There is a snow moon out tonight. I spent time with a friend who is a therapist. I seem to collect therapist friends. I think it is because they can sense my need for safe people. I will say though, I collected this friend decades ago, before her therapist title.

Safe people. Safe. Safety.

I have had to tell myself many times now, I am safe. In fact, I have a book of affirmations related to physical ailments stemming from trapped emotions by Author, Louise Hay titled, Heal Your Body. I have gone through the pages of it and copied down my own pages of affirmations related to the various ailments I experience. Almost all of the affirmations I copied have me say, “I am safe.”

I say things to myself to reprogram my botched brain in order to make my nervous system believe I am safe. Now, get me on a movie set and I could play the crazy lady, right? I feel crazy sometimes.

I remember the first time I was told I was neurotic. I was dating…..well we were actually going to get married. However, after he realized I was not the neurotypical girl of his dreams, he was out. I suppose I don’t blame him really but it was hard to accept I was not what someone wanted.

I think what I mostly feel is divided. My therapist friend calls it, “fractured parts.” She has encouraged me in her own gentle and persistent way to do “parts work,” which honestly did not make sense to me.

(I will say here my inner dialog is telling me to just shut everything down, it’s not that bad, forget it all and just move on. Well brain, I have tried that and it led to years of masking in darkness and almost death. So, I will just keep going.)

So, my friend and I were sitting in my vehicle. Being in the driver’s seat has historically been a challenge for me. Vehicles are a big trigger for me. Growing up my biological parents were divorced. My mother remarried when I was three or four and again when I was around seven or so. All three men were alcoholics. Two of the three were violent alcoholics.

I retold a story about being in the back seat, driver’s side and witnessing my step father beating my mother while erratically driving. His brother in the back next to me, behind my mother maniacally laughing. I can remember my stepfather’s hand gripping my mother’s hair tightly while slamming her head repeatedly over the emergency break. He yelled and cussed the entire time. I was screaming in panic, terrified. He didn’t stop hitting her head until he whipped the car to the curb, drug her limp body out of the car, then got on top of her on the side of the road where he punched her face with alternating fists over and over. I can’t remember how it ended but I thought she was dead and I was next.

My friend and I were talking about it and I said, “After all the inner work I have compassion for my stepfather. I recognize his abusive behavior did not just appear. I know that was all learned by his own alcoholic father and so on.” She said, “You know that now but the girl that was in that back seat has feelings about what happened in that vehicle.”

Finally it clicked.

I am fractured.

Being in the back seat, watching a man who said he loved my mother beat her almost to death……his brother just laughing hysterically……that did something within me.

My mother never discussed that beating or any other I witnessed with me. I remember my mother’s face and eyes after that beating……she was unrecognizable. All of the white in both her eyes were blood red. Her face, shades of black and deep purple.

I think a part of my mother did die that day. I think a part of me died that day too. I buried that part of myself. I had to survive.

As I write this my physical body is tense and shaking, a reminder the healing road is long and unclear.

I am not sure of what to do aside from writing and breathing so I will focus on that for now.

Tomorrow, I meet with the therapist I have to pay. I have them on my calendar once a week now, which is good because it keeps me accountable to actually feel things, talk, and be accountable.

The trauma has fractured me to the point I am carrying on without allowing shut down and buried parts to be seen, heard, and healed. I have forgiven my stepfather and my mother. I have compassion for them both because they didn’t know what they were doing. However, I haven’t shown that girl in the back seat compassion by allowing her to process what happened through feeling and telling myself WE are safe.