All roads lead...

Mine is a life littered with traumas that pre-date birth. The most destructive forces on my childhood all originate in the teachings of my parents’ church — a brand of “Christianity” that teaches (controls) with fear as the primary motivation for living. Eternal damnation to a pit of fire is a terrifying concept that crushes a young child’s soul. The terror owns the child: mind, heart, soul, and body.

They taught us girls to hate our vaginas and fear the repercussions of allowing such evil to enter our consciousness. Our mothers were too ashamed of their own to teach us the beauty and magic of its role in our existence. For many of us, the fiery baptism of learning their purpose still torches our souls.

At summer camp, I learned about blasphemy, while the dark cloud of my sister’s death still lingered above my head. My dear, sweet sister. Lost to me. Now, they convince me, she is lost to God. It is I, Mom. I am the one who left flowers those many times. I, who sat at her headstone, sobbing, pleading, “Why, God? Why not me?”

My mother simply hates life and everything it comprises. Who can blame her? Maybe she loves us. She doesn’t know how. Who could with that history? She abused all of us horribly, my dad the worst of all. I am the one she rejected. Only demons require surgery [injury to mother] to make their entry. Was I born or exorcised, in her mind?

The abuse — my mother’s, my brother’s, the church’s — motivated me to physically extricate myself soon after graduating high school. At 17, I left a note on the kitchen counter: “I’m moving in with Rhonda. Our number is [redacted because I don’t remember it]. Colette.” #iGotOut from under the control of the cult-like church and my family. In shattered shards, a body in agony from archived traumas, I was ill prepared for life. It would take another forty years to fully realize the suffering I carried forward from my childhood.

In late 2019, the reins of my family were handed down to my brother, a conspiracy theorist, militia man, and wannabe revolutionist. I was expelled by the new patriarch for siding with the “enemy” brigade — everyone who disagrees with their particular brand of religion — and for demanding that he show me respect. My family had morphed into its own mini sub-cult, and I, their primary detractor, as an embarrassment to their “community.”

I volunteered out of that community, but it still held me in its clutches. I love my family despite our differences. Losing them all at once devastated me, but it ultimately freed me. I found my way out of the residual mental and emotional turmoil. By taking a deep dive inside myself, I learned to let go. Of things that harm me. My grasp on people who would seek to harm me. Of harm itself — the ones stored in my mind, my heart, my body, and my spirit. I learned to let go of my distorted sense of self. My grief and depression, my anxieties. My physical pain. And my dread of life. I set it free, all of it. To be fully me, fully alive, fully at peace.

~Colette