Heart To Heart: pt 1

       As the years go by and you look back on everything that has happened while raising kids, there are memories that come to mind. I had one of those times happen tonight, thanks to my DD #1. She came to me with a book idea that she wanted to work on, one I suggested about 6 months ago. I was a little surprised by this because it was a topic that I didn't think she was ready to work on. A topic that was close to my heart and hers but one that would be a difficult for her to work threw regarding her past abuse.
        Abuse is a difficult thing for anyone to have to deal with and work threw as an adult let alone as a young adult. At some point in one's life you have to face the abuse and what it did to change your life, good or bad. You need to face that fact that unless it was a stranger abusive situation or a sever physical abuse, there was some good memories. Now I am not saying that the abuse itself is good, just that a good percentage of abuse situations that do have pleasurable memories with that abuser as well as negative memories.
         Before you start pounding on me about what I have just said, look at this example of abuse that I am referring to. A child is being sexually abused by a person in their neighborhood. This person is an outstanding person and is married with child of their own (now grown). This person has opened their yard to children in the neighborhood and shows them how to garden, seems innocent enough, right? The child and this person are always in the view of neighbors, nothing seems out of the ordinary. Until one hot day this neighbor asks the child if they want a cold glass of lemonade.
        No big deal back in the 70's for a friendly neighbor to offer a glass of lemonade. This time though, they ask the child to help bring out the glasses for all the other children that are also there. The child was only inside the house for the amount of time it took to make the lemonade and carry it outside. No harm done, right? What you don't know is that the whole time they were inside, the neighbor was touching the child where only a doctor should be touching.
        Ok now you may say, there should not be much that has to be dealt with in five minutes worth of touching, every now and then. The guilt that laid in that child head for years to come started when they realized what really had happened to them as an teenager. Questions lingered in the foremost of their thinking. "Why did I keep going back there after the first time?" "I liked the attention and even the touching, so it's my own fault!" "I was asking for it." "I like working in the garden, so I have to put up with the touching."
        These and many more would float in and out of the mind to confuse the child to the point that they refused to deal with it and that something was messed up with them. They suppressed the incidences further and further down. Not making it go away but yet push it down far enough that it could be buried for a short period of time by drugs, alcohol and/or sex.
        Why didn't this child just tell someone what was happening? More to come with this story .......To Be Continued, in part 2.....