I went to the hospital on Friday, just because I have  asleep apnea problem, nothing too serious, and I was quite relaxed and ok with it all.

The consultant decided I need an operation to clear my airways because I don't breathe too well, and that should make a difference to me. So far so good.

Then the rather condescending nurse took me to the "pre-op" department for routine tests, and it was found that my blood pressure was very high .O.K , I can deal with that, not too worried. But the nurse decided that I was probably a bit anxious "dear" about coming to the hospital. I didn't bite but did as I was told "Go straight to your GP on the way home  "dear" to get them to deal with it " 

"Can't I make an appointment  for next week "I said? "Oh no "dear" we need you to deal with it now, before the weekend"  we can't operate until it is down." So off I went, drove over to the doctor's surgery.

 He hardly looked at me but  said "I don't think I will take it now, you will be too nervous and worried" -  "No I am ok " said I, "I'm quite relaxed" . "No you will be a bit anxious"   he said. "I am not anxious, I  just want to get on with it."-  "Now would not be a bad time, when you are anxious after rushing here"  "I am not anxious I am fine" - "Why don't you take  your own blood pressure at home for three days, in your own environment, where you feel a bit safer?" - "I don't feel unsafe!!!" -"No -but sometimes we get a little worried about these things, best to do it when you are relaxed" 

I didn't argue any more, he certainly was putting my blood pressure up!

I wondered what he had seen when he looked at me? What do we all see when we look at people? Aren't we all a little too keen to make assumptions? I guess on my notes it says I am a sixty five year old grandmother, have asthma, bronchiectasis, IBS, GORD,vitiligo, and an underactive thyroid, so therefore did he see  a neurotic old lady who is frightened of the doctor?  

I wanted  to tell him a little story.

That I  was adopted (probably paid for) by a catholic nutcase, grew up in an indoctrinated abusive  environment, was raped by a priest when I was child, was an alcoholic by the time I was fifteeen,  self harmed, attempted suicide, messed around with food. Ran away from home to be married at seventeen,to a violent inadequate man. I was beaten senseless by my ex husband for years,survived an attempt on my life, had six children, was left alone with them when they were all under twelve, no money, no family, no home. I got a job, then went back to school, got a better job, brought up six kids alone,got a professional qualification, became the head of a large teaching organisation, teach in 124 UK prisons, including all of the really secure ones, buried one of my children, began to tackle the narcissistic catholic church in my sixties, made a speech in front of twenty thousand people, set off hundred of lanterns in front of the vatican, shouted at the papal spokesman co - founded Survivors Voice Europe, travel all over the world for work and to  connect with survivors. 

I am a survivor, a born fighter, don't look at my notes or my grey hair!

Get that sphyg out and take my fucking blood pressure you  wimp!
But I didn't, of course, and I went home and took it myself

 My lovely daughter told me this story today, about a bullying.

A teacher in New York was teaching her class about bullying and gave them the following exercise to perform. She had the children take a piece of paper and told them to crumple it up, stamp on it and really mess it up but do not rip it. Then she had them unfold the paper, smooth it out and look at how scarred and dirty is was.

 She then told them to tell it they’re sorry. Now even though they said they were sorry and tried to fix the paper, she pointed out all the scars they left behind. And that those scars will never go away no matter how hard they tried to fix it. That is what happens when a child bully’s another child, they may say they’re sorry but the scars are there forever. The looks on the faces of the children in the classroom told her the message hit home.

So many correlations here for abuse survivors! 

Most of us have been crumpled, stamped on,got really messed up, sometimes to the point of being almost ripped to shreds.

Trying to "unfold" ourselves we see the dirt and the scars.

The pedophile priest is one of those  bullies.

The church he represents have honed their bullying tactics for millennia.

Power abuse is their  sinister form of bullying 

How many times do we have to tell the church that "sorry" is offensive! It doesn't matter how many times they say it, the scars are there for ever! 

They need to MAKE AMENDS!

But then don't we all know that bullies are always also  utter Cowards. 

Twenty Five years ago today, I lost my beautiful oldest son Nick,who died in a car crash and was just nineteen. 

It broke my heart.

I didn’t want to drink,or use drugs,  but I didn’t want to live either. I was suicidal, and I blamed myself for Nick’s death.He had surely been taken away from me because of my “unworthiness”.

(thanks for all of that self loathing catholic church)

That perpetual  feeling of being of “no consequence”  of being worth nothing was the legacy I had  from the catholic church. Not only being abused by the priest when I was a child, but by the cruel and vicious lies that are their indoctrination, and that go in young, and go in deep,  and take years to undo.

I can’t pretend I was good at being a parent, I didn’t have the skills.My ex -husband and I were  inadequate people who perhaps should never had children, but we did,  and they survived, I think more by luck than good management.

And I love them more than my life. 

Left alone with six of them under twelve was not easy! I simply tried my best. 

When the kids were teenagers ,and doing very well at school,( they are all very clever.) I instilled in them the need to get the best education they could, and made sure they worked hard, I knew that education and knowlege  was their ticket out of the sort of life that I’d had. There was lots of love and laughter in our house.

Although  my faith was non existent, ,and  I  had a real mortal fear of  the church , sickenly, I still  had a desperate and rather pathetic need to belong somewhere. Rather like a dog who has been treated badly, it still wags it’s tail and tries to be near it’s cruel owner, because it is the only pack it has ever known, and being part of a pack is a fundamental human need . 

My three boys had been  alter servers, and on Sunday I marched all of my kids down to the front of the church, it was  almost like a statement I think. Although I always felt  guilty and unworthy, and loathsome, I knew they were Very Important people.

  Years later when I was working in New York, I was working with some prostitutes, they had the most beautiful babies, dressed in designer clothes, with gold earrings and bangles, they smelled wonderful and were so happy and well cared for. Their Mum’s however had nothing,and  were all HIV positive, they lavished all they had on their children.I absolutely understood them, although  I didn’t ever quite have to prostitute myself, I would have done if it had been necessary. 

   Nick’s  funeral was in the catholic church,because that was all I knew,I had no other language,  and because  I wanted all the pomp and ceremony befitting my son, who didn’t deserve to lose his life because of my “sins”.It would have been in the Vatican if it had been possible.

  The priest who conducted the requiem had known Nick as a server, and made a few jokes about he and his brothers being the ”A team” of the eleven am mass. He also remarked about an occasion when Nick was due to go on a trek from school, but turned up in his jeans, despite them not being suitable. He joked about Nick’s insistence on wearing them, alluding to teenage fashion! what the stupid man hadn’t been sensitive enough to pick up was that Nick ONLY had those jeans, we were so desperately hard-up.

      My Mother didn’t come to his funeral (she said she wasn’t well enough) a cousin  told me afterwards that  she had said that Nick had died because he was liable to “go off the rails”, and god had spared us that. 

If that were true, then that would have to be one sick bloody god. Nick was a very good, gentle, funny, kind, human being. But nothing surprised me by then about my Mother, or her ludicrous religion.This is the woman who had me praying for the death of a cousin so he didn’t marry a divorcee and live in “sin”, the same one who disregarded me after I was abused, because she was too “priest obsessed” to care.

Of course,  she was a product of her own upbringing in a church which relies upon it’s “flock” to always obey, never question, and keep their mouths shut! 

But I can never forgive her that comment about my son. 

The pain I have felt throughout my life from the hands of the church and a pedophile priest, pale almost into insignificance beside the pain of losing a child.

     I have always been a fighter! But losing Nick took the stuffing  from me, I had always managed to fight my way out of a corner, but this was more than I could bear, I wanted to die and follow him, and look after him, but I also feared that I would never see him again, he was so good, and I so loathsome and dirty.

 Time doesn’t heal, if anything it gives you longer to miss someone.

Having your heart broken means just that- it is broken, not a little shop-soiled.

But things do get better,of course, and you are able to function, after a fashion. Survival is instinctive and that instinct kicked in. 

And it  was thanks to this awful time that allowed me to lose this pathetic desire to “belong” and to begin my “de-programming” from this inhuman religion that destroys so many lives.

So heres the thing!

My recovery  was absolutely nothing to do with divine intervention!

I am, thankfully, and will ever remain firmly,  happily, seriously atheist!

Nothing that I have experienced in or out of recovery has given me any reason to change that opinion. Nor would I want it changed.

Isn’t it completely magical  to know that I am made of stardust !! Amazing to think that the atoms that make me up have probably been around for 4.6 billion years, that all things and people are connected!! 

That “I am a child of the Universe no less than the trees or the stars and I have a right to be here,” 

To be able to see that the garden is beautiful without the fairies at the bottom of it! 

To know that I am the mistress of my own destiny, that being “decent ” is an inherent part of being part of the human species.

That no one person  has the right to subjugate another . 

That Nick was also made of that stardust! That he is all around still, there in my other children, in his niece and nephew, still with his friends, and their remembering him, in the knowlege that even in his short life, he managed to touch so many people. In the trees and the flowers in the sunrise and sunset - and in our hearts.

It was LOVE that did it! from  my other children and my husband and friends. And it is love that continues to do it, more friends, and now thankfully  fellow survivors helping me make sense of a world where this dreadful religion has created  a “sub culture” of abused human beings like me and sees them only as collateral damage.

   One of the last things my son said to me was :

 “Mum I am really proud of you” and I  did not deserve it.

Since then I have tried to work on deserving it,- not there yet! 

The Joys of Sobriety

Many years ago, when I first got sober, I went to a meeting of other addicts who were about the business of saving my miserable life! 

On the wall there was a bright yellow and red and white poster advertising a convention for addicts in New Orleans  that year. 

It had wonderful images of jazz musicians and It shouted from the wall "

"Come and celebrate the joys of sobriety"!

It was so uplifting, but a little unrealistic! 

I had six kids, no money,no husband, no family and was in the early traumas of realising that I was  a dyed in the wool addict and would die if I didn't grab this chance with all I had. 

That poster stayed on that wall for years, and it inspired me!  I can still see it vividly now, although in reality it faded and got tattered and ultimately was taken down.

It stayed on the wall as I stayed on that  path trying to make sense of life and sobriety. And it gave me hope, despite the fact that I had nothing. I was grateful for  each day, let alone a trip to New Orleans! 

And  it's message has always stayed with me, and is one that I try and conjure up as often as I can. It is one we utilise in Survivors Voice Europe, when we gather together and celebrate the joy our survival.

Because it is no use surviving to be miserable, in the same way that it is pointless getting sober to feel deprived or depressed .

I am not at my best in January! I have a very unpleasant tax bill, a wealth of other practical things to deal with, a worry about my daughter in law who has a big fight on her hands, and my son who is so frightened, the bloody awful grey English weather,which upsets my asthma, but more importantly and painfully, a very difficult anniversary of the death of my son Nick who was only nineteen when he died. 

For years everyone used to call me on the anniversary of his death,18th January,  and although I was grateful that he (and I)  was being remembered, I dreaded the day coming, because it was full of shared grief. After a while I dreaded Christmas coming, because January would be there straight after it, and then I dreaded December, because Christmas would come and then January! When I started to dread November, because December would follow and then I  would have January I realised that something was pretty wrong.

I realised that Nick was no more dead on that day than he was every other day of the year, that each day I could remember him, and indeed can't not, I asked everyone to not make a "day" of it and gradually I could restore my balance and not rule out October too! 

That was a while ago, and now I find myself grateful that even after 25 years people still send me messages, I am grateful for that "day", when I go to his grave I see someone has been there before me and left flowers or even an unsmoked cigarette! His friends still include us in their lives,  There is a shared knowlege of what each one of us is feeling, and for me now, that  is comforting.

In the night I woke in a panic, I always have "clergy"  dreams at this time of year( It infuriates me that the bastards can still even get into my dreams! ) I started to do all the things i know I should do to stop the depression form coming on, I did some deep breathing, I read something inspirational,I tried to meditate,  and then I got up!

I am English, and there is only one thing that will cure all ills! A cup of tea!

And  the memory a very vivid picture of some jazz musicians in New Orleans 36 years ago encouraging me to "Come celebrate the joys of sobriety" 

I need all of your good thoughts right now.