{"id":4812,"date":"2014-10-03T20:58:08","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T20:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelamplighters.org\/llblog01\/?p=4812"},"modified":"2014-10-03T20:58:08","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T20:58:08","slug":"forgiving-yourself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelamplighters.org\/llblog01\/forgiving-yourself\/","title":{"rendered":"Forgiving Yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was halfway through recovery I found out that my second husband had sexually abused my two older daughters. My guilt and grief were unbearable as the shock covered me in waves. How could I have not been there for my daughters? My youngest daughter, the one who revealed what had happened to her sisters, had been raped at gunpoint while working at a fast food place several years earlier when she was 17. When that happened, the therapist I sent her to, told her that it was my fault she had been raped. My daughter did not agree and stopped seeing the therapist. Nevertheless, already carrying that grueling guilt, this new guilt drove me to my knees.<\/span><\/p>\n

I knew I would never, never forgive myself. It didn\u2019t matter that my daughters didn\u2019t blame me; I blamed myself plenty. Despite my rampant sexual addiction, my children were all that I lived for. I struggled daily with balancing being a single mother with a full time job, no child support and my descent into a nightlife where I went from man to man hoping I would find someone who could both rescue me and support my sexual needs.\u00a0 I battled suicide continuously.<\/p>\n

Many years later, while in recovery, working what would later be called the Repair program, I assembled, like puzzle pieces, the history of my family.\u00a0 I trace back from the time of my abuse to the source of where it all started. REPAIR is an acronym for the stages of that program and by the time I had reached the\u00a0 I \u2013 Insight, I realized I had been set up. Like chess pieces on a board I had no control over any of it.<\/p>\n

I discovered that my father\u2019s father was a womanizer. A saying in the family, \u201cNo woman is safe with George Leick\u201d (my paternal grandfather) was well known by other family members according to an elderly aunt from that side of the family. I was shocked. Thinking him too patriarchal and controlling- a cold bastard, I had never liked him. But now I had the first piece of the puzzle, my first evidence of the \u2018why\u2019 my father had started raping me. He was raised by a man who had no sexual boundaries. Enter my mother. According to her brother she was passive in the extreme. The motto she adopted for my father was, \u201cEven when he is wrong, he is right\u201d was not a joke. She lived (and eventually died) by that rule.<\/p>\n

I continued to collect the puzzle pieces.\u00a0 My parents had four children in four years, obviously a good sex life (finding photos after my father died of my mother in the nude, taken by him, was strong evidence of that). Then an absence of new children for nine years followed. My thinking is my mom was sick of getting pregnant and the sex part of their marriage was over. Both were die hard Catholics and any birth control methods from that era would have been a definite no-no. Enter my baby sister. I think one night they drank one beer too many and had sex. When Jeanne was born my mother literally turned her over to me to raise. She\u2019d had it.<\/p>\n

Enter me at the age of nine the family housekeeper (I was a hard worker and my mother, no dummy, had turned this job over to me) age of ten, a mother, and at the age of thirteen my father\u2019s mistress. It all made sense when I looked back at it. Our religion was patriarchal so not only did mom\u2019s motto explain her decision to blame me once she found out about my father\u2019s middle of the night raids (beatings with a belt at her instigation were regular \u2013 I\u2019ll never get out of my head her screaming repeatedly hit her again<\/em>), but as my father put it two decades later when he decided to tell me about our \u201cincest relationship\u201d, \u201cIt\u2019s wasn\u2019t so bad kiddo; they do it in the Appalachian District all the time\u201d. Neither parent was capable of accepting responsibility for the abomination they were perpetrating.<\/p>\n

I ran away from home at the age of eighteen after a beating that almost killed me. I had no defenses. I was fiercely co-dependent, deeply religious and had virtually no self-esteem. I knew I was no good but I didn\u2019t know why as I had placed all those incest memories into the amnesia room in my head. Five years of marriage with four children in three years, divorce, second marriage to an abuser, another divorce, twelve years of roaming from man to man and finally a third marriage to a man who was so sadistic the therapist (number eight) my family doctor sent me to (I no longer believe you when you say your father never sexually abused you<\/em>) said I would never survive his abuse.<\/p>\n

In AA they have a saying about reaching your bottom. At that point you\u2019ll begin recovery; there is nowhere else to go but up. Unfortunately for many their bottom is death. I had tried suicide many times, always failing and angry that I failed, had been hospitalized in Psychiatric Wards twice for failed attempts and so death did not seem my bottom. The abuse that my abuser dealt was so severe that it was causing painful flashbacks to my teen years where my father entered my bedroom as I lay sleeping with my rosary under my pillow. I had hit my bottom. I began losing my mind. Struggling through recovery, while married to a severe abuser, was like trying to swim upstream with chains around me. I persevered.<\/p>\n

The hardest part was forgiving myself. I began working the Twelve Step program, Codependents Anonymous. When I reached the fourth step, \u201cMade a fearless and searching moral inventory\u201d, the therapist I was going to told me to make two lists: one for wrongs I had done, one for wrongs others had done to me. I agonized over every word on the first one as shame covered me. How was I ever going to forgive myself much less ask God for his forgiveness? The burden seemed insurmountable as I stared daily at my long list. Then I began the second list. It took many weeks before I had the courage to share my lists with my therapist (Step Five: Admitted to God, myself and another human being the exact nature of my wrongs).\u00a0 After, shamefaced and sobbing, I finally read it, she told me quietly to share with her the wrongs done to me. As I did so I began seeing a truth, one I had never suspected. Every wrong I had done could be traced back to that bedroom at the end of hall, the door opening surreptitiously in the dark of night, the anorexic thirteen year old sleeping the sleep of the innocent.<\/p>\n

I began to forgive myself. It wasn\u2019t easy. Some days I trembled with shame, wanting to wear a hair shirt and lash myself. Some days I felt too damaged to even begin forgiving myself. It was as if in forgiving myself I would not be accepting responsibility for what had happened to my daughters. At times the parade of men I had slept with censured me so deeply that I felt I would never escape the ignominy of it. Humiliation and disgrace covered me.<\/p>\n

I persisted on, completing both the Repair program and my Twelve Step Program. Eventually I was able to forgive myself for not only my inability to protect my daughters but the many sexual wrongs I had done. The gaping wound that incest had caused healed; it had became a slight scar, one that periodically reminds me of what I went through, but one that no longer bleeds and fills me with pain. Today I am happy and healthy. Today I make wise decisions.<\/p>\n

Do you have a gaping wound? Get a copy of Repair Your Life and begin working the program. Check out our website at the Lamplighters.org for more information.<\/p>\n