Your Story Is Not Your Own: Why You've Got To Share It To Heal

[Adrianne McCauley]

Destructive utterances are bellowed, punches discharged and grommet-laden belts wielded. At the other end of them all are the quivering bodies of countless children, who hours later crouch in some darkened corner of a cold domicile, thoughts racing.

Sometimes you and I are too busy to take notice, striding too swiftly stop a moment and regard the children whose eyes possess no glint. We don’t often wonder what’s behind the attitude of an angry child. We don’t question a less than sunny disposition, choosing instead to write them off as an ill-raised degenerate. Not so. There is a story behind the attitude, a struggle that has forged each bitter disposition. Countless thoughts flow through the minds of these children, the teens more so than the little ones. Though they all possess the same level of self-esteem and it has been trampled to near extinction.

Having experienced pain at the hands of an abusive, alcoholic father and drone-like, drug-addicted mother, I learned to put my pain on paper. After an episode with what I called my dad’s ‘special belt’, I’d recoil into my room and pour out my heart onto whatever scraps of paper caught my eye. One passage that stands out vividly in my mind was one that I scrawled as my body heaved in a state near convulsion: “Hell must be closer to heaven than earth. Lord knows I pass through it daily.” My thoughts raced in every direction. What child should ever feel this way?

I saved some of those poems, tucked them away without viewing them ever. The pain was too raw, the memories too vivid. I went on with my life as though it had been untouched by the fury of my father. But after 13 years of pretending - I kept seeing kids on the street, male and female, whose countenance was reminiscent of the one that stared back at me from the mirror years ago. I could hear their conversations in passing, their words riddled with anger and lack of hope. They shared their disdain for the mother who cursed at them or the father who threw them and their siblings across the room in a drunken rage. And then I knew my story was not my own to keep. It did not belong to me. On my journey I’d taken certain roads and on those roads found healing. How could I not share what I’d found?

I took various poems that I’d saved and put them in a book titled, “My Life Is No Balloon Ride.” I find myself now traveling to various schools and detention centers, sharing my story and my pain. Do burdens lift when you extend your hand to one whom you can help? Yes. I look out at the crowds as I speak and I can tell that the students know my story because it is their own.

If you’ve got a story that’s caused you tremendous pain - someone else has experienced that same trauma. Begin to share your story and you’ll heal as you help others to do so.

www.adriannemccauley.com