My Story As It Unfolds

[Depression = 72% of members]

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” - Brene Brown.

Owning my story and loving myself through that process is the bravest thing that I have ever done.

I was born in Northern Ireland in 1967 during the troubles to Borderline Personality Disordered (BPD) / Narcissistic Personality Disordered (NPD) hybrid, alcoholic drug addicted parents.

I was the youngest of six children, four girls and two boys.

Both the boys had disabilities. The eldest was born by forceps delivery and was brain damaged at birth, he didn't speak till he was six and my other brother contracted meningitis at six weeks old which left him with serious mental and physical disabilities.

We fled to England when I was five years old as refugees from the troubles when my father was "left for dead" in the streets after being found out that he was a Catholic with a protestant name, working in a protestant company, and married to a catholic women.

[freespirit]

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” - Brene Brown.

Owning my story and loving myself through that process is the bravest thing that I have ever done.

I was born in Northern Ireland in 1967 during the troubles to Borderline Personality Disordered (BPD) / Narcissistic Personality Disordered (NPD) hybrid, alcoholic drug addicted parents.

I was the youngest of six children, four girls and two boys.

Both the boys had disabilities. The eldest was born by forceps delivery and was brain damaged at birth, he didn't speak till he was six and my other brother contracted meningitis at six weeks old which left him with serious mental and physical disabilities.

We fled to England when I was five years old as refugees from the troubles when my father was "left for dead" in the streets after being found out that he was a Catholic with a protestant name, working in a protestant company, and married to a catholic women.

[freespirit]

#Remembering

I got this insight today - I think this is really about me owning my power, my connection to God, my bliss. I think I have projected my power outwards onto the men in my life as a way to stay safe. I think this is in part due to the child sexual abuse by my father as a young child. I think it was safer for me to give my power and magic away than try to keep it. I think owning my power and magic feels triggering for me today because of the child sexual abuse that I have been in denial of my whole life, so I look for someone to project my power onto, a "savior" if you will.

I remembered more of my story last night when I flash-backed to when I was a young girl of maybe ten or eleven.

I was really upset about something in floods of tears , down on my knees, my hands in prayer position pleading to the "sacred heart" picture of Jesus we had hanging in our front room (we were strict Irish Catholic) to recuse me; I was always trying to escape my reality, one way or another.

The child sexual abuse started very young, under the age of seven. He was a bully and I was very intimidated by him. My life force energy, my sexuality, my power, my magic, belonged to him.

I had to stay silent about the child sexual abuse for fear of death. I knew by his actions that he was capable of killing me, as he had already attempted to kill me when I was five when he tried to blow me and my entire family up in a caravan incident back in Northern Ireland.

He was a sociopath and hated women, there were five females in the house, so there was plenty of his raging alcoholic hate to go around.

I can relate to the stories of cult survivors. The family of origin that I grew up in was in many ways like a cult with gas-lighting, brainwashing, extreme violence, spiritual and religious abuse, child sexual abuse, physical and physiological abuse in one form or another occurring daily.

I now understand why I been afraid to speak my truth and express myself, and why my recovery project is so important for my learning, healing and growth.

[freespirit]

Repressed Memory flashback:

I am remembering that I used to black out a lot as a young child, up to about age 11. I would experience intense overwhelm and pain in my head and throw up. They (a family member) would find me unconscious somewhere around the house, on the stairs or outside in the garden where I had been playing. I would become extremely light sensitive and have to be in a darkened room, my father worked night shifts, so he had a black-out blind, I was placed right back in the bed where the trauma I was blacking out from took place.

[freespirit]

The caravan incident: Repressed Memory flashback;

The flashback I had was to when I was four or five years old and my father was "left for dead" in the streets of northern Ireland after being found out that he was a Catholic with a protestant name, working in a protestant company, and married to a catholic women.

The whole family had to run for our lives and go into hiding. This was around the time of the uprising's and the 1972 Bloody Sunday Massacre.

My father joined us a secret location and proceeded to lose the plot. He stood before us all in the caravan and said, that if he had to die, then we all had to die. He then locked the doors and windows, threw the key out the window, turned on the gas and struck a match.

All I remember next is a lot of screaming, from me and everyone else. Some one jumping on my farther to try to stop him from lighting the match, and my sister trying to fit through the tiny top caravan window to get out to try to find the key in the dark, to let us all out.

[freespirit]

Repressed Memory Flashback:

My sister was sexually assaulted by a neighbor in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, this came out right after he died. He was a suicide bomber and he got a public hero burial. When it came out that he had sexually assaulted a child my parents were visited by a certain political party offering compensation by way of offering to exhume him from the hero's grave under cover of night, and put him in an unmarked paupers grave. My parents said yes, so that's what they did.

The really  up part is that the whole time my father was sexually abusing me

[freespirit]

Repressed Memory flashback:

I am remembering that sexual abuse was not the only kind of abuse that went on in the bedroom.

I slept in a large cot with high sides next to their bed until I was about 7 years old. I had difficulty with my right leg and hip turning in slightly when I walked.

They decided to cure me themselves by attaching a board to the bottom of my cot with a pair of baseball boots nailed to it in the position they wanted my feet to point when I walked.

Every night they put me on my back and straped me into these baseball boots. Some nights I would turn in my sleep and one leg would get loose and take the boot and nails with it.

I would wake up to my farther shouting to my mother, "the little bastard has done it again!" The next night they would strap my arms as well as my legs to the sides of the cot so I couldn't move at all.

[freespirit]

Flashback:

I remember being quite young and my father taking his belt to me because I was lured by the next door neighbor into his house. I found out as a teenager that they suspected the neighbor of being a pedophile, and that they had hit me to make me "learn my lesson" to keep me "safe".

[freespirit]

Regarding the cot situation:

I see now this is where my body shame / body dysmorphia in part had been coming from. The message I got from being strapped into those baseball boots every night, was that I was not okay as I was, that I was defective, that I was less than, that I was not enough, and that there was nothing I could do about it.

Disgusting isn't it, the way dysfunction lies to us, and we believe it.

I am worthy. I am enough.

[freespirit]

Insights:

I don't want to be in denial of whats in front of my face any more. I want to confront it and see what is there, so I can deal with it appropriately. #Remembering

I now understand why I was in denial about the child sexual abuse my entire life and why its took me so long just to get here. #Acceptance

I have been terrified of men my whole life and never knew why, now I do. #KnowledgeIsPower

Education is an empowerment, because it means I can do something about this now. #Gratitude

Regarding my relationship patterns with men:

I got this insight today - I think this is really about me owning my power, my connection to God, my bliss. I think I have projected my power outwards onto the men in my life as a way to stay safe. I think this is in part due to the child sexual abuse by my father as a young child. I think it was safer for me to give my power and magic away than try to keep it. I think owning my power and magic feels triggering for me today because of the child sexual abuse that I have been in denial of my whole life, so I look for someone to project my power onto, a "savior" if you will.

I now understand that I denied the shadow in my farther to stay alive and survive, but lost almost all my memory of my life along side it. #Extreme #Amnesia I see now that I was too scared to see the demon in my father so I denied it, and hid myself in God.

That has been my relationship pattern with men up to this point.

[freespirit]

Insight:

When a narcissist rapes and feeds off a child's vital life force / sexual energy, a kind of evil feeding frenzy begins within the predator where the child's very existence is sucked dry, consumed and completely annihilated by the never enough-ness of the narcissistic big black hole. This is soul murder.

[freespirit]

Insight:

Today I understand that fully owning my personal connection to Source energy was always going to mean remembering the childhood sexual trauma and attempted murder by my father as they are both very powerfully connected.

Today I understand that I was ready to remember, I just didn't realize it. #Forgiveness

[freespirit]

Flashback:

I am remembering being about seven years old and my father regularly forcing me to play the board game draughts with him when he was drunk.

When I won he would accuse me of cheating, and get violent.

I now realize this is why I have not liked playing board games my whole life.

[freespirit]

"I think this is really about me owning my power, my connection to God, my bliss. I think I have projected my power outwards onto the men in my life as a way to stay safe. I think this is in part due to the child sexual abuse by my father as a young child. I think it was safer for me to give my power and magic away than try to keep it. I think owning my power and magic feels triggering for me today because of the child sexual abuse that I have been in denial of my whole life, so I look for someone to project my power onto, a "savior" if you will."

Insight:

I can see now that because of the childhood sexual trauma I have been too triggered, afraid and dissociated to fully own my personal connection to Source / God.

My father raping me and feeding off my vital life force / sexual energy / divinity within, then threatening to kill me if I told anyone about it, made me feel like God was dead, and my father had killed him.

This experience made me go through my life simultaneously desperately yearning for my connection to Source / God but searching for him outside of myself where I was never going to find him, in my romantic relationships with men.

[freespirit]

Flashback:

I am remembering sleeping with a knife under my pillow, age about 10.

When my father was drunk and in an alcoholic rage, which was often, my BPD/NPD mother would sleep in the same bedroom that I shared with my three sisters and one of my disabled brothers.

There was two sets of bunk beds, the first set was pushed up against the bedroom door and the second set was wedged up against the first to keep my father out.

I was in the first set and I slept in the lower bunk so was first contact if he made it through the door, which he nearly did a few times.

Once my older sisters arm got caught in the door trying to keep him out, she had to go to hospital.

I thought we were all going to die, and that I had to protect my family.

[freespirit]

Remembering:

I am remembering being about seven and my eldest brother (the one who was born by forceps delivery and was brain damaged at birth, and didn't speak till he was six) was stood next to me in the hall whilst a big fight between my mother and father went went on.

I watched as my father violently attacked my mother and I began to scream, my brother kept shouting at me to stop screaming, but I couldn't.

My brother was six foot three and I was a tiny little thing, the next thing I knew he had his hands round my throat and had lifted me completely off the ground and up to to his eye level shouting at me to stop screaming.

I couldn't breath, I stopped screaming. It was the lack of my screaming that made my parents stop fighting long enough to turn to see why I had stopped.

My parents could see he was in the process of killing me and began shouting at him to put me down.

My brother had gone into some kind of traumatic shock and couldn't let go of the strangle hold he had on me.

I was losing consciousness and at this point both my mother and father had tried to physically stop him but they couldn't prise his fingers off my throat.

In the end my father had to hit him over the head with something to get him to loosen his grip and let go.

[freespirit]

Remembering:

I slept in my parents bedroom in a large high sided cot until I was about seven years old.

I am remembering waking up in the middle of the night retching at the smell of father's vomit.

Turns out I fell asleep in their bed, and when my father came to bed in an alcoholic stupor, he staggered over to my cot, vomited directly into it, lifted me out of their bed, put me back into my cot, then went to bed.

[Kwamina]

Hi freespirit

It's been a few months since you last posted. You are remembering quite some traumatic events. You talked before about your father being left for dead and how he tried to burn the entire family and also about that time he vomited in your cot. Very difficult memories indeed.

What your eldest brother did to you was quite traumatic as well. It's very hard for a child to grow up in such an environment.

You shared quite a lot in this thread. How does it feel to get these things out?

How are you holding up?

I got some parrot hugs for you  

The Board Parrot

[Harri]

Hi.  I am joining in with Parrot in giving you a hug.   

I too am wondering how you are holding up.  What are you doing to help you cope with these memories?

[Panda39]

Hi freespirit,

I'm here reading, listening, caring and just want to send   to you now and to little freespirit 

Panda39

[freespirit]

Flashback:

I am remembering the time my mother was in an altercation with the next door neighbor and she attacked him with a hatchet.

The neighbor came to our front door "looking for trouble" in my mothers words. My mother told me to stand next to the door, and wait until she got back with a weapon to "even up the score".  She then ran through the house and out the back to the out-house where she "shook the head" of every potential weapon available to make sure she would "give him what he was looking for" and " get him good and proper".

When she got back she told me to open the door and launched herself towards him. She then "danced around him like a fairy" hitting him with the hatchet whilst he fought with my disabled brother on the front lawn.

When the police arrived, charges were pressed against my mother for Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH). The police wanted to know if what she did was premeditated or a crime of passion / self defense. From where I was standing it definitely looked premeditated, she even seemed to be enjoying herself as she was laughing about it at the time.

She told the police that she was defending her disabled son, when it was her that had put my brother in that position in the first place. He was doing her bidding and defending her.

She got the family together and said that if we told the police that it was premeditated and what had actually happened that there would be no one to look after my disabled brothers because she could go to prison and that would be our fault. She then got my sisters to lie and say they were witnesses when they weren't even there to strengthen her case.

The whole family agreed not to tell the police what had really happened and the charges were dropped from Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH) - which carries life imprisonment (with intent to do serious harm) which has a maximum of 5 years) to assault occasioning actual bodily harm (ABH - again a maximum of 5 years) to Common Assault or Assault By Beating (Maximum 6 months) she was eventually let go with a suspended sentence and court order to keep the peace for 12 months.

[freespirit]

Thank you so much for your replies and hugs guys  

Remembering these things feels absolutely dreadful, like dying really. When they come up the somatization in my body feels really intense and causes me a lot of physical pain. But when they have cleared though my field I feel more embodied, whole and authentic for having remembered it.

[freespirit]

Flashback:

I am remembering being a young teen and my mother caning me in the kitchen for some school related incident, truancy I think.

I remember her saying to me before she started "You better go the the toilet first in-case you piss yourself" she wasn't planning on holding anything back, and she she didn't.

By the time she was finished both my hands were covered in huge raised welts from fingers to palm.

[freespirit]

Flashback:

I am remembering being about 15 and coming home later than curfew and smelling of smoke.

We had a coal fire in the front room at that point, it had a glass door you opened with a metal bar about foot long.

She lifted the metal bar and hit me with it repeatedly up and down my arms.

I remember skipping physical education classes at school for a few weeks to hide the bruises.

[freespirit]

Flashback:

I am remembering being asleep in bed and waking up in the middle of the night with my mother hitting me up and down my legs repeatedly with a wooden broom handle.

This was for borrowing my older sisters (the golden child) boots without asking.

My sister found me in the school disco wearing them. She dragged me off the dance floor beat me up in front of my friends in the toilet, took the boots and made me walk the 3 miles home alone, in the dark, in my bare feet, in the winter.

It was after she got home after her night out that she told my mother and my mother did what she did to me.

[freespirit]

Remembering:

My mother put my childhood best friend my dog down (he was in perfect health) but told me that he had escaped from the back garden too many times so she had given him away to a nice family who lived on a farm so he would be safe and have plenty of room to run free.

[Kwamina]

Hi freespirit

These are again some very difficult memories

The way your mother treated you and also the way your older sister treated you, I would classify as criminal behavior. It's horrible that they abused you like that. Have you ever talked to your sister about the way she abused you? How was your relationship with your sister in the years after that?

Pets can really make a positive difference in the lives of abused children and I'm very sorry you lost your dog this way. How and when did you find out that your mother had actually put your beloved dog down?

The Board Parrot

[freespirit]

Hi freespirit

These are again some very difficult memories

The way your mother treated you and also the way your older sister treated you, I would classify as criminal behavior. It's horrible that they abused you like that. Have you ever talked to your sister about the way she abused you? How was your relationship with your sister in the years after that?

Pets can really make a positive difference in the lives of abused children and I'm very sorry you lost your dog this way. How and when did you find out that your mother had actually put your beloved dog down?

The Board Parrot

You are right of course Parrot, it is indeed criminal behavior. Talking about criminal behavior, I am remembering that my fathers birth father was a notorious Irish hard-man who was murdered on his way to murder someone else!

[freespirit]

Hi.  I am joining in with Parrot in giving you a hug.  

I too am wondering how you are holding up.  What are you doing to help you cope with these memories?

Hi Harri, this is a very good question, thank you.  

I am spending a lot of time on my own processing flashbacks at the minute. I am working hard on my recovery and mediating for about two hours a day. I like going on the elliptical at the gym a couple of times a week which helps clear my energy field from the inner work. I journal a lot. I process my recovery online in my ever evolving creative recovery project. My diet is healthy and clean. It sucks going through this but I know it wont be forever...I still have not had my first appointment for therapy, l have led myself through this.

I try to get on a walk in nature by the river and touch a tree. I stand in the river with my wellie on a lot, the sensation of the water flowing past acts like a kind of mediation for me and reminds me to let go and flow.

Lovely to hear from you, how you doing?  

[Harri]

I was just coming here to check in on you only to find you checking in on me! 

Thank you.  I am doing well. 

It sounds like you have a handle on coping and I am relieved to hear that.  Grief and remembering, as hard as it is, is important and ultimately will be freeing as well.

We are listening and standing beside you.   

[freespirit]

Parrot you asked "How and when did you find out that your mother had actually put your beloved dog down?"

She told me herself. It was years later when I was a grown women with kids of my own.  When I asked her why she lied to me as a kid she said because she didn't want to deal with my reaction. She saw it as a practical solution, she saw no problem in it.

I think its interesting symbolically speaking that she put the dog down for escaping.

Regarding my sister I did this blog post recently that answers your question.

A few years ago after my seriously mentally and physically disabled brother died, and my alcoholic BPD/npd mother's dementia went full blown, my three sisters dealt with it by witting a book about my mothers life. They got it published, and at the time there was even talk of a film deal.

In the book they white washed, idealized and romanticized the story of my mothers life in Ireland, our fleeing as refugees from the troubles. and wove a story of romance through it, removing any trace of actual truth. #Denial #TraumaBonding #Gaslighting

They then tried to suck me back in to the status quo by bombarding me with links to it in emails and messages, asking me who I would like to play me in the film and trying to get me to side with there version of reality, as they had done with me my whole life. #Gaslighting. (I was no contact with them all by then)

I understand this is what we all did to cope with the devastating effects of the childhood trauma we suffered at the hands of our toxic parents rather than facing the facts of our lives. #DissociativeAmnesia

They all so thoroughly denied my reality and betrayed me, there was not one person I could trust in my family to speak the truth, until now when one of my sisters is beginning to remember.

My sister arrived at my front door just before Christmas with another attempt to suck me back in. She has bullied and scapegoated me my whole life for speaking the truth about the family dysfunction and abuse, and speaking out against her own abusive behavior towards me. She was also the right hand of my abusive mother and her golden child. She benefited greatly financially from keeping the status quo.

I have been no contact with her for several years. For the first time when she knocked on my door I stood my ground, and before she could say a word I calmly and firmly told her exactly why I was no contact with her, and what I thought of her showing up at my door with another attempt to suck me back in. I then quietly closed the door and walked away. She later put this note through my letterbox.

Hi X I came to tell you I love you. What you said 2day you are totally right. I had a breakdown and realized exactly what you said today. I have been having treatment. I wish you well. You are right.

 Unconditional Love Does Not Mean Lack Of Boundaries

* Speak The Truth Even If Your Voice Shakes

* Validation Comes When You Longer Need It

* Do No Harm, But Take No  

* Boundaries