I had a fantastic counselor. I’ll refer to him as Red. Red helped guide me into change. I reflect often on the lessons I’ve learned with him and would not hesitate to call him if I needed his loving guidance again.
I’ve been with him for over 15 years. He may be the longest, constant relationship I’ve had, outside of my children.
That presents the problem – I have left most people I have known: the family I was born into and the family I married into and was with for 18 years. My life mandated that I move into a safe territory to heal, to grow, and to ultimately thrive.
Red and I were chatting about the lack of safety I had in my life. As he put it, “Jodie, most people have a safety net that will catch them if they fall in life. Usually it is a person’s parents. You didn’t have that foundational piece growing up. You’ve been on your own, without that safety net since you were a child.”
His words sounded trite to me in a way, most of his counsel did – at first. But, it was a profound statement. I hadn’t had a safety net.
That feeling was persuasive in my being and I knew it. There was no memory I could go back to that was good. I have searched for a time as a baby or young child that my mother may have possibly offered me even a morsel of care.
I’ve questioned my memory time and time again to find one moment where my mother held me, potentially looked at me in delight. If there was that moment, I was too young to remember it.
I’m not sure it existed.
What’s more, if my body has kept my history for me, which indeed it has, it tells me I’m on a fishing expedition that will bring me no return.
I’ve learned I cannot manufacture experience.
There is this bizarre movement that I see: people are fighting to get on the bandwagon of pain. Hyping the suggestion that their experiences are trauma. Somehow suggesting that being ignored is the same as childhood rape.
The #metoomovement was advocating for survivors of sexual harassment or violence to speak out about their experiences in order to expose and combat various forms of sexual misconduct. Not one person I have talked with who survived raped as a child thought this movement was for them nor did they consider participating in it.
I’m not saying it was a wrong movement. What I am saying is it is an easier movement for society to embrace. I’m not sure if it downplayed childhood rape but it did nothing to further it either.
When you have parents that you can return to for help, you have a safety net. When you have been plucked from the womb and demanded to be enslaved to pedophiles, it is a category of its own.
I require myself to stand ready to help.
it’s also hard to build or trust a saftey net later in life.
Xactly!
I have few, very few memories of my childhood. Most revolve around the priest at my house, giving my mother “ last rights” I don’t remember affection from my parents, but one time. I was laying on the couch in my mother’s lap, and she was stroking my forehead. It was wonderful. I had a grandmother that ogled over me. 🙂
A memory of your mother’s lap is a beautiful one. My grandmother loved me, too. God always gives us enough to keep going, to survive. Thank you so much for sharing my journey with me, Jennie. Blessings to you today!