The Secret Keeper does not feel. She has lived her life keeping the facts. It was her job. She learned it was best not to feel in order to keep me safe. She had a big job to do and she did it well. All through my life, since elementary school when I realized that I was living in a family unlike any other. She emerged knowing that I had a secret to keep. It was a very big secret and a huge responsibility.
The Secret Keeper had to do many things to keep me alive. If these secrets were ever known, it could cause violent rage in my father that could end in murder or at least severe beating, unknown torture and great harm. She lived to protect me. She grew with me through life, doing her job of being responsible to keep hidden all of the facts. She learned her job was best done if she didn't feel, since feeling made one fear, panic and lose hope.
She always was looking for a way of escape, a way out of the insanely abusive home I was raised in. At 13 she ran away from home, it was her first attempt to get away. She took a few dollars and after she was a good mile or two away she went into a drug store and bought a pencil and small spiral bound notebook. She needed to record her facts, and possibly let some of the hidden 'feeling; escape on paper to relieve the burden she carried. She needed to be comforted so she bought a single scoop ice cream cone from Baskin Robbins and then she sat on the curb in front of the store and wrote, wrote, wrote.
Yesterday in brainspotting therapy she came forward. She wanted to go through the healing processing. As I sat on the sofa in my sweet counselors office I felt like a little girl. Her feet hung above the floor swaying in the playful back and forth rhythm that is both a comfort and a joy to a child.
Before long images of an attic door in my childhood bedroom appear, she looked in but was so afraid. She wanted to go explore but felt she would come unglued or freak out if she entered. My wise counselor suggested that my adult self go with her. We found the place in my body that I felt the greatest sense of my adult self and then we found the corresponding brain spot in the room that my 'eye's window' most highly connected with the reassuring, protecting and nurturing of my adult self. After finding it, I spend resourcing time solidifying it and making it firm.
In this session I would use this brain spot to return to at any time I needed 'Lindy' - the current nurturing mother of three children - to step in and protect this dear child within, Heather, the Secret Keeper. As I was scanning the room looking for this brainspot, I also found Heather's intensely disturbing brain spot. What was very different is that my left eye could view my adult self's brain spot and at the same time my right eye viewed the disturbed child's spot. This was the first time in brainspotting that the resource spot and the distressed spot were simultaneously in the same view, one calm, peaceful, confident of her ability to help if needed and the other anxious, scared and disturbed about her life. I have learned to never be too amazed at new ways of healing.
I felt it (all the emotion and pain) in my chest right below my breast but in the center - mid sternum, breast bone. This is where the physical distress was in my body.
As I began the session, my right hand felt numb in the space between the thumb and fingers. My pointer finger also had a unfamiliar tingle as though going numb, but there was a stressful pain in the tissue between my fingers, almost like people have with arthritis in the hand. I spoke a loud to my therapist noting how odd this was. I had never felt it before or in any other session. She asked me what I was holding. I tried to focus on that for a few minutes but nothing came to mind.
We processed for over an hour. So much came forth, so much remembered needed to be told a final time. A time that this dear secret keeper could be relieved of her duties. All during childhood she bravely entered the attic crossing the beams of wood careful to not step on the insulation resting over the first floor ceiling. She would try to find footing on the sheet of plywood that was resting over the beams and filled with items from the past. These were mostly put in by my parents. But I had my own places in this attic, I would walk further away from the attic door and slide whatever it was that I was placing out of sight into the pink insulation for safe keeping. It was some poor grade test, a letter, or any kind of information that could erupt my father into starting a beating, torturing commotion that would threaten life and last hours.
She learned to work quickly, to dispose of the evidence and to surface back into the room in a matter of minutes. But she often got distracted by her curiosity, she liked to linger a little bit and rummage through the contents of her siblings things that were placed into this attic.... some oil painting done while taking a private lesson from a very talented artist - of course, none of them were 'good enough' to merit a place of honor on the wall. My father deemed them childish play and lack of talent on the part of my two oldest sisters and banished these precious works of art to a life hidden from view in an attic never to be seen again. But I like to see them, I enjoyed to run my hands over the oil paint that had raised ridges and smooth shiny texture.
Or I would flip through school papers, long gone years of hard work and study of my older sisters. I enjoyed to see what they had written and what each paper was about. Without a doubt each one was an 'A' the only acceptable grade without a beating. Soon I would remember that my job was done and I had to quickly return to the bedroom before someone came in and noticed the attic door was open. Once again, Heather had protected, hiding some secret - it was the responsibility of her life.
Heather could not feel. It would hinder her job. She was always looking for a way to help me escape, to get me out of this home. If those yellow diamond safe place signs were in fire stations, libraries or fast food restaurants when I was young, she would have stood by the sign pleading her case...refusing to budge until someone made 'Lindy's' life a safe place. But no signs like that could be found.
She told school counselors, department of human service personal, older friends, practically anyone how would listen but to no avail. Lindy's very existence teetered on a fine balance of 'don't rock the boat', knowing he, her father, would cunningly convince even the sharpest sleuth that nothing was going on in their home, only to shut the door and severely punish the person who would dare to break up his kingdom, his reign of terror, his corner of the earth that he wickedly maintain an iron-fist of control.
Each time Heather spoke, it ended in failure. She boldly spoke up, risking her life only to be forgotten .... nothing ever was done. Even the social worker from the department of human service that she totally gave every detail she could remember about her family life, sadly told her that nothing could be done. "No court will convict your father if you are the only one to testify out of eight children and your mother." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I pleaded, "I will go on the stand. I will tell all." Only to be deflated by the social worker explaining, "how could anyone believe your story if even your own mother would not collaborate it." Everyone else was too terrified of him. He would certainly want to kill anyone who destroyed is 'kingdom'. I was also encouraged to get back with her if I could convince a sibling or my mother to testify, and was told that the case would remain open until that time, if it ever happen. Hopeless! That was my life-story, continually running into brick walls that would never budge, but only slam what little hope I could muster into vapor.
Back to the attic scene, my adult self assured Heather that her job of being a secret keeper was complete, and we would would burn the things in the attic because they were no longer needed. These items were my past that could be forgotten. "And you will burn me," said Heather in a sheepish voice. "No, dear one, you will not be burned. You served a big purpose in my life. You grew up with me. You spoke up for me. I love you. This is the final thing you will do for me and then you can rest. You can let me take over from this point on.," I assured her.
In a McGiverish way I gave her a sack that contained special candles that would engulf the contents of the attic but not inflame the home. She carefully walked around the perimeter of the attic contents placing these small candle-fires and returned to the room through the attic door. I placed a detonator in her hand, the same right hand that was numb with aching pain for holding onto to so many secrets. She pushed the button and felt the familiar ache between her thumb and finger joint. As smoke began, this controlled fire systematically turned all the contents into black carbon remains that even drifted lightly in the attic air. I held her close. She looked up at me and in that instant we returned to our garden.
The garden is where all my alters now live and step up during therapy to take do what is needed to finish their purpose and be assimilated back to me, not to be forgotten, but to be memorialized and appreciated for their service in my life.
We were both quite tired. I returned Heather to the sun-room porch off the cabin that she enjoys reading in. She was too tired to read. She laid down on the wicker sofa and fell fast asleep. I walked quickly past my Papa-God giving Him a wave of hello-goodbye, and entered into my simple but cozy bedroom. I climbed in bed and pulled the soft white comforter up to my face, feeling save and secure, I fell into a deep sleep. The session was over. I opened my eyes and spoke a with my counselor. She ended the session by telling me a funny joke, I know now she was grounding me in my adult self. Leaving her office I felt a joy knowing that since my trauma triggers and constant dissociation had stopped about 8 weeks ago, I can successfully deal with my childhood in a contained therapy session.
This morning I woke in distress. I had dreamed a lot about my childhood. Heather was feeling, which is a good human part of every being. She was in tears repeating over and over, "I can't get away. I can't get away." I allowed her to feel. Then I stepped in and told her, she was away. She no longer lived in her childhood home, and that she was safe.
God uses our dreams to continue the processing that may have been opened up during a therapy session. Dreaming is a brain processing time that helps incidences, memories, emotions, or information to move between the two sides of the brain, fact and feeling. I know I must write. It is a hard choice because it will take up a few hours of my day, but I persist knowing it is part of my healing. It is also part of my remembering. After I finish this post sit up in my bed, comforted, even refreshed to enter a new day.
A new day is continually dawning, a hopeful bright future lays ahead. I take a cleansing breath, a breath of joy and peace, and get started on my day. I know my own children will need me, and I have a good life to live.
Do you have secrets you need to deal with? Is it time for you to move into the present by facing the past? Aim to always live in your present and to be the true person God created you to be.
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