The crumbs led to the Tower of Doom, the Tower of London. It has been an unbelievable path leading back in time to a historic memory. It took all the steps of my life along with a sense of destiny connected to the first steps my ancestors walked. Curiosity and a need to escape in the late night hours brought me there, and in my mind’s eye witnessing the energy lingering of a woman who I would have called my Aunt, Anne Boleyn.
It was a path well documented by DNA and others collecting landmarks -paving the trail. It took my breath away once I figured out who Mary Boleyn was, evidently my great grandmother and then her sister Anne, my great Aunt. Part of me was screaming “no way” in disbelief while the other part of me saw puzzle pieces coming together.
I submersed myself into documentaries in an effort to understand that piece of history, and because I wanted to feel what it was like back then, what they saw during their day, what it must have been like to be them.
That little girl in me, the one before she ever knew what it was like to be a survivor of child sexual assault, that innocent creature during the first five years of my life I would insist on nightgowns that looked like a princess dress so I could prance around and playout the scenarios in that fantasy loving mind I had back then. I was Daddy’s Little Princess, protected and loved. The last time I ever really felt safe in the world I lived.
Mary was Anne’s older sister. Both of them knew the greedy affections of King Henry VIII. The were what is known as Ladies in Waiting. They would follow the Queen around, providing companionship and seeing to her every little need or want. Her cheerleaders. Now I don’t need to tell you what happens when a group of women get together and especially when there is an unsaid competition for favor, yeah — an effing mess of gossip, backstabbing, and ass kissing. And, remember, we’re talking about an era where one really vile comment in someone’s ear could mean an innocent party’s head rolling in the streets as a reminder to the peasants of who was in charge. Empathy was alien, at least the willingness to show it out among the masses.
King Henry VIII took my great grandmother on as a mistress after she married the handsome William Carey. William was best buddies with the King, and was his “favorite” courtier and he had come from a longline of Knights before him.He waited until she married William, as should there had been any children conceived they would just have been absorbed into her marriage. She had no choice. She was unable to say no. She was a toy for the King, simple as that but history painted her different, even labeling her as a whore, a slut, a bitter woman. She was a victim.
Imagine how it must have felt for her when Henry made her sister, Anne, the Queen. I try to think about how she processed it all during the rare moments she was alone, those times when everything around you feels as if it is suspended in midair as all those emotions swirl with the memories of the physical. The pain releasing, or ..at least..trying to break free.
The Tudors — supposedly driven by deep faith but a trauma filled mess.
Anne spent good years, so they say, with the King, but always there was a pressure surrounding her to produce a male heir. One of her miscarriages was just that — can you imagine her sitting up in the Tower of London with all that pain, knowing that the loss of one of your babies was the one who would now be saving your life had he lived. Pain on top of pain, the mother’s heart breaking and the loyal wife’s soul shattering, all at once. How do you process all of that and remain sane? Women hating you because of envy of what they thought was a privileged life. Men lusting after you but never the right one who truly loved your being, all that made you — the others just wanted a toy or were too weak to accept her intellect, her spirit. In the end they took that educated beautiful mind and separated it from her beating heart, a heart that appears to have truly loved the man who ordered her murder. However if you believe like I do, that soul of hers, her energy that breathed life into the vehicle of her body, will always live on, somewhere — somehow.
The constraints those women had to walk through life with and remain those perfect creatures for the men to take pride in owning, it makes me wonder how many true soulmates were lost in the shuffle of chaos — power and control being abused — strict adherence to a faith that had them killing others who wouldn’t adhere — Greed. What happens to them when they enter eternity, was this their story repeating from when time began?
Yeah, this is how I settle down at night to sleep. It’s an issue.
My path to the Boleyn sisters are from documented lines I share with people who have the same surnames in their trees and some hits in the DNA — but admittedly so there may have been mistakes in documentation or even other facts we don’t know about, like all those affairs those righteous political and spiritual leaders were having — those are lost and never will be part of the documentation but do create their own stories in our family lines — perhaps the missing puzzle pieces.
Now when I look at all of it I just shake my head; 1- where’s my damn castle! 2- What happened to the family fortunes?, 3- Why in the hell did so many have to be over the top historic abusers?, 4- Does this explain the congenital defects in my spine, all that royal/noble inbreeding?
But then this morning happened. I was deep in thought wondering about Anne’s last days and her emotions, her truths when it happened. I had a surge of my own, ones I have kept locked away for some very personal reasons. But today one of the main reasons no longer walks this Earth and I guess it was time to let go, knowing that doing so wouldn’t be an arrow to their heart because they too suffered damage from the same person, just in a different way. They too was just an innocent child. Their father, one they longed to know most of their life, gave me one of the most searing memories I would deal with -shut away most of the time and never identfy my abuser to the public.
He was the one who held a little 9 year old girl down on the couch she had been sleeping on, visiting her sister and her new nephew…his child, when he came home drunk and sexually assaulted me. Painful in every way you can imagine but then there was the threat to kill my entire family if I ever told, a 200lb plus man on top of a 9 year old little girl — his fat hand across her tiny mouth while imprinting in her traumatized being she was responsible somehow and now she must save others with her silence. She was me.
Tears flowed this morning as I realized holding on to all of that — identfying him to the story, making all those connections in the open, was in fact my Tower of London. I had told some of that story in the past but I protected the criminal because in my head that was protecting loved ones — however the adult women in me knows doing so was carrying on the abuse I suffered that night and more than likely allowed for other children after me to know the pain. Silence does that — it creates a prison and allows for others to tell your story with lies and misconceptions.
As for Anne and Mary and all the other women in these family lines of mine, they were unique in that many were educated, some even authors, including back in the medieval times — but always oppressed... even though they fought to tell their truths in their own ways.
Anne loved him, King Henry VIII. Even in her last words you sense the emotion in her signature, ““Your most Loyal and ever faithful wife, Anne Boleyn.” She must have seen the innocent child he was at one time and forgave his symptoms of abuse …privileged but emotionally neglected. It is an echo and ache I know well and maybe my path is to help the women before me heal, to know their efforts were not in vain.
My Lord, Can You Imagine the PAIN..the Ache…imbedded in their hearts, their souls? Screams for help that echo for eternity.
Take a walk back in time and research your lineage…
There are lessons there…
If you’re like me and have always had a sense or draw to certain areas on the globe, with no explanation of why, your family tree is most likely the reason. Doing all of this has helped me understand some of these things,, the things you cannot put in words to others — (without someone locking you up in a straight jacket)- all those things you felt over the years about who you are, will start making sense….including the repeating generations of family trauma being passed down into your being, your cells.
The more I research the more sense I make out of my own life and some of my experiences, and the personalities in my family. Cycles repeating.
Maybe it is no joke that the Crusades and Tudor lineage is battling it out with the Eastern Prussian pagan clans and those Vikings on my Dad’s side — hence another reason for my cells to flip the switch on for having autoimmune issues
I don’t know..but yeah, I’ve been getting lost in history play out in the present era…
Oh, and to all the witches accused and condemned, I also got ya.
If you’d like to help encourage me with my online journal and other endeavors, you can with a tip for some coffee you can here.
And please pay attention to …..
HEALING HEARTS
https://www.gofundme.com/f/inject-healing-hearts-into-communities
I might be placing my vulnerabilities out there for the world to laugh at and me to be picked apart but we keep getting this wrong, why not try?
At least I want to try to place a bandaid on my branch of the family tree, I am tired of the destruction.
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