You see, I have this weird, but in my experience, validated faith that if I surrender myself to my own words, the ones that came without too much cogitation or premeditation, they will lead me to a place I didn’t know I’d be visiting; they will show me 1) What I didn’t know was on my mind when I started, and 2) What I didn’t know I knew about that particular subject.
Sydney Lea, page 195, The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop, by Diane Lockward.
Sitting in my Snowbird Poets group, I placed my fingers on the keyboard barely breathing and witnessed The Aftermath.
Time is nonexistent, Dear One, non-exist-ant
Standing barefoot
I am aware
of things I am too young to know
Stripped of my innocence
when he climbed on top of me
in the courtyard
beneath the Viburnum
That snowball bush was in full bloom
while I was not
yet
but soon would be
Ten years later
I hear from some
deep drug-induced fog:
“If we don’t get her awake
she is never going to
have this baby!”
Then: “It’s a girl!”
53 years later
my twenty-year-old granddaughter
takes off on a bicycle
as a sinking feeling
of fear
flashed fast across my face
Of course, she was right
I would have let her brothers go—
without so much as a second thought
But the Viburnum will bloom
again and again
unlike a young girl’s innocence
Debra Basham 03-18-2019
See Processing.
Pearl Bailey says there’s a period of life where we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.
Bailey’s words sing the truth. I had come from a legacy of women who had worn the shackles of sexual shame. My mother had a first marriage she did not tell us about, and I did not learn until I was in my forties that she had discovered she had a sexually transmitted disease at the same time she found out she was pregnant for me.
I became pregnant on New Years Eve, three weeks before I turned sweet sixteen on January 22, 1966. I got married, and I was forced to leave high school in tenth grade. (See Loved and Wanted: Listen to Your Mother.)
My daughter, and my granddaughter have carried that legacy of sexual shame, but none of us need carry it any longer. It is time for all women to be free….
A Course In Miracles
LESSON 60
God is the Love in which I forgive.
God does not forgive because He has never condemned. The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God’s Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me up to Him.
I do not have written permission to share these words from Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation, but the message must be shared:
For too many of us, feelings of shame, even self-hatred, are paramount. No one of us has a fully untarnished past. Every man, every woman, even every child experiences regret over some action. We are not perfect. Perfection is not expected in the Divine plan. But we are expected to take our experiences and grow from them, to move beyond the shame of them, to celebrate what they have taught us.
Each day offers us a fresh start at assimilating all that we have been. What has gone before enriches who we are now, and through the many experiences we’ve survived, we have been prepared to help others, to smooth the way for another woman, perhaps, who is searching for a new direction.
We can let go of our shame and know instead that it sweetens the nuggets of the wisdom we can offer to others. We are alike. We are not without faults. Our trials help another to smoother sailing.
I will relish the joy at hand. I can share my wisdom. All painful pasts brighten someone’s future, when openly shared.
