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
