Life At The Beginning, Prologue, Part 3

“The eye only sees what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” Henry Bergson

Sunlight streams through the dense foliage, illuminating a tranquil forest path carpeted with fallen leaves.

Last August, I shared how on a warm July evening in 2004, “…I was sitting in an emergency room watching my hand from a safe, dissociated distance as it wrote, ‘I don’t want to live.’”

This was not the first time I had expressed that I did not want to live. And it would not be the last.

The first time I attempted to take my own life, I was twelve years old. I was scolded for being selfish and ordered to not tell anyone else. Had anyone bothered to ask me at the time, they could have understood what I didn’t have words to express.

It wasn’t that I wanted to die.

Or even that I didn’t want to live.

It was that I could not figure out how to live using the resources that were available to me.

But so little had changed in the 21 years between the two moments.

Instead of being resourced and gathered in closer, held in those moments of despair and deep pain, I was shamed and blamed and shunned.

For two more years, I would try harder until on a Spring day in 2006, I once again gave in to despair.

The offers of help and support dried up, and we were left to fend for ourselves.

The spiritual leadership in our community, believing they were showing necessary "tough love," privately rebuked me, even using specific Scripture passages that supported their belief that I was suffering as the result of bitterness over past offenses. No matter that there was no way to prove that this was the case. It was clear that supporting me or showing any compassion would only reward me unfairly for refusing to repent. All of my suffering was deemed to be all my fault.

This conclusion quickly spread, leading to one of my closest friends, a woman I had trusted and shared so much with, writing a letter to our senior pastor complaining that something had to be done about me. The words from the only portion of the letter Edwin would share with me burned into my heart, “She’s always being dramatic. If it’s not her getting sick, it’s the kids. Something has to be done about her.” Whatever else she included in the letter led to him asking Edwin to direct me to apologize to her. Uncertain of what my exact offense was, I simply apologized in tears for having burdened her unnecessarily with my problems and vowed to do better. Her only response was to tearfully insist that I was never meant to read her letter.

Members of our own extended family who were quick to notice the shift in the community dynamics, rose to their own defense, sharing their grief over my selfish behavior and how they believed it had impacted our family dynamic. They shared with anyone who would listen how they felt just as disappointed and betrayed by me as everyone else did.

In the midst of this isolation, the prescribed medical treatment slowly eroded my physical health.

In spite of the psychiatric drugs robbing me of my appetite, causing extreme gastrointestinal distress, my weight steadily climbed at a rate of 2-3 pounds per week until I was 90 pounds overweight. My hair came out in clumps in my hands in the shower, something missed by most everyone given my abundance of hair.

My nights were filled with restless tossing and turning leading to days filled with barely enough energy to sit upright in a recliner, desperate to distract myself from the growing despair.

The only way to measure the passing of time outside of the steady stream of disappointing results was how much my boys had grown over the past four years. My youngest, who had been a wide-eyed toddler when this nightmare had begun, was now entering first grade. My oldest, who had just turned 7, was now entering middle school, with my middle son right behind him. The boyish innocence was gone from all of their faces, and I could see the fear, exhaustion and uncertainty that had settled in instead.

I would have given anything to spare them from this ordeal. But surrounded by so many who believed that I had somehow chosen this path of pain, even I had come to believe that I was the problem. After all, all of us are products of the culture and community we are a part of.

At lunchtime on a typical April day, finally fully convinced that everyone had grown tired of my antics, I gathered my strength one more time and headed out the door to put myself out of everyone’s misery.

Fortunately, Edwin was home for lunch that day and, following his gut, ran after me, planting himself behind our car to prevent me from leaving. This action was the crack in the dam that had held back all the grief and anguish, the helplessness and confusion that had built up from the beginning. As the dam broke, a torrent of emotion poured out as I screamed, tearing at my hair and banging my head against the driver’s side window.

Once I had worn myself out, slumped against the door, Edwin ran to the passenger side, yanked open the door and jumped in. In typical understated fashion, he asked, “So. What’s going on?”

Through sobs, I explained to him how he needed to let me go. How I needed him to help our boys understand that it was all me, not them, who just wasn’t enough. I told the one person in the world who understood as much as I did—if not more—how hard I had tried. Surely he could see that I was not enough to survive this. I begged him to let me go, to think of himself and how I was holding him back. I reminded him of how everyone agreed with me.

He listened patiently for me to finish, and then asked a simple question.

“Would you try one more time? For me?”

There was no lecture. No argument. No shame or blame. No accusations of selfishness or demands that I bury my pain some more.

A simple request from the one person who earned the right to ask.

Something about his request that was an subtle rebuttal to all the accusations that floated around me. Something that went beyond words and reached my heart.

Perhaps inspired by his belief that there were possibly answers that we had not tried, I went back into the house with him that day, determined to not only try again, but to try differently.

“Trying differently” started with identifying what I had already tried that had not worked.

I decided to start by addressing the medications that were causing me such misery. Unable to find a medical professional who was willing to help me explore less destructive options, I was forced to find resources on my own that eventually helped me wean myself off the destructive psychiatric drug protocol that was destroying my body. This took eighteen long months of trial and error, an ordeal I am fortunate to have survived. Given the advances in the field of neuroscience and the opportunity to connect with better resources online, I am grateful that others have more opportunities today than I did back then.

Reclaiming the ownership of my health in this one area energized me. My next task was addressing the mental health challenges, something I had tried to address for years without encouraging results. Having battled suicidal ideation regularly since my first true attempt at age twelve, I could not ignore that my mental health needed to be addressed.

I need to try again. Differently.

Unsure of where to start, I decided to address a specific sexual assault I had experienced at the age of 11. I had tried to address the assault for years, but had always been given the standard-Christian “forgive and forget” remedy. I had tried desperately for years to forgive, always redoubling my efforts each time I heard yet another message preached on bitterness. I assumed that the reason I couldn’t forget was because I had never forgiven. I had begged God for years to help me do what (I had been told repeatedly) He was asking me to do. Only to enter the same cycle of despair the next time a message was preached on bitterness. Desperate for relief and determined to try a different approach, I visited a support program to see what resources they might have.

That visit introduced me to a team of people who showed genuine care for me, introducing me to the next chapter of my life where I found caring, compassionate people who helped me understand how what I had called a “kind of hard childhood” was actually filled with significant, unaddressed trauma and violence that had ultimately overwhelmed my nervous system.

Since 2010, I have studied what trauma actaully is and how it impacts the nervous system. Under the guidance of multiple highly trained mental health professionals and medical specialists, I finally came to understand how the events of September 2002 were set in motion long before that night. How this mystery illness resulted from the combination of harmful cultural norms and toxic faith practices.

Observing my boys in their teenage years, I recognized how I was unintentionally repeating the same destructive patterns that had damaged my health. Edwin also noticed that, while I had suffered specific damage, he had not escaped damage of his own.

We finally understood that none of us exist in a vacuum and recognized that we are all the result of the beliefs and behaviors we encounter in our formative years.

Having already lived a lifetime—and nearly dying—under the teaching that we must ignore where we’ve been and only face forward, we chose to turn and address where we had been. Only when we address where we've been can we move forward in a new direction, wiser for having learned from where we came.

I know there are others who are struggling to break free from a past they've been told to ignore. Because I meet them everywhere I go.

I also know that there are parents like me who have been desperate to forge a different path for their own children, but they have not known how to do differently than all they have known.

I’ve talked to them, too.

Still others I have heard from who have been in a toxic, oppressive faith culture that has caused so much guilt, shame and fear, yet they are afraid to walk away for fear of losing their faith.

I am currently working on a book to tell my story, a story that became our story.

I have no idea where this will ultimately lead, but my deepest hope as I work to find my words is that more communities will be formed who are willing to learn and unlearn, to challenge the ways that aren’t working, to step into the honest work required to break the cycles of generational trauma that have impacted far too many for far too long.