I Am Transformation, You Are Too

Sometimes I find with deep sadness that my name is Carol, like a Christmas carol.

My uncle described a crime that occurred every Christmas at a dinner when he had been drinking. My mother says I didn’t hear it, but he described a crime against humanity that recurred every Christmas eve. Suddenly, I understood the biases in his jokes as defending him against this pain.

I look at my Christmas dishes sometimes and think back in time to that moment.

I won’t burden you with the words. I did that to an audience once and they started to hear things that I didn’t even say. I realized at that moment that nobody really knows you; we are constantly transforming and evolving as human beings.

In the second grade, I remember my grandfather molesting me on a porch made out of marble slabs by his farmhouse under the pine trees. He told me that my body was basically a toy for playing.

There was an attic to the farmhouse where more happened to me and my cousins. I just remember that day when the whole family left me alone with him because that day I screamed at him to “stop” so loud that my great aunt must have heard me from the kitchen where she was doing the dishes.

I walked a line of danger for a long time, where I thought I could balance an unsafe environment with screaming “stop” in my own way. 

In that journey, I found alcohol was not my friend, and the most frightening things would happen when I would drink. Whether a drinking game or a trip to China where we drank the bar out of vodka, I learned the worst happened when I drank.

Relationships with men never worked for me, there would always be some drama and it was a reflection of the drama I was living. Everything about my life was out of control and I liked it that way, it was like being in the middle of abuse and saying “stop.”

The “stop” never seemed to stick till I started clinging to my therapist.

I saw her because the most painful drama of my life ended with me being suicidal. My father told me not to use the insurance because he didn’t want to get fired from his company. I got angry and stopped writing sad songs and picked up the phone and called her.

Our session turned her stomach, and she excused herself. But that day I began climbing out with her as a lifeline, one step at a time.

I wore the conservative clothing she told me to wear. I had emulated my definition of beauty, which was short and revealing. This type of clothing was my right to wear but did send a signal to men that I didn’t really want to send. I started respecting my body and mind by dressing differently. This was one symbolic step, mirrored by my decision to stop drinking, choosing to set boundaries, and asking for what I wanted from my life.

I chiseled out a career by taking baby steps that started with volunteering for tasks like sorting office papers and restoring a database demographic digit by digit. I quit going to the dangerous places I had become so accustomed to and decided to seek out marriage versus a whirlwind experience.

I learned to name my boundaries with sophistication and keep them.

With medication or two and by diving into the arts, I found some tranquility. I sang, I drew, I sculpted, and I let it not matter what I was creating. I released my feelings on the paper or with the camera. There were self-help books and creativity books. Best of all there was advocacy as I stood with other women to say “stop” in the National Human Trafficking Survivor Network.

There was education, where I got my master’s degree before my mind exploded, reliving my experiences over and over in psychotic episodes. My master’s degree allowed me to switch jobs. When things got rough due to sexual harassment or a moment of illness, there was always something else to move on to. I always land on my feet and have had more than nine lives.  

Above all my education has served me best. I climbed the corporate ladder with a certification in peer support and jumped off the ladder, all the while having a job, because my skills have always allowed me to do something meaningful in a paid capacity. While today I am locked into suicide prevention, the journey has always allowed me to assist others in creating meaningful ladders out of the turmoil of falling into a loss of emotional well-being.

Sometimes I create dramas by still holding secrets inside. I hold onto the discipline of my faith in Jesus Christ to draw me out; He is the father I never had that loves me always. Usually, secrets involve spending money on gifts or artistic adventures that my husband doesn’t know about. This is a small drama compared to my past experiences, but important nonetheless, because fiscal health is a big part of my well-being.

Sometimes I just get stuck in my traumas and just sit on the couch afraid to move. The laughter of my son and his love of basketball and acting draws me out. My husband encourages me to just get moving and get outside.

I wrote a whole wellness curriculum called Relational Health about how relationships are key to our health. It is these human connections that link us to moving forward on the goals of our lives. When we are alone, one can feel losses in a way that drags us down. When we receive that gift of empathy, we get unstuck and move onward in life. 

I am constantly transforming as a person, and I’ve learned that no one really knows a person. I am transforming in my faith, in my relationship skills, as a mother, as an artist, as a wife, and in my career. I am Carol, a name related to the joy of Christ’s birth at Christmas. And I am not a toy.