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Showing posts from November, 2017

Survivor peer pressure - telling truths

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Peer pressure, we've all been there and know how it can take hold of our decisions and our actions - it can get embedded into our psyche, especially if you're struggling with self respect and issues of trust.   It should come as no surprise that right now in our country and because of national headlines are highlighting sexual assault and harassment, that there are women and men across this country dealing with survivor peer pressure - all while PTSD triggers are exploding all around them. Today I had a emotional conversation with a woman dealing with her own triggers and survivor peer pressure. A couple of weeks ago she tracked me down at the paper. She lives in the Southwest and I reside in Wisconsin. She wanted to know about my #WhenIBecameFree project . She was contemplating telling her story - a story that goes back over 40 years and one she never openly spoke about. She is in her 70s. I could sense the pressure she was internally struggling with - her words validated

Synchronicity

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Thank you Jeri for allowing me to use this photo!  I survived Thanksgiving. Miraculously, I survived turning 50 years old on Thanksgiving. Stop the presses- I survived turning 50 on Thanksgiving being without family the first time ever in my life. I survived the first holiday, since becoming a mother, without my babies. Okay, yes, they are adults but they will always be my baby boys. Yeppers, I tend to take paths in life with the most obstacles - I guess, as they say, it makes me stronger.  Maybe that is why as we age and become wiser our hair turns gray, it is our shield of strength.. Whatever.  Now, when I get through Christmas in much the same circumstance, then I will know for a fact I am strong. I do have to say thank you to my friends who invited me over for their family's Thanksgiving - I appreciated each and every invitation even though I declined them. I only did so as I was feeling sorry for myself and didn't want to be reminded of what I was achingly missin

I believe the women #MeToo

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I was around 13 years old when an older man thrusted his tongue down my throat.  He had me cornered/pinned in a chair. He was drunk and I was terrified. It happened so fast I didn't know what to do.  Afterwards, the days...the weeks ...months following that incident, I gagged every time I thought about it, I wanted to vomit that physical memory out of my system but instead I crawled deeper into the shell of me -a journey that started at 5 years old, the first time, as a child, I was targeted by a predator and sexually assaulted. I soothed myself with an internal debate how that tongue incident wasn't as bad as some of the other assaults I had endured over my young years. When it happened I had been babysitting a young girl and her brother. Their mother's boyfriend came home earlier than expected. That boyfriend was my attacker. The kids were in their beds when he barged in the apartment. I was watching t.v. in the living room. It was just a matter of minutes when I foun