build you a fort
of sheets.quilts
blankets–
counterpanes
A Comforter Stronghold
pillow masonry
fortifying all our flying
buttresses
around this cathedral
the artisans, all children
nobody hurt there
not allowed–
the very law of love
forbids it
and all the pain
of our collective
history
would unravel like a braid each night
healing all these grievous wounds
This happened years ago. She was very young and had a nimbus of curls. She was walking down a sidewalk holding your hand. She was clearly enjoying your company. She kept calling you “my robin.”
When I think of the ways you failed her and why you should have done more, done something–advocated for her–that is the image I see in my head. The last time I know for sure that your relationship to that little girl mattered.
At least to her.
Shelter
Just a roof and walls around us
Won’t define us
Won’t be
Nothing but a house
Kept me safe
I thought
Kept us all
Safe
I thought
Wrong
Wolf don’t give no warning
Just blow the walls down
Just a house
Not my soul
Mercy take my soul
When the wind come through
Us all
Carry us
Home
Is crying
I would bottle her grief
If I could
Bury it
No.
But it would bloom
Pour it out
Like a drink offering
Like a grief offering
Like a broken
Bottle
Alabaster keepsake
Dowry, maybe
For a child, a baby
Stolen
From our memory
Of happiness
And its careful
Lie- constructed
Illusion
full of silence
and broken pictures
a profusion of angry
words
until
the wind
rises
from the dead
you are a crime victim
your child is a crime victim
the family itself has been
smashed from the inside out
from the core of who you were
the sense of safety
is gone
and all that remains
is the awareness of sharp edges
hard objects
unfamiliar territory
fear
narrow ledges next to deep waters
where predators reside
everything has changed
simply because a truth has been revealed
no one is ever really safe.
no one
save Jesus
Here are some markers–I struggled with a sadness so strong when I was young that I frequently wished for death. God would tell me, hold on, it will get better. Your storms almost killed me. How many times did you tell me you did not love me?
When I was 17 I saw that dad was not the bad guy.
When I was 22 I realized that I would have to weather your storms to make wise decisions
When I was 30 I faced my monsterization-just like grandma and grandpa.
When I was 30 I heard you hurt me viciously and intentionally.
When I was 34 I faced your mental illness.
When I was close to 40 I talked to you about it. That did not go well.
For over 15 years I have weathered your vision of me–a monster.
I know you love your dogs more than me
You sided with a pedophile rapist over your grandchildren, his victims.
I do not believe this letter will reach you.
But it is the last way to say
I love you, get help
You need help.
A friend asked me, do you put the kids to bed and at least get five minutes to yourself? No, I say, not really but I like them all…
Hours later I realize how strange that must sound, how incomplete. What I see in my head is thirteen years of eidetic episodes of unlikable events–bullying, tantrums, swearing, violent protracted rages, physical assaults, homicidal imaginary friends, routine larceny, and lies, cursing of the most egregious kind. Some stories so awful I do not want to write about the hurt. And all of this before the years of C’s sexual felonies were dragged to light.
Most sane and normal people would have known better, right? We believed if we did not give up on m and c they would be good, or at least better because of love. Because of Love.
Jesus said, greater love has no man than he lays down his life for his friend.
Somethings are easier than others to lay down, I say beneath the shadow of the Cross.
Those 13 years took things that did not belong to me from the most precious people I know. To say I like my children is an understatement.
They are my heroes.
I have lost all respect for all of the people involved in the movie, “That’s My Dad” but none more than Susan Sarandon. How does a woman keep any vestiges of self respect when she acts in, promotes, and gets her daughter to participate in a movie which makes fun of child rape and a child sexual abuse victim?
What have we come to? What has Susan come to? Please protest this movie. Please tell people to contact others including the producers of this movie to let them know that child rape is never funny.
the day i let go of the rope i decided, why not write?
if someone mined the interior of my computer they would find fragments of the same terrible story–for years i wrote to stay sane
when i finally wrote the book it was an act of defense not just for my children but for the millions of other children who have been silenced and marginalized by abuse, especially sexual abuse
after I wrote the book I sprinted to edit it and clean it up and then I bought a hundred copies. I have given them out. That was the goal I had set for myself and the image that goes with it has been with me for years:
When M. and C. were little they had so many tantrums so regularly I often thought about the climatic moment in the now ancient movie The Witness–the bad guys are about to win when a contingent of Amish neighbors appear on the horizon. Their numbers and witness prevent violence. Over the years I have longed for those Amish people–a group of witnesses preventing violence. And that was the idea–one hundred books, one hundred witnesses. The justice system is falling short and sexual predators are allowed to do much more damage than they should because we do not have an effective system to just identify them and prevent them access to children. If you add the terrible price of silence and the way it cuts children off from healing and community–something needs to change.
Now that I have gotten to the watermark of 100 books I feel compelled to reiterate my offer. Want a copy? Send me your address.
Carrying Light 