Fast forward thirty years. I didn’t keep the secret that my family wished I had about the abuse. Not only had I spoken out against child sexual abuse, I had also spoken out about my older brother who was a drug addict and alcoholic. Because he chose to drunkenly attack our father, who had moments earlier come home from open heart surgery, drive his dump truck into our home, and then take off barely able to drive, I had called the police. He was arrested and jailed until his trial.
During that time, Dad died, and my brother wasn’t able to say goodbye or attend the funeral. He never spoke to me again. I had definitely become the black sheep of the family, and when he died of a drug overdose in 2016, my siblings and their adult children made it clear that they never wanted anything to do with me or my children ever again.
Wow!
About a month after his death, I had coffee with Tommy G. Tommy leads our crisis response team and is a highly experienced trauma clinician. He had offered to be an ear if I needed one, and although I was doing okay for the most part, I took him up on it. There really wasn’t anyone else to share my thoughts and feelings with, honestly. My spouse was just too damn angry to be a support, and I sure wasn’t going to bring my children into my generation’s “stuff.” That just wasn’t fair to them.
We were having a great conversation. I told him how ridiculous the whole thing was, and he validated all that I was feeling. This guy has incredible intuition! He asked me a seemingly left-field question. “So when’s the first time your family abandoned you?”
That one definitely caught me off guard, and thinking he was crazy, I started to answer, “Neve…” And the floodgates opened again. I sat there stunned. These weren’t memories and stories I had shoved deep away. They were stories I had shared more than once over the years. This brother trying to kill me and my sister; my family knowing I was being abused and not rescuing me; hiding under the table when my brother’s violence exploded; being told to go to my room and mind my own business when the police showed up at the house and there was frightening yelling and chaos were some of those times. I had just never put them all together under the umbrella of abandonment.
Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of good times too. My parents loved me, of that I have no doubt. But when I think about everything they were going through with a son who would eventually be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, ADHD, OCD, depression, and anxiety, I can understand why they didn’t have time, energy, or emotional strength to be there for me more than they were. I can’t imagine as a mother being told the reason your 11-year-old child, who had just been arrested for armed robbery, was your fault (years before mental health diagnoses were a thing).
For two years, I was unable to work. The depression, the anxiety, the panic attacks, all left me living on my couch, all curled up in a tight ball. Thank God for Rick and my children! Thank God for Hayden and OnSite, where I met a lot of other trauma survivors. One of those residents stands out above the rest. A beautiful, gentle Saint Bernard who knew just when to nuzzle a person who was painfully recalling their trauma, or climb up into the lap of a scared survivor who was withdrawing into themselves and their fear. That was when I learned that there was such a thing as service dogs for psychiatric disabilities, for PTSD.
And that’s how I came to get my black lab Shadow, who was a major part of my recovery and my chance at living life to its fullest.
Nice share!