Process to progress

Allowing thoughts to come and go, being Mindful.

Mindfulness approaches focus on thoughts, I understood that when I began to look more closely at Mindfulness as a practice, it was a powerful personal self resource.

I watched my painful past travel through brain structures in my mind, feel physical pain in my body and see those thought patterns and life events come and go. Trying to follow the ongoing narrative in my body that I can do this - I can do this painful process of looking at my past with the least amount of unnecessary medical intervention as possible. Because my belief of what happened to me - didn’t define me -that has always been important.

Emotional pain hurts. For me it felt like a never ending bruise and I wondered how I would find a sense of comfort within myself that I knew I needed/deserved.

Coming forward to talk about my experience of having a foster child in my family home growing up and how his sexualised behaviours harmed me has been on my mind for decades. I wondered what to do with this. memory, this pain. I was protective of myself and didn’t want my coming forward to cause me any more harm.

Reasons I found this difficult were:

I had no supporting people to validate or give evidence of my experience.

Who would believe me.

I was unsure on ages and one particular incident.

Progressing through the different emotions and memories that reliving the cumulative stress experienced was an ongoing painful whole body response.

There are laws and definitions and charges and I didn’t know where I fitted in the big picture of my experience.

But I knew that I needed to be heard. With much persistence I recently found my way to sitting in front of a detective who was clear what he thought would happen with my statement (my pain) - nothing - due to the historical nature, the uncertainty of ages and the law surrounding this.

I didn’t care - this was my life, my history, my future and my recovery process. I’d been ignored as a child, I was wanting to not ignore myself and how I felt as an adult any longer.

So I continued with the process, hearing others thoughts on the outcome, but still continuing - this was my pain to heal. A referral was made after I spoke with the Detective to Victim Services ie Survival Services, and I was contacted by someone who referred me on to a lawyer. I talked to the lawyer who agreed nothing could be done in relation to this historical pain which had changed the safety and security of how I had grown up.

But what that conversation did do was open my ears to naming what had occurred - to hear the lawyer say “There is not much done about the impact on the biological children of foster carers who have foster children with sexualised behaviours”

Somebody on the other end of the phone, in another state, acknowledged exactly what happened.

That’s important to me, I processed and progressed some more…

DANCING EYES

Reflection

Seeking familiarity

Aware of hollow pain

Far away pools of nothingness return my gaze

Where did they go?

My dancing eyes

Reassuring me of goodness in life during times of uncertainty

Stabbing feelings in my heart and head

Constricting breath

Distress over their absence

My dancing eyes

Where are they?

Recovery, discovery, healing

I see my dancing eyes

I see me

NOTHING ENDS

Nothing ends

It changes shape

Moves it’s way around into a different space

Energy

Reach me

Teach me

Shapes and spaces

Beautiful places

I wish you peaceful spaces and places

Sue :-)