Guest Blog: I, too, found the Mother I so badly needed in the Goddess

What follows is a commentary by Merry Stetson Hall about how she entered the story I tell in my spiritual memoir GROWING UP WITHOUT THE GODDESS and discovered that we shared similar hidden abusive experiences growing up in a culture that does not honor the feminine as divine. Her story touched me deeply and affirmed that this is our collective story and that as each one of us heals by finding the Goddess within, that healing spreads out to all others, too. Thank you, Merry!

Dear Sandra,

I commandeered GROWING UP WITHOUT THE GODDESS right out from under Burl's nose for two days! I intended to look at the format and presentation because I'm almost committed to using BookSurge to publish BRINGING FOOD HOME. I found your story too compelling to put down, however, and read every word greedily.

A review follows, but first I wanted to share with you more personally.

You are, indeed, right that your story bespeaks the gender abuse all women suffer in one form or another in our patriarchal culture, whether or not the abuse manifests in sexual rape. It pervades our sexuality, our relationships, our self-esteem, our spirituality, our employment, our status, and every conceivable aspect of our being on earth. It perverts our fathers, brothers, sons, and lovers too in a different way. You are right on target, too, when you suggest that the sexual manifestation of this abuse is inevitably rampant throughout our homes and families, because it is based on misogyny. You offer the painful details of your personal experience with eloquence and courage. Because you also trace your recovery in ongoing detail, your story stands as a guidepost for the acknowledging and healing journey we all must take. Your understanding that we can never be fully healed in a culture that continues its patriarchal abuse and asks us to turn to an all-male Father/Son God for guidance out of sin is invaluable. We heal ourselves by resurrecting the Goddess; we resurrect the Goddess by healing ourselves. This is our ongoing mission.

I, too, found the Mother I so badly needed in the Goddess as she variously manifests within me, within nature, within human history, within the universal energy that flows through us all, within my therapists, and eventually even within the female abusers who became my personal teachers. I am especially gifted to see and hear Her present in my husband Burl's experience, relationship, and voice--a rare blessing.

I cannot yet fathom whether the story I have woven from my own experience with my father is shrouded memory or personal mythology. I have decided that it really doesn't matter, because it requires a story of that scope to account for who I am and how I am wounded. My story goes that he used me and my vagina as a "mule" for black market goods when I was 3-4 years old and we were in Japan right after World War II. He then abandoned me in mind and spirit while still a part of the family in body as he sank into psychosis and frequent sexual liaisons that took him from home.

My mother's coping mechanism of putting a "normal" face on all this, moving the family whenever the truth started to catch up with us, mothering/nursing/forgiving her husband, and encouraging me to love/respect him as a father, only deepened the abuse and delayed my recovery. As a young mother, I ended up stepping into the role of my mother's mother, comforting her and getting her legal representation when my father finally threatened to leave her/us for his newest lover.

I did not have a brother (unless the half-Japanese half-brother I fantasize we left in Japan is real and not imaginary), but I have a now-deceased, abusive older sister, more deeply wounded than I, who spent her time on earth hating herself, life, our father, and most especially me for stealing from her the scant amount of love, attention, and affirmation my mother had left after mothering our father and nursing the wounds he inflicted on her. By the time mother had coped with my father, my sister, and her own pain, there was little energy left to mother me though she meant well. To gain at least her approval I identified with her and took on the role of "the healthy one who would succeed and uphold the family honor."

Only through my willingness to fail, to hurt, to do the incredibly painful work of acknowledging and healing have I grown now as a 65-year-old into a true though shaky manifestation of that role. Like the velveteen rabbit, I have become real. Only Sophia could have placed and nurtured the wisdom, willingness, courage, patience, and forgiveness in me that this transformation required.

Here's my book review. I hope you find it helpful.

GROWING UP WITHOUT THE GODDESS gives story and form to the abuse all women suffer in one form or another in our patriarchal culture. Sandra Pope offers the painful details of her personal experience with eloquence and courage. She shows how the denial of the Goddess has blighted both men and women from generation to generation in her family and the human family. She reveals how rape and incest team up with denial, neglect, and the perversion of victims to maim us. She shows how both the egregious and the subtle forms of sexual abuse pervade our families, our sexuality, our relationships, our self-esteem, our spirituality, our status, and every conceivable aspect of our being on earth. Her message that we heal ourselves by resurrecting the Goddess and resurrect the Goddess by healing ourselves is much needed in today's world.

Merry Stetson Hall
Author of BRINGING FOOD HOME: The Maine Example. Her book profiles local farmers, gardeners, homesteaders, processors, distributors, merchants, restauranteurs, consumers, and advocates. Through these profiles, it explores how a healthier community, economy, ecology, and ethic are growing up around local food in Maine.

Telling the Truth from the Heart

Hello, All!

Many of you, who have read or read about my book GROWING WITHOUT THE GODDESS, have commented on how much courage it must have taken to tell my story.

My story is about my search for the one who abused me before I was old enough to have memories. My story is about discovering, revealing, and dismantling the destructive patterns the abuse caused me for decades.

The amazing truth about my courage is that the book gave it to me. I didn't have it before I wrote the book.

I'm no linguist, but I love the etymology of words, and I remembered something special about this word "courage," as I reflected upon your comments.

The word "courage" comes from the old French word "corage" and means mind, heart, and spirit, according the WEBSTER'S NEW TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY (unabridged and not so "new," published in 1976!) and according to very up-to-date Dictionary.com.

The word also means simply, "heart," as it comes through Latin to us. Another word from the Latin that means heart, is "cord." You see this root in words like "accord," "discord," and even "record!" Many of us speak of "heart cords" that connect us to others.

So, the book took discipline to write. It took desire. It took belief in the outcome.

In return for those qualities -- and HURRAY! -- the book gave me courage -- the gift of healing my mind/heart/spirit (and body). Now I am more heart-centered, not captured in the stories others imprinted on me and not tangled up in their "cords."

And I truly know that my healing released them from the heart-pain they tried to heal by reaching out so wrongly to me. My healing gave them back their courage, too, and makes a difference in each one's mind/body/spirit.

I do have my courage now, and thank you for pointing it out to me! I am on my own heart-path, which keeps opening up before me, and my mission is to help others see my personal story of wounding and healing in the context of the greater spiritual problems of our times.


My Best to You!

Sandra

Going Home to Tell the Truth!

Promoting GROWING UP WITHOUT THE GODDESS: A Journey through Sexual Abuse to the Sacred Embrace of Mary Magdalene

I didn't know where to begin promoting my book, but when a friend, Rev. Mary Catherine (Kitty) Bass, suggested I contact the Women's Studies departments of colleges and universities, I knew she was right. She doesn't take credit for the suggestion; she says she never had the idea before she spoke it and that it came from the Divine Mother of us all.

I started with UNC-Greensboro because I was born and abused in Greensboro. Not only does UNC-G have a women's studies department, but it turns out it is one of the oldest departments in the country, and it has over 100 faculty affiliates involved in a multi-disciplinary approach to women's studies.

I spoke with a young woman who referred me to the Greensboro Hive, which has a childhood abuse survivor's group that is planning a spring film series on abuse.

When I went to the Hive website map, I was amazed to see that the center is located right next to the park, Morris Farrow Park, where I used to play. The house where I lived and was abused (1302 Portland Street) was about two blocks from the center! The large, old two-story house of my youth is no longer there, but it is in my memory and in my book.

I visited that neighborhood three years ago when I began to write my book. I visited Morris Farrow Park where I used to run wild with my brother and the neighborhood boys and where I was certain that there were trolls in the culvert that connected the two parts of the park. My life was dark and troubled because of early hidden sexual abuse and because of the constant beatings from my step-father. No wonder I thought I saw trolls!

I have stones on my altar that I picked up while I was there and that helped me anchor my Self as I wrote my story. While I was picking up the stones, a young girl about 11 or 12 years old mooned me as she was swinging. That act of inappropriate exposure pierced my nostalgia and made me remember more about the wounding I received at 1302 Portland Street when I was just a baby, wounding that left me unable to establish appropriate boundaries -- like the young girl on the swing.

Looking at the map, I was awed by the coincidence, and I knew that my neighborhood of 60 years ago was the exact right place to promote my book about sexual wounding, about cultural complicity in the sexual abuse of women, and about the inevitability of sexual abuse when women are not imaged as divine while men are.

I took the plunge, wrote an e-mail to the woman in charge and told her this story. I was immediately welcomed by her. She invited me to be a part of the spring film series, which will include Angela Shelton's film about abuse, Finding Angela Shelton.

Just like that!

I said, YES!

The Divine Feminine, the Great Mother of us all, guided me home, so I could be a part of healing that place, and so my healing could continue. I am in awe and in gratitude.

Buy GROWING UP WITHOUT THE GODDESS on Amazon.com.

Hear an excerpt from GROWING UP WITHOUT THE GODDESS.

Read an excerpt from GROWING UP WITHOUT THE GODDESS.