After the first showing of the movie about Journey Into Courage, I realized that my siblings’ names were listed among the contributors to making the video. I worried about mother finding out. At this point I still didn’t know about the trauma, I thought my father must have done more than my only memory of something I thought trivial.
The actual memory: I was about 12 years old, and my breasts were just starting to grow. My father came into my bedroom and put his hands on my breasts. I thought O no not this again. Then I groaned and turned over. He never did it again. Because I was unable to have sex with my husband, I thought I must have been abused sexually. But in fact, my difficulty with sex was due to early trauma. At one point my brother said he made sure his daughter was never alone with my father because he didn’t like how Daddy treated his other girl grandchildren. This was validation for my memory. There was also the fact that my groan and turning over stopped my father from doing it again. I think both these things helped make it not be so damaging an experience. It was not invalidated, and I was able to stop it. However, one piece of damage was I have never been able to sleep on my back since then.
From my journal for July 1995:
I’ve got an awful pain in my heart. I think it must be that I’m afraid that mother will see the video and be “hurt.” Although of course she won’t express it as hurt, but as anger and invalidation. I wish I had asked Bess to keep my brothers’ names out of the credits — and then I get angry: why shouldn’t they get credit for their support of this project? I imagine mother calling “You’ve embarrassed me in front of my friends..” and me saying “You’ve embarrassed me in front of my friends many times.” Of course, she’ll see that Jess and Jerry and Jo all contributed to the production, that would make it a little hard for her to scapegoat me. It’s true that I do speak of “another incest survivor” and “her father approached her too,” but don’t give any graphic details. I do talk about the alcoholism in more than one place, especially in my identification with the soldiers fighting in Vietnam. So what do I want in this situation? I want mother to never see the video, never know about it, I don’t want her to be hurt. Except for that part of me that really wants her to know how much I’ve suffered. Then I get angry at how I’ve held myself back all these years because I was afraid of “hurting” her. I see how I’m having the same problem with Mom that Beverly is having with Arlene and Lynelle with Sara. How to cut off from a person who doesn’t see you as who you are, and who will protest that you are “hurting” them if you speak your own truth?
If it could be any way at all? I want Mom to see the film, understand that she had a wonderfully creative, talented, and loving daughter, who she damaged through her drinking, I want her heart to break open, and then I want her to get help, AA or therapy, to start healing her own pain and stop drinking. I put “see the film,” but that’s only an imagined process toward the goal. The real goal is that she would see what kind of person I really am, and there’s no way she can do that without going through enormous pain. And I also want her to address her pain and her alcoholism. And I don’t believe for a moment in any of these things coming to pass. I do think it would take some kind of shock, like seeing the video, to wake her up, and I expect her to be much too well defended to let it in.
“How could you do that to your mother?” (How could she fucking do that to me? My sex life is dead because she failed to protect me from my father, and possibly also left me with an inappropriate baby sitter. I’ve lost the chance for a life in theater because she was so jealous and threatened, I lived for fifty years hiding and denying my creativity because I didn’t want to “hurt” her. I’m done with hiding and denial, dammit!)
“I respectfully give you back your pain, Mother. Here it is, I’m not carrying it for you any longer.”
“You don’t care about me.“ “I do care about you, and there’s no way I can express it that you would get. Because I care about you, I’ve spent my life holding back the parts of me that you didn’t like, and I’m not willing to do that any more. I’m no longer willing to sacrifice myself for you, especially since it doesn’t do you any good — you don’t appreciate it or even see it — I’m hurting myself and the only result is that you get to go on living your lie. I will not protect you any longer. My creative life — the life of my soul — is more important to me than not hurting you, and speaking the truth is more important to me than allowing you to remain in your comfortable denial.”
I LOVE MY CREATIVE LIFE
MORE
THAN I LOVE CO-OPERATING
WITH MY OWN OPPRESSION
and that’s the truth. And it’s right for my donation to the film to be “anonymous” — anonymous was a woman after all — and it’s right that my siblings should be given credit for their contributions.
“I won’t hold back my creative life any longer in order to not hurt you. I’m sorry that you can’t be proud of me for my part in something that will help make the world a better place to live in.”
“How dare you say you are an incest survivor? Nothing like that ever happened to you.” “How would you know, Mom? You were drunk.”
Lynelle gave me a card to take to the screening. She said she came into the house and up to my desk and felt a lot of fear in my space — all the fear that I haven’t been letting myself feel. The card was a black madonna, “Protectress of the Oppressed,” and she had written a message of love and support. She also enclosed a little tale about two birds. One had sat on a branch and watched 3,741,952 snowflakes fall on it. “When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say — the branch broke off.” The dove thought about the story and then said “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come into the world.
I wish I had saved that card.