Just Call Me 'Grace'

By Grace Ki Te Aroha

Psalm 139 v 15-16
Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be .

Genesis 50 v 20
you intended to harm me but God intended it for good to accomplish what now is being done, the saving of many lives.

This is the story of how God bought a child through childhood Trauma, sexual abuse,abandonment and mental illness, Into his marvelous light. The process of brokeness to healing can be a long journey. God transforms us over time to become part of the answer there is hope and healing in God I am living proof. There is hope for the hopeless God transforms us into his masterpiece over time for his glory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris NZ
• Release date: Apr 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781664107601

Book preview

JUST CALL ME

‘GRACE’

Grace Ki Te Aroha

Copyright © 2022 by Grace Aroha.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Biblica

Rev. date: 04/13/2022

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 Early Recollections

Chapter 2 ‘Separation’

Chapter 3 Tossed into the Pit

Chapter 4 ‘Living with a predator’

Chapter 5 ‘Horrific Times*

Chapter 6 ‘Changes’

Chapter 7 ‘The Tide Turns’

Chapter 8 ‘Deep Cleaning’

Chapter 9 ‘Lessons Learned’

[All names in this book have been changed for the purposes of confidentiality)

INTRODUCTION

I hope that as I go about this process of telling my story, I will be taking another step closer to fulfilling God’s calling on my life and walking out the ministry He has called me to do. The mind is an amazing thing. My journey through mental health and emotional health issues has been a long one. I can rattle off the physical things that happened to me in childhood, which I’ll do, but what i want to try and communicate more than anything else, is the long-term effects of trauma on a child’s mind and spirit, if they don’t have ‘safe big people’ to walk them through their thinking, after trauma occurs!

God has really opened my eyes in recent years to His graciousness to me in this area. Hence the name Grace. With the different traumas that I’ve been through in my life, it constantly amazes me how the mind works, even subconsciously, to protect itself.

Warning

There are some graphic descriptions of sexual violence in this book so please have discretion when placing this book in other people’s hands. Thank you.

CHAPTER 1

Early Recollections

My parents were married in 1954, Pauline the oldest daughter was born in 55, then the oldest son Peter was born in 56, then Mark came along in 58, then two years later Tom arrived in 1960. Less than a year later, Janice was born in 61. Then, four and a half years later, last but not least, Grace (yours truly) arrived on the 17th of January 1966. My parents had been married for 12 years, and had 5 children before was born,

Dad’s family history was that dad’s father was an alcoholic who was quite violent with his family, so I guess coming from that background the seeds were sown early where alcoholism is concerned. My Dad was a chronic alcoholic as long as I’d known him. I remember my Dad telling me stories of when he was working with the Northland forestry gang back in the 1960s, and all the stupid things they used to get up to while drunk after work.

Years later when I was in the pub scene, Dad introduced me to some of the old locals he used to drink with back then.

My earliest memories were of the house at Bayview road in the bay of islands. As a child of about three, I remember I was with the older three boys digging roads into the dirt, under the house. I remember at one stage Mark getting really angry with me, because I was sitting behind him filling in all the roads after he dug them out. He didn’t want me playing with them anymore, so he said would you like a swing on the clothesline? So we went outside and he told me to put my arms up, and he lifted me up to grab the bar of the clothes line, spun me around a couple of times, then left me hanging over the blackberry bushes, and went back to playing under the house. I remember screaming for ages until someone came and got me down.

Years later when I went back to the Bayview road house, I was doing some washing and I saw the bend in the bar of the clothes line, and the memory came back to me of how the bend got there.

I remember Dad telling me the story of when I walked off the end of the jetty when I was three, at Te Haumi. Dad saw me fall. He said all he could see was my hair floating in the water so he grabbed me by the hair and pulled me out of the water, so I guess God had his eye on me even way back then. I also remember being shut in a drawer one day, when the older brothers and sisters were playing hide and seek, and no one came to get me out for ages. I couldn’t get myself out and no