In order to understand why I’ve
created my nonprofit, Sparks of Hope (
http://www.sparksofhope.org/), I want to share my
brief history of what has brought me to this point.
My story may not be unique, but it is one
that I have never shared publicly, and only with a very few close family
members and friends.
I share this for
one purpose, to help hurting kids - kids that are like I once was.
Children are being abused in epidemic
proportions - 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused by the time
they reach the age of 18.
This is just
the
reported cases.
We are fighting a war for our children, and I
intend to, through Sparks of Hope, save as many kids from the path of
destructive behavior that they often find themselves on when trying to rise
above and overcome the abuse they suffered.
I want them to know that this is NOT how their story ends.
We can make a difference.
We can change lives.
Please support Sparks of Hope and help us
fulfill our mission to help these hurting children.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My
story - I don’t remember a time that I wasn’t being
abused mentally, physically and sexually by my stepfather - a time before I was
four years old. I see photos of myself
before the abuse and wonder what could have become of this little girl but for
the abuse? I mourn my childhood that could
have been, but accept what it was. Truth
be told, I am a strong person and I am proud of the woman I have become because
of the circumstances I overcame. It made
me who I am today. I have the ability to
turn the ugliness of what happened to me into something good, and I am doing
just that.
I
remember always being afraid of my stepfather.
To me, he was a monster and I despised him. He was my stepmonster, as I like to call
him. He had a large gun collection mounted on his bedroom wall and an extensive knife collection. I don’t remember the exact words he said to keep me quiet,
but I know I was afraid he would kill me if I told anyone and I never did.
When I was around 7 years old, he and my mom
were having another argument. They were
yelling and screaming at each other. My bedroom
was right across from theirs and I could hear everything that was said. I heard them struggling with a gun. I heard my mom tell him that if he killed her
that he better kill my brother and I, and that she didn’t want us to have to
live with him without her in our life.
At that moment, the gun went off.
It was the longest few seconds I'd ever experienced – I thought he killed her and I was next and I wet my
bed. I was so terrified and couldn’t
move. I thought I was going to pass out,
and then my mom started screaming at him again because he actually pulled the
trigger. The bullet hole in the ceiling
was a reminder that he actually intended harm.
When I was being abused in his room, it was hard not to see it as a
glaring reminder - stay quiet and I won't get hurt.
Not
only did his gun and knife collection intimidate me, but his crude vocabulary
and his size did as well. He was a very
large-overweight man with large hands.
When he spanked me, he really had no reason to use a belt in my opinion;
his hands hurt me bad enough. He would
punish me quite often when I wouldn’t comply with what he wanted me to do by
calling me vial names or he'd ignore me all together and pretend I didn't exist for long lengths of time - weeks would go by before he'd speak to me. I didn’t know
exactly what I did wrong, or what the foul words meant that he called me, but I knew I didn’t like
them. In my opinion, there is no place
for the “c” word any time or anywhere.
It
made me feel worthless and like I didn’t matter. What was the point of even being around? He also knew I loved my dad and controlled visits with
him (which I of course loved to get away). He'd use my relationship with my dad as punishment by keeping me from him. I learned later that all of this behavior was
his way of controlling me. He made me
feel like I was bad – all the time, and that I must have deserved it.
My
family was poor. We didn’t have a lot of
money, or at least my mom and us kids were poor. My stepmonster had all the things he wanted
like his expensive rings, guns, knives, leather jackets, and alligator shoes. Mom would cook what she could afford
with the budget she had. The food wasn’t
always good or easy to digest - much like her stews. The meat in her stew was of low quality
with lots of gristle - very chewy and hard to digest. It would take me 5
minutes to chew one piece of meat. I hated her
stew, but had to eat it as there wasn’t much else to eat and I didn’t want to
get into trouble. There was a particular dinner
time of eating mom's stew that is etched in my mind and I’ll use it as an example of my
stepmonster’s cruelty. I remember that I
wasn’t feeling well, and couldn’t stomach the stew so I decided that I might be
able to get away with putting the meat into my jean pocket and later flush it
down the toilet – good plan – wrong. My
stepmonster saw me put a piece of meat into my pocket and came up beside me and
backhanded me so hard that I flew off my chair and onto the floor and so did my
food. I was told I had to eat it off the
floor. We had animals and the floor was
gross, but I did what he said because I was afraid. After I ate what had landed on the floor, I
then had to go stand in the corner. What I thought would be only a few hours turned into an
all-nighter. I was standing there until
2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when my mother came down the stairs wondering why I
was still there. Really?!
I
don’t want to be too graphic in my description of events as this is for public
consumption, but I’m confident through my limited description you’ll get the
idea. From the age of 4 to 16, I lived
in hell. For many years, most every
night before I went to bed, I had to go say goodnight to the stepmonster. He would always take pictures of my privates
and make me pose for him. And he would do so when I was taking a bath. If I didn’t do
what he wanted, he would punish me. I hate
Polaroid cameras to this day. The noise
from those types of cameras turns my stomach and makes me want to vomit. I guess you could say that sound is a trigger for me.
And every night in the wee hours, he’d come into my
room and lay with me. He’d fondle me,
perform oral sex on me and do other stuff to me and pleasure himself. He made me do horrible things that a child should never be made to do. I’m surprised that I didn’t die as a
child. I never slept. I was always afraid to go to sleep. If it wasn’t the rats running in the wall and
chewing on the wood, it was the nightly sex abuse. I knew it would happen again and again – and
so it did for many, many years. Whenever
the abuse happened I froze. I thought
that if I just pretended it wasn’t happening, hold my kitty's paw and just focus on her that I'd be okay, or if I didn't resist at all and complied with what he
wanted it would be better for me and he wouldn’t hurt me, but he always
did. He always hurt me any way and often. I hate being alone in a dark bedroom to this day, but
I’m still working on moving past that.
I also hated taking baths. Baths
were never fun for me growing up as they should be for kids. For me, it meant my stepmonster would come in
and touch me, take photos of me and want to “clean” me, but cleaning shouldn’t hurt, right? It did - badly.
This is a reason why now I won’t take baths in a regular bath tub – it
has to be a large Jacuzzi-type bathtub in an open space.
As I got older and grew into a teenager it
was a rule to never lock doors. He would
always walk in on me in my bedroom when I was dressing, pin me down on the bed as a control thing and start doing gross things to me. He would always come in when I was taking a
shower and touch me. He would always find a reason to
touch me any time he was alone with me.
I never had any privacy.
As a little girl, I felt as though I wore a
sign that said "broken", “damaged”, “dirty”, or “sexually abused” and “worthless”. I thought it was obvious to everyone around
me that I was a broken girl. I spent my
entire childhood trying my hardest to act like I wasn’t being abused because of the shame and guilt I carried like somehow it was all my fault. I tried to be normal. I wanted so desperately to be normal, but I
knew I wasn’t. I felt so alone. I think I stuffed a lot of what was happening
to me down and that is why I inevitably developed Crohn’s Disease. I used to have horrible stomach pain and I’d
have to lie on the floor and do breathing exercises just to make the pain
stop. I always had stomach pain and it’s
no wonder.
I
never knew that I had any power to change a thing or that one day I could have
my justice and my day in court until it was too late. What that monster did to me would have sent
him to prison for a very long time. He
died when I was 22 years old of a massive coronary heart attack. I was relieved. I smiled.
I never really felt at peace until his death. Before he died, I felt as though he was
always watching me. My best friend would
write me and tell me that he was trying to find me and she would lie for
me. He would press her for info on me and made her very uncomfortable, but she continued to lie for my sake and safety.
I never liked being alone for fear he
would find me and hurt me. I felt like he knew where I was and would be looking at me through the windows at night or that he was watching me in crowded places. I hated that
feeling. It was only after his death
that I could finally move on and heal - to actually have peace. What an awesome feeling that was!
After the stepmonster's death, I
later learned that most of the men around me growing up on my stepmonster’s
side were all pedophiles, and had gone to prison in the 90s or in early 2000 for
abusing someone in their family. I can’t
say that I’m surprised. What an ugly mess.
I
was angry at my mom (with good reason!) later in my adult life because she was not there for
me. She always seemed to favor my
brother. It hurt a lot. She often would tell me that she knew there
would come a day that I would be very angry with her because she did not
protect me and because she was mean to me.
She was right. I don’t ever
remember her being mean to me, but I remember her not protecting me. She was an alcoholic through my childhood
until I was 12 years old. I found her
bottles hidden all over the house - in the toilet tank, under sinks, in the ceramic kiln
(an oven that fires clay). During that
time, she was in the hospital multiple times and the doctors would say that she
was killing herself and that she wouldn’t live if she continued to drink. I was angry at her for making me scared – I
thought she was trying to kill herself and was going to die. I would always end up living with one family
member or another during her hospital stents. I
remember coming home from school most days and her being passed out on the
couch. She wanted me to clean the house
so the stepmonster wouldn’t get pissed at her.
So I would clean to avoid conflict and the fights. I hated conflict. I still hate conflict, but I’m
also learning to speak up and that sometimes you can’t avoid conflict and that
it’s not such a scary thing when dealt with in a healthy way.
As
you can imagine, my mom and I had a rocky relationship. One minute I loved
her to death, and then the next minuted I was back angry at her again. We grew closer as I got older. She spent most of my adult life trying to
make up for all the years she wasn’t a good mom. I learned recently from my father that one
particular time when I was 2 she gave me vodka.
She thought it was funny. My dad
came home and found me. He said I was
like a wet rag and he had to take me to the hospital. I was taken away for a while and lived with
my aunt. Apparently there are more
stories and this is just the tip of the iceberg. My dad has never liked to talk badly about my
mom, but I want to know the truth and hopefully one day I learn the whole
truth. Eventually, I learned to forgive for
the most part, but not forget. There were times when unexpected anger would well
up and I'd be so pissed at her. She knew why, and
still took ownership for the most part.
Through the years, I was able to tell her how I felt about my childhood, growing up, and a little about my stepmonster’s abuse of me. She would always tell me she was so very
proud of me and my courage. I explained
to her my passion and desire to help kids that were abused like me and she was
very supportive of that. I was helping with other child organizations and she was excited
for me to do something with what happened to me. She died in March 2011, and never got to know about Sparks of Hope, but before she died
and on the day of her death, I forgave her and released her and myself. I think that release among other things, gave me the steam I needed to press on and create my own organization for abused kids.
Lastly,
my real father has been my rock. He is the kindest, gentlest man I have ever
met. He didn’t know I had been abused
until I was 29 years old. I prided
myself on this because I wanted him to see me as undamaged. Through him, I felt I could have a shot to feel
what it was like to be a “normal” little girl – even if it wasn’t exactly
true. In his eyes, I was a princess and
the light in his eye and he loved me beyond measure. He collapsed on the floor the day he found out
I had been abused (an ex told him out of anger), and I thought we were going to
have to call an ambulance for him. He
was in shock and I heard him say over and over again that he tried to get me
and that he didn’t know. He sobbed and was heartbroken. He felt great guilt, but none of it was his
fault. I was terrified what would happen next. I’d never thought about what
would happen if he found out. As you would imagine, as would any father who
loves their child, his response was amazing and one I’d never prepared myself
for. From that day, though I didn’t ever
think he could be more proud of me or love me any more than he did, he said he was
more proud and loved me more so than ever before because of circumstances I
overcame and because of the woman I have become today. He beams with pride in support of me and this
organization. I love him so very much for that.
I
have many more stories about growing up abused, the angel that lived behind me named Mrs. Bezack, having to live in other homes,
god showing himself to me through rats, and so much more. One
day, I hope that I can put it all down on paper, or in this blog but for now, I
will spend my time pouring my heart and soul into this organization – Sparks of
Hope. I want to inspire and empower
children who are like I was to know that they can move passed the ugliness and
into wholeness and healing – there is hope and healing on the other side of the broken place.
Please
join me and help us light a spark in the hearts of abused children and teens. If one spark can light a fire - just think what
many sparks can do!
