Pay Attention! Something Is Wrong With Time.

 

In my last post I mentioned how my father complained of a calendar change that made his historical research difficult, and years ago I looked into our time and dating system after having an odd dream. The dream was just a voice in the early morning between sleep and waking, and it declared, “Pay attention! Something is wrong with time.” The voice sounded urgent and impatient, as though time was short, so that morning I began trying to understand time.

 

When I had this dream the world was obsessed with the upcoming end of the Mayan calendar that would happen in 2012 according to experts. The experts claimed to have a grasp on time, understanding the calendar changes over the years, and adjusting their counting system accordingly. There were mainstream books, movies, and debates in the years leading up to 2012, and the conspiracy boards were ripe with opinions, descriptions, and counter debates on how they believed it would unfold, but I wasn’t sure. Apparently, according to the impatient waking voice, there was something wrong with time.

 

The world media introduced fear into the people, as it always does, with the ideas that we’d all die suddenly, or suffer in some unexpected and creative ways, and then, of course, not much happened. The experts were wrong, we didn’t die, but things did change. Something escalated, and the world seemed to move a little faster. Was it the introduction of digital TV, smart phones and meters, wi-fi, etc.? Who knows, but here we are in 2025, and it’s been a wild ride to get here. Well, at least we think it’s 2025; does it really matter if we know what time it is?

 

At first I think maybe it doesn’t matter, the days will still pass, life will go on, but something in me feels a little inkling of discomfort inside. If it wasn’t important why go through so much to keep changing it? Why have so many dating systems? Why do some cultures have a different counting system? Why confuse everyone so much that they don’t even know what day it is, or what year? I can think of a couple reasons to strive to keep the masses unsure, one would be to deliberately confuse and mislead, and the other would be that something is being hidden from us, something that no one wants us to see.

 

It’s said the calendar is the center of civilization, but has to be adjusted periodically because it slides out of sync. If time is a continuum from one point to the next why is it so difficult to take note of and count? We know of the great calendar change after Jesus walked, died, and was resurrected on the earth, which moved our dating system from BC (before Christ) to AD (anno domini “The Year of our Lord”) or BCE (before common era) to CE (common era). There was also another change in the 1500s named after Pope Gregory XIII, and that one took quite a while to be accepted by the masses. The new calendar added in a couple weeks and moved the celebration of the New Year from the first of April to the first of January. Those who protested the change and refused to accept a wintry New Year were mocked and called April Fools. There were many issues with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, but as time passed those of us in the Western world now accept that the New Year is indeed in the winter instead of the spring.

 

Is it that important to know what time it is? The Bible says there is a season for everything under the sun, and time will change, and change again, but it also says to follow the Sabbath. How can we do as God asked if we don’t even know which day is which? Do we make up our own Sabbath? Do we trust the government and our 501c3 church leaders to tell us the proper day? It’s all so confusing, and perhaps deliberately made so, but what if it’s worse than what we know? What if the entire dating system is off, what if it’s not missing just days, weeks, or months, what if it’s missing years and centuries?

 

Back nearly twenty years ago when I was looking into these things there were a lot of thoughts and opinions about world changing events, some believed that every 25,000 years or so our magnetic poles shift suddenly, causing incredible turbulence on the surface of the earth, lands flood and move and shake and burn, and humans die by the millions. Others believe there is a longer span between events that bring a similar destruction, and these people suggest that a rogue planet enters our solar system and passes by leaving great damage on the earth. The commonality between these groups, and others, are that periodically the world undergoes vast, sudden, and era ending change, and the earth certainly shows the scars of great and terrible times happening, seemingly everywhere, but the dates and reasons for it vary. The one thing most of these theories leave out is God, and the people following them seem to trust man’s counting system, but have little to no trust in God.

 

Some believe our earth appeared from a big explosion in space and everything was simply created with no creator. These people believe that the earth has been spinning for millions of years, and claim to be able to date it through carbon studies, but over and again we find out of place artifacts that don’t fit into their pictures of the age and dates of the uncreated creation. Those of us of faith understand that God has had to intervene on more than one occasion to knock us back, or knock us back in shape. Some say there was no great flood although the evidence is certainly there, and all cultures speak of one. And Sodom and Gomorrah surely had an era changing event as fire and brimstone rained from the sky just as they had been warned it would, and modern archeology agrees the city was destroyed, but may disagree on the whys and hows of it.

 

Getting back to time, man’s systems can’t accurately keep up with it, or it won’t keep up with it on purpose. They say we slide out of sync, and then move days and months, and add minutes and seconds. Science says the problem is the fact that the earth is spinning with great fervor, over a thousand miles an hour, while also moving through space at another sixty thousand miles an hour or so, and that makes their jobs difficult. And there are other issues with keeping up with time and our history, like the dark ages or early antiquity and the middle ages where apparently not much happened, we didn’t progress much, we didn’t create or invent much. We know the Roman Empire finally collapsed in 436, and that the worst year for humanity on record was 536, as in 536 they had all kinds of disasters. They had volcanoes and plagues and comet strikes, and we know these things happened on those dates because the experts have stated that they did. And after that terrible year not much happened for a long time, there aren’t many written records or art or books, and what may have been left was lost to fire.

 

It seems we struggled with fire a lot from about the 1600s onward, and strangely enough between the 1800s and the early 1900s just about every state in America, and every city in the world had what were called Great Fires. The things that may have given us a clue about our past, the maps, art, books, and records have been, perhaps systematically, burned away. Now no one, or very few, know what time it is, and we are told to just trust the experts, because really, is it that important? 

 

Recently I stumbled on a video by Gunnar Heinsohn, who was an author, sociologist, and economist, and a professor emeritus at the University of Bremen before he passed away in 2023. In his lecture he comes to the fascinating conclusion that at least seven hundred years are missing from our history. I watched his presentation a couple times, and it’s filled with charts and graphs where he points out how time seemed to stop for quite a while after the fall of the Roman Empire. He spoke of the great catastrophes that hit the area with precision strikes, which man’s history claimed happened in the third, sixth, and ninth centuries, but by the thousands of archeological digs in the area the strata and evidence to prove the managed retelling of history simply isn’t there.

 

Man’s history tells us that those three catastrophes were quite destructive. The one in the third century buried cities under mud, sand, and silt, while the one in the sixth century was believed to be caused by a myriad of volcanoes erupting consecutively along with comet strikes, and the ninth century catastrophes were also blamed on volcanoes. The destruction from each of these events stretched thousands of miles with little overlap, turning areas into desert, and coincidentally the Mayan civilization also collapsed during this time at over twelve thousand miles away and across an ocean. But Professor Heinsohn’s research shows that it wasn’t three separate catastrophic events spread out over centuries, but one, era ending event that changed the face of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, and also brought on the collapse of the Maya civilization.

 

The destruction that came with this event was profound, but the world says that it was three different attacks that pecked away at the area with surgical strikes, swiping one part, and then another part, and then another until it had altered the whole region. According to the experts the third century crisis strangled the Western Empire from Portugal to southern Italy, the sixth century disaster hit the Eastern Empire from Serbia to Egypt, and the final event hit the periphery of the area with a huge arch from Norway to Iraq. But giving the three-event scenario some thought it just doesn’t make sense, how could the devastation follow such fine and invisible lines without overlapping, and taking century after century to complete? But the experts state that’s exactly what happened, there were many, separate catastrophes in a near one thousand year span, instead of one huge event changing the whole area.

 

Typically as societies grow and fall they build on the remains of the societies before them, and through archeological digs those former inhabitants lives and existence are easily found, but not in the land where Jesus walked, died, and was resurrected. There are no artifacts, no strata, to prove that after the temple in Jerusalem fell (as Jesus said it would with no stone left unturned) the Roman Empire continued to thrive for several more centuries. Time seemed to have stopped, and the population disappeared, only to reappear hundreds of years later. During these dark ages from the first to the tenth century there was no change in architecture or language or art or coins or glass, and there are few, if any, writings from the era, time had stopped. And when time restarted, Christianity spread across the world.

 

But what if those centuries aren’t there, and never existed? What if there’s something wrong with our understanding and knowledge of time? What if there was one earth shaking, era ending, catastrophic event that changed time, and the world is determined to hide it from us? What could be so important that it must be hidden? Even Professor Heinsohn was stumped, but found a small clue of what those catastrophic events may have looked like to the people in chapters 6 and 8 of the Revelation of John.

 

 “A mighty earthquake took place, and the sun became black like animal hair sack-cloth, and the full moon became like blood, and the stars of heaven fell to earth. / And one third of the earth burned up. […] Something like a huge mountain burning with fire was hurled into the sea. And one third of the sea was turned to blood. […] A huge star fell from heaven burning like a lamp and it fell on a third of the rivers. […] And a third of the waters were turned to bitterness, and many people died from the waters.”

 

The presentation really intrigued me, and reminded me of that wake-up call nearly twenty years ago that something was wrong with time, and if seven hundred years are missing, then that voice was certainly correct. But what does that mean in the big picture? How does that change a thing? Our Gregorian calendar is one of commerce, and it lets us know when to pay our bills, our taxes, and counts down to our vacations and holidays. How can seven hundred missing years have a thing to do with any of us in this day and age? I guess that depends on your perspective, if the goal is to simply get through this day to face another then probably not much, it probably doesn’t affect you at all. But if the goal is to seek the truth in all things, then it may mean an awful lot.

 

Why would our society want to hide the past? What could have happened that was so profound that it must be covered up at all costs? Why lie about a world-altering event, and insist it didn’t happen, and was simply many smaller events? We know that there have been other catastrophic occurrences throughout the history of humankind, great changes to the land and to the people, but this particular one they decide to break up into smaller segments spread out over a millennium, confounding the experts, and making them guess and speculate. What was so important, so life altering that it had to be hidden? Do you know what time it is?

 

I’ll leave you with Professor Heinsohn’s presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0KI6TL4tf4

 

 

Keep seeking, it seems that things are getting weird out there.

Generational Trauma and Curses

 

I’ve spent the last few years exploring support groups geared toward survivors of narcissistic abuse, scapegoating, and child abuse. Social media is certainly good for allowing access into the worlds of others through various hobby, art, religion, and support groups. At first I was emotionally raw, and read and read, never commenting. I was rather stunned to find so many people shared my experiences, and they aren’t as rare as I had once believed. They are hard to explain, though, especially to people who grew up in stable, loving homes, or to counselors who didn’t spend their formative years walking on eggshells and questioning their own reality, and they are on a spectrum from bad to worse.

 

With reading so many stories, day after day, and feeling the raw emotion and confusion of these people, I began to see parallels. This type of abuse is not creative, not in any sense, and so many report growing up with the same events. Sudden, unpredictable, outbursts of anger, crazy making and impossible demands, bullying and mocking, triangulation between siblings, ruined milestones and holidays, adult issues dumped on children’s shoulders, and a lot of illogical, overly emotional and/or violent situations that leave the person drained, exhausted, and depressed. It became clear that there is a lot of fear and anger being handed down through the generations.

 

One of the more disheartening things I saw was how often unaddressed trauma is diagnosed as mental illness. I’ve seen this over and again, victims carrying the weight of family dysfunction on their shoulders, and accepting the diagnosis and drugs to numb, sedate, and ease the turmoil inside. Usually the misguided diagnoses are labeled bi-polar disorder or borderline personality disorder, and the treatment is mind numbing drugs, and shame for being mentally weak. But the struggles that come with surviving trauma and insane amounts of gaslighting is not a mental illness, it’s the natural and logical reaction to poor treatment. It’s a huge business, this mental health industry treating abuse victims and ignoring the bigger picture of why so many people are perpetually in fight or flight, and so traumatized.

 

But with all things I discover in life I tend to zoom out and try to see the bigger picture. I understood the micros, the fear and anger infecting adults that they both knowingly and unknowingly pass on to their children, but how was it so widespread? Why do we have so many traumatized adults? It dawned on me that there are strands of generational abuse, trauma, or just plain ole curses running through our nation, and it had to come from somewhere, but where? In looking around I found this trauma was woven through our nation, through our society, and is impressed on us from many directions.

 

My father (1920s-1990s) was a genealogist and historian, obsessively tracing his family tree back as far as he could, and learning about what led to the creation of our nation. He often complained about little old ladies changing official records to make their family name appear above reproach, and how that made things difficult for him. He also mentioned a change in the world dating and calendar system adding additional problems to his research. Despite my dad’s obvious trauma issues, and having only received an eighth grade education, he was a very intelligent man. He gave me my first concussions, and was one of those fine line people, a fine line between genius and insanity, a fine line between calm and raging. He was a formerly abused child, and a WWII vet with undiagnosed PTSD, and sensory and anger issues.

 

I bring up my father because I remember him having a very emotional reaction to a discussion about adoption. He ranted how unjust and harmful it was to uproot children from their lineage, and how it would leave the child forever questioning where they belong. I didn’t understand, as I was sure he hadn’t been adopted, but his reaction has stayed with me since then, and I’ve often wondered why. Why he reacted in such a fashion, and why it has stayed with me for over forty years? Over the top reactions were not out of character for my father, but this particular one has lingered in my mind while hundreds of others have not.

 

It seems the whole world carries a generational trauma, a curse, and no one speaks of it. The first orphanage in the United States was created in 1729 before America was even established, and it appears they were springing up in other countries as well. Orphanages became an industry, written about in popular literature, acted out in stage plays, and by 1900 there were over 1000 orphanages spread out across our country, each holding hundreds or thousands of kids at a time, a steady stream of kids coming in and then aging out. These were massive buildings where the children were warehoused like cattle, and treated brutally without parental care and concern. Interestingly enough a review of the Protestant Orphan Asylum in St. Louis, Missouri from 1847 to 1869, found that only 27% of the children had no parents.

 

The official record holds that the leaders of the time felt that children shouldn’t remain with their families due to poverty, low education, and other facets of life, and removed them. So three quarters of those orphans weren’t actually orphans, just uprooted and tossed into care. Coincidentally, as the leaders were yanking children from their parents, the first mental hospitals or lunatic asylums began opening in the United States in 1752, more massive buildings where brutal treatments were enacted.

 

According to the official record (which I rarely trust to give the real, true, and full picture) between the years of 1854 and 1929 the orphan train movement operated. Hundreds of thousands of kids were shipped all over the country and “adopted” at train stations, more often to work as farm hands and servants, than to be taken into a loving families. Coincidentally at the same time we were overflowing with “orphans”, Ellis Island was open and bringing in millions of immigrants and their families, while the insane asylum industry continued to grow at an unbelievable rate. So our nation destroyed countless families, tore the children away to essentially fight to raise themselves while working adult jobs, and those who complained were committed. Well, that would certainly leave an awful lot of trauma and anger in the heart of each of those children. And those children grew up to be parents and grandparents, passing on the hurt in a myriad of ways.

 

And then came the wars, and we certainly had a lot of angry young men to fight in them, war after war sending traumatized men home to start families. And then came the televised traumas, presidents being shot on screen, national leaders who brought hope being slain, and of course more wars with gruesome images of our dead young men being shown on the evening news each night. How many children got to know, love, and admire the astronauts before watching the Challenger explode in mid-air from every schoolroom across the country? There was 911, and the terror of more planes attacking the innocent, and the towers coming down over and again on repeat for days on our screens. And then the pandemic with the rolling death count on TV while nurses and doctors danced in empty hospitals, almost as though they were mocking us. Then there are the weather events, the tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, and earthquakes where we see more of our dead countrymen, and it has gone on and on for my entire lifetime, one shocking and numbing event after the next. Our country appears to be invested in keeping us traumatized and off balance.

 

Could it be that this trauma, this dysfunction, has been deliberately spread out into mankind? Why did every major country suddenly need to separate parents and children and imprison them? What is history not telling us? Depending on your beliefs we people have been on the earth for thousands or millions of years, have we always been so rough on our children? Where did our ideas of parenting begin? Could the lessons of parenting that we know have started in dark and archaic asylums where only the strongest survive? Who decided that this Lord of the Flies mentality (where bullies reign, children suffer, and personal identity and morality is lost) was the way to create a productive adult?

 

The Bible tells us that there is no new thing under the sun, and the world’s dirty secret is, and has always been, that children are a commodity. They are bought and sold and killed and used, and it’s the richest dark money scheme that exists. Despite the fact that the asylums, orphan trains, and orphanages are long in the past, hundreds of thousands of children are uprooted and disappear yearly in this nation alone, and this fact is not mentioned on the TV or media. There is still, in this day and age, a dark cloak of evil after the children of this world, and it’s far bigger than the abuse in individual families, it’s sewn into the fabric of our very nation, and our nation’s soul and identity.

 

The big picture shows that there is a massive evil stalking our children, and the micro knows how hard it can be on the individual kid where nothing makes sense, there is no stability or trust, and armoring and closing yourself off to others is the only way to survive. And perhaps that is what the nation wants for us, maybe it wants us to be closed off, broken, scarred, and no longer giving a care about our neighbors or fellow citizens, and perhaps that was always the goal from the beginning.

 

Jesus teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to seek the truth, to love and honor God and have no idols, and to protect our children, while the world’s message is far different. In this world debauchery is power, truth is negotiable, infanticide is bravery, sacrificing everything for money is heroic, idolatry is the norm, and experiencing and surviving great traumas is simply mental illness. The Bible is right yet again, what’s been done before will be done again, there is no new thing under the sun, and the soul of this nation, and the souls in this nation are in a very dark place. A dark place contrived and created by our leaders with a purpose, and looking out, and over, and under, and around I only see that the purpose is to drive us further from God, from salvation, from our rightful inheritance, and from our place in heaven. Generational abuse, trauma, and curses are real, and useful to a dark agenda, and the only way to end them is with acknowledgment, faith, personal sacrifice, honesty, and prayer. The world continues to inflict the trauma programming, and hate and shun and mock and cancel the ones who stand up and point it out.

 

Keep seeking. 

 

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Moving Forward

 

I’m always amazed when I see how many visitors this blog receives each month. I don’t know who you all are, but I wish you well, and thank you for taking time to stop by. My latest novel is complete and is yet another attempt to explain the various colors of narcissistic personalities and generational abuses, I’m just taking little slices and expanding them into stories I hope are interesting.

 

I haven’t posted here for over a year, been busy writing books and keeping focused on a couple goals, and I needed time to do some healing. There’s been a lot I’ve wanted to say, but hesitate because I know simple words rarely change any situation, so why waste the energy? But then I remember how many people my book “Momma Said Write a Book About It” helped, so perhaps I’m a little obligated to share my experiences. I think the truth is important, though, perhaps the most important thing as we maneuver through these lives and this dark world. The truth is a light in the darkness, the truth is healing, the truth is all that matters in the end, and the truth is the only way to reach the narrow gate and what lies beyond it.

 

After my mother passed I heard how she held such a love for Jesus, and I surely hope it’s true, but if it is it is a love that was found after I parted ways with her. For years and years my mother and I spoke nearly everyday, and the one thing she never mentioned or discussed or brought into any conversation was Jesus, not one time. I often wonder if people considered what my mother and I spoke about in those daily, hours long, phone conversations, because it wasn’t God, it wasn’t Jesus, and it wasn’t empathy for our fellow man, it was people, it was family, it was harsh and destructive gossip.

 

Everyday my mother dumped on me, every secret entrusted to her, and all the “concerns” and speculations of family, how each member was less than they portrayed to the world, and all they lacked in her harsh opinion. She did this in a subtle fashion with a conversational tone, usually followed by a long-suffering sigh and probing questions. (Think: “All they do is sit in front of the TV and eat, what do you think is wrong with them?” “They don’t care about those babies, it just doesn’t seem like they have a conscience. Do you think they’re a sociopath?” “I don’t know why one had such a strict curfew and the other got to run wild, or maybe I do. I think they’re playing favorites, what do you think?”) She’d pull things up from years ago, imagine scenarios that hadn’t happened, and project her own flaws on others. She wasn’t lovingly concerned about their well being, she was a harsh judge to every aspect of their behavior (as she understood it), and she wanted to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk these people into the dirt daily. She had a surgical way of picking at their character, and expounding darkly on their motivations, often going so far to question if they even possessed a conscience, or if they were possessed by a darker force. (As a child she often insisted I didn’t have a conscience, and now I know that was simply projection.)

 

She dumped on other family members too, where I was the body being autopsied and scrutinized, and if anyone said something about me in response to her guided probing questions, she couldn’t wait to tell me. Again, in a subtle fashion she’d let me know I was the one being discussed, and share their carefully selected opinions about me with me. It was triangulation; she played both sides, and stirred up trouble and ill feelings. And if there was an argument in the family she was quick to call and share every detail; every hurtful word said to her, and always with herself as the long-suffering victim of the family’s cruelties. 

 

I find it disheartening to discover that the people my mother dragged through the mud on a regular basis are the people who hold her in the highest regard. It hurt my feelings that the people I defended over and again through the years so easily turned away from me and began ignoring, excluding, and gossiping, as well as blocking me on social media. I don’t quite know what to do with that knowledge, and it was incredibly painful, but I’ve accepted it, and am grateful to God for revealing yet another hard truth to me.

 

I also don’t quite know what to do with all the secrets that have been dumped in my lap over the years, as well as all the speculations on all the secrets. I know more about some people than I ever wanted to know, and now I carry secrets I didn’t ask for, and had no interest in knowing. It is almost as though I had an unwanted surveillance into the lives of others and saw the absolute worst of them, but made to keep it to myself, and to carry someone else’s burden. Biblically it’s called gossip and is an abomination to God. (In my opinion gossip is akin to black magic, it doesn’t stop with just a few people, the darkness spreads out in the world infecting others.)

 

The truth is my mother was an emotionally manipulative person who was a master in triangulation, plotting one against the other with speculations, half-truths, and lies. The only time she showed compassion for another was when attempting to emotionally manipulate someone, to triangulate to make someone jealous or emotionally triggered, and then she pulled the compassion out in abundance, but only to imply the lack in others for not feeling the same way. I see clearly now how she manipulated my son and I, and I see how she did it with others. Plotting one against the other, egging on and offering advice to both sides while trying to provoke jealousy and emotional outbursts (which she’d later use for gossip and condemnation), and then claiming her innocence and ignorance as things dissolved into chaos. My mother has left a lot of damage in her wake.

 

After I stepped away I then heard of her “disease” which I assume was supposed to be Alzheimer’s, although no one stated it. To me it wasn’t a disease as much as an inability to mask her true personality any longer. With me she began bringing up situations from the past, hurtful and traumatic and life-changing situations caused by her hand, but now defending her actions as just and right. (“I don’t know why everyone said I had a drinking problem. I never had a drinking problem.”) Day after day in those last months of contact she’d bring up one situation or another, and explain how she hadn’t been wrong in hurting me, physically, emotionally, and mentally, I had been wrong for pushing her to that point, and being a bad kid. There are some things in life you don’t do twice, not if you have a choice, and reliving my traumatic childhood is one of those things. I was a child, she was the parent, and I didn’t make her abuse me, bully me, insult me, call me names, or break my spirit, and I wasn’t going to agree that I was just because she was old.

 

All my life my mother stated that I was too honest, the most honest person she’d ever met (as though it was a weakness instead of a strength), but I suspect those statements changed when I stepped away. I think she was terrified that I would reveal her. She said many times I couldn’t share anything she talked about or she’d be homeless, ostracized, and hated, and I didn’t share it, even after I took a break for my own sanity. She often told me I was her best friend, the only person she could talk to, but I now know that wasn’t even close to the truth, it’s what she said to many people, the people she regularly lied to and manipulated, and those words were just another manipulation. My mother had a way of making everyone responsible for regulating her emotions, she did it to me from the time I was a young child, she did it to my son, and she did it to others. Everyone was responsible for her emotional needs and expressions, everyone except herself.

 

I’ve been able to find forgiveness, though, because I realize my mother was just continuing generational abuse, a curse the Bible would call it, and was once a young and confused girl undergoing abuse just like I did. I can easily forgive that scared little girl, God bless her. Curses can be broken with prayer and faith, with obedience to the God’s rules, but they have to faced and acknowledged. Buried and unspoken curses just continue to produce bad fruit, and in families that bad fruit is broken and hurt people.

 

I pray my mother did find Jesus before she passed, but I have no proof of that. It seems that if she did she would have reached out to apologize, to find a way to help ease some of the pain, to be honest about the circumstances, but she never did. Jesus is the truth, the life, and the way, and no one can reach heaven without Him. The path is very narrow, and according to the Bible very few will find it, and I know without any doubt it can’t be reached while living a life of lies. Facing the truth is incredibly hard because it brings change, and once you see the truth you can’t unsee it.

 

The truth will set you free, but it will also piss off an awful lot of people. Keep seeking, though, it is worth it. 

 

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Grief Is Not A Spectator Sport

 

I’ve been thinking of funerals, and of course I am, my mother has recently passed on. Death is a big thing in trauma/addiction recovery, truly any event that brings a lot of emotion forward is a big event, but death is definitely one of the biggest ones. And the death of an abusive/estranged parent is the biggest. Needless to say there are a lot of mixed emotions involved.

 

With the news of her impending death I found myself in constant prayer that she would seek repentance for the harm she put out in the world. I found myself waking early in the morning already engulfed in prayer that somewhere in my mother she realized the harm she had caused, and was honestly repenting. I have longed for her to show me remorse over the years, to acknowledge she hurt me worse than any other human being was capable, but the last week of her life I wasn’t interested in her remorse, I just wanted her to repent before she died. (Mathew 18:6) I don’t know if she did, and I suppose I won’t know until I pass on myself.

 

I am grateful I had almost two and a half years of mourning before she passed. I am grateful I had a chance to begin healing, to create a life where she wasn’t the chaotic center of it, to find some peace and belief in myself, and put myself in God’s hands and trust Him completely with my fate. I will always be grateful for the time. In the beginning I separated myself simply because I had no choice, my body had revolted. And I will be forever grateful the nightmares, flashbacks, fear and trembling, anxiety and panic attacks came before she died, because if they’d happened afterwards I don’t know if I would have survived it.

 

Therefore I’ve been thinking about funerals, and being the youngest on both sides of my family I’ve been to a lot of them in my years. Funerals tend to be highly emotionally charged events, and perhaps because death marks the end of an era, funerals tend to bring people to seek resolution of one long-held issue or another. Funerals are triggering, and I can’t think of a single funeral I’ve been to that didn’t bring an eruption of chaos during it, or quickly following it.

 

When my own father buried his mother he went to the funeral carrying his gun. The tension in that funeral home was like nothing before or since, the factions were aligned with their perceived righteousness and indignities of how my father had failed his mother, and although no shots were fired, or blows thrown, that event left an indelible memory. Then there was the funeral where a cousin went after an uncle and had to be physically restrained. And the one where one mourner worked diligently to turn everyone from another mourner with accusations of an earlier unwanted sexual encounter, or yet another funeral where there were divisions with claims of domestic abuse.

 

And of course there was my own child’s funeral where several people targeted me, trying to engage me into some kind of upset. One followed me through the funeral home mocking my words as I spoke to mourners, another tried to draw me into an argument because she felt she had been treated unfairly, and yet another sought out to resolve an issue from years earlier. All this occurred while I was attempting to say goodbye to my only child. Why did those people choose a funeral to address long-held upsets? I don’t know, but I do know that it’s not uncommon to use that ritual as a tool of harm.

 

Grief is not a spectator sport, nor should it be used to gather more fodder for the gossips. If the last two and a half years have shown me anything it has been that I can only rely and put my trust in God, not man, not family. I suppose I knew what would happen when I stepped back to mourn my own losses and begin to heal my own injuries, and the events happened in a textbook fashion, the lines were drawn and people chose their side. I didn’t ask anyone to choose, and although I may have desired understanding and compassion, I did not expect it, and I wasn’t surprised when I did not receive it. I was hurt, though, just one more hurt piled on top of the others, and I was gossiped about and condemned far and wide.

 

I have stated over and again that I abhor gossip and fully agree with the Bible in this point, it is destructive, it is sinful, and it is where small and evil minds gather. My mother told me many times in my life if I didn’t do as she requested then people would talk about me, ie., she’d get that ball rolling. Luckily for me after being warned, gossiped about, and experiencing the awkward hush that comes over a room when I stepped inside, I was prepared for what followed. What I won’t do is feed that gossip machine any further. 

 

My mother has died. There are so many losses to be mourned, so many. As her only surviving daughter I have the right to mourn as I see fit, I have the right to soothe my own pain in Jesus’ peace, and not be further fodder for the gossips.

 

All this is my way of saying I will not attend my mother’s funeral. Experience has shown me that funerals aren’t a safe place to let down my guard and open up my heart. Experience has shown me that the only benefit to be had by my attendance would be to deepen the coffers of the gossips, and to further a divide that may never be bridged. I know where my mother will be buried, I’ve spent a lot of time in that cemetery in my years, and I will go and visit the grave on my own, when I am ready.

 

Sometimes in this life you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t, and I am mightily tired of being damned by people who do not know my story, and mock, lie about, and dismiss what I have survived. She was my mother too, and above all else I pray that she repented for the incredible pain she caused in her life. 

 

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Righteous Anger

I haven’t been posting a lot of blogs recently and the main reason is that I’m angry, and I didn’t really want to push that anger out into the world. I’ve written plenty, and when I see the anger sneaking in with no way to say what I feel without revealing it, I close it out. It’s righteous anger though; it’s the anger that comes when you finally find respect for yourself, your abilities, and your own existence.

 

I find I’m most angry over all the losses, the loss of a education, the loss of the love and affection a child needs to become a well-rounded human being, the loss of a central nervous system that works correctly and isn’t constantly on high alert waiting for the next threat. I’m angry that I never had a mother I could trust, one who would protect me. I’m angry that as an adult I never had a mother who was a friend, one who would hold my secrets and stand up for me. I’m angry that through all the suffering I’ve endured in my life, my mother only viewed my pain as fodder for gossip, as a means to draw attention to herself.

 

I’m angry that I have suffered real brain damages from the concussions, the beatings, the threats, and the continuous and constant stress through my formative years. I am angry that every confidence I trusted with my mother was shared far and wide, and not just shared, but subtly changed to suit her wants and needs for attention. I’m angry that in my childhood every little thing was a dramatic, never-ending crisis. I’m angry that my mother never tried to be a good mother, never taught me anything useful or valuable, it was all about her, her feelings, her needs, her wants, her desires to be the focus of everyone in her world.  

 

I am angry that the only affection I received as a child was in front of an audience, and had no real feeling behind it, it was just a show for others. I am angry that I am the daughter of such a cold, heartless, unfeeling, and cruel (mean-girl) woman, and that I was never allowed to be my own person, I was simply a possession that was expected to mirror her feelings. I am angry that I had to struggle so hard to find little pieces of myself, that being a whole, separate person was discouraged, while being a pathetic, helpless mess was encouraged.

 

The anger ebbs and flows, some days better than others, and I know with time it will lessen, and I also know that the anger is righteous and needed. What I find I am the angriest with is that I put up with it for so damned long, that I wasted the majority of my life seeking a thing that simply doesn’t exist. I am angry that I exposed my only child to the gaslighting and confusion, and now so many odd things that he said over his lifetime are suddenly making sense and I know from where those words emerged. I am angry with myself that I continued to trust my mother, and the countless times I was hurt, deceived, and gossiped about. I am very angry with the way I was used as gossip fodder over the years, my life, my pains, my suffering at the hands of a narcissistic parent were only used for talk, as a means of damned entertainment for people who would have never survived what I have endured.

 

So yes, the reason I haven’t posted much in the last year or so is that I am mad as hell! And following my well-established training, I’ve kept that anger to myself, not wanting to be or put a burden on anyone. I can’t say much will change by my stating these truths, but posting this blog will be a start.

 

 

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Momma Said Write A Book About It

Perhaps this new book is my own confession, an attempt to rid myself of the deeply ingrained shame that I imagine most abused children experience. When you grow up under continual threat, in survival mode, and then step out into the world, it’s not easy to shift gears, and when you are trained in abuse, abuse begins to feel familiar and safe.

 

I’ve been on a long journey in my quest to feel comfort in my own body and mind, and at first I began changing the basics. At first I removed the harmful pharmaceuticals, harsh grooming products, and toxic cleaning supplies, I began eating more healthfully, we moved out into the country away from the city’s chaos, I moved my body more, I got sober, and grew stronger in my relationship with God. But what happens when you change everything possible outside of you, yet you still feel like crap? Then you must look inside, and at your own history, to understand those triggers that keep you in fight and flight mode. They say that unaddressed traumas stay in the body until you address them, and I have found that that is the truth.

 

As an example: I’ve always had a complicated relationship with sleep, it took me hours to drift off, and if I was awakened unexpectedly my entire day would be ruined. Such a simple thing, sleep, yet as a child I still recall the dread I felt at bedtime. Whatever my issue with sleep was, it was still affecting me in my 50s. For a lot of people sleep is safety and comfort, for me it was something to dread and avoid. Looking deeper I found the problem. As a child sleep was never safe and comforting to me as I could be yanked out of it at any minute, and being dragged from sleep usually meant being yelled at, accused, and hit and hurt. There was no comfort in slipping off to sleep, only fear of when I’d be attacked. In facing that fear and acknowledging it, my sleeping schedule has shifted, and for the first time in my life I now feel that comfort and safety, but I would have continued to suffer had I not gone down the rabbit hole of my own miserable upbringing.

 

In the new novel there is a scene where my lead character, Dani Donnelly, is talking to her young neighbor. The 11-year-old, Crystal, had just experienced a traumatic event, the first of her young life, and was having trouble sleeping. Dani suggested art as a way to remove the flashbacks from her mind, and I suppose this new novel is my art. Sometimes taking those images from your mind, by painting or by writing them out, lessens the power they have over you, and eases that ever-present shame and fear.

 

The title of the new novel was the obvious choice; there could be no other title, as when I was a child and would complain of the treatment I received I was told I could write a book about it when I grew up. I was told to write a book about it many times, usually with a smirk and a chuckle, as my grades in English/Lit were always terrible. So finally that is what I have done, I have written a book about it.

 

I weaved my own story into the story of a fictional character, Dani Donnelly, an author on the run from a stalker. Dani has signed a contract to write her memoirs, and with just a few fictional twists and turns to blend my story with Dani’s, most of her written memoirs are the truth of my upbringing and the early years of my adulthood. I faced incredible fear writing this one, as fear and secrecy (what happens in the family, stays in the family) was a mainstay of my upbringing. The description of the anxiety attacks the author suffers is not much different than what I endured breaking the trauma bonds that have held me captive and suffering for over fifty years.

 

So with all that said, the new novel is available on Amazon.

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVKV59Z9

 

 

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Healing Loudly Part Three

I had a revelation this week, as it dawned on me that it isn’t the memories kids growing up in abuse repress, it’s the emotions connected to the memories that get stuffed down and buried. I have always remembered the abuse, tucked away and compartmentalized in the back closet of my mind, but what I had buried were all the emotions a kid feels when undergoing years of systematic and intentional abuse.

 

Growing up under a covert narcissist, one determined to break my spirit, and leave me ever dependent on them, a lot of emotion gets pushed aside and buried in the name of survival. The abuser controls everything, from comfort, food, and sleep, to whatever emotion is deemed appropriate to express, and in my upbringing only the abuser was allowed to express any emotions. My emotions were unimportant, ridiculous, the mark of an insane person, and completely unworthy of any attention or concern.

 

And it was those severely repressed emotional responses to systematic abuse that have been bubbling to the surface these last few years of sobriety. I was ill prepared to deal with them as I had been taught I had no right to them, no right to feel any way that my abuser didn’t approve. My abuser had a very limited range of emotions, and I was expected… No, it was demanded that I share only the emotions of my abuser, and disregard any of my own feelings.

 

Growing up like that, all my formative years spent trying to mold myself into my abuser’s screwed-up and limited emotional range left me unsure of my own emotions as an adult, and it sure explains a lot about my own life. A kid just wants to be loved and accepted, and that is something I never experienced as a child, which left a deep longing in me, and is the reason I put up with such insane abuse as an adult. I’d been groomed, beaten, and brainwashed by the continual abuse into not only yielding to the desires of the molesters who found me during my fourteenth through sixteenth years, but for accepting even more abuse as I grew up. My emotions had little meaning to me as I tried to fit myself into the emotional range of my abusers in adulthood, just as I learned to do as a child.

 

It occurred to me last night that I experienced at least a hundred abusive episodes at home between the ages of eight (when my sister died) and seventeen (when I left home pregnant and married). If it happened just once a week, then it’s literally hundreds of times, but I will settle with just the number one hundred for now. At least one hundred times of being hit, condemned, told how awful I was, and how much I was hated as my mother, my abuser, took out all her frustrations on me. It’s a miracle I have as much sanity as I do, it’s a miracle I’m not a hopeless and helpless mess, and although I am a bit of a mess, I managed, though the grace of God and God alone, to recover a spirit of optimism and hope.

 

So for those of you wondering, talking, scrutinizing, dismissing, and choosing sides, understand I’m not recovering forgotten memories, those have never changed, I am experiencing the emotions denied a severely abused and neglected child. Finally God has allowed me a space to feel and heal those deep, and unwarranted, wounds.

 

 

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