The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said…

This isn’t really a blog. It is something I have waited, contemplated and wanted to write, but knew it needed to be written.

I have felt it in my body for the longest time the shallow breath, the constant tight jaw, the heaviness and knew one day, just one day, I could help myself exhale again, softening and almost leaning towards fresh air.

Even as I pen these words, I feel my body stir with anticipation.

There has to be a preface why now, why still, for who?

The answer is for me.

This year, as I have mentioned, has been the most testing and challenging year. I feel that in my lifetime I have truly weathered so many storms on so many fronts. But being post-menopause, you really begin to feel physically the effects of unprocessed trauma that has lived day in and day out within the body.

I know what I am sharing, to some, may seem less than what they have experienced. Others will have had similar experiences, or even far more pressing events and moments.

But for me, it isn’t a tally.

It isn’t, “Mine is more.”

It is simply: I need this said so I can be set free.

Before, I held onto it.

I have mentioned in much earlier blogs about hiding people’s secrets, shame and guilt. I hid because, as a young Christian woman, to be tainted could have repercussions. Who would marry someone who was?

Then it became more complicated, because the story I held was also intertwined with another person’s journey, one with even more scars and I felt,

How can I share when it is theirs too?

The consequences.

Let’s let that land.

Often those who keep things hidden fear not only the consequences for themselves, but the consequences for others — sometimes even for those who caused the harm. I want to start here and then go backwards.

Why now?

“Mum, I’ve noticed that since you stopped speaking to your brother, you seem so much more relaxed, happy and at peace,” my daughter told me.

She isn’t wrong.

He was the last link to the life I was running from. In fact, if I am honest, the only reason for so long that I stayed connected was for him alone. He will never appreciate or understand what that took from me, what it robbed me of, or the sacrifice that was and it is almost as if I can hear his words in my head: “I never asked you to, or wanted you to.”

I have only just realised that I held onto a relationship that wasn’t reciprocated.

I don’t blame him entirely, but he does have some accountability for his actions, accountability I overshadowed for so long because he was the youngest, and because love overlooked all.

In June, mediation occurred and afterwards, I spiralled.I was so angry. Full of rage.

Later I began to understand why. When you realise that a felt sense can connect itself to a past experience as though the event happening now and the event happening then are the same when they are not, we can respond on autopilot without even realising it. I shared some of this before.

What I didn’t share was that the anger, rage and hurt were towards my brother.

After my mother died, he took it upon himself to share with a family member what had happened in the past and I need to highlight this: he was going by what he thinks he knows, we have never spoken at great length about it.

He shared his version of what he thought he knew, and in doing so he robbed both myself and my sister of our voice.

When it first happened, I was upset and hurt. But I fell into the same pattern of behaviour seeking his approval and love and I downplayed the impact of what he had done and how it made me feel.

“He is grieving.”

“He needed someone to talk to.”

But now, with my body more aware than ever, I understand why it affected me so deeply.

What he may never appreciate is that it wasn’t his story to tell.

He never asked us beforehand. He never checked how we would feel about people knowing, again did he even have the story right?

To him, sharing that part of our journey seemed like nothing.

But it wasn't nothing.

The trauma. The abuse. The abandonment. The blame. The guilt. The shame. The rejection. Everything it cost us to keep that hidden.

And then, without a thought boom it was out there, not just to anyone, but to family and like wildfire, it spread. Now members of the family have some version of events.

So…

The time has come, the Walrus said.

I am ready now to share the events publicly and loudly, because I want to be completely free.

I no longer want to be blamed.

I no longer want to be someone else’s excuse or scapegoat.

We have reached the point where something has to happen.

I was eleven.

When I was eleven, my mother started going out with a fella who she fell head over heels in love with. Not since my father had I seen her like this. She had broken up with my sister’s dad and met this guy, like she had met my sister’s dad, on some night out. He, like my stepfather before him, was so nice to me.

My stepfather had soon shown his true colours, you hear those stories about people being nice until they move in, and then they change because they no longer need to be nice. They got their prize.

But this new guy was tall, good-looking and, importantly to me, not my stepdad, so I was all for this new relationship.

My mother, right up until she died, had a history of putting men before her children.

At eleven, though, I was smitten,not in the way people might think, but as a naïve girl who felt like perhaps the knight in shining armour had finally come along to save the day. Boy, was I wrong. Not long after they started dating, we went in June to my mum’s friend Liz’s house. I really didn’t like her, and the feeling was mutual.

There was a group of us sitting around the lounge room. It was cold, there was a kerosene heater going, and everyone had blankets over their laps.

I was sitting on his lap.

Not long after, I felt his hand on my thigh.

I froze.

I wasn’t sure what to do. It was almost as though my body knew what was going to happen, but I didn’t know how to stop it. There was also confusion and curiosity. That is something people don't often talk about when they talk about grooming or sexual abuse. When you are so young and someone has charmed you, you can start questioning yourself:

Did I ask for this?

He was brazen, my mum was sitting on the other side of him on the couch, completely oblivious to what was happening underneath the blanket. We had arrived in two cars. When it was time to leave, I asked if I could go home with Mum. She said, “You came with him. Go home with him.”

I convinced my sister, who was only three, to come in the car with us because I thought if she was there, I would be safe. While driving, he tried to get my sister to climb into the back of the four-wheel drive. Yes, this was before seatbelts were compulsory and when seemingly anything went. When we arrived home, I raced to my room and stayed there, wondering if something would happen again.

My mum came down the hallway and I told her that night what had happened, I know she was shocked.

But what surprised me was that she didn’t kick him out.

In fact, she didn’t do anything.

And that was the beginning of something breaking between my mother and me. He came down the hallway into my room and tried again.

I punched him.

She called out.

And that was that.

A lot of people may say I got off easy, but for me, having lost my dad five years earlier and remembering sitting on his lap, what happened cascaded into a chain of events that changed my life. I was fortunate to have someone who was like a sister to me. She was older and didn’t live with us, and I confided in her.

What she did next potentially saved me.

Only last year did she tell me that she had followed this guy and damaged his car. All those years, I had no idea that somebody had actually tried to protect me.

And that matters.

Because I wasn’t only struggling with what he had done to me.

I was struggling with what my mother didn’t do.

Every day my mother cried about losing the love of her life, not once did she ask if I was okay, not once did she ask what I needed.

One day I went to school and found Child Services in the principal’s office with dolls. I raced home after school, only to find them in my home.

They scared me.

To this day, that experience of Child Services has stayed with me as something associated with fear rather than safety.

Not long afterwards, there was a conference at the school the school, my “adopted sister”, Child Services and my mother.

And then, abruptly, I was taken away from my mum, fortunately, I was taken to someone I knew and loved.

But seeing your mother chase after the car as you are driven away does something to you.

What did I do wrong?

Did I cause this?

Am I the problem?

I didn't stay away for very long. I asked to go back.

But what I didn't understand at the time was that they had been following my mum and had discovered that she was sneaking out to see the very man who had sexually abused her daughter.

Think about the belief that can leave in a child:

Your mum cares more about seeing him than she does about your wellbeing.

I had already lost one parent.

I didn't want to lose another.

I didn't want to be separated from my sister.

So I kept silent.

There was eventually a court case. He wasn’t meant to represent himself, but he did. He questioned me face-to-face, in great detail, about what had happened.

He got off not because he pleaded not guilty, but because he hadn't signed his statement.

Let's just say my experience left me with very little faith in the system. There was, however, a restraining order preventing him from being within a certain proximity of us.

After enduring all of that, I then discovered my mother was pregnant.

Was the child his or my stepdad’s?

We may never know.

But I will say this: his birth brought joy. It was almost as though I poured all my energy into loving my little brother because he felt like the only good thing that had come out of the whole ordeal.

And for now, that is where I need to leave this part.

Because what happened next is another part of the story.

And it deserves its own space.