This has been a rough Christmas; it’s been a rough year to be honest. There’s just been a pile of hardship, and I don’t want to whine, but I can state them all objectively. I was hit by a drunk driver, injured badly with a brain injury and damage to my spine. I found out five days later that my father has been sexually harassing and stalking people at my home church. Two months later, I was fired by my primary client. Two months after that, we were evicted from our house and had to move. Two months after that, I had to have surgery on my spine and wasn’t able to work.
Needless to say, as a single mom, I have not felt this level of scarcity since the initial separation from my ex-husband. That act of leaping into the world without a net is scary. And leaping when you don’t have your full faculties is even scarier.
But I’m not writing this to complain. I think this year has been a gift and represented a cosmic shift in my priorities and perspective. I’m writing this as an act of acknowledgment. As an act of honesty, and an act of letting go.
When the news came about my dad, it unlocked memories that I have long buried. And I’ve spent the year trying to make sense of memories of abuse and the impact that my father’s behavior has had on almost every element of who I am. While I have been honest with myself about what I’ve experienced, and I’ve confronted my father, and I have been in therapy, and I have spoken to trusted loved ones, I have kept this very close. But silence has started to feel heavier than truth. And to truly put this down and stop looking at it, I think I need to say it out loud.
Trauma that is named only in private often keeps asking to be spoken, not because it wants attention, but because silence keeps it alive in the body. I have been sick to my stomach for weeks. And I haven’t been able to stop crying. The magic of Christmas was gone this year. Everything about Christmas made me cry. Everything I did to bring back the joy and love just led to tears. Because the magic of Christmas is ultimately about tapping into a childlike version of ourselves. It’s about touching the spiritual nature of our connection to the holy divine. It’s about giving and love and family.
So, when I tap into my childlike self this time of year, I am faced with my dad. My dad is a minister, so Christmas was a particularly beautiful time for our family. It was filled with pageantry and sacred birth. Not just the birth of a prophet, but the birth of us all, the birth of salvation, the birth of hope.
But the reality is that my father sexually abused people in his care, people who trusted him and looked to him for safety. I am one of them. And all I could think about this Christmas was this betrayal.
This betrayal has fractured my sense of safety. It has distorted my relationship with faith, authority and belonging. It taught me to disappear to survive.
I have spent my life knowing something was wrong. I knew I was running from something. I would have flashes of memory that I rejected. I ran straight into the loving arms of drugs, promiscuity and abusive relationships. I ended up married to an abuser. And it took a bad car accident to knock these memories loose, and a really good therapist to give me the permission to believe them.
The truth is the truth, and honestly it puts so much of my existence and struggles into perspective. It’s like I finally have the key to the secret garden of myself. What’s inside is beautiful, but it’s been untouched and it’s weedy and it needs to be sorted because the walls my brain put up to protect me have kept me hidden from myself.
This exposure of the truth has opened me to myself. But I’ve also realized that being able to fully reclaim myself means that I am no longer required to protect someone else’s reputation at the cost of my own peace. I am no longer required to stay quiet to be considered “whole.” Speaking this is part of choosing my life.
And I can’t keep carrying it around with me, scraping off the scab to expose the wound over and over again, shocked at its presence every time, even though I’m the one who scratched it off.
The scar can be there, I need to let the scar form. I need to set this down, say it out loud, release it from my body. I need to understand that my father’s actions have been named, seen, witnessed. I need to understand that it’s not my responsibility to right this wrong, it’s not my job to carry the responsibility for this because I want to rescue his victims from this hurt.
My life can move forward with this as one of my scars. But I have to choose to be free from it, I have to tend my garden and bring it back to life. I no longer have to be in relationship to what harmed me.
I acknowledge what happened.
I name it as real and wrong.
I release my obligation to carry it forward.
This chapter is closed.
My father abused me and so many others. We are walking away now – to powerfully embody our own lives without the stain of his actions interfering with the beautiful mark we are going to make on the world.