Tethered Hope: A Journey of Blessed Broken Roads and Paths toward Redemption

By Sophie Ann Pierpoint

God sees the mess inside us; he can work that mess when we ask him to. Have you experienced something in life that causes you to spiral emotionally and mentally in different directions? A personal tragedy that changed your life forever? Then one day, something comes along and alters the ugly feelings you harbored for years. You found something""a temporary relief; a long-awaited and most welcomed feeling. As mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives, we have personal battles. Some of us are born women stars with the natural ability to succeed in most aspects of life. We were safely shielded from the evil beatings of this world. For many of us, it is a constant revolving battle in our minds and in our hearts. In an instant, a dark experience alters who we are as individuals. The experience affects who we become. We continually fall short with our womanly duties and life endeavors. We crawl through life, yearning each day for a light to shine through the cracks of our soul. Many have struggled from the horrid experience of abuse; many will turn to some form of substance in search of the ability to experience a feeling other than their own. For many, it's a lifetime of fighting, a lifetime of seeking, and a lifetime of hurt. Come with me. Let me share with you my true personal experiences, trials, and tragedies. Let me take you on a journey of hope, faith, and grace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098000967

Book preview

The Introduction

INTRODUCTION

The Journey

Have you ever felt an unending nudge in your heart that last for days, months, and well into years? Have you ever felt a deep call in your soul that will not go away? For many years I shrugged the idea into the abyss, but it never seems to permanently stay there. It would come back even stronger each time. In my efforts to calm the tug in my heart, I decided to start drafting, praying, and listening. When I start writing I feel a burning sensation deep in my heart. It’s a calm feel with a strong sense of peace flowing through me. I’ve tittered with God for years about what I strongly believe he is calling me to do. I am no one special, I am not a known author, I have no idea how to write a book or what to write about. Besides, if I was to write, the only thing I am sure of is my life. Who wants to read about my life? It’s just an ordinary life I tell God.

As I proceeded to write, a greater understanding was becoming clearer. My life experiences can help others through hope and healing. As a child I was sexually abused and as a result; I always felt there was something wrong with me. I felt broken, lost, and terribly insecure. I never knew that someday, something, could temporarily relieve me of such emotional and mental turmoil. The use of illicit drugs became a part of my life and with it, the beginning of more heartaches and pain was promised to come. The ability to see clearly and make right choices for my life and my future was somewhat elusive to a point. The lifelong battle with low self-esteem and insecurities kept me going in circles. I did not like myself much, I struggled with life trying to find justice for what had happened to me and as if someone had to pay for my pain. In the midst and depth of my addiction a new relationship was forming. I knew and was taught of a God at an early age but in a religious way. One day I was introduced to a more personal God and today I call him my God. He knows my name. He knows me intimately and he loves me no matter what I do. He is also my daddy and I know him based on our relationship. I know when he is there, when he was there, I know when I call on him, he would answer. I know how he saved me like a true loving father would do for his precious daughter. Many prayers and waiting to hear from God were taking place as I was writing. He has revealed bits and pieces of his plan.

My soul desire is to write with total honesty and share my story to all that have been impacted by sexual, drug, domestic and other abuses. I have made choices in life that would forever impact my destiny. There are many things in life as a woman that we want to keep as our soul secret and many regrets to be had. I want nothing but to touch your life or the life of someone you love. Life has been rough, tough, and with it came the lessons that must be learned and shared. From the darkest moments of my life to the great ones, the dreams and hopes that kept me going is what I want to share with you my dear readers. God has a plan for our lives, a plan for prosperity and not of harm, a plan filled with hope and a future.

You may be a sister, a mother, a friend, a daughter or known an associate that has gone through some of the experiences as I have, if not you. You are welcome to take something from this life of mine and help yourself or someone with it. With that said, this book has found its divine purpose and God’s plan would be fulfilled. I pray for you my dear readers that there will be healing from your life’s struggles as well as mine. From the very first chapter to the last; you will see how my life led to drug addiction, my struggles caused by bad decisions, and how hard relationships were for me. Through it all, I learned of hope, I became a friend of hope, and it is that same hope that empowered me to dream for a better life. Hope showed me that I am the child of a living God and therefore, I was free to live and pursue a hope filled life. This was the hope that kept me out of prison, the hope that kept me out of an institution, the hope the kept me alive. It is, tethered hope.

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

The Little Island Girl

Then

If you asked me today if I was a happy little girl, I would probably pause and think about it for a moment. Yes, I have to say there were beautiful memories as a four-year-old little girl living on a beautiful island where child activities were abundant at no cost. Yes, at that age, I believed I was the happiest little girl. I walked and played in the woods and enjoyed tree climbing, hanging out at the beach and swimming every chance I get. I would always pretend to be the mermaid I hear so much about. During low tides, I would walk the reef, admire, and play with many species of shells and fish. Then I would sit in the sand, pick puka shells, and make necklaces and bracelets. I was as innocent as any little girl. Yet lurking in the midst was a young man who had intentions of harming me. During the happiest, most beautiful and innocent time of my life, I was about to experience something unimaginable that would happen to me: sexual abuse. It is still not easy for me to talk about this experience, and to this day, I was able to share this experience with my drug and alcohol counselor once and discussed it twice. On the weekends with as many as nine or more people in one house, many kids, mostly teens, slept together in the living room of my stepgrandparent’s home. I will be in a deep sleep, and I will be awoken to a feel of a hand touching me in a sexual way. He was touching me in a way that I knew deep in my heart was very wrong. Oh, as a child, it was the most awful and devastating moment of my life: I laid there frozen in time. I was so afraid, deathly afraid. I lay there silently and, in the core of my heart and soul, cried out for my mother. Where is my momma, why is she not here? Why is she not with me, why is this happening? I thought had she been there with me, this would not have happened.

Consequently, as I got older, I’ve come to appreciate the fact there was no penetration involved, not that the abuse would seem smaller, but it would have done a much larger damage to my soul and my life. I was violated I felt I may have done something wrong. I knew it was so bad. Even as a four-year-old, I truly understood that. I could not find myself to share the horrible ordeal with my own mother. I knew deep in my heart, I would hold her responsible for the rest of my life, although not realized until years later. That night changed me. It altered my life forever. It made me carry an awful feeling in my soul. It made me believe that I had done something wrong, and I must have done something to allow the abuse to happen. I can still remember that very night, it is a night I visit mentally and unintentionally every so often. As you read on, you will understand how this sexual abuse impacted who I am and how some people whom have experienced sexual abuse are never the same. Is there recovery from sexual abuse? I do believe that many women do recover by learning to forgive and continuously finding ways to live past the abuse. Speaking and writing from this experience, I do not think that images and memories of sexual abuse can ever be totally erased from one’s memory.

In dealing with the sexual abuse, I was exposed to alcoholism and physical and verbal abuse daily through my mother’s first marriage. Here I was dealing with what had just happened to me, and in addition, I was struggling to understand why people are hurting people just as my mother’s husband did and how he treated her so horribly almost daily. I do believe that through it all, I found ways to continuously tuck the experience deep down in my heart. I will not speak of it or revisit the experience until many years later, until one day when I found myself sitting in a drug and alcohol treatment center. The one true thing I took away from this experience is some people are sick and some men have evil intentions driven by sexual desires. Today, my only regret is that I never confronted the man who sexually abused me, that I never really got the healing I so deserved because I knew deep in my heart, confronting him would bring some recovery and healing. It is imperative to truly understand how important it is to face the individual to allow the victim the opportunity to voice the impact and attempt to heal in some form. So many questions continue to linger in my mind. He was a young teenage boy at the time; does that give him an excuse to do what he did? Did he know what he was doing? Does he not know what he has done changed the course of my life forever, most importantly, change the beautiful and smart person I was purposed for? I later learned that had I faced him, I would have been able to let go of some of the pain.

Many years later, we traveled back to the island for a funeral. I was a lot older then when I first laid my eyes on him again. Yet I still did not confront him. Thinking it was a funeral, he had just lost his brother, I can put me aside and maintain myself. Yet again, I felt that I was a coward. I had an opportunity, I did not take it. And yet I just added to the list of my regrets in life. I was never free to be a child again after the experience. I moved on living a life, yet deep down, something was gone. I knew I was different and felt I was not worthy of anything, and yet I lived and breathed learning to make the best of all things. Looking back at my life shortly after the abuse, I physically moved on and tried to live as normal a life as possible, but mentally and emotionally, I was in a state of stagnant.

In addition to that awful blow of sexual abuse, once again, I dealt with another episode of just how ill minded some men are. A few years later, when I was eight years old, I went to see a movie by myself. I was so excited and felt so free. Here I was sitting in a theater minding my business when an older gentleman walked in the aisle where I was sitting and sat about a seat beside me. He was exposing himself to me. He continually asked me to hold his penis. He had on him a strong smell of cologne, and to this day, I so relate this evening with a certain cologne smell. I would remember that evening as if it was yesterday, then a nauseating sick feeling would craw up inside me. This incident again haunted me for years to come. To this day, I am not fond of certain men’s cologne, specifically the ones that were available back in the 1970s.

As a child, I had a hard life. I lived with different people—family, friends, grandmother, aunts, and uncles. I must say that I am grateful for the many lessons I learned growing up. I learned to live with resources of the land, from fishing to picking peppers and finding anything and everything to make money from. I labored for hours, yet I remember there were no toys to be bought or ice cream to be had after long hours of gathering. There was no one in my life at the time that had the ability to recognize that I had been abused. Could it be possible had someone been there for me, I would have come out of this painful secret and gained some healing? Could it be possible that if the abuse had been addressed, my journey through this life would have taken a different path? Did I hide my pain so deep that it was unrecognizable? Yet I knew what I knew then, just me and no one else. I did not like myself most of the time. Whatever I did or said, I truly felt inside that I was unworthy. There was something inside me that did not quite feel right, and no matter what I did or did not do, the ugly me that I felt was there and was unshakable. I had lost something, yet I never asked anyone to help me find it. What was it I was looking for anyway?

When I was nine years old, I had been in an accident that left my right and left leg badly scarred for life. A couple of guys got their truck stuck in the sand, us kids decided we could all help these servicemen get out of the sand. So one of them had placed a piece of tin under the tire, and we were behind the truck pushing forward. As I looked at this tire rotating really fast, I quickly saw in my mind what was about to happen. By the time I realized the danger I was in, it was too late. This experience had just dealt me another massive blow to my already very low self-esteem and, therefore, cementing my insecurities. As I got older, well, before my teens, I learned to hate myself and body even more and in to a new level of I am ugly. I had been sexually abused, and now I am scarred for life, yet it did not really sink in as much until I got a little bit older. I had many influences in my life as a kid. Many times, I would be emotionally hurt about something, and I would start to cry. And yet I would be scolded for crying and, therefore, demanded to stop crying. That taught me at a very young age that crying was not acceptable, and so I learned even more to bottle things up. I had an awesome grandmother and aunt whom had made both negative and positive impact in my life as a child. I would be forever grateful for all they had done to share with me, what love they knew.

Now

Looking back, I want to say, things happen that could surely be prevented. Every child is vulnerable to sexual abuse or any other form of abuse at anytime, anywhere. Take time to look out for your child’s well-being. Know where they are always and who surrounds them. Sexual predators are everywhere and in different suits and most likely someone you know. Keep an eye out, be observant, but most of all, talk, hug, and bond with your child as much as you can while cementing the love that will strengthen their soul through good and bad times in their life. I believe if a special