I feel awkward making observations about being beaten. I don’t remember anyone talking with me about them, commiserating with me, comforting me or asking how I felt. After each beating I simply walked out of the room and right back into life. Read the rest of this entry »
I was groomed to be a victim. No one used those words, but that was the sad outcome of supposedly good intentions.
My father’s mission was to break my will. This wasn’t a secret. It was in keeping with biblical teaching as he understood it. One day he would answer to God about his efforts. I would have to answer for mine. Read the rest of this entry »
I grew up in a strict, rule-oriented household. Actually, there was only One Main Rule: Good Girls shall obey their parents in all things.
But the proof is in the Big Picture. So just to make things perfectly clear, here’s what the One Main Rule looked like on a daily basis, Read the rest of this entry »
This episode in my life was a smelly, rotting stench in me all the way through school, college and my first years of marriage. Even after I told my husband about it, I still smelled the old man regularly and without warning. It was a living, breathing, stinking rotten nightmare.
Despite this, I never wrote it down or reflected on what it reveals about me, much less about my relationship to my parents. I simply tried to put it away and let the past be the past. Done. Over. Finished. Time to move on. Read the rest of this entry »
Some things are just plain wrong. No grand theological framework, no appeal to the Bible, and no wisdom of the church or its elders can ever make them right. Read the rest of this entry »
I need to write this letter to you, but I don’t know where to begin. So much happened to me and in me when I was a child and teenager. I need to talk about this out loud and without shame. The only way I know to do that right now Read the rest of this entry »
