Why A Blog?

Welcome!  This is a beginning for me.  I decided numerous times to write a book, but after a few pages, chapters, and much use of the delete key on my laptop, I decided that a book was just too daunting to pursue.  I decided that perhaps a website and blog might be a better avenue/platform to share with an audience.  So, here I am, now creating my first blog post on April 1, 2024. 

The back story is that I experienced a lot of things in life which involved abuse and neglect.  I know a lot of baby boomers and non-boomers alike who have also battled through childhood abuse, and I have heartfelt sorrow that anyone of any age should have to deal with and carry the burdens of trauma.  I'm 65 years old now, and my therapist always said that "writing is good for the soul".  I know it is a way to deal with my own trauma and continuing journey toward healing.  I also thought that maybe someone out there might find solace by reading my story.  If I can help make someone's day a little brighter, or if someone can gain a sense of hope from my experiences, then I know my own struggles, were not in vain.  I am no authority of fixing anything in anyone elses life, but I invite you along in my healing journey.  Perhaps, we can learn together.

And that will sum up my first entry into this new world of blogging for today.

April 2024 NOW:

I'm 65 years old, and I've seen a lot, been through a lot, and honestly know a lot.  A lot about what's right and what is wrong.  I have a strong moral compass that guides me mostly with the thoughts of "I don't ever want what happened to me to happen to anyone else.  People deserve the best, and children deserve even more.  When you grow up as a child who had a stable home, but had an unstable mother, you feel that so much. 

I have a daughter, and I swore when she was born that she would not have to deal with all the awful things that I had to deal with growing up.  I've gone thru therapy, read books, talked with other abuse survivors, and done a lot of soul searching. Oh yes, and I've prayed a ton over what happened, and how I never want that to happen to my own child.  Will it?  Most likely not, but I have heard my departed mothers old verbiage come out of my own mouth a few times and it does not make me happy.  In fact, it breaks my heart.  But, some of this is programmed into me.  That is not an excuse.  That's just science and genetics, and I always try to apologize as soon as I realize what I've said because words can be almost as painful as physical abuse.

People often talk about the physical abuse, but what is done to the body most often will recover, but words will always stick around in the back of your brain just waiting to one day be triggered into an outward response.  Sometimes the words will come during a particularly difficult experience, and other times they will come in the middle of the night, triggered by dreams, and accompanied by tears, profuse sweat from the nightmare, and invoking a panic/anxiety attack right there in the same bed where I recently was sleeping peacefully.  They say to forgive and forget.  But, if you talk to anyone who has experienced abuse, you know that there are some things that you just cannot forgive, and you most certainly won't ever forget.  

THEN:

"You were supposed to be David Paul!"  The little girl heard that her entire childhood.  She also heard other things that left her believing that she had disappointed her mother greatly by not being this David Paul she spoke of.  But, it wasn't the little girls fault.  The mother (I will refer to her as the Queen from here forward because she really was much more like a royal authority figure than a mother in most respects) literally believed and proclaimed that the hospital had given she and my father the wrong baby.  My father begged of the Queen that they take the little baby girl home.  And that was the start of it all.  Was I the wrong baby?  No one but the Queen believed that.  I looked so much like my father that everyone knew I was their child. However, I would live decades being ostracized for the fact that I was not the boy she was promised.  I was not David Paul.

NOW-  People Change!