life
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I’ve spent too much of my life feeling responsible for the crimes that were done to me. Someone did go to prison for those crimes but it wasn’t the prepetrators, it was me. I was a prisoner by no crime of my own and I lived that way for far too many years. I thought…
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Healing takes a mindset of growth. As a seed becomes a plant, there is visible change. The same was true in my life. The more I healed, the more everything starting to look just a little bit different. Many of my relationships in life took drastic turns: from the men I dated, to the people…
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Wicked schemes like incest are born from pure evil. How does evil hide itself? Often veiled in a religious clock of denial. Oh, he was a righteous man. He knew the bible and went to church. What a great cover story! The man who took my virginity now gets to teach me about god. This…
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I’ve spent too much of my life feeling responsible for the crimes that were done against me. The last time I saw my mother, I felt that old burden of responsibility creeping in, the desire to not to blame her and leave the shame she ladled into my life with her. I felt a need…
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Several of the women recalled lying awake, motionless, waiting for the inevitable – a brother or father coming in to molest them. The Body Keeps the Score, van der Kolk, Chapter 2, Trauma Before Dawn These were my nights. Many of them. And, I survived. How I survived is the thing to be questioned. As…
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Sometimes growth looks like grief. Like a tree in winter—barren, stripped, still. But oh, what the gardener knows that the tree does not. God is not afraid to prune us. He is not afraid to cut away the dead things, the false selves we built to survive, or the brittle branches we clung to in…
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When people betray you—when those you trusted wound you deeper than you thought possible—the temptation is to lock your heart away, to vow never to be hurt again. I understand that desire to build walls and bury your heart where no one can touch it. But that is not the life God intended for you.…
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Introspection — what better way to start a week. I had a dream last night. There was a mother and her two small boys. I walked up to them and the boys were swimming in a large pool. Their mother was floating face down in the water. Startled, I asked the boys what was going…
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Introspection — what better way to start a week. As I’ve walked through this healing journey for over 25 years, the common theme I found when standing up to liars was how quickly they maligned me with their critical denial. I would be surefooted in one moment about my path forward with the truth. As…
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If I didn’t honor myself by returning to my past, and bringing vindication where I could, I would have been left abandoned. I would have abandoned myself. I had to force myself to remember me. Everything around me told me to stop seeking, stop turning over rocks. “Learn to live,” they would tell me. Didn’t…