Those who went through abuse/trauma; how do you separate yourself fully from the things that happened to you?

Baybreeze- Here's a thought that you may find shocking, but please consider it.

The wounds that you mention, and others I suspect you have suffered but do not mention - Perhaps these are not weaknesses; perhaps if you understand them the right way they are STRENGTHS. Gifts. Things that you have that can enable you to reach out to others who have been hurt as you have been, to relate to them, to care/share with them, to show them that they are not alone but part of a community -the community of suffering, of human vulnerability that in fact includes ALL of us.

I was never shut out of my home as a punishment, but I did, when quite a small child (about three yrs old, I think) get lost in a wheat field where the wheat was much higher than my head. I remember the terror that I felt then, and it allows me to understand the "separation anxiety" that not only small children but even animals and yes, adults too can feel when they are separated -perhaps as far as they know, forever!- from their families and friends.

I was cut off behind enemy lines for eight days in Korea. I know utter aloneness. But I think my childhood time in that wheat field helped me survive that time in Korea. And both of these experiences help me to identify with you now. During that time in Korea I was desperately hungry. I don't know if you know this, but Koreans consider dog flesh an acceptable meat, At that time they raised puppies for food -and I have gnawed on thrown-away puppy bones in the garbage outside North Korean villages while trying to find my way back to American lines. Actually that is just one of three times when I have been actually starving. But all these experiences lie behind my passionate commitment to do all that I can to make sure that people in my community  -where about 40 percent do not earn a "living wage"- get fed. I have worked as a director of two charity food pantries ever since my retirement from university teaching twenty-two years ago.

I could go on like this for several more paragraphs, because I am a very old man who has experienced a lot of the stuff that life throws at us all. But that's not the point I hope I'm communicating to you. That point is stated very simply in the words of a song I learned in music class when I was in the 7th or 8th grade:

      "When you are happy, oh friend of mine
        And all your skies are blue,
      Tell me why, dear friend of mine
        So I may rejoice with you.

      But when you are sad,  dear friend of mine
        And all your skies are gray,
      Tell me why, oh friend of mine,
        That I may wipe your tears away.

I went to the funeral of an old friend today... We joined our university faculty together in 1969, forty-seven years ago. I listened to his son struggle through tears to read the eulogy he had written for his dad. I gave the eulogy for my father twenty-eight years ago. and I know what David -who as a little boy slept on the couch  in our living room while  we grown-ups played cards and plotted strategy in university politics- was going through.

Let's you and I be friends?

Huw This post was edited by Huw at March 30, 2017 9:17 PM MDT

Hey Baybreeze -How are you doing? Have we drowned you with our long-winded advice?