WHEN MOM AND DAD BECOME DARTH VADER
I remember growing up when friends would share stories and photos about their childhood when they were five years old or six years old, how I had to remain silent. They would ask me, what were you like when you were six? Did you remember your kindergarten teacher? I remember looking at them with a completely numbing and vacant feeling. “I don’t remember the first seven years of my life,” I would always respond. After a while, I would joke about not remembering the first seven years of my life.
I would joke about losing the first seven years of my life as though I lost a mitten while walking home from school. The truth was my soul was prompting me to remember what happened to me when I was only two and a half years old. It took me thirty-three years and my two and a half year old daughter, Sierra, to help me to remember what had happened. Sierra, at two and a half years old, was a reflection of me at that age.
I can still remember exactly where I was when I remembered. It was the fall of 1991. I was standing in front of the television in the family room watching Oprah. Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold were on Oprah talking about their abuse as children. As Roseanne Barr spoke, all of a sudden I couldn’t hear what she was saying. It was as though her voice was being blocked out so that I could hear another voice. At that moment, two and a half year old Sierra ran in the room and jumped on the couched behind me, and that is when I heard a small voice say, “Daddy raped me.”
I had heard and read stories about people who remember childhood traumas when they have their own children whose uncanny physical resemblance to themselves jolts the memory free. When it happened to me, I wasted no time in calling a therapist I had been seeing intermittently to help me cope with managing my incredibly meddling and manipulative mother and mother-in-law. I immediately set up an appointment to help unearth my buried memory.
It was at that time, I realized that in my play entitled, THE ROOMER, my main character Rachel Ward had a buried secret too. Something had happened to her in the basement of their family home. She witnessed her father raping her ten year old best friend, Monica. I had written that play before Sierra was born. What I realized was that my soul, my conscious, had already tried to help me to remember through my writing. I had projected my secret onto my alter ego Rachel Ward. I projected my painful experience onto a fictional character so that it would be safer to remember and examine my ordeal.
My intensive therapy, reading of countless self help books on child abuse, and talking about it with friends and family helped but didn’t really allow me to understand how and why something like that happen. Even confronting my father and mother with the truth did not provide understanding for such an act. I could see that they both knew what had happened, and were amazed that I remembered something that happened to me when I was only two and a half years old.
My parents’ stunned and then vacant stares along with their denials offered no explanation or solace for me. My father’s mumbled denial of, “That didn’t happen between you and me,” coupled with my mother’s response of “Who told you that!” and “Why are you washing my face in this!” made clear to me that my parents were ill equipped to have any dialogue about the situation. With no explanation or answers available, I had to make a decision to release the rage that was trying to claim me and search for the real reason why that rape occurred through my writing.
However, my writing wasn’t going to be the only tool I would have to help me discern the truth. Somehow I had managed to heal myself enough to bring my inner child back to life. That little voice of my inner child, who so gently told me about my father raping me was now my intuitive voice; an intuitive voice that led me to others who were in need of help. Before I realized what was happening people were calling me to help them to remember.
At first, I was afraid because I was intuitively hearing, seeing, and knowing things about the lives of others that even they couldn’t remember. Often times my clients would have to speak to a sibling, or a relative to verify the information I provided them. I was able to provide in detail the description of the perpetrator, the room or location in which the trauma occurred, and the client’s age, what they looked like, and what they were wearing. My intuitive ability was a profound tool that mystified me and my client. I could offer no explanation on the how and the why of my ability. I could only accept and honor it to the best of my ability. Looking back on that experience I now believe I was given those clients, so that I could understand how to use my ability to help myself.
Armed with my intuitive ability, all that information I absorbed from the self help books, and my desire to write I was finally able to begin delving into why I was raped. The self help books provided me with a clear thesis: Children who are abused don't have to become abusers. Anyone who has been abused has a choice to end the abuse and break the cycle. I began with that understanding and let my intuitive inner child guide me to see deeper truths about my family.
As an adult I knew nothing about my parents, their parents, or much about their lives as children. My parents never really shared or discussed what their childhood was like. I realized to understand why they behaved so soullessly there must be a secret pain hidden behind their eyes and stuck somewhere in their souls. There must be some rational reason why they could not be loving and protective of me. I wanted to know what was it that drove them into their private hell that then forced them to try to take me with them.
It is true, that misery loves company. Based on my parents’ actions and behavior, it was clear to me that they did not want to dwell alone. Thus, after six months of intensive therapy, (that kept me going in circles), a very difficult divorce, in which my husband became mentally and spiritually abusive, I quickly realized that I would have to get the truth on my own.
I had to create enough peace and forgiveness for myself and my parents so that I can put my emotions aside and examine who they are and where they came from without judgment. I couldn’t just examine my mother and my father, but I also had to look at their parents. I believed that my father raping me had to have originated from something that had happened to him, or maybe something he saw. I applied the same theory to my mother. You see my mother knew my father had raped me. Not only did she do nothing afterwards to protect me, her perverted perspective saw me as a competitor for my father’s attention and love.
My intuitive ability used in conjunction with my writing unearthed facts about my parents, and their ancestors that clarified my parents’ tormented existence. Most of this information I was able to obtain on my own, through what I believed was a form of intuitive channeling from both of my mother’s mothers. My mother had two mothers, her adoptive mother, Jenny Johnson, and her biological mother, Moms, who I first met when I was around eleven. Both of these women intuitively relayed pieces of my genealogical puzzle that I would never have known on my own. As a result, my novel, THE DESCENDANT, was born in the spring of 1998.
My mother’s sister, Aunt Loretta, to whom I read an early version of the Moms section of the novel, wondered how I could have known details about her mother’s life, especially her childhood that my mother didn’t even know. She validated information about the burning of Moms hands, and being sent away at an early age to live with her father. She even confirmed how Moms was alienated because of her dark skin. My aunt Loretta and both my grandmothers were able to provide me with bits of information that helped me to see that my sexual abuse at two and a half years old was deeply rooted in the lives of the women who came before me.
As for my father, I knew nothing about him only to fear him. My emotional archeological dig on him unearthed a deeply troubled soul that belonged to no one including himself. Intuitively learning about his sexual abuse, which was a back woods remedy of penis rubbing to quiet the male infant, evoked shock and a better understanding for my father’s inability to remember and know the origin of his sexual depravity. The knowledge commanded compassion for a being that I feel still wanders the other side looking for a place to his rest his angry soul.
Both of my parents were part of a relay race of self destruction that began long before I was born. The story that I have blessed to tell is based on true events. I can honestly answer yes to the question, “Did your mother really cook your father pork chops breaded with rat poison?” I can, thankfully with pride, answer yes to the question, “Did you maternal great grandmother really play piano for an American President?”
Like all factually based stories, I have changed the names of my relatives, dead and alive, in order to respect their right to privacy and for obvious legal reasons. I have utilized my right as a creative writer to take factual information and expand on it fictionally for the purpose of telling the story. I have also provided what I hope will be a unique perspective and narrator, the voice and perspective of my unborn soul who is watching, and praying for my ancestors to make the right choices.
The perspective of the unborn narrator provides a more intimate view into the souls of the characters. It also takes the reader on an epic spiritual journey showing how the actions of one person’s life can effect and flow seamlessly into the life of another. Nevertheless, no matter how I fictionalized the lives of my parents and grandparents, their pains were real pains that unfortunately filtered down into my life. However I am grateful that I get to relay the stories of their lives to my own daughters and others instead of reliving those pains in my life.
This journey has left me with a deeper understanding of my parents’ human frailties, a revelation about the spiritual purpose of my rape, and a realization of a past life that I have managed to relive yet again because I failed to learn my lesson from before. THE DESCENDANT, which is book one of my ancestral and spiritual odyssey trilogy, is the result of the lesson that I have finally learned and wish to share with others who wish to free themselves with compassion and forgiveness.
I tell this story for others whose truths are entombed in family secrets and denials. I believe that after reading THE DESCENDANT, many people, no matter what their ethnic background, will recognize a piece of themselves. I believe my story will help awaken others to their own personal truths and free them to become more passionate and compassionate beings, and more conscious of the power and effect their actions and words can have on their life as well as the life of others. My hope is that the reader will recognize that life and truth are a conscious process of intention and discovery.
Know that if your mother and or father become misguided and take on the spirit of Darth Vader and seek to destroy you, you can survive. Just remember that the human spirit is a powerful force that can emerge from the deepest abyss and triumph as long as you have faith and believe in yourself. Nothing and no one can separate you from God’s divine love, because God’s love, the truth, is already in you. You are loved.
It feels good to be home.
To purchase a copy of THE DESCENDANT or to read an excerpt and reviews, click on MY LITERARY SPACE tab and click on THE DESCENDANT to purchase your copy at the bottom of the page, SAMPLE CHAPTERS TAB to read an excerpt, or REVIEWS TAB to read what others say about after reading THE DESCENDANT.
I remember growing up when friends would share stories and photos about their childhood when they were five years old or six years old, how I had to remain silent. They would ask me, what were you like when you were six? Did you remember your kindergarten teacher? I remember looking at them with a completely numbing and vacant feeling. “I don’t remember the first seven years of my life,” I would always respond. After a while, I would joke about not remembering the first seven years of my life.
I would joke about losing the first seven years of my life as though I lost a mitten while walking home from school. The truth was my soul was prompting me to remember what happened to me when I was only two and a half years old. It took me thirty-three years and my two and a half year old daughter, Sierra, to help me to remember what had happened. Sierra, at two and a half years old, was a reflection of me at that age.
I can still remember exactly where I was when I remembered. It was the fall of 1991. I was standing in front of the television in the family room watching Oprah. Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold were on Oprah talking about their abuse as children. As Roseanne Barr spoke, all of a sudden I couldn’t hear what she was saying. It was as though her voice was being blocked out so that I could hear another voice. At that moment, two and a half year old Sierra ran in the room and jumped on the couched behind me, and that is when I heard a small voice say, “Daddy raped me.”
I had heard and read stories about people who remember childhood traumas when they have their own children whose uncanny physical resemblance to themselves jolts the memory free. When it happened to me, I wasted no time in calling a therapist I had been seeing intermittently to help me cope with managing my incredibly meddling and manipulative mother and mother-in-law. I immediately set up an appointment to help unearth my buried memory.
It was at that time, I realized that in my play entitled, THE ROOMER, my main character Rachel Ward had a buried secret too. Something had happened to her in the basement of their family home. She witnessed her father raping her ten year old best friend, Monica. I had written that play before Sierra was born. What I realized was that my soul, my conscious, had already tried to help me to remember through my writing. I had projected my secret onto my alter ego Rachel Ward. I projected my painful experience onto a fictional character so that it would be safer to remember and examine my ordeal.
My intensive therapy, reading of countless self help books on child abuse, and talking about it with friends and family helped but didn’t really allow me to understand how and why something like that happen. Even confronting my father and mother with the truth did not provide understanding for such an act. I could see that they both knew what had happened, and were amazed that I remembered something that happened to me when I was only two and a half years old.
My parents’ stunned and then vacant stares along with their denials offered no explanation or solace for me. My father’s mumbled denial of, “That didn’t happen between you and me,” coupled with my mother’s response of “Who told you that!” and “Why are you washing my face in this!” made clear to me that my parents were ill equipped to have any dialogue about the situation. With no explanation or answers available, I had to make a decision to release the rage that was trying to claim me and search for the real reason why that rape occurred through my writing.
However, my writing wasn’t going to be the only tool I would have to help me discern the truth. Somehow I had managed to heal myself enough to bring my inner child back to life. That little voice of my inner child, who so gently told me about my father raping me was now my intuitive voice; an intuitive voice that led me to others who were in need of help. Before I realized what was happening people were calling me to help them to remember.
At first, I was afraid because I was intuitively hearing, seeing, and knowing things about the lives of others that even they couldn’t remember. Often times my clients would have to speak to a sibling, or a relative to verify the information I provided them. I was able to provide in detail the description of the perpetrator, the room or location in which the trauma occurred, and the client’s age, what they looked like, and what they were wearing. My intuitive ability was a profound tool that mystified me and my client. I could offer no explanation on the how and the why of my ability. I could only accept and honor it to the best of my ability. Looking back on that experience I now believe I was given those clients, so that I could understand how to use my ability to help myself.
Armed with my intuitive ability, all that information I absorbed from the self help books, and my desire to write I was finally able to begin delving into why I was raped. The self help books provided me with a clear thesis: Children who are abused don't have to become abusers. Anyone who has been abused has a choice to end the abuse and break the cycle. I began with that understanding and let my intuitive inner child guide me to see deeper truths about my family.
As an adult I knew nothing about my parents, their parents, or much about their lives as children. My parents never really shared or discussed what their childhood was like. I realized to understand why they behaved so soullessly there must be a secret pain hidden behind their eyes and stuck somewhere in their souls. There must be some rational reason why they could not be loving and protective of me. I wanted to know what was it that drove them into their private hell that then forced them to try to take me with them.
It is true, that misery loves company. Based on my parents’ actions and behavior, it was clear to me that they did not want to dwell alone. Thus, after six months of intensive therapy, (that kept me going in circles), a very difficult divorce, in which my husband became mentally and spiritually abusive, I quickly realized that I would have to get the truth on my own.
I had to create enough peace and forgiveness for myself and my parents so that I can put my emotions aside and examine who they are and where they came from without judgment. I couldn’t just examine my mother and my father, but I also had to look at their parents. I believed that my father raping me had to have originated from something that had happened to him, or maybe something he saw. I applied the same theory to my mother. You see my mother knew my father had raped me. Not only did she do nothing afterwards to protect me, her perverted perspective saw me as a competitor for my father’s attention and love.
My intuitive ability used in conjunction with my writing unearthed facts about my parents, and their ancestors that clarified my parents’ tormented existence. Most of this information I was able to obtain on my own, through what I believed was a form of intuitive channeling from both of my mother’s mothers. My mother had two mothers, her adoptive mother, Jenny Johnson, and her biological mother, Moms, who I first met when I was around eleven. Both of these women intuitively relayed pieces of my genealogical puzzle that I would never have known on my own. As a result, my novel, THE DESCENDANT, was born in the spring of 1998.
My mother’s sister, Aunt Loretta, to whom I read an early version of the Moms section of the novel, wondered how I could have known details about her mother’s life, especially her childhood that my mother didn’t even know. She validated information about the burning of Moms hands, and being sent away at an early age to live with her father. She even confirmed how Moms was alienated because of her dark skin. My aunt Loretta and both my grandmothers were able to provide me with bits of information that helped me to see that my sexual abuse at two and a half years old was deeply rooted in the lives of the women who came before me.
As for my father, I knew nothing about him only to fear him. My emotional archeological dig on him unearthed a deeply troubled soul that belonged to no one including himself. Intuitively learning about his sexual abuse, which was a back woods remedy of penis rubbing to quiet the male infant, evoked shock and a better understanding for my father’s inability to remember and know the origin of his sexual depravity. The knowledge commanded compassion for a being that I feel still wanders the other side looking for a place to his rest his angry soul.
Both of my parents were part of a relay race of self destruction that began long before I was born. The story that I have blessed to tell is based on true events. I can honestly answer yes to the question, “Did your mother really cook your father pork chops breaded with rat poison?” I can, thankfully with pride, answer yes to the question, “Did you maternal great grandmother really play piano for an American President?”
Like all factually based stories, I have changed the names of my relatives, dead and alive, in order to respect their right to privacy and for obvious legal reasons. I have utilized my right as a creative writer to take factual information and expand on it fictionally for the purpose of telling the story. I have also provided what I hope will be a unique perspective and narrator, the voice and perspective of my unborn soul who is watching, and praying for my ancestors to make the right choices.
The perspective of the unborn narrator provides a more intimate view into the souls of the characters. It also takes the reader on an epic spiritual journey showing how the actions of one person’s life can effect and flow seamlessly into the life of another. Nevertheless, no matter how I fictionalized the lives of my parents and grandparents, their pains were real pains that unfortunately filtered down into my life. However I am grateful that I get to relay the stories of their lives to my own daughters and others instead of reliving those pains in my life.
This journey has left me with a deeper understanding of my parents’ human frailties, a revelation about the spiritual purpose of my rape, and a realization of a past life that I have managed to relive yet again because I failed to learn my lesson from before. THE DESCENDANT, which is book one of my ancestral and spiritual odyssey trilogy, is the result of the lesson that I have finally learned and wish to share with others who wish to free themselves with compassion and forgiveness.
I tell this story for others whose truths are entombed in family secrets and denials. I believe that after reading THE DESCENDANT, many people, no matter what their ethnic background, will recognize a piece of themselves. I believe my story will help awaken others to their own personal truths and free them to become more passionate and compassionate beings, and more conscious of the power and effect their actions and words can have on their life as well as the life of others. My hope is that the reader will recognize that life and truth are a conscious process of intention and discovery.
Know that if your mother and or father become misguided and take on the spirit of Darth Vader and seek to destroy you, you can survive. Just remember that the human spirit is a powerful force that can emerge from the deepest abyss and triumph as long as you have faith and believe in yourself. Nothing and no one can separate you from God’s divine love, because God’s love, the truth, is already in you. You are loved.
It feels good to be home.
To purchase a copy of THE DESCENDANT or to read an excerpt and reviews, click on MY LITERARY SPACE tab and click on THE DESCENDANT to purchase your copy at the bottom of the page, SAMPLE CHAPTERS TAB to read an excerpt, or REVIEWS TAB to read what others say about after reading THE DESCENDANT.
