The Memory Bird:
Survivors of Sexual Abuse
Edited by Caroline Malone, Linda Farthing, & Lorraine Marce
Temple University Press, 1997

Like Dangerous Families, The Memory Bird is an amazing anthology of writing by abuse survivors, free from intervention or direction by psychological “experts.”

Its rareness (at least to me) comes not only in presenting the voices of sexual abuse survivors, but in the particular community involved: survivors of all sorts from New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

The authors range from utterly unknown to nearly famous activists, pouring their hearts out sometimes for the first time; and the anthology’s editors are no slackers themselves.

Caroline Malone is an artist and an activist for survivors’ rights and needs. She is involved with – in fact, she’s the founder of – a successful self-help network for sexual abuse survivors which began in 1989.

Lorraine Marce educates people on the psychological effects of sexual abuse and the rights of children, via workshops, lectures, and political lobbying.

Linda Farthing is a therapist with seventeen years of experience in working with sexual abuse survivors of all ages, and manages her own family therapy center.

With such a political group, it may be no surprise that this book stands out in one other important way: its political awareness. The art, stories, letters, poems, and essays within its covers run the emotional gamut, but unlike many books about abuse, this one has a special place in its heart for rage.

The Memory Bird is divided into different sections with names like “Claiming the Right to Feel Pain” and “Learning To Dance.” Each section illustrates vividly the struggle to break the rule of silence and shame and speak out, as well as the beauty and strength of each person’s recovery. But my favorite section by far was the last: “You Want a Witness?”

They end the book with a bang. One review of the book remarks that this section is about recovered memories and “helpful comments on false memory syndrome.” This is what we call exceedingly subtle sarcasm.

This section is beautiful. The whole book is beautiful, in the particular way that truth is beauty and people sharing their truth is beautiful and the feelings and the strength and…. But you know, in this last section there is some TRUTH. Ass-stomping, how-dare-you, get-your-fucking-ass- out-here-motherfucker kind of truth, in which everyone who ever said “You know, that incest happened a long time ago, you need to just forget it and get on with your life,” or “Well, you know, kids can really be very flirtatious, and….” or “Well, at least you’re experienced,” is utterly called on their shit.

It’s a wonderful little book, full of good writing and especially of people being very open about a subject which has for so long been hermetically sealed. I think in many ways the angry parts make it easier to read, because anger is easier on many people than grief. This is the sort of book which inspires plenty of emotion.

I have always loved the Little House books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read them many times as a child; I especially loved Little House in the Big Woods, with its holiday stories of peppermint stick candy and rag dolls and dresses with buttons that look just like fat juicy blackberries. And the pig’s bladder balloon! And the stories-within-a-story of Pa’s childhood, a trillion years ago. That must be the one, too, where they make maple sugar candy in the snow, because the dress is at the sugaring party at their relatives’ house through the woods. There’s a lot of great food in that story.

And I LOVE reading @HalfPintIngalls on twitter. (The “@” is just how usernames show up on Twitter.) It’s someone’s hilarious rendition of what it would be like if Laura Ingalls Wilder, as she is portrayed in those books, were Twittering. She has the slightly sarcastic bite of teenage Laura, a good dose of historical parody, and a lot of just plain funny. “Pa says if the blizzards keep up there’s going to be a ‘donner party.’ Whatever that is, it’s high time we had some FUN around here. Hurrah!”

So today while I was catching up on some of HalfPint’s twitter posts, I ended up at the Wikipedia article on Wilder and found that, although her daughter Rose Wilder Lane helped write the Little House books, Laura did quite a bit of writing on her own – in large part as a columnist for The Missouri Ruralist (which still exists!), writing a regular column called “As a Farm Woman Thinks.”

(She wrote it as “Mrs. A. J. Wilder,” which confused me until I remembered the olden days less than a century ago, when otherwise perfectly normal sane women took not only their husbands’ last names but their WHOLE ENTIRE NAMES as their married names. So you’d call someone Jane because you knew her, but when you invited her to your formal dinner party it would be “Mrs. Albert E. Hannigan.” I used to work for my college’s alumnae association – it was a women’s college, so we got to spell it like that, even though technically that leaves out the boy graduate students and the trannyboy alums of all kinds – and even in 1999, we’d still frequently have to address thank-you notes that way. It was just What Was Done, for so many women; Tradition, disconnected from any sort of rights or oppression. But that’s another story….)

I googled her writing, of course. And I found one of her columns so far, which I thought was so excellently suited to the subject matter at hand, and tied so well in with the last entry here, that I would like to share it with you in its (short) entirety. It is, in part, about the way in which we judge others is really a reflection of where we are. Which is very recovery.

In 12-step programs, the fourth step in large part involves exploring our resentments and fears, and what part we play in them; in doing that work, I’ve repeatedly found that my resentment of others is just me projecting my self-judgment onto them. Like, if I internalized the idea, growing up, that I shouldn’t take up space, it just plain riles me up when other people barge around the supermarket aisle with their enormous carts, taking up not only their own space but the little space I thought I was allowed. Of course, that’s not what I think is going on at the time – I just think “how rude! That person is in my way! I hate them! I hate this store! Damn yuppies! Taking up all the space! Why don’t you leave your cart in one place and walk to find things like I do! I am in a hurry! Get out of my way!” And in reality, they’re probably just doing the best they can to navigate the store – maybe it didn’t occur to them that they could leave the cart off to the side, or maybe they have a good reason not to right then. But when I look at them through the lenses of my own abuse history, all I see is red.

But what struck me more about this article, the first time I read it, was the way that our vision of the world around is different when we are “blue” than when we are happy, even though we are looking at the same situations, people, and objects. It is so easy to focus on just the negative, and find it everywhere – in fact, it is so easy to choose to focus on the positive too, but when we are stuck on the negative it’s very hard to see that. And our negative thinking argues, “If it’s easy to find the negative everywhere, why would I look at the positive? That’s just self-delusion! The bad stuff is just as prevalent as the good, and if I focus on it, I will know where to find it and how to avoid it!” Sounds perfectly logical, but in fact it is madness, because it’s not a matter of knowing both of them are there, equally: framing the world as a series of pitfalls and crises poisons our lives and obscures all of the good stuff. What we focus on grows: whether it’s the good or the bad, what we see and think about spreads out like ink on wet paper, slowly eliding anything else from our experience.

But you don’t have to take my word for it; here is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s own insights on the matter, with enormous thanks to DakotaGirl for finding and sharing it. I hope she shares more. And if you are at all interested in these books or that historical time, I think you too will love her blog. She has some amazing stuff on there – but I guess that is obvious, since she seems to be the only one on the web with copies of this writing!

A WONDERFUL way has been invented to transform a scene on the stage, completely changing the apparent surroundings of the actors and their costumes without moving an article. The change is made in an instant. By an arrangement of light and colors the scenes are so painted that with a red light thrown upon them, certain parts come into view while other parts remain invisible. By changing a switch and throwing a blue light upon the scene, what has been visible disappears and things, unseen before appear, completely changing the appearance of the stage.

This late achievement of science is a good illustration of a fact we all know but so easily forget or overlook-that things and persons appear to us according to “the light we throw upon them” from our own minds.

When we are down-hearted and discouraged, we speak of looking at the world thru blue glasses; nothing looks the same to us; our family and friends do not appear the same; our home and work show in the darkest colors. But when we are happy, we see things in a brighter light and everything is transformed.

How unconsciously we judge others by the light that is within our­selves, condemning or approving them by our own conception of right and wrong, honor and dishonor! We show by our judgment just what the light within us is.

What we see is always affected by the light in which we look at it so that no two persons see people and things alike. What we see and how we see depends upon the nature of our light.

A quotation, the origin of which I have forgotten, lingers in my mind: “You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window thru which you must see the world.”

Gratitude is a huge tool in 12-step programs. People often make gratitude lists, or find other ways to have “an attitude of gratitude” – to focus on what is positive and the ways in which they are showered with support, rather than giving in to the urge to grouch around and make everything negative.

I used to see that as a burden. Like, OHHH, you should be GRATEFUL for what you have. Like SUCK IT UP! There will always be someone worse off than you, so you can’t be justifiably upset about anything! You have to make like you are happy about it all! Or like a threat: be grateful or I’ll give you something to really be unhappy about!

Eventually I let go of my resentments around it and learned to use it as a tool, to practice thinking about all the great stuff in my life or the overlooked silver lining in whatever is pissing me off. Like people say, what we put our focus on grows. Our minds work like microscopes, zooming in on great or horrible details until they fill our entire field of vision and seem like the whole universe.

But it’s only recently that I figured out that gratitude equals joy. Being grateful about things just means ENJOYING them.

I like this much better. It suggests that “having an attitude of gratitude” means I get to ENJOY my life. That I can go around just looking for things to enjoy about what I am doing. The sun, the wind, walking outside, seeing someone I like, being at work, not being at work, having a cool idea to think about, eating some chocolate, whatever. There’s a lot to enjoy in my life. And that means I get to use this idea to work on being present in my life, which is a lot easier than trying to, separately, be present AND every so often list things I am grateful for. It means integrating joy into my every day – and not just that, but that I am SUPPOSED to have a joyful time here. That this is a reasonable, laudable goal.

So rather than trying to stop and mentally list things that I can be thankful for, I get to enjoy my life on an everyday basis. Like the keychain I got that says, “Don’t postpone joy.”

And it’s a good reminder: if I’m not enjoying something, why am I doing it? Sometimes there’s a good reason: I don’t enjoy filling out my timesheet, but I will certainly enjoy the money that follows as a direct result. Sometimes I can find something to enjoy in those necessary things, too: I can make it a little challenge to fill it out correctly, like a puzzle. (I have a really hard time getting the timesheet all the way right!)

Sometimes it’s ridiculous: I’m not enjoying myself because I am spinning my wheels, looking for jobs way past my bedtime and cranky because I am tired; hanging out with people I would normally enjoy but secretly just stressing about when we are going to stop and eat because I am hungry and I don’t know what to do about getting some food where we are; reading a book because I really wanted to earlier and I think that must mean I still want to, instead of checking in with my feelings to see what I actually want to be doing now. In other words, neglecting my needs – a classic survivor pitfall. Stopping to notice this stuff helps me shape my life, carving away behaviors and experiences that don’t work for me and choose the ones that are fun and fulfilling.

What are you enjoying right now? How much more do you enjoy it when you take a moment to consciously notice that joy?

Fair warning: I didn’t actually finish this book. I don’t plan to, either.

A lot of YA (young adult) lit involves dysfunctional parents. As with a lot of chick lit, some of these narrators are aware the parents are crazy, and some seem to just think they’re describing harmless wacky fun. This book, obviously (pink cover! “girl” and girly acronym in the title!) has some overlap with that category; it’s teen chick lit. And, unfortunately, it takes the “harmless wacky fun” attitude toward the parents.

I just couldn’t read it. I was hoping for a fun grrl power romp, which it may be. Hey, the girls want to go to a rock festival, and they’re not allowed, and then their annual school picnic (described as pretty much being a day when they can all dress their skimpiest and make out as much as possible) gets canceled – so rather than do yet another boring kids-sneak-out adventure, they plan their own local music festival!

Sounds fun and empowering, right? But I just couldn’t make it past the first chapter or two. The protagonist – like most chick lit protagonists – has very low self-esteem, and it became agonizingly clear early on that that’s mainly due to her mom’s emotional abuse. The narration treats her mom as if she’s going to be an amusing terror, but that only works if the character is sympathetic and loving when good people are around. Instead, we get classy scenes like this one, where I threw the book down for once and for all (page 43-44 in my paperback copy):

Okay, between you and me, [says Veronica, the protagonist and narrator], what terrifies me most about asking for help is being officially certified “dumb.” Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen. I’ve seen the special stickers they put on your personal files to signify “borderline retarded.” I’ve skated pretty close to this with a few school reports too. Not in cool lessons like English or religious studies, no, I tend to A grade them. I’m talking about maths and science. That’s where I blow, big time. Those snidey little remarks written on my end-of-year report cards really keep me awake at night:

“Ronnie is a capable girl but loses all interest when the going gets tough. Grade: D,” my science teacher bitched last year.

“Pah, that’s what you’re like with everything. You’ve always been a quitter,” snapped my mother helpfully.

“Gnnnngn,” I grunted, grasping around for one really difficult thing in my life I’ve actually finished. And failing.

I am such a loser.

It just killed me to read such a concrete, obvious example of how her mother’s rage was destroying Ronnie’s self-esteem. I mean, when she gets good grades in something, she doesn’t understand that she’s good at it or smart, she just thinks that means it’s “cool” and kind of tosses it aside; when she gets bad grades in something, she’s so traumatized that she thinks it means she’s stupid, or that she may be developmentally disabled in some way.

And she can’t ask for help because if even admitting her grades are bad makes her own mother call her names and shut her down, asking for help must mean something even worse would happen. She imagines that she wouldn’t get help, she would just reveal to everyone that there is “something wrong with her” and get labeled and set aside by the whole world. Because that’s all she’s experienced at home.

No wonder she “quits” when things are too hard – she can’t see any other options. This is typical of the way that abuse survivors are set up to self-sabotage at work, in our own projects, and just in life.

The author is, at least, clear that Veronica’s parents are fighting and that their fighting in front of her is not okay, that it terrifies her – which usually means that the fighting will be resolved later on in the book. When I typed that quote up, I remembered that and regained some hope that the book would eventually come around. Maybe author Grace Dent really got how terrible the mom was, and they would have a heart-to-heart where the mom vows to get help and change her ways….

So I flipped through the rest of it. Here’s what happens: the mom TAKES OFF. Disappears to her own mother’s house. Doesn’t tell Ronnie she’s leaving. Ronnie, who is in the middle of planning a freaking music festival at age 14, doesn’t realize her mom has gone until FOUR days later – nobody, apparently, thinks to talk to her about it at all, including her father. When someone who works in the family restaurant admits her mother has gone, Ronnie calls her and her mom, if you can believe this, goes, “Oh, hello, darling. Oh, so you’ve eventually called me. Have you run out of clean knickers or something?” And rather than being outraged that her mom ran off, didn’t tell her, didn’t call her, and is now being a passive-aggressive bitch about it, what does Ronnie think? “Touché.” GAH!!!!

And then it’s all, blah blah blah, music festival, blah blah blah, agonizing about whether her mom will ever come back, blah blah, and at the veeery end her mom comes back, out of nowhere, no warning at all, and her dad is all “This is the best excuse anyone has ever given you in the whole world,” and the excuse is that her mom went nuts and ran off because she’s PREGNANT and the dad had said they were “too old to have another little baby in the house.” And Ronnie, of course, agrees that this is the best excuse EVER because it means she will be a big sister and hey, who wouldn’t go nuts if they had “a real actual person growing” inside of them. OH DEAR GOD.

I should have expected all this, really, because the book’s dedication reads, “for mam – who lives with the world’s worst teenager”. And usually people who think they were the world’s worst teenager are people who have no perspective on normal child development or on how abusive a family has to be to result in “the world’s worst teenager.” Hey, I work at an outpatient drug and alcohol treatment center for teenagers – I KNOW.

So in short: not worth the pain of reading it to get to the great bits about how she and her friends successfully throw this festival, or the one time her mom says something nice to her about how “competent” she is. There are a lot of other books out there; read one of those.