Category: therapy

A letter to survivors (originally posted 4/2014)

If you had told me that I would I be living this free two years ago, I would not have believed you. Two years ago, events happened that triggered my healing. I have post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a result of surviving childhood sexual abuse, abandonment, neglect, and rape before the age of five. Five is the age of the first rape memory at the hands of my mothers’ boyfriend.

Writing saved my life. Words were my saviors. This is why I am compelled to tell my story. I do not tell it to gain pity or fame. I tell it because I was born to tell it. So I tell. Everywhere I go I tell.

I want to tell my story of PTSD because most of us do not know what that looks like on an African American girl or woman. The number is many but until we start talking about it, most will suffer in silence, and ignorance. The majority will be miss-diagnosed with a mental illness or written off as just an angry black woman.

Be clear that PTSD is not a mental illness. It is how I respond to stressors in life after some trauma. My brain is wired differently, when it comes to how my body and mind react to stress. Knowledge about this disorder has been the single most important piece of my healing outside of my willingness to heal and therapy. I was able to function in society but the evidence showed up as “angry black woman”. I married, had children, went to school, worked, and to some had a pretty good life but PTSD affected everything. I will talk more about it in my book.

The story was telling me. I was angry and spiteful. Guarded was the aura I wore. I had to wear a mask that made you want to stay away from me. It served me well as a child but, as an adult, it robbed me of everything good. As a child, it kept me safe. If I came across as angry and hard then you could not interact with me. You just left me alone and that was how I controlled my environment. Of course, all of what I know about how I used to be is the result of a lot of therapy and my soul’s persistence to heal itself. I say used to because I have worked hard to change. I am not that woman any longer.

I am who I always knew I could be. I did not have the tools to let her live but I always knew there was a beautiful sweet woman inside of me.

I want to tell you, whoever may be reading this and experienced similar trauma that you can make it. You are a survivor and you will thrive. I know you feel like you will never be happy. I know you feel the weight of all that has happened to you. You get tired of trying to be happy. I know you are tired of people telling you to “get over it”. I know you want to be over it so badly it hurts.

You may have even learned, as I did, to give the appearance that you are okay. Believe me I know that feeling of being two different people. You have the functional face and energy that has served to get you through until this day. However, you also have that little child inside that needs nurturing. She needs rescuing and you know you are the only one to save her but you feel like you don’t have enough to even save yourself. I am telling you that you can and will heal.

It really does get better. Like I say in my poem “survivor” whatever it took to get you through until this day, it will take you further. You are not what you are feeling. You are strong and courageous. If you are reading these words that means you survived and now you can choose to do the work and start to thrive. https://thesoulspoet.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/survivor/

I know it f***ing sucks that you have to heal yourself. You did not do this shit to yourself. I look at it like this I had two choices. I could stay in pain or I could heal. Either way, I am in pain. So, I told myself if others said they made it over to the other side of healing then I am going to try it. It is true that the day will come when healing is the only choice you really have because the alternative has become unbearable. Trust that your body and mind know when the time is right. If you are suffering, it is time.

The most loving thing I have ever done for myself is do my work in therapy. I swear there have been days when the fear of healing took my breath away. My mind hid those things away to protect me until I could fully comprehend what happened and go through the healing process.

It has really become a spiritual journey for me because I know that my personality is only the tool my soul uses to heal itself and everything that has happened to me was for the elevation of my soul. Looking at it in this manner does not lessen the pain it just helps me to accept it as a necessary part of my journey. I hope my words have helped. My purpose is to use my words to help.

Mozayik “the souls’ poet”

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I am Happy

Most of childhood was hidden from me in the recesses of my mind, waiting on my soul’s readiness to heal from rape.  Only now as I stay committed to therapy by any means necessary are the good memories starting to surface after excavating through the dirty images my mind knew I was not ready to see.

It is not coincidental that my mind, body, and soul have chosen this time for my healing.  School has always been my hiding place.  My sanctuary is my mind.  As a child at eight, I remember walking alone to the library to check out books because I could hide in them.  By the time I was nine I had read the entire Child-craft Collection of 24 books cover to cover. Safety was found in the worlds I could transcend to with my book.  Words were my toys.  I could use them to create whatever reality I chose.

I am finding solace in my schoolbooks now.  They provide an anchor for me.  I can find my self-esteem in challenging my mind. No one can go inside my head and take away my knowledge.

I feel my grandmothers’ presence.  They are always in my mind.  I hear them telling me I am smart. Pretty was not important but smart would save me.  They protected me, nurtured me, and sheltered me with love.

I am filled with so much joy from the memories of Nesie with her grandmothers, HAPPY.

As long as I was sitting on the porch at their feet it did not matter if it was day or night

I knew I would be all right.

They were the ones that rescued me and took me home.

They filled up all the little holes in my heart

even though their love always leaked out.

They never grew tired of filling me up.

by mozayik “the souls’ poet”

9.8.13

ample example

how do your grieve without being sad

when your tears are all you have

the people who say they love you

have suffered long

their limit is full

healing the mind and repairing the soul

take a lot of tears and screams from your soul

i can only give you my example

for you it may not be ample

but this is my journey

and this how i have chosen

to purge my psyche and make whole my soul

by mozayik “the souls’ poet”

I was feeling kind of sad today for many reasons and beating up on myself about this down mood.  I have committed to healing from my childhood trauma so I can’t expect it not to hurt.  My best friend told me today that anybody would be angry about what happened.

This all came up while trying to complete my homework given to me by my therapist.  I am to write about one incident of rape.  I had no ideal it would bring up so much emotion.

I just dont want to be the victim.  I dont want to be stuck in the cycle of victim thinking.  I survived, but that does not change that fact that I am pissed that I have relive this shit again just to be done with it.  It feels like rape all over again.
Unfortunately that is the purpose of therapy.  I have to process those emotions that were pressed deep inside me over and over for decades.

Now is when my mind and body have chosen to heal itself and I am grateful.  As a child I had no frame of reference to deal with this, but I have all the support that is required to navigate through it, so I know it will be okay.
So the most loving thing I can do for myself today is to be proud of my courage to heal.  I am brave enough to move forward towards a more healthy mind, body and spirit.  It may not be what others would do, but this is what is needed on my journey.  Only I get to decide what road I must travel and in what vehicle.  My destination is Whole.

Cloak of Guilt

A journal entry from 1.3.2013

All day today I have been hearing that Mary J. Blige song “Just Fine”.  I made it through a tumultuous year.  If you had told me everything that happened in my life was a promise I would have laughed.  I believe I can be more than a survivor.  I can thrive.  I know how to hold on to my Joy.  (still holding 3.25.2013)

I am still in therapy and I plan on staying for the long haul this time.  I am truly falling in love with me.  I had told myself that I deserved bad things to happen to me as restitution to what I thought I had done to people I love.  My therapist had me look at and what I found was that I was quick to take the blame for everything that went wrong in my children’s’ lives, the people I was in relationship with or any other situation.  It was easier to be the scapegoat that way I did not have to address the issues.

Our society conditions women to wear guilt like a cloak of honor.  A case in point is my divorce and the custody battle.  My ex husband had one of the best and most expensive lawyers in Missouri and they had plotted their plan of action against me months before I ever spoke to a lawyer.  The Legal Services of Eastern Missouri  http://www.lsem.org/ could not help me  in the late 90’s, I hope the patriarchal stupidity has stopped
because they used his income to decide if I qualified for help.  Although,  it was documented that he was physically abusive.

Of course he won custody but I am still treated as if I abandoned my children.  Not once has anyone said anything negative about a man who would take his children from their mother when there was no history of anything negative.  As I look back I can understand his perseverance  to keep them away from my incestuous family.  He knew all about the Sexual abuse of me and my siblings and was determined to keep his children from that and I don’t blame him.  Looking back with 20/20, things happened the way that they were supposed to.

But I do blame myself and allow others to guilt trip me.  (working on changing my thoughts)

It showed up in my relationships.  Particularly the most recent involvement with a woman that triggered me to relive my trauma and neglect.   I clung to her with my life, and would not let go because doing so meant I had to stop blaming myself and do the hard work of healing.  I willing allowed her to tell me all of our problems were because “I had issues”.  She was abusive and I made excuses for her so I could live in denial, but that is another story..

I am grateful to know that I can be alone with myself and have peace.  That was something I had lost last year.

I am still free from the fear of being alone.  3.25.2013

Emotional Boundaries? Girl,I am doing my work!

It has been a while since my last post. I have been putting my mental and physical health first. I seek to be whole. I am ready for truth. I await my teachers. Bring me my answers, show me how to go in and bring out the gift. This is my prayer.

I have been reflecting because my homework from my therapist is for me to look at my emotional and physical boundaries. All of my relationships with men and women have been abusive in some way, except for maybe two, and those two people are still a part of my life.

I am asking myself some hard questions lately. Why do I partner with abusive people? Why do I partner with people who need me to take care of them? I am seeing the patterns. I am committed to taking the time and energy to do what is necessary to change my thinking so I make better choices. My relationships have not been healthy but that does not mean future relationships are doomed to be a repeat of the past, especially if I do the work.

So much has happened since my last blog post. This journey is mine uniquely. Others may have been able to endure what I have and not be as affected. Others still, did not survive and have severe mental illness, addictions or have committed suicide. We do not know why some are affected more or less than others.

I have given up feeling guilty because it appears to have been harder for me than someone else “getting over it”. We all have own limits. PTSD is Post/After Trauma Stress Disorder the very name describes a disorder in the way a person handles stress physiologically, psychologically and certainly emotionally get so tired of people saying, “Let it go, it happened so long ago, get over it, and move on”

I am now finally learning how to move on. I started taking care of people at the age of eleven. I married at 17, again at 25 and again at 38 along the way having twins and triplets. This is the first time in my life the only person I have to take care of is myself. Now is the perfect time to devote to “getting over” this. I am creating my best life. My likelihood of having a healthy, loving, and honest relationship increases every time I go to therapy even when my body is taunting me with pain.

Any way I may have digressed, I think one main reason that my partners turned out to be abusive, (they did not seem abusive in the beginning), is I do not have well established emotional boundaries. I never even considered this concept until my therapist brought it up.I am an open book and I was proud of it until now. Being too emotionally open has allowed people into parts of me they did not deserve access to. I gave them a map to my buttons by telling all of my darkest secrets and fears. All the things I felt guilty about or felt ashamed of were deliberately used to their advantage. Well, not anymore. I am a survivor. I always figure out the way through difficult situations.I am strong enough to write about the past and still live in the now.

I still have some work to do, but the hardest part is over. Now I can work on the side effects. The images, memories, and the feelings that accompanied them don’t take me hostage while robbing me of my breath.

I will definitely tell y’all about it when the time is right. But, it will be soon. I am now working on the final touches for the book. I have a feeling that now is the time to give my gift away to the world.

by mozayik “the souls’ poet”

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Repeat

you see I am holding on the best I can

but I don’t see you there extending

the hand that rubbed my body

and released it from pain

the hand you held out to me

has now changed

where it was smooth and healing

it is rough and cutting and cold

tearing my secrets apart

I have to take care of me

I was wrong to offer myself incomplete

I will go to make myself whole

but I know I wont need your hand anymore

I want and deserve more

I will never change you into what I need

you will forever let me chase and bleed

I am strong enough now

so go ahead take your bow

out of this, is what I need

if I am ever going to get back to me

I was born with what I need to take care of me

my biggest red flag should have been

“Baby, I want to take care of your every need.”

silly ole me

tired of the trickery

no longer able to see the difference

between me and we

again

here I am

with me

and I’ve learned the hard way

this is the safest place to be

ill be glad when I stop trying

to recreate what she

did to me when I was three

so off I go to therapy

by mozayik “the souls’ poet”

I am learning much about myself in therapy. I am looking at my patterns and why they are there. This therapy stuff is no joke if you really do the work.” I am doing my work” (in my Iyanla Vanzant voice). I go every Monday now since school started. I have not been able to really get into the Childhood Sexual Trauma therapy yet because I had to deal with my family crisis. My assignment this week is to take an event that was abusive and write about it. This is going to be hard because just talking about in therapy I started to hyperventilate, my heart started racing and I had pain in my chest. If this is what I need to do to stop repeating the same scenario in my life then I will do what needs to be done so I can have the healthiest relationships I can. Especially the one I have with self. I will keep y’all posted. I am finding my truth in therapy.