Waiting for Our Mother"s Arms, Even when My Sister is Raped

*    Co-dependence

*    Enabling

What do they mean to you?

For my sister and me, it meant detachment from our mother. She could never tell us she loved us. She had trouble even touching us. It was almost as if she were afraid the emotions would rip something open in her, and tear apart the numbness around her heart.

The following passage of Shadow Heart is more from the night that changed my sister’s life forever.

“Where have you been?” My mother asked angrily. “I was so worried.”

Calmly and without emotion, her body in shock, Jenise answered, “I was raped.”

I saw my mother’s face become stone, trying her best not to let the hurt inside.

“I want to take a shower,” Jenise said as if she were a zombie.

“Just stay right there. Don’t move, wash, or take anything off. Don’t even comb your hair. We need to go to the hospital first,” my mother said. She was well aware of the protocol for rape from taking care of the girls at “Juvie” who’d been attacked.

I don’t know if she wanted to take her daughter in her arms and tell her she was sorry for what happened and that she loved her, but she didn’t. As always, she did a good job of pushing her emotions down, not losing control, or escalating an already delicate situation.

1. How did you feel in a moment you only wanted to be loved but the person near you, the person who was supposed to love you, didn’t understand?

2. How did you take care of yourself?

3. How could you change the situation even now?

Won’t you join in the discussion?

www.JourneysToAnOpenHeart.com

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Waiting for Our Mother"s Arms, Even when My Sister is Raped

My Sister was Raped

IN THIS SCENE IN SHADOW HEART NICKY YOUNG REFLECTS BACK TO WHEN HER SISTER WAS RAPED, AND HOW IT CONVINCED HER THAT FLIRTING OR SHOWING YOURSELF WITH REVEALING CLOTHES LEADS TO VIOLENCE AND SHAME.

The day my sister’s life changed forever, I came home from school at the usual time.

She was generally a few hours behind me, hanging back and talking with friends, having a soda or the occasional beer and doing the other things that occupied the lives of teenage girls.

So when she was late, no one really gave it a second thought. That was until dinner came and went and she hadn’t called.

My father was drunk, of course, and without his sparring partner at the table, he ate dinner quietly. Maybe somewhere under his numb- ness, he knew, because without any words, he went up to bed and left my mother alone to handle it.

Our parents bought my sister a cell phone so they could reach her, and she them. But that day Jenise didn’t answer. By the way my mother began cleaning the house instead of reading her romance novels, I knew something was very wrong.

“Did you hear from Jenise today?” Mom finally asked me.

“No, I came right home from school and then went up to my room to study,” I said. “Have you phoned her friends? I have some of their numbers if you don’t. She’s friends with Patty’s sister.”

“I’ve called them all,” my mom said. “As far as they knew she was coming right home.”

A sinking feeling filled my body, and I’m sure my mother’s heart crashed into her stomach. I imagined she was walking her fence, trying to decide whether to call the police, go look for her, or stay put.

In a way, she was trapped. She knew my father couldn’t help and as much as she probably wanted to do something instead of sitting and waiting, she couldn’t. If she went to look for her and Jenise called, I’d be alone with a parent who was drunk and couldn’t help.

I did the dishes, and then sat in the living room watching something on TV, eating a bowl of ice cream with my mom.

At about 9 p.m., Jenise walked through the door. Her clothes weren’t quite right, and the color was drained from her face. Her eyes were distant and the first thought that crossed my mind was, “She looks dead.”  – Continued

PLEASE JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION AT WWW.PAMELATAEUFFER.COM AT MY BLOG SITE:

Have you or anyone in your family been raped?

What kind of feelings did you have? Why were you ashamed, if you were?

Why do we or does the legal system or society blame women or question what they did to bring it on?

 

My Sister was Raped

WHY AM I SO AFRAID OF SEX AND INTIMACY

IN THIS SCENE NICKY YOUNG, OUR YOUNG WOMAN COMING OF AGE, SITS WITH HER NEW WOMEN FRIENDS AND MENTORS, TARA SUMMERS AND ALEXANDRA FLOWERS, WIFE AND FIANCE TO MATT AND DARRELL SWEET, PROFESSIONAL PITCHERS ON THE SAN FRANCISCO GOLIATHS BASEBALL TEAM.

NIKCY HAS JUST SHARED WITH ALEX THAT HER FATHER IS AN ALCOHOLIC,  AND BEGINS TO REFLECT INWARD ON HER PROBLEMS OF MAKING NEW RELATIONSHIPS AND HER CHALLENGES ABOUT HAVING SEX.

To finally share the information with someone I trusted, who was another adult, was such a relief, and in doing so, I cemented the relationship with my two new women friends.

“This is an escape as much as a hope that Stanford will acknowledge me,” I said. “My dad and sister argue and fight all the time, and my mom is just, somewhere else. I wanna get out of there.”

“What about you?” Alex asked. “What’s your relationship like with your Dad?”

“I love him, but he’s made me . . .” I stumbled to find the word.

“Numb?” she asked knowingly.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I know, Sweetheart,” she said patting my back, “I know.”

How do you know?

When Tara joined us, Alex excused herself to check on my teammates.

“What’s your routine like tonight?” Tara asked. Both she and Alex were yell leaders in high school and working with cheer routines was second nature for them.

As I stood up, waving my hands in the air to demonstrate, the Goliaths were on the field taking batting practice, shagging balls, and doing their sprints and stretches.

“Looks like you guys have it down,” Tara said. “I’ll be watching to make sure I don’t see anything you need to work out. If I do, you can all come over to my house and we’ll review it.”

When I sat down, I noticed Ryan Tilton, who was a pitcher, the game closer, for the Goliaths, looking at me as he ran to catch fly balls and then throw them back to the infield.

Ryan’s six-foot, two-inch frame, athletic body, blue eyes, and golden brown hair were like a beacon, and I’d already noticed in just a few weeks, how people were naturally drawn to him.

The women were endless, dressed to attract a single man, but there was also a parade of others hoping for a piece of the good looking, professional athlete he was.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Hey, what’s Ryan Tilton staring at anyway?   He’s been looking over here off and on for the last half hour.”

“Don’t mess with that one,” Tara said. “He’s a wild boy.”

“Yeah, I gathered as much,” I said. “You know, almost everyone has come out to introduce themselves to us, but he’s among only a few that hasn’t.”

“He’s got a reputation along with his friend, Kevin Reynolds,” she said. “I think Ryan has a steady. At least there’s a blonde woman named Jesse who hangs around him, but ‘steady’ is relative when it comes to that boy. You shouldn’t even think about a ball player.”

“No chance of that. I don’t even date,” I said laughing.

I entered into my adult life innocent and extremely naïve about sex and boys. I was shut down and closed off, and afraid that having a boyfriend meant I’d get distracted and my grades would suffer.

Ultimately I interpreted a boyfriend as a roadblock to Stanford and much too risky. Ever since I was a young girl I had marked the beginning of college on my calendar with a red pen and circled each day that passed in yellow.

I was stubborn and frustratingly slow to open up and let anyone inside my personal fortress.

All my friends were sexually active, but I just wasn’t ready. Sex was a strange concept for me. I couldn’t understand my friends having it at fifteen and sixteen. Stay away from boys as long as possible was what I believed, especially since my sister had been raped at fourteen.

The day my sister’s life changed forever, I came home from school at the usual time.

WHAT ARE YOUR CHALLENGES WITH INTIMACY?

HOW MANY TIMES COULD YOU HAVE REACHED OUT TO A FRIEND OR CO-WORKER IN A VULNERABLE AND LOVING WAY?

WHY IS SEX CARRY SUCH A BIG STIGMA IF IT’S BETWEEN TWO CONSENTING ADULTS?

I welcome your comments and invite you to contact me on my website www.PamelaTaeuffer.com

Or e mail me: pamelataeuffer@gmail.com

I am also on Facebook: /Shadow-Heart and Pinterest: /pamelataeuffer/shadowheart

Twitter: @PTaeufferAuthor

Thank for reading!

WHY AM I SO AFRAID OF SEX AND INTIMACY

A Romance Novel, Coming of Age, Intimacy, Addiction, Family

So to recap Chapter 1 of Shadow Heart, the first novel in the Broken Bottles Series.

What are the challenges of our  heroine, Nicky Young?

The story opens up as we hear her voice, at some age, talking about a time when she was eight years old and witnessed her father’s rage toward Jenise, her sister, just because they wouldn’t eat the cold creamed corn their father served them.

We also hear Nicky open her story by talking about her little prayer, the way most little girls and boys pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . . and please make my father quit drinking.”

In fact I prayed this way every night growing up, because you see, Nicky in many ways is me.

No amount of prayer changed my father. Sometimes he paused for a week, a month, a day . . . one time he was sober for eight months. What a joy it was to have my dad back. But you know what? It also heightened my anxiety.

Why?

Because a new edge was sharpened on my survival “knife.” Now each day I waited, dreading the man who was bound to fall off the wagon, once again red faced, seeking sloppy love when all we wanted to do was push him away.

Have you felt like that?

Growing up under any trauma makes us not only survivors, but keen observers, adept at analysis, and listeners like no other, but we need to weave and dodge through the bullets of dysfunction.

So what do we know by knowing Nicky in chapter 1? She prays, which means she must have had some exposure to religion of some sort.

She talks about the things she knows:

1. Something bad is coming; it always does.

2. I can’t ask for help; I’m too ashamed.

3. I can’t talk about our secrets; no one else understands.

4. I can’t trust anyone; they always leave.

Children of addiction/trauma learn by being abandoned. We are promised, day after day that this will be the holiday, birthday, school even, that our parent or loved one will be sober. But of course they choose the bottle or drug of choice over us.

We’re sure no other family is going through it, and we know we have to keep secrets.

What else do we know?

Nicky’s mother has gone through the same thing. She screams out loud in the Arizona desert in the summer monsoons to have the floods take her away from her home.

What does Nicky know now after watching her sister’s punishment?

She’s not safe.

Her mother can’t protect her.

Her father is no longer who he once was.

She knows, it’s all up to her, and she’d better pave her own road because no one is there to help her.

WHEN DID YOU REALIZE IT WAS ALL UP TO YOU?

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ROMANCE?

AAAHHH! JUST WAIT…IT’S COMING! DEEP, SENSUAL INTIMACY…WILL NICKY LEARN HOW TO GET IT?

A Romance Novel, Coming of Age, Intimacy, Addiction, Family

FAMILY, ADDICTION, SURVIVAL, INTIMACY: SHADOW HEART

AS CHAPTER ONE ENDS, NICKY YOUNG, OUR YOUNG HEROINE, HAS JUST OBSERVED ANOTHER VIOLENT OUTRAGE BY HER FATHER, AND THIS TIME, HER SISTER TOOK THE BRUNT OF IT. NICKY IS STARTING TO FORM OPINIONS ABOUT MEN, HER PARENTS, FRIENDSHIPS, AND UNDERSTANDS IN ORDER TO SURVIVE, SHE’D BETTER SHUT DOWN AND KEEP HER HEART CLOSED.

From my hiding place I watch everything. My father whips my sister again. She is helpless and cannot escape. She’s somersaulting, stumbling, and falling as the belt strikes her.

While Jenise screams with high pitched sounds of terror I haven’t ever heard from her, I stay frozen and keep praying, “Please don’t let him find me, please don’t find me . . .”

Jenise falls and turns her head. She sees my hiding place. For the first time since his rage began, I see the fear and pain on her face. She shrinks to become as small as possible, her once tall and erect posture, beaten down.

All she has to do is point me out and complain that I didn’t eat my portion either. She could take the violence away from her body so easily, but instead she’s taking the pain for both of us.

She stumbles and rolls over, exposing her soft belly, trying to surrender to his fierceness, but he whips her again and yells, “Get up!” Down the hallway and up the stairs to her bedroom she runs, my father following her, making her sorry she challenged him.

Finally, Jenise’s bedroom door slams and the whipping stops. I hear her sobbing and crying, but at least she has been left alone.

It’s better when we’re left alone.

In many ways, we were alone.

Even though I escaped the physical consequences that night, I didn’t escape the mental ones. When my mother arrives home I come out of hiding, but only in body.

Did we talk about what happened? I can’t remember. If we did, I don’t remember being comforted. Her arms never surrounded me or my sister, nor did her words give us any reassurances of being safe, or that we were loved, or she’d hold us no matter what.

As we got older, the constant pounding of my father’s drunkenness made Jenise and I grow up fast. We became skilled at the techniques on how to survive our home, especially when we entered high school and were more independent.

But when I was eight-years-old, the only ways I knew to survive were to run and hide or detach in the hopes that the madness would stop before it came down to crush me.

And I ran, and I ran, and I ran, and I didn’t stop running for years.

FAMILY, ADDICTION, SURVIVAL, INTIMACY: SHADOW HEART

Shadow Heart-Contemporary Romance of Intimacy and Trust

IN PREVIOUS POSTS, NICKY AND JENISE, SISTERS TRYING TO SURVIVE IN AN ALCOHOLIC FAMILY, ARE LEFT ALONE WITH THEIR FATHER WHILE THEIR MOTHER IS AT WORK. THEIR FATHER IS COMING UNGLUED AS HE STRUGGLES TO MAINTAIN EVEN THOUGH HIS BODY CRAVES HIS LIQUID CANDY, HIS WHISKEY.

THE GIRLS FACE THE WRATH OF HIS BELT, AND NICKY WATCHES, ALL THE WHILE TAKING APART AND ANALYZING THE PUNISHMENT, EVEN AS A LITTLE GIRL OF EIGHT, KNOWING SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH HER FAMILY.

I know he’ll find me hiding and I’ll feel the belt and the sting of its leather biting my butt, erasing slowly and methodically with every whip, a father who once loved me.

From my hiding place I watch everything. My father whips my sister again. She is helpless and cannot escape. She’s somersaulting, stumbling, and falling as the belt strikes her.

While Jenise screams with high pitched sounds of terror I haven’t ever heard from her, I stay frozen and keep praying, “Please don’t let him find me, please don’t find me . . .”

Jenise falls and turns her head. She sees my hiding place. For the first time since his rage began, I see the fear and pain on her face. She shrinks to become as small as possible, her once tall and erect posture, beaten down.

All she has to do is point me out and complain that I didn’t eat my portion either.  She could take the violence away from her body so easily, but instead she’s taking the pain for both of us.

She stumbles and rolls over, exposing her soft belly, trying to surrender to his fierceness, but he whips her again and yells, “Get up!” Down the hallway and up the stairs to her bedroom she runs, my father following her, making her sorry she challenged him.

Finally, Jenise’s bedroom door slams and the whipping stops. I hear her sobbing and crying, but at least she has been left alone.

It’s better when we’re left alone.

In many ways, we were alone.

Even though I escaped the physical consequences that night, I didn’t escape the mental ones. When my mother arrives home I come out of hiding, but only in body.

Did we talk about what happened?  I can’t remember. If we did, I don’t remember being comforted. Her arms never surrounded me or my sister, nor did her words give us any reassurances of being safe, or that we were loved, or she’d hold us no matter what.

As we got older, the constant pounding of my father’s drunkenness made Jenise and I grow up fast. We became skilled at the techniques on how to survive our home, especially when we entered high school and were more independent.

ABUSE – EVEN THE WORD IS UGLY. IT’S SAID 1 OF EVERY 2 PEOPLE HAVE EXPERIENCED IT. THINK ABOUT IT: Bullying, Sexual abuse, domestic violence, mental abuse, date rape, child abuse, sexual harassment — how many forms it has to show itself.

Shadow Heart-Contemporary Romance of Intimacy and Trust

Test Post from Pamela Taeuffer

Test Post from Pamela Taeuffer http://pamelataeuffer.com

Shadow Heart: A Love Story, Being Vulnerable with an Open Heart

The story opens when Nicky Young, a woman coming of age, reflects on why relationships are so difficult for her. Shadow Heart is her story, created from the journals she’s kept all her life. We open as she reflects back to eight years old, as she and her sister are waiting for their father, an alcoholic, to prepare dinner for them.

EARLY LESSONS: NICKY YOUNG

I always prayed the same way at night: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the world, and me. And please make my father quit drinking.”

This is what I know as a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism:

Something bad is coming; it always does.

I can’t ask for help; I’m too ashamed.

I can’t talk about our secrets; no one else understands.

I can’t trust anyone; they always leave.

Fear rolls out before me like a red carpet. It’s stained red with the blood of my family’s secrets. My name is Nicky Young. My story begins when I am eight and my sister is eleven.

We were only trying to have dinner before he unraveled. Now I’m cowering as I pray under the dining room table that he won’t see my hiding place. My small body shakes as I watch my sister face the wrath of our father’s anger.

It’s as if the desert storms from our mother’s childhood have come to us, their thunder and lightning are crashing.

“Please God,” I beg. “Protect me from the monster in my house.”

As little girls we spend most of our nights, like tonight, trying hard to avoid our dad’s drunkenness and counting down the minutes until our mom comes home from her night shift at the Juvenile Hall in San Francisco.

Jenise and I are being wrapped in our father’s horror as if he’s become a spider and we’re in his web, ready to be harmed, all because of a can of creamed corn and my sister’s defiance.

“Once he’s done with Jenise,” I say only to myself. “When he’s whipped her enough so that her sobs become quiet hurt, I know he’ll turn to find me.

“Once he’s done . . . he’ll look for me. Once he’s done . . .” I say to myself over and over. The words weave into my prayers as I clench my teeth in fear and shake under the dining room table.

Before my escape here, before he tore his belt from the loops of his pants, before my sister told him what he did wasn’t good enough, we were waiting for dinner. I don’t understand how his daughters, only wanting to eat something we like, made him explode.

As I sit in the blue vinyl booth in our kitchen and my sister in my mother’s chair, even I can hear his silent screams; wretched, twisted, and in such despair.

“How come he’s mad at us?”  I whisper to Jenise. “What did we do?”

“Shh,” she says to me, putting her finger to her lips.

It’s as if sparks are igniting around him, irritating his skin. A red, angry, face takes the place of the genius I once admired him to be. Tonight, he paces, walking the floor, back and forth. His silent explosions are loud.

Does he only care about his whiskey now?

Why won’t he choose us over his bottle?

How come he won’t stop?

Sometimes I feel like we’re all pushed to the edge of going crazy.

I’m taken over with the thought, “We’re in his way, and he hates us for it! Oh, God, our father hates us.”

QUESTION: HAVE YOU EVER FACED A RAGING PARENT? ALCOHOLISM OR ADDICTION REACHES MOST ALL OF US. WHAT DO THIS PASSAGE INVOKE FOR YOU? WHAT CHALLENGES DO YOU THINK NICKY MIGHT FACE WITH RELATIONSHIPS?

Contemporary Romance Novel-A Story of Love and Trust, Told in a Slow, Sensual Burn

"Have you ever wanted your lover to walk up behind you and whisper in your ear?"

"Have you ever envisioned his hand slowly moving down your hip then coming to rest, opening gently on your belly?"

-- Have you ever felt that safe?

The Broken Bottles Series explores intimacy and trust this deep, as Nicky Young fights her fears of abandonment from childhood, struggling to trust and embrace another in ways she never thought attainable.

Her father's alcoholism taught her well: "The next trauma is around the corner.  Something bad will inevitably shake your foundation, so keep yourself shut down and off." Nicky heard the message and refuses to let new relationships, especially men, into her life.

She tries desperately to run from her dysfunctional family and into a future at Stanford she's planned from when a little girl. That is until Ryan Tilton; a professional baseball player enters her life and challenges her to examine everything that keeps her heart bound in hurt.

Book 1, A Heart of Shadows begins the journey of Nicky Young. We cheer for her from the very first pages and enjoy turning them to discover if she can ever take the leap from her cliff that she grips onto so hard, digs into so deeply, trying her best to hold on to what she knows.

Can she jump into the light of chance and stamp out the pain of her past?

Can she embrace the joy and possible big love that's waiting?

A Shadow's Heart (A Heart in Shadows?? A Heart of Shadows?) explores the fears we nurture and how they can stop us in our tracks...if we let them.

The Broken Bottles Series is a spectacular love story of family, friends, lovers, and children. It's told in a unique way, examining the vivid details of intimacy and sex, and offers bare boned and raw stories of abandonment and mistrust.

Ultimately it's hope, faith, and trust in herself that Nicky must bring into her heart, which frees her to reach for the light of what can be. By allowing others "in" she might be able to forgive and recover from her fears, stepping out from her shadows.