And so it begins...my first venture into cyberspace as a writer.
I've been thinking about beginning this blog for some time now. The topic of "Choosing" is an interesting one. Each day of our lives we are presented with an array of choices. Most small, some medium, once in a while a big one. Most unnoticed because they disappear quickly into the fabric of daily living.
The big ones will either serve as turning points that move us forward in ways we could not imagine at the time of choosing, or keep us stuck in places that fail to support our health or growth as human beings.
On Thursday, March 10, 2011, the first sign time it was time to start this venture appeared with the ringing of my cell phone. As my friends and family know, I was the victim of childhood abuse. After a long healing and recovery process I learned a lot about being a victim, then a survivor and then about living in the present. No longer a victim. No longer a survivor. I learned about choice and how it relates to being a "victim" and a "survivor". This blog will be devoted to the topic of "Choosing" in all aspects of life. I look forward to hearing how "choosing" plays a role in how you live your life.
I've been thinking about beginning this blog for some time now. The topic of "Choosing" is an interesting one. Each day of our lives we are presented with an array of choices. Most small, some medium, once in a while a big one. Most unnoticed because they disappear quickly into the fabric of daily living.
The big ones will either serve as turning points that move us forward in ways we could not imagine at the time of choosing, or keep us stuck in places that fail to support our health or growth as human beings.
On Thursday, March 10, 2011, the first sign time it was time to start this venture appeared with the ringing of my cell phone. As my friends and family know, I was the victim of childhood abuse. After a long healing and recovery process I learned a lot about being a victim, then a survivor and then about living in the present. No longer a victim. No longer a survivor. I learned about choice and how it relates to being a "victim" and a "survivor". This blog will be devoted to the topic of "Choosing" in all aspects of life. I look forward to hearing how "choosing" plays a role in how you live your life.
March 10, 2011, 3:45 pm.
The phone rang. I answered.
“Hello, this is Barbara.”
A soft woman’s voice asked, “Is this Barbara Oliver?”
“Yes, it is. How can I help you?”
“Did you write a book called Scream Louder?” she wanted to know.
A bit taken aback (it had been a long time since anyone had asked that question), I answered, “I did. “What can I do for you?”
A moment’s pause and then an excited voice, “I can’t believe I’m talking to you!”
Another pause…I waited.
“I’m reading your book. I didn’t know there were others like me,” she said, her voice wavering.
Tears, I thought.
“What’s your first name?” I asked gently.
“Tanya,” she replied.
“Tanya thanks so much for reaching out and calling me today. What can I do to help?”
“I don’t know where to start….” Sniffles and tears followed.
“Tanya, were you abused as a child?”
Another pause then, “Yes” in a small, small voice.
“How old were you Tanya?”
“From six to 12 years of age. Same as you. My step-father.”
My heart skipped a beat. To say this was an unexpected call is putting it mildly. Twenty-two years after Scream Louder was first published, the book I’d poured my soul, years of personal therapy, and a few years of writing and re-writing into was still making a difference in the lives of people who had suffered through the trauma of child sexual abuse.
I hadn’t given Scream Louder much thought over the last ten or fifteen years. My life had moved on. Yet here I was again listening to the story of another hurt-child-grown-into-an-adult with all that pain still trapped deep within her heart and mind as if trauma that caused it had happened yesterday.
Tanya and I spoke for about half an hour. I asked her if she had been in therapy. She had been, more than once. Yet she hadn’t revealed this part of her past to a therapist – she’d had so much shame attached. Like many – like me before I began my therapeutic process, she believed that she was “the only one” who had ever experienced such an awful thing. That shame and false belief had kept her secret buried within her. Reading Scream Louder was bringing it to the surface. I encouraged her to seek out therapy again and to reveal her secret so she could get some help and support to work it through. I hope she did.
I provided a few metaphors that helped me during therapy. I talked about peeling back the layers of an onion as a metaphor for the process of uncovering layers of pain, sadness, fear and grief. I encouraged her to read Marsha’s[1] sections of Scream Louder. In those sections are some wonderful tools that I continue to use in my daily life. Tools like the Drama Triangle and the Feelings Diamond[2] that I learned and then taught to my children. And the same tools that I used in my business career and tools that I have shared with others as they’ve gone through precarious times in their relationships.
Near the end of our conversation, I said something that reaching out meant that she was ready to start the process of not being a victim anymore.
“But aren’t you always a victim after something like this?” She sounded amazed that she could be anything else, as if she believed that she could never be anything but a victim – as if there were no other possibilities before her.
I remembered that I once believed it was impossible that I wouldn’t always be a victim. I thought the best I could do was to learn to cope with being a victim. And now, so many years later, I know that victim is a place we can move through. Victim is not a destination. Victim is not a place we must park ourselves and live. Victim, as odd as it sounds, is a choice.
My purpose here is to share my process and the steps of my choice. That choice didn’t happen overnight nor even in an instant. The “choice” took time and was revealed to me less in a moment than in a slow awakening.
So no Tanya, you don’t always have to be a victim. You CAN move through victim. Throughout your life, you may move in and out of that place called “victim”. The more you grow in awareness and healing the more you will learn that each time you stumble into that place, you will have a choice whether or not you want to stay there.
[1] Marsha Utain is a Marriage Family Therapist and the co-author of Scream Louder, which was later re-published under the title of The Healing Relationship.
[2] The Drama Triangle and the Feelings Diamond can also be found in “Stepping Out of Chaos” by Marsha Utain. Published originally by Health Communications, it can be found in its entirety on this website: http://www.nancycarterlcsw.com/DramaTriangle.html. Both are excellent as therapeutic tools as well as life tools.
