Butterfly Wings

People say “the system” is flawed when they talk about social services.  They say that social workers ignore abuse because they are sloppy, and lazy and don’t want to make an effort to do something about it.  They ask the question, why report child abuse when nothing is going to be done about it anyway? In recent days, I …
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Each and every day I choose to believe.  It is what keeps me going – it is my salvation.  Believing brings me hope and helps me to breathe again.  What I believe is not as important as the fact that I do.  Without belief – there is no hope. Without hope – there is no joy. Without …
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One week, and all is quiet.  [That man] has not replied to my e-mail, which means he is either angry, did not receive it, or he refused to read beyond the first line.  There was a time, when no response would have left me waiting on pins and needles, wondering if I was a terrible …
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Ok, I don’t have a copy of my letter to [that man my mother had me with], but here is the basic gist of what I said (please forgive me if it doesn’t completely make sense because it is very late….): I really don’t know what to say except that I appreciate your apology.  I …
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Ok, the more I think about all of this, the angrier I become.  When my [that man] sent that message, he was expecting me to just say, “Oh, ok.  I understand now that abuse is love, and it’s ok because you were trying to keep me from being f***ed up when I got older.”  Well, …
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This morning I received the following e-mails from [that man my mother had me with]: Hi {term of endearment}! I’ts been quite a few years since you’ve been to our house so we were wondering what we’ve done that is so bad you don’t want to see us. As you get older you can look …
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In the past few years, I have made great strides in coming to terms with my experiences as a child, and the effects that they have left behind.  Over time, I have come to understand that many of the things that I believed to be true about myself were incorrect because my perception had been …
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One of the reasons I began my healing journey was because I was consumed with anger against one of my abusers.  Every day, I woke up with the thought of seeing his name in the paper under the obituaries.  I could not reconcile myself with the thought that, while my life had come to a …
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I saw one of my abusers again today.  It just makes me sick how they think, because we are family, that we should just be so nice to each other.  They stole my innocence and act as though nothing is wrong.  I can’t stomach another, “How was your Thanksgiving? Did you go see your Dad?” or …
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