Asking too much!

Dammit, that's why we shouldn't educate those girls.  Next thing you know they want answers, they want to know what happened.  It's just so much easier to keep them quiet and at home.


That's pretty much what I imagine the thought pattern has been.  So amend your request.  No soul searching, I just want to hear the stories.  I always think of Brene Brown, who simply collects stories.  I am very disappointed that there's not even an urge to try, to step a little into her discomfort zone and try to remember those feelings.  What happened to our courage - of course, Brene says courage means whole heart, and mostly we don't have whole hearts...

Shame takes on a life of its own until we are ashamed of things that have nothing to do with us, or things that have no shame attached to them in a healthy situation.  Somehow it just takes over our whole lives!


I'm glad you answered my rhetorical question.  I did 12 Steps, and yes, you must apologize and make amends, if you can.  The 12 Steps are elegantly, deceptively simple, yet excruciating.  I am still not sure which was/is worse - realizing what happened to me, realizing what I had lost, what our family had lost, or understanding how I had hurt others, especially my children.  I writhe when I consider the mistakes I made as a mother.  But there is no way out of the pain except to walk back through it.  What we don't know before we start the trek is that if we had the strength to survive the abuse, we have more than enough to endure the walk back home to self.  It's kind of like birthing a child, and discovering you really can do it and survive and emerge transformed.

I cried a lot when I was actively working the 12 Steps.  But once I was back through - at least the first time - I started to smile and laugh again.

I worry about the pairing of those two brothers, because they were active abusers. B#1 has rewritten his story to include chastity until he left our childhood home.  He truly believes we are all close to each other, it's just the physical distance that keeps us apart.  He is living in his own creation, and B#2 may join him or may challenge it.  As we know B#1 has capability to be very cruel.  He can lash out when threatened.

What seems overwhelming is that their abuse started at such a young age, triggering them to abuse at a young age.  Those overlapping cycles have piled on both of them, until I wonder how they can breathe - which might very well explain the asthma and allergies.  Mom signed for both to have tracheotomies when they were young - maybe 1 and 2 years old.  It was bad right from the start.

We did rescue him.  We did enable him to continue his pattern, I believe.  Part of me believes we need connection to survive, and maybe I thought we could provide that.  I was naive enough to think he might stick with AA just to survive.  He does want to survive for his daughter.  But I forgot how unconnected we are.  This family can not provide a safety net.  He might have been better off in a sober community.  Someone there would have forced him to be honest.

I remember Dad occasionally belting out a few lines to a song we were singing, but you are right - he mostly told us to go away and shut up.  Perhaps I retreat into fantasy on occasion.  Seems to be a family gift!

A couple of the 12 Steps come down to Let go and Let God; to admit we have no power over our addictions.  Our addictions control us.  But without them...will we survive?  So starting The Steps, and continuing with them is a great leap of faith.  It's no wonder we have to hit bottom before we are willing to let go, to get into our hearts and trust the world, to trust that the universe is a loving place, and that we have our place here.  When you sing about abandoning it all, I think this is the place you are addressing!

(I am not Biblically oriented, but I do recognize and value the truths I find in sacred writings...)



FYI - but really to refresh my memory...

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.


And smile sister...you are beautiful, you are strong, you are not alone...and I am grateful that you are in my life!