Daily Excerpt: Healing from Incest (Henderson & Emerton): Lies and Secrets

 

Excerpt from Healing from Incest:

Lies and Secrets

When I think about the lies my father told and all the unsaid thoughts and fears that were part of the air we breathed at our house, I remember a particularly frightening time when the truth was almost brought into the open many, many years before that session in Seanne’s office.

 

Mother and Father had come for my college graduation—a ceremony I had attempted to forego, perhaps to avoid having them come. But that same weekend my cousin had planned his wedding to coincide with the gathering of the families and friends for our combined graduations. I was involved in the wedding preparations, and Mother decided to ride along with me to a nearby city for the rehearsal. The truth was, she had an agenda that I couldn't have imagined. If I’d had any idea of her intention, I'd have been even more frightened and much more uncomfortable.

 

I sometimes had nightmares about Mother dying and me being forced to marry my father to look after my younger siblings and keep the family functioning "normally." I always awoke crying and grateful it had not come true yet though I clearly continued to think about it when I awoke. Even though I realized that Mother was all that stood between me and my being completely subsumed by my father, her presence made me feel guilty and uncomfortable.

 

This speaks well to the conflicted and complex feelings so common in incest survivors. Geri loves her mother fully and, while she didn’t protect Geri from the abuse, her mother did buffer the relationship Geri had with her dad. Yet, she can’t help feeling guilty and uncomfortable around her, making an emotionally intimate relationship impossible and causing great emotional stress in Geri.

 

After riding together for several minutes, my mother said, "One of your professors told me to ask you if something happened to you in Norfolk because you do not seem to allow any of the boys interested in you to get close to you. Did you tell her about your father?"

 

It’s interesting that it took this outside interventionist (the professor) to inquire before Geri’s mother brought the subject up. The unspoken rule in the family system was, as Geri said, to not talk about it. It was the norm to exist in an environment rife with unsaid thoughts and fears. This dynamic, common in families where abuse is present, contributes even more to the victim’s reluctance to speak out and tell.

 

When Geri first told me that her mother asked, “Did you tell them about your father?” my initial reaction was anger toward her mother. These words confirmed her knowledge about the abuse though she had never broached the topic until now. Why is that? Does it mean her mother didn’t really love her? On the contrary, Geri’s mother seems to love her very much. So much so, she had to deny the truth to herself because it was too much for her to fully accept.

 

The role of the mother in the father/daughter incest dynamic is highly complex. The mother is in an impossible situation, especially if she is trapped in the marriage. There are myriad reasons why women are trapped in such marriages. Financial and emotional dependence are primary. It was further complicated in this case because Geri’s father was a religious public figure, and the family lived abroad. Living abroad contributed to the isolation of the family system, which is another common factor in abusive families. The shame that would befall the family, should it become public, was too great a risk. This all contributed to the conditions of secrecy. So, while it’s common to feel anger toward the mother who doesn’t protect, it is important as a clinician to override that anger and look at the big picture.

 

I was nonplussed, totally puzzled by my mother’s question about my father! I had not thought consciously about what he had done for many years. As a matter of fact, I never spent conscious time thinking about it while living through it even though every daily and nightly habit had been circumscribed by my need to somehow take control of what was going on, to be in charge in some way. Why was she asking me whether or not I’d told about my father? It took me a few seconds to register what she could have meant.

 

"No," I said, "of course not!" I was indignant. If I didn't or wouldn't think about it, why would I have said anything to anyone else? At this moment, I prayed for some sort of divine or any other kind of intervention. Oh, please, please, please, let's not talk about this! Please!

 

Mother continued, "Did something else happen?"

 

As a matter of fact, something else had happened. How could I tell her what had happened? In some measure, as time passed, I'd come to blame her for the rape I had endured more than four years earlier.

 

This is astute self-awareness on Geri’s part: the fact that she was aware of blaming her mother for the rape that she had experienced. It’s not unusual for the victim to protect the mother from all blame. It’s healthy, at least, that Geri could see the contextual relationship within which the rape occurred, not that her mother was indeed responsible for the rape.

 

I had returned to the island at 17, after the year of American high school on the East Coast that my mother had insisted on. The American co-ed high school experience had so terrified me that I'd begged to return home.

 

My Jamaican high school had ended with the award of a Cambridge Certificate of General Education. “O” Level, allowing me to teach in a Jamaican elementary school for the upcoming year, and that's what I did for the next year.

It was a wild experience without textbooks or curriculum. I read everything I could about educating small children. Each night, I spent hours preparing twenty-five individual copybooks for each child. The age range and grade levels of the children were all so different.

 

There was an American working there, doubling as an office manager and Vice Principal, and we became close friends over time. When she had to leave the island for a conference, she asked me to stay at her house in the evenings to be with her children, two girls I really liked. Another friend of hers would provide a chauffeur to take us to and from school and various other after-school activities.

 

I began this story and told my mother that I didn't know that the Vice Principal’s friend also paid for the house, the maid, tuition for the children's private schools, and other things, too. He began to come over in the evenings, have dinner with us, and always ended his evening with his own concoction, a dreadful tasting rum, lime, and coffee mix.

 

I reminded my mother of the one afternoon, back at my parents’ house, when I had said, "Mother, I'm worried about Easton. He comes over every evening and drinks and touches me."  

 

(At the time, she had said, "I've told you how to handle that,” to which I had not responded, realizing that whatever it was she thought she'd told me, I could not remember. I had searched my mind. What could it be? My mind had started spinning and finally stopped, devoid of answers.)

 

Often, because mothers of abuse victims feel like failures, they project their feelings of inadequacy onto their victim child by blaming the child. Here, the words, “I’ve told you how to handle that,” may have implied that Geri had control over the situation and that it was her fault if the situation got out of hand. At least, that is how Geri reported she felt about this comment. But how can we really know? Maybe Geri’s mother’s comment of “I’ve told you how to handle that” was out of concern and nothing more. It’s likely that her mother felt quite helpless to really assist Geri. This is a good example of communication that needs to be clarified. Yet, at the time, Geri did not have the skill set to assertively inquire of her mother what she meant by that statement.

 

The next time Easton came over he said, "Has Patti [the Vice Principal] written?"

 

I said, "Yes. I'll get the letter."

 

"No, no hurry,” he replied. “Get the children to bed first."

 

I did that and then walked down the hallway to Patti's bedroom where I'd been sleeping. Not bothering to turn on the light, I reached for the letter on the bureau. As I touched the letter, Easton came up behind me, grabbed me, and dragged me over to the bed. It was impossible for me to imagine that I could cry out or scream with the children sleeping so close by. What feels embarrassing to relate is that it took so little effort on his part, after my initial struggle. What was clear to me then was that my father was right—I was a terrible girl and that fact must be obvious to Easton or anyone else who wanted me. He left his watch on the bureau. When I saw it, I thought, "Whore!"

 

Easton later promised that he would not be so rough the next time. He said I would even grow to enjoy it. He had everything planned. He would pay for a nice duplex beside his mother's home. That way, no one would know he was visiting me.

 

Further, in the twisted mind of this man, he'd done me a huge favor by having sex with me. As a “return favor,” he asked me to get the contract for his furniture manufacturing company to make the church pews in the new church my father was building. I appeared to acquiesce, and there were times I let myself believe that there was nothing better for me in this life. I should be grateful to have anyone care about me even if it was this way. After all, father had always said, "I'm teaching you about love." This was probably the best I could ever hope to have. I remember that Easton was obsessed with the pop song, Angel of the Morning, that had just come out that spring. He called it our song. Feeling trapped, I told my parents I wanted to stay in Norfolk Island. “What? Not go to college?” “No. Not now, anyway.”

 

After two weeks, Patti came home, and I couldn't help but tell her my story. Thankfully, it was nearing the end of the school year, so the fact that my disclosure ruined our friendship and Patti’s relationship with Easton didn't matter too much in the long run.

 

Obviously, Patti and my mother had had a chat, about which I reminded Mother because back then she had told me, "Patti says you must get off this island and go to college. It would be a terrible, dreadful waste. We cannot let you stay."

 

It’s not uncommon for untreated victims of sexual abuse to have few, if any, boundaries. It’s as if they have radar emanating from them that says, “Abuse me.” Perpetrators easily pick up on it either consciously or subconsciously. This perpetuates the cycle of abuse and continues the victim’s belief that they are, indeed “bad.” It sets up a shame cycle, where behaviors continue to happen that keep the untreated victim in the feeling state of shame because this is what feels normal to them. By the time Geri recounted this rape experience with me in therapy, it had been years since it actually had happened. It was not reported since in the state of Nebraska, the survivor gets to decide herself if she wants to report. She did not. I was following her lead and respected her rights. I wondered throughout my work with her, however, if legal action against any of her perpetrators would have lessened her extreme sense of shame, self-blame and anger at herself. She would have nothing to do with it.

 

I concluded my story to my mother, finally deciding to tell her because I didn’t know how else to explain my professor’s concern. Of course, that day in the car, I did not relate all the details to my mother. But upon hearing the "R" word (rape), she cried. I felt terrible. I knew I hadn't fought hard enough. I'd given in and given up. At that moment, I felt just as I had at the time of the rape: filthy, terrible, miserable. I'd hurt my mother again. What kind of girl was I, anyway?

 

I had trouble concentrating on the wedding and what I was supposed to do. Ironic—a wedding, the meeting of two beautiful souls who, I was sure, were chaste, pure, and happy—things that were impossible for me to conceive, impossible to be.

 

Not only does Geri internalize the message that it is all her fault, but also her mother cries and seems to remain silent. This feeds the belief Geri has that she needs to take care of her mother. It confirms what she believed all along, that she is truly a filthy and terrible person. How tragic and how poignant the contrast for Geri as she witnesses the “chaste and pure” wedding, further anchoring her belief that she is undeserving.

 

It’s common for untreated abuse victims such as Geri to have a promiscuous history, primarily because of the belief that they deserve abuse since they are “bad” anyway. Abuse victims are accustomed to not having a voice and to being controlled by the perpetrator. Boundaries are nearly impossible to set and maintain when this is the embedded belief system. The shame victims feel compounds, creating a vicious cycle—one that is often very difficult to break.

 

 

 

Read more posts about Geri and Seanne and their book HERE.

Read more books about abuse HERE.

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