Tag Archives: Family

The Relative Conversation

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It happens sometimes. He encounters people with functioning extended family–they exist in movies and television. They pop up at the occasional birthday party.

He asks, do I have cousins? Or uncles, aunt, grandparents, depending on the occasion. And I find myself staring at the rock wall of truth.

How do you explain the FBI definitions of rape to a kindergartener? How do explain the way humans can run like roaches when confronted with the concept themselves? Or worse. There is always worse.

So I take time to answer, starting with the easiest part–You have cousins. You played with them before. You just don’t remember.

He makes an expression of mild exasperation. Why can’t he remember them?

I tell him he probably would if he saw them again. I tell him I will show him pictures.

You have pictures? he exclaims, as though I have been stashing chocolates.

Yes. I have pictures. And memories too. They are pretty lovable kids.

And this is the part I have yet to frame into words, into pictures on the wall of who we are–

If you love someone, and that loved someone gets hurt, badly hurt, it is your job to stop the hurt. Your job to stand up for that love. Whatever the cost. Whatever the monsters

If you don’t, you can’t call it love.

Darling, I am so sorry, it was our own family who taught me that.

Losing people

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A few days ago I received an email from a family member–normal right?

I could tell this person’s email account had been hijacked because s/he and I do not have a family relationship anymore. S/he joined the ranks of friends and family who were so chagrined by me that the relationship could not be repaired.

Close relations of crime victims often inflict terrible secondary wounds.

They are ashamed of me and my story and to preserve their “normal” life they do really wretched things.

Friends can be equally painful. They stop being friends, shrinking quietly into the shadows, not calling, not inviting our family to events. That familiar blanched look of fear…silence…gone….

I had a friend who was a sister to me. Unlike many she stuck with me through the shock, grief, and early period of survival, but she deeply disapproved of my public efforts to draw attention to what happened to us. Too public…to noisy…

She is gone. It hurts.

The list gets longer and more erratic after that–people who make their money from shepherding other people–gone or worse–cruel.

You start to rethink people. The world seems increasingly lonely.

Yesterday the Christian Post asked if it’s readers experienced loneliness. A bunch vehemently denied it–

Never! I have God! Ditto!!! Double that!

But of course I have to be the lone dissenter. I said,

Jesus experienced loneliness, why shouldn’t I?

That is my motto and I am sticking to it. But I won’t lie to you–I wish I had kept my mouth shut for my children.

They had a shot at “normal,” if it weren’t for my big mouth.

The truth will set us free…no one said it would make us look normal.

Normal is the lie.

For all of us…not just mouthy me.

Hypothetical Family

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In the fall of 2009 our family as we knew it imploded in a fierce burst of awful. This was after years of maintenance strange and two years of ascending chaos as our adopted daughter burst forth into mental decline. Epic mental decline. Followed by the revelation that her biological brother was a pedophile. Then things got worse…

Actually, not worse. Safer and blindingly honest. Grandparents punished the victims and rewarded the perps. Uncles were cowards. Aunts were um, not helpful.

The nuclear families that my husband and I had been born into were destructive forces. I think that the stigma of being in a relationship with the victims of sexual abuse was too much for them to handle. They blamed the victims. It was like an acid bath. They said terrible things.

I drew a wall around us. There were months of fasting and debilitating heath problems. There was our children’s grief. There was the cost to our marriage. It was enough.

We skipped a wedding. We cut off our phone. We changed. Our family became orphaned not just from these near familial relations but also from a church we had served for years.

Our older children remember. Our young ones do not. They do not know their aunts or uncles, their grandmothers or grandfather. My son knows that my father died the year he was born. He knows that we live on a small island of ourselves. He sees these relationships played out on the children’s shows he watches. Dora has a cousin named Diego. Word Girl has a cool grandfather. Every so often one of us will refer to the missing uncle or grandmother he does not know. His eyes will light up as though we are discussing Christmas–I have a grandfather?!. He will ask incredulously.

Yes, I say.

Then his face grows serious. Oh, but he is not safe for us, right?

Right, I say, he is not safe.

The loneliness and loss in his face is the reminder: the ghost of hypothetical family.

Fireflies

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John 19:1-3 (NIV)
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. [2] The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe [3] and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they struck him in the face.

Fireflies in the dark
Defined our early years together
Not the constant noise
Or social ostracism.

No.
Fireflies
More beautiful than
The man-made fireworks
We craned our necks to see

When you were that pesky
Little girl
He was already ahead of you
Closer to prison
Farther from the boy
I must find to love him.

Sometimes, I promise you
The only poetry here
Is in
every careless word
Missing
From our story.

Family Picture

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Suddenly I see us
Traipsing in,
Blankets, flotsam of ourselves
Trailing behind us
We are like children
Dazed and shellshocked
By the dust of a falling world
Still crashing down
Behind us

But we are Here Now
And as we wipe the tears and soot
From our brand-new-eyes–

We recognize
This strong family
Resemblance in a sea/a star
Filled sky full of Light.

The burned down house

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A friend posted a picture of her former house, razed to the ground. It is a stark picture of the power of fire and destruction. So sad because it represented the lives lived within it.

Still. No one was hurt. No one lost their lives. It could have been worse?

I wrote for Yahoo! Contributor Network because I wanted to keep children safe. As the mother of rape victims I was aware of the devastating aftermath of sexual assault. I was also aware of how pervasive images of sex and pornography in our culture hurt our children.

So you can imagine how devastating it was to find out that Yahoo video searches render explicit images of pornography on ordinary searches.

I have contacted Yahoo repeatedly about this problem and the lack of a functioning filter. They have sent me automatic responses but have not fixed the problem.

How sad that a company with such power for good would not make efforts to keep children–and all of us, safe from the dehumanizing effects of human exploitation.

I write this here because they declined to publish my words on YCN.

Epilogue

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justcould have been a much longer book full of the things you find in successful memoirs–descriptions of meals and vacations and conversations in transit. It stops abruptly (except for the necessary introduction) two years ago at the end of 2009.

I did not put the rest of the story in because it was worse, yes, worse.

Our families, church, and many colleagues did not handle our story well. Our children were isolated and lonely. Out of everyone we knew, one couple confronted Charles about what he had done. Most people sent him cards and money. Some said unspeakable things.

Many long acquaintances just withdrew. Some old friends disappeared.

There was something good and valuable that happened.
Dozens of abuse survivors and rape victims shared their stories. We may have winnowed out family and friends, but we are deeply grateful for those who have listened, shared, and grieved with us.

And we now know that the only uncommon thing about our story is our willingness to speak out. Most families hide the story and ignore the damage.

It is time for that to change.
It is long past time.

Every family, church or community that turns a blind eye to an identified predator is responsible for the victims

All the innocent victims.

“my robin”

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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.