Memories of Mothers

Alayna woke up this morning. She was awake for about an hour when she realized that Sunday is Mother's Day. Our adopted mom is cool and we adore her and this will be our first Mother's Day with her.... but our bio mom doesn't inspire great thoughts or warm fuzzies. It was only a few minutes after thinking about it when Layna became overwhelmed and the posts and memories started coming. After hours of her reliving memories she made the choice to call our bio dad and talked to him about everything. He listened, as he always does, with patience and compassion. He had no part of the abuse, and no way of stopping it. He offered to help with remembering and dates. From there the rest of our day has been intense memory work, placing together times and years and people. 

Emotions are all over the place. Memories are in pieces. Pens and papers are everywhere. This headache is unreal.

That about sums it up.....

Carbs. We're mostly made up of multiple personalities and carbs. Lots of carbs. 

So lots has gone on. We moved. We left Denver and went west and it has been an amazing move. No move is without its challenges, and lets face it, we are pretty damn challenging. All in all though, its been an incredibly positive experience. 

Our walking is suffering but its been hard to find a routine and we are finding numbness in our right leg after 2 miles. So today I did one mile. Bella wants to get into a yoga routine. We like yoga, its fun. 

We're also knitting and learning to garden. Jenna is so incredibly excited about our gardens. We have starter plants growing in the garage. Totally excited about having a successful garden. Its a lot easier to garden since we are down 40lbs too. Still more to go but a great start. 

The flabby skin on our arms makes the body look 80 years old. The thighs too but that part we don't care about because pants hide that. The arms are tough for us but we'll figure that out somehow and at some point. 

Pictures will be coming of our garden experience.

Time Flies!

Its been over a month! I know, it sucks for me too. It turns out we despise trying to write a blog post on our cell phone. Our laptop is touchy and we really don't like being at the big computer with our back to the room, and the big computer takes forever to load stuff and its frustrating so we often don't bother. But then we don't write!  And Lord knows we need to write. We all do better writing and writing on paper isn't happening anymore.

Journaling is really helpful for most of us. Hand writing feels awkward and we all feel reluctant to have our thoughts laying around on paper. At least here we can make things private if we need to or want to, or we can share them with the world anytime we want to.

There are about 9 of us active right now.... they are....

Me (Kaysie)
Alayna
Jenna
Cadie
Lyssa
Hayley
Abby
Zoey
Bella

Bella isn't fronting at all unless absolutely necessary. The rest of us are handling day to day life as best we can. Its been tricky because we had to make the very hard choice to give our dog to our ex for reasons that are best for her....mostly health reasons. She was our therapy dog... our bond was tight and we miss her like crazy. Its only been a week but the chaos its created is nuts. Everything from feeling alone, abandoned, unsafe, unable to trust, attachment issues, and overwhelming sadness. I'm hoping it all starts to settle down soon.

Because everything is mixed up we have been working on new ways to stay connected and together. We have found a way to communicate outside when communication inside is tricky and the parents have been monitoring everything to make sure we can ask them whats been going on and they can help us out. They have been pretty patient too. We want to start writing more too.

Thats about it for now...

Kaysie

Reflection

So I just read an article. An article that caused some heavy thoughts and some goosebumps. I'll link the article to the bottom of my rambling because I want to process this out. In short summary, the article was about the author's opinion of comments made about a 14 year old girl who completed suicide after having a sexual relationship with her adult teacher. The author herself had a past filled with willing sex with adult men. She wrote that she was 25 before she realized that the men who consented to sex with her were pedophiles.

That struck a chord with me.  This body's first sexual partner was 40+ years old when the body was 4 years old. By 14 this body was having cyber and phone sex with grown men who knew the truth about our age. By 17 we had miscarried a baby, not with our original abuser, but from an adult man who introduced us to the BDSM lifestyle. One we entered willingly and thought we needed. At 18 we allowed ourselves to be prostituted.  We met our husband online at 17, married at 21, and had an active BDSM life with him until we hit mid 20s and started to realize that something wasn't right.

We consented to nearly everything.  We initiated a lot of it. We grew riskier at every turn. But looking back now, we weren't emotionally equipped to consent to sex. We had no business at all consenting to these relationships. I doubt if we are emotionally equipped to consent to sex now (one of many reasons we are no longer with said husband). 

We learned to use sex to manipulate situations at a very young age. We learned to submit to the desires of grown men in exchange for affection and we called that love.

What we didn't learn was boundaries.  We didn't learn self control. We didn't learn self respect, love, affection, or mutual desire. We didn't learn self worth or value. And it took until this year, when Mom and Dad took us in for it to become obvious to us.

Reading that article brought it all home for me. I'm not sure all of us get it now, but the article wrapped it up in a neat little package and threw a bow on it for me. It also explains our crazy strong reaction to our 46 year old neighbor having a relationship with the 17 year old across the street who has been in and out of the foster care system.  Yes, she's consenting, but she's got about 5 to 10 years before she really gets it. And I ache for her.  And I loathe him.

This protector gets its now.

Kaysie

http://www.xojane.com/issues/stacey-rambold-cherice-morales

When Memories Collide...

This post is going to contain graphic descriptions, sensitive subjects, DO NOT read if you can't stomach depravity...

Bout sums it up.....

So... we are currently separated from our husband and working on a divorce. We've been married for awhile and we separated once before 6 years later. The separation was the best possible thing for us however we found out we were pregnant a week after he left, and had massive medical problems during that pregnancy. By December of that year we started feeling a massive pull to reconcile. We couldn't eat, breathe, sleep, or function. We just believed we needed him back. We reconciled in January and by May we realized we made a huge mistake. Our relationship continued to deteriorate but it seemed that every December we would go through a period where we doubted that things were so bad and maybe even that we were exaggerating or making stuff up for it to seem so bad. We would try again to make our marriage work, only to realize that nothing was getting better. We had a family therapist for many of these years who was confirming that the relationship wasn't healthy. We just weren't getting it.  This year we walked away again (6 years from the first separation), and now its December and the familiar pull is happening again.

Yesterday Jessa decided to reach out for help on a Facebook group for people like us, to find out why this keeps happening in December. The conversation turned to 6 year cycles, return dates, half returns, and programming. Someone mentioned ritual abuse or spiritual abuse. From the moment Jessa read those words memories started flooding back. First in small fragments, and then like a damn broke. Memories are playing over and over on a big screen in our inner space. There's no pause button, no stop button, no way to slow it down or block it. We have the little girls in a safe place, away from the chaos but we all can't be there because someone has to run the body and live our life. So the 4 of us who are over the age of 10 (there's been a LOT of system changes since we last blogged) are rotating out and trying to figure out what to do.

I know that part of what we need to do is talk about it, but therapy is not an option for us. We simply can't feel safe and it would take months to feel safe enough with a therapist to talk about it. Mama and Daddy want us to open up and talk but we cant seem to bring ourselves to speak the words. Mama suggested writing about it, and I decided to take that suggestion and write it out.

So far that's proving to be challenging. My focus keeps wandering and  I keep forgetting what I'm doing. I keep trying to think it through but my thoughts jump around to other things. Even writing these sentences I'm finding myself thinking about 8 other things of which I could write. I'm just going to try and jump into it now and see what happens.

The first memory fragment was about a pagan style ceremony in our bedroom a bunch of years ago. There was a star on the floor, with a circle inside. The lights were off but there was a candle at each point in the circle. There was chanting and blood involved. We don't seem to have any memory of where the blood came from, how it ended, or what actually happened there. We are assuming that the first born child was in the room at the time, but we have no memory to confirm that or not. We are mostly positive that second born child was conceived around this time, possibly that night, based on what memories of that year and time frame we currently have. There were a few of those types of ceremonies. We can see other bedrooms we've had with him over the years, sage, salt, incense, pentacles, candles, tarot cards, knives.

That memory paved the way for a lot of others, most being highly sexual. Being whipped with a belt while holding a necklace with a pentacle charm. The guilt of our body becoming very turned on. No memory of why, just the vague clips. Some type of blood ceremony, using a cut on our upper arm. Blindfolds, chains, and candles. A brand, in a crescent moon. Piercings, candles, pentacles, and intimate acts with a dog. Tied down and blindfolded with a lit candle in our anus. Being choked with his penis, being spoon fed his cum mixed with some type of oatmeal or something that made it chunky. Him mixing his cum into a lot of our food. Having him urinate on us, many many many times. The collars that choked us and felt horrific. Being called pig, cow, and other degrading names while blindfolded and naked around others in a room. Being used sexually by him and other females. Being given pills to ensure our compliance, or to sedate us so that we could be used sexually without fight or emotion. Being dressed as a small child, diapered as a baby, bathroom use being forbidden to purposely create accidents. Being punished (spanked, corner time, and butt plugs inserted) when the accidents eventually happened. Being used sexually after accidents and punishments. Use of furniture being forbidden... always belonged on the floor. Fed from dog bowls sometimes. Crawled around, barked like a dog, and being required to hump his leg. Being tied to the bed at night with a chain and a locked ankle cuff. Showers in cold water, him urinating in our hair, being forced to lick his anus. Him saving drops of our blood, keeping locks of our hair, clippings from our fingernails, Him assuring us he would always be able to find us and get us with those items. Threatening to leave us so that we'd be alone and no one would ever want us after all we've done.  

I don't know what the right words are are to describe this, but taking advantage of littles in the system for sexual reasons. Waking up in the middle of the night to intercourse, often with the littles in the system. Manipulated into believing he could make spirits possess us, being punished for not trying hard enough at orgasm control, for not performing well enough, for not reaching a trance like state during beatings or whippings, being punished for healing too quickly from these "sessions", Comfort items (blankets, stuffed animals), food and drink, bathroom use, orgasms, all needed permission. Permission was often denied. Sleep often denied for 30+ hours, while being expected to work a full shift and take care of the girls.

The worst part,  I think, was being convinced that we wanted and needed it. That it was all going to make us be "good girls" and that it was necessary for our protection and best interest.  The guilt is overwhelming because our body will still react in a sexually positive way to these thoughts, memories, etc. 

The List

This is, hands down, one of my most favorite memes from Facebook. It completely describes most of us in this system. People have asked us before why we always seem to need to learn things the hard way and the answer has always been the same..... we didn't realize there was any other way. I think, in a way, the hard road/way always seems easiest to understand. We are leery of things that seem too easy. Almost like its a trap or not "real". 

So, these silly girls take the hard road. Part of taking the hard road seems to be never looking at what's right in front of you. Right in front of me is a ton of opportunity to learn new things and to do things that previously were impossible. Mom and Daddy are really supportive of whatever it is we want to try. So some of us made lists of things we would like to try to learn or do.

My list so far: 

Lose weight (working on that, down 32lbs since we moved here in August)

Learn to bake

Learn to cook

Become a better and more consistent writer

Get divorced

Knit something useful

Change the way the body looks to better reflect us... get comfortable in our skin

Learn to bead on a loom

Become somewhat athletic

So far that's what I've got. Glee is playing now (binging on Netflix) and they are talking about Domestic Violence. I'm home alone, like usual these days, and anxiety is bad. I have brownies cooking for Mama in hopes that it makes her smile. I used a box mix because I have no idea how to bake anything from scratch, nor do I understand what ingredients would be needed. That's why baking is on my list. 

Its time to switch. I'll let you know how my list progress goes.

Alayna Jade

Our Aching Feet.....

Most weekday mornings we head out for a walk. We aim for anywhere between 3 and 5 miles, although sometimes we're lucky to hit two miles.... haha.  The walks weren't something we could really do in our old life. We didn't feel safe enough or comfortable enough and it always seemed like our time was better spent in other ways. Here, though, we are greeted every morning by this sight:

Our mountains wish us good morning (taken 11/1/15 with the samsung S6 around 7:45am).

We really didn't think the walks were accomplishing much except for aching feet. (Pretty sure we have a muscle/tendon problem in the right foot, but no pain no gain, right?!). When Mom realized we were serious about the walking she decided we needed new shoes and that has helped a lot (stupid arch in the right foot is still killing us tho....shhh). We seriously had no shortage of aches and pains but we own a mirror and nothing seemed to be changing. It was getting pretty disappointing, which was leading to feelings of defeat and failure. Those feelings were, in turn, fueling some massive bad energy and I'm willing to bet causing us to overreact to other things. We were getting tired of seeing this (see picture below) and still feeling rejected and worthless (other things contribute to that feeling but this wasn't helping):

This a partial screen shot of our Fitbit Flex today (11/1/15).

The negative emotions were eating us alive. We were second guessing a lot of our recent major decisions and trying to figure out how we had screwed up so badly in life. We were trying to figure out what was wrong with us and why we are always rejected and/or left behind. It was just bad. If you've read other posts, you know how bad things got. Everyone in this house was dealing with their own problems and adjusting to their transitions in their own way. Everyone was battling big things... and we were sick. We spent almost all of last week with a bad cold and a mild fever. That helped NOTHING at all, especially because we couldn't safely go for our walks. We could barely make it safely across the driveway. 

Being down for the count last week, having to rest and not walk seemed like a great thing. It seemed so wonderful to not ache and not deal with the arch pain in our right foot. It continued to seem like that, but our life seemed to be falling apart at the same time. We were a mess, our life felt like a huge mess. 

Thursday of last week Mom insisted that we were not only going on our walk, but that we would complete two miles before coming home. Honestly, I (meaning me, Alayna) was pretty sure she had lost her mind because we were still running a slight fever so in my mind we were still sick. Sick kids don't go for walks. Sick kids binge on Netflix. I wanted us to binge on Netflix. Needless to say, if you've ever met my mother, we lost and we went for our 2 mile walk. We lived through it and Jenna at least, was pretty proud of us for getting it done. Then we went back to hanging out with Netflix. (side note: Netflix is pretty much our only friend here, so we're pretty attached...lol)

Friday morning comes around and Mom, once again, insists on a 2 mile walk. We ended up with close to 2.5 miles on Friday. 

By yesterday, we realized that when we don't walk, we miss a lot of benefits from walking. We miss our park, our mountain, and our trees.

More importantly, we miss out on the good feelings that come from walking. We've always heard that walking releases endorphins and raises mood, blah blah blah. I can honestly tell you that the blah blah blah is real. Our mood and our life was spiraling out of control because we weren't doing what we needed to do in order to take care of ourselves. No, we shouldn't be walking when we're sick but we could have tried sooner. Mom knew though. She knew how badly we relied on that, even when we didn't. She made the choice to force us back into it knowing we didn't feel well. 

That's not to say that our problems as a family were all due to a lack of walking. God I wish it were that easy. No, we as a family have a lot of work to do in order to make everyone feel welcome, safe, and happy. But we can make it better on ourselves and, in turn on our family, by keeping up with our walking. 

This morning, while we were hanging out in Mama's room watching her go through her laundry, she had us try on some pants. Almost everything she gave us to try on fit, and most of them were smaller than what we already had. She had noticed that we were struggling to keep our pants up. We noticed too, kinda, but figured we stretched them out or something. We never considered that we were ready for smaller pants. Her scale (which she only lets us use once a week) showed us today that we have lost 30.2 pounds since we moved here in August. That's huge. It's seriously huge and we never noticed. I spent a bit looking in the mirror today, and I really can't see it. The neighbor sees it. Aunt Leslie says she sees it in pictures. Mom says she sees it. We just don't.

What we do see: Our hair is growing back thicker and in much better shape, our nails are getting healthier, our blood sugar is almost always close to perfect and a blood sugar level of 90 feels great. When we first moved here 130 triggered a low reaction. Our average blood sugar sat around 300 and refused to budge.  

Today, after completing 3 miles and seeing the scale, the clothes fitting differently, and spending some not emotional, perfectly normal time with Mama, I feel good. Not only do I feel good, I feel hopeful, strong, and I feel a weird sort of peace. I don't really feel safe yet, that I think will come in time. I think I need to work on not pushing myself to feel safe. Pushing this system to feel something we aren't ready for or can't seem to grasp always seems to lead to disaster. I think I'm going to do my best to keep my sisters and I looking ahead and I'm going to keep building my support system. I love my family and I won't give up.

Alayna Jade