Maybe I am the odd ball in all of this -- but honest to God, the only time I ever felt good and really energetic is when I was pregnant and having my girls.
For me the birth of my kids were the ability to NOT do the shitty stuff other adults who had raised me to do.
Do I wonder if I screwed up my kids over these years? Hell yes, and I know there isnt a parent out there who hasnt thought that. Wondered even if for a moment what or how they screwed up their offspring.
I know many women who have chosen not to have children, and I support them wholly. I also know one now who has stated she regretted bringing at least one son into this world -- and my heart breaks for her and her son she wants so badly to deny she has.
Maybe I am some bleeding heart, but for me I think the ONLY thing I did right was have my girls and protect them, even if hypervigilance hurt them in some way. They are grown now, both have graduated college and choose to have partners in their lives. It is truly and honor when they still come to me and ask me questions about not just their bodies, but about relationships and life --- even calls that come at 2 AM tell me that I did SOMETHING right, especially with them.
My oldest wrote a paper for graduation and in it she writes doing some comparison between two characters in a book written by Maya Angelou -- the entire paper is entitled "Love" -- I want to share an excerpt from that paper that moved my very soul beyond any description, if I shared it before, I apologize.... But the piece describes incredibly what having my children was like for me. ...
I am going to post the paper she wrote in a following post, as I currently am unable to choose the exactness in a short space ...
I hope you choose to read the posting....
With Hope, Love and Peace
Sammy
I do know that I made a solemn promise to myself when I was very small to NEVER do to my girls (abandon them) what my folks had done to me. So far I have been able to keep that promise.
I think what has been far more scarey and more of an experience of rape has been my many surgeries. Being stretched out like Jesus upon a cold slab, arms strapped out and bound down with so many IV's running at once ... and then some "masked person" taking a small towel and slightly covering my pubic area then to shave away what represents my "womanhood".
I was awake thru the first time, and the doc got pissed off royally when he couldnt get the catheter in me, I of course was doped up and made some smart ass remark about how if he had Snap On Tools at least they would come in and replace the catheters for free -- the last thing I remembered was him telling a nurse to "shut her up"... and then I woke up, in a different bed.
It was bizarre feeling the catheter and watching it go into my heart and feeling the flutter of my heart valves around it, and a warm feeling as if I was peeing inside my skin as the dye filled my body....
Now if I go thru procedures I just make sure they understand I am to be completely out, I dont want to feel the needles in my groin, or anything elses... I have woken up in the middle of surgery, but each time it was because I was having a heart attack --
There have been so many invasive procedures, I had one done where a doc put a scope down the back of my throat to see the back of my heart -- but first the tech sprayed me with some numbing agent, it didnt work the first time, she had to spray me a 2nd time... and then tossed a comment as if nothing mattered "gee you're the first i've ever had to do that twice for" -- who could ever tell her how in the hell I was forced to learn NOT to gag?
My GP knows I am a survivor, and knows that I wont get my supposed yearly Gyn exam done because of that.... even tho she is kind and I trust her, there is no one who has ever held my hand....
and now I am just scarred in my groin -- a visual that represents what I have always felt about my own body having been violated --
When I went thru those weeks flat on my back, with countless docs and nurses and techs all coming in and whipping back my blankets and gown to "see" the gapping wound in my groin --- and a plastic surgeon who said "I cant stand taking care of women because they cry".... he couldnt ever have the sense to know that I cried not just because of the physical pain of him cutting away flesh a couple times a day, but that it was so representative of what it felt like each and every time I was molested and raped....
Discounted, minimized and made to feel at fault -- Its true we survive having children, some of us it makes us stronger, it made me even more paranoid of my kids being molested --- even to the point of not trusting my hubby deep in my gut that he might hurt them, so I injured the relationship he could have had with my girls because I was too afraid to leave him alone with them, or ask him to just go spend some normal daddy daughter time together.
I've told him I feel so bad about ripping them off since I have been able to look back and see how my own abuse effected/ affected their relationship.... I cant quite forgive myself for that for some reason? I am trying tho, and I know that they still love each other and no matter what they will and would have worked out their relationship in what ever way the 3 of them could/can.
How is it all these years later it takes someone so long to realize the impact of sexual abuse during not just birth, or pregnancy , and even raising kiddoes...
Women are still discounted in so many ways, and not just about not making equal pay.
A GF of mine had a hysterectomy a yr ago -- it took her over 2 years to get a doc to believe her ailments enough to take empathy and help her to get a hysterectomy done when she was almost hemoragging to death every couple of weeks. A FEMALE Gyn told her it was all in her head and she needed to "suck it up and just accept herself getting older" (she wasnt even 40 yet).
I do know this from my own experieince, my T now he equates and has for a long time my illness and my health experiences to repeats or reliving my sexual abuse. He is the one who brought this to light for me. I never thought of it, I am sure my body reacted to it... and truthfully I think the stress of all the years of abuse triggered and made worse what genetics I already carried -- An early death sentence, given not only at the moment of conception but at the first of many sexual abusers.
