writing prompts – Ritual Abuse

I belong to a support group for RA/MC survivors that, once a month, spends part of our meeting writing. We are given a word or a phrase as a prompt and then we write as fast as we can for ten minutes. When the time is up, we share what we wrote.

Past prompts have been shame, inside my mind, and out the window. This week it was healing.

I’d like to share what I wrote because I find this format encourages a richness of content and emotion that a neat little blog entry doesn’t always offer.

healing is a rainbow
     One color is black
     One is red
     One is clear for tears

healing is a mystery
how does it happen?
What sets it off?

healing is not a good simile
you heal from a broken bone
you heal from a disappointment

but how can you possibly heal from
          ritual abuse
          being sold
          being a killer

these things are lifelong
if you are lucky they didn’t
physically happen all your life

but the scars and brokenness
          in your body
          in your mind
          in your heart
Go on and on and on forever

I say “learn to live with my past
in a different way”

that is –
I know some things that happened
to me – not all, but some

I know and say, yes that is so
that is true that is awful

I can see the path from what
happened to what is – sometimes
not all the time but sometimes

I can be with people, be at ease
     with people
with people like me – not always,
     but a lot
with others, less so, but still
     Sometimes, not always
          even with strangers
          even with men

thinking of what I have written
healing is sometimes not always
but sometimes

It’s the rough path from the then to the now and on to – what?

It’s just a word, a bridge to
     others I use the word because
     others do – not always, but
     sometimes

It’s an on and off thing
     sometimes I am walking on
     this path, not always but sometimes
     Sometimes not

It seems like a path of time

~~~~~~~~~~

The possibility, the beginning of several poems are hidden here. Will they emerge into full fledged poems? I don’t know. I don’t write poems. They use me to get written and I have no control over when they come. I can only wait and see.

What impresses me most about what I wrote is that whatever mysterious thing that happens is not under my conscious control. If it were, I would be working on it all the time, and I would see the results all the time. It would be a linear process.

But things go on below the surface that I am not aware of and then, when it is time, they rise up into my consciousness, like a poem.

One day in the supermarket, I notice that I am not looking at the floor. I am looking at total strangers and smiling! I’m telling them I like their hair or asking what their tattoo means to them. I know I am enjoying myself, and I think they are, too, because they look like they are. I didn’t decide I would initiate these conversations, I didn’t add this task to my marketing list. I just did it.

Like I didn’t plan to write a poem or see it coming. I just sat down and wrote it.

When I first remembered, I didn’t set any goals. I told myself that my only job was not to kill myself. That was hard enough; I was pretty sure anything else would have been impossible. So day after night after day after night I didn’t kill myself. I just let the flashbacks wash over me.

And then one day I noticed I no longer believed the cats could read my mind or that “they” could control me through the radio if it was plugged in but silent. I saw those beliefs as flashbacks of things I had believed as a little kid because grown ups had told me so. Now I was out of flashback. When the thoughts came back, I was both in and not in flashback; I thought those things and was scared but I knew I was in flashback. That was a huge change!

And I hadn’t done anything on purpose except not kill myself.

~~~~~~~~~~

upcoming holidays

September

9/5 – 9/7 Feast of the Beast/Marriage of the Beast
9/7 Labor Day (United States)
9/20 Full moon
9/22 Fall Equinox
9/29 Michaelmas/Feast of Archangel Michael and all Angels

October

10/11 (?) Columbus Day
10/13 Backward Halloween
10/20 Full Moon
10/31 Halloween/start of Celtic New Year/start of the dark half of the year

November
11/1 All Saints’ Day
11/2 All Souls’ Day
11/4 Satanic Revels
11/11 (?) Veterans’ Day
11/18-19 Partial Lunar Eclipse
11/19 Full Moon
11/25 Thanksgiving Day (United States)
11/28 First Sunday of Advent
11/30 St Andrew’s Day

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups

9/1 Start of WW2
9/7 Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year, Day of Judgement)
9/16 Yom Kippur (Jewish Day of Atonement)
9/21 – 9/27 Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles, Jewish harvest festival
10/4 Hitler’s alternate half-birthday (Note: Hitler was born on Easter, so Nazis celebrate his actual half-birthday, 10/20, and his alternate half-birthdate six months after Easter, which falls on 4/4 this year.)
10/16 Death of Rosenburg
10/19 Death of Goering
10/20 Hitler’s half-birthday
11/9 Kristallnacht
11/29 -12/16 Chanukah/Hanukkah (Jewish Festival of Lights)

(NOTE: Not all groups meet on Jewish holidays. Some groups also mark Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, Halloween, the solstices, and the equinoxes.)

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You can find more information on the following holidays at:

Tag: writing prompts

Healing from Ritual Abuse

upcoming holidays

upcoming holidays

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