Someone like you…….

I am sitting in my library listening to one of my favorite songs, “Someone like you” by Linda Eder from the Broadway musical Doctor Jeckle/Mr. Hyde. It brings back memories of a different time, a time when my world was full of people I loved, a special friend I did things with: going to movies, to plays, walking on the beach, trying to find out what life was all about, watching sunsets as they melted into the ocean,  eating at Chinese restaurants, moving through our lives with questions about why we were here, how our other relationships were going, sharing feelings, observations and mostly just feeling so full of life, so full of joy, filled with anticipation at what life had yet to bring. We talked of Philosophy, of organized Religions, of good people and bad, sorting through our thoughts as if they were files in a drawer pulling out this one and that, sharing them, then putting them back. Our minds were curious, like children who begin experiencing things they know nothing about but have many questions regarding.

But I live a different life now. My friend has faded into the background and I live in a different state, in a different time, married now and living a life I never imagined I would. I spend most of my day looking for Lamplighters, people who would be willing to begin chapters in the movement I started for recovery from incest and childhood sexual abuse, a movement that now has 64 chapters in eleven countries. I spend part of my day marketing my books, looking for women’s prisons that might be willing to start Lamplighter chapters and use my book REPAIR Your Life as a model for recovery. I prowl the Internet trying to keep up with what is going on in the world of child abuse and what is being done about it. I answer multitudes of emails from people all over the world. Many of my letters have: “Please help me,”in their subject line. I read their stories, my heart heavy with pain. If only I could reach through time and wrap my arms around them, to help them, to bring comfort.

I had a phone call yesterday from one of my facilitators who told me about abuse going on in Child Protective Services; how mothers who have left abusive relationships and gone into women’s shelters are having their children taken away from them and given back to the abusive fathers. She told me that Child Protective Services was making money off of this. I listened with dismay. Trusting by nature and almost child like in my belief that people are mostly good at heart I didn’t want to hear what she was saying. I didn’t want to believe it. After I hung up I emailed a friend of mine who works for CPS to see what she knows. In the meantime I was back on the Internet looking for information. As I read it I found myself almost rising above all of the fray, seeing the good and the bad of a system that has grown too large, too bureaucratic, and dealing with too many people who are deeply troubled and don’t always tell the truth. I’m reminded again of how few people have personal integrity. Sometimes all of what I’m doing and all of the information I receive, some of it so full of anguish that I wonder how my heart can hear one more story, find out one more evil that people are capable of, feels hopeless.

Almost all of my family and friends live in other states. I am lonely for them but we talk on the phone frequently. I call my children and grandchildren and especially my five year old great-grandaughter, Chloe, who looks just like me, acts just like me, is me in miniature, much to the dismay of her mother and grandmother. She has a cell phone and she calls me periodically, her mischievious voice saying, “Hi Gigi, it’s Chloe. Then she giggles because she knows that I know it’s Chloe.” We talk of silly things, of what we’re doing and what we’re going to do. Before she hangs up she says in a low voice, “Gigi, how soon am I going to see you. I miss you.” And my heart swells and all of the pain I hear of people going through goes to a back room in my mind, one I know I must pick up again in the morning. But for now even though I don’t have my friend who I miss so dreadfully, even though I can’t walk on the beach and share with him the twists and turns of what I’m doing now, I can talk to Chloe and she will remind me of the innocence of children. I can listen to my song, “Someone Like You” and just for a few minutes I leave my desk in Arizona and fly through the sky to be with my friend, just for awhile, so I can feel good about life again, so I can feel that almost painful joy of connecting with another human that understands everything you’re going through and is there for no other reason than to listen, to bring care and comfort.

This is life, the good and the bad but if I were God…………..