Into the Light: You Too Can Heal

By Sissy J. Adams

My monsters don’t live under the bed they walk right through my bedroom door in the darkness of night. My monsters wear the masks of trusted family members and the adults in my life. The very people who are supposed to love and protect me are the ones who are hurting me! Someone, please help me!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796073904

Sissy J. Adams

My name is Sissy J Adams I am a wife of 23 years and a mother of three beautiful children. I work with special needs children who don't have a voice of their own. I help them by being their voice and helping them find a voice of their own. I live in Connecticut and am from the west coast. I was raised in various small religion-based towns. My story is about my life growing up in abuse and fear and the mountains I had to climb and the paths I had to walk to overcome the damage the abuse caused to my mind and body. I am 47 years old now and I am on the other side of the darkness in my mind due to the abuse. Through a lot of years of very hard work and the support of my family, I have the light and my voice to tell my story. Even though most of us go through our abuse alone, we do not have to go through the fires of healing alone. Life is meant to be a challenge, for some much more than others. We need theses challenges to grow and what I endured as a child has made me who I am today. Struggles from the past, present and future touch us all every day. The goal is to come through the darkness and into the light. Become the you, you were meant to be. Together we can heal and find the light. Laura Reynolds helped me with my illustrations. She has loved drawing and art ever since she was a little girl. She graduated from Southern CT State University with a Bachelor's degree in Art Education as well as a Master's degree in Special Education. Laura has been an Art teacher at a camp for Special Needs Children for three years. Laura lives in Connecticut with her husband and daughter.

Book preview

Into the

Light

You too can Heal

SISSY J. ADAMS

Copyright © 2019 by Sissy J. Adams.

ISBN:              Hardcover              978-1-7960-7392-8

                        Softcover                978-1-7960-7391-1

                        eBook                     978-1-7960-7390-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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.

Rev. date: 11/23/2019

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1   The Effects of Abuse

Chapter 2   The Abuse

Chapter 3   Diagnosis and Coping Mechanisms

Chapter 4   Triggers

Chapter 5   Healing

Acknowledgements

Introduction

I was born and raised in various small towns in a Utah. Religion was a big part of my life as a child. We belonged to a religion where at the time, women had no power and no voice. Women were to serve their husbands in all ways and spread his seed through procreation. They cooked the meals, cleaned the house, raised the children, and did whatever their husbands wanted whenever they wanted it. We lived and breathed this doctrine. We trusted the elders of the religion to protect us and help us with everything. The elders of this religion were all males, and they thought of women and children in only this way.

So this is where my story begins. My mother had gotten pregnant by my father at the age of fifteen, and my father’s family was very strict in their religion. My father and mother were forced to get married by his family. My elder brother was born when Mom was sixteen. Just a year later, before my brother was even one year old, I was born; Mom was seventeen. My younger brother was born two years later, then finally my little sister when Mom was twenty-one years old. By the time Mom was twenty-five, she had to have a total hysterectomy due to so much damage from abuse, miscarriages, and disease. There had been abuse in her marriage of a sexual nature as well as in her childhood. My mom had gone to the elders of the church to speak of the abuse that was happening in their home behind closed doors. She was blamed for the abuse and told it was because she was a frigid wife. She was put into counseling by an elder of our church because she needed to learn to satisfy her husband. During the counseling, the elder would ask deeply personal sexual questions. For my mom, this was a further violation because she was embarrassed to speak about such things and because she was being blamed for what was happening. The sin was hers alone to bear. She was not doing her job as a wife according to the doctrine. Our religion and our elders did not protect her or her children. They blamed her. She chose to leave the situation and the marriage later by divorcing my father, which is a sin in our religion. She was excommunicated and blamed by this same religion for speaking out and for leaving. She was now a single mom raising four very young children with no support, working just to pay for day care and wondering how she was going to pay rent and put food on the table. This way of life in these various small towns we lived in while growing up helped form an abusive, secretive existence for us all. This atmosphere sets the stage for my story.

We all have stories to tell from our childhoods—good, bad, and indifferent. But the stories we hide from and run from have a way of coming back to haunt us. For me, growing up in abusive situations was just the way it was. At the time, I didn’t know it was wrong, only that I didn’t like it. As a child, I could not understand the ways of the adult world. I didn’t even have the language to express what was going on. I learned to survive in an adult world with the mind and body of a child. So when I was told I was special and what was happening to me was how you show how loved and special someone is, that was all I knew. It hurts. I felt yucky, and I knew I didn’t like it. But I’m loved and special, so it must be okay. God had told my abusers this was so, that I was a gift from God, so I believed it to be true because this was what they told me. After all, it was the doctrine I was raised to believe in.

My monsters didn’t live under my bed. They walked right through my bedroom door in the darkness of night. They wore the masks of trusted family members and adults in my life. The very people