What saved me...1st 5 of my Top 10

So, how did I survive that?  Why am I not crazy or dead?

Here is the first half of the list of things/people that saved me: 

#1.  Saw an Angel:

I think it was during the summer I stayed with my grandparents to help my grandma clean the high school.  I was around 5 or so.  I was sleeping in the bed facing my grandmother’s bedroom door.  I remember, very clearly stirring and wakening because I saw a light…the light woke me up.  I opened my eyes and saw, on the landing at the top of the stairs, outside of the doorway…an angel.

 It looked very similar to this but it stood sideways.  It raised it’s hand to me and then disappeared.  I have shared this story with many people.  Some believe me, some do not. 

During my time in therapy and during my studies for my substance use counselling certification I came to understand that what saves many, many people from total despair and self-destruction:  the faith that some source greater than ourselves protects us from unseen harm real or imagined.  For some people this is “God,” for others it is a sense of ancestral spirit, and for still others it is a connection to energies outside of themselves from some other source. I remember hearing stories of abuse survivors who connected themselves to “fairies,” toys that came to life, or images in wall paper that would comfort them and protect them during abuse episodes. Our brain is truly miraculous.

So, I guess, ingredient #1 or one ingredient for resilience is:  feeling of connectedness to a greater energy, power, source that you believe, with all that is in you, it will protect you…save you – especially if you are a child going through trauma.

#2.  Music:

 – this one is going to have it’s own blog post….it shows up twice on my list. Lol.  Music would have been #1 on the list but I have never shaken the image of that angel in the doorway. 

Music has, however, remained with me as a way of crawling out of soul crushing despair from as long as I was able to choose my own music. 

I remember very clearly sitting in the dark basement listening to music, rocking in our old crushed velvet rocking chair, feeling as if my heart would never be the same.  Back then

(I think I was 10 or 11) Elton John, the Eagles, and Elvis made me feel better.  The only albums I knew how to buy were the mixed K-Tel albums offering the best of whatever top 40 was available to us at the time.  I was not yet old enough to know what music I really liked because it reflected my own taste but my parents and my aunt, who lived with us at the time, had great taste so I listened to what they had.

As I got older and chose my own music I discovered the power of words…again…and started writing out lyrics, posting them on my wall so I could always read them.

To this day my favourite artists are real, raw, and speak truth to power. 

Music has saved my life many, many times.

This video is from the show The Kids from Fame...loved this show.  This is one of the albums that saved me.

  

 The song: "I still believe in me"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#3.  Shame: 

I was too filled with shame to cause any more for my family by killing myself. 

I remember this very clearly:  I was 16, in Germany on an exchange, in excruciating emotional agony, holding a razor, ready to slit my wrists.  All I could think of was that my mother would be furious that I made such a mess. 

Of course I was being silly, my mother would have been devastated had I died in Germany, but in my mind I couldn’t bear to bring more agony to my parents who had been through so much already because of me.  I was getting really tired of disappointing them.  I just wanted to find ways to make them proud of me – and slitting my wrists in a resort communal bathroom in St. Peter-Ording, Germany was not going to do it.  So I started cutting instead. 

I guess a little healthy shame can be life-saving.

#4.  I was, really, too scared to die.

 I had fantasies that I had cancer or some other life threatening disease and always felt sad that I would never have children or get married.  I really wanted all of those things and suicide would take that away from me.  The more I thought about that, the less I wanted to die. 

I was convinced, deep in my heart in spite of how messed up I felt about myself, that someone, somewhere would love me for me – wounds and all. I believed it so deeply that it kept me from killing myself.  I am  so glad  it did.

#5.  Music…

That’s the 1^st half of my top 10 list of what saved me.

I wanna know.  What saved you?

The second half of the list will be up next week.

Thanks.  Blessed be you.

R

Opinion # 1 gazillion 30 trabillion on bullying

We cannot stop bullying with punishment, anger, hatred.  In my experience, if you bring an energy of “anti-” to something you give the power to the very thing you wish to eradicate. (Sorry…Kids in the Hall sketch went off in my head – the Eradicator!).  If we want to get rid of bullying we have to be “for” the opposite of what bullying is: tolerance, love, compassion, and mercy.

Most of the kids I have worked with, and many adults, who have reacted to their personal pain with behaviour that we call bullying have been driven out of the community many, many times because of their behaviour.  All this has done to them is made them hurt more and because they have equated pain with weakness (and in the case of boys – “femaleness”) they have found solace in anger and abusive behaviours.  They don’t know how to be anything else because their behaviour has so repulsed people that they are continually pushed away.  They hurt because they feel, and are, unloved and forgotten and they are unloved and forgotten because they act out their hurt in a way that hurts others.  The knee-jerk reaction of “anti-bullying” campaigns and programs only perpetuates bullying because the very people who need to be drawn into the community with love are being suspended, expelled, cast out, and bullied by the programs designed to end bullying.

Our logical brain cannot wrap itself around the idea of doing what must be done…hit hate with love head-on in spite of, because of, our own personal anger toward the acts of hatred. 

Many of the kids I work with, or have worked with, (many of them boys) have been bullies or have been bullied or both.  Many of these kids have come from a place where they had no one to love it out of them.  They were/are keenly aware of how very flawed they are but they are rarely made aware of their beauty and perfection.  I have watched very aggressive, angry young men soften and learn to be compassionate and caring.  They learned to trust and love because they were loved and trusted in spite of their behaviour.

Last night, as I soaked in my tub, I kept thinking about a horrible image I saw on facebook – an image of a girl who had hanged herself with the caption “Todded” over it.  I kept asking myself “what would make someone do that to someone else?”  How much do you have to hate yourself to prey on other people?  How could I love a kid/person that would think that was funny or ok in any way?

The questions pushed me down the rabbit hole of self-loathing. 

Just try it.  Put yourself into the mindset of someone who would tell someone else they thought they should kill themselves and really mean it.  What is that saying about you?  How much pain and rejection has had to have been in your life for you to feel this? 

How much shame do you feel about your life and your mistakes do you have to feel to wish death on someone who has made mistakes similar or the same as yours?

How many times have we been angry with someone and wished they were dead?  We have all done it.  This doesn’t make us evil – it makes us human.

Now think about how much your anger, shame, pain, loneliness would be reduced if someone knew about how you felt, knew you said those horrible things, did those horrible things, and they loved you anyway.  Don’t you feel softer inside? Don’t you feel like if that one person thinks you are loveable that maybe you are and they are worth changing for? 

Doesn’t love make you wanna be a better person?

Please don’t misunderstand.  Abusive behaviour to others is never ok.  I am not a flakey-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbiya (however it is spelled) kind of person. All I’m trying to suggest is that we can’t get rid of bullying with more abusive, angry approaches.

Also understand that the question of loving the bully out of the person obviously becomes more complicated when we talk about adults.  My experience is with teens – that’s what I need to focus on.  Also, it’s kind of a no-brainer that the earlier we start working with people to try to change their behaviour, the more likely we are to actually instill change.

Kids who bully other kids to death don’t need jail, they need someone to hear their stories and to love them into compassion – for themselves first and others second because at the heart of a bully is self-loathing and loneliness.