Hiking the Mountain in Flip-Flops

Like many survivors of childhood abuse and dysfunction, I’ve lived most of my life in my head, unsure of what was real, feeling confused, irrevocably broken, and never quite knowing why. In response to this, my brain scanned, analysed, and meticulously tried to unearth every memory from the past to justify my profound sadness and my incessant need to fix the brokenness within me. But what was this brokenness that needed to be fixed? In my adolescent ignorance, I concluded that it had to be me. It was me who was flawed and damaged and needed to be fixed. But now I know the truth. I am not broken. I was never broken. They were. This is a story about a woman. She is not unlike you. She may act and talk just as you do. You may have passed her on the street, seen her at the grocery store. She smiles. She laughs. She plays the game extremely well; everything she does is perfectly executed. No one would ever suspect what is really going on underneath her façade. She hides her terror, confusion, and profound sadness behind one of the many masks she wears. She cannot risk being exposed. Therefore, she unceasingly uses that smile to hide the shame and brokenness that lives and grows and festers within her soul. Pain she has tried to forget about and push away for decades. Pain, she thinks, should no longer matter because she is older now. But is she? Is she older? Because deep inside, at the very core of who she is, is the little girl she once was. And unbeknownst to the woman, this little girl controls every thought, every action, every feeling she experiences. This little girl obsessively reminds the woman to be afraid and on guard at all times. She demands perfection because anything short of perfection could be disastrous. This little girl is shattered into a million pieces because she was denied her birthright to be loved and nurtured, to feel safe and protected. She was emotionally abandoned, physically and sexually abused. And when part of her soul died as a result of this, she was buried, entombed within the darkness where her shame became her burial cloth. There was never a funeral or a farewell. She cannot, will not, rest until someone, anyone, rescues her. And because the woman has stifled her cries for help, that little girl still exists, stuck in the mire of darkness, confusion, and fear. The child longs to be validated, to be set free from the chains imposed by others and, more tragically, by the lies she believes about herself. But how? How can this possibly happen? The woman does not yet know that, ironically, she is the answer, that she is the only person who can save this little child. Because she doesn’t know this, the woman refuses to even acknowledge that the little girl exists. She ignores her pleas for help, day after day, month after month, and year after year. It is the only way she can survive. The truth is too excruciating to believe. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Pretend. Drink. Drug. Numb. Act as if everything is fine. That is, until the day comes when the child inside her revolts and refuses to be silent a moment longer. This is the story of that woman and that girl. Me. This book recounts how I was able to reach my own wounded inner child after decades of repression and self-hatred. When I finally acknowledged her, we were able to start a relationship. Slowly she began to trust me, to expose her pain and vulnerabilities. It was only then that I discovered the nightmare she had endured because of the actions of the adults around her and the coping mechanisms she developed to survive those atrocities. I learned to dialogue with her and through this process, she began to heal. And in turn, I began to heal. This led to the discovery of a spirituality and a truth within me that I never knew existed. There are countless men and women who do not believe recovery from childhood trauma is possible. It is possible. Paradoxically, she, that beautiful little girl in me whom I despised for most of my existence, was the one who showed me how to heal. For decades I obsessively searched for the answer outside of myself. I didn’t find the answer in any of the self-help books I read. I didn’t find it through the countless years of psychotherapy or through abusing alcohol and drugs. Nor did I find it in an organized religion. Those things only offered me insight and at times helped ease the pain. Instead, I found the answer to my inexplicable suffering deep down inside, in my soul where that little girl still lived, terrified and alone. And this is where everyone’s answer lies.