Warrior Wings

Over the past few months our Instagram account has flooded with responses related to trauma. So we are pulling some of our skeletons out and sharing them with you...

I am a child of domestic violence. Throughout my past I've experienced many triggers and images of the torture I witnessed at a young age. This made it difficult for me connect the pieces so I could make sense of it all. For years I was haunted by this one image of my mother. I've had nightmares about it. Thought about it in random settings. Obsessed about it without completely understanding why it continued to resurface.

When I decided to see a therapist about my drinking, we did a thorough inventory of my past. Things that triggered me to drink, made me sad, or brought on anxiety. I give many thanks to this therapist for helping me take a deeper look into my past, myself, and urged me to journal the triggers so that we could process them during our therapy sessions. I had many pages of the specific image of my mother written out. The image was a very vivid picture of my Mom. She was crying, gasping for air, sitting in the middle of our yard in torn pajamas. She told me and my siblings that she was having an asthma attack so I never questioned it. My therapist and I decided to focus my trauma work around this image.

Weeks of review and dissection led me to a strong feeling of fear, a fright or flight response that told me something was off. I learned at an early age to trust that feeling. It helped me close my eyes and cover my ears when I sensed imminent danger and run for help when shit hit the fan. I began each therapy session focusing on this image and began to pick it apart. I was finally able to understand why this vivid image continued to haunt me. Below is a tidbit from my book surrounding this scenario....

In the middle of the night, I awoke to screams and the sound of glass shattering. I knew the protocol for those nights....it was to keep my ass in bed until Mom broke free from my abusive Dad. I laid in bed waiting for Momma to run out the screen door. The slamming of our screen door was the sign that Mom had escaped from my Dad and made it outside. I quickly jumped out of bed and opened my bedroom door. Dad, on the opposite side in his room obliterated and in blackout mode, cursing and lying on the bed, too drunk and high to move at that point. My brother and I ran through the house screaming for Mom. I grabbed the phone on the way out and ran to Momma while dialing 911. We called EMS so much they knew us by name. As we opened the screen door, I could see Momma. It was the same image that haunted me. She was sitting in the middle of our grassy yard, hand on her chest and a frantic look in her eyes. I jumped down the stairs and walked over to her knelt down to kiss her cheek and rubbed her back whispering "it's going to be okay, Mom". She was panicking and gasping for air. Her hair was a mess while she sat in her torn pajamas in the middle of our yard. Mom had red marks up and down her arms and neck. She gasped for air and whispered “water” in between breaths during her "asthma attack". The cops never did much when they were there. Sometimes Mom would press charges but Dad always manipulated his way out and other times she would give my Dad a pass. 

My entire life I believed Mom was really suffering from asthma (she does have a history of asthma) until I talk through it step by step with my therapist. Those were not asthma attacks. Those were panic attacks from Mom getting abused mentally, physically and emotionally by my Dad. I felt helpless during those nights. I wanted to beat my Dad up, but I was scared shitless of him. There was nothing I could do except comfort my Mom in those horrific moments. We waited for Momma to catch her breath and settled down. Once we knew Dad had passed out for the night and we were safe to go back inside, my siblings and I would wrap blankets around Momma and walk with her into our home. We made Momma sleep in the middle of me and my siblings so we could protect her. We all cuddled up and cried until we fell asleep.

After relaying the actual events surrounding that image to my therapist, my cheeks were soaked with tears. That was the image I unconsciously carried with me whenever I felt helpless. I had pieced together the image that haunted me for years and made me feel like my entire spirit had been sucked out of my body. It was intense, sickening and therapeutic. I was disgusted by the thought of what that man did to Momma, his own children and countless others. But I had solved the piece that needed to heal so I could move forward. I left therapy that day with a sense of pride and accomplishment, thanking God for uncovering a piece of my past that I longed to heal. The vivid image rarely comes through my mind these days but when it does I welcome it, envision that little 7 year old girl helping Momma off the ground and wiping her tears away, looking my Dad in the face and saying

THANK YOU! Thank you, Dad, for making me a strong ass warrior..... I release the image and I let it go.