Leaving The War Zone: A Battered Mothers Memoirs For He Daughter
Chapter 8 Memories, Past, Present, Future
Mother, daughter and granddaughter.
A strong and powerful maternal bond created by God
for mothers and daughters only.
A Mother Hold’s
Her Daughters Heart Forever
Nineteen and half years, that’s how long I have lived in hell on earth. I was four months pregnant when I was first hit. Pregnant with my dear daughter at age 30 a pregnancy that I was told I could never get pregnant-- one I would never have, one that proved to be life threatening not only to my daughter but to myself. Then, throw in all the stomach punches…. And as the pregnancy continued the violence only increased. Until Rikki was taken emergency c-section, the Dr’s saying - about my daughter “prepare, she may not live, in fact it highly unlikely”. You did. All legs no brown fat and several weeks in the neonate intensive care unit. You lived.
After your birth, nothing else mattered. I was determined focuses like no other and hence began the next 18 years. My fight to be free of torture, to free my child to believe in a beautiful world to raise her with the goal that there is no limits to what she can dream what she can do and who she is.
The most special and most beautiful person, born out of the ashes of pain and suffering to be a wholesome, loving smart and wise person.
I try to write to you. I try. There has been such a ‘block’. Awhile back I threw all the documents of court litigation away. (Most never scanned as it happened before the age of technology.) It was all my life, it was you. It was painful all the pain all the truth all the lies, I disposed of. Literally it filled a semi tractor trailer, representing millions of dollars - that is plural the millions - of the fight for simple justice that never came. The whole – “The truth will always win” - never came. Not in the hell of the judiciary any ways. Please always believe what the heart tells you there is baby an Ultimate Justice, a beautiful Justice and that Justice is eternal.
With putting the legal away (that part of life now over) I am now able to look at my memories before we were separated. It doesn’t hurt like it did. In fact I even smile. It is as it should be.
You are 18 now, as of December 12, 2012 -- but still you will be trapped until age 23. That is when my Social Security Disability payments will run out for your dad - as payee to you, my dependent child. At this date the amount is about $800.00 a month. But in order for him to keep it he must keep you, and so you will continue school in a local community college, still living under his control, his transportation his, his, his, his…
One day, you will leave - but only allowed - when he knows without a doubt - that his control remains complete - and that you will never think to attempt to reach out to your mother. But you will think-- and once gone your mind will begin to question (yes I know and unheard of thing - dare to question - but is normal) as no longer will the ‘punishment’ for thinking about your mom be physically there. It will be subconsciously - scary at first, as you have been conditioned like “Pavlov’s dogs” to avert all such thinking. Evan Stark writes about this in Coercive Control.
Do not be afraid baby, but at the same time do not push it. Let it happen as it may, let your defenses block when it is too painful. And for many years this is what will happen.
When you turned 18 December 12. 2012 - It was and I really did not expect this - was my freedom. The titanic was no longer chained to my neck; I no longer was gasping holding my head up for each and every breath. It felt good. To the normal person it would be like the child has grown, now let her go and let her spread her wings and fly--- fly high, fly free. Our mantra baby from all those years ago and here it is back again. It’s the beginning of your life and the last that I will be able to even watch you from a distance, like I have watched you grow quietly from the sidelines, just a blurred face, a stranger who was always there at all your events. Me - Your mother.
High School Track will be coming soon next month; I will be at every single track meet. Your last of High school. I plan to stay throughout them all - in years past the physical pain many times had forced me to leave before the end - most meets out of town lasting 8 hours on a cold hard bench. Since my lower back was kicked out of place, the vertebrae not breaking only twisting the pain of sitting standing becomes too much. But this year, I will sit front seat front row at all track meets.
After all, the last time I see the most beautiful woman in the world, my precious, my heart, my every breath - my daughter.
Then in May 2013 - your high school graduation. Again, I will be on the front row. I will not cower nor be intimidated or frightened. With your graduation a set of luggage, a new international cell phone, my 3 T external drive. I hope as well to finish the collage you and I started. It got ruined but will hand clean each and every image you and I placed then use new clean clear Hodge- Podge (the stuff I placed on it turned everything cloudy white L ) Not thinking how important they were – memories- I had mostly blown it off, I know that now they need preserved and finished with love.
When I met you in the parking lot of your school (27 seconds - after so many years of no contact) and gave to you all the stuff you had asked me to keep safe for you from all these years gone by – years before all our contact was ended, (you smiled like you would at a family reunion when meeting an uncle bob who gave you something— someone you may have met once in your life when you were 6) you were polite and with a smile you accepted your gift box….. all your stuff from granny - well the important limited edition stuff, heirlooms.
This is when I realized that you too had absolutely no memory. Of not of just the decades past but even from just a few years ago.
In talking with another mother who had contact w her daughter and even regained custody of her daughter, her daughter too has absolutely no memory of even a few years ago. This mother’s daughter started college out of state, the mother worried that the memories will come and incapacitate her. I thinking of you and even worst, no contact for the better part of the last 10 years of your life. No just hanging out with your mom, talking, laughing, shopping—doing everything and nothing, things that most mothers and daughters have. Each other.
It was never that we feared each other—it was the fear of the punishment of seeing each other that we knew would happen. We feared it.
Again Evan Stark’s coercive control – that power of consequence, even when no longer does it exist—well for you now it does, but one day it will not, but the stripping of that autonomy will remain. You can read much about coercive control on the internet. I have met w Evan he is an amazing person. He also touches on the taking of a woman’s child as has happened with us as just one part of the coercive control. Human rights.
He explains where words cannot, it is not the single physical attack, and it is not so simple to just leave. It is a control that has never before been seen in any other crime victim, a control that long holds its victims’ across space and time.
The memories will come. One day. This is why I try to write now. So one day you can be validated set free from that pain. The mother above I was talking to - her daughter too. But she has her mom, although it is painful, when she should need to - her mother, she now knows and she will be ok.
My daughter, they have stripped away not only our autonomy but for you, all that is left is just another memory - of your mother. A memory that through the years has been chipped away and replaced with inaccurate and falseness. I can only say baby, that when you begin (and I will hopefully have released all else that holds me down by your graduation, will also mark the end and beginning for me) that I will be able to seriously leave the war zone and seriously write to my own distant memory. You my daughter.
I do not know you - but I do know the strength of the bonds of a mother and daughter. I know this from my own mother and I. We were the most close in the last 20 years, because of you J my momma was there when my heart opened, for the first almost 7 years of your life you were endowed with incredible beyond words, wise, compassion, strength wisdom and a love like no other.
I did not understand it then but my mother your granny had said “However you are at age 7 is exactly who you are as an adult” - this is your core platform. She was then preparing me for what she must have already foreseen… that we would not be together that justice would fail.
I miss my mom, I miss her terribly. Each spring I miss her more. As it always takes me to the ‘feel-good’ I had when we went home to Texas - cold in Kansas, swimming pool at granny’s J Home….. That’s where we were and the most peaceful time of my life, the constant laughter of you baby and granny, the amazing invisible but seen and amazingly felt - the strong bonds between you and granny. Two peas in a pod. Two hearts beating as one.
I know that all you had loved has been destroyed and replaced in your memories. I will try to put more up about the two of you—you and Granny. I think that your 1st know is the fact that if you have ever been told and then viciously dislike or think how evil or dangerous any one from your maternal family is—know that the worst—is actually the best. The more you were taught to fear someone the more that someone is very important and is to you. I would use that as a guide.
Incredible isn’t it? I as an old lady now, a smart one, even a psych nurse, could I have imagined the not only current placement of the years of torture but even the decades later. For you, for myself, for what was your maternal family. All but gone now. Granny, great gramps J he loved you so much! You him lol.
Memories, they are important when the mind is ready. No hurry no worry, just know that I unconditionally love you. When you were born my life changed, once a mother ALWAYS a mother, nothing else matters… everything I had ever done in my life the very full life as when I turned 18 I too was set free… and Baby I lived my life—the world was mine and I experienced it 100x more than the normal person… If I thought about something—I did it. J As for you my daughter - I wish this.
The sky is the limit!! I know that you recall that I used to sky dive… I know that for some reason you thought that was beyond cool. I guess looking back it was J but at the time it was just yet another of the beautiful things I experienced because I thought about it.. Think you want to do that. And do it - I did. You think it - baby girl and then it is yours – do it. Live life it really is a most amazing venture.
Then one day (I pray- a very long time away) you will become a mother. J and all that you have done will still be memories and there but as a mother God has connected you to your child and a daughter mother bond is even more profound because we are the creators of life, a magic if you will made into us, mother is humanity, that’s just how God made us and really baby although our experience has been nothing except harrowing, that golden thread is still there and one day we meet again and no words will be needed. Like I and my mother, we just picked up where we were…. (I had stopped talking to my mother ten years prior to your birth—I don’t even know why—some silly stupid-ness that seemed important when I was a bratty kid through the years I had long forgotten why--) But when we did meet, and Rikki it was you my darling, nothing else mattered.
My mother was and is my very best friend. The last time I saw her, I was able to see her as not just my friend, your granny but as a mother herself. The wooden statute – (I gave to you in your b-day box) a tree carving --- from the same tree branching into a mother and another branch into a daughter was the last xmas gift she gave me before she died. Instantly I loved it – thinking of you and I—and although my beautiful mother loved her daughter—me--- as I love my daughter –you. She said “You know, I too am a mother who loves her daughter more than anything”. My most treasured of all—but knowing that I needed for you to have this – as with all granny’s heirlooms- it was time to give to you.
I will never forget the pain in her face when she gave it to me—not from the painful terminal illness that took her soon after. But of the pain she felt because she was powerless to stop the pain of her daughter. Myself. I boarded the plane to come back to Kansas to as granny said “Fight for my granddaughter”. That was the last time I saw her alive.
It was also the last time you and I -- 2nd and 3rd generation had any further contact.
Though out this past 18 years, we were allowed only a few supervised visits -in a year – many years not even that…. This is how you grew up. Perhaps with the paid hours of supervised visits maybe combined a Month? Then again perhaps not even that….. In all your 18 years.
But like granny said, we are bound and it is always there. All through eternity.
"Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Sometimes we must interfere.”
- Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor
