(from my memoir, I Never Heard A Robin Sing, available as a Kindle at amazon.com)
Excerpt from my tapings – March 18, 1991
I’m in the town of Trona, at Dad’s grave. It was a long drive, four hours, but I felt I needed to go. It’s a beautiful day, the clouds, gray, and purple. In loving memory….his grave has only a concrete slab over it….here in the middle of the arid desert.
I can hardly talk for crying. It comes out of me in such huge jagged parts that I feel I’m vomiting up all the pain, as I talk to my dad. I’ve been suffering most of my life, but now I’m suffering because I’ve lost a man I loved… a man that was not good for me…..a man I was drawn to because he was so much like you. What a sick, sick emotional feeling. He represented all those things I didn’t get from you.
We’re going to talk, you and I, about the truth. We’re going to talk about a thirteen-year-old girl who died, who lost the Dad and Mom that she loved so much and herself, that she loved so much. And we’re going to talk about what happened to that thirteen-year-old girl.
You gave me an original promise…a promise of wonderfulness…and you gave me a betrayal of all that wonderfulness. You condemned that young girl to promiscuity, to nervous breakdowns and suicide attempts. You condemned her to years of abusive relationships, to the belief that she was no good. You even encouraged that belief. Why did you do that? I loved you.
I’m in so much emotional pain. I have so much confusion about who I am and what I’ve done. And you left without telling the truth. You trapped that innocent girl inside of me….that girl who believed and trusted everyone, and then taught her to never trust anyone.
I still love you and miss you but I’m so angry, angry that you damaged that young girl you delivered, that daughter you should have loved and cherished and protected. I passed your legacy on to my children. They saw Mama being a victim and they were victimized in turn. So, you not only hurt me, you hurt my children and maybe their children and maybe their children’s children. You set me on a path of such destruction that I don’t know how I survived this long. I’m angry you couldn’t be there in a healthy way for me; all of my life, not just till I was thirteen.
I’m angry that you took my Momma away. Not only did you take Momma away from me, you took Momma away from herself. You acted like you had no responsibility in any of it.
You taught me it was okay not to have any sexual boundaries and you punished me for not having them. You gave me a cruel and abusive legacy and at the end, you could have made it right by telling me the truth. Instead, you let me live in doubt and chaos, setting me up for the next abusive man. There were many opportunities when you could have told me. I’m a forgiving person. We could have still talked about it. At least I could have known you were trying to make amends.
That young girl never stopped trying to find out what she’d done. You let her live for all those years thinking she had done something wrong…something she didn’t even remember. She had no idea what happened. She only knew she wasn’t any good, that she was bad. You perpetrated that myth, letting the world think you were a wonderful person while secretly abusing her. You made her feel like she was the abusive one. I can forgive you for what you did, but you can’t ever come back and make it up to me. It will be with me till I die. My life is not over. I came close to ending it Saturday night and I don’t want to ever come that close again. I need to go on with my life. I need to set the boundaries now that I didn’t know how to set when I was thirteen. I need to learn how to not let anyone come into my life that’s going to set me up for pain.
At least now, I’m aware of it. I know we had an incestuous relationship. Mama wasn’t capable of blaming you because she had you on a pedestal. Somebody had to be the scapegoat. A little kid can’t fight back. I couldn’t call 911. But now I can fight back. Now I can look at the world with stronger eyes. And I have to learn that for myself because you didn’t teach me.
Where have you gone? I don’t know, but you’re gone. You’re up in those gray clouds or up in those mountains hiding, or maybe up in that tree. Maybe you’re in the sunset at night or maybe you’re just down in that concrete slab.
But you’re somewhere and you know how short life is and how you have to make it rich with healthy, happy memories. You took so many years of my life because of a sexual compulsion you couldn’t control and would not get help for. You destroyed a lot of lives. You almost killed me. You were responsible for Mama’s death. Maybe you killed Jeanne. Maybe she had a death wish. Maybe she too witnessed what happened in that bedroom and it tortured her. How many years of Gretchen’s life have been wasted?
I have to go on with my life and it’s going to be healthy. I need help because it won’t be easy. Maybe you didn’t do anything before, but you can help now. I believe that people who have gone before us can reach back and give us strength and purpose. You can do that. You can make me strong enough to want to go on living, even if it means giving up Dennis. You can make me strong enough to let only healthy people in my life. If I can be big enough to forgive you, then you can do that for me. But that doesn’t mean I’m not angry. I’m angry that you took away my life.
My head is filled with happy memories, memories of when I was a little girl, my pride in you. If I go back far enough I can probably remember the day you pulled me into the world with such promise, such love. And I can remember thirteen years later that love and promise being betrayed, blown away like it was worthless.
You gave me so much. You gave me the Midwest with its storms and its people and its rivers and its trees. You gave me mountains, and sunrises and sunsets. You gave me flowers and lakes. You gave me so many values, working hard, striving to do better at whatever I did. You gave me a lot of good things, and when I was thirteen, you gave me something horrifying. It almost canceled all of the good things you gave me.
But I’m not going to let it. I’m going to take the rest of my life and all the unhealthy behavior I had and I’m going to throw it away. I’m going to start over and go on as if I were taught what you should have taught me. And I’m going to be all right, because I’m strong, I’m resourceful and I’m spiritual and because I’m able to forgive you.
I’m going to use my words to help others like me who didn’t know what happened to them and even if they did, don’t know how to deal with it, people who think they are locked into a “no good” prison. I’m going to teach them to pull out of it because my life is going to have a happy ending. One day my words will help others to get well and recover like I’m doing. I’m going to start a movement to help others who were sexually abused as children. If you help me do these things, I can forgive you.
And if you love me, you will walk by my side while I do this. And you will guide me in healthy steps like you didn’t when I was thirteen. I’ll mourn you for the rest of my life. I love you and I forgive you, but soon I will be well because I don’t want to carry any more pain.
Good-bye Dad. Rest in peace.
HAPPY FATHER’S DAY DAD!!
(The first Lamplighter Movement chapter formed was at The Sunrise Center for Sexual Abuse in International Falls, MN, in 2008. When they contacted me to say they wanted to start a chapter they also asked if I would do three days of speaking engagements. They didn’t know until I arrived that I had been born in that small community; my father had delivered me in the middle of winter, creating an unbreakable bond between the two of us.)
There is no such thing as a coincidence.
