incest
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Recovery from childhood abuse is a long, winding, badly paved road. There are stretches where you think, I’m finally getting somewhere. Then suddenly you hit a pothole you didn’t know existed. A memory surfaces. A feeling you buried twenty years ago walks into the room without knocking. And then comes the part nobody talks about…
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The problem with keeping secrets is that they’re alive. We like to think that our secrets can lie quietly in our minds, as inert as dirt, but we’re wrong. Secrets aren’t just our creations…they’re our creatures, beings with wills of their own. They grow. They reproduce, as we form new secrets to support the old…
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‘You weren’t born to be anything you want; you were born to be something quite specific.’ —Martin Shaw, Smokehole Somewhere along the way I was taught that freedom meant becoming anything I wanted. Build yourself. Reinvent yourself. Curate yourself. Keep every door open until life itself becomes one long hallway of mirrors. But God has…
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Childhood wounds possess a strange talent. They convince a person that pain is the truest thing about them. Years pass. Faces change. Homes change. Even the body becomes unfamiliar. Yet the frightened child keeps whispering beneath the ribs, certain the world is still what it was. Time appears to agree. It stacks memory upon memory…
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On the question of fear, ask yourself: Do I live in the fear of what my future holds? Incest leaves a whole so large in the heart of a person seldom do they whisper, “I cannot wait to see what my future holds.” They’d never utter that because hope has usually been robbed from them. Hope…
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My body became a monument to everything I refused to say. For years I searched for what was broken in me, never suspecting it might be my soul crying out. Headaches. A neck so tight it felt like it was holding up decades instead of a head. It is a strange thing, how flesh becomes…
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On the question of fear, ask yourself: Do I live in the fear of what others think? Fear with a capital “F” stays with survivors of incest. It was a gift given to us at breakfast, served with soup at lunch, and gluttonously given at the dinner table. Fear had to be consumed by us for…
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Times of reflection are the best way to start a week. Ask yourself this question: “Do I believe that help is coming? A life without hope is a very bleak existence. Today’s world seems to offer hope as a gift of denial. Hope is not denial. Hope knows that help is always coming because when…
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I used to think the greatest tragedy of my childhood was everything that was taken from me. My innocence. My safety. The ordinary, forgettable childhood every child deserves. And those losses were real. God never asks us to pretend evil was anything less than evil. But over the years I’ve begun to notice something unsettling.…
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I spent years running from stillness. The moment life became quiet, I reached for something to fill the space. Drugs. Sex. Attention. Fantasy. Chaos. Busyness. It hardly mattered what the distraction was, only that it kept me from being alone with myself for too long. I thought I was avoiding boredom. Looking back, I think…