Dear Jamie,

Thanks for your message and all its supportive affirmations. I must admit

when you’re in the midst of this healing process it’s very difficult to keep

a realistic perspective on your own ‘progress’. To have such positive

feedback is therefore very encouraging. I think healing is never a straight

path and often brings with it a huge amount of confusion. It’s not always

easy to see what actually represents ‘progress’, particularly when there are

so many muddled thoughts and feelings to contend with. Only another person

can perhaps identify changes in our attitudes and behaviour which we may

still be unaware of.

As I dialogue with my inner child and assure her of my continuing support

for her I am conscious of a growing sense of my own wholeness. Giving this

childhood part of me the freedom to feel, think and speak as she wishes

allows her to know that I value her and her experiences, painful though they

were. I’m listening to myself in a way I’ve never dared to do before. By

choosing over and over again to open myself up to the reality of my past I

realise that I am gradually letting it go as I integrate my past self into

my present self and heal that soul-destroying division. Strong emotions can

still be the order of the day. I think, however, I am now gaining a greater

measure of control as I acknowledge that it is my choice to allow these

feelings to surface: it is my choice to express them both verbally and in my

writings: it is my choice having learned some aspect of the truth from them

to finally let them go on their way.

Perhaps I’m making this sound a little too simple! From day to day some days

are easier than others. I can feel quite buoyant on occasion only to slump

into a mass of negativity a short time later. Hence the path is more peaks

and troughs than a straight highway! The main thing is that I’m taking

responsibility for the path I’m on and am committed to following it wherever

it leads me.

You asked me about grief and what things I thought I should grieve for. I

think now that I’ve begun to emotionally and psychologically separate myself

from my parents I am mainly grieving for myself: for everything that I lost

as a child and for the loss of my childhood itself. I had to sacrifice so

much of that open-eyed, open-hearted spontaneity and wonder that children

naturally have. Once hurt and confusion dominate your landscape you have

little option except to ‘batten down the hatches’ and concentrate your whole

being on avoiding psychic death. You become isolated from your real self,

isolated from other people and isolated from life in general.

To be honest, however, I’m amazed at how much of that instinct we are born

with to reach out to the world, to want to share ourselves and to seek

oneness in everything, still remains. True, it’s buried beneath layers of

repressive self-defence and protective barriers which my wounded child

erected in order to survive. But the instinctive need to love and be loved

still lives on!

I suppose I am grieving for all my childhood self had to give up of her own

being: for the loss of that naturally beautiful and gracious person she was

designed to be and for all that she was given to gift the world with. I

think it’s very tempting sometimes to see abuse as having somehow

irrevocably ‘ruined’, ‘defiled’ or ‘distorted’ me for ever. Gradually I’m

beginning to understand that I haven’t irretrievably lost the ‘unspoilt’

being I was when I came into the world. She still exists and is recoverable.

She just went into hiding!

Perhaps this all sounds a little too fanciful. Perhaps it’s simply a

reflection of my need to see my self as essentially ‘good’ after so many

heartbreaking years of thinking of myself as ‘evil’ or ‘bad’. I’m not sure

it actually matters what my sentiments are, so long as they affirm my real

self.

I hope these reflections make some sense to you!