Daily Prompt: Landscape

Daily Prompt: Landscape.

When you gaze out your window — real or figurative — do you see the forest first, or the trees?

I see the forest but then quickly become lost in the essence of the individual tree.   The beauty of the branches, the wonder of the buds, the protection of the canopy of leaves, the strength and longevity of the tree, the scars she bears, all are part of the energy she emits.

Some trees are more powerful than others.  My backyard elm has helped heal my wounded soul many times.  There is a tree on my walk that I go to when I am especially depleted.  He is very large, and very old, very scarred and should be ugly, but he is divine, his scars take my breath away in their beauty.   The ground beneath him hums with energy and he radiates power.

I see the forest, but each tree is sacred, a gift from God, a channel for the powerful healing energy within the earth.

Sunday Worship HOG Style

Spring has finally arrived and I could not be more estatic!  I think our temperature soared to twenty-four degrees celcius yesterday and my partner and I, with a group of other like-minded souls from our HOG (Harley Owner’s Group), spent most of the day in worship.

I very seldom attend church, it has never been part of who I am.  I didn’t even get baptized until I was twenty three, and that was with a great deal of trepidation.  I told the priest I wasn’t much of a church goer and he told me that doesn’t really matter since:

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Mathew 18:20
I go a little further than that, I have a personal relationship with God.  I talk to the Creator daily, often, and give thanks randomly throughout the day, whenever I see something amazing – which of course is very often.

Being out on the motorcycle yesterday was worship for me.  The sky was blue for as far as the eye could see in every direction.  The sun shone down and warmed us, the breeze was light and carried promise.  The roads were clear, traffic was light and seven Harleys roared their joy in worship of the open road.

Yesterday, that was my church, the ceiling was bright blue sky that didn’t end.  I could not breathe in the air without exhaling  thanks to the glory of our Creator.  My God is so expressive and abundant in his beauty that it takes my breath away.

Another Thank You Lord, for yesterday was a balm to my soul.

All Over

I am at a loss right now.  I don’t have any more rants to write, I got out what needed to be said for now, I’m sure more will come up later, that’s the thing with dealing with past trauma, you think you are over it and then suddenly it pops up like a whack-a-mole.  Well, I’ve hammered it down for now and don’t feel the need to talk about it anymore.  (At least for now!)  Plus, I have apparently discovered a rat in the grain and need to figure out who it is, either that or “unknown” is just lying and trying to upset me.    

I also have a confession to make.  I didn’t plant my seeds this year.  I got the room all ready, got the pots and potting soil, got all the seeds and then the weather sucked so badly I couldn’t bring myself to plant the seeds.  So, I guess I will just prepare the larger garden this year without planting it all, and buy a few vegetable plants that I can’t live without.  It’s raining out today and the snow is almost all gone from my yard, now I’m really kicking myself for not starting those seeds.

I discovered a few things recently:  that even the written word has the power to make me sick,  there is no mistaking the gut feeling I get when I feel somehow threatened, most people in my blogosphere are kind, supportive people, and the need to moderate comments before they are posted is now clear.   

Thanks for reading.

On Going Too Far Or Not Far Enough

A couple of my recent posts – So The Psychiatrist Said…, and How Far Is Too Far, garnered some interesting speculation.  I was particularly interested in one of the negative comments and have put part of my answer to it in this post. 

Let me begin by saying that my words are not harming my children, they are fifteen and nineteen, not five and nine years old, they are old enough to understand that standing up and speaking out about injustice is not a bad thing, it is a necessary thing.  Secondly, I’m their mother, they have never read and have no interest in reading my blog, as far as they are concerned I don’t really exist outside of the realm of “mother”.  Besides, why should I keep my experience with abuse quiet from them?  They are two girls, in a group of three, one of them will be a victim of abuse in their lifetime.  Hopefully mine will have learned from me that abuse is not acceptable. 

At least I’m damn sure I’m no longer willing to keep my mouth shut because what i say may make someone else feel uncomfortable.   You should feel uncomfortable.  Abuse is more than uncomfortable, it destroys lives and families, it harms society as a whole and it will take the whole of society to stand up and put an end to it.

F.U. secrets,  I’m standing up and shouting out.    How dare you tell me not to? 

 

Daily Prompt: Second Time Around

Tell us about a book you can read again and again without getting bored — what is it that speaks to you?

via Daily Prompt: Second Time Around.

I have a few books I have read more times than I can count. The first book is Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’. My first copy was a paperback which I still have, tattered and torn, missing its covers, but still the one I pick up even though I have the hardcover as well. I like the writing for one, King is a Master without doubt. The story grabs me and doesn’t let go till I’m finished it, I know how the story unfolds, I know what comes next and I love knowing where it goes. The story is an epic battle between Good and evil, Good wins, that’s important to me.

Another of my favourites is Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice. I go in stages where I read nothing but horror or mystery or deep, dark, heavy works, and then I need to read Pride and Prejudice. It’s like a palate cleanser for my brain, something nice and light and playful and innocent.

Another favourite is ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ by D.H. Lawrence. It is the language and the dialect in this book that draws me, it is so very different that it requires a different level of concentration in order for me to read it.

I have other favourites, but these three have been read the most often.

How Far Is Too Far?

I took a bit of flack on that last post, apparently I’ve gone too far since some things are meant to be private.  I cannot stay quiet on this,  I believe that secrets are usually bad things. Good things are surprises, unexpected pleasantries, happy things. Secrets are usually dark things, things that make you feel ashamed or afraid, weak or powerless, and there is nothing happy about them.

Abusive relationships are usually full of secrets, whatever the relationship, elder, child-parent, partner, lover, friend, peer or even stranger and regardless of the abuse, be it physical, sexual or emotional in real time or online. All abuse causes pain. I believe that by outing abuse, you make people aware that it is not okay to be treated this way, every human person has the right to be treated with dignity and respect, without fear and abuse, regardless of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion and the list goes on. You remove the blame and the stigma from the victim survivor and eventually, with enough awareness, the hope is that no one will have to suffer abuse.

Mental Illness, until very recently, was something to be ashamed of, questioned, heavily drugged and maybe even institutionalized. It was considered a dirty little secret. Why for Christ sake? A heart attack isn’t a “dirty secret”, why should mental illness be? It’s an illness for crying out loud, don’t blame, find what works, and if that means talking to anyone and everyone then do so. If that means blogging about Bi-Polar disorder while you check every site you can find then so be it. If you have a diagnosis you take every opportunity to learn everything you can from everyone you can because there is no definitive symptom, behaviour or treatment, you try everything you learn about it and if it doesn’t work you try something else. You can never speak to too many people or get too much feedback on something you are trying to navigate and they are experienced with. Why does it have to be a secret when any snippet of advice could be of help.

As for education. Why is a child who does not know how to learn the way she is taught, not taught in a different way? I know, the teachers have a curiculum to follow and a certain number of days to get through it, a large body of students and very little one on one time, but picture this – the child who is away sick for months and falls behind in school work when she already needed help before she became ill. When she goes back she is now so far behind and the more time goes on the more behind she gets and then she begins to feel stupid. What is more horrible than being unable to “get” something your peers easily understand. Months of trying gets the child further and further behind, she is pulled from class more often to do catchup work, she feels even more stupid and is now also teased by other classmates. She becomes so anxious that she can no longer face even going to school. The child is not stupid, far from it, she can give every single relevent detail in the lifecycle of a bull shark versus a hammer head shark.  She can explain in grueling detail, complex plots in long works of fantasy fiction. She can give you a plot synopsis on any book or character in a book that she’s read in probably the last six months. However, she doesn’t get math, and therefore, well obviously glossed over that part in science where the cells divide. Why would a learning assessment be such a difficult thing to arrange? How about attempting to discern if a learning disability or difficulty, dyslexia perhaps, exists when the child is continuously unable to learn after an extented period of time.   How about instead of trying to focus on getting the child to school, we focus on getting the child an education.

My question is, are my main topics, abuse, mental illness and access to education, things that should be kept secret in any way?
I  want your feedback on this. Have I really ‘gone too far’?

So The Psychiatrist Said…..

I have been on a journey, as you know, an exhausting journey filled with doubt and fear hope. The journey is far from over though, my mind knows the truth as I’ve exposed it, but my heart and my soul is still trying to catch up.

I had an interesting if brief conversation with a psychiatrist a few weeks ago during an assessment of my daughter E. E started having problems in grade five, she was approached by the quintessential bad guy – a guy in a white van – who tried to lure her in. She would have none of it and ran away, she ran home, phoned me, phoned the police, gave a statement. She did all the right things. She had nightmares, she had counselling, she had a fear of being left alone even in her own room, she eventually seemed to recover. But still, that’s where the problems began, or so I thought, so everyone has thought.

The following summer we moved, my mum died, E’s rabbits died, her cat died, our dog died, and she changed schools. Then she got H1N1 and missed three months of grade six. I may as well say that she hasn’t returned to school since. She has tried, she managed twenty one days in grade seven and twenty-three days in grade eight. So far she’s managed about sixteen hours of grade nine. Throughout these school years she has received no formal education. I can’t teach her, we would probably tear each other apart! The schools would not send work home no matter how many times I asked, or the social workers asked.

At ten years old E was suicidal. She was diagnosed with major depression, anxiety, social phobia and agoraphobia, and bi-polar disorder was suspected. She was given anti-depressants and tried a number of them before we found one that helped. Last year she was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and prescribed the appropriate medication on top of the anti-depressants. The medication is definately helping. She no longer spends quite as much time awake or asleep, she no longer flies into violent rages and tries to kill me, she no longer experiences blackouts, she no longer cuts herself or wants to die.

I should be incredibly happy with all of this progress. But the truth is, she still does not go to school, she is still not being educated and I still can’t get her to leave the house even just once a week on a regular basis. I can’t even get her to see her counsellor every week or make her group meeting. She still has sleep issues, often staying awake for thirty six hours or more followed by eighteen to twenty four hours of sleep. She will be fifteen in a week. Five years of fighting for her in endless meetings with endless teachers and psychologists and doctors and her father and I feel frustrated.

This brings me back to my conversation with the psychiatrist. So the phsychiatrist said that she is not fully convinced of the Bi-Polar Disorder diagnosis, instead she believes that I may have unknowingly projected my childhood trauma onto my own child. Her words, “don’t you think it odd that E’s problems began when she was ten and she is now fourteen, and your first memory of sexual abuse was when you were ten, and you put an end to it when you were fourteen?” At first I was floored, those words actually had a physical impact on me. I felt like I had been hit with so much force that it knocked the wind out of me, it left me breathless. Thinking about it now my heart is pounding and I feel nauseated. I was seriously sickened at the thought that my child’s pain is caused by me, that I would, even inadvertantly, hurt her that way.

I have been mulling this over and it bothers me. I’ve mulled it over a lot in fact, and I’m not buying it. I really thought I had put my childhood abuse behind me long ago, I went to counselling, I delved, I dealed, I forgave, I moved on. I was okay, I really believe that. I was okay, I was happy, had a home, a good job, had met a good man, my children were happy until E was not. I was still okay, even with all the things E was going through and our family was going through in terms of losses. I was doing okay until last Summer when my dad was arrested.
So I don’t belive I was projecting my pain onto her. She had her own pain. E has her own story. It’s not my story but I’m the author of it right now, and I’ll probably be prominently to blame, when as an adult she seeks out her own psychiatric help. I’m okay with that too!

So you see, I’m pretty damn tired from this journey and I’m really damn tired of being on it without a map and I am seriously fucking tired of the ripples of abuse. Right now I’m also kind of angry.