Part VI (two years later)--Cascading consequences and epiphanies.

So as y'all are aware who read this blog, about two years ago I wrote a multi-part post about something very difficult and sad that happened to me a while ago. If you haven't read it and are curious, the tag on this post will lead you to the others.

In a nutshell, I got married at a young age to a guy who was good but secretly addicted to pornography. He had other issue in his life that lead him to be abusive and unstable and unsafe for me and our daughter to be around. His actions lead to several different things: we ended up divorced, he ended up in Jail, Emma and I ended up on our own, and I ended up in the news. Nobody knew how to handle it, and everybody (including me) sometimes handled it horribly, and I was left with a lot of scars and sadness as a result; scars that left me hurting pretty badly for a really long time. THen about three years ago a miracle came into my life; a friend and bishop who helped me heal. And then as I was able to open up, others were able to help me heal. My husband. My kids. Friends. Family. These last three years have been the happiest of my life, in spite of the fact that there have still been significant challenges and things that have been heartbreaking even. Things I have not written about on this blog.

I'm going back to this today because the other day, I had an interaction with someone that left me hurting again, and questioning whether it was a good idea to write about it all. To come clean. And wondering why I did; why I exposed such a vulnerable part of myself for people to judge and comment on and be upset at me for.

This person told me that I am a liar, that I live in a fantasy land, and that I write about other peoples' lives without permission. This person was pretty upset with me. They said I'd offended several people by writing on my blog about stuff. Because no posts on my blog have really been about anything significant, other than this series of posts about my recovery process, I have to assume that these were the offending posts.

In a sense, I guess these posts did include others' lives. My ex husband being the most salient example. While Emma and I were pretty significantly affected by what happened, the real tragedy in this story is his. And the real vulnerability is his. This is why I have decided never to tell this story as an author. I could, and I'm sure I could sell a lot of copies of a book about what happened to me. But it's not my story, primarily. Not my tragedy. It's his. That means it's his to decide to tell or not.

So why did I write about it? Was it going back on my resolve to blog about this?

In addition to my ex husband, I also talked about the bishop's life--the one who handled it all. It was a signiifcant trauma for him, too. And the way things happened, and how I reacted, didn't exactly bring him off in a good light. But he is a good man. ANd he learned a lot. Like all of us.

IN addition to my bishop, I wrote about how some ward members struggled, how those struggles hurt me. Those were their tragedies, their traumas. And I wrote about my own family's struggle to help me, and in so doing, I told about their struggles and their traumas.

Also, as I described the recovery process, I wrote about the life of those who helped me recover. I revealed some vulnerable things about them.

I want to say, if this hurt any of the above people, I really am sorry.

I've been struggling the last few days with guilt and sadness, wondering if it was the right thing, to write this stuff at all, because it could potentially hurt so many people to be writing about what happened to me. I go back and forth--on the one hand, it is hard and sad to revisit that stuff. But on the other hand... it's a story of healing. My healing. It's a very real example of how you can be very hurt by those you are supposed to trust, and how you can still trust again in spite of that--trust husbands, trust preisthood leaders, trust friends. I want people who are struggling like I did, to feel hope that they will be able to trust again. I want to loan them a piece of my faith until they can find their own again. I want people to know that the church is still True in spite of imperfect vessels of priesthood and spousehood and freindship.

The church is true.

It will keep you sane.

It will keep you happy.

It will give you strenght.

It will give you joy, even in the face of complete despair.

Your Heavenly Father loves you. And he loves everybody that ever hurt you. And He is doing all He can to help you help yourself find happiness again.

That was what I wanted to say. That was the thing that allowed me to press "publish" on all those posts--the possibility that others, who are where I have been, might be more able to continue knowing that life gets better and can even be more wonderful in the aftermath of tragedy, than it would have been if no tragedy had occurred. I have a wonderful relationship with my husband because he has seen me through heartache and struggle and paranoia and lack of trust and all sorts of things--he has been more than a best friend. ANd the others in my life have come to know me in a way they never would have, if I hadn't been so vulnerable when I met them. I treasure this, because I am not normally a very open person, and to have such good friends and family who know me so well is a miracle to me.

So for that reason, I am not ashamed I posted about my life (and others' lives.)

Today I realized another reason I am not ashamed. I've been turning this over and over in my mind, like I said, questioning my motivations and one thing I've realized lately is, I had to take my story back. My epiphany came after watching this video that my friend posted on facebook tonight. It's about rape. It's really sad. Don't watch it if you don't want. Here are some of the lyrics:

You tell me "it gets better, it gets better,
in time"
You say I'll pull myself together, pull it together,
"You'll be fine"
Tell me what the hell do you know,
What do you know,
Tell me how the hell could you know,
How! could you know

Till it happens to you, you don't know
How it feels,
How it feels.
Till it happens to you, you won't know
It won't be real
No It won't be real
Won't know how it feels.



The point that struck home for me is this. Rape is a horrible thing. What I went through was a horrible thing.
What I went through does not trump rape. Rape is awful. What I went through was awful. Both are awful.

But not very many people actually go through what I went through--survive three attempts on her life by someone she should have trusted, and then have personal details, vulnerable details, about her life--in every newspaper in the state, on the television, talked about behind her in every college class. Not very many people have complete strangers come up to her and ask her about the most horrific, vulnerable things she's ever gone through; is going through at that moment, as a matter of curiosity. Not very many people have these personal, terrible things that she is not even able to process or accept, commented on in the most vulgar and judgmental way--hundreds of comments on dozens of news articles; not very many people have cameras shoved in her face and very personal questions asked; not very many people have news vans following her around as she's trying to go to class and drop her child off at childcare and go to court to testify against the person she thought she knew and loved the most; not very many people have people who *still*, thirteen years later, remember these very personal details about her life.

NOt very many people go through this. So not very many people *can* know how it feels. Nobody knows. Nobody. I'm alone in this. Except for Heavenly Father, who knows exactly how i feel.

THe thing is, guys. I had to tell it.

It was part of my recovery.

I'm sorry to those I hurt. Deeply sorry.

But I had to do it. IT was taken away from me; these things. IT was told for me, and told wrong. Nobody heard my voice at all.

I had to tell it.

And until it happens to you,

.... you don't know how it feels.

I'm not a liar.

I'm not living in a fantasy land--these things REALLY happened. And the IdaDad of my posts is REALLY a great dad, to a lot of people. His own daughters, and lots of others who are not his daughters. Lots of people who aren't me. What a miracle some people can be in the lives of others. I am inspired by the example of those who have helped me. And by the way--Mile 21 was about my recovery process, and about an old acquaintance from my home stake who went through a significant tragedy right about the same time mine took place. It wasn't about you. At all. So you can stop thinking you're that special. Sorry.


And I don't tell about other peoples' lives on purpose--no, not at all. I told this story because I needed to. But there has been plenty that has happened... things that have broken my heart, that I have *not* talked about.

But I had to tell this story. ANd I had to talk about what happened with my young women calling. It was too close to what happened before... it was too much. I had to talk about it. If you have a problem with that, well, there are several lovely bridges in town that you can feel free to jump off of :)

Sorry. I'm just done.

I love a lot of people. Even people who have been awful. I love a lot of people and that's why it hurts so much. Please forgive me, people, for being broken, and for not being perfect as I try to fix myself. Maybe someday we can be friends. I make a good friend. I'm loyal. I'm kind. I'm a hard worker. I've got good intentions even when I accidentally do things that are awkward and offensive. So, please forgive me if I've made you sad. Let's move on. I'm ready to. IF you aren't, I'm leaving you behind. I'm kind of done. I'm not listening to you anymore. I've got to be a good mother and a good wife and a good friend and a good family member, and your words aren't relevant, and they're not true, and they're not healthy for me to listen to. I have to be done.

Be OK With Where You Are

I can't really think of a title for this post right now. Maybe by the end I'll think of one that encapsulates all the free-floating, seemingly unrelated ideas swimming around as I write them down and they coalesce and make sense and point to a theme. I'm grateful for writing. It's a good Urim and Thummim for me. How's that for a confusing, oblique Mormon reference?

I think that recovery comes in layers. For me, the first was numbness. And that lasted for ten years. Next was anxiety. Lots of strong, seemingly rootless emotions would just come and overwhelm and turn the world flat for a while. That was a pretty scary place to be, and I still end up there from time to time as I stumble over "triggers." The nice thing is, eventually you learn to identify those triggers and can move through the anxiety better, knowing that's the source of it. Hopefully eventually one examines the root of these triggers and untangles them to the point where they're not triggers anymore. That's the goal, at any rate. I'm not quite there yet.


The second layer for me was anger. A lot of that anger stems from anger at the source of the trauma, suddenly understanding what happened to me and how it was very not OK, and negotiating feelings of betrayal, disappointment, etc. But it's also frustration with myself, that I don't seem to be functioning emotionally as well as I wish I could.

Some of it is also directed at others, in the present--people who seem to think less of me because I'm not acting cheery and competent, and I'm asking for help. I'm working through this still right now. I think one of the things I struggle most to forgive, in the now, is the attitude that I should be just fine right now because this all happened 13 years ago.

Some don't understand that, actually, that's quite normal for someone who's suffered pretty severe emotional events. People with PTSD are often numb for years, living in the world of adrenaline and reaction as emotion, not feeling much of the currents underneath causing the anxiety and numbness. It's like the heart shuts down and protects itself and doesn't allow the feelings to be felt, until there's a safe place, or a safe enough distance, from the trauma event, and then the mind and heart let it all flood in. Feelings. Forgotten experiences. What a lot of people don't realize, when they say someone who has suffered trauma "should be over it", is that right at that moment, they are working through things they haven't remembered, much less been able to process. *At this moment* the events are actually occurring for the person. The feelings are actually being felt for the first time--grief, fear, disappointment at what was lost. Sadness at what loved ones had to go through. The events are occurring for that person *right now*.

I've also been struggling to forgive another attitude some seem to have. It goes like this: "you're not the only one who's going through pain. What makes you so special?"

It kind of boggles my mind a bit, that attitude. Yes, everyone has pain. That hymn really resonates, "in the quiet heart is hidden sorrows that the eye can't see." As someone who has endured some real heartache and horror in my life, I'm utterly and completely aware that many of the people around me have endured heartache and horror. Their own personal tragedies, and things like depression and anxiety. What I don't understand is the conclusion that some people come to, that because they've had pain, another person doesn't have a right to be in pain. For me, enduring real struggle has made me more aware and more accepting of the pain around me. I don't understand the whole, "We've all had pain, so what makes you so special that you have to struggle, and we have to watch, and you need help?"

I mean, pain is pain. ONe person's pain doesn't minimize another's. One person's recovery doesn't take from another person's recovery. That's like saying that love is limited--if one person gets love and attention it takes from another person's allotted amount. Love isn't like that. The more there is, the more there is, period. And recovery's not like that, either. I think that Love and recovery are just like chocolate. Who doesn't want more chocolate? The more chocolate there is in the world, the better the world gets, right? I enjoy and celebrate all the love, recovery, and chocolate, I see around me.

I mean, each of us struggles with our own burden. I don't feel a need to compare. What's the point of comparing?

Jeffrey had an insight for me yesterday. He said that the type of person who'd say things like that, "We all have pain, you're not the only one, what makes you so special?" And "It's been thirteen years. You should be over that by now," is the type of person who isn't actually addressing their own pain. They resent me asking for help and being vulnerable because they don't feel safe asking for help, or being vulnerable. So they shoulder that burden on their own. And seeing people around them asking for the help they also need, and visibly struggling in a way that they're keeping only inside, is pretty threatening to them.

So my frustration should really be empathy. These people are still stumbling along in the state I endured for a decade. Numb. Anxious. Not able to address it yet.

Instead of being angry, I can feel for them. And hope that eventually they feel safe enough to pass into a less painful stage of recovery.

This kinda leads to the last layer of feeling, which I think I'm passing into right now as I leave anger behind. Grief. Just... sadness. I mean, it was really sad, what happened. I'm sad at what was lost, and sad my baby had to go through it. Sad I had to go through it. Sad my family had to go through it. I'm. Just. Sad.

And that's OK. IT's the feeling at the root of it all. It's something I might carry inside me and have to re-negotiate during my life. Grief is like that... you re-address it as you grow and new understanding of what happened develops. But Sadness is something one can deal with. When you're sad, you accept comfort from your loved ones. You talk to your friends. You cry. These things are vents of emotion--wells of feeling, being allowed to drain and become productive. The emotions above--anxiety and anger--tend to block release, but Sadness... well. The Savior wept. And I can feel the powerful force of the atonement come over me as I work through sadness.

That's where we want to be in the wake of hard stuff. Sad, so that we can eventually be happy. What is that quote from Genesis? Without pain, we don't truly know Joy.

I think I"m going to do a post in a few days about why I'm grateful I've gone through the things I have. What good they've brought into my life.

In the meantime, I guess one message I wanted to bring across is this: comparison is the thief of joy. It's not good to compare your pain to others'. It's not a happy place to compare your recovery to others', either. It's really just best to be where you are, and be Ok with that.

The earth's elliptical rotation (hint: it does not revolve around you)

This is a weird title for this post. It's something symbolic, though, for me. I used to think the earth turned a perfect circle around the sun, and when I realized the orbit was in fact more elongated, it was hard for me to conceptualize. I like things orderly. I like things to come out even. Eliptical just seemed disappointing.

It was even more disappointing to find out that the earth isn't perfectly round; is in fact, slightly pear-shaped. Did you know that? Is your mind bending just a bit?

This weekend was my church's big bi-yearly meeting. Every six months, at the beginning of October and the beginning of April, we meet for two days to hear our leaders speak. We spend a total of ten hours or so if you count the sessions for the women of the church and the priesthood meetings. I love these meetings. I feel a lot of peace--perhaps more than I feel at any other time. I also, suddenly, seem to find perspective, which is hard for me, sometimes--I am often very stuck in the moment and stressed. Being able to see and feel a more long-term, gestalt perspective of my life, of why I'm doing what I'm doing, being reminded of how much I love what I believe to be true and how much I appreciate and am grateful for all I've been given, is so refreshing and important. I wish they had general conference every three months instead of every six.

I used to be a part of an online community that took in LDS people from many different perspectives, mostly the off-beat among us Mormons. Radical feminists, disaffected members who still wanted to be part of an LDS-cutlure-based-community, members struggling with feeling sidelined because of things that had happened to them like divorce, or same-gender attraction, or infertility or whatever else gave us a need to go someplace to feel included. For a while I felt like Mormon Culture did not know what to do with me, a divorced 22 year old woman with a child. I went there to feel like I wasn't alone.

I loved being a part of this community for a short while, but I quickly realized that this community had its own standards of inclusion and non-inclusion. They were talking, one day (sorry, this is a bit gritty but it's my example) about female genital mutilation in Africa (a terrible thing, which I have read and thought a lot about because I knew I'd be adopting girls from Ethiopia. BTW my girls are fine.) Anyway, I brought up male circumcision. Jeffrey and I have had a lot of discussions about this, and we read a lot of information on both sides of the issue, and I wanted to discuss how our cultural expectations/norms also brought us up against something similar. In other countries, you see, they don't do it. But we do. Why?

I was pretty much kicked out of the discussion. Angrily sent on my way, in fact. I tried again a few times, and found that the same thing happened... kicked out, ignored, mocked even. It was strange, to me. If LDS culture has been so hurtful and non-inclusive to this particular collection of people, why the heck, after feeling all of that, experiencing it firsthand, would they turn around and do the same to others?

I had kind of an epiphany yesterday as I was watching Elder Packer talk. For those of you not familiar with Mormon stuff, Elder Packer is the most senior of the LDS apostles. He often speaks on the topic of difficult moral questions--pornography, marriage, etc... all the hot button issues. And he does it unapologetically. So he gets some flack.

Lately he has been very ill. In this last conference, I couldn't understand what he was saying. He was tired. He was struggling. I felt a great deal of love for him... the man's personality might not be mine, or mesh well with mine, but what he has to say has a great deal of merit. I remember one conference a couple of years ago, a talk of his that just struck me as powerful. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I may not understand him well as a person but he has valuable things to say.

Anyway, just out of curiosity, because I'm like that, I went over and peeked at this website I've stopped following. They often take conference talks and dissect them, discuss why they disagree, etc. Often, Elder Packer has been the butt of a lot of angst on this site. But seeing him struggle, with so much courage and humility, to deliver his conference address, nobody could possibly make fun of him, right? Because we're kind people. Even if we don't agree with the man, we're decent human beings.

Well, I shouldn't have looked. The thread on his talk was all about his garbled speech, making fun of him for a word people had mis-heard, talking about how they're ready to take offense because of all else he's said, etc. It made me pretty sad and pretty angry.

I shouldn't bother myself with this stuff. I know that. But this, for me, speaks to an overarching theme that disturbs me a lot. I see examples of it everywhere.

People think they're the center of the universe.

I've been thinking lately, about leadership and why it's hard. I was given a calling in my church a couple years ago (still plugging away) that involved an element of leadership. I got to know my bishop pretty well, and he'd talk to me about the struggle of being a leader and also being a principal. Jeff and I have been watching some star trek. You won't believe me but, if you want a good treatise on leadership and what it means, go watch a few episodes of Patrick Stewart in the role of Jean Luc Picard. I've learned a whole lot about being Young Women President from Jean Luc Picard. I don't think anyone ever thought that sentence would exist.

I've had a lot to chew on, thinking about leadership and what the job really is. Do you know what it is?

Making people upset.

Ok. Not on purpose. A leader shouldn't go out of their way to offend, to sideline, or to disagree with those who serve with them. But the thing is, the hardest part of leadership... the part of it that is the front-line, the part nobody else can take on no matter how much you delegate, is that very thing: having to make decisions based on careful consideration of all information, all opinions, all situations brought to your attention. I've learned that you have to expect that whatever decision you make will make a few people unhappy. Because that is just how it works--a collection of people with all different ideas of how something should, or could, or ought to or it would be nice!, to have it done this way, is just not going to agree. And so that's what a leader is for. To listen to everything and then make a decision. And then, the way it's supposed to work is, everyone accepts that decision and works together to bring about the common goal.

Of course, in order for that to work, all the people have to trust that their voices were heard, and that the leader is capable of making wise choices. That's the other ucky part about being a leader... you have a sort of obligation to try to get people to trust you. It's not about being liked, it's about giving whatever group you're trying to bring together confidence in your ability to make the choice that's best for the whole.

And generally speaking, it works out ok. There are a few who aren't all that glad, but they come along and work good-naturedly alongside everybody else and then the next time, it'll be their idea that gets put into practice. It balances. It comes around again. Everybody gets heard and eventually, everybody's ideas will be implemented and everybody's causes given attention. In an organization like the LDS Church, we fully expect that everybody who is there is there for a reason, and God will inspire each individual with something important to the whole.

The problem is, this doesn't always work. Do you know why?

Because there are some people who really struggle to see another's perspective. Their ideas are more important than others' ideas. Their cause is the most important cause. Their perspective is the only perspective.

It's like some people really struggle to see the universe as anything but revolving around them. THey see through their eyes, and feel with their feelings, and see the world around them as being only that way--the way they see it. They struggle to notice or give importance to anything but their feelings, their needs. And that even goes so far as spiritual feelings. One leader will have their heart touched, hard, by a certain issue or a certain individual they have stewardship over. Another person will have another set of needs and ideas come into their heart. A good leader will make sure each issue and each need and each individual is eventually addressed, but as there is only so much time and only so many resources, unfortunately all can't be addressed at once. Some understand this, and others see it as their ideas and promptings going ignored or being pushed aside as unimportant, no matter how you reassure them their issue is important to you as a leader.

In the case of General Conference, there are people out there who are hurting. I'm one of them. I really struggle with priesthood authority, with the issues of single parents, pornography addictions, and children in need. So when those issues come up my heart is extra-sensitive. THere have been times when the speaker went the direction that didn't necessarily nurture and help me, and if I wanted to, I could take offense and become angry and feel unlistened-to and hurt. Or.

The OR is this: Or I could realize that the Mormon faith is made up of many, many individuals with different and sometimes contrasting pains, hurts, and needs. I need to remember: the leaders of my church lead everybody. Not just me. The issues they address are everybody's. NOt just mine. A woman struggling with years of infertility might feel a lot of heartache over a talk about motherhood. But another woman, struggling with severe postpartum depression and feelings of inadequacy, needs that talk.

A woman who is divorced or single and struggling for perspective may be hurt by a talk about the importance of marriage, but another woman, contemplating marriage with a great deal of fear because of events in her life, perhaps parents or a sibling who has endured a painful divorce, needs to hear that message--that marriage is wonderful and important.

A man struggling with a pornography addiction may feel horrible during a talk about the damaging nature of pornography, but there are twelve year old boys who need to hear it, to have that salient in their minds as they negotiate the difficulties of junior high school and cell phones and sexts and free videos and all the stuff.

We all have very real needs and we all look to those who lead us for comfort, reassurance, and validation.

I think that the thing that has helped me most, is to *look* for those things in what my leaders say. Be on the lookout for those messages of peace and validation that speak directly to my heart. Expect to come away with a handful of messages that were meant specifically, specially, personally for me. I need to see and feel the love in that: this is a big church, 15 million people, and Heavenly Father, and my leaders, took the time to say these few, special things, just for me.

I remember how emotional and grateful I felt when President Hinckley, addressing BYU during the time I was there struggling as a single parent, mentioned divorce. Mentioned single parenting. How it was so hard. How he knew that those of us going through it spent long hours sorrowing. He said Heavenly Father knew our sorrows, and that he also knew our sorrows, and sorrowed with us.

Heavenly Father knows me and my sorrows. And the leader of my church was aware as well, and sorrowed with me. That's something I have cherished in my heart ever since. And I've cherished the countless other times when this has happened.

General conference is not just for me. The earth revolves in an ellipse... it moves in response to all the different forces pushing and pulling on it. And it does not revolve around me.

One popular phrase I find very frustrating:

Yes. Well, only from your perspective.
To someone else, It is something else.

This applies to more than just religion and religious discussion and policy. It applies to politics, policies, issues. It applies to Stuff. All Stuff. People struggle because they see out of their eyes and feel from their bodies and think from their minds and forget that other people, just as smart, just as caring, just as wise, are feeling and seeing and thinking from another place entirely and so they see something different. And both are important, valid, real, intelligent places to think and see from.

I hate guns.
You love guns.

I have eight children.
You are passionate about the environment and feel large families are irresponsible.

I am very religious, and I believe the gospel I've been brought up in holds important and necessary keys to salvation.
You believe that organized religion causes unecessary pain and conflict.

You think our country’s on the brink of socialism.
I feel frightened of the hysteria that seems to have gripped our nation on the topic of socialism.

We’re both here for a reason. Every human is born with passion and perspective, and over time all gain experience. We are all here to create what needs to happen and to be, together, what needs to be.

And that takes *All* perspectives. Yours, mine, the guy ranting in your politics class. The REAL killer in our society is apathy.

We need to step out of our lonely solar systems, where all the planets seem to pass around us in perfect symmetry and circumference and we're standing there on the sterile, lonely ground of our own making, and start seeing the universe for what it really is--a balance of so many crazy elements and objects and forces that we really can't even begin to understand how it all works together (though some really enjoy trying, and I dig that). To truly enjoy life we must enjoy the richness of a home, a church or social group, a society, a country, a world, made up of everything you don't understand. And we need to fully comprehend how every different perspective plays a part in that, even if we can't fully comprehend every perspective.

I'm weird, and it's actually OK!

Being too introspective and self-reflective can become a problem in itself. I have known a few people who've gotten stuck at this phase of recovery. It makes me uneasy, to be self-examining so much. But on the other hand turning inward to find out what's broken to fix, and what's not broken and doesn't need fixing is essential, I think, in rebuilding (or just building, for the first time) confidence in the aftermath of emotional wreckage. Emotional abuse demolishes you.

About fourteen years ago or so, I walked into the office of Dr. Bounous, of the BYU music department. I hadn't sung for two years. I'd had a pretty terrible experience with a voice teacher, and in my discouragement I abandoned singing for a while. It's an unfortunate coincidence that, during this same two year period, I was...

I don't even know how to say what it was that happened to me. There's no descriptive phrase for it. My husband wasn't my husband. My marriage wasn't a marriage. I was being emotionally and physically abused (it really kind of galls to put it in that way, passive. "being" abused. Ugh. I don't know why I have such a negative reaction to that. It just feels gross.)

Anyway. I decided to start singing again. I believe that was the beginning of my pulling away from the situation--taking something for me again. My relationship with my ex-husband had turned me into a nothing-person. My entire existence was lived to prevent him exploding, to prevent him from hurting himself or hurting me (and more often both). I spent all my energy trying to be "a better wife." That's how I perceived the situation. If I could just fold the towels exactly right. If I could just do all the dishes so there wasn't a single speck on a plate or cup. If I could just keep up with the laundry, if I could only stop biting my fingernails, if I could force myself to stop eating things with garlic and onions, if I could get rid of the upset and angry and helpless feelings I was having, if I could just be more interesting, so he wouldn't spend so much time in front of the playstation....

I walked into Dr. Bounous's office an empty husk of a person. I remember how drab I felt--I could see myself, how it wasn't right, even though I couldn't figure out how to be different at the time. I wore a white T shirt, washed-out overalls. my hair was blah and midlength. I generally wore no makeup, made no effort. I had no excitement about anything, no hope for joy in my life. I remember feeling extremely drained as I talked to him--perhaps the only person outside of my husband I had really communicated with in two years. (except for the phone conversations and occasional yelling-fights with my mother and other family members.) I remember as I went back and listened to the tapes, hearing how completely flat, drained, and passive I sounded, even as I sang, which in the past has been the way I express all the overpowering emotions I've struggled with all my life.

I was an empty person. I was used up, squeezed, out, burned out, drained. I was nothing.

Singing helped me on the way to recovery. Also, I latched onto whatever passions might be lying around--I worked with girls who had eating disorders, so I became passionate about feminism and body image. To the point of being grating on my friends and family members. Jeff was a vegetarian and a homeschooler, so while dating him and after marrying him, I became passionate about homeschooling and vegetarianism. Nature abhors a vacuum... I was vacuuming up everything in my immediate vicinity that I even sort of liked or was interested in, and adopted them as pieces of my identity.

Part of recovery for me has been to disassemble all this confusion--the causes and passions I've collected--and turn them over and examine them and decide which of them are real. This has made for some difficult times with Jeff--I've realized that, actually, I think homeschooling is wonderful but I also have some deep feelings about why homeschooling is not so good. And the same about vegetarianism. And a multitude of other things--feminism, liberalism, lots of isms and also lots of passions. Singing, for instance, is something I Love, but not something I need to be pursuing with professional intensity. I've realized that, and we no longer spend money on voice lessons. For me they were therapy. They were the vehicle that brought me back to myself. I told jeff, when I married him, that we probably either needed to afford voice lessons or therapy. ANd that turned out to be right. When, after eight years of lessons with Dr. Bounous, we moved away, and I tried voice lessons with someone for a bit, it wasn't quite the same. I didn't "need" them anymore. What I needed was...

yeah. Therapy. And spiritual counseling.

Knowing yourself is an important step in recovery from emotional abuse. One of the greatest miracles and gifts about the counseling I've received over the last couple of years is that I was talking to someone who is a whole lot like me. I don't think I can convey adequately what a rarity that is. Do you know how many people I've met in my life who I feel i share even minimal traits with? It's an extremely rare thing for me to find someone I identify strongly with. My cousin Greg was one, and when he no longer came to family reunions, I ached and felt empty, because I felt nobody else around me really understood me. My parents didn't, my cousins, while hilarious and nice, really didn't either. My best friends didn't. I had friendships that were long-standing, but not deep and vulnerable. I often felt rejected by people, and as I grew up, I stepped away myself, from offering feelings and thoughts that were vulnerable, from offering friendship.

My friends. Growing up was an interesting experience. I had a best friend in gradeschool who was so good at being "good." Being perfect. I remember constantly feeling unworthy of her. She got perfect grades; I struggled to make C's in math. She kept her thoughts focused on higher laws than I did... I got curious about the world's less righteous elements and would examine and turn them over in my mind and try to understand them. I didn't feel safe going to her, or to my parents, with these sorts of observations because a "good" girl shouldn't be thinking of these things, should she? I should be more like my friend, who thinks about... I don't know. Tithing and fasting and the Book of Mormon all the time.

As I got into high school, that spectrum turned full circle on me. My friends were not very religious--one was, but most of the people willing to hang out with me weren't, because I was Mormon and most were strong Baptists or Protestants or other ants who believed Mormons to be risky to associate too closely with. SO then I became the "too unworldly to get close to" element in my friendships. I felt, from them, exactly what I had felt toward my elementary-school best friend. They sheltered me; they protected me. They kept me away.

I had one LDS friend who I was close to sort of, in high school. But the relationship was often difficult. She made fun of me a lot. About me being gullible, using words that were too big, being "weird." She was kind of merciless, actually. It got pretty wearing, but there were also great times with her. Plus, I cared about her, and knew she was struggling.

But her treatment of me was kind of typical for my acquaintances. Growing up, I more often got made fun of than anything else. I learned to fight back. In Jr High it got pretty intense. I had jr high boys telling me how ugly I was, others making fun of me for things like not shaving my legs (I wasn't allowed until I was 14), and even sexually harassing me. I learned quickly some terms that I'm pretty sure my prim-and-proper best friend was never subjected to. I'm not sure why me, and not her... we were both prude mormons. Maybe I seemed weaker. Or maybe it was because I didn't cry. Or maybe it was because occasionally, when I got to the breaking point, I'd let off a rather cutting retort, and they enjoyed the reaction. I don't know.

The point is, going into my abusive marriage, I already had pretty poor self-esteem. I already felt completely alone, I felt like nobody understood me, heck, I didn't understand myself. I didn't know who I was.

I'm learning now. Some revelations are welcome, others not-so-welcome. But one thing i've realized is, I've got nothing to be afraid of. I think that for a long time (most of my life, maybe) I was frightened that I was actually a terrible person inside, and that, because I tried so hard to be good but somehow still messed up and somehow still seemed weird and unacceptable to people, and because I had so many struggles with my family, I was *actually* essentially, bone-deep, inescapably, bad. It's hard to look inside yourself if you're terrified of what you're going to find.

I've been using Typology lately to try to understand myself and some of the more difficult interactions I've had with others. I don't think things like the MMPI and the MBTI and even the DSM-IV are bringers of truth. I don't think they describe anything real. I think they're tools that can be both helpful and incredibly dangerous--they can give you a starting point and provide a map or a list of more-likely-to-be-useful suggestions, but they can also be a basis for judging others and pigeonholing yourself.

So I'm not going to state what I've found from these measures here. Sufficient to say, I've come out on the rare side of things. I've learned, from these tools of self-reflection, that part of my problem is, there really aren't that many people who are like me on this planet. I'm an unusual person.

When I was younger I internalized this as "weird," I was a weird person. Unnaceptably, uncomfortably weird. When I walked into a crowded room I would become intensely aware of my appearance, my posture, I'd be incredibly anxious about how people might be made uncomfortable by me.

It got so bad, I noticed I wasn't looking anyone in the face. I had to give myself a goal, my senior year in high school, to smile at people if I passed them in the hall and I actually knew them. People started smiling back. It was a revelation to me... that if I made an effort, I could still be acceptable to people.

I'm weird, but weird doesn't necessarily mean bad. I'm re-realizing that. But two elements of my weirdness provide me with some real struggles right now. One, perhaps the most damning for me, is that I need people to be authentic. Any hint at deception, or game-playing, or lack of honesty and authenticity, and I struggle to want to associate with someone even on a superficial level. That's a problem because how many people are really authentic like that? Does that make them bad people? No. But to me, emotionally, it's the world falling, to find out someone I trusted to be honest with me has deceived me... even white-lie deceptions, even "I don't want to let you know what I'm really feeling," deceptions.

This has been, of course, vastly compounded by the experience I had, where I married someone I thought I knew, and he turned out to be something completely different. I still go back over all my interactions with him, when I knew him before we dated and while we were dating, to see "what I missed." I can't find anything. He very successfully deceived me. And that's unusual--generally I can read people very well (though interacting with them is a different matter.)

The other struggle I have is, I blame myself for everything that goes wrong. Everything. And logically I know that's not the case; I know I can't possibly be responsible for everything that happens. It generally takes two. Lately I've successfully been able to get through forgiving myself when I know I've done something wrong, and asking forgiveness from others.

The thing I struggle with is how to forgive others when I've done nothing to deserve the hurt that comes. WHen I've contributed, I find it very easy to apologize, to accept their apology and move on. When I've done nothing, I struggle to move on. I hold on to it without wanting to. And it seems to continue... hurt upon hurt hurt upon hurt in every new interaction with them.

I think part of it is, I struggle to *believe* that I haven't done something to deserve it. That's something that just doesn't fit into my mind right now. And so what happens is, I go back over and over the situation, find that I couldn't have done anything different, and feel like, therefore, I must be an essentially bad person, because even though I did my best, I still did something bad that resulted in the "punishment" of someone hurting me.

Anyway. More vulnerable thoughts. Not necessarily needing a response. But if you have any suggestions... if you've been able to overcome some of these things, I'd love a place to start. A more-likely list of possibilities.

In any case. I'm learning right now, that I'm OK. I'm a good person. I really am. Isn't the definition of being a good person, someone who tries their hardest to do what is right and be kind? Sure, we all mess up every once in a while. But part of being a good person is messing up and asking forgiveness, or messing up and figuring out how to do better the next time. That's what it's like to be a human, during this probationary period. That's the *point* of it.

On Problems

When I post from this blog on twitter, it always ends up on facebook with a giant picture of my face. Which I hate. I realized recently (when I posed a blog with pictures) that twitter just wants a picture from my post--any picture--and it will choose my face if I don't find something else to give it. So, from now on I'm including at least one picture in every post. One, possibly random, but still nice picture that twitter can decide to use instead of my face.

Random Birdwing Butterfly


Actually, that picture might get me in trouble because look, it has a logo. So it's not in the public domain. It was, however, one of a few I have saved on my laptop. The reason why I had this is I was talking with a good friend (whom I have talked about several times on this blog, who also happens to be my bishop) about random things and occasionally I will send him a picture of something we both like. We both like this butterfly because it has his favorite color in it and also my favorite color in it, and I love butterflies, and he has come to like butterflies because I love them. Anyway, I sent him this butterfly several days ago. So it's on my desktop. Random explanation for random picture.

And really what I'm doing now is stalling, because I don't want to write this post. But I kind of have to. It's one of those prompting things, and on facebook this meme came up--the Thomas S. Monson quote of "Never, ever ever postpone a prompting." Heavenly Father is telling me something this morning.

So, yeah. I'm about to get painfully vulnerable. Sorry, or you're welcome, or whatever it is I need to say to you about that.

This is a hard time of year for me. It's, as I've stated in previous years, the time that evokes my feelings in an anniversary reaction. People who've gone through trauma might know what I'm talking about--that around the same time of year, or on an anniversary, of something really difficult that has happened to you, you start feeling cruddy. Or sad. Or just, your feelings are really intense and they burden you and make it harder to cope.

I have been, this year, more unapologetic about it, and my needs during this time, which I think has allowed me to feel the full scope of emotions and deal with them, which is what needs to happen. I think anniversary reactions are there because it gives you a chance to sort through emotions--they're intense enough and are on the surface where other times they might be buried pretty deep. So I'm working on that right now.

I have spent a lot of time, this time, talking to my husband. And also talking to my bishop, he's found time each day to see me for around half an hour, and it has been very helpful. I just feel very, very grateful for such a good priesthood leader and friend. Have I said that before? Yes I have. But I need to say it again.

I have also spent a lot of time being emotional around my husband. Which is very difficult for me, but which I am grateful I'm actually capable of right now. Have I said what a miracle Jeffrey is in my life before? Yes I have, but it needs to be said over and over. He is the singular most miraculous thing that has ever happened or ever will happen to me.

Last night. It was actually a pretty terrible night--lots of feelings as I came away from the business of the day that keeps me occupied and paying less attention. Just really, really difficult feelings. And last night the smoke detector went off randomly and I woke up to some really difficult feelings, too--like an anxiety attack. I struggle with that. If I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep quickly, the racing, distorted thoughts take over and not only do I not get the rest I need, my mind basically is hurting itself. It makes me wonder if somehow my mind addresses lots of issues and concerns and stuff while I am sleeping so that I don't have to deal with it when I'm awake. I don't know. It's possible.

Anyway, I woke up all the way and had to deal with that.

And then when I finally fell back asleep, I had a very strange dream. I dreamed that someone in my family--an in-law--was talking with me and as they talked, I realized they were really struggling. And as we continued the conversation, I realized that, in fact, they were really, really, really struggling emotionally. Terrible struggles. Finally this person kind of threw out her hands and said, "Sarah, I don't understand. With everything you went through, how come you don't have big, big problems?"

And I thought about it. It kind of hit hard. I realized that to her, I seem like I'm awesome or strong or really functional or something and that she was feeling sort of crushed by her own comparison, because it seemed I was not struggling as she was, and why was she struggling when she didn't have an event like mine (few people do, let's face it) to pin struggles on?

So I told her, in my dream.

I do. I really, really really struggle. Life is not easy. It feels crushing, sometimes. But I think two things are what has saved me, and saved the emotional well-being of my family as we struggle. I decided, a long time ago, that I will never, ever do two things. No matter how bad things get, I will never do two things. I will never

1) Leave my family.

That means I will never physically leave them, but it also means I will never do anything that is tantamount to leaving them. Like leaving the church, because that is leaving the covenant I made with them--that is leaving them in the eternity, in a way. It also means I will never commit sins that will keep me from being with them, or will break our family apart.

and I will never:

2) take my own life.

When I was young, my mother told me the story of her cousin. His dad (my great uncle) drank. He was not a good person to be around when he drank. My cousin felt like his life was pretty terrible and so at age twelve, he took his father's shotgun into the barn and shot himself.

I think that this, and also my grandmother's death at a young age, put the fear of God in my mother at the thought of this happening--to anyone she loved, to herself. She sees life as a precious and priceless gift, not one you should ever throw away. And as she reiterated to me and my siblings, like a mantra, growing up, "it always, always, always gets better. Always. Don't do something stupid because of a bad moment."

So even though I really do struggle, and I sometimes fall into a really deep pit of negative emotions--life is worthless, I am worthless, nobody loves me, this world would be better if I'm gone, etc; I know that ending it's not the answer. I know that what would happen in that case is, I would wake up on the other side and immediately think "what a stupid thing I did," and then I'd have to watch my family mourn and struggle and be betrayed and traumatized and then, eventually, move on.

Sorry. This is pretty gritty. I warned you, though.

So I want to tell the internets, and whomever I'm supposed to be writing to right now that, yes, I struggle. I struggle to the point, on occasion, where I can't get out of bed. I struggle to the point where I don't react well to my family--I have to isolate so I don't do damage because I know I'm not reacting correctly. I have to bite my lip or bite my tongue and not. say. a word. Because I know that the feelings I'm having and the words that would come out of my mouth would not be words I'd say if I were in my right mind.

I struggle with intense feelings of anxiety, paranoia, self-loathing. And there are some situations (like at church, unfortunately) when the negative emotions are just an assault at times--like being caught in a tornado, all I can do is let it pass and sort of wait. And hopefully not do any damage in the meantime by reacting inappropriately.

Yeah. I have big problems, guys. I really am pretty messed up. And I feel it, in full measure, at this time of the year when the leaves change and the air gets cold and instead of getting excited for school starting and apple cider and fall colors and Halloween and staying inside in the warm and looking out at the cold and all those wonderful things that used to fill my emotional experience during this time, I feel like the world is falling apart. And what I do to cope is, I hug my babies. I hug my kids. I hug my husband. I hug my bishop, I hug my young women, I hug my friends. I stay quiet except to those who I know I can talk to about it without destabilizing them (and hopefully nobody reading this blog falls into that category), who want me to talk about it because they love me and they just want me to talk to them about stuff I'm feeling.

OK. I'll leave this post on that note:

you need to know, person struggling. The people who love you, love you. Talk to them. They want you to--even if your mind is telling you they don't, that you shouldn't because you shouldn't burden people with the pain inside.... it is a lot more pain for them to know you're struggling, and to not have you trust and talk to them and let them help you feel better. OK? OK.

--and yes, I am fine. No need to send me texts or messages or anything else. LIke I said, I'm just writing this because I feel like I'm supposed to. Why am I fine? Read numbers 1 and 2 above.

Love you all.

People Just Don't Understand

I'm sorry, but I can't do this anymore. I need to explode all over the place. It is time.
Regular readers, this is not directed at you, and I apologize in advance for drama and negativity. ANd also what will maybe seem to be an adolescent rehearsal of wrongs.




Recently my therapist (yes, I see one) (in fact, I see two if you count my bishop, who is more like a best-friend and Dad-figure but he's pretty much a therapist) told me something significant.

I really have struggled in my ward. OK. Full disclosure. I've tried not to write much about it, because even hinting at struggles with neighbors has caused some backlash and drama. But I'm at a sort of breaking point, now. I need to talk about it. So if you're reading this and embarrassed i would talk about something, maybe there's a reason. That's all I can come up with right now.

Since I came here, I have loved so many things about this place. There are great, great people in my town. SO many great people. More than I've ever seen collected in one place--down-to-earth, willing-to-serve, head-screwed-on-correctly people.

There's also this handful of people who enjoy drama, enjoy talking about others, and enjoy making others' life hard. You know those groups... mostly women, who function as a sort of hive, with a queen bee (or perhaps two, constantly engaged in a power struggle) and a bunch of satellites? Bees are actually not dangerous creatures. When there's one of them. But a whole hive can kill you with a hundred little stings.

One of my young women gave a very up-front, frank talk in Sacrament meeting on Sunday. She basically said, "you guys have a problem. IT's gossip and judging others. Stop it." She basically gave the distilled version of this talk, which I have, in the past year, been tempted multiple times to print off, roll up, and stick in certain doorways in our ward. And not just because of me. Because of what I've heard said about others, ranging from negative and snide speculation over a very tragic and painful divorce that occurred to condescending remarks about how a few young mothers are parenting their children, to discussion of mistakes people have made, to facebook conversations accusing people of dishonesty that involved several members of the ward.

So, to take things back several years. I went through something terrible when myfirst husband's confession became a matter of public record. What happened was, suddenly everybody was talking about me. Not just in the ward, not just in the stake... the entire state of Utah. In the newspaper. On the radio. On the television. And at school, too... I heard conversations, behind me in class, speculating on the tragedy that had just struck in my life. ANd speculating in joking, not-too sympathetic ways.

People failed me. Let's just say that. Even really, really nice christlike people judged me, and treated me like part of this was somehow my fault. And I realize that is just human nature--it's a way of them feeling safe, feeling like it can't happen to them, that they assume I did something to bring it on myself--I was a cold wife, perhaps. Maybe I wasn't accommodating in bed. Maybe I wasn't attractive.... that was the tenor of several comments on the article that appeared in the daily universe (and then was recanted when my picture was posted above the next article.) Maybe I knew about my husband's habit and gave him an ultimatum. Maybe I was emotionally abusing him. Maybe..... there's lots of maybe.

That's why tragedy should remain private, why you should be able to choose who to counsel with, who to trust with what you are going through. Groups of people can be cruel, and often are. Even nice BYU students.... the need to joke about something horrible, I understand that.

This is why gossip is such a bad thing. It hurts those already hurting. It makes their burden much bigger, and the burden's already too much. It spreads, and infects even those who have good intentions, and separate those hurting from their natural support group, from the sympathy of those around them.

Lies hurt.

And gossip, guys. Gossip is always a lie. Because you never know what someone is going through. You never know what's in their heart. You never know the real details of their situation and even if you did, you aren't putting yourself in a place to understand if your intent is to spread ill-feeling, or spread excitement about detailing the difficulties and mistakes others are going through.

So, to the person who is constantly calling different city departments about any and everything they've decided we aren't doing right, from deciding to irrigate our lot to having a dog that barks too much to building an attached greenhouse to not being able to mow our lawn as often as you'd like--

Stop it.


To the person who eviscerated me on facebook, and stalked out of meetings, and basically made me feel like crap for just imperfectly trying to do a job that is very hard, and who talked to several in my ward about how you thought my book had exploited details of your own personal tragedy (when I gave it to you as a peace offering, trying to reconcile and help you understand I am a good person)--

Stop it.

To the person who served with me and expected me to be perfect, and when I failed inevitably at being perfect, took advantage of that, worked around me, decided not to listen to me, and when I snapped and said something out of frustration, came over to my house and verbally eviscerated me for an hour and a half, and never responded to my attempts to reconcile afterward--

Stop it.

To the person who I reached out to because we were serving together, who I needed support from both in the calling and as a friend, and who rejected all attempts at friendship, made their distaste very clear and then, on top of that, accused me of "harassing" them for texting them a handful of times over the period of two years--

You hurt me. You were perfectly within your right to say and do what you did, but I don't think it's what Heavenly Father wanted. I'm still hurt by you.


Going back to the beginning. I have gone through a lot. And I'm trying, right now, to recover. That means I am visibly struggling at times... I can't always smile. I can't always function. I am trying *so hard*. And I feel judged for breaking, as I'm breaking.

People don't understand that.

I have had to seek a great deal of counsel from my bishop in order to restore a lot of my trust in priesthood leaders, and my relationship with him has developed into something like father and daughter.

People don't understand that, either, and have accused me of being selfish, using up too much of my bishop's time, and being inappropriate. One in particular yelled at me, "Go see a therapist."

You know what? I AM seeing a therapist. Thank you very much. I'm sorry that the fact that I was married to a porn addict who tried to kill me and my unborn child three times, and my story ended up in the newspaper, and my priesthood leaders failed me (not intentionally, it was hard for them, too), and people betrayed me, and I lived in a state of stress and blocked emotion for ten years, and am only just now recovering and a lot of times it ain't pretty, is a problem for you. Have you considered the fact that it's an even bigger problem for me? That faith is what I'm clinging to? That my husband and bishop are basically keeping me alive right now? That often, the fact that I've shown up on Sunday with a smile on my face, ready to plan a pile of things and invite a ton of people and coordinate the conflicting desires of several leaders, is an impossible achievement for me, made possible only by the antonement and the *support and counsel* of said bishop?

Do you see how hard I'm trying?

NO, because people don't understand. NOt even if they know my entire story, will they understand. SOme people just enjoy eating drama for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and in order to make their own difficult lives worth living, they stand on the tragedy and difficulty of others and find comfort in looking down on them.


The thing my therapist said to me: Even if they know everything, Sarah. Even if they knew every little detail--they still aren't in your shoes. They still don't feel what you're feeling. They still don't KNOW. And some, won't understand, and won't care.


The thing is... it shouldn't matter. We should all be giving each other the benefit of the doubt. We should all be reaching out to each other in love. We should all be proffering forgiveness.

So.... please, everbody. Person calling the city. Girl who ripped me apart. Girl who accused me of harassment. People who speculate about my divorce, my greenhouse, my lawn, my close relationship with my bishop....

Please stop it.

And....


i will try to forgive you. But I am not perfect.

How to Weather Hard Winters

One of my favorite books ever, like in my list of "top five", is The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I've read that she originally titled it "the Hard Winter," but her publisher had her change it, because he felt it was too harsh, the concept of "hard" vs "long."

As many of you know, the stories Ingalls wrote were autobiographical; what we'd call "creative nonfiction," nowadays, though she is such an accomplished writer, they read like novels. This particular section of Ingalls life-story stands apart from the others in the "Little House" series because it depicts a very difficult time for her family and for her little town. In The Long Winter we read about what it is like to go through near-starvation, death of exposure, being isolated on the Dakota prairie, during a wild and terrible time, from every help except for what the settlers in their little town could provide each other.

Therefore, we read of bravery. Sacrifice. Blind, dogged courage. I have two favorite parts of the story. The first is when Almanzo Wilder goes with a friend into the wilderness, under threat of deadly blizzards, to find food for the citizens in the town. The second is more relevant to what I'm writing about today: when Pa goes into the Wilder boys' store and offers a quarter for some grain he's savvy enough to know is hidden in their walls. He doesn't ask. But he also doesn't fight for it. He goes in, quietly, humbly, and tells them to fill his bucket with wheat for a quarter, so his family can eat for another few days.

Laura is the able-bodied member of her family. The Ingallses didn't have any sons, and so often it is her, going out with her father and helping him with the necessary tasks. She works hard to help her family survive.

And they do. In the end, the train gets through because of spring melt and the help of hordes of men shoveling off the tracks, and they get their Christmas turkey several months late. This story sends a very clear message--to survive, you need to pull together. You need to support each other. The very best and the very worst sides of human nature come out when people are fighting to survive. And those who make it are those who support and serve each other and accept service in return. Pa was a proud man, but he went into the Wilder boys' store with a quarter and an empty bucket because he had children to feed. Almanzo was going to get through the winter just fine, but he went off into the dangerous wilderness to find more food because he knew he would not be able to watch his friends starve around him.

....


I think back on some hard times of my own. I think one of my biggest failings has been my inability to ask for or receive service. It is a matter of pride. Some of us have pride that involves comparison to others' appearances, possessions, residences, professions etc. That has never been my problem. I personally wouldn't mind living in a cardboard box on the side of the road if I had to, if my family were still happy and healthy and well fed. Some of my friends could attest to that... I have a mild (or not so mild) obsession with tents and camping and backpacking. What I love is the simplicity of carrying all that you need with you. Not needing much at all to get by. I've been very blessed, however, not to have to live that way as a necessity. Perhaps my perspective would be different if I did.

However that is also my problem and my own personal brand of unrighteous pride--that sense of simplicity, of being able to get by on my own; priding myself in independence from others. I have struggled, in my life, to accept service because I feel frightened at the thought of not being able to get by on my own. Of having to depend on others. What if they fail me? And what if I can't give them anything back in return? Does that make me a broken, incapable person who always takes but never gives? Does it make me selfish and self-centered, that people serve me?

I have, however, gone through seasons in my life just like that hard winter the Ingallses weathered, where accepting help was necessary to my survival emotionally, physically, etc. And I wouldn't have been able to accept it even then, if it weren't for Loli.

for Loli's sake, I accepted a lot of things.

After everything fell apart and I found myself a divorced single parent, full-time student, part-time employee, I realized I literally could not do it on my own. I needed, for instance, someone to watch her while I finished my degree, and while I earned the money necessary to feed, house, and clothe us. And even then, I didn't make enough money to do so on my own. My parents bought a condo, which I lived in, rent-free, for two years.

During this time, I had a difficult schedule--get up at 4:45, drive Loli to Santaquin (because it was the only childcare we both felt comfortable with), get to work by 5:45, work with dozens of women struggling with tragedy, emotional upheaval, overwhelming anxiety and depression until 6pm, drive back to Santaquin by 6:45, get home by 7:30, play with Loli for an hour and give her dinner, get her to bed by 9. That was three to four days of my week.

The other days I spent trying to take care of the "everything else", taking care of my little girl and focusing on her during the time I had with her and also on bills, car maintenance, cleaning, shopping for groceries, and, eventually, dating my husband.

I look back on those years and the feeling I get from them is just.... emergency. I was constantly high-strung, constantly putting out fires. Like when our only car broke and the shop told us it was a new head-gasket (turned out they were trying to get money... I took it somewhere else and they bled an air bubble out of the radiator for free), and I was at work trying to focus on my job while trying not to worry about transportation and trying not to worry about Loli and how she was doing and whether she was being treated right and whether she was eating and whether I was spending enough time with her.... you get the picture.

I look back on my own "hard winter" and wonder what it says about me.

I learned how to accept a little bit of help and service--the stuff I had to accept for bare survival. I wasn't, however, always the best employee. I was too stressed out. Stressed to the max. And in an environment where everyone is professional... where maybe a few are enduring their own "hard winters" but everyone keeps it all to themselves... it's not quite the same, I don't think. It's not a community pulling together. It's a few people floundering to themselves in a mass of humanity all trying to figure out how to be best at what they're doing.

I didn't do as well as I could have. Well, the thing is, I did as well as I *could* have, in the situation. But people I worked with didn't get the "best" me, if that makes sense. And neither did Loli.

I look back on those experiences and wonder how I could have functioned better. I think it would have involved going to people for help instead of staying stubbornly independent and to myself. The Lori Hacking story broke during that time. And I was feeling some very strong fears, angers, and grieving. What if I had gone to my supervisor and talked to her, instead of staying behind the nursing station all day and isolating and not talking to anyone, including the patients I was supposed to be helping? What if, instead of presenting a hard, blank face to the world and keeping a wall between myself and others, I was being honest and open and vulnerable. Like "here is what I have to do this week. Just so you know." And then letting people talk back about their own stuff, and commiserating, and strategizing together... that is the stuff of which friendships are made. Of which functional, supportive communities are made.

The thing is, it has been a hard journey for me to be able to be open that way. I think my problem is, if something difficult is going on in my life, my default is to blame myself for it, to believe that I deserve it. So I feel shame, and keep it to myself. I am working on that.

I have realized, however, that some people also do not welcome vulnerability. They would rather stay in their shells and struggle alone. They feel threatened by others' sharing.

And some want to serve, and not be served in return. To them (and to me, I'll admit it) being served is giving up too much control. When someone does something for you, what might be their motive? What do they expect from you in return?

You can think of it that way, or you can see it as a symbol of something much more powerful and important. We are all the vessels of God's grace for each other. Sometime, at some point in your life, you will go through a season (more likely multiple seasons) of needing the service of others. You can either accept it and be whole, or push it away and struggle and not be as whole as God would like you to be.

In order to be strong enough to serve others, you need to accept service yourself. That is the beautiful, (sometimes, it feels like, horrible, but really, like anything really difficult, it's redeeming), truth to it all.

And how do you think someone feels about you after they serve you? Let me tell you from experience. They love you more. ANd they love you in a way that is Godly--they love you as someone they have served. It's a sort of love that runs deep, that infuses your relationship with forgiveness and mercy and longsuffering.

As anyone who has read the LIttle House series knows, Almanzo Wilder eventually married Laura. And I have wondered... how much of that feeling, that warmth he had for her that lead him to court her, came from the incident of filling her father's empty bucket?

RE Feminism: Sister Oscarson, Kate Kelly, and Small, Tired Me.

I’m sad about this Kate Kelly thing.

It is hard to be a moderate feminist in the church. Some people tell me I shouldn’t label myself. A long time ago I wrote a post about why I call myself a feminist.

I feel like moderate feminists are in a tough spot right now, because of Kate Kelly and Ordain Women and other movements that basically sideline more moderate views. I feel like I have been called a lot of things lately by these more extreme feminist elements in the church—oppressed, ignorant. Uneducated. Unaware of church history, etc. All those things are inaccurate. Up until a couple of years ago, I participated occasionally in a large, well-known forum where women from the church gathered to discuss women's issues. I liked about 30% of what I read there, struggled with 30% and got sick of the drama that was the other 40%. I left that group when someone told me how wrong it was that I had so many children and that I must not know how to use birth control. (I don’t think anybody who says that truly realizes what they’re saying. Which of my children are you saying I should wish I don’t have?)

And so it is hard to find opportunities to discuss these things that are so important to me (how to help women worldwide, help for the spouses of pornography addicts (often women), help for women who are abuse victims, help for women who struggle with eating disorders, how to prevent these sorts of things from happening to the rising generation of young women, who I love with all my heart) among the general population of the church, without being sidelined and labeled as an extremist myself.

I think it’s hard to be a moderate anything these days.

I feel badly for Kate Kelly.I feel badly for all the women who are struggling because of this, feeling small, like they can’t speak up and be heard. That frustrates me. You CAN speak up and be heard. You CAN have opinions. As Kate Kelly’s bishop said (in the private letter provided so willingly to the media) the problem is not how you feel, what you wonder about, what you wish could happen, or your own answers to prayers and personal revelation you feel you’ve had. The problem is when you start telling people that your opinions are the right ones. When you start ridiculing others for disagreeing with you. When you start to accuse people because they aren’t giving you exactly what you want, right now, and you start talking to others about why this is a bad thing and stirring up peoples' doubts, fears, and pain to gain followers for a cause you've adopted in opposition to those who are actually in charge of figuring these things out church-wide. Personal revelation: that's yours. Revelation for the church? It'd be chaos if everybody decided suddenly they could receive revelation for the church.

In the wake of all this, I feel like things have gotten disingenuous. Sorry. I know that I’m judging. But I feel like some of the actions—providing everything to the press, not going to your own disciplinary counsel and instead submitting hundreds of letters from “followers” and a legal brief detailing exactly why church discipline doesn’t stand up to some sort of contract concocted by someone who’s read some version of the church handbook and extrapolated to create “rules” nobody has agreed to—show that a person isn’t much interested in remaining. It shows that you're finding plenty of support and fellowship from followers, and that is what is important to you. I might be wildly wrong, but that is what I feel burdened by, reading all this stuff.

I guess I’m mostly frustrated with a phenomenon, not a particular person. In short: NO I don’t want the priesthood. And I am fine with how the church is structured, I believe it is inspired, and I do my level best to manage my own heartbreak and pain over very real events that have damaged my trust in priesthood holders. And that does not make me ignorant, oppressed, or uninformed. I have had too many experiences with priesthood that are significant and real to not have a testimony of it. I have had answers to prayers that are unequivocal. That is where I’m at.

I’m OK with where you’re at, wherever that is—extreme on either side, moderate, or even ambivalent or not needing an answer. And what I wish: that we could all be ok with where we’re all at, and not judge each other. From any side. When I choose friends, I don’t look for a set of beliefs that match mine. I look for genuine people who are compassionate. I do enjoy certain traits: people who work hard, people who don’t complain, people who are open-minded. But those aren’t requirements for my friendship. I enjoy people, period.

I feel like this whole thing with Kate Kelly had been very hard and painful to watch. And I hope the aftereffects don’t make life harder for people who question. Because we need questioners in our church. Questions are how you get a testimony. If you have nothing to bring to God, you can’t get any answers in return.
I also hope the aftereffects don’t make life harder for people who willingly obey. Because it is no less hard for us—those journeys of testimony. We’ve had struggles, too. We’ve had our moments of wanting to give up. We’re not ignorant or uniformed, and we’re not close-minded.

This video by Sister Oscarson, our General Young Women president,exemplifies to me how we should act toward each other, no matter what our beliefs and circumstances are, no matter what sort of testimony we have. No matter what our standing is with the church (or outside the church. This isn’t just about church members, it’s about EVERYONE.)

Goals are sometimes very very hard

This blog has become a semi self-documentary on my recovery. I'm not sure why that is. I think I know why, actually. I used to put blogging and journaling aside in times of turmoil, because I have this strange relationship with the concept of honesty--I feel like if I'm writing only about the things in my life/events that are happy and funny and impersonal, I'm not being honest. ANd others who are struggling will come read about my life and feel miserable because they'll be like, why is HER life so perfect? I must be a crappy person to have to go through so much stuff.

I admit a small, immature part of me feels that way in the presence of people who seem to always be living happy little lives full of scrapbooky stuff.

In the past (before this last year or so) I would deal with that sort of dissonance (what do I blog about when I'm going through significant struggles) by leaving the blog alone and not writing at all. But that made me feel bad, too. I love writing on here. And I don't want there to be giant gaps on here in my childrens' development, in my life. So here we go, writing about everything. I guess.

I've gotten some judgy comments on a couple posts. I guess that happens when you open yourself up by writing about personal stuff. There's a facebook meme that goes: don't want to be judged? Then stop putting your personal crap all over facebook.

Well, I feel like putting my personal crap (enough to be real, but not so much that I feel like I'm sharing things that I can't come back from emotionally if people criticize) on the internet actually helps me, because I think of myself ten years ago, and how it would have helped that girl to be reading about someone's recovery. It makes me feel like there might be a purpose to all this.

So in my last couple of personal-crap posts, I talked about how I'm trying to open myself up and trust.

It's really hard. What I *want* to do right now (particularly walking into church meetings) is to sit by myself and glare at people. So instead of doing this

my heart seems sometimes to be pulling me in the direction of this.

some things have happened that really haven't helped. I won't talk about them here.

One thing I've realized lately is, I really, really do not trust easily. It is so hard. It's like weight lifting--I have to actively force myself not to assume things. My mind bends itself into a hundred twisty assumptions whenever something makes me insecure in an interaction with another person. My struggle is, I worry all the time that I'm offending others accidentally. I have to actively work to unbend those thoughts. Sometimes I need to do that without even asking questions or clarifying. A person I'm talking to lately said it like this: take everything at face value. Don't read anything into what people say or do. Yes, sometimes that will come back to bite you. But what sort of life is happier: a life where your'e always assuming you've hurt others all the time and being right a fraction of the time, or assuming you're at peace with everyone, that people are fine with you, and being wrong a fraction of the time?

It's a powerful concept.

One that is sometimes very difficult to apply in real life.

I feel like I'm a person who really has been mostly knotted up tight inside--so tight, I did not even know what I felt for a while. And now, I'm still unknotting. I probably do seem quite spiny to people at times right now. But I am doing my best, and so I need to forgive myself for that. You can only do so much at once.

We've had several weeks of sickness in our house. I love my children, and am grateful I get to be the one to help them. It is also exhausting. To me (I am coming to realize) the most exhausting thing in the world is to feel stuck and unable to do things. Like clean, or finish projects, or continue to plug away at projects. I got a total of 4,000 words in last week--I have to remind myself that I was taking care of a sick baby, so that is OK. My time was legitimately spent. It is OK that I spent hours on end looking into my baby's face and enjoying some down time. Maybe I *need* down time and that is why my family got sick. I don't know. Heavenly Father has a funny way of making important things happen.

Goals are great. We need to forgive ourselves when we can't do it all at once. We need to remember that a destination is important, but the road is where we spend most of our time. And that is OK. And we need to have peace in the journey.

Sort of a part V-- Grateful Reflections in the aftermath of life explosions.

SO I've posted some difficult stuff lately. About struggles with my family, and ward, and bishops. Now that I've got all that out of the way, I want to fall back and enumerate some truly great things people have done for me and been for me. Nobody's perfect--like Oaks said, we're all imperfect appliances. But (as I've stated before) I have a truly great family, and my ward and also my bishop at the time of Paul, were/are also truly great people. I think they're due for some praise and gratefulness.

I'm going to number this just because it makes me think better sometimes to number things.

1) My Dad. Who I've talked about struggling with. Some wonderful things about him (other than what I've already said about him being brilliant, creative, funny, and someone who really loves me) is also an amazing piano player. One thing I always cherish with him is time when he plays the piano and I can sing. Want to know how I found my voice? (and it's a pretty belty voice... and has been since I was probably a 7-th grader). It's because I could sing freely while my Dad played because i know he loved me and our time together was special. While my dad's love language isn't the same as mine, he does do a lot of things to show people he loves them. He serves people, quietly, with no expectation of praise or returned favors. He also never, ever says things vindictively about others. He doesn't gossip. And if he has a problem with someone, he can still appreciate their good points.

2) My Mom. I've written poems about her. She is a person I'd love to be like. I like to call her a rennaisance woman. She can do anything creative. She throws herself into projects and is talented at just about everything she tries hard at. She is a woman (like I've said before) with a big heart and no chip on her shoulder--she'll come and clean poodle poo off your floor if you're wheelchair-bound and your six elderly poodles need cleaning up after. She is loyal. She is always on the lookout for the underdog, or for people who are lonely or are maybe in need of more help than others realize, and she does all she can to help. She helped nurse my great grandmother through the last stages of her life, even though it was not easy. She works really, really hard to make sure another of my grandmas, who is currently struggling a lot, is as happy as possible, and she takes the difficulties she faces silently, without returning hurt for hurt or feeling a need to defensively gossip. She is an inspiration to me that way. I wish I had her bravery to serve people without apology. She also is a master-organizer. She organized and put together and ran all the big events for my high school choir for years, and was willing to do even the hard jobs nobody else wanted to do, like chastise kids on Europe trips for buying stuff they shouldn't :) My mom is a rock star and she doesn't get a whole lot of recognition, except from those who love her and know her well enough to know who she is.

3) My sisters and brother. They are hilarious and brilliant and when I'm with them, I feel like I'm a member of some cool tribe. We have a sense of humor (my grandmother curtis's sense of humor) that is just its own flavor. Aaaand we do great things together. My siblings are very talented at a lot of things and they choose very interesting things to do in life and aren't afraid to dream big, or be themselves. Sometimes this has earned them some eyebrow raises or even disapproval--watching them do what they do and be what they are anyway, and still have very strong testimonies they wouldn't give up for any reason, or person, makes me feel grounded in my own love of the gospel of Christ.

4) Bishops and ward members. Specifically at the time I've been outlining lately--when all went down with Paul.
Despite my struggles with the bishop (which were because of all the circumstances already related... everything so messed up and stressful) I have a lot of admiration for this person. I know him still, and have gotten to know him better over the years. We have some association because of common interest groups, online and in other ways. He is a very good person. He's had trauma of his own. He is very loving and giving and really, a very sensitive person overall. Who was thrown into a very difficult situation. The last interaction I had with him, he actually came to my home (some ward members were over and we'd just cleaned it, ready to move me to my new apartment.) He handed me a book--the compilation from the Women's Conference that had just ended. And he said, 'I feel like I haven't been the best bishop to you.' and I could see how much he wished things had worked out better. I do, too. He is a good man. And I know we both learned a lot from our time together.

Ward members: People were so kind to me. One person brought me by some Christmas pretzel chocolates right when I needed reassurance. People still involved me in baby showers and such. My home teachers, one of the experiences with them that was quite hilarious was when a big media van pulled up in front of my house, and one couple distracted them while I sneaked out the back & headed over to the other couple's house. It was a bit double o seven ish. To be able to laugh at something so stressful was a relief. We even turned the TV on to see the news to see if they were still trying to film my house. People let me visit teach them. One relief society, the teacher dispensed with the lesson (right after story broke) and said she thought we should just sing hymns the whole time. I felt that was for me. The sister sitting next to me told me what a beautiful voice she thought I had. I needed to hear that. I will always be grateful for my relief society president who came over and mopped my floor, and then took walks with me, both of us hauling our baby strollers. I appreciate them and a couple who lived next to them, who invited me over occasionally to talk to me and laugh with me.

And on top of that, I now appreciate all the people who have written me to express how they wanted to help, even though they weren't sure how, but that they were thinking of me. I know that made a difference. Maybe one plus in having my story all over the place was I had a whole bunch of people praying for me.

One sunday, I was informed that the entire provo police department was fasting for me.

So.... I guess what I'm saying is, difficulty is difficulty. We go through crap. People aren't perfect. But they are still wonderful. Even people who make things hard are wonderful. I'm sure I've accidentally (or maybe on purpose, I don't know) made things hard for others. I hope they can forgive me, and I hope that whatever harm I've done, can be healed eventually. I'm grateful for healing. I'm grateful for people.

I'm grateful for my voice teacher, who became my friend and who gave me blessings. And who taught me to find my voice again, and who has continued to be a wonderful friend forever.

I'm grateful to the people who watched Loli with such love and care, and who weren't awkward about it at all, who I felt were my friends.

I'm grateful for psych professors who didn't condescend to me or mention anything, even though I'm sure they knew who I was and what I was going through.

I'm grateful to a guy I dated (between Paul and Jeff) who helped me realize I was a desirable person to date, and a fun person to be around, and who helped me gain the courage I needed to date my husband when that happened.

I'm grateful for random ward members (especially ones who cooked lots of Indian food and gifted me with a homemade-cool ball thingie) (and later moved here where I can be their friends now still) who took Loli when I needed to go to the temple or some other appointment.

I'm grateful to teachers and classmates who expressed concern.

I'm grateful to the people at my work, and my boss, who put up with me not always being the greatest employee, and who moved me (illegally, using work vans) into my new apartment, on work hours. Because they wanted to make sure I was OK. They made me feel very loved and supported.

I'm grateful to my (now cousin-in-law,) who convinced me it wasn't selfish or inappropriate of me to try attending the singles' ward, where I met my wonderful husband.

I'm grateful to lawyers and therapists who worked with me, I suspect, partly pro-bono.

I'm grateful to a bishop who advocated for me, even though I wasn't supposed to be attending the singles' ward, and whose grin kind of split his face open when he attended Jeff's and my post-sealing luncheon.

I'm grateful for whoever anonymously donated 1000 as a "scholarship" for me one semester, and enabled me, along with some help from my grandparents as well, to buy a vehicle to replace the one that had so many bad memories, and also not very good gas mileage, and was safer to drive.

I'm grateful to a former YW leader for her show of support and help.

I'm grateful for Elder Groberg too, who I am sure prayed for me. And who, I'm sure, wanted me to make the right choices.

I know I've missed lots and lots of you. Sorry about that. It's like numbering grains of sand. I know you're there. I'm grateful for the warmth and support I stood on, and continue to stand on.

I'm just grateful, is all, and Merry Christmas to everybody. Love you all.

Parts 1-5 of this post:

Part 1



Part 2


Part 3

Part 4

Part 5