Pamela Taeuffer's Blog, page 3
March 20, 2014
Why Am I Afraid of Sex and Intimacy
IN THIS SCENE NICKY YOUNG, OUR YOUNG WOMAN COMING OF AGE, SITS WITH HER NEW WOMEN FRIENDS AND MENTORS, TARA SUMMERS AND ALEXANDRA FLOWERS, WIFE AND FIANCE TO MATT AND DARRELL SWEET, PROFESSIONAL PITCHERS ON THE SAN FRANCISCO GOLIATHS BASEBALL TEAM.
NIKCY HAS JUST SHARED WITH ALEX THAT HER FATHER IS AN ALCOHOLIC, AND BEGINS TO REFLECT INWARD ON HER PROBLEMS OF MAKING NEW RELATIONSHIPS AND HER CHALLENGES ABOUT HAVING SEX.
To finally share the information with someone I trusted, who was another adult, was such a relief, and in doing so, I cemented the relationship with my two new women friends.
"This is an escape as much as a hope that Stanford will acknowledge me," I said. "My dad and sister argue and fight all the time, and my mom is just, somewhere else. I wanna get out of there."
"What about you?" Alex asked. "What's your relationship like with your Dad?"
"I love him, but he's made me . . ." I stumbled to find the word.
"Numb?" she asked knowingly.
"Yeah," I said.
"I know, Sweetheart," she said patting my back, "I know."
How do you know?
When Tara joined us, Alex excused herself to check on my teammates.
"What's your routine like tonight?" Tara asked. Both she and Alex were yell leaders in high school and working with cheer routines was second nature for them.
As I stood up, waving my hands in the air to demonstrate, the Goliaths were on the field taking batting practice, shagging balls, and doing their sprints and stretches.
"Looks like you guys have it down," Tara said. "I'll be watching to make sure I don't see anything you need to work out. If I do, you can all come over to my house and we'll review it."
When I sat down, I noticed Ryan Tilton, who was a pitcher, the game closer, for the Goliaths, looking at me as he ran to catch fly balls and then throw them back to the infield.
Ryan's six-foot, two-inch frame, athletic body, blue eyes, and golden brown hair were like a beacon, and I'd already noticed in just a few weeks, how people were naturally drawn to him.
The women were endless, dressed to attract a single man, but there was also a parade of others hoping for a piece of the good looking, professional athlete he was.
"Yeah, okay," I said. "Hey, what's Ryan Tilton staring at anyway? He's been looking over here off and on for the last half hour."
"Don't mess with that one," Tara said. "He's a wild boy."
"Yeah, I gathered as much," I said. "You know, almost everyone has come out to introduce themselves to us, but he's among only a few that hasn't."
"He's got a reputation along with his friend, Kevin Reynolds," she said. "I think Ryan has a steady. At least there's a blonde woman named Jesse who hangs around him, but 'steady' is relative when it comes to that boy. You shouldn't even think about a ball player."
"No chance of that. I don't even date," I said laughing.
I entered into my adult life innocent and extremely naïve about sex and boys. I was shut down and closed off, and afraid that having a boyfriend meant I'd get distracted and my grades would suffer.
Ultimately I interpreted a boyfriend as a roadblock to Stanford and much too risky. Ever since I was a young girl I had marked the beginning of college on my calendar with a red pen and circled each day that passed in yellow.
I was stubborn and frustratingly slow to open up and let anyone inside my personal fortress.
All my friends were sexually active, but I just wasn't ready. Sex was a strange concept for me. I couldn't understand my friends having it at fifteen and sixteen. Stay away from boys as long as possible was what I believed, especially since my sister had been raped at fourteen.
The day my sister's life changed forever, I came home from school at the usual time.
WHAT ARE YOUR CHALLENGES WITH INTIMACY?
HOW MANY TIMES COULD YOU HAVE REACHED OUT TO A FRIEND OR CO-WORKER IN A VULNERABLE AND LOVING WAY?
WHY IS SEX CARRY SUCH A BIG STIGMA IF IT'S BETWEEN TWO CONSENTING ADULTS?
I welcome your comments and invite you to contact me on my website www.PamelaTaeuffer.com
Or e mail me: pamelataeuffer@gmail.com
I am also on Facebook: /Shadow-Heart and Pinterest: /pamelataeuffer/shadowheart
Twitter: @PTaeufferAuthor
Thank for reading!Shadow Heart
NIKCY HAS JUST SHARED WITH ALEX THAT HER FATHER IS AN ALCOHOLIC, AND BEGINS TO REFLECT INWARD ON HER PROBLEMS OF MAKING NEW RELATIONSHIPS AND HER CHALLENGES ABOUT HAVING SEX.
To finally share the information with someone I trusted, who was another adult, was such a relief, and in doing so, I cemented the relationship with my two new women friends.
"This is an escape as much as a hope that Stanford will acknowledge me," I said. "My dad and sister argue and fight all the time, and my mom is just, somewhere else. I wanna get out of there."
"What about you?" Alex asked. "What's your relationship like with your Dad?"
"I love him, but he's made me . . ." I stumbled to find the word.
"Numb?" she asked knowingly.
"Yeah," I said.
"I know, Sweetheart," she said patting my back, "I know."
How do you know?
When Tara joined us, Alex excused herself to check on my teammates.
"What's your routine like tonight?" Tara asked. Both she and Alex were yell leaders in high school and working with cheer routines was second nature for them.
As I stood up, waving my hands in the air to demonstrate, the Goliaths were on the field taking batting practice, shagging balls, and doing their sprints and stretches.
"Looks like you guys have it down," Tara said. "I'll be watching to make sure I don't see anything you need to work out. If I do, you can all come over to my house and we'll review it."
When I sat down, I noticed Ryan Tilton, who was a pitcher, the game closer, for the Goliaths, looking at me as he ran to catch fly balls and then throw them back to the infield.
Ryan's six-foot, two-inch frame, athletic body, blue eyes, and golden brown hair were like a beacon, and I'd already noticed in just a few weeks, how people were naturally drawn to him.
The women were endless, dressed to attract a single man, but there was also a parade of others hoping for a piece of the good looking, professional athlete he was.
"Yeah, okay," I said. "Hey, what's Ryan Tilton staring at anyway? He's been looking over here off and on for the last half hour."
"Don't mess with that one," Tara said. "He's a wild boy."
"Yeah, I gathered as much," I said. "You know, almost everyone has come out to introduce themselves to us, but he's among only a few that hasn't."
"He's got a reputation along with his friend, Kevin Reynolds," she said. "I think Ryan has a steady. At least there's a blonde woman named Jesse who hangs around him, but 'steady' is relative when it comes to that boy. You shouldn't even think about a ball player."
"No chance of that. I don't even date," I said laughing.
I entered into my adult life innocent and extremely naïve about sex and boys. I was shut down and closed off, and afraid that having a boyfriend meant I'd get distracted and my grades would suffer.
Ultimately I interpreted a boyfriend as a roadblock to Stanford and much too risky. Ever since I was a young girl I had marked the beginning of college on my calendar with a red pen and circled each day that passed in yellow.
I was stubborn and frustratingly slow to open up and let anyone inside my personal fortress.
All my friends were sexually active, but I just wasn't ready. Sex was a strange concept for me. I couldn't understand my friends having it at fifteen and sixteen. Stay away from boys as long as possible was what I believed, especially since my sister had been raped at fourteen.
The day my sister's life changed forever, I came home from school at the usual time.
WHAT ARE YOUR CHALLENGES WITH INTIMACY?
HOW MANY TIMES COULD YOU HAVE REACHED OUT TO A FRIEND OR CO-WORKER IN A VULNERABLE AND LOVING WAY?
WHY IS SEX CARRY SUCH A BIG STIGMA IF IT'S BETWEEN TWO CONSENTING ADULTS?
I welcome your comments and invite you to contact me on my website www.PamelaTaeuffer.com
Or e mail me: pamelataeuffer@gmail.com
I am also on Facebook: /Shadow-Heart and Pinterest: /pamelataeuffer/shadowheart
Twitter: @PTaeufferAuthor
Thank for reading!Shadow Heart
March 17, 2014
"My dad's an alcoholic and I hate my body."
At seventeen, Nicky confides in cheer team mentor Alexandra Flowers and Tara Summers about her family's dysfunction and also her fears and doubts about her body. Her hips, breasts, and stomach are more developed than her peers, she is getting looks from older men, and she's uncomfortable in her own skin and with others. She sits in the bleachers talking with the two women.
"My dad's an alcoholic, Alex," I confided while she waited with me in the outfield bleachers at the Goliaths baseball stadium.
It was shortly after I had graduated from my sophomore year in high school that I came up with an idea to bring together two of my favorite things: Goliaths baseball and another after school activity in which I could participate, padding my resume for college.
I planned to study business marketing and wanted to do it at Stanford. From talking with my guidance counselor I knew I needed to be aggressive, somehow standing out from the thousands of students wanting to go there.
So I surveyed Goliath fans via social media, researched and gathered data which supported my idea, and put together my plan for a cheer team.
I proposed we sing and do gymnastics to carefully selected songs approved by management, which would also play over the public address system.
Cheering on a professional baseball field had never been done before. I knew if my plan was accepted, Stanford would follow. After reviewing and editing it more than a dozen times, I finally sent it off to Jose Vasquez, the Entertainment Marketing Manager with the Goliaths. In December of my junior year I got the call that it was accepted.
Our cheer team consisted of six members: Colleen, who was also my best friend, Sharon, Lorraine, Marilyn, Patty, and me.
All of us grew up together in the same neighborhood and had been friends since grade school. We kept our fingers crossed that this adventure would be our ticket to college.
Was I nervous about walking onto a professional baseball field and performing in front of forty-thousand people? Hell yes. With every performance I fidgeted and had butterflies in my stomach.
Like a "deer in the headlights," is how we felt, our eyes wide open, afraid, nervous, and excited. Two women, Tara Summers and Alexandra Flowers, noticed, and immediately took us under their wings, especially me.
Tara was married to Matt Summers, a pitcher on the Goliaths. She was a small, petite, gentle soul with long, strawberry blonde hair. Her face was dotted with freckles and she generally wore jeans or loose flowing pants in earthy colors and materials like cotton and muslin.
Her very good friend, Alex, was engaged to Darrell Sweet, also a pitcher on the Goliaths, and she couldn't have been more different. She was a tall woman with reddish brown hair who had such striking features that she'd been a model since high school. When she wore jeans, they were often paired with heels and a designer blouse or sweater.
Something just clicked between the three of us and we bonded immediately.
It began with long talks in the bleachers, which led to requests made only of me to water their plants, or housesit when they were away, volunteering with them at their favorite charities, and then eventually, we began socializing together.
Our first performance was a Friday night in early April. It was usually cold for night games in San Francisco, until early autumn when "Indian Summer" came to the Bay Area, bringing calm breezes and warmer temperatures.
The Goliaths games generally sold out; they'd been competitive for the previous ten years, and their fan base was scattered throughout a one-hundred-mile radius.
And so, as thousands of people sat in their seats waiting for the game to begin, we performed the routines we'd rehearsed almost every day for four months. Each was two minutes long, and we took the field before the first, third, fifth and eighth innings.
I remembered sitting in the stands with my father at six, seven, and eight years old, all around the stadium, slurping up a hot fudge sundae or eating a pretzel. Actually being on the field, among the baseball men I'd cheered for while sitting next to him, was surreal.
Now it was our sixth game, and we waited behind the outfield fences for our first performance. The noises of the crowd surrounded us, and drifting by were the smells of hot dogs and popcorn.
I hadn't gotten over my nervousness, and still, my stomach turned over. I was self-conscious and had anxiety from just about everything.
It was a Saturday afternoon, as Alex waited with me, and I told her about my alcoholic father, and the battles for survival my sister and I faced daily.
1. HOW DO YOU/DID YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR BODY AT SEVENTEEN?
2. DO YOU LOOK BACK NOW AND REALIZE HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE/WERE?
3. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE FEARS ABOUT YOUR BODY THAT STAY WITH YOU EVEN NOW?
4. WHAT WAS THE MOMENT, IF YOU'VE SURVIVED ADDICTION IN YOUR FAMILY, YOU REALIZED SOMETHING WAS WRONG?
#alcoholism #comingofage #women #newadultromance #romance #contemporary romance #family #addiction
"My dad's an alcoholic, Alex," I confided while she waited with me in the outfield bleachers at the Goliaths baseball stadium.
It was shortly after I had graduated from my sophomore year in high school that I came up with an idea to bring together two of my favorite things: Goliaths baseball and another after school activity in which I could participate, padding my resume for college.
I planned to study business marketing and wanted to do it at Stanford. From talking with my guidance counselor I knew I needed to be aggressive, somehow standing out from the thousands of students wanting to go there.
So I surveyed Goliath fans via social media, researched and gathered data which supported my idea, and put together my plan for a cheer team.
I proposed we sing and do gymnastics to carefully selected songs approved by management, which would also play over the public address system.
Cheering on a professional baseball field had never been done before. I knew if my plan was accepted, Stanford would follow. After reviewing and editing it more than a dozen times, I finally sent it off to Jose Vasquez, the Entertainment Marketing Manager with the Goliaths. In December of my junior year I got the call that it was accepted.
Our cheer team consisted of six members: Colleen, who was also my best friend, Sharon, Lorraine, Marilyn, Patty, and me.
All of us grew up together in the same neighborhood and had been friends since grade school. We kept our fingers crossed that this adventure would be our ticket to college.
Was I nervous about walking onto a professional baseball field and performing in front of forty-thousand people? Hell yes. With every performance I fidgeted and had butterflies in my stomach.
Like a "deer in the headlights," is how we felt, our eyes wide open, afraid, nervous, and excited. Two women, Tara Summers and Alexandra Flowers, noticed, and immediately took us under their wings, especially me.
Tara was married to Matt Summers, a pitcher on the Goliaths. She was a small, petite, gentle soul with long, strawberry blonde hair. Her face was dotted with freckles and she generally wore jeans or loose flowing pants in earthy colors and materials like cotton and muslin.
Her very good friend, Alex, was engaged to Darrell Sweet, also a pitcher on the Goliaths, and she couldn't have been more different. She was a tall woman with reddish brown hair who had such striking features that she'd been a model since high school. When she wore jeans, they were often paired with heels and a designer blouse or sweater.
Something just clicked between the three of us and we bonded immediately.
It began with long talks in the bleachers, which led to requests made only of me to water their plants, or housesit when they were away, volunteering with them at their favorite charities, and then eventually, we began socializing together.
Our first performance was a Friday night in early April. It was usually cold for night games in San Francisco, until early autumn when "Indian Summer" came to the Bay Area, bringing calm breezes and warmer temperatures.
The Goliaths games generally sold out; they'd been competitive for the previous ten years, and their fan base was scattered throughout a one-hundred-mile radius.
And so, as thousands of people sat in their seats waiting for the game to begin, we performed the routines we'd rehearsed almost every day for four months. Each was two minutes long, and we took the field before the first, third, fifth and eighth innings.
I remembered sitting in the stands with my father at six, seven, and eight years old, all around the stadium, slurping up a hot fudge sundae or eating a pretzel. Actually being on the field, among the baseball men I'd cheered for while sitting next to him, was surreal.
Now it was our sixth game, and we waited behind the outfield fences for our first performance. The noises of the crowd surrounded us, and drifting by were the smells of hot dogs and popcorn.
I hadn't gotten over my nervousness, and still, my stomach turned over. I was self-conscious and had anxiety from just about everything.
It was a Saturday afternoon, as Alex waited with me, and I told her about my alcoholic father, and the battles for survival my sister and I faced daily.
1. HOW DO YOU/DID YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR BODY AT SEVENTEEN?
2. DO YOU LOOK BACK NOW AND REALIZE HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE/WERE?
3. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE FEARS ABOUT YOUR BODY THAT STAY WITH YOU EVEN NOW?
4. WHAT WAS THE MOMENT, IF YOU'VE SURVIVED ADDICTION IN YOUR FAMILY, YOU REALIZED SOMETHING WAS WRONG?
#alcoholism #comingofage #women #newadultromance #romance #contemporary romance #family #addiction
March 14, 2014
A Romance Novel, Coming of Age, Intimacy, Addiction, Family
So to recap Chapter 1 of Shadow Heart, the first novel in the Broken Bottles Series.
What are the challenges of our heroine, Nicky Young?
The story opens up as we hear her voice, at some age, talking about a time when she was eight years old and witnessed her father's rage toward Jenise, her sister, just because they wouldn't eat the cold creamed corn their father served them.
We also hear Nicky open her story by talking about her little prayer, the way most little girls and boys pray, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . . and please make my father quit drinking."
In fact I prayed this way every night growing up, because you see, Nicky in many ways is me.
No amount of prayer changed my father. Sometimes he paused for a week, a month, a day . . . one time he was sober for eight months. What a joy it was to have my dad back. But you know what? It also heightened my anxiety.
Why?
Because a new edge was sharpened on my survival "knife." Now each day I waited, dreading the man who was bound to fall off the wagon, once again red faced, seeking sloppy love when all we wanted to do was push him away.
Have you felt like that?
Growing up under any trauma makes us not only survivors, but keen observers, adept at analysis, and listeners like no other, but we need to weave and dodge through the bullets of dysfunction.
So what do we know by knowing Nicky in chapter 1? She prays, which means she must have had some exposure to religion of some sort.
She talks about the things she knows:
1. Something bad is coming; it always does.
2. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed.
3. I can't talk about our secrets; no one else understands.
4. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Children of addiction/trauma learn by being abandoned. We are promised, day after day that this will be the holiday, birthday, school even, that our parent or loved one will be sober. But of course they choose the bottle or drug of choice over us.
We're sure no other family is going through it, and we know we have to keep secrets.
What else do we know?
Nicky's mother has gone through the same thing. She screams out loud in the Arizona desert in the summer monsoons to have the floods take her away from her home.
What does Nicky know now after watching her sister's punishment?
She's not safe.
Her mother can't protect her.
Her father is no longer who he once was.
She knows, it's all up to her, and she'd better pave her own road because no one is there to help her.
WHEN DID YOU REALIZE IT WAS ALL UP TO YOU?
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ROMANCE?
AAAHHH! JUST WAIT…IT'S COMING! DEEP, SENSUAL INTIMACY…WILL NICKY LEARN HOW TO GET IT?Shadow Heart
What are the challenges of our heroine, Nicky Young?
The story opens up as we hear her voice, at some age, talking about a time when she was eight years old and witnessed her father's rage toward Jenise, her sister, just because they wouldn't eat the cold creamed corn their father served them.
We also hear Nicky open her story by talking about her little prayer, the way most little girls and boys pray, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . . and please make my father quit drinking."
In fact I prayed this way every night growing up, because you see, Nicky in many ways is me.
No amount of prayer changed my father. Sometimes he paused for a week, a month, a day . . . one time he was sober for eight months. What a joy it was to have my dad back. But you know what? It also heightened my anxiety.
Why?
Because a new edge was sharpened on my survival "knife." Now each day I waited, dreading the man who was bound to fall off the wagon, once again red faced, seeking sloppy love when all we wanted to do was push him away.
Have you felt like that?
Growing up under any trauma makes us not only survivors, but keen observers, adept at analysis, and listeners like no other, but we need to weave and dodge through the bullets of dysfunction.
So what do we know by knowing Nicky in chapter 1? She prays, which means she must have had some exposure to religion of some sort.
She talks about the things she knows:
1. Something bad is coming; it always does.
2. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed.
3. I can't talk about our secrets; no one else understands.
4. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Children of addiction/trauma learn by being abandoned. We are promised, day after day that this will be the holiday, birthday, school even, that our parent or loved one will be sober. But of course they choose the bottle or drug of choice over us.
We're sure no other family is going through it, and we know we have to keep secrets.
What else do we know?
Nicky's mother has gone through the same thing. She screams out loud in the Arizona desert in the summer monsoons to have the floods take her away from her home.
What does Nicky know now after watching her sister's punishment?
She's not safe.
Her mother can't protect her.
Her father is no longer who he once was.
She knows, it's all up to her, and she'd better pave her own road because no one is there to help her.
WHEN DID YOU REALIZE IT WAS ALL UP TO YOU?
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ROMANCE?
AAAHHH! JUST WAIT…IT'S COMING! DEEP, SENSUAL INTIMACY…WILL NICKY LEARN HOW TO GET IT?Shadow Heart
March 12, 2014
Shutting Our Hearts Down, Views from Childhood
Keeping my screams pressed down, I hold my hand over my mouth and watch when he takes the back of Jenise's head and shoves her face hard into the bowl of creamed corn.
She lifts her head slowly and turns to the side after he takes his hand away. I'm frozen as I watch her look at me, her shock mixed with the corn that drips off her nose, hidden in her burning eyes as she wipes them, and within her lungs as she gasps for air.
As soon as it happens, my defenses click in and I detach. My father's demon swirls around us, come to possess every breath we take. I don't look at the monster in our kitchen; I'm terrified he's going to hurt us—badly.
My dreams begin, and more than the physical act of violence itself, I notice the smaller details around me like the colors in our kitchen.
I see the pale yellow of the corn as it drips down Jenise's face. It matches the paint on the walls. I see the white of the porcelain bowl as it rocks back and forth from the shock of her face smashed down in it.
I hear the sound of dullness made by the spoon that once rested by the bowl of corn, now fallen to the floor, and I see the beautiful color of my sister's hazel eyes as they squint and blink.
THIS SCENE TAKES PLACE WHEN NICKY AND JENISE'S FATHER RAGES, WANTING DESPERATELY FOR HIS DAUGHTERS TO GET OUT OF THE WAY SO HE CAN DRINK. THEIR FATHER HAS JUST SHOVED NICKY'S SISTER'S FACE INTO A BOWL OF CREAMED CORN BECAUSE SHE'S CHALLENGED HIM.
THE POINT OF VIEW IS FROM NICKY AT 8 YRS. OLD.
I watch her mouth open as she tries to regain her breath and her white shirt becomes blotched with stains the color of butter. My eyes see the sky blue of the vinyl booth I sit in and the white rope of the leather ribbing that seams it.
A few years earlier I'd taken a knife and sliced it, making neat and orderly cuts about an inch apart, beginning at my father's seat and ending to my left at my sister's spot.
It was as if I tried to cut myself away from the yelling, terror, and disgust, perhaps even to cut myself out of my family. Anywhere seemed better than being at the dinner table with them.
Everything moves in slow motion, except when my father takes his belt from the loops in his pants; that move was so quick it seems blurred to my eyes.
One half of my mind knows my body is present within the trauma and craziness, and the other half is somewhere in the shadows, observing.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST MOMENT YOU FELT SOMETHING OFF? NOT NECESSARILY IN CHILDHOOD, BUT ALSO GROWING UP? HOW DID YOU FIND YOUR VOICE?
WHEN DID YOU LET YOUR HEART OPEN FOR DEEPER INTIMACY, NO LONGER AFRAID?
She lifts her head slowly and turns to the side after he takes his hand away. I'm frozen as I watch her look at me, her shock mixed with the corn that drips off her nose, hidden in her burning eyes as she wipes them, and within her lungs as she gasps for air.
As soon as it happens, my defenses click in and I detach. My father's demon swirls around us, come to possess every breath we take. I don't look at the monster in our kitchen; I'm terrified he's going to hurt us—badly.
My dreams begin, and more than the physical act of violence itself, I notice the smaller details around me like the colors in our kitchen.
I see the pale yellow of the corn as it drips down Jenise's face. It matches the paint on the walls. I see the white of the porcelain bowl as it rocks back and forth from the shock of her face smashed down in it.
I hear the sound of dullness made by the spoon that once rested by the bowl of corn, now fallen to the floor, and I see the beautiful color of my sister's hazel eyes as they squint and blink.
THIS SCENE TAKES PLACE WHEN NICKY AND JENISE'S FATHER RAGES, WANTING DESPERATELY FOR HIS DAUGHTERS TO GET OUT OF THE WAY SO HE CAN DRINK. THEIR FATHER HAS JUST SHOVED NICKY'S SISTER'S FACE INTO A BOWL OF CREAMED CORN BECAUSE SHE'S CHALLENGED HIM.
THE POINT OF VIEW IS FROM NICKY AT 8 YRS. OLD.
I watch her mouth open as she tries to regain her breath and her white shirt becomes blotched with stains the color of butter. My eyes see the sky blue of the vinyl booth I sit in and the white rope of the leather ribbing that seams it.
A few years earlier I'd taken a knife and sliced it, making neat and orderly cuts about an inch apart, beginning at my father's seat and ending to my left at my sister's spot.
It was as if I tried to cut myself away from the yelling, terror, and disgust, perhaps even to cut myself out of my family. Anywhere seemed better than being at the dinner table with them.
Everything moves in slow motion, except when my father takes his belt from the loops in his pants; that move was so quick it seems blurred to my eyes.
One half of my mind knows my body is present within the trauma and craziness, and the other half is somewhere in the shadows, observing.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST MOMENT YOU FELT SOMETHING OFF? NOT NECESSARILY IN CHILDHOOD, BUT ALSO GROWING UP? HOW DID YOU FIND YOUR VOICE?
WHEN DID YOU LET YOUR HEART OPEN FOR DEEPER INTIMACY, NO LONGER AFRAID?
March 9, 2014
Finding Intimacy - A Little Girl's Voice Begins to Form
Shadow Heart Jenise and I make faces when our dad opens a can of creamed corn to serve us for dinner. He doesn’t care that this is the one food my sister and I hate more than anything.
I can see leftovers in the refrigerator and other cans of food stacked in the cupboard we like, but it doesn’t matter. It feels like we could’ve been given garbage to eat if that was the nearest and easiest thing for him to grab.
As the opener tears at the metal of the can, grinding jaggedly and twisting it a circle, we sit and wait, and quietly understand: we’re going to bed hungry.
But we also know tomorrow our mom will reward us with presents for being good girls. It might be a new doll, or maybe she’ll treat us to a movie, or her favorite . . . bringing home a supply of sugary snacks.
I can already taste my favorite candy bar—milk chocolate covering caramel and a cookie. But if she brings me a quart of chocolate chip ice cream, that’s just as nice.
“Yuck,” I say to myself as I take a spoonful of the cold, canned corn, forcing it down so I can please dad and get out of the kitchen as fast as I can.
We swallowed everything that way—one spoonful at a time to survive.
Jenise isn’t eating. “Jenise,” I whisper. “Eat.”
Why won’t she eat? She will not give in. No, my sister isn’t that kind of peacemaker. She doesn’t seem to hear his feet pounding the kitchen floor, waiting, angry, as he counts down the minutes to send us to our baths and then to bed.
I watch in dread, afraid for what’s coming as her little body becomes rigid, bracing for what even she knows will be a storm.
She’s daring him! Oh no, don’t!
She plants her feet firmly on the black and white squares of linoleum and refuses every kernel.
“We don’t like creamed corn,” my sister says stubbornly.
This night, there’s no protection from the explosion lying just under his surface. It’s ready to boil, ready to burst, ready to—punish.
“Eat it now,” my father warns. His voice is detached and cold.
But my sister, my hero, she will not back down, and now my father’s face is a brilliant red, and his demons, the ones I’ve seen before, take him over.
Perhaps my father’s anger came from the disappointment of failing as a good parent. Maybe somewhere deep inside he was hiding, protecting his vulnerability, still the nine-year-old boy who couldn’t be soothed when his own father died.
Maybe it was the guilt that consumed him when he looked in the mirror and saw a young man who refused to stay home and take care of his mother as she sought relief from her addiction to prescription pills. Instead of facing that, he had joined the U.S. Army.
Did that tear his heart into pieces? She ended up such a delicate and frail woman. Did he feel guilty about leaving her? Or worse, did he feel by leaving, he made her that way?
Whatever the reason, tonight, his spark ignites. I watch in horror as his flushed face knots up in hatred because we stand between him and his liquid candy.
* HOW DID YOUR VOICE BEGIN TO FORM?
* WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY OF SOMETHING BEING A LITTLE OFF IN YOUR FAMILY?
I can see leftovers in the refrigerator and other cans of food stacked in the cupboard we like, but it doesn’t matter. It feels like we could’ve been given garbage to eat if that was the nearest and easiest thing for him to grab.
As the opener tears at the metal of the can, grinding jaggedly and twisting it a circle, we sit and wait, and quietly understand: we’re going to bed hungry.
But we also know tomorrow our mom will reward us with presents for being good girls. It might be a new doll, or maybe she’ll treat us to a movie, or her favorite . . . bringing home a supply of sugary snacks.
I can already taste my favorite candy bar—milk chocolate covering caramel and a cookie. But if she brings me a quart of chocolate chip ice cream, that’s just as nice.
“Yuck,” I say to myself as I take a spoonful of the cold, canned corn, forcing it down so I can please dad and get out of the kitchen as fast as I can.
We swallowed everything that way—one spoonful at a time to survive.
Jenise isn’t eating. “Jenise,” I whisper. “Eat.”
Why won’t she eat? She will not give in. No, my sister isn’t that kind of peacemaker. She doesn’t seem to hear his feet pounding the kitchen floor, waiting, angry, as he counts down the minutes to send us to our baths and then to bed.
I watch in dread, afraid for what’s coming as her little body becomes rigid, bracing for what even she knows will be a storm.
She’s daring him! Oh no, don’t!
She plants her feet firmly on the black and white squares of linoleum and refuses every kernel.
“We don’t like creamed corn,” my sister says stubbornly.
This night, there’s no protection from the explosion lying just under his surface. It’s ready to boil, ready to burst, ready to—punish.
“Eat it now,” my father warns. His voice is detached and cold.
But my sister, my hero, she will not back down, and now my father’s face is a brilliant red, and his demons, the ones I’ve seen before, take him over.
Perhaps my father’s anger came from the disappointment of failing as a good parent. Maybe somewhere deep inside he was hiding, protecting his vulnerability, still the nine-year-old boy who couldn’t be soothed when his own father died.
Maybe it was the guilt that consumed him when he looked in the mirror and saw a young man who refused to stay home and take care of his mother as she sought relief from her addiction to prescription pills. Instead of facing that, he had joined the U.S. Army.
Did that tear his heart into pieces? She ended up such a delicate and frail woman. Did he feel guilty about leaving her? Or worse, did he feel by leaving, he made her that way?
Whatever the reason, tonight, his spark ignites. I watch in horror as his flushed face knots up in hatred because we stand between him and his liquid candy.
* HOW DID YOUR VOICE BEGIN TO FORM?
* WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY OF SOMETHING BEING A LITTLE OFF IN YOUR FAMILY?
March 8, 2014
Finding Intimacy
Married twenty-seven years, my husband and I had retreated to the darkest recesses of our caves, ignoring each other, sitting separately, often going to bed hours after the other, and barely kissing good-bye or saying “I love you” during the day.
I’d had the crap knocked out of me that year, by employees who’d gathered together and decided to bring false claims against me, all the while trying to steal clients and business away.
Is it my fault for trusting too much or becoming too relaxed? Yeah, I’ll admit that. But I’m also a romantic. I tend to dream and see the flowers along the path, while ignoring the slugs.
I can’t pinpoint the day when I began to see a brass ring shining again, but I presume it was one night while I sat up writing sometime between three and four in the morning. It had become a habit for me, staying up late, not having to go to bed and touch my husband or hear him snore, or feel the separateness of being together.
Does that make sense?
Even as we lay next to each other, we were both very lonely. We’d gone to therapy, we’d tried the dance of talking it through, but we always retreated after a few weak attempts at working it our.
The oddest part of it all, is that it wasn’t over money, or sex, or children. There wasn’t anything wrong in those areas. What it was, was that we’d become only friends, and I began to resent it. And I REALLY started to resent it when I started my books, The Broken Bottles Series, so named after my father’s alcoholism.
I waned to tell more than that. Sure, I went through what thousands and thousands of others have, a child of trauma, mental and physical abuse from the alcoholic or addicted parent, but what was it from all of those shadows that made me afraid to walk up to my husband and ask for intimacy and love?
Why were the words so hard? I only had to say, “Honey, I want more. I want your lips on mine, and your arms around my body.”
You’d think after that many years it would be easy.
But it wasn’t.
I began to examine why not. As I peeled back my layers, I began to understand what being a child of alcoholism does: it shuts you down, closes your heart, and makes you afraid — it made me very afraid. I knew I’d be abandoned because I wasn’t even the first choice of my father. He chose his bottle over me. How could I ever hope anyone would love me?
And also, why do so many couples end up as friends as they transition into their fifties (or even younger)?
What is it that fades away? Why can’t we each ask for what we want and find our voice with each other?
And that, my friends, is the crux of Shadow Heart, Fire Heart, and the novels to come in the Broken Bottles Series. I have three missions:
1. I want to show what the effects are from growing up in a family battling addiction. It’s not only the fears of mental or physical abuse, it’s the every day choices we make — the way we dress, comb our hair, socialize, participate — they’re all because of how we grew up.
2. I want to take the dirty our of sex. It’s healthy, it opens the heart, and keeps us talking, communication, and asking for what we want.
3. I want to encourage people, wherever they are in their lives to openly ask for what they really want from each other.
We can’t read minds, and we can’t guess. Say it!
DISCUSSION: What is the first step (baby steps) you could do to ask for what you want? Do you even know how? Don’t feel bad, I didn’t!
I’d had the crap knocked out of me that year, by employees who’d gathered together and decided to bring false claims against me, all the while trying to steal clients and business away.
Is it my fault for trusting too much or becoming too relaxed? Yeah, I’ll admit that. But I’m also a romantic. I tend to dream and see the flowers along the path, while ignoring the slugs.
I can’t pinpoint the day when I began to see a brass ring shining again, but I presume it was one night while I sat up writing sometime between three and four in the morning. It had become a habit for me, staying up late, not having to go to bed and touch my husband or hear him snore, or feel the separateness of being together.
Does that make sense?
Even as we lay next to each other, we were both very lonely. We’d gone to therapy, we’d tried the dance of talking it through, but we always retreated after a few weak attempts at working it our.
The oddest part of it all, is that it wasn’t over money, or sex, or children. There wasn’t anything wrong in those areas. What it was, was that we’d become only friends, and I began to resent it. And I REALLY started to resent it when I started my books, The Broken Bottles Series, so named after my father’s alcoholism.
I waned to tell more than that. Sure, I went through what thousands and thousands of others have, a child of trauma, mental and physical abuse from the alcoholic or addicted parent, but what was it from all of those shadows that made me afraid to walk up to my husband and ask for intimacy and love?
Why were the words so hard? I only had to say, “Honey, I want more. I want your lips on mine, and your arms around my body.”
You’d think after that many years it would be easy.
But it wasn’t.
I began to examine why not. As I peeled back my layers, I began to understand what being a child of alcoholism does: it shuts you down, closes your heart, and makes you afraid — it made me very afraid. I knew I’d be abandoned because I wasn’t even the first choice of my father. He chose his bottle over me. How could I ever hope anyone would love me?
And also, why do so many couples end up as friends as they transition into their fifties (or even younger)?
What is it that fades away? Why can’t we each ask for what we want and find our voice with each other?
And that, my friends, is the crux of Shadow Heart, Fire Heart, and the novels to come in the Broken Bottles Series. I have three missions:
1. I want to show what the effects are from growing up in a family battling addiction. It’s not only the fears of mental or physical abuse, it’s the every day choices we make — the way we dress, comb our hair, socialize, participate — they’re all because of how we grew up.
2. I want to take the dirty our of sex. It’s healthy, it opens the heart, and keeps us talking, communication, and asking for what we want.
3. I want to encourage people, wherever they are in their lives to openly ask for what they really want from each other.
We can’t read minds, and we can’t guess. Say it!
DISCUSSION: What is the first step (baby steps) you could do to ask for what you want? Do you even know how? Don’t feel bad, I didn’t!
