Monthly Archives: November 2011

Nov27

Say what you need to say…

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“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”

If you have been following my personal journey through this blog, you may notice that I have rewritten and reposted one of my entries. This entry was the one titled “My own little hive” where I first shared with you the abuse that has been hidden in my past. I have made the decision to exclude some of the indirect nouns in the repost that I used in the original. This was a difficult decision but one that I was able to come to peace with.

Almost two weeks ago, I received a letter from an attorney asking me to remove the post claiming it was defaming his client. After speaking to some of my amazing friends and family, I decided to utilize the skills of an exceptional law firm and arm myself with knowledge. I used this firm because they have a wonderful reputation with similar cases. So, after some wonderful advise from my brilliant attorney, I have become aware of what my rights actually are. (There is so much power in knowledge!) I know now that I have the right to tell my story and will not be scared into silence again, as I was as a child. The changes I am making to the blog post are solely my decision. The reason I am doing this is because speaking my truth has absolutely nothing to do with my abuser. It is about my need to uncloak myself from the shame and fear that have surrounded these events. And by having even a vague description of him in the post it shifted the focus of the post from its original intent and put the light on who the abuser was. And I want to say this in no uncertain terms, I am done with him. He is not worth another moment of my time. He has had held a dark place in my life long enough. It is long past time to move on!

Don’t get me wrong, there is a part of me that wants to come at this from the direction of anger. To speak of how many people in my life could possibly fit the description I gave in my original post, and how only one person jumped up with the threat of a law suit. But I am trying to remain on the high road. To keep my direction clear and not be tempted down the path into the dark place that my abuser can take me. Ok, well maybe I went there for a minute, but I will allow myself that one indulgence…

I feel this deep need to speak my of journey and the lessons I have learned from them. I am not sure if this is journey will be just for myself or if my story may be able to reach out and help someone else. Nonetheless, I am going to continue to follow my heart and speak my truth. I am not the same scared child that kept this secret to myself for all these years. I will not be bullied into silence anymore!

This last couple of weeks has shown me first hand why so many people keep these secrets to themselves. Why there is such deep fear in speaking out. And until we as a society can create a space where victims can feel safe to speak the truth we will never have an idea of the true number of people who have gone through similar situations. The numbers currently for sexual abuse is staggering.

Here are just a few:

  • 88% of cases of sexual abuse are never reported to the authorities. (www.childhelp.org)
  • In as many as 93 percent of child sexual cases, the child knows the person that commits the abuse. (www.stopitnow.org)
  • Adult retrospective studies show that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men were sexually abused before the age of 18 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2006). This means there are more than 42 million adult survivors of child sexual abuse in the U.S. (www.d2l.org)

With all that being said, I am grateful for the lessons learned over the past couple of weeks. Before this situation arrived in my life I did not know my rights. Now I do! Now I know that truth is not defamation, and I have every legal right to tell my story. And I know that I never have to allow myself to be silenced again. I have the greatest support system in my life right now. And that is not something that I could have said a year ago. I have meticulously cut away the negative people who have been in my life over the last 10 years and have now aligned myself with loving and supportive people. All my love and gratitude goes out to my supportive portion of my family and Scott’s family, and to the amazingly beautiful friends that have become such a positive influence in my life.

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” ~ Buddha

I am looking forward to where this blog will take me as I continue to grow. And I am grateful for all of you who are taking this journey with me!

All My Love, Michelle


Nov27

My own little hive…

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“I am a honey bee, Shunned off from the colony, And they won’t let me in, So I left the hive, They took away all my stripes, And broke off both my wings, So I’ll find another tree
And make the wind my friend, I’ll just sing with the birds, They’ll tell me secrets of the world…” Zee Avi – Honey Bee Lyrics

This beautiful song was gifted to me by one of my dearest friends in the world at one of the hardest times in my life. These amazingly simple and beautiful lyrics told the painful story of how I separated from a portion of my family. This story is a very complex one that I want to begin to share with you. The portion I am going to write about today is about the painful lesson that I learned about family. Family by definition for most of us is thought to be the people who love us the most. The people who we have grown up to believe that they have our best intentions at heart and will be with us through thick and thin. The ones who will support us know matter what. Well, with those definitions in my heart of what family is “supposed to be” was I in for a shock when I finally had to draw up enough courage to share one of the most painful events of my childhood.  I knew that there was not going to be anything easy about sharing my painful secret, but I was not prepared for what came next.

When I was a young girl, I was sexually abused for years. I had only told my husband of this and was really worried about sharing this with anyone else. Like most children who have gone through this experience, I was well-groomed by my abuser. Even as an adult, I still had those fears that he had instilled in me during the years of abuse. So, when this time came to bring it to the light, I was terrified. The timing of sharing my deep secret was not really of my choosing. It came about through a very long and winding road, so I will spare you all the details of how I got to the place where I had to share and get back to the point. Needless to say, I was a stressed out disaster up until the moment the words came out of my mouth. I had to tell my mother which was extremely painful and on Christmas Eve to top it all off. But I did share my story with her, and she was very supportive considering the pain she was going through on the realization of what had happened to me. Then the most dreaded part of the story, where we met with the parties involved, the abuser excluded of course, and I begin to speak. To say that my truth was met with a wide array of emotions would be a understatement.

I experienced the situation that keeps most victims (I use this word here, but no longer refer to myself as a victim) from ever speaking out. I heard every excuse as to why it did not happen, why what I had gone through wasn’t as bad as being raped, all the way to complete anger that I would ever tell anyone. The truth is that the people I was speaking to would have been much happier if I had never said anything. They could have gone about there lives in simple bliss and unawareness and been none the worse for wear. I was asked to not let it bother me,to put the needs of everyone else above myself. The vast array of reactions I was not prepared for, I knew that it would be hard but this type of hate and anger that was lashed  towards me crushed me. I quickly and harshly learned  not assume that people close to you do not mean support and love. I do have some members of my immediate family who are the support that I need and without my loving husband I don’t know how I would have gotten through those days. But I did get through them!

Over the next several years life got harder, more stressful and I got to a darker place than I have ever seen before. Everything in my life was tied up around this situation and  I got sicker and sicker. Until last year… I have mentioned several times that this last year has been one of the most challenging in my life and this is not an exaggeration. My husband and I had to come to some very hard realities about where we wanted to be and where we wanted to lead our children. Things had to get really bad for us to leave this life we had created over the last 10 years. But it did get bad enough that the decision was made, we had to put our health and happiness above everything else. We had to love ourselves more, and more than ourselves, we had to love our children enough to teach them that this unhealthy situation was not normal.

I had so many issues around this situation, and still do to some extent. I had to begin to deal with the fact that no one believed me. That my abuser thinks that he has won and my ego really gets upset by this. It wants everyone to see him for who he is and to see him punished. But I have had to come to the harsh realization that this is not my place. Going to this dark place of anger and vengeance only brings me down, not him! If I let this defeat me then I am letting him win, and I know that I am more than what has happened to me. I am grace, love, compassion and forgiveness. (Although anyone who knows me would never call me graceful!) The forgiveness part is still a daily struggle. I really want to hold onto that anger, but piece by piece, day by day, I am easing into forgiveness.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.”

Speaking my truth became the beginning of the end of a lot of things in my life. It caused me to align with my true support group and separate from the people who were not a positive part of my life. All of these things that have snowballed from this one truth session I can now see as some of the greatest blessings in my life. They taught me just how strong I actually am. It has also allowed for some of the greatest gifts to flow into my life as well. The creation of my dream center, the place I want to give the world, Bodhi Grove. And it gave me the ability to write this, to find the courage to share my story and own my truth. These lessons allowed me to realize that I can walk where I like my steps, and I choose to walk with the people who love me and to go build a hive in another tree.

Forgiving is rediscovering the shining path of peace that at first you thought others took away when they betrayed you.  ~Dodinsky