THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT ABUSE!

By EILEEN F WYANT

EVERYONE HAS BEEN ABUSED ONE WAY OR ANOTHER IN THEIR LIFE. THIS BOOK GOES THROUGH SHAKEN BABY, ALL CHILDHOOD ABUSES AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.  MANY ARE UNAWARE OR THE MENTAL DAMAGE THAT DEVELOPS FROM ABUSE AND HOW TO OVERCOME THE MENTAL DAMAGES.SIGNS OF ABUSE ARE NOT JUST PHYSICAL, BUT ARE ALSO EMOTIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL. MEN DON'T REALIZE T

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eileen Frances Wyant
• Release date: Sep 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087892030

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Copyright © 2016 by Eileen Frances Wyant All rights reserved.

Revised Copyright © 2020 by Eileen Frances Wyant All rights reserved.

2020 IngramSpark by Ingram Content Group

14 Ingram Blvd

La Vergne, TN 37086

TO MY DAD, WHO WANTED ME FROM CONCEPTION!

THANK YOU.

TO MY DAUGHTER AND SON: EVEN THOUGH

YOU MAY NOT HAVE HAD EVERYTHING YOU

WANTED IN LIFE, YOU DO HAVE A MOM WHO LOVES

YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD!

TO MY FORMER BOSS DENISE, WHO CHANGED

MY LIFE BY JUST BEING THERE. MY COUNSELOR

FROM CATHOLIC CHARITIES, ELIZABETH - THAT I

WASN’T MAD - THANK YOU ALL FOR BEING IN MY

LIFE YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW. AND TO

MY DAVE. YOU MADE ME STRONGER. THANK YOU!

CHILDREN ARE A BLESSING AND A GIFT FROM THE

LORD!

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 BABY ABUSE

Fraternal Twins - The Abortion of One of Two Babies

When Pregnancies are Unwanted

A Common and Devastating Form of Abuse

Babies as Young as One Week Old Are Victims of Abuse or Neglect

Shaken Baby Syndrome

Brain Injury

Learning Disorders

Every Child Should Be a Wanted Child

Parents Are a Child’s First Teachers

My First Teacher Was a Pathological Liar

Ovarian Dermoid Cysts

CHAPTER 2 CHILD ABUSE

Child Abuse

Breaking the Cycle of Child Abuse

Battered Child Syndrome

CHAPTER 3 ADULT ABUSE

Major Legal Options to Gain Protection from Abusers

An Introduction to the Legal System

What To Do If Your Abuser Violates the TRO or the FRO

Dismissing a Restraining Order

Divorce

Support

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Exercise, Sport, and Physical Activity

Play Therapy for Children

CHAPTER 4 MENTAL DAMAGES

FIBROMYALGIA

Rheumatoid Arthritis

Anxiety

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (Spastic Colon)

Sleep Disorders

Other such disorders are:

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)

Stress

Multiple Sclerosis

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

CHAPTER 5 PHYSICAL DAMAGES

PHYSICAL AND OTHER CONDITIONS

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Chronic Pain

Gastroenteritis

Neck Pain

Panic Disorder

Phobia

Scoliosis

CHAPTER 6 LISTS OF ABUSES

LIST OF ABUSES

POSITIVE - GOOD LIST

REFERENCES

References: Shaken Baby Syndrome

References: Ovarian Demoid Cyst

References: Child Abuse

References: Child Sexual Abuse

References: Fibromyalgia

References: Irritable bowel syndrome

References: Anxiety

References: Fatigue

References: Depression

References: Stress

References: Multiple Sclerosis

References: ADHD

References: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

References: Abuse

References: Back

References: Central Nervous System

References: Chronic Fatigue

References: Chronic Pain

References: Gastroenteritis

References: Neck

References: Scoliosis

INTRODUCTION

God did not make a mistake when God made you and me. You need to see yourself as God sees you.

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God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid. (Isaiah 12:2 KJV)

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Jesus saith unto Him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: No man [or woman] cometh unto the Father but by me. (John 14:6 KJV)

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Teach me, and I will be; show me where I have gone wrong. How painful are honest words? But what do your arguments prove? Do you mean to correct what I say, and treat the words of a despairing man [or woman] as wind? You would even cast lots for the fatherless and barter away your friends. But now be so kind as to look at me. Would I lie to your face? Relent, do not be unjust; reconsider, for my integrity is at stake. Is there any wickedness on my lips? Can my mouth not discern malice?

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This is the toughest thing I have done in my life. I am no doctor, and I am not a victim. I am a survivor of an abortion, I was a shaken baby, and I have endured most of the abuses that I have put into this book. People don’t realize it’s not just the physical abuse and what it does to one’s body but the emotional scars that are left behind and the misunderstanding of love and pain. I realize that there are people out there who have had it worse than I have, but I am the one who is letting the world know about these abuses and the outcome of causing pain to anyone such as a helpless baby, a child of any age, or an adult dealing with domestic violence. I am giving you the true facts about me and what I have been through so I can help you.

My first question was WHY ME? Why did I have go through hell? Well, I believe it was destiny that led me through my discoveries and the lies that I dealt with until I said, NO MORE! And then for the first time in my life, I found the truth. It is true — the truth does set you free. Now with the information I have uncovered—AWAKENING, DISCOVERY, CREATING, DWELLING, NOURISHING, TRADITIONING, and TRANSFORMING—it is your time to be set free through the words in this book. This book is for the open-minded individuals who want to find their beginning.

See, I found the beginning of my health and emotional damages that I have been dealing with for over twenty five years. Finding that there is an end to these abuses and finding the end to my emotional issues, today I have found the end of the rainbow. I am in a new beginning of my life and I want you to get here one day. Call me a Messenger, because I am called to write this book. Not everyone will like it — the abusers think they do no wrong. It’s no big deal. KARMA knows your address.

My story is true to the medical facts that the doctors used to diagnose me. A lot of research was done to provide the most accurate accounts of each incident of abuse and the true side effects that happen to a child’s mind and body. Abusers think that since no bruises show, no one will find out what the abuser did to the child. Well, that is wrong and the signs are evident. I am going to tell you about the signs of abuse that show up in such a quiet way in children and the harm of not stopping the abuse. What happens to the child who grows up and questions everything?

It is never too late to correct the damage to your mind and your body and your soul. Living with abuse is not a life for anyone. Your hands should only be used to defend yourself and not to cause pain to any individual. Causing pain means you don’t love the individual and you should seek help for your anger. Anger is not healthy and does not belong in any relationship. I am now a better, loving mother, a better person all around. I am nice to everyone I meet. My love is one of a kind. I am silly, funny, and sweet. Sometimes the best thing I can do is not think, not wonder, not imagine, and not obsess. I can just breathe and have faith that everything will work out for the best.

You can call me stupid. Call me wrong. Call me incapable. Call me names I cannot ever repeat. You can spread your lies and convince others. Build a whole army of puppet followers who agree with you. You can convince a friend of mine that you’re right and turn someone I love against me. You can find the evidence that you need to point out my flaws. Cast a spotlight on each insecurity. You can even break me down. Bring me to my knees, alone on a cold floor, and you might think then that you have won. But tomorrow I will stand up. I will take another step forward, no matter how small or how shaky. And I will know that you will never get the best of me, because even as I stumble through this fucked-up world, I know it is love I hold inside my heart and you can never make me hate. I can say this today.

Here are the seven steps that I took for my body and for my mind and my spirituality. This is my opinion — lam not a professional teacher, doctor, or minister. I’m just showing you what I have found, and I put it all into a book that will help you.

1) Awakening to the place to start: the body. Awakening begins with attentiveness to the marvelous and wonderful creation that is your body. By awakening to the problems of my body, I was breaking the cycles of wrong and making myself right. When I awakened to see the truth of what really happened to me, I was free to research my conditions and start fixing one medical problem at a time. And it is amazing how prevalent these conditions were and my attitude to be — I finally deep down like myself. By not rejecting, resisting, or rebelling against the ugliness of what was done to my mind and body, I was free to heal. Although the awakening of my spirituality happened in its own time, it happens from within and cannot be hurried — in the manner of the coming of spring or a birth of a child — certain experiences in my life set the stage. By things happening to or around me which shifted the furnishing of my life, moving from silence to speech, to finding my own voice. For the first time in my life, my voice is being recorded throughout the world, and over and over I found that the voice of others is my voice too. And as I am telling the truth about my life, the world is splitting open to reveal untold stories and mysteries of mind and body and soul.

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2) Discovering the experiences are unique. To move through the process of discovering with the open mind vision of a wakening is to be aware, often for the first time. That something in my world is awry. The first great discovery that shaped my spirituality is one that all people before me have also come upon: terrible conflicts of rages in the universe between good and evil; life and death.

These were the messages of the fairy tales of my childhood; even then I knew that dragons and monsters represented something real, and that great forces were at war both in the heavens and in my heart. My world rests on a fault line of tragedy, sorrow, and grief. Children suffer without cause, death comes without warning, and love evaporates, leaving no trace. In the context of this universal and cosmic brokenness, today I am discovering on my own the particular brokenness, with its own uniqueness. In the midst of a broken world, I realized that the roles, expectations, and messages about myself, received from the past, no longer fit. And so I faced a broken life pattern - whether these are patterns of work, job, marriage, and family life, or patterns of religious life, including my image of God. And these broken patterns in turn affect my relationships with others, especially those closest to me, as I take on new roles. These roles at the very least cause a soft bruising and at the very worst a searing pain. For one is not a mother or a wife or a daughter or a lover in the same way anymore, and new ways and attitudes are not yet completely clear. In the midst of the new patterns, the deepest brokenness begins to manifest itself, that within myself: emerging out of the new desires and sense of self, in contract to the desires I was taught. For I am not the woman in the same way anymore, I am in the dawning of a new wisdom.

When through response, searching, and finding myself uncovered my own gifts and started to remember who I was, I began to feel a new sense of power. I began to see that my own gifts and my own powers are what will overcome darkness. I began to realize not only that I have power, but that I have a repository of power, of a very specific set of powers. For most it is powerlessness, not power, that corrupts their lives and their dreams. The first discovery is that the capacity to be vulnerable and to express weakness and even helplessness, is itself a power.

To say to someone who has spoken to you brusquely, that really hurts, or to admit out loud, I can’t do this alone, or I’m feeling really anxious about this new baby, are expressions of strength. Such admission is not usually thought of as a positive ability. On the contrary, vulnerability and weakness are feelings many of us are encouraged to dread and deny. Yet such feelings are common and inevitable to everyone, even though our traditions and culture may say only women feel them. More to the point, recognizing these feelings is actually a genuine strength, since being able to admit that as human beings we are regularly vulnerable, often weak, and many times helpless reveals a capacity for truth.

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Discovering the problems of my physical problems was just the tip of the iceberg, and here is the beginning of my back problems:

September 2,1998. By a doctor who is a D.O., D.F.M.

Subject: Me, the patient, notes some mild decreases in knots, but still has spasms. Doctor reports that neck has significant spasms and difficulty turning. Also noted the left ear is dripping.

Objective: Trigger points were noted at C-3 - C-5 bilaterally, T-3 - T-5 bilaterally, and trapezius bilaterally with positive jump signs elicited, taut bunds, radiation of pain on palpation, muscle spasticity, and local twitch response. Examination of the ears revealed erythema at the left external superior position. Tympanic was negative bilaterally. Yellowish drainage was noted.

Assessment: 1) Post-traumatic cephalic 2) Posttraumatic stress disorder 3) Upper extremity paresthesia 4) Lower extremity paresthesia 5) Herniated nucleus pulpous at L-4 - L-5 6) Disc bulges at L-4 - L-5, L-5 - S-l, and L-3 - L-4 7) Depression 8) Otitis external.

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March 13, 2003. Cervical Spine MRI was ordered by my primary doctor.

Clinical History: Magnetic resonance imaging of the cervical spine was performed initializing multiple pulse sequences in multiple projections. There is straightening of the neutral cervical lordosis curve and reversal at the C-3 - C-4, C-4 - C-5 and C-5 - C- 6 levels. The signal of the cervical cord appears normal. Mild to moderate degenerative spondylosis. There is no significant abnormalities atC2 - C-3. At C-3 - C-4, there is mild osseous ridging and associated disc bulge, mild narrowing of the anterior subarachnoid space, mild right neural foramina narrowing. Fibrocartileginous ridging and associated disc bulge is seen at C-4 - C-5, moderate narrowing of the anterior subarachnoid space, mild right neural foramina narrowing. There is mild side of a cervical cord and this may be accentuated due to curve reversal. There is Fibrocartileginous ridging and associated disc bulge at C-5 - C-6 and a right Para central disc protrusion and annular tear that extends to the cervical cord and may be slightly posteriorly displacing the cord extending by curve reversal. There is mild bilateral neural foramina narrowing. There is Fibrocartileginous ridging associated disc bulge at C-5 - C-6 and a right para central disc protrusion and annular tear that extends to the cervical cord and may be slightly posteriorly displacing the cord extending towards the right, which may be accentuated by curve reversal. There is mild bilateral neural foramina narrowing. At the C-6 - C- 7, there is a small osseous spur extending posteriorly from C-6 with mild narrowing of the anterior subarachnoid space.

Conclusion: 1) Right Para central disc protrusion and annular tear at (-5 - C-6, mild posterior displacement of the right side of the cervical cord, mild bilateral neural foramina narrowing. 2) Disc bulge at C-4 - C-5, mild neural foraminnarrowing, mild posterior displacement of the left side of the cervical cord. 3) Disc bulge at C- 3 - C-4, mild right neural foramina narrowing. 4) Mild to moderate degenerative spondylosis. 5) Reversal of the neutral cervical lordosis curve.

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The second discovery is that, although pain and brokenness abound, grace abounds even more: the divinely bestowed grace of human and personal power.

At its root, power simply means capacity and ability. All human beings are naturally gifted with certain powers: to think, to love, to create, to be responsible. For we possess a range of powers that are critical for teaching to the brokenness in ourselves and our world.

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October 5, 2009. Cervical Surgery Fusion done by a professional spinal specialist.

Preoperational Diagnoses: HNP at C-4 - C-5 and C-5 - C-6 with neck pain and left arm radiculopathy.

Procedure: 1) Anterior cervical discectomy at C-4 - C-5 and C-5 - C-6. 2) Decompression of spinal cord and bilateral foramina with foraminotomies being performed at C-4 - C-5 and C-5 - C-6. 3) Incretion of TM-100 tantalum mesh interbody cage at C-4 - C-5 and C-5 - C-6. 4) Anterior cervical interbody fusion using local bone, copious and bone marrow. 5) Insertion of anterior plates and screws from C-4, C-5 and C-6. 6) Aspiration of bone marrow times 2 from C-5 and C-6. 7) Use of C-arm fluoroscopy for identification of levels and guidance with replacement of screws and plates and for interbody cages.

October 7, 2008. Lumbar Spine MRI orders by orthopedic doctor.

Finding: MRI of the lumbar spine demonstrates normal vertebralstsature throughout. There is mild curvature of the lumbar spine convex left. There are some hypertrophic degenerative changes of the articulating facets most prominent at L-2 - L-3 through L-4 - L-5. The conus terminates at the L-l level. No epidural mass or collection is identified. L-l - L-2 level demonstrate disc desiccation with mild intervertebral disc space narrowing and annular bulging impinging upon the theca sac most prominent right paramedianly. The L-2 - L-3 level demonstrates desiccation with mild intervertebral disc space narrowing. There is annular disc bulging impinging upon the theca sac. This appears most prominent involving the left neural foramina with associated annular tear. There is mild central canal and neural foramina stenosis, left greater than right. There is some encroachment upon the left L-2 nerve root. There is a 4mm grade 1 spondylolisthesis of L-3 - L-4. There is disc desiccation with intervertebral disc space narrowing and diffuse annular protruding disc impinging upon the theca sac. There is moderate central canal and neural foramina stenosis, right greater than left. There is impinging.

January 24, 2011. Lumbar Spine MRI by my neck surgeon.

Finding: There is curvature of the lumbar spine convex left. The consul appears of normal signal intensity. No epidural mass or collection. Hypertrophic changes of the articulating facets. L-l - L-2 through L-4 - L-5 disc dehydration with disc space narrowing. Some degeneration endplate changes at L-2 - L-3 through L-4 - L-5. L-l - L-2 annular bulging with super imposed shallow right para median protruding disc effacing the theca sac. L-2 - L-3 annular b impinging upon the theca sac with hypertrophic changes of the articulating facets. Moderate central canal and neural foramina stenosis. L-3 - L-4 annular bulging with super imposed right neural foramina protruding disc impinging upon the right L-3 nerve root. Hypertrophic changes of the articulating facets of moderate to severe central upon the right L-3 nerve root with effacement of the left L-3 nerve root. L-4 - L-5 level demonstrates disc desiccation with some intervertebral disc space narrowing and degeneration endplate changes. There is focal lesion at L-4 suggest typical of a small hemangioma. There is diffuse annular protruding disc at L-4 - L-5 impinging upon the theca sac. The L-5 - S-l level demonstrates mild bulging of the annulus. There is left neural foramina stenosis with impinging upon the left L-5 nerve root. There is right neural foramina annular tear at this level. Canal and right neural foramina stenosis. L-4 - L-5 annular bulging with super imposed broad left Para median protruding disc impinging upon the theca sac with hypertrophic changes of the articling facets. Moderate to severe central canal stenosis. Mild to moderate neural foramina stenosis. Right Para median/neural foramina annular tear. Effacement of the theca sac and left S-l nerve root centrally central canal is patent.

Impression: Lumbar spondylosis as described with annular disc bulging throughout. Curvature of the lumbar spine convex left. Super imposed protruding discs as described L-l - L-2, L-3 - L-4 through L-5 - S-l, with multi-levels central canal and neural foramina stenosis most prominent at L-3 - L-4 and L-4 - L-5. Scoliosis is a reversal to the left.

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I have the power to accept and express emotion. As with vulnerability, the assumption that this is a power is met by a long tradition of denial. Being cool, not showing feeling, has been offered as an ideal, and women who are generally more expressive than men — women are given to crying in public without shame, for example — are often teased or belittled.

Third, strength developed and demonstrated primarily in my life is the power that comes in helping and caring for others. Most nurses are women; most attendants in nursing homes are women; most people who are in child care are women. Brokenness and the awareness of my powers to respond to it remain an incomplete discovery without the presence of the third element. This is the revelation, born out of the power of connectedness, that I am called is to community. True, my experiences as I begin my discovery are of a solitary nature, spiraling down into a deep well. But when I touch bottom, the experiences turn out to be that the waters of life and spirit underneath each well are common waters where all that has divided me begins to merge. In the merging, I discover the impulse toward community.

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3) Creating is the refusal to separate creator and created; it taught me to become what I created and that, like birth, it is not possible to hurry the process. Rather than my thinking of myself as working towards a goal or objective (What’s the five-year plan for my life?), this law instructed me to be aware of effort and production and to be more attentive to allowing and permitting the forces of life to shape me. Following such a law leads me into something, if I let it, and is far more attuned to living questions than living answers. This first law is also at the base of the creative quality of sensitivity, where I gave my senses, especially my sight, time to know what I see, rather than limiting myself to seeing what I know. And, by teaching myself the refusal of striving and grasping, this law permits me to cultivate the capability to live in uncertainty, doubt, and mystery without needing to know WHY?

The second law is born from this one and teaches that creating is a continuing process. This means in part that once I had engaged in this step of creating, I took on an ongoing, never- ending movement. At no point in my life will my creating be completed, because at no point will I know all that I can know or be all that I can be. At no point in my life will all the data be in concerning who I am and what I am called to be. Instead, I have come to recognize creating as a step in the dance of spirituality is a living one, each time it will be at a deeper level.

The third law is true to each of the steps and We do not create alone. In the realm of spirituality, someone or something is always creating with you. As at the step of Awakening, where Someone helped Awaken me, and at the second step where Someone was searching for me — as I was searching for the truth — so now, at the third step, I followed the law, saying I do not have to do it all by myself. The brooding, hovering presence I have already met holds me gently and tenderly in its everlasting arms, at times making me lie down in green pastures, at other times leading me beside still waters.

And the fourth law is paradoxical. The only way to ensure creating is to do away with preexisting ideas of what my spirituality will look like after I have moved through the process. Like all artistic work, presupposing the outcome can only get in the way. So I put my assumptions aside and risked birth — as all genuine creating must.

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STEP 1 is Contemplation. This is the movement where looking and seeing was my principal work. The creative process begins with me attempting to see what is there in my spirituality with my being still and quiet and not rushing in, just as I do when creating a meal, a home, a book, or a poem.

I look intensely at spirituality, not so much at its individual features, but as a whole, something I have not yet done specifically until this step.

STEP 2 is Engagement. Every artist knows you cannot keep looking at your materials; you cannot keep reading the recipe; you cannot remain at a distance. In this step, I did more than merely contemplate spirituality. Engagement is the step for plunging in and messing around. It is the step of taking spirituality on, committing myself to getting inside it, and allowing it to get inside of me. Because it is diving in and living inside, that time helps me connect with my deeper self, our thought, dreams, and desires, and even with my unique circumstances, such as rising my children alone, working two jobs, or being too old to live by myself. Once I am engaged with my depths, I can then move on to engagement with others. My strengths of community and connectedness have the ability to deepen the consciousness of this life — met in discovering. I now can begin to live from that engagement, treating others with the same reverence I show myself, and become sensitive to my fears and my grief too. The Spirit, the Heart, the mystery at the Center of everything is with and under and over and through all creations.

STEP 3 is Form Giving. I reached a movement when a new form began to be created. I stopped and looked, I saw that Engagement had given way to a step where my spirituality had taken on a form and design of its own. That is where I passed over into the security of Form Giving. In this step, most of my energy went into the continued molding, brooding, and hovering which are meant to shelter and encouraged the new form. And depending on the community that surrounds and supports me, the personal histories I carried within me and the circumstances influencing me at the time, their forms will vary, although they will be aspects of each form in everyone. I will not be content to just sit back and do nothing. Empowering my soul often blossomed for me when my children were small and my life was constant self-giving, but it was also in my characteristic way of being. Empowerers keep genuine love afloat in the world, especially if love means desiring good things for others. And I claimed this form of my own, as well as allowing it to claim me, lean into the step of Emergence.

Emergence feels like a misty, consciousness moving aside to reveal something forgotten. I stand at a new place, and yet it seems as if I am returning to a familiar one, but with a greater wholeness. Emergence provides a kind of substance and at- home-ness I did not have before. The recognition that this spirituality is mine and has personal meaning signals to move into Emergence. I know feeling light, hope, joy, I feel set free — free to let go of my past life completely as I did. Release is that moment where I recognized in my bones that the first law of Creating is true.

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4) Dwelling has always been central in my life. Dwelling is the step that I found to be the heart of Spirituality. Dwelling holds my soul together, knitting it into a seamless garment. I took the time I needed to examine each dwelling place: a symbolic, centering, and spiritual location where I can live out the events and occasions that make up life. Without going through all these emotions and steps, I would not have been able to help you through this book. Primarily, all dwelling has to do with a place. As human beings who are matter and mind and body and soul, I must dwell somewhere. I may share that place — a house or apartment or room with others, perhaps several others, parents and children and spouses. But these are places of residence. I also dwell in places of work, an office, a hospital, a classroom, or a store. I dwell in places of daily travel: a car, a train, a bus, a plane, a roadway, a path, or a sidewalk. I dwell in places of worship: a church, a temple, a synagogue, or a chapel. I dwell in open air, sitting perhaps by the side of a lake. I dwell in places of restaurants and art galleries. I dwell locally, intimately, and individually in places personal to me alone — hideouts in the trees, and caves in the hillsides — and I dwell universally and majestically upon the ground of the planet called Earth.

For Dwelling to happen in me, I needed not only to be in some place, I needed to be — to exist and to live in some time. I needed to be present. And being humanly present is often very difficult. I am always being tugged backward toward the past or forward toward the future (imagination). I was also always being tugged by the demands of those around me, often causing me to wish I was somewhere else. Sometimes that even pushed me into a make-believe existence where I failed to enjoy the present moment because I was thinking of a period that is over or a dream time yet to come. The importance of this realization is critical if Dwelling is to occur. I needed to learn to cultivate presence, care for it, and cherish it. The mystery residing at the center of all that does not reveal itself to me unless I am willing to wait, to watch, and to dwell. This is what I did and the real, ugly truth was revealed to me.

Being deserted and knowing the pain of loss is one of the universal human experiences. Just as I was dumped by my family and child, we all experience that pit-in-thestomach agony that caused me to feel completely alone. But because of the extraordinary stress on pleasure in today’s world, and because of the great emphasis on having rather than being, the importance and meaning of such desertions today have tended to be diluted. I tried to avoid pain, loss, and defeat rather than face them or, even more radically, befriended them. Nevertheless, because suffering and sorrow are common to all lives, I have learned how to dwell in them.

I am not talking here about making suffering an idol, or being a martyr or a victim. I am not talking about passively accepting the cruelty of others and allowing myself to be beaten or abused, even to the point of thinking that I deserved it. I am talking about the inestimable value to my spiritual life of learning to ride with the times when pain or sorrow strikes me. Be warriors. No one deserves to be treated like shit but as a live human being who has rights. One temptation is to ignore the situation and to pretend that I don’t have a broken heart. The opposite temptation is to wallow in my pain and to bring misery upon myself and all around me. Desertion is a place and a time to face what is here — a time to be still and to be at rest. It was time for allowing myself to feel, to let the hurt wash over me like great, healing waters so that the desertion inside can be faced and accepted. This was the time I waited without love, and without seeking love, because that too might be love for the wrong things. These even may be times when I knew I must wait without feeling God’s presence.

When I felt deserted, I had reached a turning point in my life and literally did not know where to go. No avenue was open to me; no hand was stretched towards me; no other human being seemed to be aware of me. Inside I was completely lost and empty. I was alone. But the desert as a dwelling place can be also a positive setting where I took the time to dwell in darkness. I named it, faced it, and came to grips with reality. And out of my deep and quiet center, I learned to challenge it too. When I found that I had the courage to do this — and I took this risk and survived it. I learned it is possible to go through hell and survive. I came in touch with my own power, and a Power both within and beyond me — a power I name as God.

If the Desert is about dying and endings, the Garden is about beginnings and flourishing. The Garden teaches about the rhythms of living upon the Earth, with all the natural gifts that accompany those rhythms: food, shelter, shade, rest in labor, cool respite in heat, comfort in weeping, seasons, and decay. It teaches about being soil and being life givers. If Desert and Garden were my only dwelling places, I didn’t succumb to the danger of forgetting that I dwell in the cosmos and a world with innumerable other creatures — human and nonhuman. The glory of the city as a dwelling place, either as an actual city or as a symbolic reaching out to others on a local, national, or global level, has its capacity to center me in a relationship. Women who are neither nuns nor married will band together to help others. This is where I came and love to live. In health care, women give themselves to nursing the sick and the dying, religious groups of women whose purpose for coming together in community was and is to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, visit the imprisoned, and assist those who are abused and battered. I have done it all except visit someone in prison. Other women whose work is outside their homes — police officers, social workers, and office workers — do not act in such a direct fashion, yet they bring to what they do the same or similar caring attitudes. Caring work forms the bulk of the day’s women who worked at home. Other women enter the city for a few hours a week or only periodically, doing volunteer work in nursing homes, in hospitals and hospices, in day care centers, in schools and in other service organizations, feeling their soul is incomplete unless they do. Still others operate soup kitchens, help with breadlines, and give time in houses of hospitality, as the Catholic Worker refers to its shelters, or alert others to places homeless can go and be taken in. Some women work for the animals through animal shelters, antivivisection movements, and organizations to save various species. Still others live in the city as a dwelling place by being friends of the planet Earth and working to end pollution and the rape of our environment and to end the threat and possibility of nuclear disasters.

Having a pattern, routine, and the healing power of daily rhythms is important. Without patterns and rhythms I was scattered, diffused, and uncentered; with them, I have a base, a home base. Home, as a Dwelling Place, is the place I became centered through the actions of rituals. Once the mask was taken off, Home as a Dwelling Place revealed itself in its deepest dimension: I am Home, I have always been at Home, and it is at the center of my being that Mystery dwells. I am Desert, I am Garden, I am City, and I am Home. The first companion with whom I dwell is myself.

The second stage of companions with whom I dwell is that entire universe of things — living and non-living elements in the universe that enable me to dwell as a physical, spiritual being. The third set of companions stands out in my dwelling more than any other: the human beings with whom I share life, death, and all that comes between. Finally, there is one last companion in dwelling. I dwell in the company of the Holy One. Dwelling with God makes dwelling with anything or anyone else possible.

A victim may only reach out for help once. If a child says I’m scared, believe them. Always stand with the children; not believing in them creates more doubt and trust issues in people and life. I am speaking from experience.

P

5) Nourishing is needed for all parts of everyday life. It needs a regular program of health maintenance, exercise, and calisthenics, just as my body does. It became proficient in the discipline of contemplation, for I was willing to live in the midst of paradox. For I only know the Mystery by letting go