“When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.” -Adrienne Rich
free bird
There is something about having an audience that provokes an artist (of any kind, whether writer, musician, visual artist, actor, etc.) to rise to the occasion and express themselves. I find this to be what will cause me to sit down and write, sometimes more than the need to express, itself. But the need to express today is strong.
When I was a little girl, I had a vivid imagination. I imagined worlds and dramas and tragedies and great tales of heroism. I sometimes told these stories during show and tell in 1st grade, interweaving the facts of my life with the fictions in my mind. These acts of creativity were unappreciated for what they were, however. The era, the lack of knowledge or understanding in the family I grew up in, and the location of backwoods North Carolina where I grew up had little appreciation of normal child development, and so I was labeled a Liar.
That label followed me around for many years….again, doing what normal children do to sometimes cover up their mistakes, to try to look good in the eyes of those who have the power, to try to minimize the punishments for falling down, I sometimes did not tell the truth. No, I did not take a cookie. No, I don’t know anything about the candy in Grandmom’s drawer being gone. No, I did not take the few coins on my father’s dresser. It is absolutely true that I did those things.
Later in life, as I understood some of the crazier events that happened to me in my family, I began to see that labeling me as a “Liar” was a brilliant, if unconscious, strategy. No matter what excellent grades I brought home, no matter what awards and accolades, my identity at home would be one of not being trusted to tell the truth. And so, when I did understand the importance of speaking out about my early life and dealing with it head on, I would have an inner conflict set up even before I started.
I wonder now if there is a different standard for boys and girls when they do the inevitable and make up a reality, or lie. Are boys expected to be “naughty” and therefore not stigmatized about lying? Are girls expected to be pure and chaste and innocent, and so if they act out in ways that children do, they bear the brunt of unfair discrimination?
I remember a particular day when I was 11 years old, when I was caught in a lie (I cannot remember what it was, perhaps the stealing the change on the dresser thing), when I was sent to my room. I lay on my bed and cried for a long time, feeling a sense of injustice and not being understood. My parents did not give me an allowance, so I did not have money to buy myself little things like candy or toys. At the time, I didn’t intellectualize the fact that children need to feel a sense of power and control over their lives in some aspects as they begin to enter adolescence, a healthy, normal development, and that my taking the change from my father’s dresser was an attempt to have some power. I just knew I felt zero support and understanding in my world.
My father came up and sat on the bed with me for a long time, speaking the importance of telling the truth and how all we have in this world is our reputation. It may surprise some of you to know that this was one of the most beautiful gifts my father gave to me in our twisted, convoluted history together. While he raged and sexually preyed on me as a drunk at night, when sober, he became the kind of man my inner masculine wanted to model myself after. His sharing of his concept of honor made such a deep impression on me at that age that I am touched by his teaching to this day, and part of my moral code and devotion to truth I attribute to this conversation. How interesting and ironic that my dear father, whom I love and hold in my heart despite everything, would coach and prepare me to reveal what he did to me.
Perhaps I was at the age that I began to understand the difference between truth in the consensual reality and the truth of my imagination. Perhaps at age 11-12 the child’s brain is capable of conceiving what that means. Already a prolific writer and winning competitions for my essays in school, I had some sense of the worlds that I had access to through my artistic ability. I began to learn that I was intelligent, and that the way I put words together had an impact and inspired people. But add the complexity of what had been done to me in the name of satisfying sexual greed in the dark of night, and the desperate need to keep the secrets in an alcoholic family, and you will see how the telling of the truth has become a very loaded topic. The gravity of the truth began to shine clear, and the heavy weight to burden me.
What is the truth? Is something true if we don’t want to look at it? Is it true despite our attempts to deny it? What are the ramifications of pretending something isn’t true when it is? These are all questions that I have wrestled with in endless cycles since I began to wake up.
To this day, I have an obsession with truth. To the point that if I try an experiment and say something that is NOT true, such as “My name is Beth”, I will start coughing. I can’t do it. My inner barometer won’t let me speak or write something that I don’t personally experience as true.
I have examined many spiritual traditions as well as modern physics and understand now that there are as many realities as there are perspectives, and all are valid. I also know (and experience) that if a reality is unobserved it may as well not have happened.
Additionally, I understand that there is some modicum of truth that we can all agree to, if we are willing to acknowledge it. While my family has given slight, grudging acknowledgment of the sexual abuse and no acknowledgement of the alcoholism I encountered as a child, there is great resistance to me talking about it. Does this make it untrue?
In my desire to be a loyal daughter, I have censored myself for many years, even though the truth has leaked out in ways through my writing and art and conversations. Even in therapy I have protected my family as a “good daughter should”, revealing only parts of the story, perhaps the parts that I could handle revealing to myself. I love my family, as people and as having been the sieve through which I arrived in this world. I would not be who I am without them. I have even attempted over the 21 years that I have been in conscious recovery and healing work to actually heal my family, out of my love for them and desire that they, too, be free from the sickness that bound us. They have been unresponsive, however.
Now, the bird that has lived caged in my throat must be freed, and I am going to talk about my life openly and unapologetically. I will censor no more. I choose not to become a raging fanatic for a cause, because that would be out of balance. Yes, I am a survivor of sexual abuse and an adult child of alcoholics, but that is not my identity or the sum total of who I am. Not by a long shot.
My desire is to tell the truth in a measured, grounded way, honoring myself, with the intention and purpose to heal and to give permission to others to acknowledge the truth within themselves, no matter how heinous it may be to see. I know from my own life journey of looking at these truths that therein lays the path to integration and Wholeness. And an even deeper appreciation of The Truth.
