for years and then one day at a store i was telling her about what happened to us, about the dead-end we reached when we realized “the system” had worked to protect C. not his past or future victims.

She told me she was a victim of sexual assault.  I was stunned that I had known her for years, she seems unflappable, and yet there was this terrible thing she had gone through.

I grieve for her.

You should know that “she” is a person who represents more women than I choose to count.  This is my private survivors day, the day I am dedicating to all the “ordinary” survivors of sexual assault.  They have the right to stay private, to keep their stories to themselves but when they look around at all the other people in the store they need to count every other five people.  At least sixty percent of the people I know have been the victims of some kind of assault.

I know these people’s stories because I told mine shamelessly.

Look around.

There were certain stories that haunted and informed me before and during our ordeal.  The story of a young girl being stolen from her own bedroom on threat of death, pain, her family’s destruction is so effacing.

The knowledge of her rape and torment, the lost and broken days is more heartbreaking.  I wish this were like a scene in a movie and each day were a paper or a dollar bill blown out by a strong wind and we could all gather around her and grab them back for her, order them for her, take years of her life and smooth them out in an orderly stack and return them to her,

unharmed…

Beautiful wisdom

beautiful daughter

I remember the day you came to me

like it was yesterday

like it was an idea that was bigger than me

you scared me, trapped behind my pelvis

like waves crashing into rock or

rocks crashing into pain

the oxygen mask/the fear

and then when we had already thought c-section?  i cant do this

cant someone else carry this pain for me?

like a cornered bird fluttering against the glass

this was the time your father asked me not to cry out

but I did cry

in shear relief and joy and more joy and more joy

beautiful wisdom

girl.

in “just” i call her melanie.  other times i call m, mel, magdalene.  she is my precious baby, even though she is not really my baby anymore.  she is the first child we had after we lost veronica and the day she was born i looked at her and knew that she was healing up a place in my heart, returning what the locusts had eaten.

the day we found out that sea was molesting saskia, m remembers coming home from rounds with her father and walking into the bedroom where sea was folding up the tent he made to molest his little sister.  she says he had a very angry look on his face.  i see the scene through her eyes, vividly.

she came into my bedroom where i was still talking to saskia and em and she heard what had happened.  she very, very calmly corroborated that he had abused her also, for years, until his abuse became more invasive and she understood from a sexual assault prevention lecture that she could ask him to stop.  he did and she never thought that he would abuse her little sister.  he abused her and yet she still had a basic level of trust in his humanity.  in her mind if he stopped abusing her then of course he would not abuse her little sister.

like em and me, melanie carries around an unshoulderable burden.  she knows now that if she had reported what he was doing to me or her father, the abuse would have stopped.

we tell  her it is not her fault.  and it isnt.

we tell her she could not have known, and that is true also

we tell her he fooled us too

and that it is all his fault, all the sin of it belongs to him

and yet this burden is something we all carry

there is no relief from the past, from things one cannot undo.

forgive me for applying a pseudo-letter here.  I hope your mom lets you read this but one way or the other I think Q is an excellent name–smacks of international espionage and such.

But that is not why I am writing.  I am writing because due to several rather LARGE DIFFICULT INTERVENING TRAGEDIES, I thought I had lost you and your whole beautiful family.  I had always wanted to be a very good __________ to you.  If your mama lets you read this you will know what word goes in the blank but for anyone else reading consider the mad libs! (beekeeper, ringleader, Oktoberfest organizer, primate handler…)

So it sounds like you are hitting a rough patch.  First let me say that I love you and think you have great potential.  Next let me say that the time of life you are in can feel like a real garbage dump outside the holy city, or put another way–the pits.  sometimes a body is inclined to do somethings like  1. kick the cat  2.  be mean to younger kids 3.  say rude things 4.  blame one’s parents.

Let’s start with the last thing for now:  one’s parents.  I had a great dad and I loved him very, very much, but he was not perfect (no sirrr–eee) and when I would feel a little down because my father tended to be a leetle too critical sometimes (he liked to catch a body doing something goofy and then correct them thoroughly).  Like if he were an English teacher he would correct me right now for using them instead of he or she.

Also. he was not very affectionate.  Kind, intelligent, loyal, truthful, adventerous on occasion, but not cuddly.  I needed a big-bear-i-love-you-dad.  Luckily I found Him.  Or He let me find Him, like divine hide and seek.  Over time I realized He was always there. waiting for me to ask the right question and that question was–

are You there?  are You real?

This is a question worth asking because once i realized He was there I also felt His great love.  You don’t wanna miss out on that.  God is the dad we need, we all secretly look for.

As another young friend of mine used to say–

our REAL Dad.

He’s the One who teaches us how to be.

love you kid,

E.

i am not sure about how she is gonna feel about this, but she deserves to be here.  she is an incest survivor, but she is more than that.  on so many days when the truth was a matter of survival, she told the truth.  especially on that last day when she brought saskia to me, the last day saskia faced her abuse alone, the first day the truth set us free

i tell em she can always tell the truth.  it is a tough story, but it is ours.  I am so grateful Em is my daughter.  I pray and hope for her all the time.

This is another story I am going to make you work for (if for some reason you do not know the story).  I hesitated to write about it because I would never want cause more pain, yet this family’s tragedy feels very close to me, it is the unbearable thing no parent wants and as such it has focused my prayers and changed my bedtime.  One of the reasons I regularly stay up until 2 am is because for months and months the dark brought back this story, this tragedy and the best I could pray and read until I was exhausted.  It hurt to know that an ordinary, beautiful family had gone to bed thinking they were safe and woke up in a nightmare.  I know that for Dr. Petit that day and that bad dream never stops.

Two small points of contention:  the lawyer for one of the rapist/kidnapper/murders tried to mitigate his client’s sexual assault description in a public statement.  This seemed so utterly insensitive and blind.  A little girl died a horrible death after being subjected to a sexual attack and hours of unspeakable fear and you (the lawyer) decide to be helpful and make a public clarification of the attack??

And the assailant in question made egregious statements about Dr. Petit who was brutally attacked in his own house and lay bleeding for hours as his family was raped, terrorized, murdered.  The assailant had the audacity to say that Dr. Petit should have fought harder to protect his family!

Nothing about how he should not have had to fight off attackers in his own home in the middle of the night.

My prayers will always be with the survivors of this beautiful family.  Irreplaceable.

Gave birth today.

10 years old.

that is right.

I am isolating each statement for a reason

call me judgmental

call me culturally insensitive

no 10 year old

should be having sex

no 10 year old should be a mother

(see no ten year old should be having sex)

Most important part of the story–no age was given for the father

why?

I am pretty dog gone sure he was not 10

or 11

or even 12 or 13

dont think this is a cultural phenomenon or an interesting gestational news flash

nope

child abuse

a little girl’s innocence stolen