BOOK THREE: WORLD OF WORK

…Although the abuser stopped coming physically around as much, he stepped up his efforts to turn me back around. He did this mainly by phone, continuing in the same vein and in the same desperation with the same lies. I had been conditioned to forgive what could be deemed unforgivable, and to accept, understand and live with absolutely atrocious behaviour, so it took me a while to finally lose my cool and tell him to sling his fucking hook.

Indeed, it was his constant irresponsible, inconsiderate, irritating and infuriating behaviour that made me decide to disclose all to my mother. If he had behaved otherwise, I might not have chosen to go down that road, but now I felt compelled to do so because I felt that he needed to be properly outed. Hidden in that decision was also the hope that perhaps being outed in front of my mother might bring him to the position he needed to be in, so that at the very least he would have no more justifications and would come to know the wrong he had done, if only so that he may never do it again.

It was time to truly shame the devil, and in addition to it all, I began to feel it was important for my mother to know what it was truly like for me, and what her trusted and still close friend had done to me. For me, this meant a further coming into my own; of bringing closure to not only all the bad conditioning, but also the pretence in my family, all of which seemed really relevant and extremely important to my healing journey…

Peace & Love,

Light…

BOOK THREE: THE WORLD OF WORK

“If God is for me, who can be against me?” Romans 8:31

…Old fears of possible and imminent rejection were being stirred up; fears of not being wanted or considered not good enough; fears of making a mistake and getting the answer wrong and looking like such a fool; old fears born out of past realities of oftentimes being made to feel that I was always coming up short on the parental and other authority figures’ measuring sticks. However, a more recent, and most definitely corrective, experience of studying and successfully passing my degree gave me a certain confidence, reassurance and encouragement in spite of the fears; all of which accompanied me into the interview situation, giving me the courage that I needed.

The interview went surprisingly well, meaning I felt quite confident within myself and fairly at ease with all the questioning. I left the interview feeling that all had went well, a feeling that was confirmed later on during the week by phone call and letter offering me the position, which I obviously accepted. I was so happy!

All felt very much on track in my world; the track I had initially set off on with the decision I made in 1982 to have a child and give him and me a second chance, to the renewed decision I made in 1986 to enter therapy and return to higher education and more fully and successfully turn that improved life chances corner. It felt at that time that the job, the degree and the letting go of bulimia, as well as of certain relationships, notwithstanding the growing inner peace, joy and confidence I had been feeling more often than not, were all visible signs of victory; the fruits of all the very real, very hard and harrowing work I had put into my life and self to that date. It was like a beautiful spring morning inside myself when I started work in February 1993, happily embracing the total experience of getting up and going to work, and the purpose, routine and structure it brought into my world.

Peace & Love,

Light…

BOOK TWO: INSIDE-OUT

….In my therapeutic encounters with Caroline, I experienced myself a lot of the time as a little girl trying to be and appear grown up, which made the experience of building up trust with her difficult. Perhaps even more difficult was the building of trust with my very own mother, a building that never quite got started, let alone completed, and was a very painful, uncertain and unpredictable experience. So, the much-needed building of trust in the therapeutic relationship with Caroline brought with it many archaic unresolved conflicts, as well as painful and uncomfortable feelings of neediness – a neediness and dependency I tend to want to flee from.

There was also this all-encompassing sense of shame that took up residence throughout the whole experience. Even at the best of times, I used to find it really hard to meet Caroline’s gaze in dialogue during sessions. I remember feeling compelled to bow my head in an unconscious shame, and I could only just about maintain eye contact when it was my turn to talk. I was always expecting to be judged, scolded and rejected, like had been the way of things for me as a child. I felt so little and terribly flawed in the meeting of her gaze, so unworthy of her care, so it felt less emotionally painful to bow my head.

I also had this immense, yet undefined and unfathomable, fear that I would overburden Caroline and inadvertently damage or cause her way too much stress and pain with my neediness. Along with all these fears and concerns was this intense need for her acceptance and approval, as well as the need to be her ‘good little girl.’ To me, being Caroline’s ‘good little girl’ meant doing exactly what was expected of me by causing her very little trouble and wanting for nothing…

BOOK TWO: INSIDE- OUT

“In the Creative Process, the Order of Life is Inner before Outer,” (source unknown)

…Around the same time, 1990-91, the relationship with my mother, and to a certain extent a few of my siblings and old school friends, remained strained. I had changed and still was very much changing and growing, and had picked up on the fact that people found this hard to deal with. They found it hard to relate to my being in higher education and all that they thought it entailed, all of which seemed to set me further apart from them.

In regard to my mum in particular, she still wasn’t open to discussing the past, let alone acknowledge its continued after-effects. She also found it difficult to accept the fact that I had a mind of my own, and that I was coming into myself and therefore letting go of the role of being her good, compliant little girl.

I was very much separating from her, and I sensed that she felt threatened by this, but at the same time, because I was the only one in the family who had ever made this kind of change, it made it easier for her and a few of my siblings to view the resultant unease and conflicts as solely a ‘Marcia problem.’ After all, hadn’t Marcia always been ‘different?’

During this time I decided to lock my hair; one day I just had the thought that no matter high up the ladder I got, I would never want to sacrifice or compromise my cultural and racial identity. Whatever group I was going to end up being a part of in the future, I still wanted to be proud and feel very much involved in my African and Caribbean heritage. Basically, I wasn’t going to ‘sell out’ in order to fit in anywhere I may later find myself. Besides, I had stopped perming my hair because it was ruining it, a thing I clearly began to notice after having gone through a six-month period of just plaiting it, whereupon it really picked up, which further suggested to me that my hair generally does better left to its own devices, as near to natural as possible.

It was quite an experience deciding to lock my hair; it was and has been a journey in and of itself. I got a lot of anxious and negative comments from some family members and friends with their main concerns being, What if you change your mind and no longer wanted it locked? What if it doesn’t look good? What will people say/think? What if it stops you from getting ahead? However, I persisted on, because deep down inside I knew it was the right thing for me, that I wouldn’t be changing my mind for now, and that nothing could stop me from being and becoming who or what I pleased…

Peace & Love,

Light..

BOOK ONE:THE BEGINNING OF ENDS

…It was good having college to not only take my mind off Ronald, but also give me something unknown and different to look forward to. The idea of meeting more new and interesting people truly excited me, as a lot, if not most, of my girlfriend relationships had seemed to have met a certain end. I had grown apart from them, and them, me. I was discovering and on another level felt like my life was just beginning.

The kind of life I most wanted, that is; the kind of chances that I was still adamant on creating for myself. Still, as the course’s start date approached, I had to work really hard against myself, to fight what seemed like an urge to self-sabotage. A feeling of fear was trying to make me do some kind of U-turn; trying to change my mind and make me late by putting so many obstacles in the way the morning of my starting the course, even though The Way was clear.

A great big anxiety began growing inside me; one which I didn’t quite understand, because at the same time I really wanted to start college; really wanted this something more and something ‘new.’ I didn’t understand at the time how much of a very big step going back into education was for me, and not only that, just how difficult it was also for me to go for what I wanted, and to feel entitled to it. What if I cannot keep up? I asked myself. What if I fail miserably? I wondered if I’d screw it all up, just like how, in spite of all my efforts, I had failed to create my ‘happily ever after’ family… What if… What if… What if…

These mostly unconscious thoughts and fears awakened old feelings of inadequacy, wrapped tightly in the belief that I didn’t deserve good things, and that good things are not for the likes of me. However, knowing that I’d have the individual therapy sessions to accompany and support me on the next leg of my journey comforted me greatly…

Peace & Love,

Light..

BOOK ONE:THE BEGINNING OF ENDS

…Ronald continued not to change. He just couldn’t or wouldn’t commit, and even though someplace I knew it, I also couldn’t or wouldn’t see it, let alone deal with it head on. Somehow, I kept believing and working under the premise that if I tried harder and proved how much I loved him, that he would eventually love and commit to me in return; that he would finally see what a good, understanding, forgiving and caring person I was and had been; that he would finally SEE ME and love me and accept me the way I so desperately needed.

As I endeavoured to carry on with Ronald’s good efforts that never lasted long, I began to feel increasingly out of my depth, which was a feeling I hadn’t experienced before. In my life up to that point, it had become extremely important for me to feel that I had a certain degree of control over my feelings; my very (daily) survival seemed to depend on it. Now, with all that was going on between Ronald and I, my precarious well-being became threatened, which by the same token made everything begin to feel on the brink of becoming terribly out of control. This was terrifying to me.

My thought processes were beginning to break down. I couldn’t think things through as clearly as I once did, and solutions began to elude me. I feared that I was losing my mind, which had been my place of solace and comfort. At the time, I was also trying to maintain a level of resolve when it came to refraining from eating certain foods, namely one, two, three or four packets of crisps at a time, but more and more I would find myself comfort eating – binge and purging to numb the pain. I was washing the forbidden food all down and away with an ever-increasing number of laxatives in order to avoid putting weight on, lest I reveal myself as the needy, greedy, fat and undeserving person I secretly felt that I was. Every morning I’d wake up hating myself, especially when I thought about the physical harm that I was doing to my body by abusing it in this way.

Peace & Love,

Light..

BOOK ONE: THE BEGINNING OF ENDS

…The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step. Lao Tzu

The decision to have a child changed my life forever. The year was 1982, and I was seventeen-and-a-half years old. I could have done much better in school the previous year, but looking back, circumstance didn’t really allow it. The only lesson I really enjoyed was Sociology, as it was the only subject that seemed relevant to real life; the only subject that attempted to decipher and understand it, a thing that was very important to me.

When I left school that summer with my one ‘O’ Level, I was not at all sure what I wanted to do in regard to a career. None of the adults around me at this time were available to actively explore that side of things with me, and so it was more or less left up to me and the school to decide what my future would look like. During the summer break, I half-heartedly decided to enrol on a two-year Community Studies course. I thought that a course in the caring professions would best suit me, especially if it involved working with children. I loved taking care of children.

To begin with, the course did hold my attention. The college was newly-built and I enjoyed the experience of being part of a new endeavour and a new group. I also enjoyed the new relationship that was to be had with teachers – more equal, friendly and respectful – and I really liked the course tutor, Leila. She was warm, cuddly and motherly. I also liked the fact that being at college was entirely my own affair, which gave me a sense of freedom that I enjoyed.

However, at times that freedom, that responsibility, brought with it a foreboding cloud of uncertainty and feelings of insecurity, especially about the future. Where would the future lead me? Would it take me to very difficult places, like my past had? These fears, which were more unconscious at the time, scared and overwhelmed me, so much so that by the end of the first year, my enthusiasm began to wane, bringing with it a loss of concentration, and not long afterwards absolute boredom. It was an old, familiar angst-filled boredom, and resultant dissociation, born out of extreme dissatisfaction, that often saw me falling asleep during lessons.

I quite enjoyed those little naps, though it was of great embarrassment to me when Leila pulled me up on it. She was concerned that I wasn’t enjoying the course anymore, and wondered if there was something else that would better hold my attention. But, as bored as I was, and as lost as I felt at times, there wasn’t really any other place during the day where I felt relatively safe and could comfortably be, let alone peacefully fall asleep. So, I tried my hardest not to sleep in class, but it continued to be a struggle.

The only subjects that kept my full attention were those to do with childcare and development. It was during these lessons that certain ideas began to come to mind, and, I guess, started to better fill the uncomfortable spaces of my time. Those thoughts pertained to the desire to become a mother and have a child, all of my own…

Peace & Love,

Light..

EXCERPT FROM MY UPCOMING BOOK, BACK TO LOVE…

INTRODUCTION

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. Frederick Douglass

This book, Back to Love, was born first out of a desire to share a journey, and second to tell a story. The story is one of an abused and abandoned child, and the things that can be done in the dark to such a child, casting a menacing shadow across the child’s life when grown; oftentimes for generations to come, if the healing remains undone.

In the telling of this story, my story, the unhealed baton finishes with me, which also makes Back to Love a book about the process of change and its particular twists and turns. It is a self-transformation life story about the not-altogether-straightforward cycle of change, and the coming into being of a more whole and integrated self.

This book was a very difficult book to write. The baring of one’s heart and soul, and tortures and loves, in such an open and now public way took me right out of myself, stretching me beyond all measure, on every level. I don’t know if I’d call the writing of this book a ‘therapeutic’ endeavour, but it was certainly an endeavour, to be a true, clear and no-nonsense voice for the most vulnerable in society, that I’d gladly do again and again, however much it hurts.

I don’t just speak for the needs of today’s children; I speak especially for all the wounded, denied and abandoned children that still exist within countless adults the world over. I write in service to them, as well as to the child within myself. It is my hope that in doing so, we as a society will come to listen more and better respond to children’s particular and unique needs and wants, lest those cries turns into screams of blue murder; the kind see and read about on the news and in the papers, daily….

Peace & Love,

Light..