A new beginning...

Our now small family of four left England and flew to Canada for a new start....away from my grandfather but also leaving behind everything I had ever known and all my extended family, including my grandmother who I loved dearly.
As we touched down and dis boarded the plane I remember being struck by how big everything was...and the sky seemed to never end!  Our first home was a cottage on Lake Erie, which suited me fine! It was right on the water and I swam everyday that I could.  My parents made new friends and even they seemed big...larger than life! We were surrounded by nature and even a huge deer head hung on the wall over the fireplace and we used him as a drying rack for our unmentionables and bathing suits!
Not everything was rosy though.  My sister and I were teased terribly for our English accents, and that made it hard at school.  Even some of the teachers seemed to be unforgiving of our cultural differences, such as using the the term naught instead of zero, lorry instead of truck, and our English penmanship was vertical in nature which was also wrong! Canadians slanted their writing, so we were chastised for all these errors, and subsequently teased.
There was another thing that had followed me to Canada that had resulted from my abuse at the hands of my grandfather and that was sexualized behaviour, totally inappropriate for a girl of 8.
My parents not knowing what I had endured found this to be quite repugnant and I felt their disapproval but didn't quite understand it. I thought that I was "bad" and I suppose I was, but I was confused at the same time. Why was I different from other children my age? Why was I so out of place. I had no way of understanding that my experiences with my grandfather had changed me forever.  I didn't think the same way as other kids my age and the older I got the more apparent that was.
Once, at school, after being teased relentlessly and pushed and shoved to the ground over and over again, I attacked my perpetrator, threw her to the ground one recess and proceeded to tear off her clothing and throw it over the fence! It must have been awful for her but I was so enraged that I lost control and that was my revenge...totally inappropriate and I paid a hard price for that! I was attacked even more after that, being thrown onto gravel and dragged, being chased on my bicycle and thrown off into the ditch and beaten. Their revenge was unrelenting and by the end of that year we moved to a different subdivision and a new school. A relief but new bullies were ready to take their place and they did so with gusto!
It took some years to settle in but I did and had "boyfriends" in grades 4 -8, but something else happened by the time I was 12 that changed the game again.
My grandparents had decided to emigrate to Canada as well, and their arrival resulted in a new round of abuse, and a new perspective on my relationships with my family.

My Life: Secrets and lies

I was 4 When I started school, and I think my sister was already going to the convent by then as she's a little older than me. I mention this only to get a perspective on time because it's difficult to know how old I was exactly when the "trouble" began in earnest. I know I was small because his hands were so big. That sounds like such an obvious thing to say about being a child compared to being a man but it's a funny thing about memory, what leaves its mark in your brain and what fades as quickly as it happened! Our memories of events and time are all jumbled up and even when 2 people have experienced something together, like growing up together, we all have different perceptions of what that time was like. We come to it through our own individual lens.
In the beginning my relationship between my grandfather and myself seemed normal and affectionate
as far as I know. My sister didn't like to be cuddled or tickled so I got all that attention and at first it all seemed good but at some point in time, I'm not exactly sure how old I was, things became a bit more nefarious.  The tickling progressed in intensity and the areas he tickled changed from simple waist and stomach, to my chest area, squeezing my bottom and running his hands up and down my thighs to the crotch of my panties. I remember being very confused because I loved my grandfather very much, but every time these events occurred, and the more often they occurred, I began feeling sick to my stomach, but I wasn't sure why. One of my clearest memories is of being out on my
grandparents terrace that overlooked a small lawn and then a garden with gooseberry bushes in it. I had been running around and my mother and grandmother were both in the house. As I ran past my grandfather he reached out and caught me, pulling me into his side as he sat in a deckchair. At first he was tickling me with his big hands and I was giggling. He had me by the waist and put his right hand on my thigh, running it up and down my leg several times but then he went higher and quickly he pushed his finger into me. I screamed loudly, and cried out and he quickly released me. I was inconsolable and when my mother and grandmother ran out to see what had happened my grandfather began to explain that I had been bitten by a ladybug? I was holding myself and I wept while he stared
at me and tried to pull me in to appear to be comforting me. I knew by the look on his face that I was in trouble. My mother tried to console me but she felt I was making a lot of fuss over a little bite and she began to be angry with me too. Looking back this was a pivotal point for me. I never said a word. I just cried and my grandmother took me inside to wipe my face and look for the bite mark which of course there was none which furthered the frustration over my apparent hysteria over nothing! A natural response really. Looking back something changed in me that day.
I felt suddenly alone for the first time.
I was trapped in a web of secrets and lies that I didn't really understand.

My Life: Primrose Cottage

As a little girl some of my fondest memories are of our summer holidays, some of which were spent at "Primrose Cottage" in Battle. Pictured above are my sister and me (bunny skirt), in the back garden of the cottage. Just behind the cottage was a farmers field full of jersey cows. They were beautiful, with their huge brown eyes and big wet noses! It was both frightening, and exciting, to offer them handfuls of grass...the same grass that grew on their side of the fence, but they ate it out of our hands all the same so I imagined our grass 

was special!

The cottage was full of charm, created by my mother's ability to beautifully decorate a cave if she had to, with beautiful handmade curtains and cushions, wall art, and furnishings arranged in the most creative and comfortable ways possible. In the front of the cottage was a lovely paned glass window in which my sister and I sometimes played real estate agents, wearing plastic finger tips with red nails on them. We had drawn pictures of houses for sale and fixed them into the panes of the glass! We spent hours pretending to be real estate agents greeting imaginary customers to whom we would talk about the advantages of the different drawn homes we selected from our window!

We also spent many holidays in Devon, playing on the beaches, building sand castles and splashing around in cold water! It never mattered how cold the water was or how stony the beach, playing in the ocean was a must. I remember dashing out of the ocean shivering, with blue lips and body, into my mother's arms to be wrapped up in a huge warm towel and rubbed and hugged warm! Then came the blanket, and tea from a thermos!

The smell of the ocean, and salt on my lips, the shells on the beach, all filled me with excitement, I couldn't get enough of it. Once dry, it was time to explore, in warmer clothes, the tide pools which offered a plethora of sea life. Little crabs and periwinkles were most prevalent and while I was interested enough to catch crabs, I would then squeal as they scrambled about in my hands in an effort to escape! Periwinkles were far more agreeable and just peeked out of their shells and just as quickly ducked back in! I especially loved collecting shells, pretty stones and beach glass. Treasures which could be gathered and kept in a little box to handle over and over again long after the holiday was over.

Another favourite pastime was the boating ponds. I had a little blue and white sail boat which I would launch into what seemed like a huge body of water and watch carefully as it passed other boats and 

went on its own way with the wind.  Eventually she would wind up close enough to an edge of the 

pond to be retrieved safely, much to my relief!

These holidays are memories that I will treasure always, and since the majority of the time it was our immediate family only, I was free from any uncomfortable situations with my grandfather which made me feel freer and safer.

My life: little lives and innocence

As a little girl growing up in England I had it pretty well.  As I said we had a Gardner, Mrs. Coates, and a Nanny, Sophie, who came all week and bandaged small injuries, fed us breakfast, and dinner ( which was the biggest meal) and lots of love and Mom, or Mummy (of course)as we called her cooked and baked, took us to ballet classes and to preschool and the convent ( where Nuns with cold hands taught us everything including the catechism ) and grand parks where we played hide and seek and "tracking" which was a game I didn't really understand but just tried to make sure I didn't get lost!
One day while playing with my sister and some friends, they decided to ride around the block, and I tried to go too.  My hobby horse just wasn't keeping up so I went back home to get my scooter and headed back out after them.  By the time I reached the corner everyone was gone and as I continued to try to find them, I got more and more lost. I ended up at the little row of shops we frequented every Saturday to spend our sixpence, allowance, which we always spent on sweets. I went to the bakery and asked them where my sister was and they gave me a doily! Not sure how that was supposed to help but it kept me calm while they called the police.  When the Police arrived, they put me in their car and asked me some typical questions..."what's your name little girl?"..."Sally"...I didn't know my last name! "Where do you live Sally?" ... "at home" I replied! So with all that information thoroughly documented, we headed out to find home, but I couldn't see over the dashboard! We drove around to find something familiar but by this time I was very frightened and everything looked strange to me...I was clearly no help.  Just when all hope was about to be lost, a woman waved down the Police car to explain she had lost her little girl and just like majic, there I was!!!  After hugs and Thank You's were over I was able to go home and all was well with the world, but I never quite relied on my hobby horse after that!
Most of our extended family, Aunts, Uncles, cousins and my Grandmother on my Fathers side, lived in Sheffield north of us, so we saw them less frequently, but my grandmother and grandfather on my mothers side, lived close by, and we saw them regularly. They were a large part of our lives.
My Grandmother was the most wonderful woman in the world! She always had time for us, was amazed at everything we did, and was always prepared to play with us whether it was making things with cards she had saved ( she saved EVERYTHING), or playing games with us, or colouring, reading to us, whatever we wanted. My grandfather was equally attentive to us and loved us to sit on his knee and tickle us. My sister wasn't as open to this as I was and in reflection my need for affection and physical love was what made me a perfect target for what was to come.  I continued to have many wonderful experiences as a child, which I will continue to share, but there was a growing unease and confusion in my little mind as to what was happening to me and I was very confused as to how to deal with it. My life was in a transition, as so many little children face. Things were about to change for me...a fork in the road from which I continue to grapple with the consequences.

My life, in the beginning ...

I was born! This much is obvious, but for most of my life, up until recently, I thought I was born in England. You see I was adopted at the age of 3-5 months old and so the first few months of my life are a bit of a mystery, at least to me, known only by my birth mother. ( I have tried to find her but have been unsuccessful but that's another story). So, I was born, and then adopted, and raised for my first 8 years in a beautiful Tudor style house in Kent. I loved that house.
What I loved most really was the garden. It was a magical place, and our gardener, Mrs. Coates, ( yes we had a gardener) knew all about every flower, every creature, and special ways to cure wasp stings you got from picking up your conkers without looking first to see if they were otherwise occupied! Conkers are really just chestnuts that you put a hole in and thread them onto a string and hit each other with them. I'm not certain that the original idea was to hit each other with them, but that's what my sister and I did. Yes I had a sister, also adopted, but 3 years earlier than me. My father later told me that he had really wanted a boy (what man doesn't) but my mother wasn't sure she would know what to do with one, so they got me instead!
Anyway, back to the garden! It had a magical Weeping Ash tree whose branches grew like a willow right down to the ground, but they were stiff branches, so when you went inside you were in a whole separate tree world! The branches didn't sway so no one knew you were there! It was truly a beautiful thing! We would play house inside for what seemed like days.
Then there were the hedges all around where the hedgehogs lived, of course, because otherwise where else would they live!
There was a fox that would appear from the back of the garden near the compost pile, the garden shed, and the swing.
At the front of the garden there were pebbly pathways that were surrounded by roses, and after a rain the scent of them was almost overpowering. I would walk around and around the sodden pathways while my galoshes ( rubber boots) squelched and splashed and got me wet.

Our neighbour, Mr. Penny, grew masses of pansies and you could smell them too. He would
let my sister and I come over and pick a posey of pansies! I loved their sunny faces and deep scent. We always felt very special when we got to pick our own flowers and have our own vases of them in our bedrooms. Once my sister collected a bunch of twigs and went about the garden planting them strategically in the soil.  My father watched her carefully then replaced the twigs with bulbs! My sister was delighted when all her twigs grew into beautiful little flowers, and marvelled at her success!
Sweet Tudor stories, and in reflection, when I returned to England at age 13, the house seemed so much smaller than I remember but the memories are so large, and it became the longest place in which I lived from 1967 to 1992! More memories to follow.

Commentless in Athens :(

Well things aren't going so well in this Athens Hotel!
After returning from my Mother's funeral (driving behind transport trucks all the way since my car can't go any faster than 80 -100 km an hour) I was very tired and very sore. I had gobbled up more of my pain pills than I had been allotted so throw in some exaggerated pain and possibly some withdrawal too...then I put my phone and TV on hold as a marked statement against Ma Bell only to find that while everywhere that was long distance is now free....the people down the street have to dial 1 to get a hold of me!! I was just starting to get a leg up when I went for a persantine test for my heart which took upwards of 7 hours all told with travelling and hanging about ...( I explained to everyone that I could that I was having this test because my cardiologist (at that hospital no names specified though) had cut my groin open twice without the benefit of anesthetic so this test was a better alternative to being brutally tortured by the medical bureaucrat)...and they all seemed very much impressed and sympathetic to my plight....or else they thought I was CRAZY!! Any way following the test I have spent the past 5 days pretty much in bed, just climbing up and down stairs every once in awhile so that I might maintain some minuscule amount of muscle mass and not end up flaccid on the floor.
Getting back to the post title ( I digress!) I decided to check out my little blog and see if anyone had visited and it appeared that my comment widget is dead...snuffed...inadequate....and dysfunctional. I have tried everything to fix it and in fact when I began typing this post (which I do in the H&P style , aka hunt and peck) and after much venting I looked upon my screen to find a whole mass of scribble!!! All this way and that way....almost as if someone while writing had gone mad....and I had to ask myself...I said "self? have gone mad?" and I replied :I don't think so but are we certain and with that I prepared an expedition and discovered that somehow I translated my blog into Telugu! I have no idea where that is and therefore have given up for the night,,,,Thank you for visiting and although I do apologise for the absence of an opportunity to respond...well...you never comment anyway so what the hell!!! Good Night.

The beginning

 I was born...........or at least I was told that I was born, on a Thursday in March of 1959. That's all the information that I know of my birth, with the exception of my biological mother not being married, and so she was unable to keep me. I know next to nothing about my biological father, other than he was married...just to somebody else, which isn't much help to a baby!
From then on it all gets rather vague for about 3 months...which when your 8 years old, doesn't seem that long...but when you've had your own children you realize that 3 months is quite a substantial time...filled with diapers and crying, and nursing and crying, and peeing and (yes you guessed) crying...well you get the picture.  I have no idea who was around in the orphanage or where ever I was, to burp me and bathe me and generally love me but I hope someone was.  Anyway, then I was adopted out to a couple who had already adopted one daughter, and they wanted another! I was delivered to them, sight unseen, and there it is...I went from having nothing and nobody to having a Mother, a Father, and a sister!

Hello, How are you,...have you been alright?

Hello....haven't seen you in awhile, and there's a host of reasons for that....distracted by worldwide disaster...packing for end times that didn't come (shoot); worrying about my mother who has recently been admitted to a Nursing Home, but we're the only ones who know that; my father of 86 years young, forgot that he wasn't Bruce Willis, and climbed through the escape hatch of his stalled elevator...pried the doors open, and then proceeded to climb 12 sets of stairs to get into his apartment, whereupon he promptly had a stroke, but didn't feel the need to bother anyone for 2+ days when my sister Angela (who is in running for the sainthood against that sweet little kid, but...hey she's my sister...she gets my vote) flies into action organizing a rescue and  retrieve...Dad was retrieved and taken to hospital while Mom was rescued from being alone even if she wouldn't have noticed. Then I decided that my angina was on overdrive when after an hour and more that 3 doses of nitroglycerine weren't working and off I go to the Hospital in Smith Falls, chauffeured by my Great Friend Berrnice, as she negotiated every dark twist and turn in the road, and chatted with me to keep me calm.  It was only about an hour or 2 into my hospital stay when they decided to keep me, and I watched Bernice's eyelids straining to stay open, when she revealed to me that although she wasn't in bed when my son Matt called for help...she had just taken her sleeping medication!!!!!!!!  I shuffled over and was pretty sure we could both fit on that gurney, but Bernice hung in for another hour, and then much to my dismay, headed out into a woozy night saying "Place me in God's hands"....and so I did!
There's more but...that's for another day!

Catholic Child Molesters

Watching a CNN investigative report about...what else....child abuse by priests in the catholic church....and i wonder how many people/victims have no faith in God because of the demons who were allowed...no allowed is too easy...who were sustained under the protection of the catholic church.  How many lives...victims, parents of victims, brother and sisters of victims, spouses of victims, friends of victims...and on and on it goes, have left the church and maybe faith as well.  I sometimes feel that the punishment for anyone involved in protecting thereby perpetrating these crimes should be victimized themselves but it wouldn't be the same unless the power ratio is right.  But they obviously have no empathetic or intelligent understanding of what happens to a child when they are assaulted...and it is sexual assault...we make it sound almost like having fudge brownies with father fry when we say "molested"...it describes NOTHING that haunts a victim for the rest of their lives.  They are permanently altered in their innermost parts....their souls, their spirit, their self worth is gone and everything that happens immediately following this assault will shape this individuals abilityy to remould their psyche so as not to have their being destroyed.  Who these people were before these assaults, is not the same as who they are now...but you may say, people are victims of car accidents and can't walk but they get on with it.  Thank God they do, and I pray for that for all victims...but it is different for sex abuse survivors...it's not so easy to heal from deep within, where even you yourself may not immediately understand all that is going on in your own head, why you feel the way you do, the difficulty in relationships, trust, expectations.  I myself didn't confront my molester per say, he told me off after my Mother told him to stop.  I'll never forget that day.  I knew Mom had spoken to him and was pretty sure he would find a way to confront me even with my grandmother there and he did! I rang the buzzer, and granny answered (I went there for lunch).  Mom had said I only had to go if Granny was there, so I went up, but granny was now in the kitchen around the corner making lunch...he pulled me in and pinned me up against the door and pulled my head close to his ear and hissed at me..."I hear you've spoken to your mother"...and that was all he had time for as granny rounded the corned he released me.  It was all I could do not to vomit all over the floor!  I had lunch (!!) while trying not to see him masturbating behind the opened newspaper directed towards me. I kept my lunch down until I walked back to school.  It took me awhile to get up the nerve to say anything again and after that I lived a life parallel to him in order to keep peace. It probably would have been better for my self esteem if I had taken back control from him in a formal way....but hindsight is a wonderful but useless tool.  I should perhaps write him a letter describing to him exactly the enormity of the damage he perpetrated, along with the collateral damage in the rest of my remaining life...he's dead, and was also a staunch Catholic. At least I got over my anger with God for not answering my pleas to make it stop...complete with a kneeler made out of library steps and holy water given to me by my priest!!!
If you haven't been sexually/assaulted/molested, I ask you to be sensitive to those who have this journey to make, and get help for yourself too, someone to talk to and bounce things off.  Trying to ignore it probably won't be as helpful to you as dealing with it head on.
As a final note...the Pope knows what he should be doing, and isn't.  He'll lose a large following for the Catholic Church and I don't think Peter would or is pleased!!

The View from in Here/ You're Worth It

well I'm still in the pit...but not at the point of no return.  When I look up too long my neck gets sore and my face gets wetter from the rain but that mixes in with the tears s and just becomes another wet face day!
There's little sun getting down and when I try to muscle up the energy to climb up, hoping to feel the warmth of the sunshine but then I;m become nervous about someone seeing me in such a state and crawl back into the pit. I;m here again...sad SAD sad...weeping is really a game breaker when chatting to people, can't call them up and then burst into tears...not much fun and seems manipulative to me.  Darlene has been such a lifesaver for Matt and me rescuing us from hospital admissions and comforting Matt during both my panic attack and heart attack.  I'm sure she's starting to give up on me...but calling her to bawl down the other end of the phone line just not my thing. This whole "reach out" phobia came naturally from learning by experience that my issues or circumstances weren't  important as compared to everyone else's.I know that sounds petulant, but it really isn't...it's just a statement of fact and happens to allot of people...it happened to my eldest son Paul. There's so much emotion flowing though the family that the one who makes the most noise wins, and the quiet ones just languish in the background noise and try to lick our own wounds...but since we're not old enough to recognize that we are victims of circumstance we internalize our pain, and wounds run deeper.  In my case my family was struggling with a strained married after emigrating from England to Canada, and although I didn't know what was going on, I could feel it...the tension in the air was palpable.  Then my sister was having problems, and she was very angry.  When she wasn't fighting with my parents, which was daily, she fought with me!! Physically, emotionally...whatever way she could, and she knew how to get me too!!She was very angry with me for some reason, and her rage spilled out all over us.  Her experimentation with drugs and alcohol was of great concern, but I was beginning to have had enough.  I couldn't protect my self from her rages, and my parents were besides themselves with what to do with her, but wouldn't kick her out (which is obviously what I wanted...to be safe) so we went to counselling.  That was even more offensive since I was being sexually abused by my grandfather on a daily basis (every lunchtime!) and some days would go from school (which I hated) to counselling which was focused on my sister, and back to being molested, and on again back to school! This was my ninth grade year! I couldn't protect myself from old "Grandpa" either because my Mom was worried that my Grandmother (the greatest woman in the world) would be upset if she discovered what "Grandpa" had been doing to me, and that she would be devastated!!! Curious rationalization you must admit but anyway....I don't remember much of High School at all!!!  Are you surprised!!! Anyway, much later in my troubled life my own middle son created his own stir, and Paul became a victim of that.  Andrew and Paul both were suffering from my poor choices in men...always picked the abusive one...go figure!!! But after many years we got out from under into a little scraggly house in a small village, but that's when the rage began.  By 13 he was bigger than me, by 14 he was threatening me..and by 15 I wrote him up a contract to sign as to behaviour and expectations and he moved out.  Don't know for sure, but I think Paul was greatly relieved and although I love Andrew deeply, I could sleep at night without wondering if he was going to kill me or burn down the house!!!Sounds too dramatic, but it's true.  I feel very responsible for everything I put them through, and I know I was a disappointment to Mom and Dad...but this stuff runs deep, and as long as you try to hide it the more damage it does to you physically and emotionally.  All that cortisol streaming through your veins as you navigate your crazy life using "Fight and Flight" as your core coping strategy ( plus a whole lot of wine!) leaves your body weak and unable to defend itself.  So think about it...are you under huge amounts of stress....don't be a martyr...get help...if you think things in your family are screwed up...talk to someone...if you're a kid...call a counsellor. kids helpline...tell a friend.  Don't struggle on your own and think that's it's all your fault.  You deserve help too...you're not insignificant but sometimes the people who ideally would listen to you are presently"unavailable for comment"! They're too caught up in the drama to see the whole picture. You're Worth it...DO it!!