Thank-you

"One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody." Mother Theresa

I used to feel that nobody cared about me. That I didn't matter. What I thought didn't matter, What I wanted didn't matter. Who I was didn't matter.

Even when someone offered love to me I couldn't feel it. It actually hurt so I ran from it. I didn't think I was worthy. I knew I wasn't. I lived my life running, hiding - angry, scared, hating everything about who and what I was.

Then God touched me. Powerfully. Broke through when nothing else could. In a hospital emergency room where I lay under oxygen. I felt His touch. The doctor had said I wouldn't live past the year because of all the damage I had done to my body from the drugs, the eating disorder and the street lifestyle.

But God touched me. He broke the hold the drugs had over me. Yet even though He touched me I still hated everything about myself. I blamed myself for the kidnap, beatings and rape and for all the stuff that happened. I couldn't stop hurting myself. The self loathing ran deep.

Blogging. It's broken the aloneness. I've kept silent for so long. Afraid to tell the awful things that happened. Afraid to speak. So I write. Here I can say it.

I have fought everything alone. Couldn't tell anyone. I didn't want anyone to know because I felt different than everybody else. Stuff that happened didn't seem to be happening to others. I pretended so much that many times I wondered if it happened at all. But all I have to do is look at the scars on my body and close my eyes and see the images in my mind.

I don't feel alone in the fight anymore. Thank-you guys.

My Voice

"Words are the voice of the heart." Confucious

I never talked. I never told. I never said the things that happened. Instead I hid - overwhelmed with shame, wondering if all those awful things even happened at all. I used to talk in the third person - almost as if I was speaking for someone else and not for myself. I lived as if I wasn't a part of myself - Separate. Detached.

This blog has become my voice. It's given me the freedom to write what I can't say - to put a 'voice' to the memories that play in my head like old reruns that have kept me cowering in shame, - terrified to be seen.

When I sit at my computer and type - I feel free. It kind of feels like running in the woods. I can say what I want. I can say the truth. I can be honest. No one's looking at me.

My book is finished. My writer friend edited the whole thing. She said she was entralled. She said I'll touch many lives. She told me she's proud of me for writing it. My other friend, my best friend, gave my name to some local churches to speak at in the fall. The fall is too far away for me to worry about right now, but I hope I can stand up and have people look at me and tell the truth of what happened.

This morning I went for a run. I listened for God's voice. His voice gives me courage. This morning, I heard, 'trust.' One word. One powerful word. I believe He led me to write. He brought some amazing people to help me including some of you on the blog. I'm grateful, really grateful.

I want my voice to be heard. I don't want to be silent anymore. I want to help other people find peace and freedom. Maybe my story will give them that.

Gut Sense

"We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions." Issac Bashevis Singer

Her voice was sweet and she seemed kind. I trusted her. But she helped the rapist hold me in that house. Six months, unable to get out of there. She could have let me go at any time. She had the keys to the gate, to the doors - but she wouldn't. She threw me in that small cold empty room, took away my shoes so I wouldn't run, locked the door and even held me down for him....... how could she have appeared so nice, yet participate in something so awful?

What does the face of an abuser look like? I learned the hard way it's not the creepy looking guy that everyone tries to avoid or the dishelved man slumped in a downtown alley mumbling to himself. A pertetrator of harm could be anybody - male or female, young or old. The scariest thing - you can't tell by simply looking at someone if they're unsafe.

This past June my daughter came home from school and said, 'the teacher wanted us to share something we learned from an adult.' She looked at me and smiled. 'I said my mom taught me - something or someone may look good, sound good and have a group of people supporting them, but listen to your gut. Trust that gut sense. If it says danger, - trust it. Run.'

It's taken me so long to learn that. I'm thrilled at 13 she gets it. I've always lived with this fear of someone hurting my girls. It's made me a bit crazy at times and definitely overprotective. Kids trust too easily. They believe in the good of others. How do you not scare them but keep them safe? When my 13 yr. old was small, I was terrified she would go with anyone. But I wasn't a young child when I was pulled into that house. No age is safe.

I have to trust God. Trust Him to keep them safe. My head tells me not to worry. That God surrounds them with His angels and is protecting them. I have to trust. I have to believe.

Reason To Tell

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" Martin Luther King, Jr.

I've decided to tell the truth of what happened, - all of it. Although I still sometimes wonder if it happened or if I am making something more of it than it really was - But the pictures in my head are vivid and clear. Pictures of living on the street, crouched in dark corners shooting up, trapped and held in a house for six months and raped, punched until my spleen ruptured and .......

The scars are still there. Vi sable scars that tell me it really did happen.

The shame I carried for so long, the shame that silenced me, kept me quiet - unable to talk, unable to tell - that shame is losing it's power.

I think maybe my story can help someone overcome their demons. Maybe, it can help even one person find freedom and peace.

For years I said nothing. I wanted to forget, except I never really forgot. The flashbacks, the panic attacks, the need to hurt myself.....all reminders of what took place.

When I started writing last year, I never imagined I would want to show anyone what I wrote. Now I can't imagine not.

A few months ago, I met a writer. She read the first three chapters of the book I'm writing. She said, "you need to tell what happened. Your story needs to be told." Now she's editing the whole thing. And God amazingly led me to someone else. Someone who has become a close friend, someone who has never gone through what I did but who keeps telling me my story needs to be told.

I want to tell. I struggle thinking about everyone in my life knowing the awful details but my desire to help give hope to someone in a situation I was in, compels me to pray, "God use what I lived. Give me courage to tell."

The Art of Breathing

"Breathe DEEP!" The Snuggly Fabric Softener Bear

For years I walked around holding my breath. I was pertrified of being hurt so I learned to hold myself rigid, on guard, on edge... waiting.

I spent hours hiding - crouching in the dark, in a corner in the basement, under the balcony, in the closet - staying very still, quiet - not breathing.... I needed to hear, to be aware of every sound, to be ready. If I was ready, I could take it, I could handle whatever happened. I waited for hours like an animal being stalked by its prey. The waiting made me sick. My head hurt, I threw up. I bit my arms until they bled... to force myself to stay vigilant, to stay strong.

I grew up and continued to hold my breath. I lived on the edge. Reckless, wild. Life hurt. It hurt really bad.

A few years after God touched me, I went to see a Christian counselor. She looked at me and said, "you're not breathing. You're holding your breath. Breathe! Let go!" Her words made me afraid. To let go meant to trust that I would be safe. I went home after seeing her and threw up and cut my arms. I couldn't let go. I couldn't trust. Experience taught me the world was not safe. To let my guard down meant I might not survive.

Time passed. I continued to see that counselor. She kept telling me it's ok now to breathe. In the quietness of my house, in the darkness, alone - I let go. I let myself breathe. I survived. I went back to see her and told her. She asked me to show her, right there in her office - to breathe with her. To trust. I did.

I know God led me to that counselor. He used her to bring me out of a place that I had gotten lost in. She taught me to trust. She helped me feel safe, something I had never known before.... Safety. Feeling safe... helped me to breathe again.

From the moment God touched me, I trusted Him. How could I not? He cut the chains that wrapped around me, choking the life from me. He freed me. He took away the drug addiction. He took away the needles, the dope ...the highs that made me crazy and the lows that made me suicidal. They held me a prisoner for fourteen years, shooting up three and four times a day. He broke their hold over me so I trusted Him. He led me to others like that counselor. He wanted to help me learn to feel safe in the world. He wanted to help me learn to breathe again.

I was 12 when I started the drugs. By 14 I was shooting up. Life was dark. Ugly. The police, the courts, social workers sent me to jail, to hospitals, to rehab. Nothing worked. Only God. He did what nothing else could. He broke the hold of darkness and taught me to breathe, taught me to feel safe, helped me connect first to Him, then to myself, then to others.

Taking A Stand

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controvery." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Taking a stand and speaking out when we see or hear an injustice being done takes courage. It's not easy to get involved, to have our voice - it's so much easier to walk away; to kid ourselves into believing we didn't see, we didn't hear, we didn't really know.......

Whether it's standing up for the rights of a child to be free from harm, or a nation to be free from unjust rule, or a cause that we know we cannot look away from - taking a stand tells the world we will not be silent, we will not allow wrong to be be perpertrated - whatever the cost to ourselves.

I have struggled recently with family members who knew my sister and I were being abused. They said they didn't know how bad it was, but they admitted they were terrified or our father and that many times they pulled our mother off us when she was beating us so badly. And finally they said, "we didn't want to interfere in someone else's family problems." So they walked away and left. Left us to fend for ourselves against adults who bullied and terrorized us.

Then they said we should have asked for help. They blamed us. They said we didn't reach out. It's hard for me to understand their reasoning. We were children who had no voice. They said I was quiet, that I never talked, never spoke. I had no words. No voice. How could I have asked for help?

To protect myself, I tried to disappear, first in my head, then through drugs, throwing up and cutting myself. I willed myself to not be present. Once, while at the park, it started raining. I ran to the store to look for my sister. She wasn't there. I ran back to the park. Everyone had left. Alone in the rain, thunder and lightening, I ran home. As soon as I got in the house, my mother attacked me - punching, kicking and slapping me. She put her hands around my throat and two of my aunts grabbed her and pulled her off. I slipped away and made it to the bathroom, locking the door. I dropped to the floor, soaking wet. Her screams filtered through the door. I closed my eyes and forced myself to pull away in my mind until I couldn't hear her anymore.

I became lost. I never talked. Teachers told me I was the saddest child they had ever seen. But nobody did anything. Nobody helped.

When God wrapped His gentleness around me, poured out His love - I knew I needed to be a voice for those who had no voice. I couldn't do what my relatives had done, look the other way and walk away from anyone experiencing any form of injustice or cruelty.

I went back to school. Got my degree. For all the drugs I did, the many times my head was bashed against the wall, for all the times I was called stupid, retarded, garbage, an idiot, I somehow managed to get on the Dean's Honor List.

God empowered me. He gave me my life back, then my voice. I will never keep silent again. I will stand up and speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. I will not turn away. I will be a voice for the vulnerable, the weak and those unable to stand up for themselves. I want to make a difference, regardless of the cost to myself. With Him in my corner, I will not be silent anymore.