Safe, Not Sorry | Part 2 of 2
by Elouise
I’m feeling raw today.
Best to start with
A Reality Check
Me:
It’s easier to write about
my childhood and early teenage years
than later years.
It’s easier to understand and forgive a child
or young teenager suffering from trauma
than an adult survivor of trauma.
The Voice:
“Yes, I know you’re a diagnosed PTSD victim/survivor.
However, you’re now an adult
and must put all that behind you.
Thankfully, you’ve done tons of work
in 12-step programs and psychotherapy.
It’s time to move on.”
Me:
I’d love to move on!
But trauma is trauma, right?
The Voice
hastens to answer:
“Yes, but now you’re an adult
and must accept full responsibility
just like everyone else for
everything you do.
No excuses!”
Could this be true? Is the shattered plate so easily put back together? Are re-wired emotions, thoughts, behaviors and vulnerabilities so quickly reset? Will I ever be completely free of old survival instincts, anxiety or fear? I rather doubt it, though I would hope such a day might arrive in my lifetime.
What seems easy for some is difficult for me and others with similar trauma. This is reality, not an excuse. I am a mature, responsible adult woman. Ironically, super-responsibility is one of my problems. Thankfully, I’ve made progress. I’d like to believe The Voice is working as hard on his or her issues.
Why this matters
I’m about to talk about regrets—yes, I have them, and I’m finding it challenging to write about them. You see, hardly anyone I now know saw or was aware of the trauma of my childhood. When people meet me, they assume I’m a healthy adult woman. Most also assume it was a great privilege to be a preacher’s kid.
I kept family secrets for decades–chiefly to protect myself. I didn’t think anyone would believe me. Or worse, they would decide I deserved my father’s beatings and humiliations. Even after I confronted my parents in 1993, I didn’t tell the complete story about my childhood and how it affected me later in life, including how it affected my professional and public life.
Some of you have known me for years. Others are new friends. For those who’ve known me for years, I want to say this:
- I rarely regret relationships I enjoyed in my professional, church or community work. Most were life-giving, and preserved hope in me for something better. I have nothing but gratitude for them.
- I don’t regret meeting and working with people I found challenging. They taught me about myself, about life, and about how to get along in challenging relationships. I’m grateful that most of these sometimes painful encounters grew me up and grew me out of myself.
- I don’t regret times when my decisions caused anxiety, disappointment, or anger. I’ve been on both sides of the fence and understand fully that I don’t always get it right. I’m a learner. Sometimes a beginner. I make mistakes and have to evaluate, reconsider and decide what to do next.
My regrets aren’t about other people or about decisions I have made. They’re about me. Not so much about what I’ve done as about what I haven’t done, and why. The last posts on Dreams and Daydreams, and Part 1 of this post put it right in my face.
My Regret:
I have played second fiddle all my life
when I might at least have tried out for first fiddle.
If not conductor!
As Part 1 says, I had no clear, compelling dream for my life. I set and completed many challenging goals and objectives. Yet not one of them was the result of a compelling dream that would help me make decisions about becoming who I was meant to be from the inside out.
As a stenographer, church musician, student and educator I wore various outfits and hats quite well. But not one of them was comfortably ‘me’ from the inside out. My years as a professor in the classroom came closer than other roles. Yet even then I didn’t get up each morning excited and joyful about my work and where it was taking me. Many days I wanted to just stay in bed and go back to sleep.
Don’t get me wrong. I love a challenge! This is isn’t about finding something easy. It’s about knowing that what I’m doing fits me and is moving me toward my personal dream. Furthermore, it isn’t about figuring out what God is going to make of my life. Thankfully, God can use or discard whatever material I offer.
I think of my dreamless situation like this: I had no personal compass! No clear guidepost at the end of that row I was plowing. Nothing to keep my vision (endpoint) clear and focused. On track. I had no north star, no true north! Instead, I focused on scores of near-at-hand deadlines, goals and projects. Good things. And yet…
Having no north star is like having no compelling boundaries. Boundaries help me clarify decisions, behaviors, attitudes, how time is invested or not invested, when to say Yes and when to say No, how to accept No from other people, how to create or at least enhance safety in any given situation, what is and is not allowed, where I will and will not go and why.
It also includes taking the risk of living this out. It’s one thing to know in my head that I can say No. But am I able to say No? To leave the room? To leave the door open or shut or locked? When I don’t practice personal boundaries I leave myself vulnerable to coercion, including flattery and false promises. I know this. I’ve been there. It’s all part of my childhood legacy.
Boundaries don’t guarantee that I won’t be hurt, or find myself in difficult situations. They do, however, help me listen to my body, emotions, heart, mind, faith and experience, and then take steps that move me steadily in the direction of my true north. My dream.
In the end, if my boundaries are good for me, they will also be good for you or for the group, organization or team I’m on. The boundaries may not feel good, and may even raise hostility and anger. Yet it will indeed be good. For all of us.
Postscript
I have a dream! I’ll talk about it in a future post. Also not yet answered: questions about my sometimes confused and confusing history with men, and my early patterns with gifted women. I won’t forget.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 21 October 2014
Telling the Truth 
Much to ponder. I read these words: “Yet even then I didn’t get up each morning excited and joyful about my work and where it was taking me. Many days I wanted to just stay in bed and go back to sleep” and think “that’s depression shouting out loud and clear” Not Elouise, but Elouise’s brain chemistry impacted by many years of emotional neglect & abuse. Elouise’s PTSD speaking, not Elouise herself.
The Voice. A word of condemnation at every turn. Where’s that coming from? It is certainly not of God. Stick a fork in it! We’ll help you!
The Regret. You are no doubt aware of Leonard Bernstein’s comment about the hardest position to fill in an orchestra – it is second violin! It requires great skill and what one author calls a “willingness to be more obscure”. But without it, there is no harmony, much like singing alto in a choir. (Having been dean of a seminary, it seems like you have been a conductor!) That said, I hear a sorrow over risks not taken that might have unfolded life in a way that more deeply engaged your talents and gifts. We can mourn that.
The dream. Why about doing? Why not about being? I’m not sure the “doing” dream will ever be big enough, though, or be set on the most expansive plane. I think about Jesus at his baptism & the Father’s word that this was his son whom he loved and with whom he was well-pleased. This is Elouise, whom I love and with whom I am well pleased. Yes? Or not to be believed? “Who am I becoming?” is every bit as valid a question as “What did I do?”
One of my favorite “visions” is from C.S. Lewis’s short writing “Man or Rabbit?” This quote is wrenched out of context, but it is helpful to me in terms of our emotional growth and the question you pose about rewiring. (And I think you can read past the gender-specific language.) “…but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear – the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy. ‘When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.’ ” (It is the “drenched in joy” part that especially grips me.)
Iain Matthew’s The Impact of God: Soundings from St John of the Cross remains one of my most treasured books. As a “doer” rather than a “be-er”, I have appreciated it so much as it draws me away from my endless and restless activity and towards the God who desires to be with me and to give love. “The powerlessness of night brought an admission, that we need to be saved, and that we are not our own saviours. Into this, John announced the proximity of God, a God who loves to give himself, and whose love, in giving, transforms. The guarantee of this is God’s fidelity to himself: ‘he acts as God, to show who is he.’ “
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Meg, Thanks for your thoughtful reading and comments. My regret about being 2nd fiddle is about settling for less rather than more. Not necessarily more responsibility(!), but a more faithful way of being Elouise that reflects the desires of my heart rather than the wishes, plans or needs of others, or the ‘Elouise’ they want or think me to be.
Elouise!
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It is great that you articulated your inner critic / inner voice. Hearing someone else’s inner critic makes me feel more normal, or rather more accepting of my humanity / human condition.
Thanks for sharing such a personal account. Somehow hearing other people’s accounts of suffering and difficulties makes me feel less alone. I’m not sure if that makes sense to you at all.
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It makes total sense! I’m also relieved when others share the language that haunts them. It doesn’t soothe me into doing nothing; it galvanizes me, because now I know I have good company and even more reason to move ahead with my work as a fully human being. Yes, less alone. Precisely. Thanks so much for your comment.
Elouise
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I feel so much connection hearing other like yourself. Speaking from our hearts heals others hearts too. I also feel hugely inspired by people like yourself who articulate their journey so honestly and passionately.
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Thank you kindly for your response. Gratefully received.
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