Our Little Secret: ONE WOMAN'S TRUE STORY OF HEALING FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

By Lorraine Hall

An insightful memoir of Lorraine’s 10-year journey. Repressed memories, of holding “our little secret,” unfolds.

   Sally, came into Lorraine’s life as a result of pain and cruelty. Join her, who with Sally’s truths, allows the jigsaw of her life, to merge together.

   Through

• Language: Australian
• Publisher: Lorraine Hall
• Release date: Sep 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781627471916

Lorraine Hall

Lorraine Hall is a part-time hermit andfull-time writer. She was born with an old soul and her head in the cloudswhich, it turns out, is the perfect combination to spend her days creatingthunderous alpha heroes and the fierce, determined heroines who win theirhearts. She lives in a potentially haunted house with her soulmate andrambunctious band of hermits-in-training. When she’s not writing romance, she’sreading it.

Book preview

Introduction

Our Little Secret, a memoir of an artist’s journey, discusses the last ten years of remembering, bit by bit, the abuse and traumas that poisoned my childhood. Some parts of this story will shock you – others are very disturbing – but this book is my truth. Tragically, it is the truth of far too many people’s childhoods.

It was ten years ago when I remembered, our first secret. I was fifty-four, and it felt like an elephant standing on me, leaving me all broken and dying. Suddenly I found my life out of control, spiralling down, down, to a sinister, scary place inside myself.

I didn’t feel safe.

Until this moment, I had lived what could be considered a fairly successful life. Owning my own home at age thirty-two, which I achieved by buying and selling houses. Achieving was a key word – and I was a high achiever. Here’s a snapshot of my curriculum vitae. For forty-six years, I was a hairdresser. I was head of my final year at Tafe and worked in the city in a very contemporary salon, where we dictated the styles of Sydney-siders. I also owned my own salons for most of my career. I loved designing gardens and houses, creating beautiful environments to live in. Fit and active, I played A-level squash for many years and A-level Netball. I have two high-achieving children and three gorgeous grandsons. At age fifty I took up surfboard riding, and in 2007, I earned my Diploma of Fine Arts.

And in a moment, the life I had lived for fifty-four years was gone – gone in one flash of a vision of my father sexually abusing me in the bath. I now remember feeling terrified. It felt wrong – stop, Daddy, stop....

I liked it, for the briefest moment. I was three years old. This first memory became one of many of my father sexually and mentally abusing me. He stopped when I was six years old, but his grooming (to keep me from telling) and control over myself and the family, continued until I confronted him in 2009. He betrayed his innocent, vulnerable, beautiful little girl.

My father’s brother sexually abused me when I was nine to ten years old. He was a cruel, creepy, brutal man in his abuse of me.

Neither man ever asked; all they did was take. They had no right. They took my innocence; they used my body, my vulnerability. What was left was a little girl who lived in fear, and a woman, within whom fear was always lurking. When I was a child I learned coping mechanisms to try to keep me safe, but as an adult, these coping mechanisms were destroying me. And none of them ever did keep me safe.

My mother, because of the abuse she had suffered as a child, came to rely on alcohol. She abandoned me, abused me mentally and physically, and betrayed me. This is how her mother had treated her, and this is how abuse is perpetuated through generations. When I first remembered, I believed she had known what my father was doing to me, just the way her mother had done with her. In recent years, though, I have thought long and hard about that burning question. Finally, I have come to a place of understanding that no, she didn’t know anything about my father’s disgusting betrayal of me, at least not on a conscious level.

I wrote this book because over the last ten years I have been on the most profound journey. I want to share with you what it has been like, the understandings I have gained, and the tools that have helped me.

I do not claim to be a therapist of any kind. I was a victim who, through my own healing, has learned by trial and error, while exploring what worked for me and what didn’t work for me. I am bringing you what I believe to be information that can be as helpful for your journey as it was, and still is, for mine. I am grateful to be able to pass on this information, to make your life an easier one, and to know there is always hope and love there for you.

I want most of all to give you hope. I want you to know that you’re not going crazy. Everything you believe about yourself, what you hear in your head – that critical voice of judgement that says terrible things to you – all of that is because of the abuse and trauma you experienced in your childhood. Whether you’ve been sexually abused like me – or experienced trauma and abuse in mental or physical forms such as neglect, abandonment, having a rescuing parent, being overindulged – we all have beliefs of not being good enough.

For many, there are the overriding feelings of hopelessness, of being unlovable, powerless, all alone and different from other people in some way, and feeling as if we don’t fit in.

I’ve learned that these behaviours come from the trauma and abuse. All I did was try to keep myself safe. What I said to myself and others – how I let people treat me and how I treated others – often came out wrong, because I didn’t have good role models to show me how to behave. My trust was broken, so I didn’t trust others. I so wanted to be loved, loved by my husbands, partners, family and friends in respectful, kind, caring relationships, but often that critical inner voice stopped me. I had the need to be in control, to control others as well, to want people to like me. Anger surfaced too, and I realised I was passive-aggressive.

I clung onto these, and many more unhealthy patterns that I’d learned to keep me safe as a child, but as an adult these patterns of mine had to go if I were to have loving, fulfilling relationships – first with myself, and then with other people in my life. I’m not saying it’s easy, because it’s not. What it is, is very rewarding to live your life without your critical inner voice, while not being needy or co-dependent. It is living a life that is my truth, coming from what it is like to respect myself and to be the very best I can be, to have a voice and not shrink or want to fight when there is conflict around, to trust my instincts.

I have had to learn what it is to be human, because I didn’t know. Two of my discoveries come to mind: One is that I have choices now in everything; the other is that it’s okay to make a mistake. Yes, I am still learning, on my journey as I often call it. I love knowledge – I’m amazed at how our brains work. The fact that I didn’t have a clue about my traumatic childhood fascinates me.

A lot of what I know is not only from reading. I went to three five-day healing sessions at a trauma centre, and afterward, when I was ready, I volunteered there for several years too. I have spoken and worked with many survivors during this time, and have had two psychologists, who were able to assist me with my complex traumas, they have been great support and teachers. I have experienced the profound heartache, and incredible joy, of growing from a little girl with no friends to a woman supported today by a wonderful group of spiritual women.

I met my partner at the trauma centre. His brain had repressed his memories just as mine had. I feel very fortunate and grateful because of the understanding, support and love we have for each other. He has shown me that there are good men, and I feel so blessed to be loved by one. In conversations about how our traumas have affected us, a great deal of learning has taken place. I believe that this has helped me enormously, because people who haven’t had my experience don’t know what to say to someone who has. I don’t think it’s their fault, even though it can be annoying at times. They just don’t understand.

I am responsible for my life, the same way you are responsible for yours. If you choose to stay in the victim space, that is your choice – but I didn’t want to just survive, I wanted to grow and to live my life. Yes, all those horrible abuses happened to me, but I will not allow them to stop me from being who I was born to be.

Writing this book has been both wonderful and challenging. Until now, I never acknowledged I could be an author, and writing something of this caliber astonishes me. I am so grateful for this process. The act of writing about my experiences on my ten-year journey of remembering, the shock of sometimes having to relive some of my pain and the intense feelings from that time, brought about more healing and light in areas of my life that I was unaware of.

I was asked, What do you hope readers will take from your book?

My response is this: hope, knowledge and tools. And to understand, you can be broken and in pain, to achieving a fore filled and happy life.

In the last ten years, I have grown from victimhood, to survivor, to teacher. Currently I am a qualified teacher in the Art of Feminine Presence. I teach art workshops in my studio on our beautiful property in the Hunter Valley, and I have an art exhibition this year in Cessnock Regional Gallery. Oh yes, and now I am an Author! I could not have imagined, that day in Adelaide when the first memory made itself known, what a wonderful life lay ahead for me.

Now it’s my turn to do my best to help others, as I have been helped. If I can help to stretch people’s minds or beliefs or help them along in their lives in some way, then I’ve added something to their life – and that possibility makes me a very happy woman.

I WOULD LIKE TO EXPLAIN WHY I USED, ‘OUR LITTLE SECRET’ AS THE TITLE OF MY BOOK

The title, Our Little Secret relates to the shame I felt, holding the secret of my abuse. The secrets we hold cause a double bind. Meaning, the perpetrator will often show attention and love to the victim, and then harm the victim. We as victims deny a certain aspect of the reality of the abuse and are often confused about love and our attachment to the perpetrator.

Survivors take it to be their fault, their shame.

Perpetrators hold authoritarian power over us as children and often into our adulthood. Rendering their victims powerless. Feelings, such as being worthless and not good enough are always present, either in our behaviours or beliefs about ourselves.

Perpetrators either say or imply, keeping the secret of the abuse. Secrets are like a curse, in as much as the guilt and shame we hold in our self-beliefs.

You can’t see shame, but it permeates into our mental, spiritual and emotional beliefs about ourselves. Right down to our cellular memory and we also hold it in our bodies. What survivor doesn’t have feelings or thoughts of being powerless, worthless, not good enough and all alone.

Shame and the double bind has been a huge part of my journey, to realize none of it was mine. I needed to take responsibility for myself and let go of these negative beliefs and patterns which I took on.

IT IS NOT AND NEVER WAS YOURS OR MY SECRET OR OUR FAULT.

1

Memories

I didn’t know anything about depression. I do now. I hadn’t ever heard of repressed memories. I have now. I never recognised I had a mental illness. I do now.

It’s March 3rd, 2009. I feel excited as the plane touches down in the Adelaide airport. I’m here