I’ve been quiet on this blog lately for a couple of reasons. One of which is that I have a couple of book manuscripts I have been working on, but the other is that I was considering the feelings of a family member who after not speaking to me for a very long time, rang me up to discuss this site. In considering this family member’s feelings, I stopped writing for a little bit.

But, like I have said before on this site, child abuse thrives on silence. On secrecy. On being too afraid of what someone will say or do to you.

If you ask me to stop helping myself and others, then fall off the face of the planet again, then why did I stop in the first place? The “favor” you ask of me is to shut up and sit down. And when I do, you disappear again. You don’t support me. You don’t maintain a relationship with me. Remind me why should I do you a “favor” again?

Anyone who asks you to do something that hurts you, or is a huge step backwards for you, is not your friend. This person does not have your best interest at heart, only their own.

Rhoni Reuter

By Tara Overzat

Last night’s Dateline focused on the October 2007 murder of Rhoni Reuter, longtime girlfriend of ‘85 Chicago Bears star Shaun Gayle. Often these Datelines are predictable and all fingers point to the significant other. Reuter, however, who was several months pregnant was instead killed by one of Shaun’s many other girlfriends, a real-estate agent and wannabe model, Marni Yang.

What is disturbing though is how the cold and calculating Yang was caught. Both Yang’s teenage son and her “best friend” (as labeled by Dateline) told police she was capable of putting seven bullets into a pregnant woman’s body. The best friend went so far as to help police gather enough evidence to arrest Yang by wearing a wire tap and luring the murderer into a local Denny’s, where she again recounted the crime to her friend.

Yang, despite how clearly those close to her saw she was disturbed, could not have been arrested before the murder. Yet, this woman being out in society resulted in an innocent woman and unborn child (a girl to be named Skylar) being murdered in cold blood.

How twisted a mind must a mother of three have that her eldest son finds the courage to tell police he believes she committed murder? What did she do those children? What awful misgivings did her “best friend” have that made her help police build a case against her?

How do we shine a bright enough spotlight on evil so that the most twisted of thoughts never manifest into reality? How do we stop the person we think is capable of killing from actually killing? Is there a way to stop the sociopath in her tracks?

Over the years, I have been lucky to have a lot of good friends from all over the world. However, I fell into a habit that I was only recently able to shake- getting close to toxic people.

Toxic people may be drug addicts or alcoholics; perverts; criminals; or just normal-seeming people who put you down at every turn, feeding off negative energy and kicking you when you’re down.

While good friends and associates tell you that you are mature, responsible, intelligent and cute (and are straight with you when you miss the mark), toxic people will tell you that you are immature, crazy, dumb and fat all of the time. Any praise you get from them is backhanded and intended to make the toxic person feel better about himself.

Growing up, these dual messages were all I got. When teachers, classmates, or other “outsiders” congratulated me on my accomplishments, all my mother could say was, “They don’t know what you’re like at home!” My mother created an alternate reality where I was stupid, talentless and unlovable- as a teen and adult, I sometimes found myself attracted to people that mimicked this “personal truth” for me. I sought out and kept around some people who would tell me how horrible I was only to turn right around and ask for a favor, just like my mother did.

The first step in shaking off the toxic people in my life was the hardest. I had to fully embrace the fact that I was a good person. Not perfect, but good and trying to be even better. I was not all these negative things the toxic people in my life said I was. That took a very long time to realize (and I still struggle with it).

Next I had to create distance between myself and these people, which was hard because I cared about them. Realizing you could care about someone without putting yourself in harm’s way was a difficult concept to grasp, one often called “loving detachment.”

Finally, I knew I could make and keep friendships with the positive people in my life, the people who had been, and would truly be, my friends. The people who’d tell me I’m wrong when I have made a mistake and lift me up when I fall; not the people who’d degrade me everyday just to satisfy their own egos.

I think about the numerous reasons I stayed quiet about being abused until now, and even as an adult I have a fear of retaliation for speaking up.

Some of it was very likely programmed into me as a child, the overt threats and abominable lies that kept me in line. Threats of an even worse life; threats of death.

Today I can’t help but fear that some boogeyman is going to get me for writing about all this. I have not received a single threat, but still the fear lingers… would someone I know actually kill me over this? Or have I been watching too much Law & Order?

All I know for sure are the wise words of Mark Twain, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.” I will not stop because I feel afraid or unsure of what will come next. Truly, none of us know what will happen next year, next week or even in the next few minutes. Fear cannot paralyze us or we will never learn how to live.

By Tara Overzat

My life is pretty good these days, and I have had some very bright, shining moments, seeing and doing things some people only dream of.

However, I do have my regrets. My biggest one is that I hid the burden of my child abuse for way too long. I realize some people never talk about it, and others don’t begin to talk about it til middle age or later, but I have already seen the consequences of keeping this a secret.

I dated someone in college whom I fear I hurt the most with this secret. When I moved away from home at 18, I settled into college life in north Florida and was doing exceptionally well academically, socially and extra-curricularly. I also happened to fall in love. My first love.

Everything in my life was great, and I could not have asked for more.

The summer after my freshman year things changed. I was hit with flashbacks and an overwhelming feeling of sinking, followed by dissociation. The summer term at college was very quiet, and perhaps the lack of distraction caused all these things I had been holding down for years to surface.

I wound up seeking counseling and was first disastrously put on Prozac, and later switched to a low dosage of lorazepam. I was neurotypical; I was a healthy person having flashbacks of a hellish childhood.

But I didn’t tell my boyfriend that. All he knew was that I was vaguely having some weird issues and was taking some pills. I wasn’t ready to admit to myself what was happening, let alone him. I think I was afraid that he would all of a sudden see me as some gutter trash that not even her parents could love, and leave me.

Instead, the mystery caused a bigger problem. He was a 19 year old boy, and though he was very mature, I do not think he could handle the idea of being with someone who he perhaps thought was going to be chronically mentally ill.

I wish I had just told him the truth. It would have helped the both of us. It was towards the end of that summer that I stopped taking the lorazepam altogether- I didn’t feel like myself on it and it severely lowered my libido along with the annoying side effect of memory loss after taking it in the evenings and mornings. I have not been on any medication since, and am again working on my issues and fears from my childhood with a clear mind.

I do have a great boyfriend now. A job that works with my schedule. I still find time to travel. But, I am still guilty about what I put that young man through all those years ago. I loved him, but was scared. Scared to tell him what was actually wrong, and scared to tell him clearly and without inhibition how I felt about him. It reminds me of a song we used to listen to:

“You were fighting every day

So hard to hide the pain

I know you never said goodbye

I had so much left to say…”

(Angel’s Son, Sevendust)

And today, I am angry. When my parents were abusing me, did they have any idea just how far-reaching the effects would be? That I would not be able to have a relationship with someone where I could be honest and open about the past until today? That all those people had to be hurt along the way?

Despite everything that happened, I had happy times as a child. In retrospect the things that made me happy were so minuscule, the things that children in healthy families take for granted. In addition, I think some of it was just my perception of happiness and my warped perception of what was normal.

Before I was old enough to look around and say, “Hey something’s wrong here…” I remember times when I got along with my mother. I remember her playing Scrabble with me and my brother at the kitchen table, (with a bit more liberal use of the dictionary than the rules allow.) My mother liked words and word games, so it was a natural fit for her. There was no concept of “letting the kids win” but we sometimes did.

I remember being around 8 or 9 years old and my mother giving me a quarter to make the beds. I excitedly took the warm, fresh-from-the-dryer bedsheets and made her queen sized bed and the twin beds. She was trying to establish a routine of chore-based allowance. This was short lived though, because with her not working herself, the quarters ran out.

There was a dinner she made every Sunday. The recipe had been taking off the side of a tomato sauce can when she was married to my father, well before I was born, we were told. It was a pretty simple dish, inaptly called “Chicken Fricassee.” (I was actually very surprised years later to order chicken fricassee in a restaurant and have stewed chicken in a cream sauce come to the table.) It basically consisted of chicken breast with the bones still in it that we three split, canned tomato sauce, onions and green peppers, and white rice (usually burnt). A pretty straightforward and typical dinner for some, but my mother prepared this with much fanfare, and yes, compared to our usual “dinners” this was something worth singing about. I think she really thought that cooking a normal meal that did not include a deep fryer full of dirty oil was doing something special, doing something for her family. Just maybe she did…

There were glimmers at times of a mother. And that fed my hopes. That, and the fact that for the longest time I thought we were like every other divorced family in the world. If my schoolmates’ lives were different it was because they had two parents instead of one. As divorce became more common this rationale could not even begin to explain the anomaly of my life.

Not only has going public been difficult, embarrassing, and painful, it was something that even a few months ago I would never have dreamed of doing. I had always kept my mouth shut, and suffered the terrible consequences of doing so- one of which was not allowing people to get too close to me. My denial of the past cost me people I wish were in my life today, people I may not be able to get back.

I tried quietly to handle this within my own family and received nothing but push back and excuses, my favorite being, “Everyone goes through hell in life? What’s your problem?!” This version of “get over it” completely misses the point.

While telling my story I hope will help others, it is also an effort to continue healing me. I have survived and accomplished things so far and I need to keep working to cure myself as much as I can.

I also wonder if survivors sharing their stories, from known figures like Oprah Winfrey, Jeannette Walls, Adeline Yen-Mah and Dave Pelzer, to bloggers online, will help protect the next generation. Abuse thrives in the dark of secrecy. If enough of us speak up, abusers will have to think twice becuase children may be less afraid to tell someone what is happening at home. Evil cannot last under a hot spotlight.

Just because someone is mentally ill does not mean they should not have and raise children. There are thousands of people who struggle with disorders ranging from depression to schizophrenia, who take steps to lead normal lives and are good parents. And there are plenty of neurotypical (NT) parents who don’t care about their kids and end up being crummy parents as well.

The issue is trying to be a good parent, whether you have been diagnosed with a mental disorder or not, or are dealing with a disease, a disability, a family issue, or any number of difficulties. No matter what your cross, if you have the desire to be a good parent and then follow through with the steps to be that person, you give your kids a much better chance at life.

The worst combination may be a parent without the desire to do all the hard work necessary to be a good parent who on top of that is struggling with alcoholism, depression or some other issue. While it is tempting to blame the depression or the drugs, for some people it is more than that; there is a point where the illness stops being the problem and the parent’s own failings are in the spotlight.

There’s too many what ifs in life for any parent to be perfect, and there is no guarantee that great parenting will allow your child to be the next Mozart or Einstein.  Striving to do good is what counts. Knowing that you tried your hardest to do good by your family is what matters.

For the survivor of child abuse, the events that happened don’t just go away. If they are not dealt with they may manifest into the strangest of problems in your life. (See The Michael Jackson Tragedy- What Happens When You Don’t Deal With Your Past) As such, all of us who survived child abuse are “living with child abuse” for the rest of our lives.

But we can still have great and accomplished lives. (See What Will Happen to the Children?) Here are some strategies that I have used to deal with the past while living very much in the present.

1) Keep your sense of humor.

Find something comical everyday. It can be a funny website, like lolcats.com, or a sitcom that makes you laugh. Maybe you have a friend who is hilarious to be around. It could even be a favorite comedy movie or book.

And always, be ready to laugh at yourself. None of us are perfect. And if you can find humor in your own situation, you may also find a way to make it right.

2. One step at a time. Baby steps are okay, too.

When you’re mired in depression, anxiety or shame, getting back to happiness, to feeling normal, can seem nearly impossible. But by breaking it down into little steps and taking as many of those little steps you can everyday, you will start to feel better and one day you will wake up to see that the finish line is in sight.

I was so shy around people in my middle school. With all the bullying and ostracization I encountered my self-esteem was zilch. When I tried to make friends with new classmates, I was petrified. I started out very small. I said, “Hello,” in class. On a good day, I may ask what someone got for problem #27 on their algebra homework. These little queries were just meaningless small talk for my classmates, but for me it was huge. I eventually made long-lasting friendships with some of these people. And it started with finding the courage to take a baby step in the right direction.

3. Grieve “what could have been” without wallowing.

In recent years, my big problem has been an overwhelming sense of regret. Despite the things I have accomplished in my life (perhaps because of them), I feel like I was robbed of a chance to do even more. Maybe, instead of taking care of my mother while she forbade me to leave the apartment, I could have been taking dance or acting lessons. Maybe I could have been skipped a year ahead in school. Maybe in high school, instead of working so many hours, I could have had the time to study more and been valedictorian of my class. If I hadn’t felt the need to stay close to my Florida hometown when I went off to college, I could have gone a to a really great school out of state. The list of maybes and what ifs can go on and on.

All of us who were robbed of childhoods and adequate emotional support from our families feel like maybe we could have been someone better. Someone smarter, better looking, more athletic, more admired.

The truth is, we are here today because of all the moments and seconds in our lives that came before. Change any moment, any second of our lives and we would be unrecognizable. We may not even be here at all.

It is okay to grieve over a lost opportunity every once in a while. But to wallow in that grief, to not do anything with today because we are so upset at what happened yesterday only further ruins our chances of making our lives great.

4. You’re important. But there are things bigger than you, too.

Devoting time to a volunteer organization or to help a friend or family member in need can help divert your attention from your problems just long enough for you to put your problems in focus. When people are counting on you to help cook a meal for the homeless or your little cousin is expecting you to cheer him on at his softball game, you have to get yourself out of bed, get dressed and put on a smile.

One caveat: I became a workaholic and avoided my issues altogether. As with all things in life there is a balance. Don’t completely ignore yourself!

5. Never give up hope. Ever.

Human beings are incredibly resilient. People survive horrific accidents. Wars. Concentration camps. Survivors are the people who never gave up hope. Whatever you are going through, never give up.

In order to create a better tomorrow for ourselves, we have to be able to imagine what that tomorrow will look like and how we expect to get there. The essence of hope is that this beautiful future is possible.

6. Know when to let go. (Loving Detachment)

While healthy human beings have an innate instinct to help one another, change starts with the individual. If a person does not want to change and become a better person you cannot force them to.

With alcoholics, drug addicts, and anyone else with a life-blocking issue, unless they want to face that they have a problem, there is no way you can help them. This does not mean, however, that you do not love them.

I love both my parents; but they have seriously derailed their lives and put their children through hell in the process. I cannot sustain a healthy relationship with either them unless they seek treatment.

I love them, but have detached myself from their dysfunction. In order to save myself, I had to jump ship. The captain of the boat is the only one who can change course. And I refuse to aide and abet them anymore in their unhealthy ways, and reinforce and reward their negative habits.

I never remember being spoke to as a child by either of my parents. My mother used me, from about the age of 5 on, as confidant and, surprisingly, advice giver. So dependent was she on my father, that when he mercifully left, she sincerely did not know how to do the simplest of things.

Not long after my father left, we went to visit my fraternal grandfather, who lived 3 miles away from us in our New York town, a town she had lived in well before I was born. Leaving his home, she got to the stop sign down the street and asked “Left or right?”

Was she talking to me? She wasn’t asking my 3 year old brother, I guess. I honestly didn’t know, hadn’t really ever paid attention to my father’s driving before…

“Right?” I hopefully guessed.

She dutifully turned right. A few minutes later, she was very agitated.

“Where the hell are we?!” she shrieked. “You little idiot!”

The car was still moving (albeit slowly) as the hand found me over and over again in the back seat of the small car.

We did find our way home, but I was berated all day over my right versus left flub.

**************

At eight years old, I was editing “news flyers” for my mother. She was changing diapers in a preschool classroom, as a teacher’s assistant, when the teacher, who was pregnant, took leave. My mother took over for the few remaining months in the school year. This was still only part-time employment and there was no pay bump, but now she was a “teacher” and had to make a “lesson plan” and a “news flyer” for the parents.The “students” were 18 months old.

Essentially, all this flyer had to say was, “This week, we made some colorful finger paintings to celebrate spring! Miss So-and-So read us a funny Berenstein Bears story…” Really basic stuff.

My mother had a very hard time with this. So, it was up to me to help. Spelling, grammar, tone, word choice. She never helped me with my homework, but I had to help mom with hers.

*****************

The worse and most lasting consequence of this was being shoved into the role of confidant to a 40 year old woman. I endured story after story of my father’s abuse, and then was promptly gift-wrapped and sent to him to claim our rent check. So, not only was I dealing with my own fear of being attacked again, but now could add to it the time he threatened to kill my mother; the time he threatened to set the bed on fire while she slept in it; details about a drunk driving accident he’s had; lurid stories about love affairs he’d had while they were married; details about their divorce.

My mother was an extremely repetitive person, so I didn’t hear these stories once or twice. I heard them over and over starting when I was about eight until I was an adult. The details didn’t change, it was just the same memorized monologue to deliver to me for countless encores.

I don’t think she did that to poison me against my father. After all, her biggest delusion was that  they would get back together. She did it because she had no friends. She had stopped speaking all but entirely to her family. She needed someone to talk at, and there I was, a captive audience. An audience that did not have the life experience to tell her she was wrong, that she was better off without him that her suffering children were better off without his drunk ass. The perfect audience: one that cannot deride you but only nod in agreement and offer you sympathy.

This role reversal didn’t strike me as odd then, just like how I thought much of my childhood was normal. I thought all divorced families were like this and that every divorced mom was like my mom. I had never heard of the term “parentified child” and I did not have the knowledge of the outside world to see how my mother, unable to handle the role she chose for herself, was trying to shirk her responsibilities and give them to her unwitting child.