Skip this section if you don’t want to know the details. Warning: This content contains descriptions of severe child abuse.

I was sexually abused by my paternal grandfather starting at age 2 years old. He took every chance to fondle and kiss me and my cousins. He told the smooth lies used by those who manipulate vulnerable children. I learned secrets and games on the bed and in the shower. His wife knew about the abuse while it was happening. It happened in her bedroom while she stayed in the kitchen. It happened in church while she sat next to us in the pew. He touched underneath my skirt and his monogrammed Bible covered his hand. He was serving as a respected deacon. It happened at the lake house, the garage, the truck, and every other place he controlled. His wife knew because it happened to her, her daughter, and her nieces. So many women I loved knew about him before I was abused. They did not speak up to stop the cycle or prevent the abuse to others. They internalized anger, disconnection, and helplessness.

I made an outcry at 4 or 5. The family kept quiet. My grandfather was released after one week in jail because my statement to authorities did not include the penetration of his erect penis. My dad let his parents continue to babysit me because he was busy selling drugs and collecting bed partners during our weekend visitations. If I wasn’t with his parents, I was watching dad hiding guns from cops, counting cash, and getting drunk and high with his friends. I continued to be sexually abused by Papaw until age 6 or 7. By then I knew exactly what his other family members thought about protecting me. They didn’t. 

Mom did great at saving me from dad’s side of the family. It was her brave and only parental act. Otherwise, mom let her own extensive damage affect those closest to her because she couldn’t get help. Her reasons for that are her own. I know that she has many barriers and resistance to change. Like my dad, her home life was horrifying well before I existed. A drunk driver ran into her parents’ home, burying her baby sister under a pile of bricks and rubble. Her father, a doctor, was not able save the baby with a trachea bypass made from a ballpoint pen. Her mother, already a hysterical ball of anxiety before the death, subsequently had chunks of her brain electrocuted in the name of 1960s-era mental health. My mother was rigidly maneuvered, overly protected, and expected to perform life at consistently high levels of intelligence and talent. By age 15, she was primed to rebel from her strict, perpetually grieving parents with the first scruffy stoner who showed her the attention she was desperate to receive. That burnout was my dad. He was already prescribed heavy doses of lithium for what they called manic depression. 

My parents crashed their unhealed damage and dysfunction into each other. It was hard drugs, loud music, and parties. Just reckless kids having fun. I was there too, a baby in the thick of it. They were completely self-absorbed, abusing amphetamines, and determined to prove to their own terrible parents that they were in control of their lives. When they inevitably divorced 5 years later, they each moved fast and hard into other messy relationships (on repeat for the rest of my life).

I realize now in looking back how I must have felt as a child. I was afraid of everything and never safe. My nervous system switched to survival mode and stayed there for many years. 

My maternal grandfather died when I was 3 years old and my mom was 23 years old. No one had taught her how to parent, one of her parents was gone, and so was her husband. Her young life had become overwhelming. She married a man 14 years older within one year of her divorce. 

My stepfather was an artist. The way he crafted and carved wood sculptures evoked strong reactions from art lovers. He encouraged those reactions with his own vibrant charisma, which was very compelling, and with his ridiculous egomania, which was dangerous. His cult of personality included several other impressive talents, an intricate web of lies about his past connections and experiences, some mixed delusions of grandeur, heavy substance abuse, and a lot of excuses about why his behavior was okay. He very much fancied himself to be the dashing and debonair artist/singer/rake. He enthralled my mother and she was immediately on board with his endless charades and facades. He started to sexually abuse me almost immediately. 

He leered at me, unclothed me while drunk, “taught” me to shower, drugged me with cough syrup, showed me sexual content in movies and magazines, commented on my body and weight, and “accidentally” left his balls hanging out while wearing shorts. He left doors open because he wanted me to see him having sex with my mother. He locked me out of the house for hours at a time to watch porn that he left in the VCR. He massaged me to ask where he was “allowed” to touch me. When I was 13, he splashed battery acid onto me purposely, then became dramatically insistent that he assist with my shower for safety reasons. When I was 14, he encouraged me to masturbate with her vibrator, and later made coughing noises outside my window to peek if I had done it. 

Mom allowed her husband to abuse me sexually. She convinced me it wasn’t the same as my previous abuse. She explained that he needed to view the female form for his art, or that it was an accident, or that it was situationally necessary in some way that he had explained to her afterwards. I believed her when she said it was different from my past abuse, because indeed it was. I was rarely touched directly on the genitals.

I slowly stretched my undeveloped brain to the painful betrayal and began to frame my perspective to be more like hers. Incidents happened randomly with long stretches in between, and her calm yet stern responses remained the same over time. She did not think that the explicit  incidents I described were abusive. It definitely didn’t seem like she was urgently trying to resolve a problem. I knew she had protected me from abuse before, so that also helped shape how my brain responded. I trusted her when I needed an adult to take care of me. She looked the other way when he made advances towards my under-18 girlfriends, her friends, and his own daughter.

Rather than being shocked by him and protective of me, mom was jealous because he wanted to be with me. This set up a lifetime of competition with my mother, but I had no idea I was participating. I figured out much later that he was careful because he didn’t want me to perceive unwanted abuse. As he wore me down over time, he could remain blameless if he was able to cast doubt on my explanations.

I was supposed to want to be in a relationship with him. My stepfather delusionally believed himself to be so powerful and attractive that he could have a relationship with both mother and daughter. He was outside my window because he wanted to be invited inside. He wanted me to flirt back with him, show a peek of my breast, enjoy myself with him, and develop a mutually beneficial sexual relationship. I did not do any of those things, but he tried for several years as their marriage declined. I was five years old when they got married and I was 15 when their divorce was final.  

From birth until I ended our relationship after 33 years, my mom humiliated, shamed, and abused me with her own raw emotional wounds and unresolved past issues. We were best friends and I was encouraged to pursue interests that involved her in some way. Piece by piece,  she controlled and managed every aspect of my life. When I wasn’t left alone or locked out of the house, she scrutinized me carefully to ensure there were no disruptions to her own outward appearance as a quality parent. She controlled my food, weight, appearance, clothes, activities, and friends. She came into my dressing room and closet to berate my body while I was naked. She restricted my food intake to the point of starvation while I found fast food wrappers in the back of her car. She commented on the perfectly normal smell of my feces in my private bathroom. 

She allowed everyone else in my life (friends, partners, family members) to hurt me also, and she led the charge with negative comments and bullying. She calculated my responses and used them to blame me. I felt and acted severely depressed for many years as she told everyone who would listen about how abused and depressed I was. Her explanations never involved any acknowledgement of her own actions or neglect. Her criticism was constant except when she needed to praise me to make herself look good. She had an insatiable and impossible need for me to react to her every whim and emotion. When she couldn’t exert control over me, she spun out of control, and that was also my responsibility. Over the years, this pressure to assume forced behaviors created a facade of fake personality that I wore as my real one. The false me became real to me because it was all that showed. My authentic self all but disappeared. 

I never could have understood the dynamic as a child. No child should have to live with that kind of understanding. Almost 30 years later, I worked with a therapist and realized the extensive nature of the distorted thoughts that made all of these lies into my truth. I had been taught to manipulate my own mind for the benefit of others. I felt that I was worth nothing of value beyond my connection to the needs of my supposed caregivers. I was hiding from my own conscious viewpoint because I couldn’t face what my authentic self knew about the facts of the matter.

It was like living in a cult and being brainwashed by the leaders, but it was just the three of us. We were posing as a real family.