Silver and Turquoise
June 11, 2013 by 2 Comments
My feet were heavy with dread as I shuffled over and my stomach felt sick as I climbed into his stinky bed. He pulled me close against his damp, clammy skin. He took my hand and placed it on his penis. I tried not to breathe or move a single muscle in my body, hoping to avoid making the situation any more threatening.
Why children don`t tell
June 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Why children don`t tell Posted by Boriana Todorova on May 2, 2013 in Education, Voice
What if you tell and you get into trouble? What if you tell and your family gets hurt like the abuser says. What if you tell and no one believes you?
There are many possible reasons why children do not report the sexual abuse. These are some of the reasons why sexually abused children never tell, and in fact the silence is what empowers the abuser…
Silver and Turquoise from Ragdoll Redeemd
June 4, 2013 by 2 Comments
We finally arrived at our destination. I was breathless. My eyes and ears were taking in all the joyful sights and sounds of the carnival-type festivities. The various food smells were heavenly, and people shared willingly with one another. There was food in cups, food on plates, food on sticks, and all kinds of dips to stuff it all into. People spread colorful blankets everywhere for covering, sitting, and even just decorating. Among the craft tents, young and old alike were beading necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. Others were weaving things of beauty to wear or display. It was the colors that dazzled my child eyes more than what their hands were making. There were many displays of different types of rocks of all colors and shapes. I even saw fossils of dinosaurs and petrified trees. I had never seen so many things in one place.
Ragdoll Redeemed, Toxic Parenting
May 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Oops! This week I posted an excerpt from my book, Ragdoll Redeemed out of sequence. When I realized my mistake, I immediately posted the two previous scheduled excerpts as a corrective measure. Hence, three posts this week.
As the following information relates to the title of my blog site, The Faces We Live (The PARTS of us or aspects of ourselves that often run our lives without our explicit permission) toxic parenting helps us to understand how we have become who we are today. Nevertheless, as I have stated elsewhere;
Ragdoll Redeemed: Reverence and Milk Bottles
May 7, 2013 by 1 Comment
HOWARD, MY ADOPTIVE father, frequently locked me in my brothers’ small bedroom with its colorful floors. One small window became my salvation: I would imagine myself flying out of it to perch upon the fluttering leaves I could see from my assigned square on the floor. It was hard for my four-year-old arms and legs to remain still for so many hours. When he was angry, Howard would frequently grab me by one arm and yank me high up in the air. On one occasion he dislocated my arm from my shoulder before slamming me down on the orange and blue linoleum. For years I had recurring nightmares in which I was frantically running from pieces of orange and blue squares.
Ragdoll Redeemed: House with no Paint
April 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
One day while napping I overheard ten-year-old Ronnie speaking in soothing tones to our four-year-old brother Russell. As often happens with the oldest child, Ronnie had become responsible for protecting Russell and me from the screaming matches. The fights between Howard and my mother were escalating in tone and regularity.
I was pretty sure the reason that I was not welcomed into any of the neighbor’s homes was because the whole neighborhood could hear the verbal battles in our house. That and the sap on my feet, the lice in my hair, and the dirt from the dumpsters. In spite of any prayers and wishes from Grandmother and me, the hollering became more and more intense.
Attachment: If Not to a Person Then What Substitute?
April 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In posting this week’s excerpts from my book Ragdoll Redeemed: Growing up in the Shadow of Marilyn Monroe, I am reminded of the developmental challenges of children who feel safer attaching to things in nature, animals and soft toys like tattered ragdolls. I was luckier than some children in that I had the consistent connection of my beloved grandmother and the watchful eye of my older brother even though both were either too scared or too young to protect me from abuse.
The Development of “self” as Multidimensional
April 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
From the beginning of my blog, The Faces We Live, using everyday language and the Internal Family System Model, I have attempted to demonstrate that a “self” and/or our minds are multidimensional. Ten years ago, together with Jeanette Rodriguez, Professor of Theology at Seattle University, we collected large amounts of research from various resources such as sociology, psychology, culture, religions and neuroscience that normalizes and affirms the human person as a multifaceted, pluralistic and relational self.
I Did It, I Did It!
July 3, 2012 by 25 Comments
Tomorrow is my 67th birthday and I have posted one blog every week since July 4th of last year. I am not sure which is the greater of the two feats. Surviving, even thriving to the age of 67, or writing a blog every week for one year. Both have been great learning experiences and both have been arduous adventures I wasn’t sure I would achieve. While I have gleaned a great deal of knowledge about blogging and social media in general, I have discovered a great deal more about myself. Writing does that, memoir writing in particular. It’s the slowing down (un-like speaking) and putting down one word after the other, always looking inside for the right one to describe my thoughts and feelings.
In my 66th year, I published my first book, Ragdoll Redeemed, (how cool is that) and I wrote how words often occurred to me tangibly like pieces of laundry. I wrote about being seventeen and hearing my first husband string words together that mesmerized me with their brilliance. He wasn’t trying to speak brilliantly, having spent a year at Yale; he just naturally spoke that way. At the time I didn’t know what most of the words meant but I filed each word somewhere in the laundry basket of my mind so that later, I could hang them on an imaginary close line and watch them dance in the sunlight of my mind’s eye.
