“Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.” – Maya Angelou
About this episode: This is the fourth in a series of episodes that are just the start of where I plan to take this podcast. These initial episodes will give you a backstory on the journey I went through to recover from childhood sexual abuse at the age of twelve. The purpose of this backstory is to help you see how trauma affected my life and art, and to learn some of the things I did to begin healing.
I do not give any graphic details of the events.
Our First Apartment – Humble Beginnings
In the last episode I mentioned that I moved in with my boyfriend after I graduated from high school. What I didn’t explain, is that we were only living together for two weeks before I gave birth to our son. He was born three weeks early, full term, and healthy. But we thought we had more time to figure things out! This abrupt entrance into adulthood felt like getting thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool when we could barely swim.
Life in our first apartment was hectic. My boyfriend was going to school for a two year computer-related degree while I took care of our son. Without the help of family at this time I don’t know how we would have made it.
It was my boyfriend’s mom that found us the apartment. It was a small one bedroom apartment in a cool old house with hardwood floors. We could walk to the library, grocery store, and a coffeeshop. It was perfect in many ways! But it was small. Like, really small. So small the dining area was also a hallway and only one person fit in the kitchen at a time.
We didn’t have much while we were just starting out. I laugh now thinking back to our tiny black and white television that got about two channels. Our TV antenna was hanging from the cord of the blinds wrapped in aluminum foil just to get reception. Ha!
Our Second Apartment – Movin’ on Up
We lived in our first apartment for about a year and a half, and we moved into our second apartment when I was 20. This place was bigger and a bit nicer than the first (cue The Jefferson’s theme song). That same year, I got pregnant, we got married, and I gave birth to our second son. All before my 21st birthday. It was a busy year!
Life in our second apartment was even more hectic. My boyfriend husband was working a demanding job in the computer software industry while I took care of two young kids and the household responsibilities. Our apartment had a large bay window in the living room that faced the street. Directly across the street was a high school. I remember rocking my baby while watching the high school kids come and go. It was so strange, because to me high school felt like a lifetime ago, but it actually wasn’t that long ago at all! It was a lonely time for me. I missed having friends and craved connections with other moms. But I had trouble connecting with the moms I met, partially because I was so young.
First Time Homeowners – In Over our Heads
Three years later, at the age of 23, we bought our first house. As a young couple already overwhelmed by our daily jobs, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We weren’t ready for the added responsibility, but we had a nice house to raise our kids in and a big yard for them to play. My father-in-law said he felt like he was going camping or hanging out at a state park whenever he came to our house. And that is a pretty accurate description of our yard. It had towering trees and plenty of open space to roam around on.
Life was extremely hectic during this time. I was trying to handle being a wife, a mom of two young boys, and take care of a house and yard. My husband was working hard to support us. Outside of work, he continuously taught himself new technologies to advance his career and provide for the growing needs of the family. As a way to cope with the demands of our jobs, our marijuana use increased. We went from smoking on the evenings or weekends, to during the day, first thing in the morning, and then all day long. We didn’t have friends or community to help us manage. So we stayed home watching stand-up comedy and playing video games as entertainment, and an escape.
Buried Trauma – Memories Resurface
At this point, my trauma was pretty well buried, but lurking just beneath the surface. I was so busy with the responsibilities in my daily life, that I didn’t have time to reflect on the past. However, I never completely forgot about what happened when I was twelve. Sometimes, memories would resurface. It always seemed to happen when I was in a similar environment as the trauma. When I was alone, in the dark and quiet of the night. When they did, I quickly pushed them back down. My heavy marijuana use also helped me numb my true feelings and keep the trauma a secret.
Art I Made at this Time
My husband and I both have creative outlets. Mine is visual art and his is music. We have both gone to them in moments of inspiration. Often those were times when life was so overwhelming that we couldn’t not create. This is reflected in the art I made during this hectic time. As busy as I was, I did manage to create a few paintings. Here are two them.
One painting is of a person drowning. It showed an arm coming out of the water and a hand reaching upward. The hand was open, grasping for something, anything to hold on to. After I painted this, I immediately hid it in a drawer. I didn’t want anyone to see it, especially my husband. I didn’t even want to look at it! But I was worried that if my husband saw it, he might think he wasn’t doing enough or that how I was feeling was his fault. Eventually, I threw that painting out.
The other painting I made when I was feeling a lot of beauty. It is a surrealistic painting of a landscape. It’s painted with bright, childlike colors that don’t portray a realistic setting. There is a sun with a face that’s blowing another face, a tree, and green mountains in the background. There is also a purple bird flying over a stream and the reflection of the bird in the water.
What No One Wants to Talk About
When the trauma was still a secret, I didn’t want to think about this period in my life, because it was too painful. All I could see were the regrets and things I had done wrong. Before I started to heal my trauma, my normal mindset was to only see the negative parts of myself. I still had so much shame, guilt, and low self-worth. It had become normal and comfortable to focus on the negative side of everything.
Now when I look back at this time, I see both the things I wish I did differently, and the things I did right. I can look back without judgement and guilt. I don’t think we should push aside our mistakes or ways we’ve hurt people and only look at the good things we’ve done. Being able to see both has helped me be able to forgive myself and have less regret.
Finding Forgiveness for Myself
Maya Angelou once said, “Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.” This has been a powerful message for me. We can’t go back and undo what we’ve done. But we can change things by taking accountability for our actions and asking for forgiveness. We can move forward in a different way than we did in the past.
I love my kids so much. One reason it was so hard for me to look back at that time was because I regretted hurting people I loved. It is an incredibly hard thing to confront. I was eventually able to with a lot of support. Being able to face past regrets and find forgiveness for myself is one thing that has helped free me from the past.
If I could change anything it would be how I treated my kids at times. Heavy marijuana use meant I was more distant and distracted than what they needed. I wasn’t as emotionally available for them because I wasn’t emotionally available for myself either. These are some of the effects of complex childhood trauma coupled with addiction. It isn’t easy to talk about. No parent really wants to let others know where they failed their kids – and yet every parent seems to feel they did to some extent. So I realized I didn’t say what I regretted or how I treated my kids in the podcast episode. It wasn’t intentional, but I’ve explained it here for clarity. I believe being up front about them can help us heal and do better moving forward.
Hope for Healing
It has been really healing to go back into my past. It helped me to see how much I was carrying at this time, and then forgive myself for not doing more. I was already doing so much! My hope is that you can go back into your story and have some kindness for yourself. You may also find that there is a lot there that you may not be thinking of. When you put it all together it begins to make sense why we acted the way we did. Perhaps you were also too busy in your present life to go back into your past. That can lead to forgiving yourself for that time, like it did for me.
Have you revisited times in your past, too?
Share your thoughts below. 💬