My Therapy Journal: A Journey of Healing

By Micah Mason

It all started when an innocent little Brownie walked to a neighbor’s house to sell Girl Scout calendars. It seemed like an overdone, slobbery kiss as Micah Mason left, but at age seven, she wasn’t really sure. That moment instigated four years of hiding or being caught and molested, and a chronic state of hypervigilance. As the events led Micah into therapy, a counselor suggested she journal as homework.

In a collection of raw, unfiltered poems penned in a therapy journal over several decades, Micah invites others to witness her heartbreaking journey through childhood trauma and therapy into adulthood as she faced life-altering abuse, witnessed its affects on her life, and eventually learned healthy coping skills and self-awareness. Her poems illustrate the ups and downs of life while healing, trust issues with those who failed her, and the power of her faith as it carried her through the most challenging of times.

My Therapy Journal shares a moving compilation of poems that convey the myriad of emotions that accompanied one woman’s journey through childhood trauma, broken trust issues, and eventual healing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Sep 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480866119

Micah Mason

Micah Mason has been a registered nurse for forty-three years and earned a PhD in natural medicine. She enjoys crafting, organic gardening, and learning about essential oils. She is a mother, a lifelong teacher, and healer who currently resides in Elyria, Ohio.

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Copyright © 2018 Micah Mason.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6612-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6611-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018909641

Archway Publishing rev. date: 8/31/2018

Contents

Introduction

Touch

Pain Makes Me Know I’m Alive

How Barren

To My Sons

Bart’s a Brat

I Wonder

Ahhh!

Emotional Paths

Hope for Joy

The Greatest Lesson

A Million Tears

Self-Inflicted Isolation

The One Who Shared the Secret

My Present Guilt

To Travis, My Love

Subconscious Expressions

To Ezra

In Contradiction of His Love

Unfinished Business

Bared by the Tales

My Sister’s True Depth

Sickness on Sickness

Daddy Says

On that Lane

My Poor Mother’s Frustration

Through a Million Tears

A Million to One

Praise to the Father

With the Devil Inside

God Seeing All

Remember When

Love You

A Sandcastle Be

To Donna

Love and Desire

Grandma, Dear

A Paradox

Darkness

In the Still of the Night

Love, Travis

Cleansed

A Touch of Life and Health

He Touched Me

Of Flying Snakes

Certain Noises, Smells, and Sights

Amnesia

Wet Again

The Tunnel

Sunbeams

Babe at Breast

A Special Moment with a Doctor and Wife

Time to Leave

What the Nurses Saw

The Hat

She’s Got Legs

Lawn Chair

I Hate Hot Dogs

Toasted Marshmallows

With His Wife in the Next Room

Diving Deep

I Know

I Could Be

He Doesn’t Understand

I Like School

Giving Up Is Hard

I Want God in My Heart

Stand Up for Your Rights

Cigars

Someone Knew

She Knew Too

How Did My Sister Feel?

A Family Reunion

Make Every Day Special

Genetics and God’s Gifts

Glass Trap

Like a Teenager

Born of Shame

I Hate Snakes

When Losing Control

Brock

Shame, Shame on You

Of Rocks and Islands

Hate

Cousin to Cousin

Not Worthy

January 1986

Winter Wind

Torn in Pieces

Alice of the Looking Glass

Alone with Loneliness

Ghosts

Free!

For Betsy

Despair

Emotional Death

Nightmare Cage

To Justin

Trust

Happiness’ Horizon

To Margaret

Here’s to You, Dion!

Trapped

Tortured Life

Tribute to Self-Help Books

Vampire’s Victim

Directions

Cinder City

Three Bullets in the Floor

Drought of ’93

I Am a Person

Anger

I Believe in Me

Gore Orphanage

Some Fun Limericks

The Flower Man

Color Comes to My World

Blue Christmas Wrap

Lord of Light

Reason for the Season?

Shut Down

Relentless Love

The Bride of Frankenstein

Symphony of Sympathy

Ashley’s Poem

Joy’s Sacrifice

Headaches without End

Missing Terri

The Fortress

Longings

Found Poem from an Old Textbook

Hope Floats

Ocher Stain

To Drown or not to Drown

Hope

Away with Sadness

Night Vigil for Mom

The Weight of My Pearls

Dad

Dad’s Song of Low Self-Esteem

To Dad

Crazy Karina

The Past

The Land of Trumpmania

Tears for My Mother

To Beatrice

Goodbye to Donata

Epilogue

Hymn Resource List

Suggested Bibliography

The quilt on the cover of this book was made by a nine-year-old victim of molestation. She worked on the quilt indoors to avoid the neighbor outside.

This book is dedicated to my poetry pals. Both gave me unconditional love and pointed out my strengths. And to all the children who were molested or raped and didn’t get to voice their pain, anger, and depression. I hope these poems give you a voice.

And thanks to my friend for his technical support to fill in my gaps of knowledge about the computer.

Introduction

As I awakened from years of repression, depression, and denial, I decided I needed counseling for the years of molestation I had suffered as a child. It started with a seven-year-old Brownie going to a neighbor’s house to get an order for Girl Scout calendars. It seemed like an overdone, slobbery kiss as I left, but at seven, you’re really not sure. That was the beginning of four years of hiding or being caught and molested. This evading and avoiding contact led to much stress and a state of chronic hypervigilance from age seven to eleven. As I discussed these things with my counselor, he suggested I start journaling as homework. The journaling began as prose-like diary entries but quickly changed to poetry after starting an American literature class.

These poems are raw, rough, and straight from my mind, heart, and soul. Though not elegant in the normal literary sense, they are in their truthful expressions of unfiltered emotions. They express the tender, painful wounds of depression to the point of feeling the tears roll down my cheeks. Some can take wings of flight from pure joy, finding healing in the evolution of the journey that is life. We always have the freedom to choose how we respond to life events and our feelings. We can allow the tears of depression to drown us, or they can become the saline that cleanses our wounds. When withholding, tears can grow to the steam of anger that leads to hurting others because we are in pain. Tears of sadness can weaken our resolves, so we give up hope and drown ourselves in alcohol or drugs. I chose to eat too much.

In the beginning, my choices were driven by depression, which was not wise due to the binding despair and low self-esteem. But as I moved along the trails of life and different styles of therapy so healing took place, I made better choices toward new steps. I moved from talk therapy to behavior modification and finally eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).

These are the poems of my therapy journal that I started in the mid-eighties and have continued to the present. As you watch