The Tattooed Lady

I am going to veer off from my usual topics here and post a very personal story that I want to share.

The Tattooed Lady

or We Are Survivors!

This year marks 50 years ago that I survived childhood sexual assault. I was 14 at the time. Two men assaulted me throughout the night, leaving me half naked in a corn field at 4 in the morning when they were done.

In my very immature 14-year-old brain, I figured I would rather kill myself than wait for them to come back and find me and carry out their threats. Of course, I had to tell the sheriff what happened. Yes, I could identify their house. Yes, I could describe them. Yes, they were caught.

In the 1960s we didn’t have victim services--at all. No one knew what to say, so no one said anything at all. After my suicide attempt my parents sent me to a state mental hospital (after not talking about what happened or its suicidal aftermath) which is where the psychiatrist said I would be safer than left to my own devices. I didn’t meet with the psychiatrist or any other health care professional during my entire sojourn there.

Where I spent two years pacing the halls and crying. But I survived. I eventually left. I finished school, worked, travelled, grew up.

My life had all the ups and downs every life has. Then mine became decidedly richer: I found the love of my life, had five amazing children, continued to travel, was awarded a fellowship to return to school after the children and received my state midwifery license in 1989. I wrote a book* and became an author, a grandma and an artist all at the same time. Life is still full and busy and, like brandy, my husband only gets sweeter with age. I am blessed and deeply grateful.

* Ma Doula: A Story Tour of Birth, North Star Press, was released on June 1^st, 2015. In 2016 Ma Doula won as a finalist in the 12-state Midwest Book awards.

Continue forward to this year, 50 years later. I’ve moved on. I tried to forget. I stuffed all of the rage and shame and fear down so deep I hardly knew it was there, but every time I looked at the white slash marks up and down my arm, I was reminded. I hated my arm. I wore long sleeved blouses all of my life. I didn’t want anyone to see my past carved out there so clearly.

Then the miraculous happened: about seven years ago I was at a doula workshop and during our lunch break, as I was wandering around, taking in all the vendors there for the day, I happened upon Victoria and her henna booth. Cool, I thought. She invited me to sit down and have a henna tattoo done. They were so beautiful and magical. When I was settled, she gently reached out to take my arm which I quickly drew back. “Not that one. It’s ugly. Do the other one,” I said. I could actually see a shift in her eyes as she carefully continued to pull my left arm onto the little table by my chair. As she took in the 12 inches of my own handiwork she said, “Then let’s make it beautiful.”

I was stunned. I couldn’t say anything. I let her paint as my mind was swimming with this new paradigm on the whole of my arm’s life. She not only completely covered the scars, but it was elegant and beautiful. 

  

After that I bought some tubes of henna and learned the art by drawing over Victoria’s patterns as they began to fade. This experience had really opened a whole world of possibilities, short sleeved shirts being one of them. It definitely stopped the horrified looks every time I went to the doctor or had my blood pressure checked.

Fast forward (back) to my 50^th anniversary this year. What appeared to be a grave error on the part of my medical practitioner turned into a miraculous teaching and healing that would direct the next ten months in particular, and then the rest of my life. This was also the year I turned 65.

The whole saga is being written as a book called Elopement Risk so I won’t go into details here other than to say that as I was being weaned off a mild anti-depressant, I was prescribed Trazadone and by the 5^th day on it, was into a full-blown psychotic episode where I was hallucinating, had stopped eating and sleeping and my mind was convinced I was on an epic religious crusade, complete with Satan stalking me from behind attempting to thwart my successes along the way. Yes, to say it was bizarre is an understatement. It was like going on my first LSD trip at 65. It took two whole weeks in a psych ward for the effects of the errant drug to leave my system and once again get a good night’s sleep.

The miracle, however, is that I had the opportunity for the first time in my life to talk about the past and all the things that had bubbled up during the last two weeks in the hospital.

Even when I went home, I was required to continue psychotherapy (having been diagnosed with PTSD) and found a wonderful woman who actually understood what I had been through. After several months with Janice I was invited to join a 10-week workshop/group therapy program called, “In the Wildflowers” with five other survivors of childhood sexual abuse. What an eye opener. I had never heard any other woman’s story. I could share mine and each time I did I remembered more and more details and was able to work through the pain. It was freeing. It was amazing. God had found a way to heal me, even at 65.

About this same time I stumbled upon a website for women who had survived mastectomies and chose instead, rather than reconstruction and breast augmentation surgery, to cover the scars with beautiful tattoos.

I was awestruck. Such brave women, and they were all around my age! What a revelation! I could permanently cover my scars with something beautiful. This idea ‘blew my mind’ as we would say back in the ’60s.

So, I got my first tattoo. I designed it and found Nora, a budding artist who has perfected the art. 

I love it. I even love my arm, after 50 years. I thank God and Janice and Victoria, and Nora and all the amazing women who have blessed me this past year. I am grateful.

Stephanie

On Censoring the World For Our Children

On censoring the World for Our Children

Most of you reading this are parents of very young children, I suspect, but I have been wondering about several things that I am guessing we began when ours were little and elaborated on as they grew. We based our early years of homeschooling on one quote alone by John Holt, the guru of home schooling or UN-schooling as some call it. He said that all that children need to learn is an environment consisting of "an extravagance of creative space." I didn't need to stand up in front of them, all relegated to individual desks, and pour (or shove) information down their throats. I could step back and let them discover the world at their own pace. Each one would be free to explore and exhaust each new thing they chose to study or work with. I didn't even have to offer various topics. I could trust them to be curious about the world around them and give them the freedom to delve into whatever interested them without my interference. When did adults decide that children would only learn from us and not from what they could taste, see, smell, hear or touch?

So, I would begin each day doing what chores I needed to do. Sometimes one or the other child would follow me around and even help, doing whatever I did. Other times I would find them picking up where they left off the day before and continue playing in the stream, creating a whole world out of twigs and mud and acorns, little cities with bridges and castles and whatever else they imagined, often things taken from books we had been reading to them at night, or things they heard us discussing. I was careful not to clean up their projects at the end of the day; I couldn't bear to destroy all that hard work. I would clean the house around them, reminding them if we were expecting visitors and suggest they move to "help" me cook or bake, sometimes getting helpers, sometimes not.

I realized as they grew that perhaps some if not all of the problems with American teenagers stemmed from them not being genuinely needed. If we look at other cultures, both third-world and so-called first-world, children were and still are desperately needed to help on the farm or help support the family, though often, unfortunately, to the extreme of child labor. But they were depended on. They didn't have to check a roster on the refrigerator decorated with stars and stickers, relegating the daily nominal chores: dishes, laundry, garbage, walk the dog, clean your room. They need to be needed more than that. There must be another dimension, perhaps spiritual. They belong to a larger unit. They aren't little pawns waiting to be launched, putting in their time, dreaming of the next adventure. Rather, each one has gifts that we have to discover and put to use, to make us all better, stronger.

A very wise Quaker granny once told me that the promiscuity we can observe in American teenagers is a direct result of the lack of affection bestowed on them at home. If they are no longer cute and little and cuddly, do they suddenly not deserve hugs and pats and kisses? My granny friend said, "You just watch. They will find their hugs elsewhere if not at home."

High school presented the biggest challenge for me yet. Books were coming into the house at an alarming rate, faster than I could approve them while other moms in our church were daily adding banned titles to their lists. That didn't quite jive with me. If they are banned at home, and we request alternative assignments from our children's teachers, how do we justify that to the kids? Is it OK because I am an adult to filter everything they see, but get to read whatever I want? Are the arguments worth it? Won't they just sneak the banned books, curious to see what all the fuss is about? I know I did when I was their age, though my parents were intellectual atheists and trusted (or allowed) us the freedom to decide for ourselves what or what not to read. I certainly didn't want them to lose their innocence as early as I did. 

In the end we came up with a plan. I got to see what they were reading in school and would read it too. Then each night we'd see where the other was in the book and discuss it - all of it. I could give them my take, why I thought something was sad or racy or whatever, and they could share their thoughts. It only brought us closer and I hope helped me retain some respect in their eyes. 

They all still read voraciously. I even get books in the mail from New York and California with little notes: "Ma, you'll love this one!" (I hated it but didn't tell them that.) But some are really winners. I think it helped keep the lines of communication open. I am glad.

Welcome to Parenthood

Once upon a time... we got out the calculator (before computers) and figured we had not slept through the night once in 11 years. We also deduced that I had been pregnant or nursing or both for 9 straight years. I usually smelled like a dairy, or a barn, or both. I had not had an uninterrupted hot cup of coffee in... well, I couldn't remember when the last one was. I wasn't remembering much, actually.

But I do remember making challah bread with my children and picking off the cat hairs from the dough after Isaac dropped his little braided loaf on the floor on its way to the oven. And I remember the day they named the kittens. The kids held the equivalent of a world congress from which I had been banned while they debated. The verdict they arrived at was "Orangy" for the tiny calico, and "Little Fuzzy Fur Feet" for the black one. I will never forget the day Hannah asked me, "Who puts the eggs under the chickens for me to find?" Or when they wanted to know if they were born in the shell or out of the shell.

The joys outweighed the sacrifices. We didn't do everything right. I am sorry if my past blogs gave the impression that it was all bliss. No, it was all trial and error. Year after year. Nothing from all those years of school prepared us for parenthood, but we are so very blessed because of them. I wouldn't trade those years for anything. And now they are gone, only memories that I cling to.

What I am left with is five confident, beautiful adults, all seeking their place in the world, all caring, curious, insightful, independent, very unique people.

~ Grandma Stephanie

Tribes and Everybody Loves Babies, the movie

Filmmaker Thomas Balmès criss-crosses the globe to observe and record the first two years in the lives of four infants and their families. Ponijao is the youngest of nine children and lives in a village in Namibia. Bayarjargal's family lives in Mongolia. Hattie is a San Francisco couple's first child, and Mari is the first child of a couple living in Tokyo.

What are we seeing, then? Two so-called first-world families and two (supposedly) third world families. I am quite sure the photographer wasn't intent on observing bonding styles or even measuring maternal responses to the infants' attachment cues. But this film gives us the rare opportunity to glimpse just that. 

There is virtually no narrative in the movie. We just watch the four babies at various stages of development from birth, to their first steps, their first words, interaction with others and their play.

But I am instantly struck by the vast differences in the various parent's interactions and the link between that and the baby's responses; sometimes bored, whiny, frustrated or downright opposition to the proposed activity. In San Francisco Hattie wants nothing to do with a drumming circle nor a dip in the jacuzzi. In Japan Mari is left to play alone with numerous toys and throws herself down in utter misery at her failure to occupy herself. 

Then we see the contrast in Namibia where toddlers are perfectly content and given the freedom to explore their world free from distractions. They are even content playing with sticks and rocks. We see a similar response in Mongolia. Two boys and two girls. Fate has brought them to four very different families on opposite sides of the world. We get to travel with them. We get to form our own conclusions. 

We have a rare opportunity to observe bonding at every level by looking into the lives of these babies. Every time I watch the movie I am struck by the obvious, to me at least: more is not always better.

Make your own conclusions.