Making Sense of It All, KIDNAPPED TWICE

DOUGLAS AND TINA

I hesitate to write this next part of my book, as I am afraid I might not be able to articulate my observation and my total admiration for my co-author. Douglas is the bravest and most dedicated person I have ever known. When I opened Douglas’s letter to me this week, he had written a few pages about his beloved quadriplegic wife, Tina. He wrote that Tina was feeling down, even when Douglas told her she was the most important person to him. Number one! As his writing went on, Tina, in my eyes, seemed to be feeling very sad that they were no longer able to do certain things together because of her illness. Tina was unsure that she was number one, as Douglas had told her.

Dear Tina,

You don’t know me, but I hope you believe what I tell you.

You are adored, treasured, loved and of course number one to Douglas. I feel so fortunate to hear Douglas express how much he loves you. You are his life, his love, and forever partner. I hope to meet you someday, and if possible become your friend. It would be an honor.

Warmly,

Mary

CHILD ABUSE IN THE NEWS

On the television news this week, there was a very little boy along with a really big man in a store. The man threw the boy to the floor and started kicking him and hitting him. The news later reported that the man was the mother’s boyfriend. After the man was finished hurting the little boy, he walked away from the child. The poor little fellow got up and ran after the man. The news never reported what happened after that.

There is no excuse for child abuse.

MAKING SOME SENSE OF IT ALL

As I am writing all of this, I am trying to reach some of the people who also have spent a lot of their years plowing through life, because we all had to, butlike methey have not been dealing with the emotional trauma endured, nor the physical abuse.

My way of dealing with it all was not to deal with it. As it all is hitting me now, it has been almost as hard on me than when it first happened! Further, I am now angry about it. My abusers are lucky they are not alive to feel my anger.

I have walked through my life with a forced smile. When people would ask me how I was, I never said, “Fine!” I always said, “OK.” I was neither fine nor even OK. I was just plowing through. It must have shown. I have been told, through these years, that I seemed to be a very serious person, which I am.

To all the young people who have been emotionally and/or physically abused: please, do not go through your life thinking that it has not affected you. It has. You need to find a good counselor. Sit down. Get it out. Cry the tears. Laugh the laughs. Make sure that you never do to anyone else what was done to you!

For example, make sure you don’t become an alcoholic. It really is not such a hard decision to make.

We become the people we become largely due to what has happened to us in the past. We have been injured, but a lot of us take too long before we try to heal.

I am not a happy person, but I am beginning to believe that I could have been, if I had dealt with the hurt and anger that I felt at the time they affected me. I feel as though I’ve cheated myself out of parts of my life. People and things I should not have let into my life, I did let in.

I am changing now. Perhaps I will become a happy person.

                           ###

We are serializing her memoir, Kidnapped Twice, by Mary E. Seaman and myself, an exploration into the impact of an abused childhood on her subsequent yeas, published by Outskirts Press, available from OP and amazon.com and bn.com and other online booksellers, as a paperback or ebook.

Visit my writing-coaching-editing site, http://writeyourbookwithme.com.