Girl in the Mirror

By Jean Berry

This is a true story detailing the intimate realities of living with parents alcoholism alongside childhood sexual abuse. It shows firsthand the devastating impact addictions bring to those who happen to be in their path.

Now in her late thirties, author Jean Berry is getting a chance for the first time to tell her trutha truth that somehow entangled itself into a deadly weave of family secrets born out of a burning need to protect the image of this outwardly successful family.

This is a story of a girl who lost her way through believing others and not herself, but whose constant brush with the past finally brought her back on her path to life. At last she is at peacea peace that comes only from going deep within.



I have learnt that instead of judging I can lovingly choose, in every little way, all that is best for me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Mar 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452588124

Jean Berry

Up to recently, Jean was living a normal life and working full-time as a business consultant. In 2010, she relocated back to her birthplace coinciding with the beginning of a new relationship. It was around this time that the abuse, which had taken place in her home, began to resurface in her mind. She gave herself permission to deal with it once and for all, and over time she came to see the many walls of silence and denial that surrounded her. This is her story, written from the heart, detailing how something as serious as sexual abuse can so easily get lost in the overwhelming need to just survive a childhood of alcoholism.

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Copyright © 2013 Jean Berry.

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This book is a work of non-fiction based on the experiences, recollections and reflections of the author. In all cases, the names of people, places and some detail of events have been changed to protect the privacy of others. Every effort has been made to maintain the authenticity of the story.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-8811-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-8813-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-8812-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922190

Balboa Press rev. date: 5/21/2014

CONTENTS

Introduction: Why

Chapter 1 Where My Questions Begin—My Mum and Dad

Chapter 2 Abuse of a Different Kind

Chapter 3 My Mum

Chapter 4 Opening Up

Chapter 5 Boarding-School Days and a Second Opening Up

Chapter 6 The Summer of 1993

Chapter 7 First Love amid the Drink

Chapter 8 A Move to Waterford

Chapter 9 A Fresh Start

Chapter 10 A Birth

Chapter 11 Wedding Bells, 2005

Chapter 12 Dad’s Passing, 2007

Chapter 13 A Best Friend

Chapter 14 The Standoff

Chapter 15 An Awakening

Chapter 16 A Breakdown/Confrontation

Chapter 17 Last Man Standing

Chapter 18 A Meeting

Chapter 19 A Simple Message

Chapter 20 Acceptance at Long Last

We may not realize it now, but we treat our children abominably. Children of the future will look back to children of the present in their history classes and will cry.

Lorna Byrne

Stairways to Heaven

This story is dedicated to the one, in my family, who always looked lost. May this book find him, and may he know that we were all lost too.

To my leading man, Pierce; thank you for your love.

To Kay, my reiki healer and teacher: thank you for guiding me back towards neutral.

To the Balboa Press team; thank you for your professional and insightful support. You are a fantastic team.

Only from the point of neutrality—the whole truth—can we know the difference between right and wrong, positive and negative.

This can help bring us together or push us poles apart.

This is our choice.

* * *

I have stripped myself bare for good reason.

This is my choice.

I have the right to stand up to those who have silenced me for too long.

This is my choice.

I have the right for the whole truth to be known.

This is my choice.

We feed our minds daily with knowledge, yet let us not forget to feed our spirits daily with truth.

INTRODUCTION: WHY

March 2012

I am writing this book to help in the way others have helped me—with kind, heartfelt, loving advice. It is my hope that children of alcoholics and abuse victims like me will see that they are not alone; I hope to encourage them to reach out for help in whatever way the y can.

I am writing to explain what happened to me, to explain my now-changing self. I do this so I will never forget, so I will never change back.

I am writing to explain that in my world, for a very long time everything appeared normal (or healthy even). Everyone else may have thought I was normal too, except those who cared to look deeply into my eyes. They would ask, Are you okay? Those who cared to keep on looking would see an agony so terribly deep that they didn’t know where to start.

They would try to help. I would cry simple tears in reply—not too many, but they were deep. I was afraid to let them out. I was afraid they would never stop. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, so how could I tell them? I didn’t know why I was crying. I couldn’t understand it. Try to get some counseling, they would gently say. I would say, Maybe, but never would.

Eventually they would stop trying, and I would move on. I was out of reach; I was untouchable. I was in denial, mostly to myself. I was in so deep, and I couldn’t see a way out. I didn’t know where to go. I had nowhere to go—until now.

I was one tragedy leading to the next like a major car crash waiting to happen. From afar you can see everything clearly, but when you’re in it you don’t see that one bad choice, one poor decision on your part or someone else’s, leads to an unavoidable collision. That was me. Along the way I banged into everyone and everything but just kept going on the same road—until now.

I see now that I am the only person who can put a halt to these endless collisions. I see that I am the driver of this car—that I am the one in control. It’s me, just me. There is no one to cling to and no one to throw tantrums at anymore. They are all gone. They are too tired to listen.

Here’s where I am. I stopped my car. I pulled over to the side of the curb three months ago. I stopped everything to look back—really look back. No peeping through the mirror, no quick flick around and back again. I stopped, and the whole world stopped too, at least for me.

For the first time in my life, I am stationary.

Surprisingly enough, I am still here in exactly the same location. I didn’t think I would be able to remain here. My family, who are exhausted, are still here too; they are waiting for me to calm down. They are waiting for everything to go back to the way it was.

But that isn’t going to happen. I’m not going back. I’m only going forward, and to do that, I have had to strip myself bare. In doing so, I know I am making myself whole once more from the inside out.

As I look back, unfortunately it’s the traumatic events that dominate my memories; the good ones seem to be blocked out. Perhaps I can’t remember them because the bad ones have such a profound effect on me. They are what nightmares are made of. They are haunting dreams that never go away. I feel faint just thinking of them. In fact, I feel faint quite a lot. My stomach churns and churns, leaving a vacant emptiness behind. It drains my energy, and my heart is heavy. These are the telling signs.

I look gaunt and tired from exhaustion. I am worn out. I am thirty-eight years old, but inside I harbor a seven-year-old’s plight. My body aches from a deep hurt that permeates me deep inside. It’s everywhere, but mostly it’s in my heart. It is hardly beating. It is lifeless. It wants to give up; it wants out of all its misery. It wants to die.

* * *

This book is not about blame. Rather it is about taking responsibility for one’s actions, and this can only be done through awareness—awareness around the things we do to each other and how we come to a conclusion that these things are somehow acceptable just because they are not intentional. It’s also about taking responsibility for our own happiness, and that is what I am doing. Telling the truth makes me happy. It has taken the heavy load off my weary shoulders.

This book has been written with love—lots of it. I hope someday all will see that. I am doing this to help all those who are close to me understand. I am doing this to give answers, especially the unasked ones. I am doing this to reach out in the only way I can.

I am doing this to help all accept the new me, for there is no going back; what I accepted then I would never accept again. I am forever changed for the better.

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God

CHAPTER 1

Where My Questions Begin—My Mum and Dad

1978

M y earliest memory as a child is at our big front doors. They are mahogany, glossed to the nines and beautiful. They are big, heavy, expansive double doors. I see them clearly as if I am there righ t now.

I am on the wrong side of them. They are closed, slammed shut as if in a hurry. My mum and dad are scurrying away on the other side like two little mice. I can hear their every move. They never told me they were leaving. I just happen to be going past the door when I hear a noise. It is accidental. I am not supposed to hear them. I am not supposed to know.

I am furious! How dare they? Where are they going without me? There is no one else in the house but me, a little four-year-old. I reach for the nearest thing to pull me up. It is the gold umbrella stand; it’s full of all kinds of umbrellas. I roll it over toward the middle of the two doors and clamber up on it as quickly as possible to get to the bolt on top.

I unlock the door as speedily as my little hands let me. I am good at things like this. I love adventure; no place is hidden from me. But now I am in a hurry. I am panicking. I am being left behind. I just know it. It feels like I am about to lose something—something very special—and it is not coming back; it is never coming back. I run out and scream Mammy, Mammy. Where are you going? I cry wildly.

In my hand is a big, black umbrella I happened to pick up along the way. I don’t know how or why. I begin to hit my mother with it from behind. She is still walking away following Dad. He, my dad, is not even bothering to look back; she, fleetingly so. If she hurries she can make it to the car before I catch her. How dare she? How dare she do this to me? I get closer. I’m faster than her. I’m more determined than her. I get up close and hit her hard. She has no choice but to stop now. She has no choice.

She says little by way of reply. She just stops and looks at me. I can see that she is annoyed. She is annoyed with me. I am in her way. Dad continues to the car as if nothing has happened. He just ignores my pleas. He gets into the car. He is ready to go. I hear the engine coming on.

She does nothing for a moment, a very long moment. She says nothing. She always says nothing. I can see now that she is panicking just like I was a minute ago. I recognize that panicky feeling, the same one as mine. Hers takes over mine. I stop and stand back to look up at her as if from afar. I am in shock. I can’t believe this is happening to me.

She moves in fast, still nothing, not a word. I’m shaking with pain. Every core of my body just wishes that she would hug me and tell me that everything is going to be okay. Surely it’s going to be okay now that she sees my pain? But it’s not okay. Nothing will ever be okay again; something deep inside tells me so.

She doesn’t hug me. Instead she bends down and quietly, deliberately tears the umbrella from my little hands. Coldly she picks me up. She puts me firmly back inside the door. It’s decisive; there is no feeling here. She doesn’t see my tears. She doesn’t see my fear. She doesn’t see my pain. She only sees Dad.

She only hears the engine purring in the background signaling that it’s time to go, before he changes his mind and leaves without her too. She closes the heavy doors in front of me. I sob and sob until finally I can sob no more. I stop. It’s quiet, eerily quiet. I get up resigned to the fact that I have been forgotten. I decide to forget about them too for a while. I begin to play. I know deep inside that this is the best thing to do. I know that they’re not coming back anytime soon. I know that I am irrelevant.

* * *

I was born into a family of seven. We lived in a vast seven-bedroom house with an indoor swimming pool and lots of garages in a small town in North Cork in southern Ireland. The gardens were lavish. I was the baby of the family. My dad would tell anyone who cared to hear that they saved the best till last. His voice would boom with gusts of laughter once these very words were uttered. He also told of how I was the only one to be born in hospital to a doctor of another color and creed. I was born in 1974, five years after the sixth child. Somehow this gap was to be the beginning of a new generation while the rest remained part of the old.

It was unusual at the time to either be born in a hospital or to meet or work with anyone other than one that you had known for centuries before. But for me things were to be different from most others in my locality. I was born into a fairy-tale lifestyle of local fame and fortune. My dad was larger than life, outwardly happy, chatty, and charming. He looked to be living life to the full.

He was a millionaire a few times over by the time he was thirty, having first started out in the manufacturing of stainless steel products before moving on to other similar businesses and finally building large commercial and private buildings all over Europe. Shortly after I was born he sold his stainless steel business for a sum of money never seen or heard of before.

He drove a beautiful top-of-the-range Mercedes with a black leather interior that always made me sick on long journeys. The smell of leather mixed in with smoke gave my tummy the twirl each and every time. Once retching was inevitable, Dad would pull his car over to let me out to vomit only to light up another cigarette while casually observing me, and again another one on my re-entering the car. It was the early seventies, and children were to be seen not heard and certainly not to be thought of. If I got sick that was my problem, and if he wanted to enjoy the finer things in life—well, that’s exactly what he was meant to do regardless of how my tummy reacted to such luxuries.

My dad took good care of himself. He worked and exercised hard and provided well for his wife and his family. The only other thing my dad liked to do was talk and drink in between a dinner of mostly T-bone steak. My dad was a particularly lucky man, as his wife was beautiful, one of the most beautiful of them all, and best of all he was completely loved by her.

My mother was the best singer in town. I can see him now leaning his head back over his sumptuous couch, his eyes closed with just his right hand gently out front swaying back and forth in time with the music. He was following tradition, Irish tradition, but he was doing so in style. Where others failed at gaining access to plenty of money, this was not so for him; he had that conquered.

My dad preferred the old Irish tradition of sitting around the fire, where you told or sang stories of the Great Famine, of lost love, or of young folk leaving for foreign shores. While there was television, older folk still had a preference for each other’s company. They had their dreams; they had their hopes; and in Dad’s time it was just possible to attain them. So he got to remain in Ireland.

Dad was surrounded by spacious living rooms filled with silks and velvets. He was the lucky one, the one who got away from all past hunger and strife. He was deliriously happy, and it was with that happiness that he shared his drink and food with all who ever came to visit. All were provided for with a generosity of spirit for which the Irish are world renowned.

My dad was the toast of the town and maybe even the toast of the country, for he had also appeared on the cover of the Time magazine. It was to be the epitome of his career—that one piece of paper confirming to all what he knew. He indeed did have it all—beauty, intelligence, and a gentlemanly spirit. He provided employment to hundreds in the locality and beyond in many counties where jobs were hard to come by.

He was keeping the married men of the region in jobs close to their own families. Irish entrepreneurship was an unknown entity in Irish history at the time. It was this that gave him more glory than he was capable of dealing with, particularly one who knew little of the drawbacks to being ascended to such heights of adoration.

He was listened to because of this placing—the pedestal that society had bestowed upon him. His words were carefully scrutinized for any wisdom by everyone, except possibly himself. He was surrounded by warmth and hospitality from all in the hope that his luck would rub off and leave in its mist a trail of goodies. He was up on high upon a pedestal, and he simply loved every minute of it. It gave him the confidence he might not have otherwise had. It gave him a sense of false everlasting harmony. Slowly he stopped seeing what was ahead of him. He lost his keen observation skills, the very ones that had made him the man he was.

My mum met my dad at a dance at the tender age of nineteen, and by the time she was twenty, they were expecting their first child. The Catholic Church viewed this as a sin—to be pregnant outside of wedlock—and so, just like everyone else in this condition at the time, they were quickly married as quietly as possible. It was this or a life sentence in a Magdalene Laundry for my mum, where the newborn could have been taken from her and given to an infertile married couple.

The Catholic Church also told her not to use contraception (for it was a grave sin—I still felt this condemnation at the age of seventeen), and so we continued to arrive one after the other quick in succession; and all had limbs and arms where limbs and arms were supposed to be.

Upon marrying she was forced (by the law of the land, right up to 1973) to give up work in the local bank, as it was her duty to rechannel her young life of freedom and fun into a life of rearing children and being wife to an upcoming enterprising husband. After her seventh child, she was exhausted; but more important, she was fat.

She tried every diet in the book: the grapefruit diet, the grape-only diet, the F-plan diet, and the last-resort no-eating-and-plain-starvation diet—everything to remain within the clasp of beauty. And all of this for her successful and by now popular young man, one who left earlier and earlier each day and who would return later and later each night—all for work-related pleasure or pain. What did she have to worry? Couldn’t she always leave him if she was unhappy?

Of course she could not, as it was unheard of. There was no divorce back then; only the carefree and frivolous had thoughts such as these. To stay was a matter of pride and principle. The bigger the sacrifice you made for God and your country (and your man) the more you would be rewarded in heaven and for eternity. These were the teachings of the Catholic Church my mother grew up with.

But somewhere along the way it was becoming obvious to those who cared to notice that my dad was, as the Irish saying goes losing the run of himself, followed quickly by Sure isn’t the money such a curse? Some would reply, Ah well, better not to have it. And that’s what the church told us too: that to fly in the face of God—by being too rich or too happy as this was to be seen as too selfish—would have its consequence.

But my mother continued to do what she always did—she stuck staunchly to her routine. She continued to diet (badly and unsuccessfully but results were never seen as a lesson onto itself), bought even more fabulous clothes, dyed her hair an even stronger shade of blond, and finally, when all of that wasn’t enough, she joined him. She joined him because she could not beat him into staying put. She followed him everywhere just like my earliest memory.

He told her he loved her; wasn’t that enough? He told her, but soon after he stopped coming home in time for dinner, and when he eventually did arrive home he was drunk, so drunk that all he did was repeat over and over again how much he loved her. Eventually that’s all we heard too. It got him off the hook, those little drunken words of love.

And in the latter years when she wasn’t able to be out and about with him, she enlisted us to follow and bring him home—each and every one of us all at different points in our lives. Drink consumed our lives so much so that by the time I was seven I remember clearly waking up in the morning to a bottle of Hennessy closely nipped in behind the big black boiling kettle of water. I knew the portion of brandy to pour into the tea once brewed and to leave it on either side of the bedside table before heading off to school.

By then I had my very own personal school driver who just so happened to also be my teacher, she who was always lovely to me and she who relished each piece of Waterford crystal Mum gave her every Christmas for just such a consideration. She too was in awe of my mum and dad just like everyone else in the town. The internal troubles we as a family were experiencing were not yet public knowledge.

Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.

JK Rowling,

Harry Potter & the Goblets of Fire

CHAPTER 2

Abuse of a Different Kind

O ne day back in the summer of 1974 my dad was outside tending