We're All Lost

I was talking to my MNPD mother on the phone yesterday. Our relationship has had another bump or mountain in our road. I say “our” because we really are on this road together to find a place of healing and love. My mom received the devastating news last week (I think it was) that she has bone mets. She survived a bout of thyroid cancer in the late 1980’s and the doctor’s believe it has metastasized to her bones. The prognosis is not good. She was put on time release morphine which she takes 4 times a day, and 2 days ago they doubled her dose. She sounds pretty loopy when I talk to her, but much calmer. So now I have this difficult mom, who has been dying with her heart problems, and now definitely is dying with this new glitch. Her time is likely short and it will be painful for her. A real contradiction of feelings for me. Part of me is glad she will have pain like she caused us, but the empathetic person in me can’t bear the thought of her suffering. I cannot bear anyone suffering or being in pain. I have had thought such as “Karma is a bitch”. Yeah, it is, but who am I to talk when God’s word clearly states that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory that is Christ Jesus. I am certain that the word “all” includes me. You see, I have sinful, unkind thoughts directed to my mother as I still have unresolved anger.

Perhaps my anger is justified, but what does that mean? By holding on to it, it diminishes me as a person and causes me to feel and sometimes act hateful. I have come to understand my mom a little better and I am sad for her. She holds on to so much bitterness about how things should have been, or as she says “That’s not the way it was supposed to be.” She would say that over and over about anything and everything we talked about. Finally, one day I asked, “Well, how was it supposed to be?” Her answer both surprised me and saddened me. At the age of 79 she was still angry about her first husband and her dreams for their life together. In her words, “We were supposed to be a family. We were supposed to have a house, and celebrate birthdays, and Christmases. We were supposed to have happy memories of vacations together.” My dad and her broke up when I was 10 years old. My mom was 28 years old. So for 50 years she has been angry that things weren’t the way they were supposed to be.

In addition, she is angry at her mom. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Well, she does have every right to be angry at her. Her mother failed her in many ways, just as she failed me and I failed my children. You live what you know and what you have learned. That is why I am smarter now than when I was 20. She is angry that her mom treated her the way she did and failed her. When I ask why the answer is, “because, that’s not way it was supposed to be”. I felt her deep emotional pain and understood what she was saying, but at the same time it was so sad because she has never been able to move from that pain.

I got a little annoyed at hearing her say repeatedly that she wished things had been different because it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be that I reminded her of what my despised stepfather used to say all the time. I used to say, “I wish you weren’t so mad all the time”, “I wish I was better”, “I wish I was perfect”, “I wish I could make you happy”, and the list goes on. His reply was always “If wishes were horses beggars would ride.” That made me so angry. What did beggars have to do with my wishes to not be beaten or abused.

So, I reminded my mother of this, so I could be as kind as my stepfather had been. I was angry and was feeling as sympathetic as she and he had been in my childhood. She sounded wistful and replied “Yes, he did say that didn’t he? He was so cute.”

Cute? Really? I blurted out “Really? I wish the freaking horse would step on his head and crush it! I hated him and I hated him more when he said that!”

Mom, for the first time in my entire lifetime of knowledge of her was very calm. It must have been due to the morphine coursing through her veins. So very calmly she says, “You will not talk about my husband in that way. You will not disrespect him in my presence. He was a good man who provided for you and gave you kids many things you would not have had. You will respect him.”

I sat in stunned disbelief at what I just heard. My MNPD mother, even with her morphine had shown her true colors again. It wasn’t about me. It was about what she wanted in life. She wanted a provider, she wanted a house, she wanted things. She got them through this person, even if it wasn’t the way it was “supposed to be”.  I again felt beaten and humiliated. My mother had just told me to respect a man that molested me. I was nothing. I was lost. She was lost in the ‘supposed to be’; in her dreams that she never realized. My pain was nothing because hers was greater and she was so lost in it.

I retorted, “He molested me! I have a right to be angry at him! You should be angry at him! He touched your daughter. It should not have happened and I will not speak kindly of him. Not ever. How dare you even ask me to respect him. He was a child molester!”

She said, “I know, because you told me, but you should have told me then.”

So it was my fault. A beaten, abused, intimidated, broken child who was threatened almost daily with death was at fault for not telling she was being sexually abused. I know my mother. At that point in time she would not have believed me. She never did. She would have beaten me until I told her the truth she wanted to hear and then she would have made me apologize to him and hug him and kiss like I meant it. I want to be physically ill. I want to scream at the heavens for my justice. Yet I am not sick, and heaven sometimes feels silent.

We are both so incredibly lost in our pain and our suffering. May God reach out and heal us both.

But even though we all have strayed and lost our way at times, we can live in the knowledge that our sins are forgiven.

Isaiah 53:6 (NIV)
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

And he will find all of us who are lost.

Luke 19:10 (ESV)
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

I Have a Right To Tell My Story and to Use any Material that Reinforces the Veracity of My Story

Life, goes by with little markers that seem almost unnoticed. I quit smoking 5 years ago and the day went buy with a mention. In the beginning one day was a huge deal. A week, monumental! A month, well that could be worth a steak dinner. Your children pass their landmarks with cakes, candles, photos, and gifts. We pass the year marking the seasons and special days like birthdays, Easter, Christmas, Holidays, doctor’s visits, another year of life after my husband had his device implanted. Day after day march by in perfect formation and timing.

Another marker went by yesterday that I wish had not. The last time I self-harmed was November. I made close to a year. I made it 9 months. I fought it for 2 days and the succumbed. The emotional pain became like the steam escaping from a pressure cooker. It had to be released by the self-harming or I might have done worse. For me it is a non-event and brings about enormous relief, but does leave me with shame and self-loathing. I don’t hide it anymore but show someone. This time my husband who just put his harms around me and hugged me tight. No blame, condemnation, or accusations. But he can’t understand. How can he when I don’t.

There was a dialogue on a local FB site and they were asking about the use of cursing. I do not believe in cursing, escpecially the F-bomb as they call it. I said as much and attached an article from a Christian book about Profanity and the moral decay of society. I was flamed. Harshly. Told that if I practiced love I would be better. I was told to “get a grip lady”, and other things. It wounded my soul as I know I am a very loving, caring, and extremely compassionate woman. Too much so at times. I started to unravel. Why did I post it?

Well it talks about welfare and people not caring. We lived in small towns where many lived in welfare. I have many cousins whose parents were on welfare. Husbands were drunks. Mothers drank. Their existence was horrible. Many of their homes were hovels. Why would they care? 6 kids in a two room shack with no plumbing. 4 kids in a two room shack. Coal and wood stove. My mother was cruel. Others were cruel too. Some didn’t care and let their kids roam day and night. We were taught to steal. Anything was fair game. Anything you had and we didn’t have was fair game.

Men came day and night, and parties. We saw our mother and aunts in the act of sex. The husband or boyfriend came home and took it where he wanted it. Even if she said no. Even if all the kids where there. A drunken father would bring the bar home and sell his daughters to the drunks that wanted them. Would ask his boys if they wanted a try. Many were sexually active before 12 and married before 16. We saw men jumping out of the windows of my mom’s house and my aunt’s and cousins houses. In my own family there are six kids with the potential of 4 different fathers. I saw aborted babies pulled out of the toilet

Most of the girls were sexually abused by the time they were six years old. They were abused by brothers, sisters, fathers, grandfathers, and strangers. To escape the horror they would get pregnant, run away, take drugs, get drunk, get married. And the cycle would start again, but it would be worse. So much worse. It breaks my heart to know how worse.

And words. It’s a lie that words will never hurt you. It is such a lie. When the F word was said it was always connected to harm and danger. Strangers having sex with woman saying “I’ll F*** you if I want to you f*ing b****!” My mother swinging the conveyor belt and scaring my body with bloody welts say “If you weren’t f****** guilty you wouldn’t be f****** crying .” Only when I quite crying out of exhaustion or because I was at the verge of dying, would she stop. Belt buckles wrapped around the neck and teeth knocked out “You f***** asked for it”.  Always harm. Always anger. Never safe. Never funny. Never just a word.

This article mentions this. It goes on to mention disobedience of god’s laws resulting in crime, murders, car jacking, rapes, theft, homosexuality…..OOPS!  God and sexuality in one sentence. What a religious bigoted hater I am. Sad. I have two brothers who are homosexual. Scott Peck, MD writes in Children of the Lie he writes that the scapegoat son of Malignant Narcissist Psychopath mothers are frequently unable to have relationships with women. When I asked my brother he said he “F***** hates women”.

Hatred? Bigotry? Inability to Love? Are you kidding me? I don’t hate the people who did this to my family. I am not a bigot, I love everyone including the impossible ones. Oh course you must be kidding. I love my brothers with everything I have to love. He knows what happened. I know what happened. My brothers, sisters, cousins, all know what happened. The poor kids in my neighborhood and my mom’s neighborhood know what happened. Gosh, some of the kids took part in the wife swapping parties.

Someone is outraged because I posted hate? You need to be outraged because it is truth and it goes on far more than you know. That is the outrage. Not the mention of God or homosexuality, or the behavior and moral decline. I have looked into the eyes of men and women who have just given up and have no hope. You leave them a bag of oranges and they neither look left nor right nor at you to acknowledge you. Why? Because they know it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow they will be gone, and then what. So many nights I went to be hungry. Many nights a mead was macaroni with just margarine. If we were luck we had macaroni with ketchup.

I escaped. So many don’t but don’t get angry when I speak my truth. It might not be pretty, but I lived it and I have as much right to tell my story as anyone else. Much more right.The words written blamed and accused me for being something I was not. They caused me to panic. In my mind I feel the beatings. I feel the fear. I feel the hatred. I panicked and took down my posting and then was accused that I had done it because I knew they were right. My mother would say that when I stopped crying because I couldn’t cry anymore. I reached out to everyone I knew how encourage me. Then in the middle of the night my mother’s voice came to me “You now, you’d be better off dead. Everyone hates you anyway, and it would be better for you to do it than for me. You will be sorry if I have to do you F**** waste of space.” In the morning I slashed myself. I don’t know how many time. I have a road map to my pain.

My God weeps for the poor and calls me help them.

Psalm 10:14

“But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless.”

Psalm 12:5

“‘Because of the oppression of the weak and the groaning of the needy, I will now arise,’ says the LORD. I will protect them from those who malign them.”

Psalm 140:12

“I know that the LORD secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.”

I hate this, I want it to stop, I don't want to remember, but I have to. I need to get better. I thank God for the people who "get it". The people who create fear in my, well I thank you too. It shows me where I still need to work on myself.

My Mama

My mom was born in 1935. The sixth child and the last of the three children that lived. All three were girls. Their mother was born in an immigrant Ukrainian family that had come to Canada at the turn of the century. My baba's dad came in 1901 and her mom and two brothers came in 1907. The settled in the Lethbridge are and guido supported the family by working in the mines. My baba was the 3 or 4th child born in this country as she was a twin. I don't know if she or her sister was older. Many more children would follow and my great baba would be the mother of 16 children that lived.

Baba was born in 1909. Just two years after her mom has arrived in this country. Life was very difficult. Especially with all those children. My great baba worried about her children and loved them. She wanted the best for them and when my baba was just 16 years old they arranged a marriage to another Ukrainian immigrant. He was good looking, had $150 in the bank and owned a house. Baba did not want to get married and she was so young. She did not like her chosen husband either. What her mom and dad did not know was that the charming husband to be was cruel. He was jealous, controlling, abusive, and an alcoholic. He beat my baba and her children all the time. He injured the back of my mama's eldest sister so she had troubles her entire life. Then one day he just disappeared.

My mama remembers then living in an apartment in a house in or near Lethbridge which was near the ice plant. She recalls being about 3 years old and running over to the ice plant in her bare feet with her sisters, to catch the ice that fell from the trucks and front loaders. She said they would suck on the ice like it was candy. Some pieces were so big and so cold that they had to wrap them in their t-shirts to hold them. It they got caught, they were punished, but the next time the ices was being loaded they ran back to get the ice.

The girls in the summer would get gunny sacks from their baba and walk across the prairie collecting dried cow patties for burning in the stoves in winter. They said it was hard work and hard to find the dried on. They would wander miles and the bag would get heavy as it filled.

My mama was a wonderful singer and every Saturday, her and sister would run to the radio station where mom would get picked to sing live on the radio. For doing so she would get a bag of porridge or cream of wheat. Mom said they would tear a hole in the corner to dip their fingers in and eat it on the way home. It was the dirty thirties after all. Poverty was all around and my mom and her sister were forever changed by that poverty.

Their mom would meet a man that had a house and a farm and they would get married. The problem was a little like like Prince Charles. You see grandpa loved someone else, but she was married. Grandma was second best and every chance he got he was with his first love. In a small town, everyone knows everything and people talked. People knew. My grandma was a proud woman and very beautiful. I think the talk must have broke her heart. I think her firs husband did as well as she could never please him. Something changed in my baba. She started to drink with her husband. She would go to parties, leaving the girls at home. Her and grandpa would bring the party home, and there would be late night drunken parties and fights. My mom would be woken up from her sleep and made to sing requests from the drunks. She would sit on their laps while she sang her beautiful songs and they would molest her. This went on for years.

While grandma and grandpa were gone and partying the girls took care of the farm. The animals, the house and if things were not done correctly, baba punished them very harshly. She was a cruel task masker. In later years baba told me that my mom was always bad. Right from the moment she came screaming out of her belly. Poor mama. She didn't stand a chance, did she?

What I see is a young girl, being raised by her older sister. A girl being molested while singing songs. I see a girl who wanted her mom to notice her, her mom to love her. She wanted her mom to be a mom.

Life was really hard for mom and her siblings. It was the end of the thirties and early forties. Many people were homeless, starving, and barely existing. It is the stuff that songs are made from and Woody Guthrie sang many songs about the era. My baba was forced to sell her mandolin which was a gift from her mama and had come from the old country. My own mama had a cow which was given to her as a calf, but it had to be butchered. They needed to eat. My mama never forgot and is angry still today over the loss of her "Joseph" who had blue eyes. She feels very bitter and says that had they not partied and drank, they wouldn't have had to take her cow. She loved that cow and sang to it all the time.

My mama told me she entered a singing contest in a neighboring town when she was about nine. She bought the certificate and ribbon home to show her mom who was proud at that moment, but then it was never mentioned again. Mom said that as far back as she could remember, she wanted to sing. She sang to flowers, to rocks, to trees, to her dolls, to the farm animals. She sang to the sun and moon and stars. "I only wanted to sing." A young girl with a dream that was ignored, smashed, and broken. In it's place was a broken, empty, and bitter being. Who broke my mama's dreams? My mama's heart?

My mom left her home when she was 16. By 19 she was married and there I was. A child born to parents who were both broken but good people. My dad was very musical and artistically gifted. He wanted to go to Art school more than anything in his life. His parents wouldn't let him and sent his brother to university for something more suitable. My mom only wanted to sing. Now she is married and has a child. Life is going down a different road.

She brings me to visit her mom one day. I am small and she is carrying me in her arms. She goes in baba's house and she hears yelling and screaming from baba's bedroom. She runs to the room and sees my grandpa pointing a rifle at baba's face. She is on the bed and he is straddling her and holding her down. All my mom sees is the gun at her mom's face. She leaves and runs as fast as she can to a neighbouring farm and begs them to come and help and to call the police.

When help arrives my baba and grandpa are having a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. They don't understand the fuss.

Gaslighting, something my mother did very well. It looks like she learned it from her parents.

 A form of intimidation or psychological abuse, sometimes called Ambient Abuse where false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory, perception and quite often, their sanity. The classic example of gaslighting is to switch something around on someone that you know they're sure to notice, but then deny knowing anything about it, and to explain that they "must be imagining things"when they challenge these changes.

 They blame my mom for lying, having a vivid imagination. When they left, baba got up and walked over to my mama who must be so confused, hurt, and wounded because she loved her mom. Anyway, Grandma walks over to my mom, who is still holding me, and almost spits in her face while saying with venom "Don't you EVER tell ANYONE what goes on in this HOUSE!" With this proclamation, my baba punches my mother and punches her in the face. She broke her nose and gave her a black eye. I can't imagine a mother punching a daughter, let alone a daughter who is holding a child, and a daughter who loved her mother and just tried to save her life.

This was her life, and it became my life. Broken can only create broken. I weep for the girl my mom was. The girl who sang to nature. The girl with a song in her heart. She must have been happy. One day it was punched out of her and there was no going back.


The Bible warns us about provoking our children to anger. I believe there is a reason for it for I saw my grandmother's, my mother's, my mother's siblings, my siblings, and my own children's anger. But I also believe that God forgives us, and can and will heal our wounds.

Ephesians 6:4English Standard Version (ESV)

4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.


And then we need to forgive. If we don't forgive the anger festers like a wonder until the pressure builds up and it explodes over innocent people. Forgive them so you have no desire to hurt them like you were. Forgive them so in your anger you don't hurt others. Forgive them, so you can shine love for the world and give the broken hope. Love the unlovable. The world has made them so and a kindness can change their world.


Romans 12:17-19
17 Do not repay any one evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.
18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.

Afraid to Remember

I was watching Saving Mr. Banks this evening and Walt Disney is relating the real story of his life to Pamela Travers. He tells of the hardships he went through with a penny pinching and stern father. When he finishes the story he says, "But I don't like to remember it that way."

Nine words that struck at my heart and reminded me of how I choose to remember. I choose to remember my abuse as being not as bad as I remember it, or perhaps I did deserve it, or maybe I imagined it; anything other than what it was because I don't like to remember it the way it was. It is too painful, and so filled with terror that I currently cannot let my memory banks spill the memories into my conscious mind.

I have come to realize in the past couple months that I don't remember many things correctly, or with the intensity of the event. I have minimized it so I can bear it and write or speak about the evil in my life. I gloss over the real memory by creating a foggy image in my mind, and muting and muffling the sound. The picture and sound are at levels safe enough to see. Perhaps that is because of the dissociation at the time of the event and even now when I try to recall or talk of certain events. As I have been learning about complex PTSD these past 5 years I have been opening some of those drawers containing those painful memories. Many remain firmly shut and to even look at them causes intense feelings of panic and terror. There are moments when I want to beat at my head in panic, like a hoard of bugs has fallen on my head, and run screaming down the road. At other times I want to run to a corner and curl up as small as I can get and cover my face and my head. I have done both many times in my life.

There are memories that I have peeked at and they fill my mind with shadowy figures. Like looking at an old black and white thriller with someone looking at figures through a frosted glass. I don't want to see them because I don't want to remember what they have to say. I don't want to remember the way it was. I don't want to remember the real painful stuff. Yet I must if I am to recover completely.

I need to find my Mary Poppins to save the girl in the corner. The girl in the left side of the room that I cannot bear to cast my eyes upon. Not that I don't love her, or that she scares me. No, it is because she has the memories. I know if I look into her eyes I will know the entire truth. The truth that scares me. The truth that keeps a brother away from his family. The truth that has sent another sibling into a reclusive lifestyle. The truth that should set me free, may send me to a different prison. So, I don't want to remember it that way. It is safer to remember the way I do, but not healthier. What a dilemma.

I believe it is better to live with the truth than a lie. My Lord assures me that the truth will set me free. But what will it set me free from if I then run into hiding? Well, I have to believe that He will also heal me. Heal my mind, my heart, and my soul. I must put my fear aside and trust in Him for he loves me and will catch me if I should fall.

I will turn a deaf ear against the Devil who whispers those doubts in my ear. He has no power against my God who has spoken everything into being. Those that did evil to me, and those that wish to continue that evil upon me cannot stand against my God. They no longer have control over my mind. With the continued Grace of God I will continue my healing journey. One breath at a time.


1 Peter 5:7-8
7 Casting the [a]whole of your care [all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, [b]once and for all] on Him, for He cares for you affectionately and cares about you [c]watchfully.

8 Be well balanced (temperate, sober of mind), be vigilant and cautious at all times; for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring [[d]in fierce hunger], seeking someone to seize upon and devour.

Psalm 147:3-6
He heals the brokenhearted
    and binds up their wounds.
4 He determines the number of the stars
    and calls them each by name.
5 Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
    his understanding has no limit.
6 The Lord sustains the humble
    but casts the wicked to the ground.