ON HER SOAP BOX-FAMILY Part 1 - Part 4

READERS,

This is where I write my own thoughts about what I am passionate about. I write on any topic that fires me up." Could be good things, could be bad things, but this is where I express what directly gets to Meetta!

(PART 1)

Today's topic is FAMILY!

Today's article is going to take some interesting turns. For me, this subject matter, has 2 major aspects concerning it! One aspect of family that I will be touching on is the relationships of the family. I will reveal the other aspect of the is topic later in this particular article, keep reading.

Readers, I have been wanting, needing, and waiting, to say OUT LOUD and WITHOUT SHAME, my thoughts on this subject. As a writer, with writing as part of my "voice", I have been wanting, and needing to write about this for quite some time now! I have been waiting for the "right time" (for me) to get it out. But wisdom says, everything in its it's own time.

Sitting at a family gathering last night, I knew it was time! Siting and being uncomfortable around certain people. My own family, I'm tired of it!

I equate the timing for my thoughts today - to making jello! Yep, I know you return readers like my "colorful way" of using words (smile). So moving on. In jello making, if you try to eat the jello too soon without first letting it set and form, when you try to eat it, it doesn't hold well together! It's not very appealing or acceptable. So most people would probably chuck it and call it garbage! The jello would be deemed as "no good!" No good because it was not served in an acceptable way, the jello didn't have time to "gel" or form. And Because you tried to eat it too soon, it didn't have the opportunity to reach it's full and maximum potential, and having the affect on you that you hoped for! The jello, in its un-gelled, weak state didn't have the strength to become what it was designed to become!

On my thoughts on family and what I will be sharing with you today, timing is everything! I needed to know when I was "formed" enough, "gelled" or put together well enough, that I am strong enough to outlast these words that I write. I needed to know that I was strong enough to withstand and outlast the "actions or talk", my words will surely promise to provoke. You may be saying, "Why write it?" "Why write these words Meetta?" My answer is, because I understand my purpose! Through the knowledge of God, through " my walk" and experience as a Christ follower, I understand that first, my purpose is to glorify him! Allowing God to be glorified through my life! That includes through the ups and downs of my life, through my talk and actions, through the victories, and even through the creativity of my gifts and talents!

Without God and his guidance, saving me from SO MUCH, even the bad decisions I've made and the horrible, wretched things that people have done to me, my survival would not have been possible! Without a miracle, the people God sent into my life to rescue me, protect me, support me, fighting for and with me, and encouraging me, praying for and with me, loving on me and now on my son, through it all...without God and the intervention of Jesus, I never would have made it!

I continually am grateful to God because a few of these people remain and still stand by and with us, my son and I! They won't let us go! I thank God for giving me them as "my family". Though we are not blood related, but related through the belief and spirit of God. God will give you what you need and it may not be the way you think, but he'll give it to you! Just as he gave me "a family". The closest to my son are not even my own kin!

(PART 2)

So, in gratitude of ALL that has been given me, I use the gift of writing and I write! I write about truth, not just my own! I write to encourage healing, to educate, to inform and to inspire! But, I do this by incorporating wisdom and knowledge. Incorporating wisdom and knowledge allows my writings to be a " life giving" tool. The purpose for which I believe, it was intended! The purpose for which I believe, I was intended!

My writing ability is not and accident! How my writing came to be, an instrument of encouragement, first came to encourage me! My writing spoke for me in a way my natural voice had been silenced. In my family, for a very long time while growing up, I was NOT ALLOWED TO TALK, about certain things. Even when I got older, I was "warned" not to speak up still! I was told that I would be the one who would "take the heat" if I revealed certain things. I was told to just "drop it" and move on! But you see, those things that I was silenced about were the major things that have shaped and molded me into the person I am today! A person of integrity, strength, joy, love, forgiveness! I am a successful mother of a beautiful and talented son! I am a woman of faith. A woman of God!

I also have my flaws, but, I didn't turn out to be what those people who tried to silence me, tried to convince me that I was going to become! A whore, a wasted life, or dead! Two of them, went to great lengths to try and prevent a successful life for me! They threatened me and one of them was stopped from causing me bodily damage when I was a teen! They tried to attack me with a long lead pipe! Someone one saw them sneak up behind me and cried out before they got to me!

GOD IS GREAT! While they were right about my families response to the revelation of FAMILY SECRETS, it didn't stop me from being my best self! FAMILY SECRETS is the second aspect of this article.

Family Secrets, many families have them. I know mine does!

I KNOW my family has secrets...because I am one of them!

The things I was silenced and ridiculed about were things that ended up haunting me for many years. They affected how I saw the world, tainting my views of it and how I saw myself in it! Those things affected relationships outside of my family and everything I was! Those things that haunted me, eventually strained and prevented family relationships with other family members... Family relationships, I so desperately wanted! Every child, every member of any family wants to be loved, supported and accepted...by family!

It doesn't matter how many friends you have or how great your boyfriend or wife is,...we still have that innate desire to be connected to the "root" of who we are and where we come from. We want to be and remain connected to the origin or source of our being, because there in lies answers to who and why we are, who we are!

(PART 3)

My writings gave and still keep giving me a voice, peace of mind, comfort and strength! Considering the dysfunction that my family has experienced, ironically, some of the best things IN MY LIFE, my writing, my passion for people, Story Telling and being confident Public Speaker, and head of a blossoming "Women's Empowerment organization", came out of being a product of my family! Writing gave me a positive outlet that turned into a passion. When no one else would listen, as an answer to a prayer, when I put my words onto the pages...kept me alive! Writing, even as a teen kept me in touch with myself. No one else would listen to the depths of my soul. No one, not even my family was listening, not even to a child! That is...no one, but God the Father and Jesus the Christ.

Why write these words now? One way you now you are "completely healed", ...is that you can talk about it publicly, without shame or fear of back lash!

Living with secrets, I don't do so well. Especially secrets that have caused a great deal of pain! See, I've learned in my life that healing is connected and even stimulated by "truth".

Not telling truth, only makes matters worse! Maybe not for you , but trust me, for somebody else, close to you. My son has suffered too, because of what surrounded me.

Not telling the truth, the complete truth and having my family to have to deal with it, has robbed me and my son of those precious close and "real" relationships with cousins, aunts and uncles and they with us! Pretending all is well, not getting the truth out there in the open continues to rob us all. It has also given way for rumor and speculation to be spread even unto marriages of uncles. I don't even go the reunions anymore, because I hear the whispers. I see the pointing. THEY DON'T KNOW A DANG THING to be the truth, BECAUSE NO ONE, not even me, HAS TOLD IT all...yet! I wrote my first book in 2002 with including only a handful of poems speaking on my abuse. Not nearly enough. Over these years, I have been approached about writing the 'REAL" Story of my survival! I wasn't ready, I needed time to grow stronger and work through some things. I needed time to grow! Healing happens in stages!

Family secrets have prevented a "True healing" to happen for us all in my immediate family and extended families. Family secrets stole more than what they give. I am a Christ believer and I believe where it is written that "Jesus is the way, The truth and the life".

I believe, trust and turn to Gods word in how to live and successfully make it through this life as well as concerning myself with the after life. BIBLE, B.I.B.L.E. = Basic Instruction BEFORE Leaving EARTH. Any answer you need, you could ever have or think up, the solution is written in that book! Child rearing questions, marriage question, everything to what marriage is to what a husband or wife's duties are etc. It has answers to money matters. To find the answers, depends on you and, what you believe, how you apply the solution. But the answers are there! On my quest to find the answers that I needed, in my questions of who I am who I can be and who I am destined to be, with Gods help with the aid of the bible, I have found many answers! I AM NOT ASHAMED TO SAY THAT!

One solution I found that I needed was freedom! Another was truth! There is freedom in truth. "And the truth shall set you free." Truth is a sign of great character strength. Lying is a sign of weakness! Lying is also an abomination unto God! There is nothing honorable about lying about anything! "Everything done in the dark will be brought to light." That's why lying and secrets don't work! Lying and keeping secrets have a way of taking on their own life! You can only lie so much before the lies get out of control causing all kinds of damage! Secrets also have a way of seeping out anyway. Most family secrets are not really secrets! Somebody, knows about it, chooses not to talk about it, but unfortunately when they seep out, they seep out wrongly, causing more damage especially over time! More so than if the secrets were just out in the open!

Remember, healing can't be started if the truth is not faced!

In my opinion family secrets shouldn't be secrets at all.

Turns out, among other things, I have pedophiles, and child molesters, rapists, in my family. My aunt told me just 4 days ago that one of our relatives tried to rape my Aunt's daughter (my cousin), when she was a child. It's no surprise, but I never knew that about this person! Many people die and take some family secrets with them to their grave.

There are many family secrets that don't deserve such a proper burial!

Because while the person may be dead, the fruits of the pain they inflicted or endured lives on in somebody may be continuing to cause DAMAGE!

(PART 4)

Today, I am going to say something that is going to catch "some" of you off guard But you know, it shouldn't considering the harsh cruel world we live in. I know my family has "family secrets, because I am one of them...A family secret!

I was a family secret, not because of something that I did, but because of something that was done to me. It has ripped my life apart ever since!

No more! NO MORE, I SAY!

I'm taking my power and control back, in the name of the Almighty God!

Without shame! I yell it to the roof tops.

"I was sexually abused from the age of 5, up to the age of about 11, by 3 of my 4 brothers. But had to continue to fight off attacks until I was 14. I was physically, mentally and verbally abused up until the age of 15. My mother didn't protect me, like she could have. In fact she abused me , but not sexually, mostly out of neglect.

They had scarred my mind so bad, that I tried to block the pain with that false sense of family loyalty my abusers and others had driven into me! I tried to move on, still letting them into my life as I got older. But when I was in my twenties, letting some of them continue to have a place in my life, backfired on me, one of those raped me as and adult. I was so broken for so many years, I didn't have the inner strength to fight! That was then though! Don't mess with me now!

But as a teen at 15, my mother lied to me, told me she was taking me to the hospital to get me some help, but she was really trying to get rid of me. Instead it backfired on her. She lied to the Doctor who had admitted me! The hospital kept me there and paid my bill for 3 weeks while they later petitioned the court to have charge over me.

Later I was released to social worker and taken to my older brother (the only one who never hurt me like that ) and taken me out of the home at age 15. I became a ward of the state and put into Foster Care until I was 19. At 15 though, I had to appear before a judge to explain to me what was happening,

" I remember the judge being compassionate and saying I am doing this to save your life. I believe this is the only way to give you a chance."

By the way that person, who tried to rape my cousin was one of the persons who molested me, his own sister! If people had spoke up! If they had listened and helped me...! Yet people still invite them over for dinner, tip toeing around their "real thoughts" about who they are and what damage they have caused, knowing they don't trust them! Talking about them to other relatives when they are not around!

NOT ME THOUGH! I'm not inviting them to dinner, hanging around

partying with evil!

It's taken years and much, much work to get to this point, but I'm here AND

I'M FREE YALL! I'M FREE!!

I DON'T have TO BE ASHAMED ANYMORE!

"...I am wonderfully and fearfully made"

in the name of Jesus.

I am an abuse survivor and I didn't do anything wrong!

It was done unto me!

Meetta