As a survivor of trauma, there is nothing more unnerving and disorienting than the process of recovering memories of traumatic events. I despise the unknown. It is difficult to acknowledge there are aspects of my own life of which I have no awareness. It’s scary. It means I am vulnerable because I don’t have all the information. This isn’t just something my scared inner parts have made up. It’s the truth. Dissociation is a beautiful survival skill which keeps us alive in childhood, but in our adult lives, it makes us highly vulnerable to repeated patterns and future attacks. I have learned this the hard way. I have learned that I cannot fully protect myself while there is important information not available to my conscious mind. This understanding has made me deeply committed to the memory recovery process. I am committed to remembering everything I need to be fully informed about the people who hurt me, the way they hurt me and how they might try to hurt me again. In the end, this gives me an advantage over many of my abusers because they often don’t have the memories of what they did to me. I am ahead of the game. I have an edge. I know the truth and they don’t (not that they would admit it if they did).

One of the primary catalysts to the memory recovery process is establishing safety in our present lives. This is not easily done when we are brainwashed to stay in our traumatic patterns. Our choices in life will reflect this. Our inner parts are compelled to repeat patterns to resolve the original trauma, but this keeps our lives in chaos and avoids healing. When I moved to Florida, I thought it was a new beginning, and it was, but I have learned things tend to get a bit tumultuous when we first establish safety on a new level. For the past three years, I have recovered the hardest memories of all. You might be surprised to hear what I will say next. The hardest memories to recover are the memories from our adult lives. The more recent a memory is, the more our defenders fight against it. Adult memories are the most unnerving of all the memories.

We like to think we are in control of our adult lives. The controller certainly wants us to believe it. The controller loves to tell us that we are living our best lives under their control, but it is often a dissociative and denial-based story. In my Back to the Blog post from last year, I said my abusers ran for the hills when I started my blog. That is true to some degree. They may not have shown their faces. That’s not the whole story though. That was the controller story. They were using other people to get to me. They were creating havoc in my life and even my children’s lives in some ways. They were using flying monkeys and attacks on my credibility to make my life extremely difficult. They wanted me to shut up and they threatened me in many ways to stop my blog. At the time, I did not stop my blog. I knew it was the right thing to do. At the same time, I had to remove almost everyone from my life to avoid further abuse. Eventually, I had to leave the state altogether. This is hard stuff to acknowledge. I was deep in recovery, and I was still forgetting important things. I hate that. I could not use the full power of my adult self to protect us because I was dissociating. That’s infuriating.

In retrieving these memories, it has put a hold on my blog. I hate that too. I have been processing tremendous fear from my inner parts, and it stopped me from any significantly visible activities in my business. I’m going to come back with a vengeance. I don’t know how long that will take. I said in my Back to the Blog post, “Maybe I’m back.” That’s still where I am with things. However, my unconscious is less resistant every day. I am writing this blog, so that’s always a good sign. My adult self now knows names and circumstances. My inner defenders think that makes me less safe, but I know better. That makes me much safer. The attacks on my credibility don’t have to go unanswered. I don’t have to be their victim any longer. My unconscious no longer internalizes their contracts and restrictions on how I live my life. I can tell my story more fully.

Is this the “end” of my recovery story? Of course not. The controller would like to say it is. The idea of a nice, neat end date is one of their favorite stories, but I know better. I don’t know what’s to come. That’s frustrating. I want everything to be safe and clear, but I have learned the more uncertainty I can handle, the better life can be. I will be more open to hearing the truth. The truth is where our power lies. I am heading toward my power. My abusers are not powerful. They are the least powerful people on this planet. I may have been quiet, but I’m not going away. I won’t vanish. I will keep showing up. I will keep telling the truth. That’s what I am here to do.