Much has been made in the news lately about Sanctuary Cities. We all need our own Sanctuary City, especially those of us who were abused as children. Where can we go to feel safe? Where can we go that is a place of refuge and protection? Sadly, for most there is no such place. Life is just a day to day struggle in an endless line of struggles to come. For some there is hope. A home, a city, a forest, a seaside or maybe a cathedral. Where can we go to deal with our pain? What will bring a cloak of protection around us when we are the most vulnerable?
It brings to mind my own sanctuary, the one I had as a child growing up in the Midwest, Petersburg, NE, and especially my most beloved sanctuary, Rae Creek. Five of my growing up years were spent in a little town tucked neatly into Boone County, NE. Petersburg was staunchly Catholic, a small Midwestern farming community not unlike a thousand others. Strong Catholics ourselves, we fit right in with the many rituals. The town consisted of 510 citizens and had a main street two blocks long. The buildings dated back many years and most of the houses had large porches with swings hanging from rusted chains. Back yards were spacious with neatly plotted vegetable gardens and springtime flowers scattered in abundance. Long stretches of clotheslines dominated the back lawns and outhouses still perched on corners of property.
The land abounded with thick clumps of trees, growing helter-skelter. Some followed lazy swirls near riverbeds with thick brush and undergrowth hovering around their trunks as they sucked nourishment from the waters of riverbeds. At the end of a valley, near a large cluster of trees a small creek babbled, filling to its top with waters from the late winter’s snow. It nurtured life as it splashed on rocks and splattered overhanging trees, spilling its vitality in small waterfalls, ending in shiny silent pools. Cottonwood trees, sentry giants with glistening leaves of green and small beads of cotton buried in their jackets stood proudly everywhere. Groves of black walnuts with grizzled bark and maple with hand shaped leaves clustered in stately groups. Large oaks stood nearby, many of their branches bowed with age and the effort of holding up their arms all these years. Elm trees, taller than a three-story house, with leaves of deep green grew in abundance. Here and there, weeping willows danced like graceful wood nymphs. I discovered nearby Rae Creek whose forested land became my second home. There I did what I loved best, wandering in the woods, climbing trees, wading in riverbeds, and writing about it to relive the moments over and over.
In the coming years, I drew indefinitely on the pictures, printed forever, as the countryside bewitched me with its beauty. The many robins, the purity of their cheerful warble filling me with enchantment, seemed the perfect accompaniment to my majestic world and became my symbol of freedom and euphoria. Rae Creek was dotted with them, their red breasts sparkling like large fireflies as they danced among the trees. My roots planted deep, bonding with the land and the townspeople with a surety that sprang from years of searching. I had finally found a place to call home. I had also found an outlet for my intense emotions as writing poetry became the best and only friend I had. Many years later, I was to discover that all the truth as well as all the wisdom I would ever need lay in my own words. Without them, and the memories of Rae Creek, I would have perished. One stanza I wrote at the age of thirteen I repeated a thousand times over the years. It sustained me, gave me hope.
Wherever I go in the years to come,
Whenever my heart is tired and sad,
I’ll think of life in this hidden world
And long for the moments that once I had.
After my father began his rituals of rape in the middle of the night when I was thirteen, I hurried even more to Rae Creek. It now became my sanctuary. There I left behind the horrors of home life. Once I entered its woods, I crossed into another world. I climbed my favorite oak tree, crawled across its biggest limb to the end before I swung myself over to the other side. I sang songs to woodland critters, counted mushrooms that cropped up at the base of my cottonwoods, skipped rocks across the creek and rolling my pant legs up, hiked with my bare feet in its midst. I picked wildflowers, wove them into necklaces, blew the seeds off dandelions, and lay on my back in the midst of the meadow, watching clouds and pretending I had no worries or cares, shutting the horror of my home life into a locked room in my mind.One part of my former enchantment was missing. I never heard a robin sing; it was as if they were no longer there, as if a small part of my joy in Rae Creek had ceased to exist. For the next thirty-two years I had missing bits and pieces of my teen years, sometimes not even aware of the outside world or what was happening in it. It was as if a part of me had Alzheimer’s.
We moved to Los Angeles when I was fifteen years old. As we came through the Cajon Pass, my first glimpse was of a sprawling municipality that seemed never ending. A blue-gray haze enveloped the valley and the sticky heat of an August afternoon clung to the air with a stubborn resolve. My mind felt congested as I looked around. There was too much of everything, all the wrong things. How was I going to be me amidst this vast network of people? The city looked dirty without trees or rivers and I felt like I was in a foreign country. Even the food offered at restaurants we passed contained words unfamiliar to my Midwestern eyes. Lasagna, teriyaki, tacos and enchiladas, exemplified the melting pot known as LA. I felt as if I were an alien uprooted from another planet. Like an embryo forced out of the womb, I longed for my umbilical cord and struggled to keep the memory of Petersburg alive as I wrote poetry while we drove of my longing for my sanctuary.
It would be many years before I finally returned to Petersburg and when that day came as I drove through the rolling farmlands of Northeast Nebraska, my heart caught, as I grew faint with approaching joy. The farmhouses and water towers, the red barns and cornfields flashed by, bringing a serenity, a feeling of belonging. I spied cottonwoods standing in groves; shiny leaves flickering the sun back into my eyes. As I crossed country bridges, the creeks rambled lazily, their waters crying out a welcome home. An ache settled deep into my throat as I approached Petersburg, then stopped for a moment at the edge of town, in front of the sign that said, Petersburg, Pop.380. My emotions choked as I spied the long familiar water tower with the name of the town. Was I really here? For so many years, I had lived in anticipation of this moment, despairing of ever achieving it, and now it resurrected with an even deeper, richer reality than I had ever imagined. I experienced a moment of pure joy, knowing I would cherish it for the rest of my life. I grasped my happy heart tightly, then drove into town.
After several days of visiting with friends I hadn’t seen in many years I headed for my old sanctuary. Picturing the joy I would feel at seeing my old oak tree and the river bends again, I hiked out to Rae Creek. As I approached, I became confused and for a moment almost fearful as I stood at the fence on the side of the road, looking across the terrain. The woods of Rae Creek, now a mere trickle of water winding in and out of muddy ruts, were gone. All the forested land was barren, the elm and cottonwood, as I found out later, laid waste by elm disease and tornadoes. With no trees or rivers, it was no more than a drab and barren field. I was heartsick as I stood looking across the land, tears rolling down my cheeks. My sanctuary, my hidden world, the one I had dreamed of for twenty-two years, now dead and desolate.
I felt as if Rae Creek, like me, was broken and deeply traumatized. I had not yet begun recovery. It would be several years in the future before I would have the courage to begin my own journey into wellness. It would be a five year struggle, the hardest years I have ever endured. As I worked my way through a program called Repair that I had devised for myself; as I sat in Codependents Anonymous meetings, as I joined other domestic violence women in a group called Alternatives to Domestic Violence; as I spent time in a women’s shelter; as I fought suicide on a weekly basis, as I endured the worst abuse any woman could suffer, I began the mending that would take me from being married to my third abuser to being the happiest woman I knew.
Over the subsequent years I have returned again and again to Petersburg, always soaking in the love that surrounded me every time I went. I have traveled out to my sanctuary, Rae Creek as I watched it match me mend for mend. Slowly the trees grew back. With shade again, the thin trickle of mud became a small creek. The wildflowers again sprang to life and the hidden hollows where I had written my words of torment, where I had hid from the violence of my home life returned again. Like myself, Rae Creek again, had become the happiest place I know. It was once again my refuge. The robins sang their lilting songs, announcing my homecoming. Life was sweet, made more so by this lovely little town nestled in a valley of green and especially by the resurrection of my sanctuary, Rae Creek.
The parents of a treasured childhood friend of mine asked her why I returned again and again to Petersburg. Her response: “She returns to find her child.” My friend is a very wise woman.
The wounded child in all of us seeks a home, wanting to be part of a stable world. This truth
often doesn’t surface for many years as we wander in the darkness, searching endlessly, never realizing we had only to look inward.
To read more about Marjorie’s journey across the Bridge of Recovery read I Never Heard A Robin Sing, now available on amazon.com in Kindle form, soon to be available in paperback.
