Holding on to Hope: A Look into a Child's Journal of Survival

By Wendy O’Neil

About the Book
Holding on to Hope recounts Wendy O’Neil’s experiences of child abuse at the hands of her father, brother, and other people in her life. Through perseverance and faith in God, O’Neil learned how to survive from childhood into adulthood, giving grace to God for helping her to survive.
The memories within will help young people experiencing times of struggle know that they can survive, as long as they never give up and take their power back. A unique perspective on survival, Holding on to Hope encourages survivors of child abuse to keep the faith that there are better times ahead.

About the Author
Wendy O’Neil works with people one-on-one who are victims, or people that are family members of survivors. As a survivalist of primitive living, O’Neil loves to teach people how to live off the grid. She loves to garden, and loves being in the mountains outdoors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886047486

Book preview

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You may find that what you are about to read maybe familiar to your life or someone you can relate to. You may know, or have met, someone like me!

  My hopes would be that in the writing of this book, you the reader, hopefully, this book will help you understand yourself or someone else like you, and yes, like myself as well! I pray that you may come to understand that you are not alone in this! That there are other’s that have been through very similar life events as you and me. Be it men, women, or children!

 Forward

To the explanation, and or premise of my book! My journal is a road map of my memories, torrent of my life’s journey….

  First and foremost, I need you the reader to understand that without God, I would not be here today. HE alone Saved My Life. Without Him, I would not be here this day to tell you my story!

  Some people, not all, but some, would like to hold what we had survived against us. Trying to make us feel as if it is our fault. Or what is worse, some use our emotional or physical pain, our past, against us in one form or another such as. Sexually, emotionally, or a mental or physical control. Please research this. You may learn a lot about yourself that you may have never known!

Take your life, your power, back!

Do not let them take what is yours, and that is you, and who you are!

Learn how to survive!

Learn to live!

Your journey may not be completely without pain and heartbreak; you may always have night terrors and flashbacks but at least you. YOU choose to survive! Many people fail themselves in their life choices!                    

Please do not become a statistic! Break that chain that binds you! Become a survivor, be that one person that helps others how are like yourself, like me! Introduction:

VIEW OF A NIGHT TERROR….

   Your day starts out just like any other day. Nothing different, no flash backs, triggers and no fighting or arguments with anyone! Your husband and you sit back after dinner to watch a movie. I don’t remember what the movie was about, it could have been the trigger with-out my even knowing what has happened deep inside of my mind.

I fell asleep with-out a problem, I think I even took a Tylenol PM that night as I usually did each night. I am a restless sleeper, I have insomnia. Go figure!

As I fell asleep the dream, more like night terror kicked in.

This is how it all started;

After my eye’s drop off I find that I am in a car ridding down a forested road, I am sitting between two men, young men just a little older then myself. We seem to be laughing having a great time. Joking around. It is dark outside, so dark that I can not see anything that is outside of the vehicle, the motor is revving up as the driver is stepping on the gas peddle. But the car is not moving any faster. All of the sudden I can see a very faint light out into the distance that we are traveling towards. What seemed out of reach, then in an instant the lit up house was right in front of us. The next thing I know we were standing next to a window peering inside. I look to the men, boy’s standing next to me. Wondering to myself what am I doing here? Something was not right. All of the sudden a fear set in. A fear that I new all to well.

We are watching 3 men playing musical instruments. 1 on the drums, another on the guitar and the last on the base. You can see them playing but you can not hear any music!

In a flash of an instant I was no longer standing at the window peering in anymore but inside laying on the floor struggling for my life, one of the men was rapping me while the other's held me down. I looked out the window over my left shoulder hopping that the boy’s that were standing outside with me would, could help me. They were no longer in sight. But there where 2 other people that took their place, my mom and dad. They watched the entire time. Not in fear, not happy, not sad. Just amused. More like they were being entertained as if they were watching a really good movie. As I took my eye’s off of the window I saw them. The men rapping me. One by one. Danny, Jerry and last but not least my dad.

When I was woken up by my husband he was pissed off at me because, as he put it, I was trying to crawl up under him like he was a table or something as I was screaming. Ya, we are divorced. Like every other man before him. It’s like I said, if you find a man that will stick with you and not run hang on to him, there will not be another.

Introduction

I am no writer. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But nevertheless, I have a true story to tell you. All of the events that you will read about are completely real; the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

  As you read this book, you may begin to wonder how mothers and fathers can get away with crimes, crimes against their own children! Believe me, it happens, I know. I lived in my own hell brought to me by my own biological father and brother. I have been told that my mother, she had a roll in all of this. She too, lent a hand to my suffering. That’s hard for me to believe. I will leave that up to you to decide, whether she did or did not!

  There are children living in abusive situations that people cannot, could not, even imagine. Children are being emotionally and physically traumatized for life. So much so that their trauma reaches to the depths of hell and beyond in most, if not all, of these cases!

  In this world, we live in today, we see children coming up missing each and every day, and yet there are people out there that will willingly turn their heads and looking the other way. Not wanting to get involved. Some people will and have made the statement that it is not their problem, or some will say. What if I (referring to the bystander) am wrong? It will make (me) look bad.

Please, get involved. You can possibly save a child!

I was a victim.

I am a survivor.

As a child, in a silent whisper I cried out for help. I was simply too afraid to speak out, I felt completely, all alone! All the signs where there! All of them! Blood in my panties. Bruising in odd places on my body. My older brother on top of me in the night. When my mom asked what was going, on my dad simply responded with, Let them alone, kids will be kids. They are just exploring.                                  

  But to my dismay, it would have seemed that not one person could hear or even silently see my cries for help!

  My own mother turned away from me. Why?

  The one person I should have been able to turn to! To trust!

  By the time anyone would hear what I had to say, it was too late!

 Today, this day. As far as I know, these men are still out there. They may still be harming other children or young ladies, even boys. I have tried to find them. To stop them.

  In 2005, I had gone so far as to go to Cape Mears where it all had taken place many years ago. I had loaded my 38 revolver and placed it under the driver’s seat beneath me. As you may have surmised, I was looking for the men that had harmed me as a child. A friend came with me, his name was Bobby, who thought at that time I was completely nuts, and as it seemed to him, losing my mind! Weeks before this, I had been having night terrors, really bad ones! I wanted to stop the torment that was happening to me! But there was nothing I could do! I had given their names and the information that I had to the proper authorities in the 1980’s. But it was like my words had fallen on deaf ears. So, it seemed.

What happens behind closed doors?

Some: mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and other family members, and friends of the family abuse children to the extent of child molestation, slavery, prostitution, rape, torture, and yes, even as far as murder.

Some of us live, and some of us die.

For those of us that do survive, at times, envy the ones that have passed away.

Why, you may ask.

Because we live with the torment, or nightmares, otherwise known as night terrors, flashbacks, and sensory triggers like; sent, touch, or a visual, the triggers go on. There are so many triggers!

This is known as PTSD. These things can become relentless, wreaking havoc on our lives!

Some men and women come home from fighting wars in foreign countries; many of them suffer from PTSD.

Some people like myself, we fight our battles right here at home. We also suffer from PTSD. I mention this because there have been people that have told me that PTSD, not possible. You did not fight in any war.

Like my daughter once had stated to me not long ago, you are not a victim, stop saying you have PTSD.

To be dismissed by your own child, is as best as I can put it, earth shattering.

 BUT, my mom once told me after I got the courage and I finally spoke out about my dad and brother and revealed what they had done to me as a child, my mom, promised me she would get even with me through my own children.

 Not long ago, it was told to me that my mom was the very instrument that turned my baby girl and my son against me through whisperings in their ears with lies.

  My mom went so far as to introduce my twenty-year-old son to the very man who raped me; this rape that brought about the pregnancy and birth of my son.

  That man was my brother and dad’s friend. I was delivered to this man in the still of night for the first time in Garibaldi, Oregon. I was only twelve years old on the FIRST RAPE by this man. My son was led to believe that this man was a good man, and all this rapist wanted was to know his son and that I made up stories of rape to keep them apart.

  Yes, I was a victim. I am now a survivor. Let us be clear on that. But I cannot escape the lingering torment in the night. I fought my battles, my war. Right here at home in America.                                      

  So, I beg of you, open your eyes, and see the signs that are before you, hear our children’s cries for help!

  Recognize the signs of what our children are trying to tell you. Do not ignore them.

  Many of us were too afraid to come forward when we were children. Now that we are older, we need to look at the people that committed these crimes against us. More than likely, they are still out there!

 In the year of 1623, I believe, a law was set in place called statute of limitation. In 2010, it had been revised but did not go retro. The change only applied to future cases. More consideration should have been taken for the victims of today and yesteryear.      

These crimes, they do not fade in to the dark, they linger into the light.

I feel it protects the people that committed these crimes against all of us.

This law is called Statute of Limitation!

This Statute, literally, in most cases imprisons the victim and sets loose the guilty, allowing the criminal free rain over all of us.

Chapter 1

Now, I am going to reveal for the first time out load my story and what I had survived.

I want to begin with what took place not so long ago in the year 2012, to show you that these people, they are still out there. They remember us, you and I!

They come to us in