In the early years of recovery from childhood abuse, too much numbing alcohol, and the reality I had to face that my children were not coming home to me, I often was able to “forget” the DeGolier family existed only to be reminded by some event or word that, yes, I had siblings. These were the times when I was forced by the weight of recovery to take a respite and recede into my dark protective cave. When the voices shushing me overwhelmed my courage to heal therapy was impossible. I could go for a few weeks sometimes, but I always had to take breaks from confronting the demons in my head, the voices of Mother and Joan in particular telling me to be quiet. I had no right to speak about the family. Not even to heal.

My children were always in my mind. there was no respite from the fact that I had lost them to their dad and step-mother. I had been telling people, in my delusion, that we shared custody and they would be back soon. that was 5 years after they left. Without the alcohol to escape to, there was nothing to do but face the reality. Before AA, when my children came for summer vacation, I stayed sober and threw myself into being “Mom” and showing them a good time, they were the center and the priority. But the moment they were gone again, I sunk into numbing alcohol. I even tried pot a couple of times back then, to ease the pain and the passage to once again not being “Mom.”

During my early years in AA I picked up a number of white chips to begin again. One was after a particularly heavy drunk. I sat by the window on Mullally St. in Holly Hill, Fl, moaning along to a Barbara Streisand album on the record player and sinking ever deeper into self pity and thinking, “If anybody knew my pain…” In a sudden flash of anger I grabbed the record off the turntable and smashed it. I was sick of me. I was sick to death of me.

I believe that was my last white chip for a number of years. I suppose I used AA to numb my pain. I often went to 2 or 3 meetings a day but it was time well spent. I heard stories that were hard to listen to, and I know much harder to tell. I heard stories of courage and anguish, acceptance and deep denial, overcoming and going under. I heard stories from men who were sexually abused as well as women. I felt their pain and their triumph and sometimes even their joy. I came to believe I too could heal. Every story they told gave me hope and however small that strand of hope, or however large, I grabbed on with both hands and ran with it. It was all I had, and I would take all I could get.

Life was hard. Recovery from sexual abuse of the kind I had survived, while coming to terms with the loss of my children and trying to tuck all that pain away so that I could work as a waitress and smile and laugh and cajole good tips out of the customers was a constant battle. When I lost, it was the job I lost, dealing with the rest was just what I had to put first.

In the years I lived on Mullaly St my sister Sheila would bring Mother to me for a few weeks every spring. Sheila hated Mother. But she would forever try to be the good daughter and take care of her. It was sad really, because she had no great ability to keep those loose ends tucked in and her pain and hatred seeped out all over Mother. One spring early on in AA she brought mother to stay and they had a rip-roaring fight in the living room over whether Ma had the right to tell Sheila it was time to sleep. It was 1am and I lay in my bed with a pillow over my head traumatized to have my little haven from life come alive with the horrid past splattered over my walls.

Then Sheila stormed out and stayed away all the next day until Ma was half mad with wondering what had caused the tirade. Looking back from here I doubt she had ever faced what she had helped do to Sheila and did not tie Sheila’s treatment of her to childhood. And Sheila had been through so much she probably would never fully recover from. She would always be the friendly clowning lady who went over the top to show she was fine only to crash and burn time and time again. But that day I found myself comforting Mother, trying to ease her pain, and it made me so very angry, as much as she had done to me, and now I must help her feel better. The DeGolier family, a fine mess.

After that whenever Sheila called and put the phone on speaker with Ma’s voice next to hers I would crumble to the floor in torment and trepidation. I would crumble, the world I built around me, the cave I always retreated to for safety, even the distance between worlds, them in NC and me in Florida disappeared in a tornado of emotion. When Mother was with me in Florida I was kind to her, but when I went out to an AA meeting I would often just drive up the coast road, beating the steering wheel till I bruised my clenched fists and screaming out my pain to the wind that carried it out to sea. Then I would tuck in all that rage and return to Ma, meek and innocent she seemed, waiting for me to return and enter back into some mind numbing conversation about family, or how ghastly it was that history studies in schools were being altered. But as a waitress I had many years of practiced smiling and laughing around all sorts of people, and pretending to have a good time with the mother who helped throw me to the wolves was just what I had to get through in that moment.

Sheila and Ma, especially together, were frightening for me, but no matter how I tried, I could not escape them always reaching out to me. One evening early on in AA, Sheila showed up on the porch of the AA club on Foote St in Daytona. She had called me the day before and offered to rescue me. She would house me and clothe me and buy me a new car if I came to live with her while she sent me to college. I tried to say no nicely but she insisted. I finally said a firm no and said goodbye. When I went out to the porch to see what she wanted she said “I just drove 500 miles without sleep to tell you I love you. Now I have to drive 500 miles back and go directly to work without sleep.” She hugged me and walked away. I began to cry uncontrollably. She was like a ghost haunting me. I could not return to my own apartment that night. She knew where I lived. A friend, Martha, let me sleep on her sofa, but for days I watched my back, and my front, and all places in my peripheral vision for any sign of her. A few days later she began sending me little cards and notes. they came five days a week in my mailbox. “I love you.” “You are an angel.” “You are special.” She was stalking me and every day I cringed at checking my mailbox. After the first few I stopped reading them and tossed them straight into the trash. You see, it was she and Ma who had thrown me on the scrap heap after my dad accosted me in my bedroom when I was 16. It took them two weeks of shaming me and berating me and shaking their heads in wonder at me to shut me up about sexual assault for the next 19 years. They sealed the secrets inside me as sure as if they had licked the envelope. I learned in 1995 from my sister, Valerie that a lie had gone through the family that I had claimed sexual abuse because I did not want to be stuck at home caring for my aging parents. Scapegoating me began early to cover over other peoples crimes.

Relationships became another place to hide from me when I could not look at myself anymore. Each was abusive in its own way and looking back from now, I cringe at the relationships I got into and stayed in long after the early glow had passed. It was an addiction all its own, any port in a storm, but the storm always followed me. The storm was me, I carried it everywhere.