Hope is there --- Where? (triggers!)
I have a strong belief in God and in His love, otherwise I would not be here to write this. Maybe I would be where my uncle is. In some hospital recovering from a slit wrist a few days ago. It was the morning he was supposed to go to his plea-bargain sentencing: for admitting to 4 counts of aggr. sexual assault with minors under 13 (his granddaughters) he would get 12 years, no parole.
He chose to slit his wrist instead. But he is still alive and the case is continued 'til tomorrow.
Where is hope?
After getting the news from my family I started reading some of the posts on this site. The Journal (by Kev)is really good. I found myself crying, wishing I could have written a note to give my father. (and thinking some of the same things the other older guys wrote). It was 1964 and my father was in Viet Nam. And it was my uncle, 14 years old at the time, who molested me, 6 at the time. And 2 of my younger brothers. Years later my uncle said all his brothers had molested him, except my father who left home to join the Air Force when my uncle was 3.
Is this how our family always existed? If it is I sure hope it stops --- either the behaviour or the family.
I have written hopeful and encouraging emails to my family, and a few are fighting to stop the abuse, but aunts and uncles are mostly in denial, and say my generation is just making Uncle M. into a scapegoat. It is like we started a revolution to say the unsayable about the family.
What do we cousins do? Give up on the older ones? It seems to me that if we do that and let the abused/abuser uncle kill himself, we also die in part. Do we keep working on ourselves and hope the older ones follow along some day? We still love them, I think, even if they don't or can't recognise their own hurts let alone ours.
I grew up thinking I was the messed up one, that we had a good family. All three of my brothers and my sister refuse to move back "home" to where the family is. They stayed scattered as a result of going into the military themselves and wanting to stay away from the way things are back home. And now, with Mom's mom recently buried, even my parents are preparing to sell their house and move to Texas to be near one of their kids instead of near my father's family. And I live in the Middle East---can't get much farther from Tennessee than that.
Where is the hope at this moment?
It is good to know that I am no longer alone with this knowledge of what has happened. I am still angry and want to scream at times or hit the wall as hard as I can.
Is this the place to write all this? Can I just write it and then disappear and just be a reader again? I am afraid that if I let out too much too often, then who I think I am and what I believe, the security I have, will disappear. Or at least come into question.
Is my Hope strong enough to survive being tested? I hope so. I pray it is. It just gets dark sometimes.
Thanks for listening.
Jim
PS After rereading this, I know where hope is, at least part of it: in my nephews and nieces and my cousins' children who haven't been molested and who won't be, God and we being their helpers! There is the hope! God and us, together!
And for us who were molested, He is our Healer working through all our brothers and sisters who also receive healing!
As they say in many languages: Slowly, slowly. Little by little.
He chose to slit his wrist instead. But he is still alive and the case is continued 'til tomorrow.
Where is hope?
After getting the news from my family I started reading some of the posts on this site. The Journal (by Kev)is really good. I found myself crying, wishing I could have written a note to give my father. (and thinking some of the same things the other older guys wrote). It was 1964 and my father was in Viet Nam. And it was my uncle, 14 years old at the time, who molested me, 6 at the time. And 2 of my younger brothers. Years later my uncle said all his brothers had molested him, except my father who left home to join the Air Force when my uncle was 3.
Is this how our family always existed? If it is I sure hope it stops --- either the behaviour or the family.
I have written hopeful and encouraging emails to my family, and a few are fighting to stop the abuse, but aunts and uncles are mostly in denial, and say my generation is just making Uncle M. into a scapegoat. It is like we started a revolution to say the unsayable about the family.
What do we cousins do? Give up on the older ones? It seems to me that if we do that and let the abused/abuser uncle kill himself, we also die in part. Do we keep working on ourselves and hope the older ones follow along some day? We still love them, I think, even if they don't or can't recognise their own hurts let alone ours.
I grew up thinking I was the messed up one, that we had a good family. All three of my brothers and my sister refuse to move back "home" to where the family is. They stayed scattered as a result of going into the military themselves and wanting to stay away from the way things are back home. And now, with Mom's mom recently buried, even my parents are preparing to sell their house and move to Texas to be near one of their kids instead of near my father's family. And I live in the Middle East---can't get much farther from Tennessee than that.
Where is the hope at this moment?
It is good to know that I am no longer alone with this knowledge of what has happened. I am still angry and want to scream at times or hit the wall as hard as I can.
Is this the place to write all this? Can I just write it and then disappear and just be a reader again? I am afraid that if I let out too much too often, then who I think I am and what I believe, the security I have, will disappear. Or at least come into question.
Is my Hope strong enough to survive being tested? I hope so. I pray it is. It just gets dark sometimes.
Thanks for listening.
Jim
PS After rereading this, I know where hope is, at least part of it: in my nephews and nieces and my cousins' children who haven't been molested and who won't be, God and we being their helpers! There is the hope! God and us, together!
And for us who were molested, He is our Healer working through all our brothers and sisters who also receive healing!
As they say in many languages: Slowly, slowly. Little by little.