My "Perfect" Life - Part 3

My mother had issues with pride. Growing up I never realized that her barbs and jibes came from her own need for affirmation. As a kid, I didn't understand her boasting about attending private boarding school was an attempt to cover up for being lonely, or that her insistence on good manners was to raise her middle class status to that of a woman of culture and elegance. I didn't recognize that when she compared her attractive legs to my stubby thighs, she was seeking compensation for her insecurity.

According to my mother, she was a beautiful young woman, an excellent tennis player and golfer, and had a large group of friends with whom there was mutual admiration. A wealthy businessman who owned a formidable department store chain proposed to her, but she turned him down. "Never go with someone whom you like more than he likes you," she advised me. That didn't speak too well of my dad, I remember thinking. I must have been pretty miserable at home because I remember wondering if life might be better if this other man had been my father, not because he was wealthy -- I've never cared much about money -- but because maybe he would have been nicer to me than my dad was. But misery is a funny thing. If it's your normal emotional state you don't really notice it as such, because you've got nothing to compare it to. No, if you've got low self-esteem you don't put it down to the way you are treated but to something unworthy within. And so in this, my mother was quite successful in raising her own status by lowering that of her children.

In my mother's pride, my brainy sister never quite measured up in terms of good manners or poise. I fared better. Though from me my family had to endure frequent emotional outbursts springing from emotional immaturity, the public face I presented seemed to satisfy my mom. But this prideful idiosyncrasy of my mother's badly marred my growth, and probably my sister's, because values were not discussed on the basis of principles which needed to be practiced but on the basis of how others would perceive us. Integrity was a value my mother professed to admire, but her concern for what people thought weighed far more heavily upon her. She was quite the hypocrite.

It seems ironic then, that she valued my father's integrity so much. Or perhaps she didn't see how lacking in that area she was personally. Isn't that the way with most of us? We don't see our own shortcomings nearly as well as we see those of others.

In my case, however, I didn't see any of my mom's shortcomings. She was my mom and weren't all mothers the same? Although for example, she never had much in the way of physical affection for me, I didn't know it was normal to want it, so I just thought she was the norm and my craving was a mismatch to the rest of the family.

I wonder why, when thinking of her, I lapse into self-reflection? It is likely because we were so emotionally intertwined while I was growing up that, when reflecting on those times, it is impossible to separate her from myself. Or perhaps I'm simply an egotistic (or just plain bad) writer!

What is the overwhelming aspect to my mother's personality which best defines her I think, is what I've already alluded to: the fear of what people would think. It was a mantra as we were growing up. What we wore, how we behaved, what we said -- all these things were a reflection on her. It wasn't so much that she was concerned for our welfare as how others would perceive her. Oh, she didn't say it was about her, but looking back, clearly it was. The most poignant memory I have that crystallizes this is the week before my sister's confirmation. My sister didn't think she believed the words one is supposed to profess at confirmation so she really didn't want to go through with it. My mother's first strategy was to make light of my sister's doubts. "Oh, you'll believe it in time," I heard her say. But my sister, light years apart from me in personality style, quietly and with a rare display of tears, stood on her conviction and said she didn't believe it now and so now she couldn't say the words. My mother grew more and more anxious and 'concerned' about how others would perceive my sister if she didn't go through with it. All was arranged. It was expected. It was what should be done....

How my mother managed to get my sister to go through with it is beyond me. I wouldn't have done it. (But I was the difficult one, my sister the older and more cooperative one.) So out of guilt or fear or perhaps just feeling worn down, my sister went through with the ceremony. She cooperated. My mother was proud (irony and insult totally intended). The day passed without incident as far as I know.

But did my mother ever grieve that her eldest daughter didn't believe in God? Did she ever regret insisting my sister claim something she didn't believe? Did she recognize the irony in bragging about her husband of great integrity and pervert my sister to lies?

It must have been hell to be in her shoes. It certainly wasn't heaven living in my own.

But the thing about childhood is that it molds us and shapes us into the adults we become. I had compassion for my sister and really felt she was right. Sadly, I didn't have the vocabulary or emotional equipment, nor a close bond with my sister to say anything to her or to my mother in my sister's defense. But now I firmly hold to what I believe is truth and encourage others to do the same.

Whatever our parents offer us, be it good, bad, right or wrong, shapes our lives. We are woven from the cloth we've lived and experience brings us to the place we are now. The steps and the people that lead us through our childhood help to shape us.

Was my mother selfish and prideful. Indeed, I think she was. Did she act out of spite. I don't think so. I think she was trapped in fear and did the best she could within her cell. It's sad but true. The best thing I can do with that is to overcome and to treat others, my child in particular, very differently. The best any of us can do with what we've experienced, is to overcome and encourage others to do likewise.

That's the purpose behind my writing.

Until next Thursday, I'll say 'bye bye' and wish you a good week ahead.

My "Perfect" Life

Imagine a perfect world in which to grow up: it is an idyllic world where your physical needs are provided. You never go hungry, have attractive clothes to wear and your mother and father are married and seem to love each other. You know from an early age that education is important and that whatever post secondary education you will desire will be made available. The country is Canada, where the true north is indeed 'strong and free'. Your world encourages freedom of speech, religion and politics.

Now imagine such a world where there is no sense of being loved, of belonging, or of being taken seriously. Suddenly, you are in the world in which I grew up. Children are to be seen and not heard, integrity is only expected in the adult world, and behavior is criticized but never corrected.

I loved my parents, now both deceased. I loved them enough never to have composed the stream of thought I'll compose here because it would have angered them. Interesting I don't say 'it would hurt them.' I would not write if it would hurt them either, but I'm not sure it is possible I ever hurt them. I'm not sure they liked me enough to be hurt. Rather, they disliked me enough to get angry with me.

In my head are many random stories. Each of them are true. How do I compile a series of vignettes that will best encapsulate my family history? And why do I do it? These are the questions I must ask myself as a writer.

As this is a blog, I think I'll provide one story at a time, randomly at first. Perhaps something will begin to take shape and from that I'll design a more structured approach.

As to why I do it? It seems fitting to write about my life given I've entitled this blog "A Life Examined". I'm aware as I write now that my tone is a bit clipped and my mood remote. Perhaps I'm a bit nervous about writing to the world; perhaps I'm a bit anxious I'll fail. I know I'm not angry with my parents or my sister. I'm just wary of what I'm about to do... to share my journey in order to capture another's interest.


The first story has just two characters, my mother and me. It isn't even a story really, but a moment in time. It begins with my mother raising her hand to me and stopping. I was about 9. I remember I'd done something wrong - I don't know what but I'm certain I knew at the time - and she was really cross. She raised her hand and our eyes met. I was scared she was going to hit me and that fear must have been written all over my face. She looked at me, her hand suspended in the air and said, "Some day I'm going to hit you." (she never had up to that point, that I can remember, nor ever did)

The moment passed. I guess she walked away. There was no hit, but no hug either. No physical contact of any kind.

I was not punished for whatever I'd done. I expect she showed compassion, or tried to, by not spanking me. But she didn't teach me, correct me or help me to learn from whatever I'd done that I shouldn't have done it. Interesting that I remember the moment of eye contact and fear, but not what I'd done to cause her anger. Was it good for me as a child, to live in a house where my mother never spanked me? Certainly to have no consequence for bad behaviour was not ideal.

It was the '60's and Dr Spock and such teaching was that you should not spank a child and a child will work things out for themselves. Well, I didn't. Perhaps others did.

It's stories like this that I'll write about. It's stories like this that make me feel sad about how I grew up: completely disjointed from my mother, who lacked confidence, and from my father, who was emotionally shut down.

I grew up in one of the biggest houses on the street, with educated parents and a very brainy sister. I had music lessons and at 6, when I had trouble with reading, my mom helped me until I could read. But inside myself I was alone, lonely and torn between over confidence and under confidence, because I felt no love.

I have love now in my own family. I'm very blessed. And I'm grateful for my history, because it's made me who I am now. But every little experience as a child has the potential to bear significant impact on life as a whole. Perhaps I'm writing to help you to tap into your memories, to see how they've impacted you - for better or worse - and to help you to grow beyond them. Perhaps I'm writing to parents who struggle with parenting, or to siblings who struggle with sibling relationships. Perhaps I'm writing to daughters and sons who have parents who are aging and there is unsettled business between them. Whoever I'm writing to, I'm hoping my words will be read, and the words will help to make our relationships better, while we are still on the earth. I shall write again next Thursday. (Is it Thursday's child that's full of woe??)

me, sitting in my back garden

Joy from Brokenness

Life never spins quite the way we expect it to.

I planned this post about 12 days ago. I hadn't written a word - just as well. I thought it'd be about the joy of experiencing healing from pain.

Then 20 first graders were murdered while playing in school and the world turned upsidedown.
Joy? Out of that brokenness? What poor taste!
Or is it?

What good can come out of something so heinous as children being murdered in cold blood for a reason we still don't know. As if there could be a reason.

Joy? First, brokenness.

How broken was this man who carried the guns into Sandy Hook Elementry School last Friday? How broken were the Innocents, gunned down in their childhood? How broken their parents now, and the loved ones of the teachers at the Newton Connecticut school? Broken. We're all broken.

We lead broken lives. The breaking starts at birth. It is magnified as we grow up. Perhaps at some time in our lives we discover our brokenness and find hope. We learn that healing is possible and our lives can be restored, rescued; we can salvage the life that was intended for us from the time of our conception.

But the brokenness continues unless it is surrendered to the One who was broken for us all. Even then it is a journey to recovery - to recover what we were born into but lost because the world is lost and we in it are lost too.

The man with the gun was lost. When and how it took shape we don't yet know. But he killed his mother at that school on Friday morning and 20 innocent children too, before he killed himself. Did he know he was broken? Did he know he could be healed?

Do you know you are broken? Do you know you can be healed?

The reason I write is to keep my pain on the surface, where it can be cleaned and scrubbed; where layer-by-layer it can be exposed and released and overcome. I write, to cleanse me from the inside out. And I wash. Of course there's the literal - I shower. But sometimes the shower of a Holy Spirit covers me in healing water that cleanses me of guilt, shame, pain, and restores me from the outside in. Both inside out and outside in - I need them both to find healing from the brokenness.

Usually, the pain we feel is mercifully less intense than the pain a parent experiences in losing a precious child. But pain it is - big or small - and it effects our lives. And it effects every life around us.

How does the rest of humanity deal with pain? Pain: we all share in it, sometimes create it, and yet we hide it as though we are the only ones who know it intimately. Like an unwanted relative or untimely guest we put up with it, are embarrassed by it, tolerate it but never appreciate it. We live as though there is something shameful about pain, about admitting we have it; it's something we all have but live as though we haven't got it at all...

Then a twenty year old man enters a school and destroys 26 - 27 - 28 lives, and the lives of all those who love them are damaged perhaps forever. Then we have permission. Then the pain is put onto the surface and there is no shame. The healing will take a long time. And we're told that's okay. For some the healing will seem forever in coming. But when the healing does come there is joy. There has to be. The contrast exists to mark the differences in our lives. The differences must exist so that we can feel, know, experience life.

For those of us who have noone involved in Connecticut, we have our own memories, our own tragic losses, our own unhealed pain whose memories are triggered by the Connecticut tragedy.

So tears flow - tears of immense pain and suffering - to mark the unimaginable agony that tragedy exposes.

And then, in time, hope returns.

Exhaustion comes and brings with it relief. Knowing that the tragedy is passed, and that we must look forward, look to the hope that is in the other children that survived, in the babies being born, in the discoveries being made, in life as it ebbs and flows and never ends, not really; this is what helps us to move on.

If we lived in a world with no pain, would there, could there be joy?

I don't know.

Pain like this is too great to be born in silence or in solitude. It is beyond our imaginings and so we make no sense of it and there is nothing trite to offer as solace. Who can come alongside a mother who has lost her little boy to a man who was once a little boy... with ideas and dreams and excitement, just like the little boy he killed. Just like the twenty children he killed. One child for each year of his own life. Is that what he was counting?

Did he hate his life so much that he wanted to kill for each year he lived?

But to think this way pulls us back into the tragedy.
Perhaps that is part of the healing process.. .from outside, to inside and back to the outside of it again.

Joy from brokenness must come. Else we despair pointlessly. Mankind is resiliant, and must be. For tragedy will come again, and again we must overcome it. The human spirit must press on. It must. It must.

What happened in Connecticut is such a horrible event that it will be a long time before any light can shine out from it. But in the meantime, tragedy offers hope for a deeper intimacy with our fellow man, a greater appreciation for children, a more profound respect for the brokenness that is in us all.

The cycle of pain to healing is not yet finished. Joy from brokenness is a process. I like to promote the process and celebrate the intimacy that comes when pain is admitted and shared. Amidst this tragedy then, like any other before, there is hope that humanity will reach out a hand to console, just as God reached down His hand to us when he gave up his son, Jesus, to heal us from our brokenness.

I am grateful for His hand. At times like this I pray our hands will reach out to one another from sorrow to surrender, from despair to hope.

So how shall we live wisely? Shall we enjoy the moments we have together, savour the Saviour and trust in his ultimate victory over the darkness? To me, there is no other way.

So in this Season, amidst the activity and holidays, the thoughts of the Christ child and your own family, take the long view: be grateful for what you have and find joy in that. That's what I try to do every day.

(next scheduled blog post: Thursday 3rd January, 2013 - Happy New Year!)

"ON Behalf of a Teenager: Student Mental Health and Setbacks

On behalf of teenagers:

One week ago I attended my university class reunion. It was fun! It was also sober as discussion and promotion revolved around the future for today's students. Some don't make it, not because they flunk out but because they die...

Studies show incidents of suicide are on the rise. My Alma Mater, Queen's University in Kingston, is one institution that is spearheading research for remedy.

I have youth in my life whom I love very much, some of whom wrestle with depression.

There are loads of disillusioned people out there. What can we do about it? What can I? I've written a book to encourage folk to come out of their fear and shame and step into the life God has ordained.

How can this book help the youth of today? It spells out the truth about who we are, what we're here for and assists in how to build healthy relationships that encourage us to grow and accept us the way we are - if that seems like a contradiction think again.

But what is the core to this truth? God. We are not the core. We are not even the center. Whether we like it or not, our universe revolves around the sun and for the Son. He came for our benefit, that we might follow Him and improve our lives immeasurably. As society strays from that truth, the benefits of God's culture become lost and our children drift into a bland nothingness of immediate gratification, superficial entertainment and technical emptiness.  They are ending up lonely, isolated and desperate.

Change needs to happen and it needs to happen fast. I look into the mirror and hope to inspire someone today.. one person.. who wants more from life than amusement or distraction. Follow Him who died so we could have life. Live children, free from oppression and full of hope. Live to make this world a brighter place.

Love Sarah

Hope: childhood, bullying, mental health and hurt, adolescence, parenting...

What a title: a lot of different issues all under one label. I've thought about hosting different blogs from encouraging  mental health, to discouraging bullying, from discussing children and parenting, to love and marriage. In the end I realized they are all simply subjects for the Examined Life.

If we think about life we can enjoy it more, because in the thinking, we don't take it for granted. Perhaps we slow down - a little at least - and smell the flowers, so to speak.

Flowers makes me think of my husband. He brought some home once recently. It was the first bouquet in a very long time. Not because he doesn't love me, but because he doesn't think of flowers, and he certainly doesn't like to give them for an occasion. He'd prefer to bring something home every day except Valentines or my Birthday rather than to focus on a particular day. That's just the way he is. And although I love flowers, I've learned to by myself some from time to time. (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=280748765372108&set=a.116043658509287.21081.100003109602306&type=1&theater)

I am in love with my husband a little. I always love him a lot. There is a difference - the one is a flame of fire, the other is embers embedded deep inside my soul.

I adore my children. One I bore, the other I married into. The first is more like me and I understand a little better; the other I cherish in part because she is an enigma to me (and I to her perhaps). I've sacrificed a lot try to understand (and she too perhaps) and I wouldn't trade her for a hundred girls I might have borne.

I was bullied as a child and it wounded my adolescence tremendously. But it taught me compassion.

I wanted to die several times in my twenties, but I'm here now as a testament that life does work itself out and we're the better for the pain as well as the pleasure. In fact the pleasure doesn't teach us much at all, except that suffering is endless. It's good to suffer and to enjoy the goodness of life, so we grow and adapt and learn to live and learn how to love all the more.

So, which concept, idea, topic should I explore in depth? Dunno. All of the above.

Love and Marriage, Down with Bullying, Up with Mental Health, Childhood-Adolescence: Parenting completes the cycle.

I'd love to hold a split second in my hand - to know what it's like to see a moment amidst all the ages - and enjoy the wave of time pass through me. Then I might know how to touch another human soul and spark into it life and hope and longing.

Live, Love, Laugh: and if not, cry, but know life is a cycle and though good moments are fleeting, difficult ones pass to and it is always good to be alive.

Brokenness: gazing in the rear view mirror

As I continue this 'series' on Brokenness and recovery from abuse memories, I'd like to share a story that adds a piece to the puzzle of what happened to me as a child, and as a maturing adult, that eventually brought about an unfortunate split from family, yet wholeness for me.
One day I was driving in my car. I don't remember where I was headed but I remember I was on Bath Road in Kingston, Ontario in my little Honda civic. I looked into my rear view mirror, as one does (or should do) when driving. But what I saw was shocking, alarming, unexpected. I did not see what was behind me but rather what was before me. I saw my eyes, hazel and veiled - veiled in a shroud of evil, shall I say of hatred. Not a self-loathing and not specifically aimed at any particular target. Rather it was just nasty. I believed then and still believe that I was gazing into eyes that held evil. It seemed as though the devil was looking back at me.
I was frightened and totally shocked. But what could I do about it? It seemed as though I was looking at something within me that was quite separate from me.
What did I do at that time? Though a believer and follower of Jesus, I did not have the experience or knowledge of how to pray about or against what I was seeing, and I didn't have the theology to know whether I was possessed or not. I simply knew what I was looking at and respected yet was repulsed by it.
From that moment I knew there was a part of me that was nasty, and my aim was not to give it any power.

This raises many questions. I have no answers except to say that part of me, or thing within, me resides no more.
But as clear as sunshine, something revealed itself to me that day, to frighten me. It had the effect of making me more self-aware and more humble toward the God that I had chosen to follow some years before.

Brokenness: repressed memory

The tension is both physical and emotional, when one is reliving a memory of abuse. It is as vivid as  'last night's dream' or an argument just shared, and yet it is a shadow from a moment-in-time lived years ago. During the flashback, there is physical tension that grips the stomach, and breathing is more laboured than usual... or perhaps that is a deliberate attempt to impose calm. Is there sweat? Perhaps, sometimes. Throat tension stifles any sound as you watch your memory playing out on an internal screen, eyes focused inward instead of looking out at the world.
The most pervasive feeling is the overwhelming sense of nervousness.

It's a long time ago I had the memories, the flashbacks of terrifying moments - desperate scenes with my mouth gagged by a disproportionately large hand, and weight born on my chest and torso.
I still hate anyone touching my face or my neck, even in a joke, even my husband. And yet this is not proof, this is not evidence that the memories were in fact real.

There was never any blood, not in my memory, so that provokes doubt. But if not a memory then what was it? Hysteria? Certainly what I relived in memory was real to me, but that does not make it real, any more than denying a fact makes something false.

When experiencing a repressed memory, it is impossible to disbelieve it. The moment is too absolute to be imagined. Yet we are not victims to it; they can be switched off... Once enough of them occur and are dealt with, we can choose to stop them.

After months of having memories of abuse and talking them through, eventually I stopped having them.
Decades have passed and they do not recur.

They are part of my past, part of my brokenness, part of my story. A testament to my healing.

Brokenness - the memory of a memory

"He was angry and scary. I ran. I ran up the basement stairs and across the kitchen and out the door.
By the time I was climbing the local rocks nearby I had forgotten why I was running.
Dressed in a dark brown corduroy jacket and Lee jeans I know I was twelve. My long dark hair hung around my face. If I was out of breath it didn't last for long before I was singing at the top of my lungs in this solitary open rocky space. Eventually I would sing the entire score from Jesus Christ Superstar - the musical passion (no pun intended) of my heart at the time.
What was I running from? Not what but who? My dad.
Why? Because I was scared. Scared of his temper, scared of his face. Scared of his hands.
So I ran away.
By the time I would return home the cloud would remain but the reason for it would be gone."

This is a memory of a memory.  Over twenty years ago I waded through hours of reading and counseling to help me work through the shock and pain of emotional memory. There was abuse in my childhood but the type - the degree - to which it occurred  and the basis of its truth will never be provable. 

Is it possible for me to have imagined the memories? To experience the shock, pain and horror of sexual abuse without it having ever happened? On the other hand, is it conceivable to experience years of abuse and to block it out completely until a safe time to remember arrives?
The memory of the memory was recalled when I was thirty. Now, that in itself seems a 'lifetime' ago.

As I write this, I do not want to write it. And I have no personal need to share. And I am very tentative. By God's grace and my own hard work I have overcome the cloud of shame that hung over me for most of my life, and I have intimate friends and family of my own now. But there are families torn apart over this issue of abuse. Perhaps that's why I raise it.

Some truths are never possible to prove. During the time of recovery from the abuse I was so sure my memories were real. Now, healed and free, I do not know. It is almost as though I am not the same person as the woman who bore the cloud. As to the child, yes, I know that was me. I remember the confusion and the misery of being a girl very well. But as I look back, whilst I've no urge to relive any of that time not even to change it, I know if it had not been for my suffering I would not be the person I am now... I would not have the compassion, the empathy for others in pain and I would not have the wisdom to know 'the truth - whether provable or not - will set us free.'

Brokenness - shell shock

I found myself sitting on the third step of the staircase in my home - a cosy 2 bedroom row house.
I had just come from visiting a psychiatrist, to discuss and to unravel a recurring dream, one I'd experienced intermittently since my teen years but which had become a bit more vivid and more recurrent of late. I was twenty-nine.
I sat on the step, fully aware of what I had learned, fully aware of the significance of the discovery and fully protected from the enormity of the memory I'd experienced only minutes before by shock.
Shock is a great veil that enables us to absorb bad news in slow motion, so that our minds get round the news before emotion can weigh us down.
Such was the case with me.
Even as I sit here now, at my computer, I am alert to the fact that I am stalling as I write. I'm called to tell this story but resistant to the job. The story goes deep, the ending is life. That's the only reason I am pushed to write it. Not for sensationalism, not for catharsis, only in the hope it may restore, rekindle, encourage someone else.
But I'm not ready yet to say more...