The Body Keeps The Score. I am 68 years old. Sometimes I still feel the motion of the mattress as a body sits down on my bed. There is no one there. It is my mind playing tricks on me, my body remembering when I was 16 and dozing off to sleep and a body did sit down beside me on my bed. He was my father. No amount of time can erase that memory. Letting go, moving on, getting on with my life, forgive and forgetting never worked. All those words did was make me feel stupid and weak, because after all, everyone says it works so why can I not do it?

The memory of that night I examined for many long years trying to figure out what I did wrong that made my father think that his appearance on my bed and the kiss he planted forcefully on my mouth would be ok. My sister that I called for help a few days later said “Shame on you, you know your father would not do that to you. He loves you.” And I was sure she was right, my father would never do what he did, so it must somehow be my fault. In order to believe he loved me, the blame must be mine somehow.

So I retraced my steps, every action, even the tent like pink stiff quilted bathrobe that showed nothing but ankle and upper neck that I wore from the shower to my room. Was my smile too big? Was it the way I held my head when I said goodnight? Was it because he secretly snuck me money and we never told Ma and I was delighted because I hated Ma and so did he? I thought the money meant he loved me and with all the other children gone from home he had more to give. Was I too delighted! And then I would begin again, the bathrobe, my smile, my joy, or was it the way I walked?

My father admitted to something. I did not hear it. Sheila told me he said he was just trying to show me how much he loved me. But in an empty house as I am heading off to sleep… and this too I went over and over trying to make it OK in my mind. I felt his strong hands grip my upper arms at the shoulder as I sat up in fright. I felt his wet mouth mash down on mine. I felt panic. I feel panic as I type this because it will never end for me. I feel my hands against his chest as I push him off me. I hear his agonized grunt as he falls back, gets up and stumbles from the room. I hear my mind ask “What have I done?”

I sit against the cold damp basement wall in my dark windowless room with my arms around my knees all through the rest of the night. I listen to Dad pacing the floor and to Ma arriving home and eventually to Ma turning out the light in the bedroom. Dad paced on from window to window and I waited for him to return. All through the night he paced then sat then paced some more. I sat and waited longing for morning.

Even though the incident was not denied by my father, someone had to come up with a story to explain something, though for the life of me I do not know why the three of them, Ma, Dad, and Sheila could not just keep quiet. I discovered in 1995 from my sister Valerie that the lie went around in the family that I had made up the incident so I could leave home and not get stuck caring for the old people (Ma and Dad).

In the end, I could not live in that house with my father anymore. On Monday nights Ma still went to her damn church circle meeting and left me alone with him. I remember the first meeting after she and Sheila had emotionally battered the hell out of me for two weeks and shook their heads at me and turned their eyes away from me and Sheila saying before she caught the bus that at least she had not had a wasted trip as she made money off some churches for a non-existent mission in Florida while she was there to help me. Mother did her hair and put on her pretty beige suit, skirt and jacket, and I watched her go to the door, put her hand on the knob, turn to look me in the eye, and walk out leaving me alone with Dad. Did I hate her before that? I certainly hated her at that moment.

I went away for the summer. Joyce thought she could protect me from Denis who had just finished terrorizing and stalking Valerie. Valerie moved away to escape him.

I was only back home a week when I knew I would not stay for my senior year and sit there afraid of this man who was suppose to be Dad. My boyfriend, Fred had just presented me with an engagement ring and also told me he wanted to drop out of college but was worried he would be drafted for the war in Vietnam. Together we planned to tell people I was pregnant and we had to get married.

The plan worked. I had just jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. I suppose in fairness, so did my boyfriend.

Life was hell from the beginning for me. I left home still living as though people were after me. I peeked out of curtains to be sure no one was around before I opened the door. I sat in anticipation of a knock at the door. I mentally estimated the miles any family would have to travel to get to me.

But then Dad was not the first. Carl, Keith, Reed, and Joey. By the time I left home I was pretty sure all I would ever be good for was sex, and at the end of my marriage my husband told me just that.

Self-loathing. It grew like ivy on the side of a stone house blotting out the light for more years than I care to count while on the outside I struggled to be normal and good and godly.

Every couple of minutes a person is sexually abused in some way to some degree, child or adult. Put a face on a statistic. Use my face. I am one of those statistics. I am no longer ashamed. It was not my fault.

And if you meet a statistic there are no more healing words than, “It was not your fault!”

Like the incest there was anger that I pretended was not there. It was wrong and I must not feel it. After all, I was the bad girl, what right did I have to be angry? But angry I was. It was like an extra appendage, always there but just barely out of sight. It began about the time menstruation began and I walked around thinking God was killing me for my wicked ways. What else could it be? With twelve older sisters I had no clue of what this new horror was in my life but death coming for me. I was eleven years old.

You can call it the beginning of PMS if you like, I never timed my outbursts of rage to see if there were a correlation. I did not know about PMS or anything else for sure about what was happening to me. A brown paper covered box appeared like magic on my bed once a month so I assumed there was something natural about this awful circumstance. No more was said about it. The silence created the new shame in me, like incest it was secret, silent, and never to be discussed.

My first full blown rage, that point where latent and ever present anger erupts all over whomever is present, was when I tried to stab Valerie with a fork. I was 11 and I cannot tell you why it happened. Valerie had always tried to protect me as best a little girl can protect a little sister. But that is how rages are. They land on people at random mostly because there is no way to get at the true source of anger because you must be a good girl and keep silent. I regretted that incident immediately. Valerie was the person I trusted most though I trusted no person to any great degree.

Rages mostly die as they come, suddenly, leaving behind shame and guilt and regret, and yes, the horror that you did, said, were that person who you see rarely, your deeper self. The next rage event I was 15. I was combing my hair in front of my mirror in my bedroom when suddenly, looking at that face looking back at me, I began to scream, loud, blood-curdling screams at that face, that person I loathed so much, me. I did not break the mirror with my rage though I hit that face several times very hard.

My next rage event I was also 15 as near as I can remember. I stood at the far end of the farthest farm field clinging to the barbed wire fence screaming until I was hoarse. I wanted out, but there was no way out, and I screamed and cried and screamed into the empty fields beyond for some relief, any relief. No one came.

When I at last returned to the house my father said I just needed a good spanking and Ma asked why I had been skipping school. The principal called and reported me for my many days of visiting Margie’s house instead of the classroom. With Margie I felt like a cared for child, I could feel that I had a Mom of sorts for a short time anyway. She was so lovely in her heart and her ways, kind and gentle with me like I watched my mother being kind and gentle in her flower bed. She was a bright spot in an otherwise dismal world. I was forbidden to replace my schooling with visits to Margie. I was 16 when Margie died. Another mom had left me.

It was savage the way she wasted away from cancer as cancer patients mostly did in those days and I was not there. My sister Sheila convinced me she was not dying and I went to Florida for the summer with her. It is not all Sheila’s fault, I played my part in the lie by wanting to believe it. I wanted so much to believe so I took the word of a nurse, Sheila, instead of the doctors who operated on Margie. When I returned Margie was a pile of bones, nothing more of the woman I knew. She passed away soon after but she stopped to say goodbye three nights later. Margie stood at the end of the bed, she smiled and evaporated, not like in the movies all dramatic. Her husband told me she thought of me as another daughter. There were no other words that could have comforted me more.

Fits of rage haunted me. I was always surprised when it came, seemingly out of nowhere, but of course it was out of the constant strain of anger held in check just under the surface. I was afraid to be angry avoiding it at all costs no matter the circumstance. I turned into a doormat and a people pleaser and yes, in many ways a martyr, like my mother.

No matter how “good” I tried to be bouts of rage spattered yucky stuff all over anyone near, mostly my family, my children. At this moment I feel the shame rising in my cheeks at those memories. My children, more than anyone else paid a price for the ongoing crisis inside of me. They would not have known it was not about them, that it was left over from a time I dared not talk about in a place I dared not remember.

And that is the point of speaking about it. That was the point when I first talked about it in the early 1990’s. I wanted my children to know that my mess had nothing to do with them. I told their father and suggested therapy for me and the children. I never dreamed he would call me a liar and proceed to vilify me. In fact I was naïve enough to think that because I lived my life, was actually there, I would be believed. But it does not work that way with incest and sexual assault. The victim is portrayed as the villain, as I was very soon to discover thus adding more fuel to my already angry insides.

The lie was that it never happened, but somehow I was the liar, the bad person, making excuses for having been a bad person.

If my mind had not already been mangled by the real and horrific events of my childhood, this new twist would have. The lies about me from Fred and Cindi had always made me a little crazy and defensive, feeling like I could never set the record straight because nobody wanted to hear my “sour grapes” against the lies. That was part of Fred’s protection. How could he be the “Great Man” in Cindi’s and our children’s eyes without spreading a little manure over me? I think this new revelation was just another tool to use to prove that I was “crazy” instead of being a reason for my behaviors.

Anger piled on top of mountains of anger and there was no place to put it, no way to resolve it, just try to win my children’s favor over and over and over until I was half mad from the resentment and rejection, and hate that returned to me.

Finally, with no way to ever win, I accepted that the rift between my daughters and I was forever. I let go of the hope I had always clung to, and did my best to live in that reality. That was in 2011.

Since then I have done much healing work. I have been working at healing for decades now and there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel. And there is hope again.

There is still work to be done on me and that is OK. I do not expect a graduation date from this intense training. I have peace at last and I want very much to keep it.

I was an emotional wreck. I was not then and certainly am not now “crazy.” I was broken. I am now much less broken. And I am enough.

After being driven from Wanda’s home by her children under the mistaken belief that their mother was in imminent danger from me or likely to be found hanging dead in the guest room some bright sunny morn, I landed with a thump in the damp basement store room of my sister Sharon’s. I was, in the words of my ex-husband and father of my children, ‘Looney-tunes.”

I was not looney in the same way he had meant it though. Life was now a matter of going through the motions and acting as if. But had it not always been that? Only to a degree. I had learned to live with the real me tucked away like Christmas wrap waiting for the next season while the other me, the public me stammered and struggled through whatever life threw at me as best a half person can. Now I had only the whole me rejected and feared and reviled by my family of origin, well, those that mattered anyway, the rest of us were either willing traitors to the family “honor” or duped by me. So there I lie, chucked out like the leftovers to the compost pile.

They used to have meetings, you know. And after the 2009 reunion Rosie wanted to go as a gang and throw my things out on the front lawn. Sheila made the ridiculous statement that Bi-Polar people claim incest as an unwritten rule. It is unclear whether this all took place at the memorial for Valerie when she died, but Carl was still there and he had come for the reunion that year. I was to be gotten rid of. Period. It was also reported that several of the boys (men) discussed how awful it would be if people found out the truth. Yes, there at Valerie’s memorial service and three of them had molested and/or terrorized Valerie as a teenager and possibly younger. I have memories of Valerie exiting Carl’s room and the door latch clicking behind her. Like a good little girl I tucked that memory away too and never spoke of it.

It was just a week after the reunion and the big meeting over what to do with little Janeen that the lady from Social Services came to investigate whether I was abusing Wanda. It was Joyce who called and Joyce had been vicious to me since the reunion in 2007. In fact, she had blamed me for Val’s death. So they were going the legal route coupled with a campaign to rouse Wanda’s children to action.

Wanda and I traveled the length and breadth of Albion to try to get legal help of our own to stop the family from further harassments. We went to social services, the police, the family court and found no relief. The woman from social services practically told me to my face she believed Joyce. She had no time for me.

Anyway, there I was lying on a cold air mattress in my new basement storage room abode wide-eyed and stark raving shocked. Back at Wanda’s my things were being handled and gone through and put in storage. It only just occurred to me, I was lucky they did not just toss everything for the junkman, but Wanda would not have let them go that far. We were friends by then, not just family, but the enemies at the gate would not allow it. And they had wielded their power well.

It was a hard existence. Sharon was good to me, but it was clearly a far-right house with Fox News blaring all through the evenings because Joe was hard of hearing and would not get a hearing aid. And he was abusive to Sharon and Sharon excused him and went on being abused by an overbearing narcissist of a husband who believed the sun rose and set on his ass alone. And he used the N-word liberally and I cringed liberally. One evening I accidentally insulted him. We were watching Fox news and Sarah Palin came on. Joe said, “There is our next president!” Without thinking I blurted, “Palin? She’s an idiot!” I was genuinely shocked at anyone thinking Sarah Palin had brains enough to get in out of the rain. From then on Joe was unbearable.

I was there for two months and still pining for NC and my children and not having a clue how to proceed. The thought of a winter cooped up with Joe was too much, and I had promised one of my grandchildren I would not be away so long this time. I told Sharon I had to go. In my unreality I saw myself getting to Carolina and finding a way to get back on my feet. Sharon signed over the little canvas covered camper to me and off I went. With the camper in tow and all my things it seemed to me if I could get far enough south to camp through the winter I would be ok. But I had no plan, only to see my children and grandchildren again.

I was a little out of my mind, I suppose I had always been with never a secure foundation physically or mentally, and my emotions had too long overpowered any reasoning. I got to my daughter’s house and exhausted to the bone and when she said “You live here now.” I just accepted it as fact. It had not been part of my plan, but then there was nothing solid about my plan to begin with. One could say that I had no plan.

I am saying straight out that none of my children can be blamed in any way for what happened next. In fact, much of what transpired over the next year and a half there is no need to go into. No matter what was wrong with me from childhood on, I was the instrument of much pain and heartache for my children from an early age. I did the best I could with what I had to do with, but those are just words to comfort me in the dark of night when the past looms in the shadows of my mind. It could be no real comfort to my children. They were the victims of repeat abandonment, yes, I accept my responsibility, even into adulthood I came and went and came and went until they could take no more. It does not matter why. Even I could not understand the why of it all and I was the one doing it. Still today I am blindsided by the cruelty of some of my actions and I inwardly cringe at things I remember saying and doing.

I was the victim of my childhood and whatever happened to make my parents the people they were. Just as clearly, my children were the victims of my behaviors, my inability to cope and to form close bonds, and repeat abandonment which for me were unbearable so I cannot fathom what they felt every time, and there were so many times.

Yet I will not take responsibility for other peoples actions and cruelty. They have a father and step-mother who did a good job discrediting me, as though I needed help to do that. And people lying every which way about my character and trying to say I had a lovely childhood and nobody knows why she is the way she is and isn’t it a shame, she had so many opportunities. Also, according to eye-witnesses, they grew up in a loveless home that I while thinking they would be better off with anyone but me, abandoned them to.

But there I was, my mind and heart once again beaten to a pulp and landing on my children’s doorstep hoping for what? Kindness? They did their best. Forgiveness? I had made no apology and there was enough unfinished business between us you could fill Yankee stadium and sift through it till doomsday and not resolve anything. In the early days at my daughter’s house I hoped for nothing more than she had offered, a bed to sleep in and a roof over my head. I was too shaky to move beyond that. I pitched in and helped as best I could, but if they had expectations of me, they would be sadly disappointed.

It was all bound to go wrong and it did. Nothing was talked about, nothing resolved, again with the eye-rolls whenever I said anything. I had nothing worth saying. My children had a mother they could not trust or believe. they had been told from childhood that everything their father did wrong was because I was crazy. My first book was “looney-tunes” and the only thing wrong in my childhood was being poor. And unknown to me at the time at least one person from my enemies in the north had spread vicious and untrue things about me to at least to one of my children. I could not fight what I did not know, and how would I fight? I had zero credibility. I was a liar and a user, lazy and cruel, selfish and crazy.

Again, I do not lay blame at any child’s door. I ended up living in my car again and with no money to buy my thyroid medicine and no way to put my mind and life back together and now the with weight of the total rejection of my daughters I sank further into despair.

In a normal person’s mind the solution would seem an easy one, get a job and get back on your feet and make something of your life. But survival was still every day a priority and thinking and planning did not happen, just getting to tomorrow, and then the next tomorrow was all I could manage. My one daughter had helped set up a stall at a flea market for me to work, but try as I did, very little sold. I had a hard time putting gas in the tank to drive to a safe place to sleep at night let alone to buy food. Twice I was chased out of places I parked by the police and one night some teenagers banged on the window of my car and frightened the hell out of me. One day I had just one dollar and change to put in the gas tank and the lady in the store told me she had set it at $5.00 and I thanked her and vowed to pay her back one day, but that day never came.

After the third stay in mental wards in the space of 5 months I called Sharon and asked if I could come back there to stay and get on my feet. I did not know what else to do. I knew as I was, I would wither away and die. Yes I had tried to get a food handout, but I did not know I had to go back to Union County to be eligible, but the flea market stall was in Gaston County and I was failing fast. Sharon asked Joe and then she and Ardys came to rescue me.

For six months I lived in the basement storage room. By day I acted as if, before Joe came home from work I retreated to my room and played Lord of the Rings on a constant loop till I was sleepy. That was life for six months, Lord of the Rings to drown out the voices in my head and all the memories I could not bear, Fox News, and acting as if life were normal somehow.

I was in therapy. I was so certain they would admit me to a mental ward I packed a bag. But they said they don’t do that so quickly if they can help it. After a few months they signed a paper saying I was permanently disabled, they gave me a case worker to help me through the application for disability and getting my own apartment.

When I did get my own place I mostly sat. New York State had bought me my first furniture and I sat with the remote for a couple of years just surviving each day until bedtime and getting up and doing it all over again. They bought me a perfectly wonderful bed but for five years I only used it once, I slept on the couch downstairs where I felt safer.

I did not expect to see my daughters again, ever. I had to live with that, but in my sleep there was no way to control what my mind presented to me. I had nightmares where Fred and I were still together and the children were still my little children and there was still time to make it all come out OK. I would awake in horror to find it all a trick of my mind. Sometimes in my sleep I would reach out to touch one or the other of my children only to have the image dissolve into wakefulness. Then I would eventually fall asleep only to recreate the family in my dreams. Again, survival was all I had. Night after horrific night and day after mind numbing day.

People say stop blaming the parents. But are we to blame the children? It is complicated, but in the end I know that I was the instrument, willing or not, for the disfunction we all have had to live through. True, I did not do it all single handedly and I was the victim of my own screwed up mind and sometimes I did things with good intentions. But I also did things that may be unforgivable. They are certainly unforgettable.

Only by owning my own part in destroying the relationship with my children could I survive to actually find joy in life again. Facing myself, after a lifetime of trying to escape me, has been the most freeing thing I could have done.

Perhaps blame is not what we need. Perhaps communication and truth. But what is the truth and who can we trust? I cannot say I have never lied. I can say I do not lie now about who I am or what I have been.

As to Wanda, we patched things up pretty quickly in the fall of 2009. I felt violated by the thought of people going through my things and moving my life into storage, and I told her so in an emotional moment, but in my heart I knew it was not up to Wanda. We shared many, many fun times after that and I love her so much. As for Joyce, Wanda refused to speak to her for years after the horror she caused us, and I shed no tear for her passing.

There is much to tell and much to sort out. Science has brought me a small relief in the knowledge of the brain and trauma effects on the brains of young children. It is enough knowledge to at least be able to forgive myself for being me.

DBT, Dialectical Behavior Training, has also improved my outlook. I see how I can train my brain and reign in my emotions to a major degree. It is a therapy of the opposites of acceptance and change. I do realize I have had no major tests of my newfound skills, but so far I see definite changes in my reactions to life’s ups and downs. I no longer need to medicate myself because my shoelace broke and it is the last straw in a day with too many straws. I wish me well. My journey is ongoing.

Some things I only heard about in 2007 from older siblings, beatings for little or no reason. Gordon Dad went after with a 2×4 board, Joyce he hunted down with a shotgun because she was dating an Italian, Theora beat unconscious over accidentally breaking something, and Wanda for the mistake of stepping onto the neighbors property and one other time, set up by Joan and Denis she was brutally beaten for a swear word. Then there was Carl, literally kicked around the garden because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and blamed for wrecking the carrot patch in the garden, as told by his own lips as he heaved great sobs in a conversation with Wanda and I also in 2007.

I ran away from home twice when I was 11 and 12, Once I got only as far as downtown Brocton, NY and when my friend Shirley, who was suppose to join me, did not show up I got scared and returned home, crawling back in through the downstairs bedroom window that I had crawled out of. But the next time I planned better. It was just me and I packed a small case and walked to town. I hid in the Methodist Church till it was time for the bus, and then thinking I would be conspicuous in our nosy little small town carrying a suitcase I left my case in the church bathroom, bought a ticket and went to my sister Ardys house in Lake City, Pa. The suitcase is only significant because it contained my close-up of Peter Noonan of Herman’s Hermits fame that had hung on my bedroom wall. I never saw the suitcase again. But in 2007 at Letchworth State Park Valerie gave me an old record album with Peter in that same sweater. She asked, “Isn’t this the same sweater?” She had remembered.

Perhaps she had remembered so well because she was terrorized by the fear that I would get a beating like Sharon got after she was brought back from running away. I’d thought she was just mad at me for going. In 2006 she told me she was afraid for me. It is sad that we could not have shared that as children, perhaps we would have had allies to grow up with. But we lived in our own separate little worlds right there in the same house.

Sharon got a lot farther when she ran away, all the way to Buffalo and when she was brought back the town policeman lectured her on what a lucky girl she was to have the fine parents she had. Sharon was Ma’s whipping post, certainly for all the years I could remember. Once she chased me away from comforting her telling me I better stay away from her or I would get what she got. That was after a brutal scene on Mother’s Day when Ma threw Sharon’s handmade gift on the floor and scolded her for her wasted time.

I did not get beaten, whether because Ma and Dad were too old and tired or because they finally realized savage beatings did not help. They made all the other children watch the beatings, when they could control themselves long enough to set the stage. Apparently these horrid scenes were not just out of control emotions on their part.

One day it was Sharon’s turn. She had stolen something from a store, a pair of shoes I think, and got caught. I was not required to stay and watch. Who knows why, but when Joyce asked if I as the littlest could be excused dad said ok and I was allowed to go to my room. My room was directly above the living room in that old farmhouse and I was not spared the screams or the begging. In 2006 Charlene told me the gory details. Sharon had curlers in her hair and Ma gripped them while Dad beat her with the belt. Some of the hair came out. I won’t go on. I can still hear the screams, feel the terror.

One day the older boys played a trick on Reed and Reed ended up clinging to a tree limb afraid to jump down. He was frightened and screaming for help and Dad came charging out of the house already unfastening his belt and beat him right there hanging from the tree until Reed let go. “I’ll give you something to cry about!” was one of Dad’s favorite tunes.

Another time I heard the rush of footfalls on the wooden stairs and both Keith and Reed were begging Dad not to beat them. I was in my room and heard it all. I was terrified for them and for me.

One day Sharon came running up the stairs screaming and I heard Ma coming up after. I was in my room, it was all the girls room, and I hid behind a dresser. Sharon was begging Ma to not hit her again. Ma stood with her plum red face, a fork in her clenched fist, her body shaking. I do not remember if she hit Sharon again. She had already beaten her before chasing her up the stairs. I was so afraid to be found I sunk further and further into my little dark corner. I do not recall how it ended.

When all was quiet, I do not know how long I hid, I heard the call to supper. I went downstairs and Keith whispered in my ear to not mention Sharon’s name. Sharon was gone and would not be coming back. My first thought was that Ma had killed her but I did not ask and nothing more was said.

My own violent spanking at age 3 1/2 was the only spanking I ever got from my parents. But I did have a flicker of the fear of Dad’s belt one day when we went to Grandma Witherils. I was terrified of Uncle Hector and steered clear of him. One day when I was about five he chased me out the front door. Uncle Hector was in his fifties and always had a sort of leer to his look and I screamed as I fled his grasp. I scrambled into the back of the truck and just as Hector was about to climb in Dad came rushing to Hector’s rescue. “I’ll give you something to scream about!” he yelled as Hector backed away and Dad put his foot on the tailgate to climb up. I do not know why he stopped. I fully expected the kind of beating I had heard and seen. Uncle Hector did not come near me again. In fact for years I spent every visit avoiding Hector instead of having fun at Grandma’s and he seemed to not care.

That was my second rough encounter with Hector. The first time he grabbed me I choked on a piece of butterscotch candy and Sharon had to turn me upside down and slap my back to dislodge it.

My mother was one of four sisters who were violent towards their children far beyond what any reasonable person would call a spanking. I think she had Borderline Personality Disorder. It is hereditary. Perhaps they all had it. I have it. But the stigma of mental disorders, see, I have a hard time calling it mental illness, kept me stuck for decades. BPD alone would not, I think, explain Ma’s behavior, but it is about emotion dis-regulation so it could have contributed.

Why does it matter now? Because the children and grandchildren need to know the truth. The great DeGolier family was a huge mess that I wish never had happened. So many babies born to abuse, then growing up without true healing and having more babies and on down the generations and where does it end?

I cannot bear the thought of dying with all this still inside of me and no record for the DeGolier descendants to look to for answers. And what are the questions? It will be different for each individual.

Some people will think me cruel to “tell all” but I think it is far worse to tell nothing and cover it up and play the “I had a great childhood” tape as my mother did and leave me still wondering what happened to make her the way she was.

“We don’t see things as they are- we see them as we are.” Anais Nin French Born Author.

I am reading a book called Interpersonal Communication The Whole Story by Kory Floyd, a textbook from NC State University. In DBT my least favorite topic was interpersonal anything because I had zero skills when it came to people, even my own children. When I saw this book at the Cause For Paws Thrift Shop I knew it was for me. For $1.49 I am learning much about perception, verbal and non-verbal communication, and so much else I cannot begin to list all of the topics.

Attribution is what I am learning today and I see how I have used it and how it has been used to explain me.

“We explain behavior through attribution. Although most of us probably try to come up with accurate attributions for other people’s behaviors, we are still vulnerable to making attribution mistakes. These errors can create problems for us because our response to other people’s behaviors is often based on the attributions we make for those behaviors.“

Attribution, as I comprehend it, is similar to stereotyping in some ways, as when we attribute a certain behavior to an only child, a person of color, or a person in line at the check-out using EBT to pay for her groceries. But it is not, I think as simple as that.

There are a couple of ways that people have made attributions about my behavior in error. There may be more that spring to mind along the way.

Behavior: I still talk and write about my abusive childhood. Attribution: She is stuck in the past.

Behavior: Can’t hold a job. Attribution: She is lazy, has no work ethic, is not a productive member of society.

Behavior: In and out of mental hospitals. Attribution: Crazy.

Behavior: Claiming incest and sexual abuse. Attribution: Bi-Polar, that is what they do.

I could go on, now that I have begun. Instead, I will discuss here these examples.

People who do not still talk about their abusive childhoods may also be stuck in the past. The past does not dissolve because you bury it. It is alive and well and controlling you from the depths of your being. There is a saying I heard many times in AA. “You are only as sick as your darkest secrets.” Before I arrived in AA I had worked overtime and in over-drive to hide my shameful secrets believing I would be shunned and hated for who I was. People would look at me in disgust. I began to heal when I began to share my story, in spite of the knee-jerk reaction of people re-abusing me for speaking..

There is no happy ending for me whether I keep silent or speak out. I do see some freedom from the chains of the past and I cherish every moment. I have self-respect at last, no shame, spontaneous laughter, and a heart I am no longer afraid to use because it has been broken so many times and I fear one more time will be the end of me.

I was indeed stuck in the past for decades, silent and alone.

As for not holding jobs there is not one attribution that fits all. In short, I have never been lazy, except in the way that we all go through moments of not wanting to do one more thing today. My work ethic told me to work hard, earn every penny I am paid, and I will get ahead. And there are many ways to be productive and people like me who spend so much of their lives unstable and unable to cope will usually find them. Growing a garden is productive. Cleaning house and helping with children etc. I have had many jobs, otherwise I would not be collecting Social Security off them, and I have always tried my best. What more can one do?

Crazy. A label given freely by people who either do not, and have no desire to, understand, or people who have an agenda to discredit you or perhaps both. I am not crazy. Some of my actions and behaviors might say otherwise especially if you have no desire to know me better. But all my actions and behaviors can be explained much better by the truth I tried so hard to bury. But people who do not want or cannot afford the truth will continue to stick to the word crazy as an explanation. It is short and to the point and most of us probably think we know exactly what that means.

It is true that my sister told people that the reason I cried incest was that I was Bi-Polar and they do that sort of thing. That is a crazy notion all by itself. For one thing, I am not Bi-Polar, I have been diagnosed in years past with that malady, but I do not fit the criteria. I do fit the criteria for PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder for which my behavioral therapy and changes work to make life easier.

There is no group of people who are prone to claim incest except for the group that has actually lived with incest. And that group is very large indeed because there is another very large group who will cry the broken record of “Shame on you for saying that!” and “He/She would never do such a horrid thing!” or they just turn their back to you and refuse to hear. These are the people, like my parents and over 2/3 of my siblings who will readily form a circle of protection around the accused while reviling the victim/survivor unto permanent exile.

When my sister Joyce said to me in a letter that if only I would be one of them, they would welcome me back into the family, the meaning was clear to me. Abandon me, abandon my healing, and join the incest family system as a proud and true DeGolier. Only by denying my self could I lay claim to being a DeGolier, just as in the year 2,000 Sheila denied her self and signed a legal paper denying her baby’s father was Denis in order for Denis and Shirley to get their hands on their grandchildren. She was coerced by the lethal trio of Mother, Joan, and Denis and she folded and died inside while they nailed the last nail into the coffin of her remaining sanity. I heard my mother cried so afraid she was of her boy going to jail if the truth came out. Someone tell me please if she ever cried for her daughters who are still living with the aftermath of incest and denial.

My sister Joyce called me evil on the basis of many lies and attributions when all I had come to NY for was to know if I had siblings that I could call family. I never shed a tear when she died. She had hurt Wanda and her children and I know that she interfered with my own children because things that were said to me when I returned to Carolina could only come from her. Perhaps one day I will feel compassion for her. She was also a disturbed and unstable person from her own time as a DeGolier. At best for now, I forgive her cruelty.

Reading my book I see so many ways that I and others in my life attribute things to people on the basis of what they already know or presume to know. It is knowledge to be used when I find myself deciding according to who I am and what I “know” what someone else actions or words mean.

Wish I had learned this earlier in life.

If when Joey, my nephew, attacked me when I was 12 and he was 17 would have been the last sexual assault of my childhood there would still have been long term damage to my future. I didn’t just cry great wrenching sobs because he put his hands in my panties and groped me, that was just the event. And people can say what they will about what they would have done in my shoes, and people have, two of my granddaughters had their macho opinions, just as I did to my mother when she said the twenty children “just happened.” But these conclusions are entirely unrealistic. Sexual assault is not an event that a person can solve with such easy answers. At least some, if not many, of my mothers many pregnancies were the result of marital rape, though back then it was just a husbands right as the owner of his property. At what point would she or could she kick him in the nuts and say “Enough already?”

I cried for other reasons. When he apologized, and he did so immediately when I began to cry he said my brother Keith had said I would not mind. It hurt to be thought of that way and passed on like an old pair of sneakers you don’t wear anymore.

I cried because a year earlier I had warned Reed off telling him “If you ever touch me again I will scream so loud the whole world will hear me.” and I ran like the devil himself were chasing me, back to the house and the relative safety of being around people. I had thought then that that part of my life was over. Carl and Keith had left home and Reed did not touch me again, I watched my back, and I expect he took me seriously though for years he used his eyes to send me come hither messages and check out my boobs. I had to live with my fear of him.

But it had not been the end. Now here was Joey on a balmy Sunday evening when we played hide-and-seek, running and laughing and it was never going to end. Who would be next? I went back to the house slightly more broken and filled with shame for what was done to me and thought of me. The pain and hopelessness were unimaginable.

Why go over this? Because most people never get beyond the point where they decide whether or not to believe the victim or the perpetrator. Well it’s a toss up isn’t it? How do we decide? Well, on the one hand you have this nice, funny, intelligent man and then here is this girl talking icky sex stuff I do not want to hear and besides, didn’t she lie about taking the last cookie? She’s obviously lying now. End of story. Shame on me.

I was already super timid and shy, afraid of my own shadow, shame-filled, full of distrust and anger, detached from reality much of the time, and feeling hopeless and helpless. I was 12.

For years I studied my father’s face, looking for some trace of the man I new as a toddler. I would tear up with joy whenever I heard him laugh at Red Skelton because the laugh took me back to better times. Sometimes when Joey’s dad Eddy came to the house they would pull out their memories and roar with laughter and I loved it. I wished it was me that made him laugh, like when I was little, but that man had left long ago. When I was 13 Dad yelled at me to get the damn cat off the table and I stopped in my tracks, it was the first time my own father had spoken directly to me in so many years. I felt relief and panic and uncertainty and shame because Dad should not have needed to tell me to get the cat off the table. I was bad.

A few years later Valerie and Reed graduated from high school and moved away. Now it was just me left at home and Mother began serving me Carnation Instant breakfast on school mornings. I liked them OK but it marked a dramatic shift in home life. Another shift was dad slipping me money in secret. I hated Ma, and I took the money to be gifts showing he loved me and now there was more money and he wanted me to be happy. I still had a deep need for a father and oh how proud I was that he loved me.

Looking back, I had that same proud feeling walking hand in hand with my brother Carl because, yes, somebody did love me. I was wrong both times.

One day I came into the house and stepped into a landmine. Dad was attacking mother verbally and Ma looked as anguished as I had ever seen her, and trust me she had been shedding her tears in rivers for years. That day was different. When I walked into the scene and stopped short at the misery in the room my father waved his arm toward me and said “There is the chief cook and bottle washer,” and continued his tirade against Ma’s cooking, her housekeeping, her everything.

I longed to go to Ma and comfort her. I just stood there for a moment then tried to become invisible as I left the room and all their misery behind.

A few days later, there was Dad waking me from the throws of slumber with a full blown kiss. I put my hands against his chest and pushed him back. He stumbled out of the room and I sat all night with my back to the cold, damp basement walls listening as he paced the floor. Mother came home from her church circle meeting and went to bed and still I sat and listened, terrified he would return. I did not sleep. Neither did my father.

I called the sister that had been raped by my brother and she came. When I got home from school she pounced with all the conviction of a righteous person. For 2 weeks I dared not be alone with Dad, so I tagged along wherever my sister and Ma went. They did a lot of whispering and head shaking at me. What could have possessed her? Did she need a psychiatrist? No, that would make her worse. I think I cried solid for the whole two weeks. Neither Ma or Dad or Sheila spoke directly to me. They either stared at me or when I caught them staring, turn their heads away. I felt like slime.

The day Sheila left she said to Ma “At least it wasn’t a wasted trip.” She had managed to book some church talks and collected donations for a non-existent charity for wayward girls. It just struck me that it was she who wrote me when I was 11 to tell me terrible things were going to happen but that I was a DeGolier and we are survivors. I never imagined I would have to survive her treatment of me. It was she who made up the ‘truth” about me being molested by Reverand Petibon.

Her words stopped my tears and hardened my heart a little bit more. I thought to myself. “If that is what they think of me then that is who I will be.” I set out to be bad. The old “I’ll show you, I’ll hurt me.”

I was 16. Survival was all I had. Normal life was not an option.

I began drinking and lost my babysitting job. Then I began hanging out downtown Fredonia till 3 or 4 in the morning trying to get into trouble. I don’t know if I thought it happened spontaneously like in the movies or what, but I had not the guts or the true inclination towards being “bad.” By then I thought I was just a bad person and that is why these things happened to me, so if I hang out in places dark and shadowy surely bad people would recognize me as a bad person and I would just fall into living a bad life.

I was torn between believing it was all my fault and the slim hope that other people were responsible. I reconstructed the scene with my father dozens of times over the next few years trying to pinpoint my fault in his behavior just as I would do with all the people I came in contact for the next decades, including my husband and children. I made an easy scapegoat.

In fact, my boyfriend Fred gave me a preview of what being a scapegoat was. He had visited my best friend at what was my old babysitting job and came on to her. When I asked him about it he said it happened because I was not there. Did I take the hint? No, I married him. I needed an escape and when he presented me with an engagement ring, he signed on as my hero. I had been dating someone else at the time and Fred said he couldn’t lose me. I suppose I had value as a scapegoat.

Later on he would tell my kids that everything he did wrong was because I was “crazy.” My “hero” became my enemy.

At what point I was to have pulled myself up by the boot-straps financially or in any other way, I do not know. My mind was a mass of conflict as well as my heart. I had no skills, no knowledge of the world, no ability to cope beyond the few survival tools I had left home with that had no real meaning in the outside world. I attracted abuse, I suppose because I had never known anything else.

Two opportunities to speak about the incident with my father came and passed. One day my sister Joyce and her daughter Brenda and my sister Valerie came to the house to beg my parents to do something to stop Denis from molesting the girls. He had been stalking and terrorizing Valerie. Denis was 35 and she was 18. As Brenda, Valerie and I stood by the pond I said Dad had come to my room and kissed me. It was almost a whisper. I had sworn I would never tell anyone again after what Ma and Sheila did to me, but here was what must have felt like a perfect opening. Brenda turned to me and asked what I said, but I had lost the courage to say it again.

The second opportunity came when i visited at my oldest brothers house a week later. My sister in law sent everyone to bed including my two nieces who were my age. It felt out of place for her to request me to stay and make cookies with her. Then she asked if everything were OK at home. Bev was a strict person and not a person one could easily warm to. I immediately smiled and said yes, everything was fine. I could not risk opening that door again to shame and blame and the meanness I must surely have had to have in order to tell such a lie. I wonder if she helped concoct the lie that I lied so that I would not be stuck at home taking care of the old people.

Children are the greatest resource the world has, and they are thrown away by the millions instead of protecting and nurturing and treating them as though they matter. Sure there are great parents out there, and there are many like me who intended to be good parents and missed. Then there are those who will violate their children to the death. And I suspect for every good parent there is also a predator who will be happy to step into any small glitch in the process.

Children. What is the answer? I do not know. I stumble along wanting to help but I do not know how, or maybe I am afraid to try because I have failed everything in my life but Survival 101. For many children survival is all they get. Some do not get that privilege. I am proud at how far I have come despite so much and so many against me.

I keep thinking one answer is in laying out the after-effects of sexual abuse on children. If people could open their eyes and see it unfold in children’s lives and feel the damage for themselves. But there are so many excuses. There are agencies for that sort of thing and other people to take care of it. Most people will not look.

There are no agencies to interfere where it is most needed, in the home. Most sexual predators are known by families, in fact they rely on the families trust to get away with their crime. And of course, incest is a family affair.

In 1995 my mother told me she remembered the night my father molested me. She told me then that she believed me. I asked her why then did she not help me. “I just couldn’t” she said. And then she defended herself by pointing the finger at me for becoming an alcoholic and losing my children. That was the only time I split in two. I was a child and a grown woman driving into town to see my therapist to see how to put me back together.

My life, in spite of being alienated from my daughters, is more together than it has ever been. To some it must seem like I am still circling a dead carcass to see how much more mileage I can get from it, but to me, I am an ever evolving person with a desire, and if I have the courage, the ability to help other people like me. My generation, and those before me, had no voice at all.

My bad reputation had long preceded me to NY. As I have said before the lie that went around the family when I was still a teenager was that I had wrongly accused my father of molesting me in the dark of night when Mother was at her church circle meeting and I was safely tucked in bed on the way to sleep. I did not know, of course, because the lie was acceptable where the truth was unthinkable, until 1995 when my sister Valerie asked me what happened.

I thought the only aftermath of the incident was in my mind going over and over and over the events of that night trying to figure out what I had done wrong to induce my father to do such a thing, because you see, I could not readily believe it either. Sheila had said it, “Shame on you, Janeen, you know Dad would never hurt you that way!” But he did what he did, so the blame must be mine and I tried and tried to put the pieces together in a way that fit my belief that Dad loved me and he told the truth that he was only trying to show how much he loved me.

It was only years later that I realized he did not deny that something happened. But it happened to me, and it was not a case of showing love. It was dirty and icky and traumatic, one more male figure laying his hands on me in secret, he was the fifth and I was only 16. I’d like to say that was the last nail in the coffin of my future life, but there were many more nails to come and I have, so far, survived them all.

Now back to the big lie. Why was it necessary to invent a lie to cover Dad who apparently did not deserve to be charged with such a crime, and blacken my name to the family? Was it done with purpose and intent? Or was it just another yearly campfire tittle-tattle to fill the reunion week gossip column? Whatever happened to little Janeen to make her such a mess of a person. She was the baby, she had a wonderful life…

More lies preceded me to NY. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, I lost my children because Social Services were coming to take them away and Fred and Cindi stepped up and rescued them. What a great life those children have and what a sacrifice that woman has made to raise those children. And what did I get? Shame on you for losing your children.

The truth is always the truth and lies are always lies no matter how many times you tell it or how good at it you are. I knew I was in trouble as a mother, partly financial, but mostly emotionally. I called Fred for help. Social Services was not in the picture. Fred agreed to take the children for six months while I got back on my feet. He thought ahead, or rather Cindi did, and brought legal papers for me to sign. Due to ill health I was unable to care for the children.

I still try to comfort myself with the lie that the children were better off in a two parent home with two working people and a home to grow up in. Beyond childhood I had been beaten down by ten years with a man who’s solution, even when I did not know something was wrong, was to abandon us for a few days and come back begging forgiveness and amid tears of remorse, promise to never do it again. I counted the number of places we had lived in those ten years. Including living in with family, 20 moves with all the packing and unpacking and having babies in an uncertain and ever-shifting marriage.

But as tempting as it would be to tell Fred’s story, I am here to tell mine. In the summer of 1980 the children and I spent a month at Cane Creek Park in Waxhaw living in a tent after Fred abandoned us in Charlotte and drove back to NY State. The first night I’d parked the car in the parking lot of Brookridge apartments where we had lived before we had no money for rent. The manager found us and took us in to the lounge and let us sleep there.

But here again, delving into the whole rotten story instead of focusing.

New York State. The lie stood that I had lost my children rather than that I tried to give them a better life than I had any confidence that I could give them. I had long ago been branded as a boldfaced liar, selfish, mean, a spoiled brat. But please, if someone out there was spoiling me do not come back and do it again. It was all a tale straight out of hell.

My children were not better off in the way that counted most. Their grandmother, Betty, called me up crying and begging me to “get those children out of that house!” because there was no love there, it was cold, Fred and Cindi were cold. Yes, I cried, I had done this to my children.

And yes I was weak. For a time I drank my pain away. Life had already been far too long and too filled with pain. I needed to rest. I needed oblivion and alcohol provided that, for a little while, then it turned on me and left me wide awake and facing all that I had tried to bury deep inside.

Who people think I am is built on lies and innuendo and the “evidence” born out by my erratic and unstable life and life-style. the evidence of “crazy” born out by many hospital visits, all but one self-imposed. The “evidence” of lazy born out by erratic work history. The “evidence” of hate-filled born out by my actions towards people which in truth reflected my fears and insecurity rather than hatred.

Family is not all it is cracked up to be. People post mushy-gushy memes all the time touting family as the great institution it is, but only for some people. Fred, who had previously been the cad, became everybody’s hero. Cindi, the woman who purposefully got involved with a married man she found crying on a bench at Freedom Park though I asked her to back off and she lied that they were only friends and she had been “instrumental” in helping other married couples get back together became a hero that stepped up and raised four, in her words, “motherless children.”

The boundless lies about me and my character have stood the test of time. Perhaps that is why I hate lies. And the DeGolier family is full of endless lies and coverups and whitewashing and there must be collateral damage to keep up the image of a great family. I was the collateral damage, and all I did to deserve it was to be born the littlest DeGolier.

When I got to NY the family already knew what a waste I was, a liar and a thief and a user and abuser. It was not a far reach for them then to believe every lie that came along in the form of gossip.

That I attacked Shirley and vowed to take her and Denis’s grandchildren away.

That I killed Valerie, well, ovarian cancer killed her, but my shenanigans were part of it somehow.

That I abused Wanda,

That I was kicked out of Letchworth State Park for bad behavior.

That I was Bi-Polar and bi-polars always claim they were molested as children.

That I was mad because I never got any of Mother’s “treasures” when she died.

That I was “in cahoots” with Glora who had done only what any good person would do, try to save children from sexual abuse.

The list is endless but I will tell you what happened the night of the “attack” on Shirley.

We were camping at Popehaven, in Rabdolph, NY. Wanda and I walked up to the store and Shirley was there. Like nice little family members we sat down and began to small-talk. I do not remember how the subject came to sexual abuse, though Shirley had been married to the family pedophile for 50 years so I suppose that is what was on our minds. How does one stay with a known pedophile for fifty years, well, known to the family.

I do not recall what I said, but Shirley actually complained that she had had to watch her husband follow little blonde girls around campgrounds for fifty years. I said, “So you knew? And you did nothing?” Then she brought up Dad. “Well, what about your dad? You know about him don’t you?”

She would not say more, but since I was the only one who ever claimed I had been molested by Dad, I felt I had a right to know the whole story. Sharon and Rozzella had admitted to waking in the night when visiting home to see Dad standing in there bedroom doors staring at them. That was all.

Later I decided to go ask Shirley what she had meant about Dad. She came at me but her screen door was between us and the latch broke. She covered it up by saying I had broken it trying to get in. A couple of days later Joyce called berating me for trying to hurt Denis and Shirley by taking their grandchildren away. I denied it. Hell, I had enough trouble taking care of me, let alone taking on a mission like that. But even though Shirley lied all her life at the drop of a hat, her lie stood. Again I was the scapegoat, and the family was going to make me pay dearly for… what? For other peoples “honor” though none of these people had any honor and the family name had been trashed by DeGoliers before I was ever born.

I was told I was not a DeGolier. So I began to use the name. They were being unforgivably cruel, but I forgave them.

People lie because they have things to cover up, Fred, Cindi, most of the DeGolier family trying to keep the world from knowing about things the town of Brocton knew when I was still a schoolgirl. Other people believe them, perhaps because it is easy? Because they have a preconceived idea of who the person being lied about is so they just store the new lies with what they already think they know?

I have longed for years to expose the lies. Did I have the right? Does that make me more cruel than people already think I am? Does it matter? People hate me for who they believe I am, so will I lose any more by setting the record straight? My heart has been broken and broken and broken and I have spent my life trying to keep the pain at bay and be the nice guy and not rock other people’s boats. If you think for one moment I have exposed without purpose other peoples flaws I tell you now there are many things I have not exposed and I doubt I ever will. Especially things that would harm other innocent people, like my children, in particular my children.

So I leave this with this question. Why have I had to endure, pretty much all my life, being portrayed this dark person, this liar and hater, corrupt and cruel when all I have done is survive the best I could and try to not hurt people along the way though I have ended up hurting many by keeping my silence?

No, I will leave with this question. Why, since I have begun to tell my side, do I find myself singing in the shower once again, I suppose to my neighbor’s delight? Oh heck, I will answer it too.

In AA they said we are only as sick as our darkest secrets. As I write I free my inner being and burst into song and little dance moves (though not dancing in the shower) like a little songbird flitting through the trees. I have more right to my freedom than anyone had to their lies that helped steal my life.

In my life, and I presume in every life, there is the story behind the story, and one behind that one and the one before that and it all leads to one moment, or event or action. And my obsession with photographing birds in NY was the result of many stories.

There is, of course the big story, the backdrop of abuse and instability that is, in one way or another, the backdrop to twenty DeGolier siblings, though there are some who will swear that nothing ever happened in our idyllic childhoods.

There is then the story of my longing for family, my own children were distant in so many ways by then, and I had vowed never to return to the land of my birth and the family who had deserted me, though both circumstances were very much a two way street.

I will begin with the family website and my visit with Rozella in the spring of 2006. I literally fell into a world of family scanning old pictures and letters onto disks. There were so many relations I had never seen or even heard of. I poured over them like little pieces of treasure. This was my family, my history, my people and I kept searching for answers among the treasures, answers to who we were, who I was, where I fit in this menagerie. I found a stack of songs and poems my father wrote spanning from before my parents married, they were all dated, until after I was born. I found a notebook of Ma’s full of her favorite scriptures and I tried to put these pieces of information together with the Ma and Dad I remembered. I could not.

When I first went on the family website I heard the voices of my siblings echoing down the years with every message they wrote of welcoming and one in particular, stern with faux intimidation, Joan, the self-appointed everything of the family. I had originally planned not to see family when I went back to research for the book I had in mind (no, not a tell-all book to expose people or hurt them, I could have done that from the safety of a few hundred miles because 90% of what I know now I knew all my life.)

I could not resist the tugging at my heart strings and the beckoning voices. To seal the deal I had inadvertently booked a summer-long spot at what turned out to be a ritual family campground for part of the family. I learned that the day I arrived to find my brother Denis had been waiting for my arrival.

There was fear and anxiety over my return. People had been on the phone lines wondering what to do about me. Joan made an angry call to Rozzella and various others were up in arms over what to do about little Janeen. I get it. When I had returned in 1996 for a brief visit after Ma had a stroke I had a breakdown and spilled my guts all over the reunion.

Some people used the gaslighting approach. Even the most innocent of my memories were denied and ridiculed or heads shook over because, I suppose, it was dangerous to let me have even the tiniest win. Joan was direct like a Lord and King ought to be, “If she gets out of hand I will quiet her down.” Sharon was worried, but she took the kind approach. She invited me to come visit for a few days and we talked of many things and as communication often does, her fears were silenced.

The next huge event was the 2007 reunion. I had made a stupid mistake and invited my children. It was two worlds colliding in my mind and I felt like I had just lost my mind. To make matters worse, there is evidence that one story that went around was that I was upset that I did not get any mementos from Ma and Dad’s treasures when they died. People kept bringing me stuff, some in anger at my gall, and some in kindness. Valerie brought a broken NYC doll among other things, but my mind reeled at the sight of the doll. They were all alike, you see, the dolls we got on our trip, and the day my brother told me if I stopped crying we would play a secret game together was all I could see. Valerie asked me if I wanted a drink and I said yes.

I tried to tuck it all back in, the anger, the sadness, a whole lifetime of running from the truth and there it was, in my face, in my hands, a doll just like mine with it’s head in my hand. The flashback in time, mother’s smiling face, the smell of laundry hanging on the upstairs clothes line, my hand in my brothers and the pride of knowing my brother cared about me. What do I do now?

The week was a disaster, but I won’t go into that here. Suffice it to say I did not play hostess to my visiting children well at all. It became another nail in the coffin of our relationship.

Due to all the pain and my need to be loved I wrote the wrong book. I just wanted everybody’s pain to stop, especially my children’s and mine.

I’d had a sort of loosely fitting plan before I went to NY. I had in mind me traveling in my fifth wheel camper, working at campground to help pay the way and writing the original book I had planned and making a little money from it hopefully. The book I wrote was aimed at the family, a plea for understanding and acceptance from my siblings and my children. Some people hated me for it, some people praised my courage and some thanked me for insight into the monstrosity that was the DeGolier family. In the end I was broken, broke, and life had once again become a non-reality reality.

The winter of 2008 came and I was stranded in NY. I had not only failed, I had fallen into the role of the baby of the family once again. I was depressed and desperate, but mostly I hated myself and did not know how to go on.

One morning I was washing dishes with Wanda and spied a bright red Cardinal sitting in the snow on her Blue Spruce tree in the front yard. I went to get my camera. Then I spotted more birds, some of them so tiny I thought they must freeze to death, and I took pictures. I thought, “If these little birds could make it through the winter then so could I” forgetting that these birds evolved to make it through the northern winters. I had no such protection and a huge family verbally and emotionally beating me up at every opportunity. But for the moment, reality was no place to be.

The birds had inadvertently saved me for the moment, they gave me a safe place to focus my attention and I began to form an idea of using the bird photos as the backdrop of a simpler kind of book. Not a book about birds, I knew so little. Just simple sayings of things I had learned in life. It was not a well thought out idea but it gave me some fragile hope of saving myself.

So that is my story of my bird photography. I was grasping for any lifeline to get me back. I was weak now, and the family got stronger and meaner by the day. They actually had meetings about what to do about me, but none of that group ever tried to sit down and talk to me. They had already formed their opinion into fact and I must go.

Their route was through Wanda’s children. They hounded them until one of them called the police and reported her mother was in danger from me. The police came, Wanda tried to stop it all happening but her daughter silenced her. That night I slept on an air mattress laid out in a cold, damp basement storeroom at my sister Sharon’s house. There is much more to the story, including how Wanda and I kept our friendship amidst all the hate and cruelty. We were both torn apart over this, but what the family could never take away from us was our memories of the time we shared. They could never take our fun times away. Even now my heart warms at the thought of berry picking, puzzles, endless flea markets, and movies and popcorn and a million miles of laughter along the way.

A side note, as I did cost my sister some money, when I got my disability we talked and agreed on an amount of money I would pay her and agreed never to mention it again. I paid her and that was that.

Communication is a wonderful thing. It solves all sorts of misunderstandings. It takes a bit of courage that I did not used to have. It is part of the reason I now have two real friends that are part of my life right here right now and why I have much hope of building a solid relationship with my son and his children. From there, who knows, I keep an open mind to hope and possibilities.

I was not, for much of my life, what might be called “a productive member of society.” I quit school and left home running scared straight into a new unlivable situation, marriage to a man available to rescue me. He had his own agenda. His dad was pushing him to finish college and become a psychiatrist. He wanted out. But during the Vietnam War there was a lot of fear of the draft and he didn’t want that either. Marriage might save him. He dropped out of college, his dad blamed me, naturally, but that was entirely Fred’s idea. I am sure that little bit of history fell by the wayside when much later he blamed me for everything he and I both did wrong.

But I am not here to tell Fred’s story. That is for him to take responsibility for. I have played the scapegoat and I am done.

I had my own idea of marriage gleaned from Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best and The Donna Reed Show, all perfect families with perfect wives who knew their place and lived it to perfection. I tried to follow in their footsteps with the old-fashioned idea that they were proper models to follow. Backtracking a wee bit, we were isolated on the farm, with very few outside influences besides relatives. My parents marriage was cold and silent as was their parenting except for the intermittent rages. Because of that and the other abuses heaped on me I had spent much of my growing years in a self-made cocoon of fantasy and day dreams. In my favorite, one version was that I had run away from home and was hungry and stole an apple from a tree. An old farmer caught me (hard to get the farm life out of me) and took me home. He and his wife were childless and so very full of love. They kept me and raised me as their own.

I daydreamed much of the time, at the dinner table, in the classroom, pulling weeds, and picking strawberries, my fantasy life was never out of reach. Reality was too hard for me to stay in 24/7. So when I stepped out into marriage I had no idea what I was doing, the sappy TV shows and my own dream world had partially shielded me from facing reality with its cold, cold face.

So there I was, trying to be the ideal wife in a world where none exists with a man who was not too pleased at where he’d landed either.

I didn’t think of working. The ideal wife cleans and cooks and looks pretty for her husband when he comes in tired from his hard day at the office. Besides that, we lived way out in the country. We had no phone, I had no license, and no high school diploma. Add to that the coping mechanisms that followed me to my new life though they did not actually serve a purpose and I was one confused, lonely, and depressed little girl at 17 and life looked endlessly unkind.

When the children began to arrive, no, I did not think of working. I had so much morning sickness stretching all the way into evening that I lost nine pounds the first month of pregnancy with my first child. The doctor gave me something for it, but it would not stay down either. And as more children arrived, Fred and I decided I would not work outside the home until the youngest began school. That did not work out too well because he met his new wife when our youngest was about 3.

My work life began, forced out into the public to fend for myself with 4 small children in tow and no job skills or people skills, I did my best. But the separation from my husband was a roller coaster ride from hell. There were times when the phone rang and I would go into a panic because it might be Fred. There were times I could not bear the the thought of being on my own and begged Fred to come back. He was addicted to me and I to him, but for very different reasons.

It was hard to hide my emotional instability, that had always been there, once I was in the workforce dealing with people as a waitress. I remember my first day on the job at Sonny’s Barbecue walking up to the first table pad and pen in hand and the dining room supervisor, Carolyn at my elbow, and staring mute at the couple sitting there. I could utter no word, I was that afraid of people, one on one contact with strangers was traumatic for me. I was 27 and had no clue how to live in this world on my own.

But there was no choice to it. Fred was gone and the children were there to be cared for and I somehow made it through the first day. When I saw how much money I had made, I determined that I would make it work somehow. And I did, for 2 1/2 years until I was fired for an emotional outburst against a co-worker.

I was a hard worker. That I had learned on the farm. I earned my money and was always there for extra shifts. I was loyal to the people I worked for. I had this weird belief that if you tow the line and work your butt off you got ahead. I did that, but I was still not equipped with any kind of people skills.

Over the years I lost many jobs, mostly due to my inability to cope with everyday life. One I remember in particular I worked for a small upholstery company. One evening I was working overtime at a sewing machine in a little corner alcove when the boss, Charles, stopped to chat. I am people claustrophobic. I am OK in a small space unless there are people blocking my escape. Panic began and no matter how I tried it erupted and I screamed and as Charles stepped back I ran screaming out the door. Yes, I lost my job.

Another time, in 1998 I worked at a car parts factory. There was a very disturbed girl there that I empathized with because I was also a bit disturbed. one day there was a scare and it was believed she might come back to harm us so the shop was closed and we were all ushered out. Come Monday morning the boss told me that he had chosen me to work with her as I seemed to get along with her. I said no. He said either agree or leave. I left. Of course he had no right to do that, but I did not think, as I often did not think clearly with so many emotions to process.

Then I went truck driving and the long hours on the road with tons of time to think was a disaster for my mental health.

I tried to be a productive person. Eventually physical difficulties cropped up to haunt me almost as much as my emotional difficulties. I could not stand for long periods, carpal tunnel, I could not lift heavy objects, it cut way down on the types of jobs I could apply for. I even applied at McDonalds and they rejected me because of my physical disabilities. Well, no, I did not want to work at McDonalds, but I had to have a job for the usual reasons. I got a job at Good Will, but I could not do the heavy lifting. I got a temp job delivering phone books in the heat of the Florida sun. I saw it through but it did me in.

The effects of childhood haunted my life in every way possible. Childhood is not an event a person can put behind them. Childhood is where we are prepared for being an adult in the real world we live in. I had no preparation, and once I was on my own life was just an inevitable round of floundering about trying to keep from drowning. In that respect, I succeeded, I did not drown. That was success for me. i did not go under today. I got up.

What is the point of writing all this? Is it self-pity? No, I stopped, or at least put strict limits on self-pity. It has no good use. Is it because I think I am unique? I have learned well that I am not unique, and knowing that has saved me.

Here is why. Something happened to make my parents who they were. They passed the suffering on to twenty children. Their children passed it on to 67 more children, and there the counting stops because I do not know and do not want to know how many that generation passed the pain on to. I passed it on to my four children and now three of them are not a part of my life. One I have not seen for ten years. These were my little babies, my responsibility and there is no apology can fix it. I have granddaughters who hate me, ten grandchildren I do not know and I do not even know if I have great-grandchildren.

I have fixed me as best I can over decades of struggling to survive. I get to enjoy the little things in life now more than the previous sixty some years. But the big things are already gone. And the big things are people.

My sister Valerie told me why she had an abortion rather than to have a child. She somehow knew she did not want to do to a child what was done to her. There I was having babies and thinking I am doing what women are “supposed” to do according to what I learned and the whole God thing and she had an abortion to prevent more pain in the world. I know she loved my children, but I do not think she ever regretted not having her own. The woman suffered a pain filled life just as I did and most of my siblings. It is inevitable that she would also have unwillingly passed on what we all tried and failed to bury.

I speak because there are children who might benefit from knowing the cold, hard truth that their parent was damaged, not bad or mean or hate filled. My first book told me, when family members spoke up, that I had accomplished something. They saw their parent in a new light and that made their life just a little easier.

We accomplish nothing when we hide the truth. We accomplish nothing when we bury the past. In fact, more harm has come out of burying the past than ever came from telling it. I wish my siblings could have seen that, but they were too scared, just as I had been for decades, that someone might discover the real DeGolier family. I feared my children would see the real me and turn away. If there had been some way to tell it like it was from the beginning, childhood abuse would not have clung to my insides like a parasite spewing hurt with every breath I took.

I kept my silence because I believed it was the right and safest path. I was incredibly wrong.

My sister had an abortion for the same reason.

When I returned to NY in 2006 after many years away I saw first hand the damage to my siblings. I saw my brother Carl break down sobbing anguished still over what Dad did to him. It is hard to still be mad at someone when you can feel their pain in your own gut. But I was not still mad because he used me, but because, as an adult he recruited Jesus to say all was forgiven. I wanted my own acknowledgement and apology.

I and two other adults held Sharon from toppling to the ground in anguish still over Ma’s treatment of her. Her face screwed up in torment, her body shaken, knees gone weak, and the howl of pain still raw in her throat. The saga of her history I witnessed as a child. It were as though Ma hated her. Sharon was, if there is such a thing, the child Ma chose to turn her worst attentions to. I listened to stories of beatings I was not born yet to witness, Dad going after Gordon with a 2×4. Theora beat senseless for accidentally breaking something. I listened as Valerie told the full story of crawling on her belly across Jackson Park in Mayville, NY trying to escape Denis, who was stalking her. Wanda, an awfully nice woman to everyone had tried to commit suicide as a teenager. Her harrowing stories of beatings for nothing more than stepping a foot on the neighbors property when she was six years old ripped my heart open.

I also witnessed the pain in my own children and the widening rift between us, much of it due to my inability to settle and bond and be a part of. Some of it due to the big lie that the DeGolier family life was terrific. It never was. I do not know one sibling who escaped unscathed. My brother Reed says he remembers no beatings, but I saw them. So much denial and the ineffective means to control the past by burying it deep enough.

But there was no place deep enough and the past kept regurgitating like a bad meal.

We live what we learn. Growing up, we did not learn much worth living. Nearly all of my siblings have children who hate or hated them. It is an aftereffect of not being capable of bonding, trusting, and being loved.

My first book I began as an answer to all that pain. It was not the book I planned to write. I had researched and planned a book on what causes families like ours, my parents lives that contributed to the suffering, the culture and world they grew up in. But Wanda, Sharon, and later Ardys and Glora were with me on the book. Everyone who would be against me was already against me and I wanted to show them I did not mean anyone harm, that I had come back to try to repair not separate or condemn.

But when family secrets are thought to be at risk, it was like trying to sweet talk a pit of rattle snakes. They were all shaking their tails and hissing in the beginning and struck most painfully at every clear shot.

I had turned to mush. I took up my position as the “baby of the family” and was once again at the mercy of every foul wind and from Joyce on down my siblings chipped away of what was left of my stability.

Lies flew about like flies on a carcass, fast and furious and with “proof” to back them up. None of those siblings talked directly to me. I must be demolished, run out of town, silenced in any way. Short of murder, but I do not doubt that was thought of by someone, perhaps by the brother who tried murder once, perhaps by my brother who terrified me by trying to drag me to the bottom of the 17′ farm pond when I was a kid. They went through Wanda’s children, telling them their mother was in danger, or their mother was going to wake up one morning and find me hanging in the spare room. Joyce sent me a vicious letter, even chastising me for not liking country music. Everything was thrown at me that could be, including the claim that I had destroyed the family. I was evil, wicked, selfish. Joyce told me the family would welcome me back into the fold if only I would be “one of us” and try to fit in, be one of them.

I did not know that my fate was sealed the day I drove into NYS. Perhaps the day I decided to go back to see what was left of family for me, if anything. Joan had already been on the phone in angry anticipation of me visiting. Fear had awoken the sleeping pit of vipers. When I arrived at the campground I learned that my brother Denis had sat all morning waiting for me, but left because I was late. I had been afraid of Denis most of my life. I had known since I was about 7 that my sister had his baby and that Denis had already messed with two other sisters. And I knew that he molested his own daughter and son and though I had not yet heard the full story, I knew that Valerie had moved away because Denis was stalking her. Denis was part of the reason I dropped out of high school and went to live with Fred. I was the last sister in line for Denis to come after and I had zero faith that Ma or Dad would protect me. They knew Denis’s history, and they always protected him. It was Denis behind the faceless dark figure in my nightmares when I was pregnant with my first child. There was no reason for him to show up unless it was intimidation. When I got my camper set up I went inside and locked the door. I believed at the time I was emotionally strong enough to be OK if he came around.

My siblings, boys and girls alike were survivors. We all survived any way we could. My survival depended on me breaking my silence when I was 35. I am 68, and just now beginning to actively live a life I want to live. Survival was the best I could manage for so long with my overused and mostly ineffective coping skills. I was an emotional wreck. I ran on emotion, I over-reacted to everything, I took everything too personal. I ran away from everything including my own children because I could not, I believed, live through the pain, the pain of another woman being the mother on mother’s day and every holiday, the pain of standing still and facing myself and my inner demons, the pain of the distance growing between my children and I for decades.

I did not know anything but survival and the endless plight to get back to my children before it was too late, and always failing beyond belief.

There is much more to the story of my time in NY. One of my survival mechanisms, though I was not clear headed enough to see how fantastical my thinking had become, grasping at straws to keep some semblance of stability, was bird photography, and there were even lies about that. Too bad, because the truth was so much more bizarre.

We inadvertently pass on to our children the pain of what we cannot fix or manage or put in perspective. My childhood ruled me from its dark little corner with floods of emotions I acted upon instead of being able to put them in there place. I expect my siblings have faced similar issues, though the degree of damage is, I expect, individual. Forgiveness is not an issue. I forgave a long time ago, but I still do not wish to see some of my siblings again. The potential for more abuse is too great a risk be it verbal, emotional, or physical. But I have forgiven and yes, I have forgiven me for all the horrid things I have done on my road of survival.

My life is not what I hoped for, but for the first time I am beyond mere survival and actively living instead of running and cringing and jumping at every emotion that travels through on its ultimate journey to nowhere, because they don’t get much time to stop here anymore.