The More Love Club

By Adrienne Alexander

Having just ended things with ‘The Italian,’ who reeked of possibility and a rage disorder, Emma, a lonely, sober divorcee paints her toenails, puts on her best kitten heels and hoping against hope to hook a man, attends a dreaded meditation meeting. The meditation works out. The man doesn’t. Humiliated by the break-up of a second relationship with a man known as ‘blowjob guy,’ through a series of coincidences, she finds herself outside a house she’d dreamt about, talking to a man named Jess, who interestingly, has the same name as her dear departed grandfather, when someone appears bearing ‘More Love’ signs. The mystery man tells them to wear the signs for five days and ‘watch for the miracles.’ Having been molested most of her childhood, more often in therapy than not, recently divorced from an abusive ex and estranged from her three boys, a miracle seems overdue. But as Jess kisses Emma goodbye that night, no sparks. Still she hears her therapist's voice in her head, reminding her, “You were wired to kiss psychotics, Emma. Keep kissing, keep re-wiring.” So when she puts her head on the pillow, the ‘More Love’ sign poking her boobs, Jess’ five-o’clock shadow and handsome smile swirling in her head, she resolves that despite the incest sized hole in her gut the size of Arkansas, to go beyond her mind, follow the charm, finally publish her incest file memoirs and ‘watch for the miracles.’

One woman’s story of transcendence from victim to victory, this 2nd Edition of The More Love Club, includes a tell-all preface. Ms. Alexander identifies herself as an incest survivor, declaring that the characters and situations presented in this book are based on real life events. Although her tell-all preface makes clear that this work is a novel based on a true story, she asks the reader to remember, "My purpose has never been to name names, but to expose the human heart and its ability to transcend, expand and grow beyond circumstance to embrace the love and joy that is our birthright.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adrienne Alexander
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301268474

Adrienne Alexander

Adrienne Alexander is an Intuitive, Psychic Therapist, with a Masters in Psychology, working with addiction, incest resolution, Bi-polar, ADD, borderline, eating disorders, sexual issues, relationships (with self and other), ie: life, who gives feedback from source, while implementing practical and spiritual principles.

Book preview

THE

MORE

LOVE

CLUB

by

Adrienne Anne Alexander

The More Love Club

by Adrienne Anne Alexander

Published by The More Love Club TM / Adrienne Anne Alexander at Smashwords

First Edition: March 2013

Second Edition: September 2015

Copyright © 2012 by Adrienne Anne Alexander

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

This book is also available in print.

For more information go to http://www.themoreloveclub.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Preface

Stranglehold

The Signs

Make My Date

Thorns

The L Word

Lessons With Dogs

Darcy’s Closet

Stage Kiss

Old Blue

Rescue

More Love

An Invitation

To Russel, my heart’s desire, always, all ways. Thank you for being.

To Thom and Jeff for meditation and new life.

To Candace and Anand for showing me possibility and fierce grace.

To Adele, Betsy, Maggie, Diana, and Rosemary for giving me love and a rudder.

To Nathan, Alexis, Luke, Kelly and Cody for being my creative and wondrous family.

"Take Joy! I salute you! There is nothing I can give you which you have not; but there is much, that, while I cannot give, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take Heaven. No peace lies in the future, which is not hidden in this present instant. Take Peace. The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet, within our reach, is joy. Take joy. And so, I greet you, with the prayer, that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away."

Fra Giovanni, 1513 A.D.

PREFACE

A Personal Declaration

Dedicated to

My Aunt Gloria and Uncle Raymond Sandbeck

In endeavoring to tell the truth, the entire truth and nothing but, I must tell you about my Aunt Gloria. She was tall, willowy, beautiful and resilient. When she laughed the whole world lit up. And my Uncle Ray was truly a gentle man. I never once heard him raise his voice. He was patient and kind and I often wished that I had been his daughter. As a young girl, I went on many wonderful outings with Aunt Gloria, Uncle Ray and my cousins. Memories of time spent with this part of my family continues to fill me with deep gratitude. Uncle Ray and Aunt Gloria always treated me with great love and respect.

When I confronted my father in the early 1980s, while my immediate family reacted with outrage, Aunt Gloria remained silent for a time. This came as no surprise. We had not seen the Sandbecks for at least ten years and Uncle Raymond had suffered a decline in health. I did not expect Aunt Gloria to weigh in. But upon learning of my estrangement from my dad, she contacted me. When she found out that I had asked my mom and dad for an indeterminate hold on our interactions, she began to write. She offered in the interim to be family, sent birthday cards and dedicated herself to show up on a regular basis. She admitted regret for having been absent and wanted to know why I was not speaking to my family. For years I did not tell her. I maintained my silence because I did not want to hurt her. My Aunt Gloria was my father’s sister.

She continued to forge a trust and a much-needed connection. At the time she was the only family I had. Eventually I broke down. I told her that I was not speaking to my family because I had written to my father, (her brother), saying that I had remembered everything. My letter had been meant to create the possibility for healing, but missed the mark. Relatives on all sides had sent unsolicited hate mail, so I was taking a hiatus. Upon hearing this, my Aunt’s response was very simple and loving.

She said, I was afraid that this is what had happened.

She promised to be family for as long as I needed her. She told me she believed me. She never related her history with my dad and how that may have helped her to believe, but she continued to send cards, pictures of my cousins, their children, along with invitations for holidays and other celebrations. Once, I accepted one of her invitations. My children, husband, and I spent a weekend in Long Island with her that I will never forget. Given that Uncle Ray was in the last stages of Alzheimer’s, her loving attentions to me during that trip was a humbling and powerful incentive for me to carry on.

Evident too, was the continued acceptance and admiration she felt for her brother, despite her belief that he had in fact harmed me. She was one of the first people to exemplify the miraculous ability to hold the image of her brother’s wonderful spirit in her heart, while remaining clear that events in his lifetime might have led him to commit a tragic mistake. The Long Island trip to the Sandbecks, in the late 1980s, was the last time I saw Uncle Raymond and Aunt Gloria alive. I was never able to properly thank either of them for the brilliant gift of faith they gave me. It is for that reason that I am dedicating this declaration in the memory of my Uncle Raymond and Aunt Gloria Sandbeck.

Aunt Gloria believed in me when no one else in my family did. She reached out to me and actively showed me how much she cared. She never stopped loving her brother or speaking about those qualities of his she admired, despite what she knew had taken place. She showed me that it was possible to love someone totally, no matter what. There were times when my relatives attacked me most viciously, but she never stopped supporting or showing her love for me. She was there. She was there for her brother, too. She knew how to love. She knew how to forgive. And for that I am eternally grateful.

After decades of attempting to discuss, via letter, phone, email, in person and online video, the reasons for what was referred to as my ‘dark childhood,’ my mother was finally able to write a brief email:

In talking about Rodney [my father], we should remember that when he was 8 years old, he either fell in the road or was hit by a passing car and suffered a head injury. Grandmother slapped a circular piece of his scalp back onto his bleeding head. I was never certain whether or not he was taken to the doctor. In 1927, who knows?

My mother’s email was hardly an admission but it was edifying. Sixty years of watching her guard her husband’s image, I knew the information she had let slip, was no mere tidbit. It was the last I might receive and had been worth the wait. If I were charting my father’s psychological profile, I would certainly have noted this in his file. Such a head trauma might re-wire the moral compass of the brain. At the very least, it could lead to abnormalities in behavior and functioning.

As well as having suffered a head injury at eight years old, my father was a World War II Vet. At sixteen years of age, he ran away from home to join the Coast Guard. On the Naval Ship to which he was assigned, he was abused by a fellow officer. Years later angry with me for speaking out, my father admitted to having been raped. In a letter to me he wrote, I never spoke a word of this for years, except to your mother.

He was admonishing me to do the same. He was telling me to be silent. He was also revealing himself as a survivor of sexual abuse.

Due to his military service, my father suffered from PTSD. He was also an alcoholic and a blackout drinker. Head trauma, history of sexual abuse, PTSD, alcoholism and blackout drinking, would certainly indicate a strong probability for inappropriate behavior. However you choose to look at it, the psychological components of my father’s real life story provided a perfect storm.

Since I can remember, I have been poised between two worlds: one where my father is a great man, worthy of adoration, and the other where, if people knew, they would revile him. As a child, the relationship we shared made me special. Though I had had my uncertainty about specific aspects, the closeness we enjoyed made me proud. Unlike many who worked with him, I knew him. He was an incomparable man. His sensitivities made him vulnerable and that he entrusted them to me, deepened my sense of connection and responsibility for him.

In the late 1950s, Rodney Wilson Alexander, built the Harper Joy theatre, now named The Alexander Theatre at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WN. He mentored many students and creative people all over the country. He changed lives. He was an outspoken visionary, who delighted, angered, captivated and constantly engaged people to go beyond what they thought possible. He challenged those around him to dream the impossible and see it through. He himself dreamed big dreams on a daily basis and his dreams became realities.

At the request of Warner Bentley, in the 1960s, my father established the Dartmouth College Theatre Department. With his creative genius, charm, wit, drive, brilliance, enthusiasm, ability and plain old grit, he took the theatre department productions from the local meeting hall to the Hopkins Center in 1967. He founded Dartmouth’s Drama Department as one of the foremost of its time. He succeeded in creating an ongoing Summer Repertory Company that gave students a chance to work side by side with Equity Talent from New York, England, Hollywood, Broadway and Europe, to name a few.

Due to the impact of his years at Dartmouth, the Drama Department is currently headed and run by Rod Alexander’s former students. So inspired by his contribution to their lives, they took up individual careers in theatre. They garnered awards, accolades and returned to their Alma Mater, anxious to pick up where he left off. His life, his cause, like a mantle, was something many of his students were eager to inherit. There are foundations in his name, theaters built and hundreds of students, actors, men and women, who would be happy to tell you of their experiences with Rod, and how their lives were completely altered due to his influence. I was one of those students.

Still, as I grew, so did my awareness. What had been a young life of simple devotion to a wonderful man became a world permeated with dread, and self-doubt. During adolescence, I had buried those things deemed unsafe. Modeling my mother and father, I decided that which could not be spoken, did not happen. Filled with self-loathing, I spun into a great depression. Desperate to appear unburdened, as a teenager I mimicked my peers, trying drugs and alcohol. Nothing would dull the steady knocking inside my head. Something was wrong. The memories buried, still haunted.

Having been accepted into Dartmouth College, it was my first weekend on campus. Excited by the opportunity before me, a friend whisked me off to a fraternity party. All around me, well-dressed youth were drunk and silly. The steady pulse of music, the drone of loud conversation, and the temporary suspension of present reality, made me giddy. It was then I decided to drink more heavily. That night I danced like no one was watching, laughed freely, kissed a boy and let him walk me home. Beer lifted my depression and the memories quieted. My life was possible.

Despite my father hovering over me from his post as the Head of the Drama Department, my fantasies about boys overwhelmed me. I was torn. I loved my father, but wanted to explore. Due to our relationship, in my young heart, he had been like a first boyfriend. I did not want to disrespect him, but sincerely wanted to be dating boys my own age. Hoping to experience my first stage kiss, I kept myself busy in the theatre. But my father’s jealousies proved formidable, and I found myself unable to face the consequences of upsetting him. I dated sparingly. Nothing lasted. I would not have sex with a young man my age until long after my peers. And I would not be able to form a lasting connection with anyone until much later in life.

Eventually I was married and pregnant and felt well on my way to happily ever after. I had one perfect son, then another, when the forgotten pieces of my former life began falling, like pages of a manuscript, one by one, out of order, all over the kitchen floor. I was feeding my babies watching Sesame Street. A public announcement began broadcasting and the spokesperson said something about verbal abuse, physical abuse and finally sexual abuse. I put one last spoonful of strained peaches into my youngster’s mouth and began to cry.

All around me, the world seemed to be raging some kind of crazy war. And the war was suddenly fierce inside me. I could hear the announcer reciting the Abuse Hotline number. I barely remembered picking up the phone and dialing. As the recorded message played, I waited. I had never really confided in anyone. Once during college, drunk out of my mind, I had tried to tell my sister. Afraid of being pitied, or worse, creating undue hatred toward my dad, I had stopped short of a confession. Now, hearing a voice on the other end of the hotline, I quickly hung up.

At the time I would have done anything to protect my father and his legacy. It seemed he had entrusted himself and his life’s work to me. But when the flashbacks began, the responsibility proved too great. I could no longer carry the guilt and shame, nor bear the silence. The longer I kept quiet the more the hurt within me seemed to grow.

The flashbacks started in the early 1980s right after my father’s retirement party. When I remembered what had happened, I was devastated. As he had been for so many others, he was my mentor. Because of our deep connection, it never occurred to me to hide this from him. I asked immediately for him to join me in therapy to mend our relationship and the family. I wanted to continue to be my father’s daughter and was sure therapy would accomplish that. There was no therapy. There was no mend. There was instead a barrage of hateful letters. There were legal threats as well. I was stunned.

The wall of angry denial encountered whenever I broached the subject, made clear there would be no family participation. Alone, I began what became fifteen to twenty years of private and group therapies. I healed as much as possible. Still, the victim in me remained. Unable to fully tell my story, unable to be private in public and be myself no matter the company, my life became a victim-sized box. I kept my story between me and the chosen few I considered safe. Ever aware I should not, could not, reveal myself to someone who might know of my family, I lived in fear. Due to my father’s stature at Dartmouth College, I was overly careful not to speak to anyone with knowledge of, or an association with the college, terrified it might get back to him.

For the most part I chose not to openly pursue it. Yet during phases of my recovery, there would come a desire to be heard and actualized by my family. Whenever I tried to address my sister, mother, or father, they would refuse to speak of it. Instead of engaging in open discussion, they wrote more threatening letters, exhibited displays of physical warning, and on a few occasions had me ousted from the premises until I agreed the subject was off limits.

In a defensive move, my aunt on my mother’s side, Judge Aurel Kelly, joined the company line. She sent a Court approved Expert Witness to California in the late 1980s. The Expert Witness was to discredit me should I choose to bring a lawsuit. I spent several hours with my therapist and my Aunt’s expert, answering questions. He found no sign of mental illness, nor any apparent history of mental health issue, present in me. In a court of law, I was considered sane and my testimony relevant. Once word of my provable sanity was received, my family stopped threatening me legally.

In the 1990s, under the guidance of a highly respected therapist, I had a number of vivid flashbacks concerning my Uncle Thomas F. Kelly. Due to the violent nature of the encounter, my psyche had deeply buried them. Finally, strong enough to face the emotional fallout, the graphic nature of these memories became clear, as did the reason for my Aunt’s earlier actions. She had used her Court Appointed power in an attempt to malign me. Conscious of my Uncle’s deviance or not, my Aunt had instinctively closed ranks, feeling the need to shield herself and her people from me.

One of those people was my Uncle, depicted in The More Love Club, as Uncle Thorny. Because the flashbacks of Uncle Tom came late in my recovery, for years he remained a footnote. I rarely mentioned him in therapy, and never to my family. Indeed, the continued uproar regarding childhood memories of my father prohibited me from being forthcoming. Not until I began writing this book, twenty years after the memories of Uncle Tom had surfaced, did I have the courage to write it.

Just prior to the first edition of The More Love Club being published in 2012, I found the nerve to raise the subject with my mother. In an online discussion, my fiancé Russel Foreman and I, spoke about my allegations of Uncle Tom. Due to the impending book release, I felt the need to warn her. The scene from the book was extreme, as was my relationship with him. My mother responded that she might believe such a story. (To be clear, my mother never said she believed me, she merely said, she might believe such a story.)

My Uncle Tom had a bad reputation in the family. He was a WWII Vet, with a history of alcoholism, who had become legendary for his disruptive and dangerous behavior. One particular run of stories involved a loaded gun that he brandished. He’d had brushes with the law and although he was family, he was suspect.

Because of the body of belief around Uncle Tom’s dis-integrity, my mother thought it possible to accuse him. That she was considering my uncle, meant she accepted, that during my youth, something had gone terribly wrong. While I was happy about that, I was also disappointed that she was contemplating a tactical move. She seemed to be introducing another responsible party (my uncle), to create doubt and vindicate my father. It was as if she were playing some kind of elaborate shell game with my life, moving pieces around at random, in order to avoid the truth.

Yet to her mind, diverting culpability was imperative. According to her, if my father had done such a thing, it would make him a monster. That would change her life story dramatically. Admitting she had fallen in love with a man tragically flawed, and also admitting that she had failed to see it, would put her reality at risk. The underpinning of her life relied on her certainty that she had married a charismatic, loving, genius of a man. What she failed to grasp is that, despite evidence to the contrary, she had done just that.

I loved my father. I loved him when he was alive and now that he is dead, I love him still. Regardless of what transpired between us, I saw him as an amazing, dynamic man. And to realize a full recovery I needed to hold onto to that. My deep appreciation for my father’s extraordinary gifts would become the life raft that kept me from drowning. Given that I inherited fifty percent of his DNA, my healing was reliant on my ability to embrace my father’s most treasured qualities. Those qualities were essentially, my qualities, my treasures.

If I am being honest about my father and my uncle, it would be easy and culturally acceptable to say I hated them. And there were, of course, times I felt this. When I first began this journey, my desire to heal had nothing to do with integrating the men identified as abusers into my process. The normal path was to cut them and their deeds out of me, out of my psyche and my emotional history. Like the rest of society, I felt destined to hate, even eviscerate my perpetrators, in order to feel better.

The problem with this course of action was that, while momentarily giving me the satisfaction of victory, over the long term, made me feel worse. Accusation, judgment, blame, opinion and hatred were making me ill. I was effectively drinking the poison while expecting everyone else to die. And they didn’t die. I did. I kept drinking the hatred of all who had wronged me and would not hear me, until my body could no longer withstand it.

Because of the need for a full recovery and a deeply satisfying life experience, I began to move beyond the cultural norm of descrying my victimhood and, in my case, what others saw as the rightful claim for vengeance. Despite the popular belief that I’d been dealt an irreparable blow, I felt there could be, must be, the possibility for complete and total healing. That is what ultimately began to interest me. It is what impelled me to write and publish, The More Love Club.

The book, as originally published, was not a tell-all, but a fictionalized memoir. The decision not to name names was deliberate. It was never my purpose to exact