AHA! MOMENT

[janbear]

Message
Clean42day
Moderator



Age: 3
Joined: 07 Dec 2005
Posts: 302


Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2006 12:36 pm Post subject: AHA! MOMENT

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AHA! MOMENT
Tyler Perry


My father was a carpenter. He used his hands to pour concrete and hammer nails. He also used his hands to beat me.

I was a tall child, but sickly—I had asthma—and when I went to work with him, the sawdust made me cough. I preferred staying home, writing and drawing. I conjured up other worlds: worlds in which I didn't worry about being poor, in which I was someone else's child, a child who lived in a mansion and had a dog. My father—a man with a third-grade education who was orphaned at 2 and sent to work in the fields at 5—understood only the physical. He thought he could beat the softness out of me and make me hard like him.

When I was 21, I left my house in New Orleans and headed to Atlanta to be a playwright. I got a day job as a bill collector and scrimped and saved to put on my play I Know I've Been Changed— a musical about recovering from an abusive childhood. But even though I was writing about recovering, I wasn't doing it. Every day I felt angry and bitter and terribly lonely. I rarely dated, and if a woman told me she loved me, I headed for the door. My play bombed; 30 people came on opening weekend. I put it on the next year and the year after that, and each time, it bombed again. Finally, 28 years old, out of money and months behind on my rent, I started sleeping in my car. When the car broke down, I asked my father to cosign on a new one, as he had just done for my sister (the light-skinned sister he adored). When he refused, I forged his signature. And when the car got repossessed, he called me, yelling. Sitting in that little room I'd just scraped together enough money to rent, listening to him berate me, something snapped. Something dormant in me woke up, and I began to yell back.

I told him that he'd hated me since I was born, that I didn't deserve the things he'd done to me. Everything I'd ever felt or thought—even things I hadn't been aware of—came out. When I was done, the line was silent for a long time. And then, for the first time ever, my father said, "I love you."

After we hung up, I felt light, empty, and exhausted. I knew that I would never again look at my father in hurt or anger. But in a strange way, I also sensed that something had died. I sat crying for hours, as if I were in mourning. My energy source, my fight, the rage that had moved me every day—it was all gone.

Slowly but surely, I began to fuel my days with joy instead of fury. That year—call it coincidence, call it karma—my play sold out. Then it sold out again, and then again. I began to write new plays, and the theme of forgiveness runs through them all. It's simple: When you haven't forgiven those who've hurt you, you turn your back against your future. When you do forgive, you start walking forward.
____________________________________________

although Tyler's experience did not include childhood sexual abuse the healing is the same.................

no matter what kind of abuse we endured it leaves emotional and spiritual scars that left untreated...deepen and affect every aspect of our lives karmically. everyone's journey of healing is a personal one and includes as many paths as there are people. some of us learned to disassociate from our pain and splinter off parts of ourselves, some turned to drugs or alcohol to make life more bearable. as we begin to peel away the layers of the onion what we find at the core is a deep spiritual woundedness, that radiates outward.

we all must be willing to stand in the middle of that woundedness, face it, enbrace it, get angry over it, grieve it, accept it, and then begin to give ourselves permission to forgive others. at the end of all my therapy sessions that dealt with any particular issues no matter what it was.....forgiveness was the key that unlocked the door to move forward. it was a long and painful journey to the door of forgiveness. but worth every step I took. the freedom I have found on the other side of forgiveness has empowered me to make my past my greatest asset to help others. suddenly all the senseless abuse I endured takes on a new meaning when I can use it to encourage, support, and empower others to believe that they can heal too.

I remember reading these three books " A Child Called It', 'the Lost Boy', 'a Man Named Dave' -- by Dave Pelzer; Paperback and was so inspired by this mans story of tragic abuse/neglect and torture(True story of the worst case of child abuse ever reported in the history of the U.S.) who came full circle to not only heal but to triumph in the face of it....and had not only reclaimed his wounded spirit and nursed it back to health....he is now world renowned for holding seminars to help others onto the path of healing.

It was his story that finally prompted me to pick up the phone and call the Local SARS (sexual assult recovery survivors) center here in town to begin my journey too. very simply - I wanted what he had found....
FREEDOM, contentment, peace, and acceptance.

what my jouney has give me is so much more......empowerment to live in today and to move freely into my future with wisdom from my past.

"We do not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it" because I am only one person....but I just might be the only person in the room who can relate to someone elses pain and support them or encourage them that the healing is difficult work...and sometime the most painful work we could ever do.....but it is not impossible. every one of us are capable and able when we add willingness to face our greatest fears. (ourselves and our abuse). A burden shared is a burden cut in half. it is so much easier when we walk through it together.

Light and love

Gail


_________________
"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, we can all start from now and make a brand new ending"
~Carl Bard