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Thanks NK and Chart for your kind words and I hope to be here a bit more as the upheaval of the move and the new build settle down.

It's been a long time since I posted and it's great to see a lot of familiar names are still here and active on the forum!

A bit of what's happened since I posted last: we sold the house we had built in 1991 in the fall of 2024 and went into homeless mode for 9 months while our new house was being built, we stayed in 4 different places during that time, did not enjoy that time. We moved into our new house last May and we  absolutely love it! 2 more grandchildren are with us now , one last year and one the year before, such joy to watch these little ones come alive and grow up in healthy households.

My sister passed on in March of last year and I just read what I had written a few years back here on the forum about my struggles with our relationship.

A very few weeks after she passed on one day out of the blue I had this sickening feeling combined with a weight off my shoulders that my sister was , what you folks call, a covert narcissist?!

She was my big sister and when we were young she was a shield for me between me and my parents and there is a whole bunch of other back story that caused me to think she was always right and I was always wrong and that I never did things quite right!

The last 20 years or so of her life, and our relationship, she was incessant about me and my family developing a relationship with Jesus so we could all be saved as she had been. I always respected her relationship with her religion and also kept my self respect around the fact that I am trying to be a spiritual being and I am following a different path than she was.

The gulf between us grew around this Jesus obsession and I didn't realize until she was gone that it had been the main reason why I was staying wary and away from her. Never once in the last 20  years when I went to see her did she not shame me about not finding Jesus, but the innuendo and shame were oh so subtle many times. She had a rare blood cancer for 11 years and went through * and was always telling me how she might die too soon, it really trying and tiring to visit her.

I've been at many bedsides just as people were about to pass on and had many very frank discussions about our time together. In my sisters last couple days I kept lying to her as she asked me if there was anything left unsaid between us and I said that we were good. A few days before she passed My wife and I and our 2 adult children went down to say goodbye, I warned them all that there was a high probability that they would be asked about their relationship with Jesus and right on cue after 20 mins of chit chat she asked each of us individually if we had a relationship and if not she pleaded that we start one. Everyone was polite and said that would ponder it. After a couple hours we said our final goodbyes and left. We stopped for dinner on the way home and had a great time together.

As I was driving home I knew I had to go back the next day and clear the air between us, it's about 5 hours total round trip so not like popping over to the next town.

I went the next day and there were a few folks coming and going and it got to a point where it was time to say goodbye for the last time. We got right to the things left unspoken and she told me she was a bit resentful that I hadn't visited more , because of  "that damn house" I was building and a few other issues. Then came the Jesus pitch, I listened quietly and then I got up and went over to her and told that I was not in any danger and was not in any need of being saved by Jesus and that I had strong spiritual community around me plus AA and I was fine and that we were just on different paths and that our paths were right for each of us. I kissed her on the forehead and said goodbye.

I know this is a long post and thanks for your patience. I just needed to once again write down the the truth to see how all consuming her need to be the one to bring me along her path to salvation and that what I thought and believed did not even register on her radar. As I look back over our lives it was always that way but she was so subtle in how she always had to be right and I had to be wrong , well f that, I am not wrong!

Hi Hope,
Hugs are definitely ok, thanks and here's one back to you!
Steve

Hi,

Trigger Warnings

I haven't posted in a bit nor been on the forum much, I hope it's ok to share a bit. It's so good to read the different ways we access memories, it's comforting to me that other people in the world are dealing with their trauma and I'm not alone, I'm not alone anymore fighting against adults that only saw me as an object for their use.

My very first flashback was when I was 38, in a week long retreat with 10 others and 2 highly trained therapists. My first trauma memory was not of CSA but physical trauma inflicted on me by my father using a belt.  The sound of a belt being aggressively pulled through the belt loops was a method they used to help me access, and I then knew what was coming.

Sounds and smells have triggered memories and flashbacks over the years. I'm now 74 so that was 36 years ago and I still do regular work in group settings to access that terrified little one and free him from that dark energy trapped in my cells.

I have been blessed to have found many survivors of CSA over these last number of years. We help and support each other the best we can as we are able. I'm a firm believer of mining the trauma with safe people and therapists as my body and soul will allow it.

Kinda rambling here, that said , it's important for me to continue to edify my experience lest I drift into denial and that old tape of" this stuff is to bizarre to have happened I must be making it up". NOT. It did happen, my body doesn't lie.

Thanks for listening.

So glad you are home and enjoying the comforts it brings!
Feel better soon!
Hugs to you.

Oh NK, so sorry to hear this. Thinking of you and sending lots of love your way!

Thanks for all you do PC, you are the best!

I'm with you.

I'm up and awake and it's still many hours before my normal wake up. I randomly will get a stretch of 6 hours straight sleep, I had that happen a couple nights ago and it's wonderful to wake refreshed and present, this happens 3-4 times a year, so not often.

I am awake now because of flashback nightmares and body memories, I hate it, I really do.
No silver bullet here just identifying with you.
Here's to better sleep!

Sorry to hear you are struggling, we are here to support you.

I'll share some of my personal experience in the hope it might help you and others.

I have done a lot of "work" around getting my voice back, also getting my handwriting back. May sound a bit crazy, the loss of handwriting, that used to actually happen. My life force was so blocked that I would come to a place where I couldn't write.
Almost the same thing with my voice, almost couldn't talk.

Over years as I uncovered the truth about the events of my young life and faced them in safe therapeutic settings and started to release those trapped emotions/energy my voice got steadier for longer periods of time and my handwriting got steadier and my signature actually evolved to one that is actually me.

So my voice and my handwriting have been great indicators to signal me that is time to go back in and work on what darkness presents. I'm just coming off a 4 day couples retreat. My wife and I did a piece of work together that was powerful and the learning for me is that all this time, about 30 years of out 37 year marriage I was trying to shield her from the horror I experienced as a child. I've actually been running a story that somehow I would contaminate her and my kids, that the darkness was contagious. It has taken huge amounts of my bandwidth for decades.
I feel so free tonight as I write this, it's what I've been yearning for for decades.

Bach, I don't know if any of my lived experiences are helpful , I truly hope they are.

I've been busy the last few weeks since the visit to my early childhood home, it's been a good busy . Did lots of projects at camp and I love doing them. However, I feel the end of Summer approaching and the diminishing daylight, I just don't want summer to go!

I also feel myself slipping into ungroundedness, if that's a word. In my head Im having some some negative self talk which usually ends up in the place of " what happened to me wasn't that bad stop wining. Which leads to, "maybe nothing really happened, you are making this up".

I have to state to people that understand severe childhood trauma: horrible things did happen to me  for many years, it was real, I survived, I'm safe, people love me, and I have the capacity and ability to love others well".

That is my truth today.

Kizzie I'd like to join the private section, at this time leave my posts public .
Thank you
Steve M

It was a great visit today. The house has changed a lot! I could feel the love that has been put in over the years, the home felt very safe. My wife and two children got to see where I grew up and they really had " a fun day " as my son put it. The kids know a very small part of my story and at this point they have a good feeling about where I grew up and I'm not saying a thing to change that. It would be self serving if I dove into my story. Thanks for your support.

I want to tell you that tomorrow at 4 PM EST I'm going back to the home I lived in from age 8 to 26. Mostly bad stuff and sad times in that house over an 18 year period.
The house came on the market Sunday and I booked a showing for tomorrow. I drove out of that driveway 46 years ago and have not been back since. I have lived a pretty amazing life in those 46 years, tremendously good things have happened in my world once I left the narcissistic den I was raised in.

The house has morphed considerably and I'm excited to go back and see if there is a sense of life when I open the door for the first time. When I left there was just a feeling of doom. The pictures make it look like a happy place now, I hope that's the case. My wife and 2 adult children are coming along , there is no way I'd do this alone.

I incurred significant abuse, over a period of about 4 years in the house next to it so it will be interesting to see what comes up tomorrow. This feels like something I need to do for myself it has the feel of taking back my power, my agency over my life.

I'll take the love and support you all show here on the forum with me and hold it dear.
My Best
SteveM

PC,
Thank you for continuing to risk and share your truth. I believe everything you have written here. Non CPTSD humans can not comprehend at all levels of what it's like to have survived the trauma we all went through. Learned people can read and may get it intellectually, that said, as survivors we bond because we get it at a cellular level, the fear , the terror, the confusion and on and on it goes.

So good for you in taking time to be scared and keep that little one safe and actually quite quickly bring the adult onboard to keep the little one safe. Hopefully you will keep us up to date about when you are going back to your beach house, you will need our collective power to help you through.

BTW, I'm all in for the posse and elephant trap!