Your healing is a huge victory

You can have another birthday. Celebrate mine with me.

Words simply are not adequate to describe how I grateful I am to be alive. It is a joy to be relatively healthy. To experience pain and joy and love. To live. There are many from my childhood neighborhood who have perished. They died young with freak accidents, suicides, drugs, and/or simply lost their minds to mental illness.

A couple of weeks ago, I learned that a dear friend of my brother, Byron, has schizophrenia. As a young man, this friend was beautiful. A sterling scholar, a return missionary, with charisma, talent, energy, and talent to do anything he wanted in his budding life. Now, at 70+, his family found him on the streets in California. Brought him home to Utah and have placed him in a memory care facility.  His mind is gone.

This friend of Byron’s never abused me. He was aware of the abuse though. Could he be like the other friend I wrote about in Paperdolls & Cowboy Boots?¹  He was there, witnessing the torture, but afraid to stop it? Debilitated by the “mob mentality”² and unable to stand up to the group?

Late last night, a dear friend texted to let me know that another from my childhood neighborhood perished. She wrote, “I just received a phone call that XXXXXXXX³ passed away this week. Evidently, he was homeless and found in his car in Midvale. Apparently died from exposure. Perpetrator or victim? Can’t remember?”

Stunned, I wrote back, “Victim.⁴ I am stunned. So sad and so sorry.”

“Yeah. Pretty sobering. Especially when he had the outward appearance that he was on top of the world for so many years.”

That’s an understatement. The man was extraordinary. All the qualities and aspects we deem for success in our society: Well-educated, Handsome, Hard Working, Loving, Kind, Talented, Athletic, all that. I know these accomplishments aren’t guaranteed to build a solid healthy life, but this young man also served a mission, was married in the temple, and had a beautiful family. Somewhere along the line, he lost his way.

His daughter gave a beautiful tribute to him online today. She wrote “He shouldered burdens far too heavy, for far too long.”

I don’t know exactly what those burdens were for this lovely man. Maybe they didn’t have anything to do with the abuse he witnessed in his teenage years. Maybe it did. One thing I know for sure, if he didn’t witness the abuse, it would have been better for him. He wouldn’t have to deal with it. He wouldn’t have to carry it with him. And possibly the other burdens of his life wouldn’t have been so heavy.

My therapist, Karen Fisher, once told me our efforts were probably only a “drop in the bucket” but if each of us heal and contribute our drop, we will create an ocean! (Phone courtesy of Pixabay)

In my quiet moments, I don’t really know why I was so lucky to have such a great therapist to guide me in my healing. I don’t know really know why I wanted to live and love, so very much. But I do know that it is so worth it. It is so worth the struggle and the pain to heal.

I blink back tears when I think of those in my childhood neighborhood who have perished. Please, my beloved survivors reading this, please know, you can heal. You can do this. This is an ongoing battle against childhood sexual abuse. Your healing is a huge victory in this war.  You can do it. You can live. You can have another birthday. Celebrate mine with me. If you want a copy of our book, as my birthday gift to you, click this link at midnight:

https://paperdollscowboyboots.com/happy-birthday-april/

1. See my journal entry of February 19, 2015, in Paperdolls & Cowboy Boots.

2. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-a-mob-mentality

3. Name redacted for privacy.

4. I think he was a victim because he was a gentle, loving kind soul, simply unable to stand up to the group’s abusive actions