Why this blog?
I need to say some things out loud before I die. I’m not knowingly staring death in the face, yet I know my days are numbered.
Like many other children, I was groomed to be a victim. What did that look like? How did it affect me as a child, young adult, wife, mother and professional woman? As an adult, what does it mean to take responsibility for myself and move forward instead of backwards?
I’m a preacher’s kid, the oldest of four beautiful, intelligent, gifted daughters. I learned early to live a double life—not intentionally, but as my sad and sorry default mode.
My father believed that his duty as my parent was to break my will. I survived thanks to silence. For years it served me well.
Then it didn’t. In 1993, on the eve of my 50th birthday, I broke my long silence with my parents: “I did not deserve to be shamed, humiliated or silenced.”
I began telling the truth about what happened inside of me when I was growing up. I desperately wanted my parents to know me as the daughter I am, not as the daughter they thought I was.
Now my parents are gone. I’m tempted to keep the lid on. Hunker down into comfortable silence. Haven’t I already told enough truth? To enough people? Maybe I should just think about it further. Or sleep on it. But grief, the global situation in which we find ourselves, and a tiny fraction of hope call me out.
Often when I’m playing the piano, writing in my journal, listening to music, singing, watching children interact with parents or caregivers, reading poetry or looking at a haunting work of art, I recall yet another piece of my life that was stolen or disfigured. I weep, swinging back and forth between anger and grief, longing for what will never be yet has within itself exquisite beauty and a glimmer of something better.
Something better, based on truth instead of lies. If I don’t tell the truth about my life, I will die inside. I want to live, and I want my children and grandchildren to live.
Hence this blog. Thanks for listening and, if you’d like, responding.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 30 Nov 2013
Telling the Truth 
I just came across your blog when going through the daily prompt posts on symptoms. To speak the truth out loud before I die–what a wonderful expression of why many of us write. It is especially wonderful to me how many times I have a positive emotional response to a post and then, when investigating the author, learn that she has had such different life experiences. And yet, we have so much more in common than the outward differences would predict. It proves something important, I think.
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What a kind, perceptive comment. Also true to my experience–especially with women. Anywhere. Thanks for leaving this note.
Elouise
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The truth is you loving yourself Elouise. Without that truth there is no love in the world. And your parents, with great love (even though they weren’t aware at the time), have asked you to look within and find that love.
And to do that we are taught by those we love and look up to, to doubt ourselves and see fault in many things that we do.
And it is in climbing from those depths that we finally do ‘see’ ourselves and the love that has been gently waiting within for that discovery.
It cannot be done without knowing both sides of our coins, we cannot know and appreciate love, without first knowing hatred. Cannot know happiness, without first knowing sadness…they are all the markers of this world, so that we ‘can’ understand and know ourselves first…only then can we ‘know’ love truly in experiencing them all.
You had been shown much fear, and in slowly understanding it, you now appreciate what it has taken you to break free and see you, the true you that had been masked from your truth for so long.
The hardest part for me was in forgiving those I felt had trashed me. Even harder still was in realising that my parents had only passed onto me what they had been taught by those they loved and looked up to. I didn’t want them to have an excuse for what they did…but the more I understood our journey, the more I can ‘see’ that we all are here to find that unconditional love. But to find it, we must first know ‘conditional’. Like all things, we need to know one side to ‘know and appreciate’ the other.
I know this was written some time ago, but I do hope that understanding of this journey has allowed you the freedom of finding that love. Your love.
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Hi, Mark.
Thanks for your comment and your interest. I don’t know what your journey was like. I do know, however, what it means struggle with forgiveness. Here’s a link to my most recent posts, The Shape of Forgiveness, beginning with Part 1: http://wp.me/p32tHJ-5ld. I hope you’ll take time to read all 4 parts. Let me know if you have trouble accessing them. You should be able to move from one to the next via Related Posts.
Elouise
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Good morning,
I noticed your photo on your blog entitled, “cracks in the pavement.” I am wondering whether or not I could have your permission to use the photo here and slightly modify it. I am a Dean for the Presbyterian Music Camp in Ontario, Canada. I am developing a theme this year entitled, “Grace Notes -accents of love for a hurting world” We always develop a poster and were hoping to show flowers growing in a barren dessert with the support of “Grace” We are just in the beginning stages of developing our advertising poster idea, but may want to use this image. We might look to adding music notes falling from the sky. Please let me know if we might use your photo you have posted here.
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Hi, Kimberly. Thanks for this inquiry. I found the photo on the internet (via Google images). There’s a note at the bottom of the post showing where I found it. However, here’s a link that should take you directly to the photo on another site: https://www.boredpanda.com/plants-flowers-versus-concrete-asphalt-pavement/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic You’ll see the photographer’s name in the lower corner of this particular rendition.
Your poster idea sounds great. And music camp sounds even better! Here’s hoping you can use the photo for your advertising poster.
Elouise
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Hi Elouise, I came across your blog and and I hope you are still running this blog. I read your post and a few more of your post. You are the strength to so many things in your life, and you are your own hero. Well Done for telling the truth!
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Yes! I’m still blogging, and can’t imagine life without it. Thanks for reading and for following. I just saw this comment (plus one more) in my spam folder! It’s now released to the world. I also appreciate your encouragement. Thank you. 🙂
Elouise
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So nice to read from you Elouise. Have a wonderful week!
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Do you give permission for reprinting? I’m editor of an online newsletter and someone has asked if we could use your blog with Mary Oliver’s poem about the donkey.
Thank you for your response.
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Oh yes! I would be thrilled to have the post passed along. This Mary Oliver poem is one of my favorites. Most appropriate for these troubled days and years. Thank you, Michele.
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Thank you so much for giving permission. Miche
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