Paula's Story.
My name is Paula, I am 48 and have a 12 year old son. My son and I live alone and I live with the effects of PTSD, this being the result of the first 16 years of my life when I was subject to my father's physical/sexual abuse and his torturous acting out of games he did upon my person. My mother was aware of his activities and her role was first to allow it to happen followed by denial, cruel mind games, rejection and evasion. There was no love, no safety, no sanctuary. I learnt to blank out each night's events and I survived my father's pain by climbing out of my body to avoid feeling it. I separated the pain from the memory by storing the memory in my stomach area, this I now know helped me to survive.
At 16 my mother told me it was time to leave home. I was shocked and unprepared. I did leave, but kept returning home in between jobs as I could not settle. Finally, I completed two training courses and set myself a goal. It took 7 years to achieve and activate that goal, however, all my life I had felt hounded by an invisible and unknown terror that was creeping up on me, a dense sadness and recurring nightmares.
Once my goal was completed, I realised because ot the sheer discipline that this took to do, in not only achieving it but activating it, I had opened myself up to the reality of what had been pursuing me. I was 30, I subsequently lost my career, my husband and myself.
I took an initial stock of what had happened and then through recall the realisation came. I decided to turn my past around and vowed to myself to make some good out of this. To emerge from this now living day/nightmare. I also chose to Forgive.
Eighteen years on, I have spent time in voluntary work trying to offer my services to society while I rebuilding my life. I continued to bring up my son and keep to my orginal vows. From this, I have developed two empowerment models which I would like to share with other people and develop further.
To date this has been difficult as I have developed this work through my experiences and recovery and this is not accepted by professionals, who have trained through traditional routes, and suggest that I now take that same route.
At present, I am unable to do this although the two models, with written work definitions and examples, are already compiled. I continue to search for welcoming avenues where people can meet me at this present stage. All my life I have had to survive off my own inner resources, managing and coping with whatever comes. I would like this to change. I would like to experience an environment with people who I can share and be accepted by and to be able to experience the feeling of being nurtured - I feel this is vital to my son and myself. My son has only me and I realise his needs require more than what I can offer from my own experiences and resources, we are both isolated within our community because of the way PTSD effects both our lives.
My dream is for us both to meet people, who through their life choices or own personal experiences, can reach out and can offer us and we can compliment that offer with a situation that allows for support and growth to help find a balance in order to live in greater depth and fullness than we are at present.
By choice we would like to live by the sea as I find the size and strength of the ocean fills me with a stillness which nurtures a growing dream to create a Retreat for people broken by their life experiences and involve their partners and professionals to draw and utilise the individual brokenness into a worthwhile and life giving skill. Is anyone willing to share this dream?
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