Return of the Word

Then there were times when

    The poetry flowed.

My words fell on paper,

    My creativity glowed.

*

The writing was easy,

   The meanings were clear.

My inner child,

    Always was near.

*

Then came the hurting,

     The word flow did cease.

I spiritually died,

    I knew no more peace.

*

Long years of silence,

    By my poet child.

I tried to be happy,

    Inside I was wild.

*

It grieved me to hear,

    The silence within.

I wanted so badly,

    The words to begin.

*

Years of discovery,

    Led me to causes.

I worked and recovered,

    Without many pauses.

*

I went back to Tulsa,

    My dead father to see.

To tell him I loved him,

    To set old hurts free.

*

It’s now a year later,

    The word flow returns.

Creative freedom,

    Again mine to learn.

*

Now there are new times,

    When the poetry flows,

The words fall on paper,

    My creativity grows.

*

Yet it seems like a new world,

    My heart is at ease.

Not flowing from hurting,

    My words are at peace.

*****

This poem was written in 1999, but I’m having this experience so strongly now that it’s really relevant today.

Photo credit:

“Inspiration” photosteve101 @ Flickr.com Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

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Walk In His Shoes

My Dad disappeared

For about a year

When I was seventeen.

The last I saw him,

We left him

Passed out drunk

On the living room couch.

Relatives came and got

My Mom, sisters and me

Leaving Dad

Who wouldn’t quit drinking

Who wouldn’t accept help.

I thought

I might ever see him again.

 *

Later

He returned to our lives

A changed man.

He sobered up

Got back his old job

Built back his old life.

*

But twenty years later

After he died

I realized

I never knew what happened

When he disappeared.

When he was on the edge

Of killing himself

With the drink.

Rumor had it

That he worked

The wheat harvest

Something he had done

In college.

Wheat Harvest

*

I started to write

The story of what I thought

Might have happened.

I realized

The piece I was missing

Was what it would be like

To work on

The wheat harvest.

*

I said to a friend

“Someday…

Someday,

If I ever want to

Really explore

My Dad’s story.

I might just have to

Work the wheat harvest.

My friend Pat

Listened quietly.

 *

Later he said

“You’ve talked about

working the wheat harvest

three or four times.

I just want to mention

Someday – if you want

To work the wheat harvest.

I have relatives in Oklahoma

Who do that each year.”

*

I did what I do

When hit with

The unexpected.

I sat there

Numbly,

Quietly.

And then said

“Thanks for telling me.”

Talk about upping the ante

On a spiritual quest

To walk in

My Dad’s shoes.

My friend had

Certainly done that.

Now I was left

To put it all out there,

Or leave it as “someday.”

*

I finally called Pat

And asked if he would

Do me a favor.

Check with his relatives

To see if I might

Join their harvest crew

For the summer.

*

Meanwhile,

I tried to figure out

If this was

Completely nuts.

Quit my job,

Go off and work

On a harvest crew

To find out about

My Dad’s story.

I checked it out

With Scott – a good friend

Who was really grounded.

He’d give me a solid answer,

Besides, he was

An accountant.

Logical, linear.

I later realized

I was secretly hoping

He’d tell me

“This idea is crazy”

So I could give up

The whole thing.

Instead he said

“Makes a lot of sense

I think you ought to do it!

It will be part of

Your healing.”

Major gulp!

*

Two months later,

I was living in a trailer

In Lone Wolf Oklahoma

With six high school farm kids

Learning to drive a huge truck

Used to haul grain.

And following

My Dad’s story.

*

Bunk trailers and work pickups

Cara - the grain truck I drove on harvest

It was the adventure

Of a lifetime.

We followed the wheat

As it ripened.

Living like nomads.

It was a world

I had never seen before.

Living in an old house trailer

In one place for two weeks

Then moving,

Trailers, trucks, combines

A caravan

To the next farm

As the wheat ripened

From Oklahoma

To North Dakota.

Combines and tractors

*

Combines dumping grain on trucks

I learned many things.

I grew up in the city

But had the heart of a country boy.

I love driving a tractor

Or a wheat combine.

I don’t do well on little sleep.

Living in a trailer,

Farm boys are not

Particularly neat

When Momma’s not there

To clean out the tub.

When pulling wheat from

A plugged up combine

The dust really itches,

When it gets down your neck.

 *

And special things happened.

    I got to visit the filmsite

From Dances With Wolves.

We saw Mount Rushmore,

Me at Dances With Wolves filmsite

My first pic of Mount Rushmore

Both affected me deeply.

All in all

It was a magical summer.

*

It gave me the truth

About what I believe

Happened to my Dad.

How he had

A spiritual awakening

And realized

He had to return

To clean up his past.

I finished the story

I wanted to tell.

I wrote it as a novel.

It will be called

“Nothing Left To Lose.”

 *

But as I look back

What Pat said

When the idea

First came up

Turned out to be the truth.

He had said

“Dan, you think you’re going

On the wheat harvest,

To learn about your Dad.

I think this trip

Will be about you.

You will learn about

Yourself.

Heal yourself.

Claim your own power.”

*

He was right!

I often look back

On the wheat harvest experience

As a turning point in my life.

When I claimed the truth

Dan the writer

Of my path

Not to follow the business world

   Of my Dad and my friends,

But to claim my birthright

As a writer

Dan the writer

A teller of stories.

And a country boy.

I am completely convinced

I did the right thing

In going on harvest

To walk in Dad’s shoes.

Because I found – myself.

********************

Photo Credits:

Photos by Dan L. Hays Copyright – all rights reserved.

“The Wheat Harvest” the slowlane @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

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September 2010 Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse: Inner Child

Welcome to the Inner Child edition of the Carnival Against Child Abuse.  We will honor our inner child, and share how that child has been such a vital part of our path to healing!

Blog Carnivals are a great opportunity to sample a variety of Blog offerings on a common topic. There are so many child abuse recovery and advocacy resources out there. We hope you find something of use to you! I have enjoyed reading and participating in this Blog Carnival and am happy to give back by hosting it this month.

Inner Child Themed Posts

Patricia Singleton offers several posts from her Inner Child Letters series.  The first is Three Year Old Adultress Revisited,  where she says “A three-year-old can’t be an adultress, so why did I call myself that name? This is a letter written to that inner child.”

The second post is Grieving, an essential part of the process of working with our inner children.

The third in the Inner Child series is Processing, and Patricia admits that “Processing the feelings and the grief that has come up with these letters was harder than I expected it to be.”

Next Patricia shares the Three Year Old Adultress Carries The Shame of Incest, and wonders “How can memories that I don’t even have be so hard to let go? Shame is one of the most crippling emotions to carry around from abuse.”

Patricia then writes Dear Seven Year Old Patricia, where she says “I don’t know what you’re protecting my mind from, but I thank you.”

These entries are from Patricia’s blog  Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker.

Marj aka Thriver tells us I Resolve to Comfort My Inner Child.  “In this post, I wrote a poem to my inner child, promising to comfort her and protect her.  These are words I never heard from my own mother.  But now I can re-parent myself and heal.”   She also shares with us Helping Your Inner Child Help You.  “I  wrote this entry for a guest post at another blog on the topic of PTSD.  I did some research for this post and list some books about the inner child and also some of the strategies I have come up with over the years for comforting my inner child.”  Both of these posts are from her blog Survivors Can Thrive.

JBR shares SIX YEAR OLD LIVING IN AN ADULT from the blog JUST BE REAL, about “this six year old” living in an “adult” body, trying to form adult words to what I am feeling, but having still the mentality of a six year old.

Dan L. Hays shares his post If You Had Any Sense, from his blog Thoughts Along The Road To Healing.  A casual comment by his father led him to betray his inner child and spend many years suffocating in the business world.

Advocacy & Awareness

Kari submits About New Tribes Mission Abuse, from the blog New Tribes Mission Abuse, “where our goal is for other survivors to find support. Please help us spread the word of what happened to us, so it can end here.  Please help us show that disclosure can help the victim.”

Deb Serani shares Mentally Ill Stuffed Animals from her blog Dr. Deb.  “This post looks at mentally ill stuffed animals and the stigmatizing images they convey.”

Enola shares For Sale – Humans – human trafficking from her blog Enola.  She writes: “This article came to my attention through work I’m doing on a gang committee. I learned about the huge underground movement in human trafficking.”

Hope offers us Just For Today from her blog Hope For Trauma.  She shares “This journey that I am on towards whatever it becomes, is traveled one day, one hour and one minute at a time.”

Tracie reminds us Rape – It Still Happens (even in Africa) from her blog From Tracie.

Emily Rossiter brings to us Mental Illness: The Answer to How Can I Help? from her blog Surviving Limbo.  She says: “I’m an adult survivor of child abuse. I have a laundry list of mental illness labels. A friend of mine with OCD and I were talking about how difficult it is to tell people how to help us. Thus, I wrote this post.”

Thegiftedhands shares The Child Witch Abuse in West Africa from the blog Planetprose.

 

 

Art Therapy

Paula offers us From Victim To Choicemaker from her blog Recovery In Art.  She says: “a collage created during art therapy enabled me to face my deepest wound and let me overcome the trauma on a way I never expected.”

Healing & Therapy

Meggs Fitzwater shares with us Call Me Crazy from Speaking Out, “a blog about coming to terms with the inner child theory and integrating it into my healing journey.”

Rick Belden submits Some Thoughts On Forgiveness from his blog Rick Belden.com.  Rick shares his thoughts on forgiveness, such as viewing forgiveness as an active and a sacred process.

Paula offers her post I Am A Duckling from her blog Becoming Myself.  She writes: “I would like to share an exercise from the trauma therapy I just finished. During a session of integrative body psychotherapy I got asked to select two symbols. One for my Inner Child and one for Big Paula. Once again I was surprised about the insights I got from this apparently so simple exercise. Grateful beyond measure. I hope this exercise might help you along too!”

Splinteredones offers how to Cut Panic w/Meditation, qi gong, from her blog Splinteredones.  “How to use qi gong and the basics of meditation to control anxiety panic and the other crud that sneaks in.”

Dr. Kathleen Young suggests to Love Yourself With Gentleness and Compassion, from her blog Dr. Kathleen Young: Treating Trauma in Chicago. 10 steps to fostering gentleness and compassion in yourself.

In The News

Jay Smith submits 10 Laws Passed After Horrible Crimes from Criminal Justice University.

Survivor Stories

Marjorie McKinnon offers Returning to the Scene of The Crime from Blog Posts for Margie Marybelle McKinnon.  “Marjorie is the founder of the Lamplighters international movement for recovery from incest and childhood sexual abuse.  We currently have 59 chapters in 9 countries.  Our Blog site is at http://www.thelamplighters.org.”

Hope submits List of Life from her blog Hope For Trauma, saying “I guess one could call it a ‘bucket list’, but I think it is a thriving list.”

Ellen Brown offers us Why In The World I Transitioned Into Coaching from her blog Stepping Stones.  Ellen says “This is a blog post about why I decided to become a coach after healing from child sexual abuse.”

Emily Rossiter shares The Story Of A Runaway, Or How I Escaped Hell, from her blog Surviving Limbo.  Emily writes “The most terrifying moment of my life happened sometime in March of ‘92.”

Poetry

Echoing the sentiment of a former host, I will intentionally not comment on poetry, but allow it space to breathe without interpretation.

 

Laura Schultz shares Solitude and Evolving from LauraSchultzNow.

Jade Fields offers And so it is from her blog Sublimely Ridiculous.

Dan L. Hays submits Heartbeat from Thoughts Along The Road to Healing.

—

Thank you so much for making this a content-packed Blog Carnival edition!  It was an honor to host this month!  You can submit your blog articles and art  to the next edition of the Carnival Against Child Abuse here.

—

Photo credit: Painting the Co-Op. Tony Crider @ Flickr.com Creative Commons.  Some rights reserved.

 

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Upon The New Year

Previously published in a treatment center newsletter as a staff submission, May 1990.

My name is Hope, I offer you,
The promise of a life so new,
Out of self will, we have to climb,
So let’s start now, one day at a time.

There is a place where we have to start,
In bringing you a loving heart.
If you view your life with honesty,
Is it unmanageable, can you see?

At first it is painful, we confess,
To admit you are powerless,
There is one thing which we can say,
There is no easier, softer way.

Second, a gift you can receive,
As in your own time you come to believe.
A Higher Power can give you back,
The sanity, you feel you lack.

Thirdly, now you can decide
That God is really on your side.
Your will and life you can be handing,
To the care of the God of your understanding.

My name is Hope, and have you guessed?
The tools with which you can be blessed.
I offer the Twelve Steps to you,
Work them all, ‘til you are through.

They will help you learn a way at last,
To clean up the wreckage of the past.
Be in tune with God, that’s the plan
And with yourself, and fellow man.

For it leads to spiritual awakening,
So carry the message, that’s the thing.
Yes my name is Hope and I wish you to be,
Happy, Joyous and oh, so Free.

 

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