BEYOND DON'T
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Dreaming Past the Dark
gynergy
books
E L L Y  D A N I C
 B  E  Y  O  N  D
D  O  N  '  T
Copyright © Elly Danica, 1996
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means whatsoever without permission of the
publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Edited by: Jane Billinghurst
Cover illustration: Janet Riopelle
gynergy books acknowledges tlie generous support of the Canada Council.
Published by:
gynergy books
P.O. Box 2023
Gharlottetown, P.E.I.
Canada, CIA 7N7
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Danica, Elly, 1947-
Beyond don't
ISBN 0-921881-40-1
1. Danica, Elly, 1947- 2. Adult child sexual abuse victims. 3. Incest
victims. I. Title.
HV6570.9.C3D34 1996 306.877'092 C96-950121-8
printed and  bound im Canada by: best Book Manufacturs
This book is for Lucy, Ann,
Maria, Ijla and Marge.
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Contents
Introduction 9
One Beginning the Journey 15
Two Confronting the World 43
Three Becoming a Public Person 57
Four Redefining Family 79
Five Reinventing Myself 93
Six In Search of My Mother 101
Seven Dreaming Past the Dark 139
Epilogue 153
Suggested Reading 155
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Introductio n
It is now ten years since I wrote the story of my
childhood experiences, Don't: A Woman's Word. It has been an
important decade in my life, and I decided to write about it in order
to see more clearly the road I travelled during that time.
My life began in Holland, a couple of years after the end of the
Second World War. In 1952 my parents moved to Canada wit h their five
children, settling in Moose Jaw. I do not know precisely what precipi-
tated this move, but it came swiftly after I first told my mother that my
father had abused me. For the next fourteen years I lived in a household
in hell as my father's violence and demands on me increased.
In the mid-1950s my father built a photography studio in the
basement of the house. Soon he was hosting raucous evening parties
in the basement, during which he photographed a series of nude
"models" for the amusement of the men who were his "customers."
As a child I was one of these models, and during one unforgettable
night, whe n I was nineyears old, I was photographed and then raped
by a group of these men.
9
By the time I was fifteen, I had buried the horror of what was
happening to me at home, acknowledging only that I had to get out
of that house and as far away from my father as possible. It was clear
that the only way I would be allowed to leave was if I married. I went
in search of a young man who would treat me with respect, and I
thought I had found him in the soldier I married at eighteen.
I left for Ontario with my husband the day after I married him.
My marriage did not provide me with the release I had been hoping
for. Five years later, when my son was born, I knew it was time to
leave my husband, and possibly also my son. Something — I didn't
understand what — brought me back to Saskatchewan. My plan
was to go to university and try to build a better life than the one I
had had until then.
I did not realize then that any step which brought me closer to
acknowledging what had happened in my childhood woul d set off a
series of nightmares and send me spiralling downward into pain and
darkness. I had imagined that attending university in Regina woul d
be as simple as taking classes, caring for my son and working toward
a degree. Instead, alarm bells went off deep in my soul, and
suddenly nothing was simple.
I had taken a daring firs t step toward adulthood and healing, but
I had underestimated both how long it would take to get there and
what I would have to come to terms with to make a better life
possible. As my nightmares increased, I began to abuse drugs and
alcohol. At the time I could not explain to myself or to anyone else
why I was in so much pain, and so focused on either walking oblivio n
or suicide.
As the crisis that seemed to be my life deepened at university, I
knew I would have to try something else and come back to work on
a degree at a later time. I bought an old country church and settled
in to write my way out of the mess I felt I was in. For the next
thirteen years I struggled to understand the events of my childhood,
even as I tried equally hard to deny that anything ha d happened to
me.
Although in some ways it was incredibly difficult, writing the
book that was to become Don't was the easy part: the manuscript
10 BEYOND DON'T
was the culmination of more than ten years of keeping a journal,
writing sometimes for as long as sixteen hours a day, just to sort out
why there was so much pain and difficulty in my life. Eventually I
had more than two thousand journal pages and a growing clarity
about the issues.
In March 1987, in pain and terror, I finally wrote the story of my
childhood. Then, in August, as a result of a chain reaction of
serendipitous events, I found myself in Vancouver at West Word III,
a school for women writers, in a workshop offered by Nicole Bros-
sard. I left West Word ten days later with an offer to publish from
Libby Oughton, then-publisher of gynergy books, and in May 1988
the book was launched. Once Don't was published, my life began to
change in many ways.
After I finished the publicity tour for Don't, my life was some-
what better than it had been before the book was published. I had
travelled the country, something I had always wanted to do. I had
met and talked to a great many people. I had visited with my son for
the first time in several years. Most important o f all, I had been able
to see my beloved grandmother in Holland before she died.
I was not, however, magically saved from the pain of my child-
hood, and I did not arrive at some mythical destinatio n healed of all
ills and sorrows. Yet there was a feeling tha t my journe y ough t to be
over. Z)0»V was selling wel l fora Canadian book, and I had appeared
on many radio and television programs. Hot on the trail of success,
a man showed up at my door, offering to help me invest my money.
I laughed and said, "What money?" A couple of years later, another
man came to my door, chanting my name like a mantra, apparently
believing that only I had the power to convince social workers, the
RCMP and television producers that he was not a sociopath. It is a
myth of mass culture that having one's story taken up by television
bestows such attendant blessings that one's life is forever set apart
and one is "healed." It just isn't so. My real-life experiences did not
guarantee salvation from poverty, and the burden of pain I carried
remained grievous.
At first I was appalled by people's reactions to Don't. People hur t
and cried reading wha t I had written, whic h made me feel wretched.
I ntroductio n 1 1
Instead of closing a chapter of my life, I was burdening others with
it. For several years after the publication of Don't, whenever I went
to the city and was recognized, I would be either stared at and
whispered about, or approached by people who had horrific child-
abuse disclosures they wished to share with me. I am not hard-
hearted. I would listen and offer what comfort I could. But I found
I could not get my errands done, attend workshops I had paid for or
eat out as I had planned. I would arrive home exhausted, angry and
confused. Eventually I stopped going out, and if I had to go to the
library or grocery store, I would keep my head down, avoid meeting
anyone's eyes and talk to nobody.
The problem was that I was no longer seen as a person separate
and apart from the book. The sum total of my identity seemed to
be the experience I had described. I began to feel erased by this
unbearably narrow view of who I was. What about the rest of me?
Growth, development, current projects, day-to-day issues or diffi-
culties? None of it seemed to matter. By virtu e of those ninety-six
pages, I had become my childhood, period.
I wrote Don't to put the pain of my childhood behin d me so that
I could get on with the rest of my life. Instead, the book struck a
chord with so many people that my childhood experience ruled my
life in a new way. I gave interviews and speeches, responded to
disclosures and talked about nothing else from the spring of 1988
until late in 1994. Although I enjoy public speaking immensely —
the hermit happily admits she loves an audience — I found it
increasingly difficult to find the energy to speak only about child
abuse, because, despite giving wha t comfort and support I could to
others, I was unable to find any for myself.
I have, throughout the course of readings, speeches and work-
shops generated by the publication of Don't, been extremely am-
bivalent. What is my responsibility t o this issue? I wonder. How do
I meet whatever responsibility I identify, yet retain some sem-
blance of a normal life? Am I entitled to my life as an artist, away
from the work on child-abuse issues? Must I, because my book has
touched so many people, continue to work in this field? Or can I
allow myself a different sort of life?
12 BEYOND DON'T
These are some of the questions I have been wrestling with . I
don't yet have clear answers. This book is an effort to find answers,
or perhaps, by looking back at the experiences of the last several
years, to find better questions. I see this project as a spiritual
journey, a search for renewal and enlarged meaning in my life. I
know that making a n effort, any positive effort, helps take me in the
right direction and helps build toward the changes in life and
attitude that I seek.
Introductio n 13
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On e
Beginnin g
th e Journey
Sorrow: for a long time I thought that sorrow was all I
had. I thought that I would spend my whole life mourning what had
been stolen from me: a peaceful and nurturing childhood; a sense of
personal integrity; a healthy, positive identity; and self-worth.
I am the only one in my family of seven sisters and three brothers
to have spoken out about theabuse that pervaded the household we
grew up in. As a child, I had buried what I knew until I was aware of
only hatred and constant pain. I could not understand why, as an
adult, I abused myself with drugs, alcohol, relationships, anythin g
that came my way and worked to anaesthetize me, for however short
a time. Not until I had written the story of my childhood was I able
to name my pain.
Several lifetimes of keening and weeping could not express my
sorrow. It is boundless and will resound, with my accusations, into
eternity. And from its depths, I say: I have been terribly betrayed.
15
From this profound sense of betrayal, I had to find my way to
health, well-being and understanding, and to do that I had to learn
to mourn what I had lost. I began to write to understand my
feelings, and most particularly my deep sadness. I knew there was
pain, but I wasn't ready to acknowledge where it came from. At the
beginning I was not aware that I was writin g a book. It made me feel
better to write, so I wrote.
I began to keep a journal. I can't recommend this enough for
anyone in the process of recovery from abuse. Writinga journal gives
you a sense of the progress you have made. It can be read as
travelogue, for even on the trip to hell and back we need to know
where we have been and what we are putting behind us. Some
women who prefer pictures to words have kept their journals in
images or doodles, and this is also a powerful technique.
I find that sitting quietly with a pen in hand to describe my progress
through a day encourages access to the past. When I wrote about my
memories, they felt grounded, and I could begin to look at them. The
more I examined them, the more I was able to understand them. In
the beginning, understanding was all I sought. The pain was not
noticeably less the first time I wrote of it, bu 11 often found a new way
to look at it, one that brought with it a small but growing sense of
release from the powerful grip it had on my life. It took many years,
however, before I was aware of my change in perspective.
I find out about that change by looking back in my journal and
measuring the distance from my old self to my present one. Every
day the distance is greater, for as I write about the past, I create,
word byword, breath by breath, a new reality. In those early days of
my recovery process, reading about where I had been gave me the
courage to go on, for there was always one more memory to look at
and, for a while, always one more horror to face.
One of my deep sorrows is that I will never forget what I have
endured. My journal has helped me reach the stage where I no
longer think it a useful goal to forget something that was so much a
part of my life. My progress feels wonderful, and I no longer spend
my days so entirely absorbed by my memories. There is some ease
now; the pain is not so acute, nor is it my only reality.
16 BEYOND DON'T
I did think of suicide, but most of the time I knew that what I
really wanted was an end to the pain, not to my life. In my
day-to-day reality, I was continuously assured by doctors I consulted
and by my husband, while I was with him, that my pain was
imaginary, even when my body proved the existence of my pain by
exhibiting a series of what were called, for twenty years, psychoso-
matic illnesses.
The first thing I learned, in a long list of strategies to survive my
childhood, was not to trust anybody. The second th ing I learned was
not to trust myself. This is the sorrow I most want to heal, and the
one wit h which I seem to have made the greatest progress in the last
few years.
When you don't trust yourself, you learn to hide the truth. From
an early age, I realized that the truth about what was happenin g was
extremely dangerous to me. I began to find ways to get around the
truth — to learn, as the poet says, to tell it with a slant. This was
difficult because I was young and because I didn't want to have to
lie. But neither did I want to create the kind of conflict that my first
effort to tell the truth about the abuse had triggered. When I had
aired that truth, my family had ended up moving to another conti-
nent. So, in order to tell others what I thought they wanted to hear,
I had to learn to lie to myself.
I learned to ignore how I really felt and to feel as I was told I
ought to feel. I began to live on two levels: the level of responding
to the abusers', my mother's and my teachers' expectations; and the
level of my denied inner life. I soon found I was happier if I did not
acknowledge that inner life, and I abandoned it in favour of the
image that other people wanted of me — of a devout and obedient
Catholic child — which seemed so much safer. And that is how I
learned to split my personality. And that is also why, well into my
thirties, I had no idea who I was or wha t I really thought or felt about
anything. Except for one thing: I was madder than hell about
something, but having learned to be a good girl, I usually kept this
well hidden. Or so I thought.
It is a strange paradox that the ability to dissociate and split is
one of the most important survival techniques I developed as a
Beginnin g the Journey 17
child, and that it then proved to be one of the most difficult things
to let go of and overcome as an adult, when I began the work of
healing. Of course it was hard to let this go — for was it not what
had kept me alive? How could I survive withou t this split, which so
conveniently kept the pain at a distance, at least sometimes? But I
learned slowly, so very slowly, to feel safe, and then I found I no
longer needed to dissociate, leave my body, fragment, hide.
As I began the work of healing, I remember kicking and scream-
ing, wishing the work were over, always. I do not have patience with
the process of recovery, even when I take such pains to document
my progress day by day. My progress always feels too slow, far too
slow! Now I realize that the process went as quickly as I could cope
with it, and I believe this is true for everyone. We make progress
when we are ready, not before. If we are not ready when we think
we ought to be, it is better to re-examine our expectations than to
indulge in self-hate because we are not meeting an agenda that may
not even be our own. There is a personal sense that we ought to "get
over it"; therapists, a spouse, friends and society generally seem to
demand that we get on with our lives and come to terms with the
past in as short a time as possible.
My recovery process limped along from crisis to crisis. For
months I was not aware of makingany progress at all, and then a new
crisis would erupt in my life. Gradually I learned that a crisis
signalled that I had been making progress after all, and that I was
now getting too close to uncovering a memory that I was not yet
ready to acknowledge. The crisis, which I had often brought upon
myself, diverted my attention from the recovery process by giving
me something else on which to focus.
Part of my problem with healing is that I try to build mountains
without moving or touching pebbles or rocks. Here I was, trying to
will the mountains of my well-being int o existence because I could
imagine them — see them clearly in all their massy splendour. But
I did not want to get out the wheel barrow and start moving th e dir t
or handling the stones that were my past and the terror I felt about
it. There was something missing from my vision of the result —
w to get there. I was so impatient to put the pain behind me that
18 BEYOND DON'T
I did not want to take the time to go through my memories one by
one. I did not want to write them all down and look at each in turn.
After each new memory surfaced, I wanted to say, "This is enough.
I know all I need to know about my past and I can go forward from
here."
My visions were grand. I saw myself in seven-league boots; in
th ree giant leaps I intended to beat my goal of beingwell and happy.
I felt grand visions could be achieved only by magical and instanta-
neous means, and not by the painstaking trackin g of memories long
hidden from view. I tried now and then to concentrate on a stone,
or even a grain of sand. Then another crisis would loom, and I woul d
lose focus. It took me a long time to realize that if I was to reach my
goal, I could not escape the gruelling work of examining my past in
detail. I also could not allow recurring crises to distract me from my
healing work.
I found it was easier to accept the work that had to be done if I
compared my inner struggle to a physical challenge. If you plan to
climb a mountain, you undergo a training period before you begin
(awareness of the issues you are facing), and you start with easy,
short climbs (a slow letting-go of denial and negative behaviours)
with experienced guides (sharing experiences with others). You
outfit yourself with harness, ropes, pick, helmet and companions,
whatever will keep you safe and enable you to make progress.
Continuing this metaphor, I find comfort in the image of the
Goddess of the Mountain as a guide for this climb.
You climb only one mountain at a time, not the whole chain in
one leap. You don't really see much of the world with seven-league
boots — everything goes by too fast — and that usually means you
will have to retrace your steps. Each mountain requires different
skills, but one thing is certain — climbing becomes easier with
experience and practice. And it will always be a good workout. The
journey is at least as importan t as the destination, though I lose sight
of that almost as often as I blink my eyes or draw breath.
As I was going through my process of recovery, I needed to
remind myself that the work I was doing was vitally necessary, and
I needed to have the courage to trust as it affected my life. I had
Beginnin g the Journey 19
trouble accepting the process because it took time, and because it
could not be manipulated by intellectual effort, no matter how
much energy I expended. I could not speed the process up when I
thought it ought to go faster. I could not leap from phase to phase
simply because I lacked patience or had become too uncomfortabl e
with where I was.
I recognize now that I slowed things down when I tried to
meddle with the healing process. For instance, if the work I was
doing became too intense, or the progress I was making frightened
me, I became intensely involved in a relationship chosen only for its
distraction value; or I went on eating or drinking binges; or I ran
away from home — anything a t all disruptive that was sure to lead
meon an extended detourfrom my healin g path . Inevitably, I found
I had to give up what was usually a negative activity and return to
my work of recovery.
The best way for me to keep track of my progress is to look back
and see how far I have come. This is why I keep a journal. When I
know where I have been, I feel less anxiety about my current
struggles and difficulties. I am also more understanding o f what I
perceive at the time to be my failures, for by looking back I can see
that what seemed to be failure at the time often leads to progress,
or to an important lesson in the end. This was particularly clear
when I went on allergy-food binges, just to feel terrible and dis-
tracted. At these times I would feel that I had broken faith with
myself, when what I really needed was a rest from the intensity of
the work I was doing — a rest I did not know how to grant myself.
I use my journal to remind me of the importance of always
moving forward in the healing process, for if I stray from the path, I
find myself investing in stasis, which is unattainable except in
depression, psychosis or death. This does not mean that I do not get
stuck for long periods; it means the price of staying stuck is a heavy
one indeed.
I try to deny the demands of the healing process because the
models I have been given are those of life-denying perfectionism: I
was rigorously trained in the 1950s by parents, nuns and Catholi-
cism to be an always smiling , polite, self-effacing, obedient breeder.
20 BEYOND DON'T
In the model handed down to me, women were not expected to
grow as human beings, to experience any spiritual development or
change in their lives, from child to adolescent through to young
married woman, mother, middle age, old age. We were required to
have the same silly smiles on our faces, the same submissive
attitudes, whether we were three or ninety-three. To me it seemed
that nothing about our lives mattered. What mattered was that men
were pleased with our performance and suffered no physical or
emotional discomfort from our particular reality; what mattered was
that children appeared but did not become troublesome little
persons with lives and needs of their own; what mattered most of
all was that women not burden men or society with what they
perceived as our messy bodies and our even messier, diffuse and
illogical minds.
I grew up thinking that weak women were subject to physical
processes such as menstruation and pregnancy, which they could
not control and were required to deny and hide. Males, who I
thought were strong and definitely got to do what they wanted in
the world, lived their lives entirely beyond physical processes. It
was a simplistic view, yes, but when I was youn g and untaught, this
is what I believed. Puberty brought monthly indications of my
female process. Not me, I said, by the third period, not me! I don't
want to live chained to this. I want a different choice. I want a
female process-free life— a lovely, naive contradiction. I want the
same freedom from process that I think I see in the lives of my
father and brothers. Physical female process, as I saw it then, was
always negative, left me ever more powerless and brought too much
pain.
When I was a child, denial became a way of life. At school — if I
wanted to get home without being waylaid by bullies an d beaten up
for my difference — I was required to deny that I had been born in
Holland, spoke Dutch as my first language and was an immigrant.
At home, denial was how I learned to see the abuse I endured as
normal or inevitable. Allowing myself to see only the relatively safe
aspects of the abuse — that is, the beatings I got and the food that
was withhel d — I would not have to see farther, to the sexual abuse.
Beginnin g the Journey 21
As a teen I hated my father, yes, but that was much safer than
acknowledging why I hated him.
Denial is one of the most difficult hurdles of all. It's clever. It
goes underground. You can play-act that you have overcome it, for
it is so strong and cunning tha t it has enormous energy for deceit at
its disposal. But as you play-act, you learn; and whatyou learn is how
to banish denial, one tiny step at a time. The energy that comes
with denial is the means to finally overcoming it. Eventually I came
to the place where I could no longer swim through such thick muck,
and I wanted to use the energy this takes, denial's energy, to feel
better, to take charge of my life.
There is only one sure way to free the energy, and that is to let
go of denial. But there is enormous pain involved in letting go. I felt
that I could not cope with more pain; that I did not yet have the
quality of trust that would let me believe that letting go meant I
would feel better, really feel better. I would run up to letting go and
pull back. Letting go of denial appeared to me as an abyss, and all I
could see was its edge. Though I was convinced I knew how deep
the pit beyond must be, I didn't really believe in freedom from the
pain I carried. I thought that if I had a closer look at what was going
on in my life, I would drop into a blacker pit than the one I had
begun to crawl out of. And I said to myself that I wasn't that foolish,
no longer that easily suckered.
There came a day, though, whe n I had no other desirable choice:
I was faced with the realization that I must make the leap of faith
that would take me beyond denial, the first step in regaining healt h
and a sense of personal integrity — for how could either be possible
as long as I continued to lie to myself about what had really
happened to me?
I took the leap of faith, and suddenly I knew why I was doing it,
and that it was worth the enormous effort it demanded of me. I
glimpsed a brighter future. It wasn't much at that moment, but it
was a start. Now I had something to work toward. And in the days
that followed this epiphany, the energy that had supported the
denial was slowly freed to help me make the commitment to
deepen my healing work.
22 BEYOND DON'T
I believe that denial worked, initially, to keep me safe until I was
strong enough to cope with what burdened me, until I had a safe
place in which to begin to look at my pain, unti l I could find the help
and support I needed for the journey. This is not to say that it is
positive or necessary to hang on to denial beyond its time. However,
what you see as my denial, or I see as yours, may be all that holds us
together. Since you cannot know precisely my healing process, nor
I yours, neither of us has the right to confront the other with what
we perceive to be denial, demanding instantaneous change. Instead
it's best to be non-judgmental and supportive, trusting that each of
us will take the leap of faith as soon she is able, and knowing that
none of us can save another from herself. Only I can take responsi-
bility for myself, see myself as I really am, whe n I'm ready, and then
walk beyond denial int o the light.
An awakening took place when I let go of denial. I felt reborn,
and began to learn to stand upright, taking up space in and with my
own body. I began to learn to speak authentically as my true self. I
finally saw the spiral path, saw that it had widened, that more light
shone upon it. Yet some things I had to do again and again until I
had the lessons clear: struggles with ambivalent feelings for both my
parents, with siblings, with lovers, with responsibility for my son
and, especially, ongoing struggles with all the residuals of the abuse
in my life.
Letting go of denial allowed me, at last, to begin to see clearly. I
learned to name my experience truthfully, for the first time, with-
out euphemism or minimizing, without the language that protects
the abusers and erases me. Instead of merely saying that I had had
a rotten childhood, I was able to acknowledge that I had been
physically and emotionally abused, raped and pimped by my father.
I heard clearly now things I had never let myself hear before, such
as verbal abuse, and I began to name that too.
Just as a person whose vision and hearing are restored after
blindness and deafness is completely overwhelmed for a while, so
was I overwhelmed. And my first reaction was to retreat, seemingly
to go backwards into the denial again. But it was not possible, and
deep down I knew that. All I really needed was to rest for a time
Beginnin g the Journey 23
before I continued with the healing. This was my life's hardest
work, after all.
I manufactured many a crisis in my life because I knew of no
other way to have time out. I wasn't yet at a place in my recovery
where I could simply state that I needed a respite, even to myself.
I felt things moved too fast, and I was terrified of movement. Mind
you, I walked this path alone, without therapists, support groups, or
even books to comfort me.
For me the healing process consisted often years of approach-
avoidance manoeuvres. I'd work hard to chisel a path so I could
approach the issues, and then I'd run like hell as soon as I made the
slightest progress forward. The saying "One step forward, three
steps back" for me meant one step forward, three kilometres back.
During this time I had a little car. Each morning, as soon as I got
up, I would drive 100 kilometres to the nearest city for coffee and
then drive home. I didn't seem to live anywhere; I was always in
transit. I simply found comfort in driving that same stretch of road,
over and over. I put 100,000 kilometres on my car in less than two
years. The point is that, even running or driving in what I thought
of as the opposite direction (though of course it was not), I still
made snail's progress, and eventually I could no longer sustain the
effort it took to do so much running or driving.
Yet it still took a major crisis for me to find the courage to make
significant changes in my life. A massive tumour on an ovary was
discovered during a routine medical examination. (Was everything
that I held onto so strenuously collected into one lump, so I would
finally have to give it some attention?) Doctors treated the situation
as a high priority, booking surgery within days. It might be cancer,
they whispered. I went into instant denial. I broke appointments,
refused several times to show up at the hospital for surgery, refused
to take any advice from alarmed doctors.
I was cornered and I knew it. Denial helped me buy time to
think it through. Eventually I realized that I felt out of control, and
then why I felt this way. The surgeon I had seen gave me the creeps.
He was grossly insulting and reminded me of the abusers; I could
not face the idea of being treated by him while I was unconscious.
24 BEYOND DON'T
I knew I needed to find a surgeon I could trust, and as soon as I made
an appointment with a different one, much of my terror and denial
dispersed. I still had to face surgery, I still postponed it so that I
could go to the opening of my first one-woman painting exhibition,
but I knew I had made the commitment to take care of myself and
to get the help I needed.
This crisis brought the child abuse much closer to the surface. I
knew it was time I looked at what was really wrong with my life. I
began to realize that, just as I risked an early death by denying the
tumour, I might equally risk untimely death by continuin g to deny
my past and the grievous pain it still caused. I could not face it yet,
but I made a commitment to do so — which was the first step. I
stopped denying there was a problem, even if I could not yet cope
with looking a t what the problem was.
I was then thirty-nine years old, and I was finding it more and
more difficult to get by in the world at the emotional age of nine. It
was a great relief to stop pretending I was jus t fine. Surgery found
the tumour t o be benign. I was glad I had trusted, and paid attentio n
to, my reaction to the first surgeon, and was grateful for the skill of
the second one. I mended well.
That spring I got my first computer. A friend who had seen me
through an earlier surgery, and had been appalled by how longl took
to recover from it, felt that I needed a new interest in my life and
that perhaps a computer woul d help me finall y writ e tha t book I had
been talkingabout. I enjoyed playingwith the computer, and by the
fall I decided that I was ready to attempt the fiction project I had
been making notes for and planning for some time. I worked flat out
for two and a half months. As I did, I thought how much better this
all was than trying to come to terms with my own past. What I
wanted to write was fiction about other women's pasts, not mine.
Of course it didn't work. The writing project died. I sank into
yet another wretched depression, and stayed there until I went
back to read my journal of the spring and was reminded of the
commitment I had made. I saw a glimmer of light, and I wrote my
way to that point. Ten years of filling more than two thousand pages
with my dances toward it and screaming retreats left me with the
Beginnin g the Journey 25
image of a tunnel in a mountain. Once I got out of the tunnel, I knew
I would have to climb the mountain. I did not think I could do that.
I had no help, no guide, no one to hold my hand so I could take the
first steps. So I wrote, creating a rope ladder, learning to climb one
word, one day, at a time.
There were things I recognized early in this part of my recovery
process. I knew I was filled with hatred, butl had notyet let myself
know why. I knew I was potentially dangerous to my son and
definitely dangerous to myself. What I failed to allow myself to see
(for what could I have done with the knowledge?) was that this was
all very serious indeed. The doctors I saw throughou t my teens and
twenties — for my hate? — prescribed Valiuin. I learned to mix it
with beer and gin, and thereby to at least double the pain relief. I
had a huge investment in oblivion.
This is the part of recovery where I was most in danger of losing
myself. It is so easy to go over the edge or get stuck here— body
processes take over, and before you know it you are physically
addicted to whateveryou have been using to try to keep numbness
between you and the pain, or even just between you and the
recognition that there is a problem. I used many things other than
prescription drugs and alcohol in an addictive manner — religion,
food, relationships — anything that could build a sea wall between
me and my pain.
It takes enormous energy to keep from recognizing that a
problem exists. And that's what ultimately brought everything
crashing down around me. For me, a medical crisis was the last
straw. Other women have said that it doesn't have to be a major
crisis, though it is always a personally significant one. Some women
speak of crises brought on by the death of a parent, whether the
offender or not, or by the birth of a child. For others, if is anythin g
that causes upheaval: losing a relationship or beginning one, chang-
ing jobs, moving houses, or even achieving some long-cherished
goal. When you are hanging on by your fingertips, it doesn't take
much to unbalance you r life.
So one day there was a flash of light. I saw the tunnel exit and
realized I would have to do something now or die before my time.
26 BEYOND DON'T
Like hell, I said, and denial began with a vengeance. The tunnel exit
disappeared. My sense that there was a problem was quashed under
the weight of my fear. I threw myself fiercely into a new relationship
or a new project. No way was I going to leave the nice safe tunnel I
had lived in for so long and climb a mountain — for who would I be
then?
And the new relationship, the many projects, the things I
thought would make me happy, became dust and ashes. The hole
where my self and heart should have been was boundless. I felt so
very, very empty, and then I found the word "void" in the diction-
ary, and I thought it might be my name.
If somebody had told me then that my denial had created the
void, I would not have believed it. How could accepting that I had
been abused fill this void with so much as the breath of one atom?
Ah, but not only the pain, the abuse and the hatred had been
denied, but also my growth, health, life and energy: everything I
thought would never be mine because some twist of fate had
brought me into the world carrying a great cosmic emptiness
instead of a heart and soul.
If you deny that you hate, you leave no room for love to grow. If
you deny your pain , you lock out joy. If you deny your dis-ease, you
cannot achieve ease and health. If you deny what was destroyed in
your childhood, you cannot know the fullness of life as an adult. If
you deny, then all the parts of self and soul are blocked and you
cannot release the energy needed to do the healing work. It carries
a huge price tag, this denial.
Denial had been a way of life for me for so long that I should have
known it was rooted firmly somewhere. And so it was. Denial
enveloped recognition of the problem; it both preceded and fol-
lowed it. For as long as I denied the need for the healing process, I
didn't have to give up my feelings of being a victim or rake adult
responsibility for myself. As long as I was in denial, I did not have to
take care of myself, but in not taking care of myself, I also could not
acknowledge strength, growth or, in fact, anything positive.
As long as there was this denial in the way, I did not have much
access, if any, to a positive and healthy future. It was almost as
Beginnin g the Journey 27
though denial was saying, "Well, I can't deny what happened any
more, but I can deny you the vision to see it clearly, deny you the
insight to see your strengths and hope." Eventually I realized that I
could not be fooled by this. Not any more. This was the same old
denial thinking I wouldn't recognize it for what it was. The ques-
tion now was: Gould I find the courage to see clearly enough to
acknowledge both the necessity of the healing process and the
strength I most certainly possessed to engage with it?
The process of recovery: a journe y from here to there; a quest for
a healthy, whole self; for contentment; for a sure sense of my life's
path; learning of the work to be done and beginning it; being as sure
as one can be, with at least some idea of a plan.
The best news, once we have taken the phenomenal leap of faith
out of denial, is that we are now involved in a process that will make
positive changes in our lives. This is both comfortingand as frustrat-
ing as can be. If there is one thing we do not want to hear, it is that
this all takes time. I woke from the long sleep of denial ready to
tackle anything — mountain climbing, space walks, anythin g — as
long as I could get it done in the next thirty-six hours.
If someone had presented me then with a list of the aspects of
the recovery process that I would encounter, in my impatience to
be done with it all, I probably would have dismissed it out of hand
as not applying to me. I had carried all this stuf f for over thirty years.
The last thing I wanted to hear was that now I needed to focus more
time, more energy and more thought on the process of coming to
terms with it. I wanted to hear that I would feel better, magically,
tomorrow.
I think the biggest single thing I learned in 1986, the year I
finally began to let go of denial, was that none of the abuse I
endured as a child was my fault. What a revelation! Jus t waking up
in the morning was easier after that. I began, finally, to shed the
burden of guilt . And now every step I took forward showed me real
progress. I no longer felt I was going backwards — well, at least not
most days.
There were still plenty of things I could not face, often simple
things that just seemed to be more than I could manage. If I looked
28 BEYOND DON'T
long enough at the task that threatened to overwhelm me, asked
enough times, "Why is this?", I eventually came face to face with
the fear behind my inability to embark on it. Once I saw what was
really going on, I could decide whether I felt strong enough to tackle
the task or whether I needed to leave it for another day. I was
beginning to make choices based on how I felt, rather than reacting
to what I thought I ought to be doing. Chalk up another big step!
I wish I could say there was an easier path to recovery than facing
all the horrors of the past. I wish I could say there were shortcuts.
All I can report are rest stops along the way, and detours that are
more or less dangerous, depending on what they are. Though the
detours can significantly lengthen the process, we come back to the
same path eventually.
Once each horror has been faced and we have shed all those
tears, the past begins to lose its power over us. I used to ask, "How
do I know when I've really faced something, not just played clever
games with myself about it?" The answer to this question seemed
ridiculous to me then, but now I understand something of its
wisdom: When you have truly faced something, your behaviour
changes and you begin to have more energy.
I did not see the positive side of this for a long time, for the first
behaviour changes seemed to me to be for the worse. Where I once
had only occasional nightmares, now they appeared several times a
week, leaving me reeling and stunned by their power and violence.
For a while I lost the boundaries between nightmares and the
waking world. The nightmares were so real that my entire life
seemed to be caught up in them.
I began the process of writing the book that was to become Don't
by asking myself this question: How did I get here? My immediate
response was: slowly. I got here much too slowly, for I could imagin e
aspects of a different, healthier and happier life more than thirty
years ago.
From the time I was fouryearsold until I left his house fourteen
years later, my father, depending on his mood, raped, beat or
starved me, unhindered by anything except my stubborn will to
survive. This man moved through life from one vicious whi m or
Beginnin g the Journey 29
fantasy to the next. Eventually he developed the abuse of me and
my sisters into a lucrative business, selling the use of his daughters
and photographs of our humiliation to men in the community.
Apparently, he has now retired in considerable comfort on the
proceeds. I am the only one of seven daughters who has accused
him. My five surviving sisters continue to deny the horror we
endured in lieu of our childhoods, for to them it seems quit e normal .
As a child, there never was a time I didn't fight him, didn' t know
he was wrong or didn't hate him forwhathedid. I am, I think, lucky
in this: My grandmother (my mother's mother) supported me,
believed me absolutely, when I told her about the first time he
abused me, when I was fou r years old. She assured me that she and
my grandfather had talked to him, tha t he would never do any thin g
like that again. Of course, this was not to be, but even so, I knew
that she had tried to stop him and, more important, that what he
had done to me was wrong. If I had not known this, had not had the
memory of a grandmother who I knew loved me, but whom I did not
see again until thirty-eight years later, I do not think I would have
survived. Too much was against me, too much effort was made to
break and destroy me.
I clung to a dream vision of my grandmother in Holland all
through my childhood: I talked to her by asking the moon to take
her my messages and by talking to the little Humme l figurin e of the
Madonna and child she sent me for my first communion . The moon,
the figurine and my grandmother were all muddled in my mind, so
that I prayed to all of them for help and protection from my father.
There was no point asking my mother for either, since she had
assured me there was nothing she could do. She had six, then seven,
eight, nine other kids to feed, and told me that what my father
wanted was a price that must be paid. I had no choice, she said, and
neither did she.
My mother made the sort of concessions to our captor that are
now better understood in terms of the hostage syndrome and
battered-wife behaviour. She made what she felt were small sacri-
fices (me, my health, my safety, my childhood) to protect both
herself and her younger children. She knew, she said, that I was
30 BEYOND DON'T
strong, knew I could take it, knew I would be all right. She may wel l
have been rightabout my strength, but she was definitely wrong that
I ought to have been sacrificed to keep him from hurting the others.
She was wrong in thinking that he would be satisfied with only one
of her daughters, when there were so many more. Slowly, surely, he
preyed on the others. Each time she said, Well, that one, but none of
the rest. Her final effort, to protect heryoungest daughter, failed too.
By then she had nothing left with which to bargain.
I don't imagine my mother ever saw or acknowledged the
pattern he so clearly followed with her children. She did not ever
think she could stop him, or even demand rhar he stop. I see her
failure to protect us as the result of a long attrition of her will and
spirit: he blackmailed, bribed, threatened and occasionally beat her.
He broke her as surely as he broke me. She saw no hope, said we
would starve withou t him , kne w she was trapped and tried to make
the best of it. My mother never sought help or fought back. She was
an immigrant woman with ten kids; this was her problem and she
had no choice but to deal with it alone.
From the time I first heard about the plans to move us all to
Canada — away from the so-called meddling of my grandmother —
I thought only of getting away from my father. Like someone in
prison, I counted down the years, months and days until I would be
free. It proved to be not nearly as easy as my child mind thought it
would be. And when I finally left home at eighteen, I most certainl y
was not free of him simply because I no longer lived in his house.
* * *
For years I was the classic little mother, carrying the burdens of a
household of twelve people that my mother was no longer required
to manage. It tired her too much, and then she was not available to
wait on him or to help him entertain the customers, so she was
forbidden by him to do any housework, and I was obliged to do it all .
I was thirteen years old and five feet two of resentment and
weariness. In the basement, at night, business wa s booming.
Some time in my fifteenth year, my father tried to strangle me
so as to be forever rid of the accusation I could not keep from my
Beginnin g the Journey 31
eyes. My mother, in her one effort to protect me from him, pulled
his hands away from my throat, but screamed at me as she did so,
accusing me of willfulness and of upsetting him. I fell from his grasp
like a stone and still cannot understand why she waited such an
eternity to stop him.
I can see them both standing there in the kitchen, infuriated at
me, both blaming me for what he did. I remember looking at them
and knowing, finally, that I was broken. I had nothing left to fight
him with. I don't think I had taken his threats seriously until then.
I realized that I would have to learn to be more careful, much more
careful, if I was going to survive. I did not know if there was help
anywhere, certainly had never heard of any and probably wouldn' t
have believed in it, so escape was not an option. What I did believe,
because I knew it by then, was that he could kill me any time he
chose to exert himself, and that maybe there would be somebody
there to stop him, and maybe not.
I became a robot. He'd snap his fingers and bark an order at me,
demand I do a task, and I'd perform without speaking or thinking .
I made my face into a mask, which my father always swore was a
sneer. Occasionally he'd beat me just for the hell of it, because he
enjoyed hurting me, saying he'd change the mask I wore, even if he
killed me in the effort; but I bore that too, without weeping,
crawling away afterwards to finish the dishes or to iron his two wh ite
shirts for the next day.
For nearly twenty-five years I kept my memory, my feelings,
almost my very being, shut down, because some part of me knew it
was the only way to survive. Somewhere along the road I lost the
reasons for my denial. Eventually I didn't remember any other way
of being in the world. Didn't remember a time when I'd lived in my
body, instead of beside or above it. Didn't remember what it was to
have any feeling other than terror. Didn't think it odd that I
remembered almost nothing before my marriage at eighteen.
Didn't even think it odd that I hated my father — for no apparent
or remembered reason.
I became a very good actor. I'd watch people and mimic what-
ever behaviours oremotional responses I thought appropriate to the
32 BEYOND DON'T
occasion or event in my life. I developed a veritable repertoire of
feelings and reactions. I was so good at this that I fooled myself into
thinking it was normal. Of course, I couldn't explain to myself the
night terrors, the days of weeping, the physical and emotional
paralysis or the multitude of fears and phobias I acquired. As time
went on, I had to work ever harder to keep myself from remember-
ing. Every time there was a crisis, I'd develop another bizarre coping
skill. And I withdrew farther and farther into myself.
Twenty-five years ago I packed up the last of my household
goods in an army officer's bungalow in Petawawa, Ontario. That
May, I hoisted my nine-month-old son into a childcarrier on my
back, and together he and I boarded a train bound for Regina. I had
convinced my husband to resign from the military so that I could get
away from the idiocy of militar y life. I had been married for sixyears,
I was twenty-four and I was certain only of one thing: that the
stifling, intensely macho and violent atmosphere of military life was
not healthy for me or my child .
That was wha t I could talk to my husband about, but I had another,
hidden agenda. This leaving for Regina was the first step I took toward
leaving my husband. The rest of the dream I had sometimes tried to
share with him: I wanted a place in the country, a writing life, other
artistic endeavours. He always had the same response: he found my
pretensions to a life of my own stupid and funny.
The first thing I did when I arrived in Regina was to sign up for
a university course. I was accepted as a "mature student," because
I had never finished high school, and I began classes in the fall of
1971. I wanted to realize my dream of becoming an archaeologist
and a writer. I had both a passion for and an incredible fear of
creative writing. As I did not yet feel safe enough to embark on my
writing career, I wanted to get an education suitable for the writer
I wished to become.
A year into my classes, I left my son with my husband and moved
into a one-room apartment furnished with a mattress and a book-
case. I was going to get a degree and then become a writer, I said,
each time my husban d asked me what the hell I was doin g and when
I was coming home. When I left my husband an d my child , I realized
Beginnin g the Journey 33
that it was becoming more and more difficult to keep myself
together with gum and sticky tape. I was out of my marriage, but I
did not know where I was going.
My lack of a life plan heightened the almost overwhelming
sense of insecurity from which I suffered. On the surface I was
doing something I wanted to do — attending university — but
below the surface I felt in tense guilt and fear of punishment . I now
realize that these negative feelings resurface whenever I do any-
thing for myself, and I have to be constantly on my guard against
them. By the spring of my third year at university, I knew that I w
losing it, for I spent most weekends in a haze of alcohol and Valiu
planning my death.
At the time, I had no clear idea of wha t I had stepped into or why
I was suddenly awash in terror and pain. I did not know why I felt I
was drowning in something I could not see or describe. Valium and
alcohol deadened everything, and as long as I could indulge in them
in sufficient quantities, I didn't have nightmares. Mind you, my
daytime reality had as much of a nightmare quality as my dreams.
I tried over and over, but I still could not begin to write what I
thought of as my "real work." Not a single word could be coaxed
onto paper. I could not define what this "real work" was, but I had
a sense I would know it when I saw it. In the meantime, I could not
even write a simple essay for a university class. Writing for myself,
which I had told myself was the reason I had left my husband and
my son, was now the last thing on earth I could do. I was terrified of
what the words would say, what I would have to acknowledge if I
told myself even the tiniest bit of the truth. And I knew that if I
opened the floodgates, even the width of an eyelash, I would drown
in the pain. There was only one thing to do, I thought, and that was
never to let the smallest bit surface, to keep it all dammed up
behind the pathetic facade I presented to the world.
So when the urge to write became irresistibly insistent, I did
what I had done in the first few months of my wretched marriage: I
wrote letters to my sisters in which I told every species of lie about
my life, creating a fiction of myself, for I was their oldest sister, the
only one to have aspirations of a university degree and a career, and
34 BEYOND DON'T
I had, I thought, a responsibility to show them my successful self,
trotting out an adulthood I possessed only on paper. Perhaps the
best fiction I have yet written was in those letters sent back to the
little sisters I missed so much.
What I didn't tell them was that by now I weighed just over
thirty-six kilograms and was given to alcohol and Valium binges;
that I ate only a couple of times a week and was so malnourished I
was losing my hair in clumps, and my teeth shifted in my mouth
with every movement of my jaw. I could not explain why, when I
was doing something that I had always wanted to do, I was so
desperately unhappy.
The anxiety level I lived with was unbearable withou t Valium.
The doctors never questioned my need for the drug. They just
gave me ever-stronger prescriptions, and instructions to take the
drug more often. I was a twenry-six-year-old basket case, in the
doctor's office every couple of weeks, and spending most of my
time trying to figure out a nice, painless way to die. No one, ever,
asked me why.
It was a bleak and wretched time — and it would have been
substantially relieved had I been able to write a little trut h now and
then. I know now that I was terrified of what I would have to face if
I was honest with myself, and that the only way to avoid this
confrontation was to stay stoned and drunk and away from writing
anything more demanding than letters to my sisters.
I wonder what I could have done, what ease there might have
been for my suffering, if I could have found a way to tell someone
what I thought this pain was all about, I tried to talk to friends,
anyone who would listen for an hour. But it was easy to see that my
fierce hatred and rage quickly became too much for any of them to
deal with. I could not shut it off and be sociable. I was terrible
company.
Sometime in the summer of 1974, I surfaced long enough to
think about what I wanted to do, what I had better do if I was going
to make it to my thirtieth birthday. What I wanted more than
anything was to feel better, bu t I had no idea how to feel, so "better"
was a dream more distant than anything I could imagine. I decided
Beginnin g the Journey 35
that since my life was a disaster anyway, I might as well pick up
where I had left off five years earlier and get serious about weaving
and spinning. University classes were impossible by then. I was not
able to cope with any demands, even the simplest. I was no longer
able to get up in the morning if I knew I was required to do
something. But if left alone, I could putter with yarns and weave or
spin for a couple of hours and get through another day.
In January 1975, over the phone and for $300,1 bought an old
church in rural Saskatchewan. It was essentially a barn without
windows, having been abandoned to the elements and village
juveniles five years previously. I knew instinctively that it was time
for me to burrow and find out what was wrong, what was so
desperately wrong, with me. It was not an option to go for help. I
knew from experience there wasn't any. Sure there were psychia-
trists, and drugs to make you slow and stupid, but there wasn't
anything like help or understanding. If I was going to do it, if I was
going to survive, I would have to figure out how to do it myself.
I couldn't do what I needed to in the city. If I was going to
change my life, I had to get away from the temptations of the bar
scenes and from the stresses of city life. I needed an existence that
made no demands on me other than getting through the next
twenty-four hours. Moving to the country, into a drafty barn of a
building with no windows, heat, electricity or plumbing, and me
with no income other than a couple more months of unemployment
insurance, brought day-to-day survival into the foreground in a way
I had not expected. Since I had only a vague perception of reality, I
had no idea what I expected to live on or how I would get through
the winter. Cope? Hah! I was out of my depth the minute I walked
a step out of the city. I had never lived withou t plumbin g or cooked
on a wood stove. Wood had to be split before I could have a cup of
coffee! I knew I'd gone off the deep end, but, as I said to myself and
the few horrified friends who drove out from the city to see what I
was up to: You see, I can write here.
Theofficial move into the old church took place in Januar y 1976,
during a blizzard on New Year's weekend. Plastic covered the
broken windows. Th e building was so cold that I slept in long-Johns,
36 BEYOND DON'T
hat, parka, ski pants and mitts, buried under every scrap of blanket
and coat I owned. Every morning I would get up and stoke the wood
stove to bring the temperature up to just above freezing. I was
miserably poor, cold and hungry, yet I felt so much better than I had
in the city. I was still in pain, still having horrible nightmares, but I
knew I was finally on the right track.
I began my long, slow heal ing process through my hands. It made
me feel good (and slightly warmer ) to be absorbed completely in a
weaving project. I taught myself and was soon very skilled at it,
eventually winning prizes for work that would culminate, te n years
later, in a gallery showing of my textiles. Poverty, however, seemed
never-ending, for although people praised my work, it never found
a steady market, though I hauled mountains of scarves, stoles,
jackets, ponchos and rugs to craft fairs and tried to sell them through
the trendy little craft shops of the time.
I cannot adequately describe how important the work with my
hands was to my healing. Even as I felt ugly and hopeless beyond
measure, my hands learned to speak an eloquent beauty and to
weave the strands of my futur e into whole cloth. I could not see the
beauty I made, fought seeing it for many years. Yet I now see how
vital this work with my hands was to my process of recovery.
But I did not only sit at a loom or spinning-wheel, tryin g to earn
a living with my hands. I spent hours, days, months, years with a tea
tray on my lap and a pen in my hand, teaching myself to write, to
think, and even, slowly, to begin to feel. During the worst years of
my crisis, in my early thirties, I sometimes wrote sixteen hours a
day, just to find a way to see and experience myself as real.
As long as I felt my hand move across the page, I knew I was still
alive. I had no telephone then, so I could not call for help. I
sometimes wrote plaintive letters, but usually destroyed them.
There was no money for postage anyway. I sat in a large red
1920s-style chair in a corner of the basement of my old church —
this place I called home — with only one goal: to try to stay alive as
I waded through hell.
Throughout those years I read everything I could get my hands
on. I was searching for some hint, some life that resembled mine,
Beginnin g the Journey 37
that told the truth about the pain I carried. I had a hope I could not
express: If I could find anything at all to relate to, the secret that
held me in such terror would be unlocked and I would be free at last
to begin my life.
I did not feel then that I was living my real life at all. I referred to
myself as someone in cold storage, someone trapped undera boulder,
someone at the bottom of a pit or in a tunnel from which there was
no hope of escape. I felt utterly powerless and unable to change a
single thing about my life. I lived in a black hole of depression and
despair — a fate against which I thought I could not rebel.
Toward the end of this time, I experienced a new and increasing
frustration. It seems to me now that it built as I acquired the words
to articulate how I felt. Over my desk and painting table, I hung
quotes from women I admired, women who clarified for me what I
was trying to do. I have long since forgotten the source of these
quotes, but my favourites are still the words of two Afro-American
writers, Zora Neale Hurston: "I mean to wrassle me up a future, or
die trying," and Alice Walker: "You have to git man off your eyeball,
before you can see anything at all."
I still did not have any clear memories of my childhood that I was
willing to acknowledge. In fact, I enjoyed the delusion that I had
never had a childhood, for that was easier to cope with than
recognizing even the smallest part of what childhood had been for
me. I eventually began to admit things to myself, like the fact that
I hated my father: first for one reason — that he'd beaten me
unconscious while my mother was in Europe, visiting her parents;
then for two reasons — that he'd refused to feed me in my early
teens, or forced me to beg for my dinner, on my knees beside his
chair; then more reasons forhatinghim appeared, slowly. So I wrote
them down and wept over my journa l pages, thinking each time that
this was it, this was why I was a mess, and now that I knew the cause,
I'd be fine.
Yet there was always more. And as more incidents surfaced and
I wrote about them, I began to feel a little stronger. I still hid in my
church basement, not having anything to do with people. But I
began to think I might be okay, even as I clung wit h fierce denial to
38 BEYOND DON'T
the notion that I had been the victim of one man's stupidity and
rough handling, and nothing more. I still believed, too, that it was
my fault. If only I had been more willing, more self-effacing, given
him more of what he wanted with less hassle; if only I had been less
stubborn, less determined; if only I had been a boy — none of this
would have happened. It was my fault. In the words of one of my
sisters: I provoked him because I was too stupid not to.
By the spring of 1986 I had a lot of disconnected fragments of
memory and a growing determination to write a book about what I
was discovering. Reading back through the journals, I find myself
writing very generally about "what he did to me," for though the
sexual abuse had begun to surface the previous winter , I still found
it safer to distance myself from it, as though it had happened to
someone I had once known very slightly .
Nothing was clear yet, but the determination to understand
what this was really abou t grew with every page I wrote. I wanted to
write about what some men do to their daughters, about male abuse
of power, about how religious beliefs are cited as justification for
abuse. I wan ted to write a book that would make a difference — but
I did not yet have the courage to speak. So instead of writing about
my childhood, for several years I wrote about writing about my
childhood, about the book I would find a way to write one day and
what it would look like. I see now that I did all of my planning for
the book that became Don't during thi s time.
One day I realized that I had begun to climb the mountain, and
as I stopped for a rest I thought to look back to where I had been.
The journa l I had written during all those years was where I could see
this: I had described everything I had experienced, each wretched
moment, each tiny step forward and the months and years of just
plain being stuck. The journal is an amazing document , unbearably
painful reading and one of my greatest personal treasures. Besides
being a travelogue of my healing process, it is also where I taught
myself to write.
Picking and chipping one's way up the mountain requires a
certain amount of skill and an enormous amount of determination.
I used words as my tools, but there are others. When I began to feel
Beginnin g rhe Journey 39
better about myself, my first thought was that I would now be able
to stop writing and finally begin to earn a living. And the first thing
I promised myself I would stop writing about was my childhood and
my pain. Instead, I realized that the book I knew I would write had
finally found me. It was ready. All I had to do was sit at the computer
and it was there— flowing from the ends of my fingers as if by
magic. Well, almost.
I still fought daily wit h myself about the need I felt to walk back
into hell, face the abusers and write a book about that. No, I said. I
don't need to do anything like that. I need to go forward, not
backward. I'm going to put all this behind me and get on with my
life. Enough of this navel gazing. I said to myself: I like the place
I've come to; I don't want to leave the security of it in order to go
on. And if I write the book, my life may change more than I want it
to, in more ways than I can imagine. I've had enough of this
roller-coaster stuff. I want a rest.
I finally realized that the only way thing s woul d ever change, the
only way I would ever get past the pain I carried, would be to go into
itand through it and write from there. No wonder I had avoided this
step for so long! The only way I could write this book was to describe
the events as though I were experiencing them all over again as a
nine-year-old or an eleven-year-old. I had to find, and then write in,
the voice of my child self. Nothing else was real enough or carried
enough of the pain into the light.
I had a six-week rest, and one morning I got up knowing that ,
ready or not, I was going to write my book. I was going to do it as fast
as I could and hope it would not hurt too much. Fast didn't help; it
hurt unbearably. But the important thin g is that I kept faith with
myself, saw the commitment through , faced each horror-filled day
and kept on writing through my tears. I'm immensely prou d of that
now, and not a little in awe of my determination. For that's what it
takes: single-minded determinatio n to walk through the hell of the
past, to face all those abusers and demons. And then, with pride in
your great courage, to walk tall and strong into sunlight.
As I wrote Don't, the pieces of my fragmented self began to
approach wholeness; the child who had been beaten, raped and
40 BEYOND DON'T
strangled into terror and silence learned to speak as an adult, with
compassion and power. The fear-ridden child who had lived with
every known phobia learned to face and survive her fears. The
self-abusive and unnurtured child learned to take care of herself.
The Inanna myth I used to structure Don't is about coming to
terms with the darkness, facing my fears, making the descent into
the depths of hell and trusting that it is both necessary and,
ultimately, healing. My understanding of the myth is that it isabout
the process of giving up aspects of myself to profound life-renewing
change: the quest for my self and my soul. There are, of course,
aspects of the myth still closed to me, as there are aspects of my life
not yet illuminated. For I have not yet walked the paths or lived the
days in which that understanding will come.
It took, in all, thirteen years from the time I began to work on
feeling better about myself, before I was ready to begin writing
Don't. And once I had begun, I wrote as though all the demons in
hell were just over my shoulder. I wrote, it seemed, at the speed of
light, with a rage and passion I can only look back on in wonder. In
less than a month the manuscript was written. Get it over with, I
had said, then put it away and you will never have to think about it
again.
Well, it didn't quite turn out like that. Fate intervened and
brought me, trembling and terrified, to Vancouver in August 1987,
to West Word, the school for women writers, and a workshop given
by Nicole Brossard. For the first time in my life, my voice was
respectfully heard, although, whe n I read from the manuscript, I
read in a barely audible whisper. I received two offers to publish,
accepted one before I left Vancouver, and went home in a state of
shock.
A month later the copy-edited manuscript was sent back to me
from the publisher's office in Charlottetown. Over a ten-day period
I argued back and forth with myself about taking it out into the
middle of the yard and burning it. I knew in my gut that if I went
through with this, if the manuscript was published, my life would
change, and I thought I knew perience, that it would not
change for the better.
Beginnin g the Journey 41
from ex
Don't was published in Canada in the spring of 1988. The
publisher felt there should be no advance publicity. We both feared
for my safety, and she wondered, as well, if I would be able to stand
up to the pressure and threats that were sure to come my way if it
was known by the perpetrators (who lived a mere thirty kilometres
away from me) that I planned to make the story of my childhood
public.
I look back on the woman who went east to Toronto and
Montreal, to launch the book in May 1988, and she seems almost a
stranger to me. For she was terrified of travel, terrified of meeting
people and absolutely out of her mind with worry about being
required to talk about the book and her life.
All those years during which I sat alone, writing and dreaming of
a life of strength, of a sure and passionate voice, I didn't really thin k
I could achieve it, didn't think I had the stamina or the courage.
Sure I'd been preparing for something, sure I'd laid the groundwork
forprobably twenty years, but I didn't really think , whe n all was said
and done, that I could find my way through the first week of talkin g
about that book.
42 BEYOND DON'T
Tw o
Confrontin g
the World
How can I begin to describe the reaction to Don'f?The
phone started to ring, for I had a phone then, and people called from
across the country (when they could get my unlisted phone num -
ber), to ask for interviews and with invitations to come to their
communities to speak. Suddenly I was "Ms. Danica" and getting
requests for interviews. No one was more surprised than I was. Does
that describe it? Well, yes and no.
I have been reading the newspaper articles written about me
between 1989 and 1991, and have come away from them wondering
why I have such an unrelieved feeling of disappointment. What is
there to feel disappointed about? Perhaps I am simply frustrated,
seeing how much has been tried and how little has been accom-
plished for children at risk in the interveningyears. Perhaps it isn't
disappointment but just a recognition of my reluctance to approach
this material and write about it. For many years it was impossible to
43
find books by other travellers who had shared my journey. I realize
now that not only had I been involved in intense denial about my
childhood experience, but society was in denial that these things
happened to any child, ever.
Societal denial is often subtle and takes many forms. Soon after
Don't \vas published, a Toronto Star review of several books about
child sexual abuse lauded Sylvia Fraser's My Father's House because
it had a "polished literary quality ... The threads and themes wind
through it with fascinating complexity, like coloured ribbons
around a maypole. There was no such patina or literary gloss around
Don't.'" Charlotte Vale Allen's Daddy's C/r/had a "disturbing com-
mercial readability"; Don't was an "unyielding scream." At one
point, the reviewer, Arlene Perly Rae, wondered why I would write
the book at all, and implied that I was still such a mess that I
couldn't even cope with interviews. She stated that I had de-
manded to be interviewed in a church (because nothing else was
safe or feasible for me?), missing entirely the fact that the church I
was interviewed in was my home. My book was too "infuriating and
outrageous to absorb"! It seemed that Fraser's book got Rae's vote
because it was a novel and gave the reader those coloured ribbons
to hang on to.
While Rae understood what I tried to do with my book, she
dismissed it because what I had to say discomfited her. Rae's
parting shot was that we who write about child abuse are merely
"attempting to get back at [the perpetrator] ... Bymakinghim the
victim, we find the accused guilty ... duly condemned. Catharsis
complete." In this dismissive scenario, unless you area novelist, you
are either too commercial or too loud to be taken seriously. The
implication was also that writin g the book served a personal purpose
and that the issue of child abuse did not have wider significance.
It seemed to me that many of the newspaper interviewers who
called me about Don't had not taken the time to read the book, for
why else would I be asked to describe its contents over and over? An
interview, I was to discover, gets an author more publicity than a
review because it appears in the first three pages of the newspaper,
instead of on the book-review page on the weekend. This was good
44 BEYOND DON'T
for the book, but I found the questions gruelling and sometimes
appalling.
Why did I have to repeat the events of my childhood, like a
litany, over and over and over again? I could never do this withou t
feeling ill, disgusted, horrified. This is what happened? To me?
God, how terrible. You want more details? Why, will you print them?
I doubt it. Oh, you need more background information. Yes, yes, of
course, I see. And the journalists would apologize, knowing, they
said, how difficult this must be, but not knowing, really, or they
would have found a different way to do this. This was journalistic
voyeurism, not news.
It wasn't always like this. Some journalists did take the time to
read the book and asked meaningful questions about family reac-
tion; how the promotion tour felt; what my life was like all these
years later; what had happened to the offenders; and what my hopes
were for the future, for myself and for others with this sort of history.
Many of the resulting articles were well done, whatever the words
above them said to make me flinch. What is a reader to make of
headlines of this ilk: "Book becomes salvation for victim of sexual
abuse" and "Life sank into a haze of drugs, promiscuity for 15 year
span" and "Father set up her gang rape, writer tells all"? This
sensationalizing approach undercut the message I wanted to impart
to readers and made the story easy to dismiss. My intent was to
inform readers that child abuse is prevalent, and that the suffering
of abused children is great and has lifelong implications. I wished to
encourage readers to care enough to work together to rake whatever
steps are necessary to stop the abuse of children .
I learned from these headlines that an issue is coloured by the
media's presentation of it. A person is presented in one way if
belief in what she says is implied, and another way if wha t she says
is not accepted or is not deemed to be significant. I saw this
distinction most clearly in newspaper headlines, but also in intro-
ductions on radio and television programs and in the tone of some
interviews. The media give readers, listeners or viewers signals as
to how to interpret the information or images that are put before
them.
Confrontin g the World 45
It is a function of the medium of print that, at least sometimes,
newspaper reporters have time to ask thoughtful questions. I found
radio, with the exception of the CBC, more like a fast-food restau-
rant: I sat in front of the microphone in a studio the size of a broom
closet, said my piece and got out. Television was pretty much the
same, only with lights and cameras. Nothing can really prepare you
for that moment on television when the studio lights are on, the
lapel microphone is live and the camera's icy eye is focused on your
face. The studio director counts backwards from five. When his
hand drops, the command is that you speak, and from somewhere
you do find the words, saying for the ten-thousandth time: These
things must not be done to children; men must stop abusing kids
and women; and yes, these things were done to me.
One of the first problems I encountered with radio and televi-
sion interviews was getting interviewers to believe my story. Appar-
ently I did not look enough like a victim to be credible. Victims are
not, it seems, articulate, clean and tidy; do not travel without a
keeper or counsellor; cannot, by their very nature, function in the
real world, get to appointments on time, answer questions withou t
collapsing or have an agenda beyond the personal. Victims are in
institutions, perhaps; certainly not covering the half-dozen ap-
pointments scheduled for that day.
To be credible, it seems I should have looked more like a victim
of child abuse. I presume this means I should have been pale, badly
dressed, fragile, half carried to interviews, wit h a therapist on either
side of me; with matted hair or in blood-stained clothing, perhaps,
like the victim of a car accident or a bomb blast — above all, wit h
visible scars. Dressed as I was, in business attire, with eyes that were
not cast down and a clear agenda, how could I be a victim of
anything? And even if I once was a victim, it obviously had done me
no significant harm. The other side of the story is that if I had
looked more like the prevailing notion of a victim, I would have had
even less credibility because I would have been dismissed as crazed
and unbelievable.
When I was interviewed by reporters sceptical of my story, I was
often introduced with a series of greetings that seemed designed to
46 BEYOND DON'T
discredit both me and the book. "If what's in this book had really
happened to you, you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't have sur-
vived." Oh, wouldn't I? 'You don't look like a victim, so why would I
believe you?" What do victims look like? "If this happened to you,
your father must be in jail , right?" Wrong. Otherdismissals I encoun-
tered included: You are not a Christian; You are a feminist; You hate
all men; You refuse to name your father from every public platform ;
You r sisters and mother don't support your story; You're not affiliated
with anyone or anything. Sometimes these statements were made
on theair, sometimes jus t before I had to speak on an open-line show,
in an attempt to rattle me or put me on the defensive. At first it
certainly was possible to put me on the defensive, but with experi-
ence I learned to see where the interview was going and would try to
regain my equilibriu m so as to be able to say wha t I needed to.
These dismissals reflect the societal disbelief that has long kept
women and children from speaking about their experiences of
assault and rape. There were many interviewers who seemed only
too ready to believe that male abusers such as my father are the
victims of crazy, malicious women who have faulty memories. And
I saw this disbelief as a "damned if you do and damned if you don't"
situation, for it would be all too convenient for the perpetrators if
none of us did speak of what we endured.
In these interviews, the same set of my th s were held up as truth:
that if I had, in fact, endured what I said I had, I'd be in an
institution, living on the street or dead; that fathers who rape their
daughters are cretinous monsters who can be easily recognized as
such. All too often, when a "respectable" man is accused of child
sexual abuse, the community comes to his defence because he's so
nice, dresses well and doesn't look like an abuser, while those
accused who have the misfortune to fit the popular image of an
abuser are written off as surely guilty. If the accused is a teacher, a
doctor, a judge — if he appears to be well off or simply attends
church regularly— it is believed that he is too upright and edu-
cated a citizen to participate in what is still seen as something only
the very poorest and least well educated would do, and then only as
an adjunct to alcoholism and bad moral fibre.
Confrontin g the World 47
I was taken aback to discover that, even when interviewers did
find my story credible, most focused on what my father and his
buddies did. Instead of asking me personal questions about how one
can rebuild a life after such abuse, or general questions about the
prevalence of child abuse in Canada and what I felt should be done
about it, the interviewers wanted to know the details about my
particular case, the more lurid and graphic the better — anything,
it seemed, to avoid getting to the politics of the issue, to naming
who did what to whom and why.
As with the newspaper interviews, what I found most difficult was
to be asked, as though somehow it were easy to report all these years
later, just what had been done to me when I was four or nine. Why did
they have to ask me for the details? So that I could relive in front of the
interviewers all that horror and they could watch it connect with my
body, discover if it was true, perhaps? Wait to see if I would implode
with the telling? Hadn' t they read the book? And, of course, they often
hadn't. After talking to me they'd talk to somebody about gardening
or politics, so it was necessary, once again, for me to summarize the
contents of the book, something I could never do without feeling ill .
I'd come away from a four-minute television or radio interview emo-
tionally drained, and have to pull myself together in the ten-minute
drive across town to the next appointment.
Then there were the interviewers who believed what I had to
say but who obviously felt that I carried some of the blame for
allowing myself to be victimized. They appeared to think that I
must have somehow invited my father's attentions. He was por-
trayed as a victim of allegations from an angry child and the woman
she became. If anyone was actually to be held accountable for chil d
abuse in this scenario, it most certainly was not going to be the
perpetrator.
Finally, there were a disturbing number of interviewers who
seemed to understand only too well the abuse that I was describing.
Or at least, that is what I assumed from observing the reactions of a
number of interviewers who seemed threatened by me and responded
by being overly aggressive, by being embarrassed or by trying to keep
as far away from me as possible.
48 BEYOND DON'T
One man grabbed at me under the table on the set of a television
open-line show; I had to respond to a heart-rending phone call from
a mother who suspected that her three-year-old child was being
abused, while fending off the guy's hands. A radio talkshow host
grinned and leered through the hour, seeming to experience an
almost pornographic enjoyment of the pain and humiliation the
callers spoke of. Another man asked obnoxious questions while
trying to lean out of camera range, tilting his chair so far back that I
thought for sure he would crash to the floor. I even met a few men
who reacted to me with outright fear, physically backing away as I
was introduced. On two occasions, when introductions were being
effected, men grabbed their private parts in what seemed to be a
protective manoeuvre.
When I went to a radio or television station I was usually
accompanied by a woman from one of the organizations sponsoring
my reading or speech. When I was asked questions about services in
the community, the local woman would be able to supply the
correct information. When such questions were not anticipated, I
would often go to the appointment alone. I was generally briefed by
the members of the host committee about what to expect from
interviewers, and often a pre-interview with someone from the
committee would be set up to familiarize me with the groundwork
for the interview.
I approached the interview that autumn day with no reserva-
tions. I had been assured that it would be straightforward. When I
walked into the studio and was introduced to the interviewer, he
shook hands with me and we settled into the chairs on the set for
the program. The lights were turned up, the microphone volumes
were checked, the television cameras were focused on my face and
his, and suddenly the interviewer went on the attack.
After a brief introduction, he opened the interview with the
pronouncement: 'You hate all men." He progressed from there to
ever-more-inflammatory statements, culminating in the accusation
that I was acting on a personal vendetta. Never once did the inter-
viewer appear willing to consider that children are sexually abused by
their fathers or by other men in the child's immediate family.
Confrontin g the World 49
I was presented with a conundrum. How was I to deal with such
hostility? My reaction was to become even more polite than usual,
firmly denying the words and ideas the interviewer belligerently
stated were mine, but that had no relationship to anything I had
ever said or thought. This merely enraged him further, and his
baiting and cutting remarks became even more outrageous. I was
tempted several times to react, but you can't win if you argue wit h
this sort of thing, so I did my best to ignore his behaviour and to say
what I needed to say to those who might be watching, and fervently
hoped the ordeal would soon be over. This memorable event took
place in Kingston, Ontario, and in response, a viewer wrote a
scathing letter to the Kingston Wing-Standard demanding that the
man who had conducted this farce of an interview be fired and no
longer allowed to infect the screen.
On the way out of the studio, I had to fight the man for my
reading copy of the book. He refused to return it, even when I asked
him three times politely to hand it over. I had to grab for it, taking
it out of his hands. This was my annotated copy; I wasn't about to
leave it behind. Once I was out of the television station after this
interview, I experienced a sudden and overpowering exhaustion ,
which made me realize just how much tension had built in me.
In one year I toured from Willowbunch, Saskatchewan, to Dub-
lin, Ireland — via Regina, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Toronto, Mont-
real, Amsterdam, Munich and dozens of places in between —
speaking to thousands of people about the mistreatment and as-
sault endured by children. I was ill prepared for such a public life,
for a constant, daily baring of my body and soul's deepest pain, for
living in a spotlight perpetually turned on my childhood suffering,
and too rarely on the person I had become despite or because of it
or on the general issue of child abuse that I felt needed to be
addressed.
A friend of mine in Toronto, Barry Lipron, sent a letter and a
copy of Don't to Peter Gzowski, host of the CBC Radio program
Mornirtgside, at a time when Peter was planning a trip west that
would include a speaking engagement in Moose Jaw. Phone calls
from Momitigside: Would I be willing to do an interview? What woul d
50 BEYOND DON'T
make it possible? After some discussion and assurances, I agreed,
stunned. Peter Gzowski, a legend, is coming here, to my house? I
was assured by Momingside staff that he was deeply moved by my
story and would be sensitive in his handling of the interview.
Momingside is broadcast across Canada from 9:00 A.M. to noon
each weekday. The program has a large following, and is one of the
best ways to bring a topic or a book to the attention of the Canadian
public. I once heard an interview in which Peter Gzowski asked a
panel of writers the three best ways to sell books in Canada, and the
reply was "'Momingside, Momingside, Momingside^ Added to this is
Peter's famous style of interviewing, and his sensitivity. In my
opinion and experience, this was by far the most profound media
interview I had for Don't.
The first thing I think about when somebody is coming to my
house is what food I can offer. This almost always presents a crisis.
What food can I afford to offer? So I cleaned house and organized
lunch, trying not to think about whether people would want to eat
anything here once they saw how I lived. I am always apologetic
about my house, how primitive it is, how like a construction site,
how lacking in so many important ways — the lack of plumbing
being a particular concern. Focused on these things, I tried not to
worry myself into a state.
Four people showed up for the interview: Peter, a technician
from Regina and two producers from Toronto. We chatted on the
front steps, then the crew came in while Peter stayed outside to
finish a cigarette. I answered questions from the crew about how
long I had lived in this old church, and about life in a village of a
hundred people.
The interview with Peter Gzowski took two hours. I was so
tense, so worried I'd make a fool of myself, so worried about the
questions I'd have to answer, so terrified that I'd unravel com-
pletely, that I had a fierce headache. We seated ourselves at oppo-
site ends of the sofa, the technician in achairacrossfrom us, and the
rest of the crew went to sit outdoors.
Peter was sensitive in his approach to the questions, an d I thin k
his compassion is clear in the broadcast interview. I found it an
Confrontin g the World 51
amazing experience to be treated with such gentleness and care,
and it is still there in Peter's voice whenever he speaks about me.
He didn't skirt the issues in any way, for he is a persistent inter-
viewer, but neither did he pressure me, assuring me that I could
take my time and respond in whatever way I felt was comfortable
and appropriate. And when he asked me to speak about something
I felt I could not bear to talk about, I was able to say, "I can't go
there," and he was willing either to let it go or to approach it
differently.
After the interview I went for a walk, replaying the scene, the
interview, over and over in my mind and wondering what would
come of it once it got to Toronto and was prepared for radio
broadcast. This was the most amazing experience in a time of
incredible experiences. The broadcast was to prove just how amaz-
ing it all was.
The day of the broadcast, I sat in my chair in the upstairs studio
of my old church. If disaster had struck the building that morning,
I could not have moved if I'd wanted to. The power of the interview
horrified me and made me weep for the child who had endured so
much pain. I sat motionless, pinned in that chair for three hours
before I could get up, so overwhelmed was I by what I had heard,
and by my fear of what this would mean.
The broadcast made me even more nervous and afraid than I had
been until then: worried that my father and his cronies would hear of
it and take revenge. What would my siblings do? Or my mother? What
would this oh-so-public exposure of the story mean to my life? These
were questions I had also asked around the time of the book's
publication, of course, but my thought now was that people can ignore
a book — I was pretty sure my family had done just that — bu 11 didn' t
think it would be possible for anyone to ignore this interview.
As it turned out, there was little immediate local response,
although I understand the switchboard at CBC Toronto lit up and
stayed that way for hours as people in various time zones called to
talk about the interview.
During the next two years I heard numerous stories about
people's reactions: the woman who was so inten t on listening that ,
52 BEYOND DON'T
when somebody ran into her car in a parking lot, she told the culprit
to go away because she was busy; people who were driving when
they heard the interview and had to stop their cars because they
couldn't see where they were going through their tears; women who
said they wanted to turn the radio off but found they could not; and
people who have that morn ing forever imprinted in their memories,
as they told me, "like the day J.F.K. was shot."
I felt more exposed and vulnerable than ever before, and also
more profoundly alone. It is terrifying to go public in this way —
once people knew who I was, they would stop on the street and
stare at me as though I was some sort of freak and very, very
dangerous.
I heard from friends that some people in Moose Jaw interpreted
what I had to say as: She says she "slept with" her father, not she
was "raped as a child," thereby making th e child, and not the adult
perpetrator, responsible for the abuse. The difference in language
is not slight or insignificant: saying the child slept with her father
essentially means that the speaker denies there is a problem.
Acknowledging that the child was raped implies belief in the child,
and in the fact that a crime has been committed against her for
which the perpetrator should bear sole responsibility.
To those people who chose to see the issue as "she slept with
her father," I had simply proven my worthlessness as a poor immi-
grant kid from the wrong side of town. Others, missing the point
entirely, referred to me as the writer of "that sex book," implying
that I had written something lurid and pornographic. By seeing the
book in this light, these people were able to avoid dealing wit h that
most uncomfortable and dangerous of topics: the sexual assault of
children. There were still others who dismissed me as vicious and
crazy, knowing, as they said, my "nice guy" father. With their refusal
to believe what I had written, they did not have to revisit assump-
tions they held about who my father really was.
Yet others — many, many others — shuddered at the thought
that their sisters, daughters, nieces and granddaughters had been in
that man's photography studio as putative "models." It seemed to
be absolutely clear to people in Moose Jaw who the book was about,
Confrontin g the World 53
even though my name is not the same as my father's and I had not
lived in Moose Jaw for more than twenty years.
It is, contrary to some things I have heard, appalling to be
celebrated as avictim. It is a millstone tha t grows heavier as you drag
it around with you. I guess there was an assumption in some of the
media interviews that I had written the book because I was desper-
ate to talk about the abuse — as though public exposure on radio
and television was my preferred therapeutic context, a peculiar
conceit of too many open-line shows. When I made the decision to
hand over the manuscript for publication, I had almost no knowl-
edge of what that would mean. I believed the abusers should be
exposed and their crimes against children shown clearly. But it
wasn't my father and his cronies who were placed in the spotlight,
having to explain and justify their actions — it was me.
My message for other victims of child abuse was that it is
important to talk to someoneyou trust; tha t unresolved child-abus e
trauma is a very dangerous thing to leave buried; that the pain and
terror can be survived and can be healed. Yet, in order to deliver this
message, I had to speak constantly abou t my own past, in excruci-
ating detail, and I had to read from the book I had written to put my
past firmly behind me.
I don't mean to disparage the many thoughtful and sensitive
professional journalists I met who did their best to make me
comfortable during interviews, and who gave me the opportunity to
say what I felt was important to say. It is the process I want to
critique. At the beginning I thought, all too briefly, that this
attention from the media was the same as attention from society as
a whole. I imagined tha t the attention I and several other writers in
the 1980s received as we worked to highlight the issue of child
abuse implied a societal and political will to do something about it.
But all too soon today's issue becomes yesterday's news. Worse,
there's a perception that, once an issue has spent several months i n
the spotlight, it has been dealt with, and the implication seems to
be that it is thereby resolved.
As any survivor of child sexual abuse can attest, nothing about
this issue is simple, and no aspect of it allows for quick and easy
54 BEYOND DON'T
resolution. Certainly six months or so of media attention is not the
same as an extensive societal commitment to doing what needs to
be done to stop violence against children. Yet, as I discovered early
on in my book promotion-tour wit h Don't, it is this complexity that
stands in the way of effective programs to address the needs of
abused children, adult survivors of abuse and perpetrators. In order
to deal with these needs, we as a society must take the time to
examine all our beliefs and practices affecting children. Rather than
embark upon this daunting task, we all too quickly sweep these
important issues back under the carpet—the ultimate excuse
being that it is really much too costly to address them.
Confrontin g the World 55
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Thre e
Becomin g a
Publi c Person
I'm thinking about the process of acquiring a public
persona. How did I get from being such a quivering lum p to feeling
comfortable in public, even with the miserable topic I talked about
daily? I am retracing my steps, looking for the crumbs on the forest
floor that will lead me back to the person I was at the beginning of
the journey. Perhaps she cannot be recovered, but I try because I
need to understand. When I began, I was so fragile. There were
things that would have made life easier for me then; at the very
least, I should have had a friend to travel with, or some previous
experience of travel.
I didn't write Don't with any conscious notion that I wanted ft to
be published. My hope was to ease the pain in my soul. I thought
that if I could tell the truth about my experience of childhood, I
would accomplish that much. More than this I didn't consider. No
writer really writes only for herself, however. She may begin by
57
writing what is essential for her to write for herself alone, but
gradually she will discover that she wants to find a reader. I had great
difficulty acknowledging a desire to be heard and read. Anyone
whose self-esteem was low as mine was at that time is more
comfortable apologizing for her existence than promoting a book.
In this state of mind I arrived in Montreal for the International
Feminist Book Fair in June 1988, a couple of months after the book
was released in Canada. There I met writers I had long admired, and
my reaction was either incoherence or speechlessness. I was afraid
they would find out I wasn't a real writer, for I didn't think I was
one. I was utterly out of my depth, and overwhelmed. Years spent
isolated and alone ill equipped me for speaking to people. Here I
was given warm wishes and congratulations by women I held in awe,
and all I could think of was how to apologize for the book, my life,
everything. I wasn't happy or exhilarated by the attention — I was
terrified.
Gynergy books had a booth at the fair. I sat there with the
then-publisher, who introduced me to writers she knew. By far the
best part of the experience was to be around so many books. I would
happily have spent thousands of dollars, had I had the money. I may
have been shy and nervous about meeting the authors, but I was
delighted to be in the presence of their work.
The rest of the experience was another matter. I didn't feel
comfortable in the city, among so many people. I was afraid of my
own shadow, afraid to walk alone from the hall where the fair was
held to the dorm. I was anxious about my threadbare, dowdy
clothing, worried I didn't look "right," whatever that was. I felt I had
been plucked out of my equivalent of an isolated cabin in the woods,
where I had lived without television, without newspapers, and
plunked down in the middle of Montreal with no more than a "See
yah. Have a good time." Nobody who hasn't been through this can
easily understand how hard it was. I was intimidated by everyone. I
didn't know how to cope, but I didn't want anyone to know because
I was ashamed of being so frightened of ordinary things.
I wouldn't go into a restaurant by myself, wouldn't get on a bus
or into a taxi by myself. If I couldn't find anyone to go out with, I'd
58 BEYOND DON'T
stay in my room. I had no basis for coping in Montreal or most other
cities. In Toronto there was my friend Barry Lipton, who would take
me to what I wanted to see, and I wasn't afraid he'd sneer at me for
being so childishly afraid. He understood my fear better than
anyone. He also gave me the best analysis of the problem: 'Ton have
no city skills," he said. "That's nothing to be ashamed of."
I still don't have city skills. I still get into a nervous state when I
have to navigate in any city by myself, so I try to avoid it. I do now
enjoy being in a city as long as I'm with someone who doesn't mind
me tagging along. But at the end of a day of wandering around, I still
find myself panic-stricken and tense. It's not hard to understand
why: I live in a tiny village and never see anyone; if the phone rings
twice a week, I think it's been busy. To go from this lifestyle to a
bustling city is difficult, but no longer absolutely terrifying.
On the whole, this feminis t book fair experience remains a blur.
It was there that my publisher began negotiations for foreign-rights
sales. Within the next eighteen months, there were eight editions
of Don't in print: English-language editions published by The
Women's Press in the United Kingdom, Atti c Press in Ireland and
Cleis Press in the United States; a German translation publishe d by
Frauenoffensive in Munich; a Dutch translation published by An
Dekker in Amsterdam; and a French translation published by Les
editions du remue-menage in Montreal; and a mass-market editio n
published by McClelland & Stewart in Canada.
I got back to my prairie churc h near the end of June , so tense and
exhausted that I slept most of the next ten days. At the end of that
time, I was physically rested but not at all settled in my mind. I
needed to talk to somebody, but I was afraid to so much as own that
I had written a book, never mind talk about what was now happen-
ing to it ou tside Saskatchewan. And if I couldn't bring myself to talk
to anyone, then I wanted something physically challenging to do
that would take my mind off wha t was happening.
I decided, with no carpentry skills whatsoever, to build myself a
bed. For years my studio had been cluttered with several huge
pieces of lumber: ZxlOs and 2xl2s I kept tripping over no matter
where I stacked them. I had always intende d to move them, but one
Becomin g a Public Person 59
of them was over five metres long and was too heavy even to drag
anywhere else. I drew up a plan and made a list of the pieces of
lumber I needed. I positioned the boards across three chairs and cut
them with a handsaw. Once they were cut, I took the boards out to
the yard, where I had a double cast-iron laundry sink I used as a
workbench. There I sanded the individual pieces to reveal the
lovely warm honey colour of the fir, and as I did that I meditated on
what I was going to do.
It took me three weeks to cut, sand and apply several coats of
Varathane to the boards and to assemble the bed. By the time i t was
finished I had a plan. What was the point, I asked myself, of hiding
or running away? The book was attracting positive notice. Why
didn't I just see where it would go, and enjoy the attention? And
how would I do that? I had much to learn to make the most of the
opportunities the book gave me. I had to learn how to respond to
the public withou t collapsing completely, either psychologically or
physically. I had to learn what I was willin g to do or talk about that
would leave me on my feet and functioning at the end of the day
and the week. I had to train myself in public speaking and presen-
tation, and learn how to cope with the hundreds of disclosures I
knew I would hear.
There is no workshop I know of where a writer can go to learn to
respond to the public: to learn how to prepare for everything from
radio and television appearances and interviews to book-signing
sessions, to standing at podiums in large auditoriums. There are no
deportment, dressing and make-up workshops for the freshly
launched author wh o has spent most of her life in clothes from thrift
stores and who doesn't own any make-up. Still less is there advice
on how to talk to people and respond appropriately to so much pain.
And even if there had been such help, there was suddenly no time.
Peter Gzowski's interview, broadcast in November 1988, cata-
pulted the book into national public awareness. I began to receive
letters from readers, as well as from people who had heard the
interview on Morningside: letters that thanked me for the book,
lauded my courage and often contained pain-filled descriptions of
the writer's childhood experiences. Although I was glad that the
60 BEYOND DON'T
book and the interview were well thought of, reading those letters
sent me into an intensely worried state. I didn't know what it was
appropriate to do with the excruciatingly painful disclosures being
shared with me.
It was not a solution for me to write a generic response and fire
it off to every person who wrote to me, yet what could I say to the
writer that would offer anything in the way of comfort for her pain
or encouragement for her healing? I didn't have enough faith in
myself to believe that anything I said in a letter might be useful, and
I was fearful of unwittingly causing additional pain. I would agonize
to such an extent over each letter that I often couldn't reply, and I
regret that now. I think a simple and straightforward acknow-
ledgement was what many of the women were looking for. Some-
how, when I talked to a woman in person, I found it easier to
respond to her pain with compassion, for I did trust my skill at
reading faces. At first overwhelmed by the public reaction Don't had
unleashed, I gradually came to feel I could meet and respond to
women who had stories like mine.
I began to relax into the job of being an author. As painful and
difficult as it often was at the beginning, it was in many ways a role
I enjoyed. I found, much to my surprise, that I loved meeting
people, loved the role of author on tour and all that it implied in
terms of dining in restaurants, travel and public recognition. I felt
this was a holiday of sorts, because I was away from my desk and my
worries about the current writing project and whether or not I'd eat
this week. I got into a routine and felt for a while that this was my
life. It was much more fun, even with talking about child abuse
incessantly, than sitting still to sort out the problems with my
childhood that remained. Every thin g else in my life was on hold. I
allowed myself no worries other than making it on time to my next
appointment, or to the airport for the flight to the next city.
The first few times I stood before an audience to read from the
book, I found it arduous and painful. My knees quaked, and my
voice wouldn't cooperate and would run our of air or falter when I
most needed it. I locked my knees to keep myself upright, but this
felt much too tense. I found that if I sat to read I was more
Becomin g a Public Person 61
comfortable and could do a better job. Eventually, with experience,
I grew more at ease with being at a podium or on stage.
Audiences always carefully scrutinize the people they are there
to see. The questions I was asked astonished me at first. Why would
anybody want to know whether I had a relationship with a man?
Why would anybody care what my religious beliefs were or were not?
Often I'd answer questions for forty-five minutes or longer after a
lengthy reading from the book. These questions, I later learned,
were almost always to do with information the individual needed for
her own life. Face to face, the woman would tell me the story behind
the question she had asked in the public forum.
One woman was concerned that she would not be able to sustain
her relationship with her boyfriend if he found out about the abuse.
Another felt she would be ostracized by her church group if she told,
and feared her faith would not withstand such a rift. Many women
feared that the truth about their childhoods would permanently
sever their relationships with family members. If I said I was in-
volved with a man, maybe the questioner could one day feel comfort-
able in such a relationship. If I said I was a Christian believer, maybe
the questioner could find away to reconnect with her own lost faith.
But I had to tell the truth. No, I wasn't yet comfortable around men.
No, I wasn't a Christian. And, most difficult of all, each family —
indeed, each family member— responds differently to child-abuse
disclosures. But, I told my audiences, my personal situation mat-
tered less than what the women asking the questions felt comfort-
able with. Just because something was not possible for me did not
mean it would be impossible for someone else.
I became aware that some people believed that, although women
like me could cope with a miserable past, it was beyond their own
powers and strengths. For example, a woman would preface a
question with the statement that she was sure she would never find
the courage to face the abuse she had endured or to tell her mother
about it. So I would say, "Well, it took great courage foryou to come
here tonight. Ifyou could do that, you have plenty of courage for the
work ahead on the path to feeling better about yourself, whatever
that work is for you."
62 BEYOND DON'T
Interaction with audience members at my readings was often
intensely personal, with many people telling me what they had
never before told anyone. Some days it seemed that each story was
more terrible than the last. And the women, for it was most often
women, said they had to tell me because they were certain I would
understand; and that nobody until then had ever understood their
sorrow and pain or accepted it as true. Many nights I heard fifty or
more stories, holding the hand of each woman as we talked for a
couple of minutes after I signed a book for her.
The atmosphere at these public events was often intensely
charged, and never more so than during the reading I did for the
Moose Jaw Public Library. This was my home town and the abusers
still lived here. I assumed this would be a vicious and hostile
audience. I had requested a police presence in the audience and I
sat with a librarian on either side of me to make me feel safer. This
was the only venue in which I feared for my personal safety. The
auditorium booked for the reading could hold 150 people, and forty
minutes before I was to appear, a huge crowd had arrived to hear me.
The room could accommodate no more people, and still they came,
standing in the adjacent park until the outside crowd was even
larger than the one seated inside. A couple of quick-thinking local
writers got in touch with the custodian of a much larger hall in the
church across the street and quickly moved the crowd and sound
system to the new location. An estimated 350 to 400 people heard
me speak that night and, although it was very tense, there proved
to be no need for the police.
Speaking out about the book was incredibly exhausting work,
but I felt it was helping to make a difference, for so many women
told me how the book had changed their lives and how much it
meant to them to have a chance to see me in person. I saw it as an
extension of my original project, which had been to ease my own
pain; if these public appearances helped ease the pain of others,
how could I refuse to do them?
I received many requests to attend promotional events for the
book, and it became apparent that, if I wanted to, I could travel
regularly. Carolyn Guertin, a friend who is a skilled publicist,
Becomin g a Public Person 63
stepped in to organize tours and speaking engagements I could not
have undertaken without her help. She handled the details, called
people, made contact with potential sponsors, set up media ap-
pointments and interviews and worked out exquisitely detailed
schedules. If I spent months on the road, Carolyn spent months on
the phone organizing it all. My only regret is that she was not paid
more for the work she did. My earnings in one city paid to keep me
going until the money came in from the next engagement. Life on
the road is not cheap, and I had my home in Saskatchewan to
maintain while I was away.
I began the longest of my three tours in January 1990, on my
birthday, speaking to inmates in Pinegrove, the prison for women in
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The first thing I saw when I walked
into the institution was agroup of women with theirarms extended
through the bars of the main gate, palms upward, waiting for the
warder to give them their medications. My reading was held in the
auditorium, only a few steps inside the gate. It was one of the most
difficult presentations I made, for the room I spoke in was filled
with the pain and tension of women who lived behind bars. I
couldn't help but think, there but for the grace of the angels go 1.1
thought about the horror of incarceration, and what it is like to have
no choices about anything, a situation entirely too close to the
reality of my childhood. I found it devastating to spend even an hour
in this environment, and I cried forhours on the trip back to Regina.
From Saskatchewan I flew west to Edmonton, Calgary, Leth-
bridge, Vancouver, Salmon Arm, Victoria, Ganges, and Saltspring
Island. The engagements were all roughly the same. I would be given
a finalized appointment schedule for my visit when I was met at the
airport. Next I'd be driven to the hotel to check in, or to a billet home
to drop off my luggage. If there was time, there would be a quick tour
of the community, including the sponsoring agency's office. In
Edmonton, it was Catholic Family Services; in many other places, it
was a coalition of community groups formed specifically to raise
public awareness about violence against women and children. Then
the person whose task it was to take me around to all the appoint-
ments in the next few days would find a suitable restaurant, and over
64 BEYOND DON'T
coffee or lunch would give me an overview of the situation in the
community regarding the issue of child sexual abuse.
In most communities I visited therewere basic services available
for the protection of children, and even more services for adult
survivors of child abuse. Counselling and support services, however,
often had lengthy waiting lists. Every community wanted to do
more, and it was felt that increasing public awareness was a logical
first step.
Most often the person who took me around to my appointments
was a woman who did this along wit h all the myriad responsibilities
of her regular job and family life. Many times I wished I could spend
more time in a place just so there would be more rime to visit wit h
the women I met. In every community I was treated with amazing
care and concern for my well-being and comfort. In Edmonton,
when I mentioned in some context I can't even remember —
maybe during an interview — that I was allergic to wheat and found
it difficult to find appropriate food while travelling, the owner of a
bakery sent me a dozen loaves of rice bread, with best wishes.
In the evening there would be a dinner with the committee who
had organized the event that had brought me to the community.
This was where I met the women and men who worked to make
their communities better and safer places for children and people
at risk, through women's and church groups and volunteer organiza-
tions. Occasionally these dinners were formal, bur more often they
were wonderfully warm, and with laughter and wit celebrated the
committee's success in organizing a coalition .
I would learn about the services the community offered
(women's shelters, counselling, programs forabused kids and adults)
and what the committee hoped my visit would do in terms of raising
awareness of the prevalence of child abuse. I would be briefed about
the interviews and what to expect from the interviewers, when that
was known. Wherever possible, I liked to do the interviews on one
day and the speaking engagement on another — to make sure I had
a voice and not merely a croaking sound for my readings, and also to
keep the pace from becoming impossibly hectic , for after two and a
half days or so I would be off to do the same thing in the next
Becomin g a Public Person 65
community, and then the one after that. Pacing was an early and
important consideration for me.
The city of Victoria, on Vancouver Island, was my winter desti-
nation, and by late January I had arrived. I spent a week visiting wit h
my nineteen-year-old son, Greg. We went to his favourite cappuc-
cino and dessert places, tried all sorts of differen t restaurants, spent
ages in bookshops, saw the sights, and talked and talked. It was the
first visit we had had in two years, and the first visit on his turf rather
than mine. I had not seen Greg since he had read Don't, and we had
a lot of catching up to do. It was during this visit that we began a
new phase of our relationship, for he was now an adult, and one who
was intensely proud of his mother and what she was doing.
After spending time with Greg, I went to the Gulf Islands to
recuperate from my months of touring. The owners of Spindrift, a
lovely resort on Saltspring Island, had given me the gift of a
two-week stay. A reading had been organized to cover my expenses,
and several local women were to keep the little guest cabin I stayed
in supplied with firewood. By the time I got there, I was very much
in need of rest, and this was the perfect place — stunningly beau-
tiful and quiet (no phone, television or radio), yet only a few
minutes from town and cappuccino. I slept, read, walked, and in the
evenings I dreamt in front of the fireplace. It was heaven, and I
dream of returning for another visit. Withou t this gift, I doubt that
I could have carried on through the next few months. It would be
late May before I could again have a relaxing, quiet time.
All too soon the time on Saltspring Island was over and I headed
back east, bound for the city, media interviews and speaking
engagements. My calendar for the month of March tells me I was in
Toronto, Hamilton, London, Sault Ste. Marie, Montreal and Re-
gina. In Sault Ste. Marie I had a severe allergy attack, complicated
by a cold and exhaustion, that landed me in a hospital emergency
room because I couldn't breathe. I had struggled through an inter-
view, and every few minutes the microphone had had to be shut off
as I coughed and coughed. After the interview, which I refused to
quit even when it was suggested that I do so, the woman who had
been taking me to my various appointment s insisted that we go to
66 BEYOND DON'T
emergency at the hospital. The doctor told me to stop what I was
doing, rest, take it easy. I can't, I said. People are counting on me. I
have to be in Montreal tomorrow.
By the end of March I was back in Saskatchewan to do a reading
tour of several rural libraries and to speak at a conference in Regina.
Then I returned to my boarded-up home to search through boxes
for clothes for the next stage of the trip, and back east to Toronto
for the flight to Europe.
I arrived at Toronto airport in mid-April, bound for Amsterdam.
All my tour-related expenses and travel were covered for this
European trip, but I had only a couple of hundre d dollars in personal
spending money to see me through seven weeks. I called Barry,
asked him to keep me company during the five hours between
planes. We had coffee, talked about the itinerary. He gave me travel
hints and we visited. Then he handed me a thick envelope. He's not
the sort who gives cards, so I was surprised. I opened the envelope
to find a wad of money. "What's this?" I asked in amazement.
"Fifteen hundred dollars, U.S.," he said. "So you can relax and have
a good time." I wanted to know where he had got this much money.
"Where do you think? A bank, of course. That's what banks are for
— to borrow money, eh," he said, laughing at my astonishmen t as I
looked alternately at the money and at him. "This is really wonder-
ful," I said, "but are you sure? It's so much.""Don' t worry about it,"
he said. "Enjoy it."
Arrival in Holland: landing in a dream I had been dreaming for
thirty-eight years. I wanted to rush out to see, experience and touch
everythingat once. Most of all, I wanted to listen to people speaking
Dutch, the language of my mother and her mother, the lost lan-
guage of my early childhood. My Oma (grandmother) was still alive,
age ninety-four, in a nursing home in Wageningen. But I was
nervous aboutgoing to see her, fearing I suppose, several things: yet
more rejection from someone related to me, or finding a woman to
whom old age had not been kind and whose mind was no longer
intact. I had no way of knowing, for though I had sent cards and
occasionally received cards in return, no real information could be
exchanged; my grandmother did not understand English and I
Becomin g a Public Person 67
could not write in Dutch. It had been several years since I had heard
anything directly from her, and even my mother no longer received
regular letters because writing had become too difficult for my
grandmother's arthritic hands.
My sense of Holland was a combination of nostalgia for what
little I remembered and the magical place my imagination an d my
yearning for my grandmother's love had made of it. Certainly I
ascribed to it culture, art and history such as I had not been able to
find in tiny provincial 1950s Moose Jaw. I knew nothing about
Holland's contemporary culture, politics or reality — and I no
longer spoke Dutch, so I assumed my access to anything woul d be
limited.
Amsterdam in awarm spring sunshine: The trees were green ing
and every street corner, it seemed, had a flower stall. Every day I
walked through the old city streets and along the canals, absorbing
the feel, sounds and sights of what I saw as my mother's and my
grandmother's city. This was the city they both loved, where my
mother had lived until she was twenty-five years old. I hoped my
explorations would somehow help me feel closer to my mother; in
fact, I learned a great deal about myself.
I visited galleries, a civic museum, a museum of antiquities,
numerous antique shops and the Delft shop in the centre of the
city, but it was not until I visited the maritime museum that I got a
clear sense of who my ancestors really were. When I saw the ships
the Dutch had built and the instruments they had designed to sail
the open seas, I felt an intense pride and connection — here were
people who made the best of a tiny, waterlogged country, and to do
so they became expert craftsmen. Craftsmanship has always im-
pressed me, and there is a Dutch sense of craftsmanship and
meticulousness that I have most definitely inherited.
I spent most of my three weeks in Holland thinking about my
mother. I wondered what it must have been like for her as a young
woman during the war in occupied Holland. I grew more and more
puzzled about why a young woman wit h a privileged upper-middle-
class background would become so enamoured of a man she had met
through a personal ad in a newspaper that she would bolt from her
68 BEYOND DON'T
family and marry him . Perhaps it was the climate of the times: the
hunger, the fear, the random and not so random brutalities of six
years of war.
In Amsterdam I walked through the old city, looking at houses
two, three and fourhundred years old; wandered through theflower
market, along the canals; purchased brined herring with chopped
onions from street vendors; sat in the sun, sipping strong coffee, or
rested on a bench in the Begijnhof (a group of houses and two
chapels surrounding a courtyard, originally founded by a group of
women called the Beguines in 1346); toured the royal palace; and
spent days in the Rijksmuseum. I began to find my personal
connection to my Dutch ancestry, the culture and the language,
which nourished a part of me I had long though t was lost in the move
to Canada.
If Amsterdam is associated for me with my mother, The Hague,
my birthplace, is associated with my father. I know I didn't do it
justice, taking a bus tour through it. Perhaps with the opportunity
to explore further, I would find it has its fine points, but I found
nothing there to engage me the way Amsterdam had from the
moment I set foot in it. However, a wonderful moment of seren-
dipity took place in The Hague when I bought a ticket for the bus
tour. Over the cash register in the tourist office there was a sign
offering tickets for the Van Gogh exhibition. I had stood in line for
an hour and a half a few days earlier a t the museum ticket kiosk only
to be told there were no tickets available durin g the time I was in
Holland. Now I fou nd a ticket fora day I was free to go — what luck!
Since my early twenties, when I first encountered Van Gogh's
paintings in a library book, I have had a passion for them. To be able
to see the largest exhibition of Van Gogh's works assembled this
century was a great delight and a mixed blessing all at once. The
ticket entitled the holder to about two hours in the Van Gogh
museum. Never having been to an extravaganza of this order, I had
no idea what this meant. At the appointed hour, 1,500 tourists
swarmed into the museum, standing eight to ten deep in front of
each painting. It was impossible to move until or unless the crowd
moved. It was also impossible to see anything .
Becomin g a Public Person 69
Around me I heard German, American, Italian, French, Spanish
and Japanese exclamations about paintings I was too short to see. If
I was going to make anything of my two hours in the museum,
strategy was required. I looked for the flow pattern in the crowd, to
see if there was a way to move in closer to the paintings, but, packed
like sardines as we were, I saw nothin g unti l — halfway down along
gallery — the crowd opened briefly to allow someone to pass.
Edging my way down to this place took precious minutes, but paid
off, and I saw the Van Gogh exhibit in the wake of a wheelchair. To
see two hundred paintings in two hours means you have twenty to
thirty seconds to glance at each image — not my idea of the best
way to view great art. Outside the gallery, enterprising young
people had set up spirit stoves wit h big pots on them and were doing
a brisk trade in bowls of potato soup for those interested in the total
Van Gogh experience. This made me roar with laughter.
It took me more than a week to find the courage to visit my
grandmother, who lived a short distance by train from Amsterdam.
I had no luck finding anyone available to go wit h me to translate for
this visit. I wondered who this ancient woman would turn out to be,
for surely she was someone qu ire different from my long-held image
of her from nearly forty years earlier. I met a very frail and beautiful
old woman whose immediate response to me was one of suspicion.
No amount of telling her, with limited Dutch, that I was her
granddaughter Elly seemed to make any impression. Perhaps she
was deaf? I didn't know and there was no one to ask. I wasn't
surprised by her response because she was not expecting my visit,
but I was disappointed.
Eventually we did manage to communicate slightly. I found a
photograph of her daughter and, pointing to it, said — in what was
no doubt an appalling attemp t at Dutch — that the woman was my
mother. My grandmother became impatient then. She asked what
was wrong with me and what had happened to my Dutch. It wasn't
exactly my dream of a reunion wit h her, and I don't think I handled
it very well, but I had had a superstitious dread of announcing
myself by letter, worried that she would refuse to see me; and I
didn't think I could bear that, so I had chosen to simply turn up.
70 BEYOND DON'T
Surprises can be difficult enough for old folks, never mind when
they haven't seen the unexpected visitor for thirty-eight years.
But still she was my Oma, crippled with rheumatism, nearly
blind and bed-bound, and I was glad I was able to visit with her, even
for such a brief time. The room in which she lived contained old
photographs of her children and grandchildren in small frames set
on the furniture, while on the otherwise blank wall beside her bed
hung an image of the crucified Christ. On the window sill stood a
vase with flowers. She was well cared for and her room seemed
comfortable, but I wondered how often she was visited by her
daughter who lived in France, or by either of her sons who still lived
in Holland. I had never met my aunt or two of my three uncles,
though theyoungest of my mother's brothers did visit once or twice
when he lived in Canada for a time. I knew nothing about my
mother's siblings, who had not been part of my childhood in any
way.
Ten days later I saw my Oma again, and this time I had a
translator and the welcome I had so long dreamt of. At one point my
grandmother said, "You had a rough time at the start but I see you
are doing well now." Again she demanded to know what had
happened to my Dutch, and why I no longer spoke it. The translator
tried to explain, but no explanation satisfied my Oma; she pretty
much said there was no excuse. I told her, through the translator,
how much it meant to me to see her and how wonderful it felt to be
in Holland after all this time. I presented her with a copy of the
Dutch edition of Don't, and for me this was a most profound
moment. For even though I knew she would never read it, I had
finally kept the promise I had made to her in 1952, at the airport,
just before I boarded the plane for Canada — the promise to tell her
if I was everagain assaulted by my father. The fact that she couldn't
now read the book didn't matter; I had closed the circle for myself
by writing it and placing a copy in her hands.
The drive from Holland to Hamburg — at 160 kilometres an
hour, faster than I'd ever imagined moving in a car — was five hours
on the autobahn with my hands clenched in white-knuckled fear as
other cars passed at speeds well over 200 kilometres an hour. A man
Becomin g a Public Person 71
from the Department of External Affairs had offered to drive me to
Hamburg, but when we arrived, he was disappointed to be told by
the women's centre that the reading was a women-only event. In
Germany and Ireland it had been decided to hold women-only
events so the women attending would be more comfortable hearing
what I had to say. In Canada all events were open to men, though
they always made up a very small part of the audience, most often
as support for partners who had been abused. During the period I
toured with Don't, men were rarely willing to speak about abuses
they themselves had endured.
A fifth-floor apartment in a Turkish quarter of Hamburg, on loan
to me for the weekend: As a result of the terror I had of going out
alone in a city I didn't know, I spent my time in the apartment
writing, trying to ground myself and prepare for the gruelling week
ahead while delighting in the blossoms of the most magnificent
cherry tree I had ever seen. I was fascinated by the tree because of
its size and splendour, the crown being just outside the apartment
window. In the courtyard below, I saw a couple prepare and enjoy a
picnic at a battered table under the tree. I also saw bullet holes in
the walls around the courtyard. The assurances that they were from
the last war didn't do a bit to make me feel safe, and it was the
beautiful cherry tree alone that kept me from bolting to an airport
and the first plane for Canada I could find.
Muenster: I arrived late in the afternoon in a city that, on the
surface, was beautiful. The woman who met me at the train station
asked me if I would like to take a walk and see the sights. Most of
the centre of the city had been destroyed in the last war and some
of it has been rebuilt. In the centre is St. Lamberts, a church like no
other. Hanging from the spire of the clock tower was what I took to
be scaffolding, for safety reasons perhaps. No, the young woman
with me said, not scaffolding— cages. Oh, I thought, that's what
they call scaffolding here. No, she said again, softly — for heretics.
The guidebook I later consulted said that the corpses of the
Anabaptist leaders were hung in the three cages after the bishop's
troops quelled their rebellion in 1535 — a chillin g reminder of what
horrors people are capable of in any age.
72 BEYOND DON'T
The women I met in Germany were familiar with English, Ameri-
can and Canadian feminis t authors, and though time was short, I found
conversation with themfascinatingand inspiring. In the Saskatchewan
village I have called home for the last twenty years, I have never found
a single person to talk to about my reading interests. Several of the
women I met had been to Canada and had loved it. One woman knew
an old friend of mine from university days.
Conversations with women in Germany particularly, though also
in Ireland, made me look at Canada differently. The women I met
envied the wondrous landscape, particularly the Rockies, and told
me how much easier it was for a woman to own her own home in
Canada. I had always seen my old church as a substandard hovel that
I lived in because I didn't make enough money to have anything
better. It had never occurred to me to think of it as property and
privilege.
Ireland was my next stop. I was excited to be in an English-
speaking environment again, and to be done with the stresses of my
rapid tour of Germany and the emotional roller coaster of my visit
to Holland. It hardly mattered that my luggage took several more
days to travel between Munich and Dublin than I did. There was
such joy in my heart during my time in Ireland — beginning the
moment my feet touched Irish soil.
I fell head over heels in love with Ireland. I don't know what it
was about the landscapes of the south of Ireland that moved and
nourished me so much, or why I responded so strongly. Perhaps,
because I have lived in a drought-blasted prairie landscape for so
long, it was the stunninggreen I saw everywhere. Or perhaps it was
the accessible scale of a land dotted with villages withi n walking
distance of each other, a sense of community without being
hemmed in, that I felt particularly drawn to. I also loved the
musicality of the language and the warmth of the people I met.
While Holland had nurtured me in many ways, in Ireland I felt that
my spirit had found a home.
My first reading was in Dublin. After the reading, I saw a group of
women clustered in one part of the room who seemed to be waiting
until everyone else who wanted to speak to me had left. Their
Becoming a Public Person 73
conversation among themselves was quite excited, and I thought
that perhaps they were friends visiting each other and that this had
nothing to do with me, so I prepared to leave.
Instead, I heard an astounding history. This was a group of sisters,
their mother and their sisters-in-law who had come together to listen
to me. Their family constellation of seven sisters and four brothers was
quite similar to mine, which immediately interested me. One of the
sisters-in-law had heard a child-abuse disclosure from a young niece
that had shocked her. She had called one of the sisters in her husband's
family and then, like dominoes falling, the story had begun to unfold.
The father in this large family had been systematically preying on the
children: his daughters, his nieces and his granddaughters. No one,
until then, had ever told. The family figured out that this man had at
least thirty-five victims they knew about in his long history as a
pedophile. The women decided that they had endured enough, and
together, as a family, they pressed criminal charges. Their mother left
her husband and moved in with a daughter.
Throughout the trial, the father appeared certain that he woul d
not be found guilty on any of the sexual-assault charges. He pleaded
his age, ill health and, according to the report I heard from the
sisters, appeared not to take the situation at all seriously. It was a
gruelling trial for the family, but the evidence they gave before the
court proved overwhelming. Th e father was found guilty and sen-
tenced to seven times seven years in prison, the terms to be served
concurrently. Family members were elated. Here was justice such
as they had barely let themselves hope for.
Two weeks after the sentencing, when I returned to Dublin,
they were still in a celebratory mood and invited me to a party.
Meeting this family was very emotional for me, for I learned that
there was a way to get an abuser convicted: what you needed was
testimony and support from mother, sisters, cousins and nieces.
This was not something I believed would ever be possible in my
situation, but it felt exhilarating t o know that it was possible at all.
I am still grateful to this family for their hospitality and encourage-
ment. I think of them often and hope that their healing path is a
smooth one.
74 BEYOND DON'T
In Canada, women were very open with me about their experi-
ences, whether on radio and television programs or during public
events, whereas, in Europe, disclosures were rare and conversations
about child abuse much more general. The focus in Europe was on
child abuse as a societal problem, and government response to it, rather
than on child abuse as a personal issue. In Ireland, the situation was
different yet again. I spoke on a national radio program. It seemed an
innocuous hour to me, filled with generalizations rather than graphic
stories of incest. Yet everywhere I went in Ireland I was severely
criticized for speaking about incest on the radio. 'We don't talk about
things like that here," the women said. Why not? "Because children
might hear."
In Ireland, the issue of child sexual abuse was still very much
hidden, and talking about it at all sometimes resulted in astonishin g
responses. In Canada, it seemed clear to everyone that men who
abused must stop abusing. This didn't seem at all clear in many
places I spoke in Ireland. After one reading, someone commented
that women must become better at stopping men from abusing, an
opinion held by most of the fifty women in the audience. This meant
that they saw abuse as the responsibility of the women who were
abused, and not of the perpetrators. There was a minority opinion
voiced that this was the wrong approach and that men should
understand that they had a responsibility not to abuse, period. A
twenty-minute verbal free-for-all ensued, and I worried it would
come to blows, so passionately did each woman feel about the
position she believed was the right one.
I credit Emer Dolphin and the other women at Attic Press in
Dublin for the fine quality of the time I spent in Ireland. With care
and foresight, Emer organized my readings, bed-and-breakfastsand
travel. She also drove me from Dublin to Galway, with stops for
readings, fine dinners an d sightseeing in Clonmel, Cork and Limer-
ick. She answered my thousands of questions about Irish history an d
culture with patience and humour, and I felt that I could travel
anywhere on the planet wit h her. I told her, when we got to Galway,
that I just wanted to keep going, but of course she was expected
back in Dublin. I think of Emer with great affection still.
Becomin g a Public Person 75
After the reading tour was done, Emer helped me find a bed-and-
breakfast in the vicinity of Galway in which I could spend the next ten
days. Some were rejected out of hand because they were too close to a
road for peace and quiet; others because they were filled with chatty
or brash tourists. Eventually, we found the perfect place: Maureen and
Colm O'Keady's house jus t outside Spiddal. Not only was it quiet and
beautiful and off the road, but Maureen understood my allergies
because her young son had nearly the same ones. I felt I was adopted
for the duration of my stay. Here I rested for the first time in months,
for there were no appointments to keep and no need to talk or think
about child abuse. The ordinariness of family life and the coinings and
goings in the bed-and-breakfast were a great relief.
Maureen took me with her when she went to do errands in
Galway, and on one memorable Sunday afternoon her in-laws gave
me a glorious tour of the Connemara mountains in a bright red
Porsche. On a particularly narrow stretch of road, the brand-new
Porsche had its mirror nicked by a car travelling in the opposite
direction. Both drivers stopped, almost a kilometre apart, and
proceeded to scream at each other, though I doubt either of them
could hear what the other said. When they had exhausted their
shouting, they got back in their cars and continued on. I was
reminded of my father and his fancy cars, any one of which had
greater value than a child's life. A child could not go to a dentist to
have a toothache treated, for that was expensive, but whatever the
car needed was purchased, because that was important.
And then there was the fashion show. There was a government-
sponsored project to encourage the women of County Galway to
knit sweaters for the tourist trade, as knittin g ha d all but died out
in the area. Each woman who participated in the project was to bring
her sweaters to a community hall to show them. There was a
shortage of people willing to model the sweaters — although you
couldn't tell that in the mayhem of the dressing room — so Maureen
asked if I would show one of hers. I modelled a turquoise Aran-style
sweater, and as I walked down the ramp of pushed-together banquet
tables I was introduced in Gaelic: "Elly Danica, all the way from
Canada," as though I had flown in specially for the event.
76 BEYOND DON'T
One day, with considerable trepidation because I don't like sea
travel, I went by tour boat from Rossaveal to the island of Inishmore.
On the wharf I hired a pony cart, shared with a German tourist
because the driver said it was too expensive to ride alone, for the
slow clipclop to the bottom of the hill on which sits the ancient
stone fortress Dun Aengus. To reach the fortress you must first
scramble over a defensive field of sharp stone spikes, not something
that can be done with any dignity. Finally you reach the top of the
hill and the double bank of stacked stone walls. There's a low
doorway, through which even I had to stoop, and then you are within
a half-circle, the open end of which is a sheer drop to the Atlantic
Ocean. There is a massive stone platform in the middle of the site. I
don't think I have ever seen the ocean from a more breathtaking
spot. From the stone platform of Dun Aengus I looked toward the
horizon. On the other side of this huge expanse of water, with rocks
and some topography you'd swear were the same, lies Newfound-
land.
I returned to Dublin in early June, and Emer and her friend
Kathleen decided that they would show me some of the ancient
sites along the Boyne River Valley. We began at Newgrange, where
a tour of the passage grave takes all ofte n minutes, and then outyou
go so the next group, usually a tour-bus load, can have their turn.
The massive mound structure at Newgrange was buil t around 3200
BCE, which makes it older than the Egyptian pyramids. I found the
power of this place awe-inspiring, and felt profound spiritual beliefs
must have caused this enormous site to be built and decorated so
beautifully all those ages ago.
We visited the remains of the mound at Dowth, then went on to
Knowth, which has been stripped by archaeologists who have been
studying it since 1962. Knowth looked more like a modern battle-
field than anything else, so Kathleen suggested we go somewhere
where we could get a better sense of what the mounds were really
about. We drove to Slieve-na-Calliagh and clambered up a winding
sheep path, which seemed to me to get ever steeper. The place to
get the best view of the surrounding countryside is a huge carved
and decorated curbstone called the Hag's Chair. To reach this
Becomin g a Public Person 77
viewpoint you scramble up the side of the mound and hoist yourself
up onto the stone. All around are other hills with mounds on their
summits, and it seemed possible to see all of Ireland from this
vantage point. I felt, sitting there, that I was held in the hand of the
Great Goddess.
Since my few moments perched on this great stone, I have read
anything I can find about ancient Ireland and the goddess cultures
of old Europe. What I seek is a connection to a culture or myth
predating patriarchal society, in the hope that I can use this to thin k
clearly about a social structure in which children and women are
cherished members of society and treated with respect and honour.
The original plan for the tour called for me to travel on to
England, but early on in my stay in Ireland, I realized that I was
suffering from an exhaustion so intense that any further work or
travel was impossible. The Women's Press, co-publisher of Don't in
the U.K., had arranged publicity for me in England, and I was sorry
to disappoint them but I could not continue after nearly six month s
of being on tour. With regret, I cancelled my trip to England and
settled on the west coast of Ireland to await the day I could fly
home.
After my travels in Ireland, I was anxious to get back to Canada.
My life seemed to have changed so much since the publication of
Don't, or perhaps I only hoped so. I was weary of travelling and
yearned for a settled home so that I could get back to writing. I had
hoped this home would be in the Maritimes, but financially it
wasn't possible, so I went back to the prairies to sort out what had
happened in the past eigh teen months and decide what I wanted to
do next.
78 BEYOND DON'T
Fou r
Redefinin g
Famil y
Family is in some ways the most difficult thing to write
about. When I see the word "family" I have a difficult time relating to
it, because it doesn't mean anything I want to think about. It should
resonate with happy connections to a group of loving people who
accept and cherish who I am and have struggled to become; the word
"family" should be rich with nurturance and bonds with siblings. For
me it means none of these things. Other people have families. I
visualize a black hole where my family of origin ought to be.
For all of us, family is the biggest hurdle in any effort to make
disclosures of child abuse. Many disclosures founder or are retracted
because of what the victim sees as the implications for her or his
family. What is at stake is always how we see ourselves. Our personal
identity is rooted within the concept of family, and disclosure could
and often does mean the victim's banishmen t from the family and
a resulting crisis in the sense of self.
79
Everywhere I read from Don't, I was asked about my relationship
with my family. The questions from the women who came to hear
me read were urgent and painful: What will become of my relation-
ship with family members? Will they hate me, trash me, sue me,
hurt me? How will they react? How will their reaction feel to me
and what impact will it have on my life?
I would be sitting behind a table, signing books, a long line of
women waiting thei r turn to speak to me. I would ask each woman
what her name was so I could personalize the signing. And, as I
handed the book to her, she would take my hand and tell me of her
pain, saying she had never been able to tell anyone of the child she
bore when she was thirteen, of the years of abuse by father,
grandfather, uncle or neighbour. And how, she asked, was she to talk
to her family about all this?
We must each weigh these questions with our own heart; there
are no recipes for gaining specific hoped-for outcomes. In the best
of all possible worlds, we would be taken into the bosom of our
families and comforted. The abuser would be forced to leave the
family constellation, and the rest of us would live happil y ever after.
While I did occasionally hear stories from women that followed
some version of this path, they were rare.
Nevertheless, many women came to my speeches and readings
with their sisters and their mothers and told me about the changes
in their lives that occurred when they began to speak the truth
about their childhood experiences. Some stories were especially
memorable. One woman read my book, called her mother and her
sisters and told them they had to read it, and within a very short
time the burden she had carried alone for so long lightened as her
family rallied in support of her. She said that where there had been
silence for many years, her sisters and her mother were now talkin g
honestly, supporting one another, and the future looked much
brighter. That woman came to tell me the most profound of all
things a writer can hope to hear: Your book has changed my life!
While I was travelling to promote the book and meeting women
who shared their stories of childhood with me, I often said they
were my family. Several years later, living once again isolated and
80 BEYOND DON'T
alone, I don't have any sense of family that feels good to me.
Whether this is a function of my history or of something else, I have
yet to discover. What begins as defensive action, keeping to myself,
ends up as an entrenched habit that is difficult to change.
* •:• *
Early on, I had two roles in the family: one was littl e motheran d the
other was scapegoat. As the eldest often children I did an amazing
amount of housework, child care and looking after my mother when
life became too much for her to bear. Twice before I was fifteen, my
mother had a nervous breakdown and went back to Holland to visit
her mother while I looked after my nin e siblings, the household and
my father, and still tried to function at school. I used to say I had
had my kids before I even left home, meaning that I had spent so
much exhausting time looking after my mother's children that I
wasn't about to give birth to any of my own.
I never felt like a child in relation to my mother, but like a
smaller adult, a household servant with too much responsibility.
None of the kids at school did anything like wha t I did in a day, and
my requests for time to play were usually refused — my mother
couldn't spare me for more than a few minutes at a time, and I tried
to use that time to read.
My father never lifted a finger to help my mother with the daily
round of tasks to keep ten kids washed, in clean clothing and fed.
That was what Elly was for. If my mother was tired or distracted, it
was my fault; I wasn't doing enough, and more tasks would be
loaded on my young shoulders. I didn't mind helping my mother. I
loved her and it was obvious that somebody had to help. What I
minded was the abusiveness and the climate of fear of the father
that shrouded everything in that household.
Because I was a pseudo-parent to my siblings — telling them
what to do and making sure they did it — it was difficult to bond
with my sisters and impossible to have anything like a healthy
relationship with my oldest brother, who, at the whim of my father,
was given my share of what food there was. This was further
complicated by my father's insistence that everything I did was to
Redefinin g Pa mil y 81
be reported to him in detail so he could decide if punishmen t was
necessary. I couldn't confide in or speak openly to anyone in the
household. What I thought or said was always wrong, bad, ridicu-
lous, stupid and reported verbatim to my father. Once, during a
meal, when I disagreed with him about a high-school football score,
he began to scream at me. When I wouldn't back down and say he
was right, he threw a plate at my head. I ducked and the plate hit
the wall behind me.
Laurie, the youngest of my siblings, was born when I was
thirteen. Her childhood, I thought and hoped, would be very
different from mine, for my mother had an intense bond with her
youngest child, which I hoped meant she would protect her. I
should have known better. Before Laurie was born I had tried,
unsuccessfully, to warn my sisters about my father, but they had
been well taught by him to discount everything I said. They had
expressed amazement when I suggested that they should stay away
from him and never under any circumstances spend timealonewith
him, especially not in his photography studio. They believed that
the problem was with me and had nothing to do with him. It was
folly to believe the pattern of abuse would be any different with
Laurie. I wanted more than anything to leave my father's house, but
I was anxious about the fate of my sisters and it was heart-rending
to think of leaving them behind.
I look around me, especially during holidays, and envy every
indicator of family I see: a mother and daughter shopping for
clothes, a father and daughter laughing in a music store, sisters
having lunch togetherand talkingabout their kids. The normal and
ordinary things that families, and especially sisters, do are so far
beyond my experience or dreams, and I can only look on in wonder.
I mourn the loss of my nineteen nieces and nephews, most of whom
I don't know and some of whom I have never met. I wish for family
gatherings and meals, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I
dream of summer picnics. Most of all I miss my sisters.
As adults, my sisters tolerated me, but that was it. I had divorced
a perfectly good husband, I lived in a dirty horrible old church, my
new significant other was Jewish and my lifestyle was entirely too
82 BEYOND DON'T
weird. My father didn't like the way I was living, so my life and
concerns, according to my sisters, were as ridiculous as he so often
said they were. They sneered at my poverty and pain and made fun
of them, but prior to the publicity surroundin g Don't, whenever my
sisters were in trouble or distressed, they called on me for comfort.
I'm not sure what I expected to happen once the family became
aware of the book. It had been rumoured amon g them for some time
that I was writing, but I was careful not to tell anyone what subject
I was exploring. When I received the offer to publish, part of my
agreement with gynergy books was that no one would be told about
Don't until it was actually out in the world. I think I probably
harboured a bit of hope that my family would never hear of the book;
they paid scant attention to any other aspect of my life. I knew it
was more likely that, with the publication of the book, what little
contact I still had with the family would end. Since I felt that all I
got from these people were put-downs, abuse and misery, I thought
I'd be better off if I didn't have anything more to do with them. I
never for a moment believed that anyone in the family would accept
my disclosures as true; still less did I expect any offer of comfort or
support.
If the publication of Don't had any positive effect in regard to my
family, it was that I was able to let go of the illusion that they cared
about me in any way. Contact with my mother in the years before
the book was published had been sporadic, and I almost never saw
her alone. My parents sat side by side in matching armchair s in the
living room of their house. Whatever my mother wanted to do had
to be done where my father could see it. She didn't go to another
room, even fora few minutes, withou t hearing hi m demand to know
what she was doing. She didn't take a phone call he didn't listen in
on, she didn't visit with anyone unless he was there. She sat in her
chair, silent, doing embroidery or oil paintings: still life with tyrant.
By the time Don't was published, my mother had been diagnosed
with cancer, although the disease was, as far as I knew, still in its
early stages, and she continued to live at home with my father.
Once Don't began to have wide distribution, there were some
immediate implications for my parents. I heard these things in
Redefinin g Family 83
snippets from my sister-in-law, Linda, who is married to the oldest
of my three brothers, and who would give me information about the
family from time to time. According to her, my mother and father
received threatening and abusive phone calls and were cut cold by
people on the street and in local businesses. My father, eye on the
main chance, apparently consulted a lawyer frien d of his about suin g
me for a share of the royalties, since the book so patently told his
story. The lawyer is said to have told him to keep his head down
while he still could.
As news about the book spread, I got phone calls from two of my
sisters, one in Italy, the other in Norway. One sister accused me of
killing her mother (we never could say "our" mother; since none of us
got what she or he needed from Mother, we could not, even in
conversation, share her). I was appalled by the accusation and sug-
gested that cancer was killing our mother. "No, no, you don't under-
stand what this will do to her." "What about what was done to me?"
"You're strong. You can deal with it. This will kill Mom. And besides,
nothing like you say ever happened." "And what about your child-
hood?" I asked. "My childhood was beautiful, beautiful," she said.
Another sister phoned to demand why, if I had to write such shit,
I didn't at least wait until my mother was dead. It wouldn't have
made any difference, I said; then you would have accused me of
besmirching her sacred memory. This will kill Mom, I heard again.
I was accused of making a big grab for money, of being stupid, of
being put up to this by a wily publisher.
Not one of my siblings has ever accepted or listened to anything
I said. Why am I always, according to them, wrong and stupid? Why,
even as adults, do they — without any examination of what they
have been told — absolutely believe their father and refuse to hear
me? The only explanation tha t makes any sense to me is that they
are still in his thrall, and that it is fear and denial that keep their
backs turned toward me. For if they acknowledged what happened
to me, they would have to look at what happened to them. Unfor-
tunately for me, they have to do that on their own agendas, not on
mine, and that at least I can accept. I know too well how fierce
denial can be, and I no longer have much investment in the hope
84 BEYOND DON'T
that one day I will have healthy and vital relationships wit h my
sisters. It saddens me to write this, but there it is.
In the last eight years, my sister Lucy, who lives in Norway, has
visited twice and called once, while another sister, who lives in
Moose Jaw, has spoken to me a few times when I met her acciden-
tally in public or phoned her, and the other three sisters still have
not spoken to me. My youngest sister, Laurie, had been killed in a
car accident just after her twenty-first birthday.
My middle brother, I have not heard from. The youngest, I
spoke to at his workplace when I was in the town where he lives,
doing research for a project. The oldest brother tolerates me be-
cause his wife, Linda, is supportive of me, but he will not spend
time with me unless it is to do maintenance work on my computer,
and then Linda must be with him. He will not discuss anythin g
except computers, period. I will not recant to suit the comfort level
of my siblings, and it seems that, unless I do so, there will be little
contact between us.
* * *
In the fall of 1988, before Don't began to receive attention in Moose
Jaw, I thought I had better find a way to see my mother. This was a
complex and difficult thing to do. She was never alone, and any
access to her was monitored carefully by my father. It wasn't even
possible to talk to her on the phone withou t him listening i n on the
extension. I don't know what I thought I was going to do once I did
see her, whether I'd tell her of the book or not.
When my mother went into hospital for tests related to her
cancer, I phoned my sister who lives in Moose Jaw to find out when
my father visited, because I didn't want to see hi m and wanted time
with my mother alone. As it turned out, it didn't make any differ-
ence. My mother complained at length during my short visit about
the parents of a son-in-law who treated her as though she were
somehow lower class. My mother had worked hard all her life to hel p
her husband struggle up the social ladder in Moose Jaw. This was a
species of insult that made her very unhappy, because, even though
she'd married beneath her European social standing, she most
Redefinin g Family 85
definitely knew she was not lower class. I realized, listening to her,
that I had nothing to say to her, and she wouldn't let me speak
anyway. I realized too, as I stood beside her bed, that I had come to
say goodbye. I did not articulate my goodbyes, but though she lived
for another two years, only twenty minutes away from my house,
that was the last time I saw my mother.
What I had hoped — my most secret hope — was that, when
she saw my book, my mother would do two things: acknowledge me
as her daughter, and acknowledge the abuse and the horrors of my
childhood. I never heard either of these things from her, but I didn't
give up on that hope until she died. Somehow, I thought that things
might change: that she'd see me as a person, tell me how sorry she
was that I had had such a bad time, and finally turn her back on the
man who had used her daughters in these horrible ways. I should
have known better, of course, for — according to Linda — with her
dying breath she was still taking care of her husband, smoothin g his
shirt front and straightening his fie.
My mother used to say that what she feared most was being
alone in old age. I remember asking her how, wit h seven daughters,
she could be worried about ending up alone. She said I didn't
understand. She excused my father many things, she said (such as
spending her retirement savings on stereos, computer equipmen t
and cars), so she wouldn't lose him and be alone. And then life and
fate never gave her an old age.
In November 1990 a friend called and read me my mother's
obituary as it appeared in the Moose Jaw paper. I was not listed
among her surviving children. None of my siblings had called to tell
me she was close to death, though sisters had flown from Europe to
be at her bedside. I learned from Linda that my siblings spen t the
two days before the funeral arguing about what they would do
should I appear; my oldest brother assured them I would not be
there. And I wouldn't have gone but for the obituary, which infuri-
ated me, and the fact that not one of my siblings had called to tell
me that Mother was on her deathbed.
I went to the funeral with a bodyguard consisting of two friends
and the father of one of them. My friends timed our arrival so that
86 BEYOND DON'T
everyone else was already seated in the funeral-home chapel. We sat
toward the back, with me in the middle of the row. It was a
wretched hour, not because it was my mother's funeral, but because
it made clear how few friends she had of her own (a couple ofwomen
from her workplace), and because all in a row behind the family sat
my father's cronies. The minister hired for the occasion spoke at
length about a man who crossed Niagara Falls on a high wire,
withoutevermakingapointorlinkinghis story to my mother's life.
The whole thing felt like a play from the theatre of the absurd,
including among the absurdities a sister who spent much of the
time nibbling my father's ear lobe. I later heard two very disturbin g
things about the funeral. My father refused to pay for the funeral
expenses and my middle brother covered the bill. And when asked
by the funeral director what he wished done with my mother's
ashes, my father told him to throw them in the garbage.
A family history such as mine is poor training for motherhood. How
was I to nurture a child when I had experienced so little nurturing
myself? When I made my decision to leave my son in my husband's
custody, that didn't mean I didn't want to see Greg as often as
possible. I did not know then that my job description would be
part-time mother. I found it all very confusing, as I'm sure Greg did
too. Eventually he was old enough to tell me what he wanted to do
when he visited with me, and he had a fine understanding of what
was not possible because there wasn't money for it. We read a good
deal and talked about books non-stop, even when he was small. Our
absolute favourite activit y was to spread newspapers over the table,
find a roll of paper and paint big pictures.
I left my husband in 1972, and the divorce was final the next
year. My ex-husband remarried withi n a couple ofyears. When Greg
was eight, his family moved to Calgary; later they moved to Victoria .
I saw him once a year if I was lucky: an occasional Christmas or a
couple of weeks in the summer. Greg's memory and mine differ
slightly about these times. I remember all I could notgivehim in so
short a time; he, more generously, remembers what I did give him .
Redefinin g Family 87
* * *
When we talked about this once, he said, "It was great. It was like
there was nobody else in the world but me, and you have the best
toys of any mom I know." He certainly had my undivided attention
during his visits, for every year he was a new person I had to learn
about. I also think it was great fun for him to have the run of my
weaving and painting studio, with a chance to try everything that
interested him.
In July 1988, when Greg was seventeen, I sent him a copy of
Don't. I called to ask him first if I could do that, if he'd want to read
it. Without hesitation he said, "Of course." The day he received the
book in the mail, he sat down to read, and when he was finished he
called me, weeping over what he had read. I will never forget what
he said to me: First he assured me that he now understood clearly
why I had not been able to look after him when he was small, and
he thanked me for loving him enough to protect him from the pain
I carried; then he said, "Nor only does your father owe you for what
he did, but he owes me, because he stole my mother." He also told
me how proud he was of me. In 1990, Greg came ro my reading in
Victoria and sat in the front row of the auditorium, amazed by the
mother he now saw as a public person.
I did not know what to expect when Greg read the book. I had
told him very little about my childhood, as I didn't think it was
appropriate to burden him with my pain. It was difficult enough to
try to explain why I didn't live with him and why I couldn't afford
to see him more often. I trusted that Greg had a good and generous
heart, but the book was very painful, and I couldn't be sure how it
would affect him.
When Greg was young, I occasionally took to him to visit my
parents. I was careful to never let him out of my sight during the
hour or so of my visit. Over the years, Greg used to ask me about the
strange behaviour he had seen his grandfather engage in, which
Greg couldn't understand. Why had my father been so interested in
giving a twelve-year-old child pornographic magazines, as though it
was normal to give such things to a child while his mother looked
on? I curtly told my father to put the magazines away and, with a
smirk that implied I was a prude, he would slide them back into the
88 BEYOND DON'T
pocket of his chair. Why, when I was so poor and my father knew we
had nothing to eat, had there never been an offer of dinner? Why
had my father ordered my mother about as if she were a servant,
tapping his cup against the saucer when he wanted something?
What was wrong with the guy, Greg had wanted to know.
When I asked Greg to give me some thoughts about his response
to Don't for this book, he wrote:
// was difficult dealing with the waning emotions of pride in
your accomplishment, anger at [my grandfather], and sad-
ness for what he had done to your fife. On one fiand I wanted
to tell everyone, "Look at my mom; sfie came through this,
she's a hero," and on the other hand it was like, I didn 't want
to be saying, "Look at my mom, she was abused," fike it was
some kind of freak show... I felt immensely relieved that fi-
naffy you 'dgot this canker out of your systetn and we could go
back to trying to be a mother and son again without the grim
spectre of your childhood hanging between us Kke the Sword
of Damocles. It's a little selfish, I know. But it was Kke I'dfi-
naUygot my mom back out of a prison that she'd been doinga
life sentence in.
We had time during the winter of 1990 to talk about the book
and what it meant, and I believe it changed our relationship for the
better. I think there is a deeper trust between us as a result of my
openness about my experiences. In May 1995 my son married. Eliza
Eisenhauer is everything a feminist mother could want for her son.
She's strong, self-assured, determined. She is a truly warm and
delightful young woman. Greg and Eliza live in Florida, which
seems, from my desk in this small prairie village, very faraway. My
dreams of family have us living closer, at least in the same province.
But in the latteryears of the twentieth century, that's a dream that
remains unrealized for many parents.
* * 
Redefinin g Family 89
Several factors in my life have worked against the creation of a
wide network of friends who might have stood in place of my lost
family. It is possible that, as an immigrant child, bookish, odd,
sad and depressed, and further distanced by the abuse I was
experiencing, I made isolation a habit. High-school friends be-
came targets for my father, so it was too dangerous to have any
girlfriends. He had told me it was my responsibility to have only
friends he approved of— in other words, beautiful young girls
who were potential prey.
The years of living alone, poverty and further bouts of depres-
sion kept me isolated as an adult. Once Don't was published, I
withdrew farther into myself, for it was too exhausting an d painful
to hear the disclosures of other women wherever I was recognized.
I go to town now with a clear sense of purpose: buy groceries, go to
the library, keep my head down and get home as soon as possible.
In the early 1970s, at a weaving workshop , I met a woman who
was to have a profound and enduring impact on my life. Her name
was Kate Waterhouse and, when I met her, she was over seventy
years old. She had an incredible passion for life and anything to do
with weaving, spinning, working wit h vegetable dyes, and politics.
Kate invited me to visit her home, which I did as often as I could,
travelling by bus or borrowed van the ninety minutes to where she
lived. Each time I visited, she welcomed me with food specially
prepared because she knew I liked it. She would make muffins and
breads out of rice flour to accommodate my allergies. She told me
that a proper visit required I stay for lunch and supper.
Kate's kitchen was an oasis for me during many difficult years,
for here we would talk about the state of the world, our weaving
projects and our lives. The room was always crowded with her
projects: two looms, a spinning-wheel, a table covered with recipes
and articles clipped from newspapers and magazines, and her vari-
ous recycling projects.
I came to Kate's kitchen to hear her stories of pioneer days in
Saskatchewan, to discuss politics, to exchange weaving books and
information, and to share jokes. More than this, I came to bask in
the love and generosity she lavished on me.
90 BEYOND DON'T
Kate was born in 1899 to Irish parents near Winnipeg. After her
mother died when she was small, she was raised in the city by a
grandmother who was a midwife. Life was not easy for Kate. She
once said that she did not own the labour of her own hand s unti l she
was over sixty. She had beautiful hands tha t were rarely still, and she
worked hard to make beauty blossom out of everythingshe touched.
She took care over, took pains with , everything she did. She wasted
nothing.
Kate taught me much: how to cook for one, how to put up and
freeze food and make jellies and jams. She loved her garden, and
over many years she taught me how to grow vegetables and herbs.
When she was over ninety, she and her daughter came to visit,
bringing trees she had started from seed in sryrofoam cups, a crab
apple and a mountain ash, each barely ten centimetres tall. For once
I didn't lose them as soon as I planted them. The ash is now taller
than I am and the crab apple is nearly as tall. My yard contains
rosebushes started from suckers Kate had me dig our of her garden,
two pink and ayellow. I have irises and daisies, gooseberries, a plu m
tree and winter onions, all from Kate's garden.
In the last years of her life, each time I said goodbye after a visit
she gave me a kiss and told me she loved me. In her late eighties
Kate called once and asked me to come for a three-day visit. She had
something she wanted to tell me. For those three days we told
stories about what we meant to each other and thanked each other
for gifts and all the time we had shared. It was, I realized later, our
time to say our formal goodbyes, and it was a very beautiful experi-
ence. Several months before she died, Kate asked her daughter to
call me with a message: to tell me she loved me. Kate's love and all
she taught me will continue t o sustain and inspire me.
Apart from Kate, there have been other sustaining friendships in
my life, and by far the most enduring one is wit h Barry. Barry Lipton
came into my life twenty-three years ago, while we were both
students at the University of Regina. For six years we lived together,
and it was Barry who helped me move our of the city and into the
old church I bought in the country. Early in our relationship I asked
him for help with a project — and he's been helping me ever since.
Redefinin g Family 91
Without his steadfast, generous financial and emotional support, it
would be much more difficult for me to spend time writing .
Our friendship has survived many changes in both our lives.
Barry moved from Regina to Toronto in 1988 and married Daina
Green in 1995. Even though it is now nearly seventeen years since
he and I lived together, I think he still knows me better than anyone
else, for he's seen me through so much: years of depression, illness
and poverty, and then the personal triumphs of textile and painting
shows and the publication of Don't. The older I get, the more I
cherish a relationship with so much history. It wasn't easy to build
a sustainable friendship after we stopped living together, but the
effort it took was well worth it. We rarely see each other more than
once or twice a year, but we talk on the phone several times a week.
Nobody believes in me more or gives me more encouragement tha n
Barry — his friendship is a treasure.
I'm learning that family need not be the collection of people into
which you are born, but can consist of people to whom you choose
to relate. It seems such a simple thin g in some ways, but it is hard
to give up entirely on one's family of origin. These were the
companions of my childhood, and there seems to be a never-ending
desire to be connected with them and to be acknowledged as a
cherished member of this family. I don't suppose I can change that
desire. It is, after all, in most circumstances a reasonable one.
92 BEYOND DON'T
Fiv e
Reinventin g
Mysel f
I'd like to be able to write a report from the magic
kingdom where I was transported after/)o«'/was published. I'd like
to be able to say that I lived happily ever after with my new family,
true love, art and fabulous riches, in a palace of great beauty. Alas, it
isn't so. I may no longer see myself as Cinderella sitting beside the
hearth, sorting out lentils from among the cinders, but I still have
entirely too much of a sense of the little match girl looking in from
the cold while others enjoy the party.
Many things changed after I wrote Don't, and more things have
changed in the years since. I've certainly grown as a person. I'm
stronger and even more fiercely determined than I was before. I still
struggle with low self-esteem, and my frustration with the poverty
and isolation of my life isn't any less. If anything, my frustrations are
more intense, for now I have seen what else there is in the world and
I yearn to participate.
93
It has taken time to sort out which of these too numerous
frustrations are with residuals of childhood abuse and which are
simply the result of being a woman and an artist in an economy and
time that do not value either women or artists, and value still less
women who are artists. I have during the last few years worked on
several writing projects, until lack of money became overwhelming
and sent me off on various detours designed to bring in income. The
result was rarely much in the way of income, and sometimes an
unfortunate hiatus in creative energies. This is the stuff of every
artist's life. It isn't true that an artist makes better art when
weighed down by worry and insecurity. This is a nice myth trotted
out as justification by a culture determined to ignore an artist until
she or he has been safely dead for at least one hundred years.
By 1990, the travel and work I was doing had begun to take a toll.
I had been touring wit h the book on and off for eighteen months; I
had travelled across Canada several times and spent seven weeks in
Europe. I had completely run out of steam. All I wanted to do was
sleep and stay in one place for more than three days. Bur I felt I
should find some way to continue this work; the issue was so urgent.
Many people I met while I was promoting Don't had suggested that
I become a counsellor, and I had said I would think about it, for
obviously the need was great; most counselling services were so
overburdened with clients that the waiting period was two years or
more.
The end of the promotion tour began a time of great ambiva-
lence for me, one I don't think I have resolved to my satisfaction. I
am a writer and an artist; writing and art are the work I want to do
with my life. But I had made significant contact with a great many
women with my book. What responsibilities did that entail? Shoul d
I abandon my artistic endeavours and go back to school to train as a
counsellor? Should I write another book in the same vein? Was I
entitled to the rest of my life or not? Was it my responsibility, as one
reader so passionately put it, to help people feel better because my
book had upset them so much?
And herein lay the real dilemma. Going back to my ordinary life
meant going back to rural Saskatchewan and poverty, and I did not
94 BEYOND DON'T
want ever to go back to living like that. If I trained as a counsellor, I
could make a living, and perhaps do some good. Everywhere I went
there was temptation to take that path, to make a living and to be
of use. I was told that I had a way wit h people, that I offered comfort
so well. One woman told me that her clients had benefited more
from twenty minutes with me than from three months of therapy.
Yet my inner resistance to doing this work was every bit as intense
as the outside pressures steering me toward it, leaving me in a
constant state of turmoil. I began calling myself names, accusing
myself of not caring, even as I realized that I did care, very much. I
simply wasn't sure that this was right for me, even though it would
likely earn me a decent living because counsellors were in demand.
So what, I asked myself, was I going to do for money instead?
In 1991,1 received a grant from the Canada Council to write the
first draft of an ambitious fiction project. Wrestling wit h this project
was, as is always true for me, in tense and physical. Some writers, I've
heard (though who has met any?), are fortunate in that things come
easily to them. Life, at least my life, doesn't work that way. It took
mefrom 1973 to 1987 to write Don'/, of which thirteen years and ten
months were spent sorting it all out. If I need to produce two books
a year to make a living as a writer, I have obviously got a long way to
go — and I have my doubts whether I even want to achieve this
level of production.
Once the grant money was gone, what I should have done was
stay at my desk and keep writing, no matter what was unravelling
around me. Instead, to keep some income coining in, I agreed to
undertake various speaking engagements. At first I was grateful for
the opportunity to spend time away from my desk. My writing
project wasn't going well anyway, so I thought I would do what I
could to educate the public about child abuse, see something of the
country and earn some money.
I spoke at conferences twice ayear for the next fouryears. It was
while I was composing my first speech that I made the transition
from speaking personally to speaking politically. I wanted to see
beyond my own story, beyond individual victims and perpetrators,
to the social and political causes of child sexual abuse. I read social
Reinventin g Myself 95
and psychological theory and many of the books then being publish -
ed about the issue.
To find the courage to make this transition from a personal to a
more overtly political voice, I wrote more than two hundred pages
of arguments with myself about why I should or should not do this.
The idea of taking a stand and possibly being wrong was nerve-
wracking. After all, durin g a speech, there is nobody at the podium
but me, and I am not representing any political views other than my
own. Now, there's loneliness for you!
For a time I thought that speaking on child-abuse issues was my
life, and that my writin g and painting projects should be abandoned
in favour of this mission I had fallen into. I certainly could not
combine the two. To speak for one hour cost me a minimum of
three months away from my writing. There was the usual struggle
to get the speech written on time, followed by weeks and weeks of
exhaustion caused by the intensity of the experience of meeting
survivors and those dedicated to helping them. Responding com-
passionately to so many stones and lives filled with pain required
that I spend many weeks afterwards processing what I had heard
and trying to understand it.
Now, as I think back on it, in the three years after my mother's
death, when I avoided and otherwise tried to outrun my sorrow, it
helped to have a justification for staying away from personal writing
or any engagement with my feelings. The speeches were one way of
doing this; then there were the projects I undertook between the
spring and fall conference seasons. One summer I decided to
drywall the basement, the next I read hundreds of mystery novels,
the one after that I designed a life-writing correspondence course
that never found any clients. Perhaps it was important to do these
things. It is only when I look at my unfinished writing projects that
I wonder.
Avoidance neverworks for me for very long, and in January 1993
I ran full tilt into a serious illness. I wonder why all my crisis point s
revolve around physical illness; is that the only time I'll pay atten-
tion? Probably. This time, though, I think the sheer weight of wha t
I had been carrying for five years simply bowled me over. I knew I
96 BEYOND DON'T
was exhausted and should quit all public-speaking engagements
and rest. But, I argued with myself, if I quit, how will I eat and pay
the bills? How can I go on without any money?
I spent a month in hospital while the doctors drained my lungs,
did exploratory surgery and tried to come up with a diagnosis. I lost
sixteen kilograms and looked awful. For that month I hardly ate or
slept. I thought I was dying, and I looked it. It was clear that I was
not getting better in hospital but progressively worse. So I picked
up the phone in Regina and called Barry in Toronto: "Barry, I need
you." That was at nine o'clock in the morning; by nin e that evening
he was at my bedside. He took one look at me and knew exactly
what to do. I needed vitamin supplements and fresh food, he said;
so he brought me meals: little green salads and poached fish he
made in a friend's kitchen. As soon as I had something tempting
that I could eat, I began to rally. When you have as many food
allergies as I have, it is nearly impossible to get anything approach-
ing nutrition from an institutional kitchen.
And then 1993 was such a bad year to be ill. The Canadian
Federation of University Women's group in Saskatoon had been
trying for threeyears to organize an event at which I could be invited
to speak, and I didn't want to let them down. In April I was to speak
at a conference in Kelowna, and the next day I had to fly across the
continent fora painting show and speaking engagements in New-
foundland. And then I was offered a seasonal job as a book rep, which
meant I had to be at the Learned Societies conference in Ottawa in
May. It wasn't the right time for any of these things, but I wasn't
going to let that stop me.
I left the hospital against the advice and wishes of the doctors.
They had done a bronchoscopy and wanted to do more exploratory
surgery; I wanted to finish the paintings fo r the show in Newfound -
land and do the things I had planned for the spring. I thought that
considering my condition — I weighed all of forty-four kilograms
— more surgery was not a wise idea. My lungs had ceased filling
with fluid, the drain hoses had been removed and there was a
tentative diagnosis of sarcoidosis: a rare chronic disease of unknown
cause that affects the lungs, organs, bones and skin.
Reinventin g Myself 97
I gave myself a week or so to rest, and then I went to the painting
table and got busy. Once the paintings had been sent to Newfou nd-
land, I began work on the speeches. I had a couple of weeks to get
myself together and strong enough to give the speech I had prom-
ised in Saskatoon, though I didn't know how I would find enough
breath to speak for an hour. Then I had a couple of weeks after that
to rest up before another hectic six weeks away from home.
By early June I collapsed again. The book-rep job required that
I work with new books and catalogues, and I discovered that I was
highly allergic to fresh printer's inks. Wha t tolerance I had once had
to such allergens was gone as a result of the sarcoidosis. Unhappil y
I had to give up the book-rep job. I managed to drag myself home,
and then spent the summer so exhausted I could barely make
myself a meal. Still, I didn't think I had to give up the speaking
engagements planned for October.
A series of readings and speeches were planned for southern
Alberta, in Cardston, Pincher Creek, Lethbridge and Calgary. I
didn't anticipate any problem. I thought I was reasonably well. But
no sooner did I leave home than I got a ferocious arrack of shingles
on my midriff and nearly all the way around my back. In Calgary I
stayed with my oldest brother and his wife, Linda. Linda, watchin g
me try to ignore the pain, took things in hand. I was supposed to be
part of a panel discussion at a conference one morning, but when one
of the organizers came to pick me up for the drive across Calgary,
Linda said, "No, she can't go. I'm taking her to the doctor." The
doctor said the usual things: Thi s was serious; she hadn't seen a case
like this outside Eastern Europe; cancel everything, go home and
rest. What? Me? Disappoint people? No way. Besides, if I didn't
speak I wouldn't earn the money to pay my bills, most particularl y
my property-tax arrears, and then where wou Id I be? So I finished my
engagements bent double in pain. What a trooper! What an idiot!
I knew I would have to stop the travel, at least for a while, and
spend some time reconnecting with the rest of my life. It wasn't
that I travelled all the time, it was just that I hadn't given myself
enough time to recover from the exhaustion generated by the
physical crisis at the beginning o f the year. I promised myself that I
98 BEYOND DON'T
would not actively seek further engagements, and would do only
what I had already promised. There was nothing scheduled be-
tween the end of October and the spring of the following year. The
spring of 1994 was hectic, but I was much stronger and had less
trouble coping with the schedule.
One of the most difficult things I had to do was find away to look
after myself physically. I have always felt that my body is a more or
less useful support for my head, and I have paid as little attention
to it as possible — except, of course, when I was ill. I was beginning
to feel there was something to be said for more positive attentio n to
the needs of my body. A friend in Moose Jaw suggested I see a
massage therapist she knew of, but I kept postponing the visit, even
though I was making littl e progress in recovering from the tendoni-
tis that had developed in both arms when I overdid one of my
money-making schemes. I had collected bulrushes in roadside
ditches for basket making. Weaving little rushwork baskets and
mats was fun but hard on my hands, for I worked twelve-hour days.
Tendonitis, not income, was the unhappy result, and months later
it was no better.
Finally I made an appointment to see a massage therapist, but
only for a meeting so I could get a sense of whether I would feel
comfortable working wit h her. She was understandin g and talked to
me about the healing techniques she practised: craniosacral ther-
apy, reiki and massage. I found I liked her and her approach. She and
her colleague began to work with me in the spring of 1995, and, in
the year since, I have felt much better, both emotionally and
physically. Often during treatment s I experience intense emotional
catharsis, as well as relief from the aches and pains in my shoulders
and arms that are the result of sitting at a computer orpaintin g most
of every day. What I like about these treatments is that they involve
only a very light touch, so nothing ever feels invasive or frightening
to me.
It is now, as of this writing, two years since I've travelled much.
During these two years I have spoken in Saskatoon at a memorial for
the women who died in the Montreal Massacre and have given a
reading in Peterborough, atTrent University. I thin k I have had my
Reinventing Myself 99
rest now. During this break from public speaking, I have spent
much time and energy attempting to reinvent myself as a writer. I
finished one fiction project, set aside a couple of others and began
another. Wayne Schmalz, then a producer for CBC Regina, sug-
gested that I write a radio play based on an excerpt of my novel in
progress. This project was very enjoyable, and Wayne was wonderfu l
to work with. Jane's Story aired on CBC Regina in June 1995.
Then it seemed necessary as part of my reinvention process to
take a long look at what had happened to my life after the publica-
tion of Don't. No sooner had I written myself an outline for this
project than the current publisher of gynergy books called me with
a serendipitous offer of a book contract.
A writer probably reinvents herself with every book. I felt a
particular need to reinvent myself because I knew only one way to
write, and that was in great pain, primed fora life-and-death battle
with the content and the words. I neither could nor wanted to live
my entire writin g lif e this way. I had to find a healthier way to write
or give it up. I often seriously considered choosing the second,
easier option. It isn't, however, a choice that would make me happy.
I continue to struggle intensely with a confusion and ambiva-
lence about my responsibilities to child-abuse issues. It is physi-
cally, emotionally and spiritually exhausting to work in this field,
and to do so without professional training and support does not
make a lot of sense and could well do more harm than good.
In order for me to do such work effectively, I feel I would have
to dedicate my life to it. And what would become of the writer and
artist I am? To what do I owe the time and energy of my life if not
to my creative work? And, yet, how can I not give absolutely
everything to help change the world to make it safe and healthy for
children? Is it better to make noble gestures or to be true to oneself?
This is a moral dilemma I have by no means resolved.
100 BEYOND DON'T
S i x
In Search of
My Mothe r
I am particularly haunted by my need to make peace
with my sense of my mother and with my own experience of mother-
ing. What does it mean to "mother"? Who should do this work? Who,
in fact, does this work? And what, in the best of all possible worlds,
should mothering be, and give to the one doing the mothering and to
the one who receives it? Mothering is a gift that cannot be enforced or
demanded. It must be freely given or it is poisonous.
Most definitions of "mother" are empty of emotional content
and talk of "female parent," or "to give birth to," or "to protect as a
mother," or "to profess oneself the mother of a child." "Female
parent" is about as neutral a phrase as you can get. It doesn't carry
anything like the yearning and pain many of us have in our guts as
soon as we think of our mothers.
Yearning? Pain? Yes, there is pain in the image of mother. The
woman who was my mother is unknown to me. I know where she
101
lived, something of how she lived, but I  nothing of who she
was as the woman who brought me into the world through her body.
"Mother" means abandoned. My mother abandoned me — not
to life, when I was strong enough to fly my little path on my own,
but raw, untaught, terrified and much too young. There were the
usual reasons. She had a second child thirteen months after my
birth, and a third thirteen months after my sister's birth, and a
fourth and a fifth, until what she had was a brood of ten — each
abandoned in her or his turn.
There are — I have heard of them — women who undertake
the care of such large numbers of children with joy. My mother was
not one of them. In her fierce struggle with poverty and endless
pregnancy, she had nothing left to give her children. She gave us
life, and then, exhausted, she abandoned us. I wonder how she
survived her childbearingyears. I wonder how any woma n survive s
the stress of multiple pregnancies without time between to re-
cover her physical strength; without time to know the infant she
has brought into the world; withou t time to think about her own
life.
What stays with you, always, is the yearning. I still yearn for
mothering, though I am many years past the time when one would
think it necessary. And lyearn for somethin g much sadder than this:
I yearn for the ability to mother the only child I brought safely into
the world. For, not having received appropriate mothering, and
understanding mothering as a hostile act (at least in my experi-
ence), I could not give this gift of mothering to my child. I would
not do to my child what was done to me, though what that meant
was that I abandoned him in a slightly different way. The only
choice I thought I had, which I saw clearly then and see even more
clearly now that I understand something of my past, was to abuse
him or abandon him .
We have been fortunate, he and I. He grew strong and whole in
safety. Another woman was able to give him what I could not. So, he
tells me now, he has two mothers. And he no longer believes I left
him to the care of his father and stepmother because I didn't love
him enough to care for him myself.
102 BEYOND DON'T
know
He would come to visit me when he was little for that bizarre
ritual that divorce forces on kids, the weekend. For a day and a half
I would struggle to mother, as I tried to understand what that meant
and what it required of me. He was patient, clever at pointing out
areas where I didn't understand what he needed — though perhaps
seeing the mess his "mother" was in caused him considerable
confusion.
His visits always began with the same denial: "You're not my
mother, you know. You weren' t there whe n I was born. Mothers stay
with their kids and do the work. You're selfish. You're not my
mother." Half his pain, half his father's. So every visit began with a
fight, as I — another needy child — in reaction to this onslaught-
fought with my needy son about what it meant to be his mother. You
can't explain adequately, to a six-year-old, why you can't be there
for him, why it is much better for him that you are not.
And yet there was th is: When we saw each other, even after long
absence, when we could make eye contact, we knew who we were.
He knew in his gut that I was his mother, just as I knew in my gut
that this beautiful child was my son. The bond is not mythical; it
does exist. It tugged us into a relationship, even when that relation-
ship was fraught with pain, difficulty and denial.
.j. .j. .;.
I wake today to thoughts of Demeter. Demeter is the goddess who
was in so much pain at the loss of her daughter to the god of the
underworld (the god of men) that she sat and wept and refused to
allow the world to continue a s it had before. Now there would be no
more fertile fields; no animals would reproduce to provide food.
Demeter's reaction to the rape of her daughter is written of in
many ways, to support all kinds of ideas of how goddess imagery
functions for women. I too have my ideas about this: I see a woman
so devastated that she knows not only that the world will never be
the same for her or for her daughter, but that she has the power to
make it different. During the time when she knows her daughter
must be in the underworld, Demeter removes fertility from the
fields. The time when she must think about, feel, the pain of her
In Search of My Mothe r 103
daughter in the underworld is winter, when all the world is made to
share her bleak sorrow.
Some part of me responds with: Yes, I know this is how it feels
to have your child abducted and raped. This is what I would have
wanted my mother to feel and do: to know that the world could not
go on in the old ways, that things were changed for us, utterly
changed. And then I would have wanted her to take the most
profound and dramatic action she could think of to have me re-
turned to her safekeeping.
Of course, this means I assume several things. I assume, in this
scenario, that my mother is strong. I assume that my mother, like
Demeter, has the power to effect her wishes and decrees. I assume
that she would know and care with her whole being about what
happened to me and would take immediate action both to rescue
me and to punish the perpetrators.
In fact, I grew, as an adult, to see that my mother had little
power. She certainly did not have the power adult men exercise so
readily and with such devastation. And all through my childhood
and well into my later years, and perhaps still, I ask the same
question: Why? Why did my mother not have the power to stop the
abuse of her children ?
Wehearmoreand more about how women have primary respon-
sibility to protect their children. Women are now being charged in
conjunction with the perpetrators of sexual assault. And I worry that
this is an indication of where society wants to take the sexual-
assault issue. It is so much easier to blame Mom. The abuser, well,
"he never did nothin' to the kid." So Mom's right there again,
powerless and victimized with her children.
One wonders how long we'll allow the abuser, society and the
courts to sentence a mother for not doing what the abuser and
society have made it impossible for her to do. Never provided with
the resources to protect her children or herself, she will now be
sentenced for failing to give protection.
It is not jus t physical resources that she lacks — proper housing,
adequate support money (whether from the state or from the
father/husband). The resources necessary to enable a woman to be
104 BEYOND DON'T
strong enough to protect her children are not merely financial,
though I certainly don't want that factor underestimated. What
every ch ild needs from birth is respect and caring for who she or he
is, and for the child's integrity as a human being. And then each
child needs a nurturing environment, encouragement to grow in
strength and in health, and empowerment to act as an adult.
Until we have women who are empowered to act, first on their
own behalf as children and young women, and later as protectors
and nurturers of children, patriarchy has no business throwing
women in jail for not doing wha t society has made sure they cannot
do. This is no different from blaming the child for the abuse. And it
quite nicely erases the guilt and responsibility of male perpetrators.
Politically, then, I am not able to blame my mother. Yes, she
knew what was going on. Yes, she should have protected me. Yes,
yes, yes, I wanted her to help me. But in the context of her time and
place and personal background, and her relationship with her hus-
band, she was powerless. I saw that clearly after the first time he
abused me. At first she believed me; then I watched him make her
choose between her husband and her daughter, and I saw that she
felt her only option was to choose him and sacrifice me. We shoul d
not be surprised — outraged, certainly, bu t not surprised.
What is it that makes it more important for a woman to believe
her husband than to listen to her child? Let's get something clear
right away. She assumes that if she chooses to believe the child, her
husband will either hurt her or leave her; if she chooses to believe
him, she will be (in this bizarre scenario) rewarded in that he will
become his sweet and charming self again, for a rime. Probably he
will tell her to forget it; it's over and they can get on with their lives.
She may even receive a present of some sort — a night out, new
clothes or jewellery. Things will, she hopes, get back to normal.
Women told me of having to make heart-rending decisions in
this scenario. Too often, if a woman chooses to believe, support and
protect her child against her husband, h e will become enraged and
punitive. He'll take the car and he'll leave, calling her every name
he can think of to hurt her, beating her up once more just to prove
to her that he can hur t her more than she can hur t him . An d she and
In Search of My Mothe r 105
her children will be without any financial support or resources, and
often without a place to sleep. Make no mistake about it, she knows
this. It is part of every fight she has with the man she lives with —
"If I push him, he'll leave." And she sees in her mind's eye wha t that
will mean to her. And don't mistake this, either: he knows she
knows, and that is his power over her — "She's not going to leave.
Where will she go? She's got nothing, no car, no money, nothing."
As an adult I don't blame my mother for not leaving. It makes no
sense to rail at her or to hate her for what she couldn't do. Once,
when I complained particularly bitterly to her (I was thirteen), she
made the issue clear: "I have nine other kids besides you. If he
leaves, we'll starve." How could I argue? I knew it was true, knew
we barely had enough to live on even with his support. I offered to
work to support the family in his stead, told her I thought we could
do it together. But she dismissed the idea and told me to do what
he wanted. It was better for all of us, she told me, and, anyway, none
of us had any choice. This was the way the world was. I learned a
painful lesson that day from my mother—added to the many other
childhood lessons in powerlessness, in hopelessness, and in the fact
that a woman's life can be unremitting pain and humiliation — the
lesson that we have no choice, ever.
Would this childhood, these lessons, have fitted me to raise a
child? Would I have been able to protect my child? An d is this not
what patriarchal society asks of abused women: out of a childhood
of powerlessness we must, upon giving birth , become powerful and
take appropriate measures to see to the health and safety of the
child? How would I or most other abused women know what is
healthy, safe, appropriate for children, never having experienced it,
and likely not even having seen it?
I was led to believe that my childhood was a normal one. That
abuse of girls was normal. That my father was normal in his demands
of me. That men use children and women. So how and why would I
have learned to protect my future childre n from this normal behav-
iour on the part of their father? This doesn't make sense. If such
behaviour is normal, the n there is nothin g to be done. But if it is not
normal, what is? It will require a lot of work to find out, so that I can
106 BEYOND DON'T
trust that my reactions are appropriate for the health and protection
of my child.
Yet, society expects an eighteen-year-old abused woman with a
baby and no support to know how to protect both herself and her
child. And expects her to do that when she has stars in her eyes
about love and her man. And expects she'll believe it when she is
told he has the potential to hur t her or her child. Her man? He's not
like that. She knows him better than that. He wouldn't hur t anyone.
He's a good man, not like some of those other jerks out there.
And if he bashes the baby around (he didn't mean to, she knows
that) because he's jealous, and wants to be and is her baby first, she
is expected to understand this and take responsibility for it. She is
expected, further, to know what's going on and what she ought to
do. She has nothing (if she left, where would she go?) — just the
life-and-death responsibility of protecting the baby from her man,
who has changed so much since the baby was born that she no longer
recognizes him for who she thought he was when they were courting.
My mother never loved me. "Impossible," I hearyou say as you read
that. "Impossible," I say, joinin g wit h you in the hope it isn't true. I
have always tried to tell myself that my mother loved me but that
she didn't know, for some reason, how to show me that she did. I
have clung to this dream secretly, surely, against all evidence to the
contrary.
I remember a time, long ago, when I did not doubt that my
mother loved me — a golden age of being enveloped in her caring,
of basking in a trust in the world and in my mother that had no
boundaries. Was this ever true, or was it a myth I clung to to keep
me sane?
My memories are definite. There was a "before," when my
mother loved me, and an "after," when she no longer loved me. It
seemed that it was my fault. If I had not told herwhat my fatherhad
done, if I had not reacted to his abuse but kept it locked away as he
told me I must, my mother would not have had to choose between
him and me — and, choosing him , no longer love me.
In Search of My Mothe r 107
* * *
From that day she turned me to face her as she dried my back after
the bath I had demanded after the first time my father abused me
when I was four years old, I don't remember her ever touching me
except to hit me. No hugs, no cuddles with a story before bedtime, no
tucking me into bed with a good-night kiss. Nothing but an unrelent-
ing dismissal — get out of my sight — and constant denial that I was
her child. And yet I clung tenaciously to the hope well in to my thirties
that she loved me. How does one survive withou t this? If it was a myth,
so much the better. Myths don't tarnish.
Each time I saw my mother I would explain away her behaviour
in some way — she had had a bad day or night, she was stressed
about money, her job was particularly gruelling that week — any-
thing and everything I could think of to account for the fact that I
meant nothing at all to her and I could read that in her eyes. Like a
hungry puppy, I kept coming back. Feed me, feed me, love me, love
me. And oh, how it hurt. Perhaps, even — wretched thought — it
was the hurt I wanted. It was the hurt I knew, after all, from the
time I was four. If my mother and I continued to operate as we
always had, I was still connected to her. She was still my mother. As
long as she was hurting me in the old ways, she was still my mother.
In desperation, I learned to build a wall — more than one, a
fortress perhaps — between myself and feeling. Feeling hurts too
much, feeling is only pain, and I simply could not take any more of
that and expect to live. Feeling could push me over the edge and
into a beyond where I could not survive. So feeling was the last thing
I could or wanted to do.
After I got married and left home, my relationship with my
mother took on a formal tone. We would meet only for a fifteen-
minute coffee break, in a public place, a restaurant where confron-
tation of any sort was impossible. We were never alone; that would
have been too dangerous. If we had been alone, my feeling and hur t
and anger would have escaped the fortress built around them, and
who knows what I would have said? So safely, for fifteen minutes,
we discussed the weather, her health and, sometimes, the uncon-
trolled spending of her money by my father. And then she would
leave to go back to work. She usually paid for my coffee, with the
108 BEYOND DON'T
remark that I would never get my act together to be able to afford
so much as a coffee in a restaurant. Out on the street we would say
our formal goodbyes.
I used to sit in that restaurant and think that she could have
exactly the same conversation with anyone else there. Most other
women around us did a better job of feigning interest in each other.
My mother never even tried. She endured those fifteen minutes
with "what's her name" and then went back to the office. I can still
see her, face pulled tight, her entire posture defensive, waiting,
waiting. Waiting for what ? Only once did I go beyond the bounds of
our coffee-break contract. Once I tried to tell her of violence against
children and women. Nothing specific, no references to our past.
She gave me her hardest look and said, "Is that right?" The impli-
cation being clear — that I'd made this up too.
When I got home after seeing my mother, I would be miserably
depressed, often for weeks. I didn't make the connection fora long
time. I didn't want to see the relationship between my fantasy of a
mother who cared about me and wanted to hear my news, whatever
it was, and the woman who sat across from me in a restaurant once
a month and endured my presence and conversation. Of course I
was depressed. Here I was, so needy, literally begging this woma n
to acknowledge me in some way as her daughter, and I got nothing,
nothing at all.
So no, my mother didn't love me. And now I think her sorrow
must surely have been greater than mine. I have other women in my
life who I know love me. What did she have? The man she had
chosen, all those years ago, the man who was so much more
important than her children that she always allowed him to stand
between them and her. The love and understanding I had for my
mother she never accepted, or perhaps even knew about.
The pain of yearning — pain for a different life, a different
mother or even the mother she once was (in dream? myth ? reality?) .
My healing demands that I accept her for who she was. My healing
demands that I remove my fantasy mother and replace her with the
woman who did not protect me, and who made it clear over and over
again that she did not love me.
In Search of My Mothe r 109
* * *
When I married and left my father's house, it was imperative that I
become a mother— or so my husband told me. It is rape (many
rapes) when you are made pregnant against your will. And how do
you come to terms with a child conceived in rape? The first time I
was pregnant, in the third year of my marriage, the fetus did not
survive, and I was thankful. I knew that I was not able, not anyth ing
like ready, to care for a child. There was so muc h pain, so much felt
wrong in my life. How could I drop or ignore all that and take
responsibility for a child? I was still a child myself, a hur t and angry
child.
This first pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage that set offnight-
mares when I had been freeof them for some time. My nights were
terror. During the day I wept and tried to write about how I felt. I
could not function in a normal or healthy way, I was in so much pain.
And I was very confused. If I was grateful that I had miscarried at
five and a half months, why did I weep all day? I did not feel sorrow,
I felt relief, so why could I not stop my tears?
My husband was alarmed by my behaviour, for I was either
catatonic or in tears, and I couldn't explain any of it to him. An d no,
I didn't want another baby to make it better. I didn't want another
baby ever. Those are fighting words to the patriarchy, so at that
point something had to be done about me and my attitude. My
husband decided I needed to see a psychiatrist to fix me up.
The psychiatrist looked exactly like photographs I have since
seen of Papa Freud in his study. Me sported a goatee and smoked a
pipe. The office had ambient lighting, a couch and framed certifi-
cates of the psychiatrist's accomplishments on the walls. There
were two matching boxes for tissues, one on the desk beside the
armchair, one near the couch. He sat stiffly in a swivel chair. I was
encouraged to use either the couch or the recliner; in either case I
was to be as close to supine as possible.
From the first meeting with the psychiatrist in the office in
which I was going to be fixed up, I was terrified. As soon as the door
shut I felt trapped. As soon as I looked at him, the faces of men I did
not remember or recognize superimposed themselves on his face. I
1 10 BEYOND DON'T
could not keep him in focus. The faces of other men flashed by over
and over again.
He wants me to talk about my problem. I don't have a problem,
I say. I think my husban d has a problem. He doesn't think I can work
out what I need to work out by myself, doesn't trust that I know,
deeply know, what I'm doing. My husband's problem is that he has
run out of patience with me and my so-called problem. I realize the
psychiatrist doesn't want to know about my husband's problem, but
I try it anyway. With all this elaborate preparation for disclosures of
some kind, something must be said in this room before I will be
allowed to leave. That, at least, is immediately obvious.
He wants to talk about my mother. How can I even begin? How
can I tell this creepy little man that I don't think I have a mother,
but that there is a woman who won't claim me as her daughter
because she says I'm too much of a trouble-maker. This is the
woman I have grown to hate, and the hate is all mixed up with
yearning fora mother who wil l love me. I don't understand wha t I've
done (and I have hidden from myself almost all of what happened)
that makes it impossible for her to love me.
And the psychiatrist, between puffs of thick smoke from his
pipe, tells me that it will all be better when I have a baby. How can
having a baby make it better? I ask. Because then you won't have
time to think about these things, he says. I won't have time to think
about it? I should just stop thinking? This is the advice of the
psychiatrist: You won't have any problems if you stop thinking.
Oh yes, and he meant it, no doubt about it. He gave me those
"stop-thinking pills," the same ones most doctors and psychiatrists
were prescribing for wome n with "problems" at that time. I walked
out of his office with moreValium than I had ever seen before. Wli at
made him so certain I wouldn't down the whole bottle? Of course,
he delivered me into the hands of my husband, whose job it was to
make certain I took the proper dosage, no less and no more.
This was the woman who, at twenty-two years of age, conceived
again as a result of rape. Stoned, tearful, confused and in great pain,
she conceived. And her instant reaction to this betrayal from her
body (how dare it be fertile? how dare it be female?) was to wish that
In Search o f My Mothe r 111
this fetus too would decide that life was not to be embarked upon
at this time and in this place.
The fetus, however, had other ideas, and soon after conception
decided it was time to make its presence known to its unwilling
host. And this is the dialogue that ensued in my head with the fetus
that would become my son. "I want to be born," it said. "I have
nothing to give you," I replied. "I want to be born," it said, more
emphatically. "I can't care foryou, I can't even careaboutyou at this
point," I said, weeping now. "I want to be born, give me life." "I
can't, I can't," I said; "I don't know how to care foryou, won't be
able to do it." "Give me life," the fetus said more insistently, "Give
me life and the rest will take care of itself. You can give me a great
gift — life, that's all I ask." "All? All? What about raisingyou? I know
I won't be able to do it." "Life is the gift I ask," it said again, "Life,
life, life..."
We made a bargain, the fetus and 1.1 woul d give it life, the only
gift I had to offer at that time, with the assurance that this would
be enough and that the rest would somehow rake care of itself. I
didn't know how that could happen. I knew what was expected of
me as a mother, but I also knew that it would be okay wit h this child
if all I could do was give it life.
I told this story to my son in his late teens and his immediate
reaction was: "You know, Elly, it really is okay." He's not broken in
spirit. He's beautiful. It really is okay. What is not okay is what we
both missed because I did not have the ability to mother him . An d
the farther along the path of my healing I travel, the more I realize
how much we have missed that is not, ever, recoverable.
•:• •:• *
Once, long ago, there was a time when I did not hate myself. My
hating began with my first menstruation. I was not prepared for this
event. I thought that I must have been damaged by my father, that
the blood was a result of injury. And how was I to present this
situation to my mother? Would she be mad at me? What would the
punishment be? Why did this happen? When would it stop? And
what was I supposed to do with the mess?
1 12 BEYOND DON'T
I stayed in bed for as long as I could that Saturday morning. I
didn't know what else to do, didn't know whom I could tell about
this and not suffer terrible consequences. Finally I wadded up a pai r
of panties and stuffed them inside another pair so I could get out of
bed and not make a mess as I walked. But I still didn't know how to
tell my mother.
All through that long morning , I tried to find ways to tell her that
would not lay the blame for this bizarre bleeding on myself. At the
same time, I tormented myself with accusations. I should have
stopped him, shoul d neverhave let (as though I had any choice) him
or those other men touch me. I tormented myself with my sinful-
ness. The bleeding was because I had sinned in some way by not
making them stop, or more likely just because I was female and
weak. The questions went on and on in confusion, pai n and terror.
What was I to do? If the bleeding didn't stop, would I die? I saw
clearly that this was punishmen t from God. The fact that I didn't
understand what I had done to deserve it didn't change that.
Several times that morning, because I was pale, because I didn't
move about the way I usually did, because I tried to sit down every
time her back was turned or when she left the room, my mother
asked me what was wrong. This only increased my terror. Could she
tell? Did it show? A trip to the bathroom proved that there was no
blood to be seen on my dress or legs. I sat in the bathroom and
wondered what it would be like to die of thi s bleeding. Would I fade
slowly? Would my sisters miss me? Would my mother? Would my
father care at all?
The bleeding became a more insistent presence. I would have
to tell my mother. I waited for the best time that morning, the time
she took her coffee and sat at the table to review what had been
done and what was yet to be done to make the house Dutch clean
by noon, when my father came home for lunch.
"I want to talk to you about something. Don't tell Dad," I said.
"Promise me you won't tell him." "No, I can't promise that. What
do you want ? Why haven'tyou finished cleaning the bathroom when
you've been in there more than half an hour? What is your problem
this morning anyway?" "I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm
In Search of My Mothe r 113
bleeding, a lot, from down there." She looked at me with that hard
look of hers and said, "Oh, is that all? Come wit h me." She marched
me into the bathroom, showed me where the pads were stored, gave
me a small elastic belt and showed me how to fasten the pad to it.
She told me that I must let no one know what was happening. It was
a secret I must learn to keep. I was particularly not to let my
brothers or sisters know about this. The pads must be burned in the
barrel by the back lane without attracting any attention to what I
was doing. "That means you won't tell Dad?" "What?" "If it's a
secret, it meansyou won't tell him." "No, that wasn't what it meant.
He'd want to know." "Why?" "Never mind. Get back to work."
"When will it stop?" "It doesn't stop, stupid. It goes on until
you're old." "Always? I'll have to wear these th ings for the rest of my
life, always? Why?" "This is what happens to girls. It stops after a
few days and then starts again next month." "No," I say, "it can't. I
don't want this to be." "Don't be ridiculous," she says. "There's
nothing you can do about it. This is the way it is. Quit whining."
"Mom, can I go lie down for a while? I don't feel very good."
"There's no reason to lie down. Nothing's wrong wit h you."
"Yes there is, yes there is! I don't want to be a girl if this is what
it means. I don't want to bleed every month. It feels terrible; it is
terrible. This isn't fair. Does it happen to boys?" "No, all they have
to do is shave when they're older." "That's not the same thing. Why
do I have to bleed?" "Nowyou can have babies. When your bleeding
starts, it means you can have babies." I am suddenly even more
horrified than I was before. Babies? You mean the blood makes
babies? Oh no, oh no! Not me, not me ever. I clutch my belly as a
cramp begins, bending over in pain. Nausea follows the cramp.
Horrible, horrible. Until it stops when I'm an old woman, every
month I have to endure this misery? It's not fair, it's not fair.
Fair has nothing to do with it, my mother assures me. It's just
the way things are because you're a girl. Then I hate being a girl.
This is too terrible. I don't want to be a girl. I don't like anythin g I
have to do because I'm a girl. I want to be a boy. I want to live the
kind of life my brother does. Life is easy for him. He doesn't have
to clean the house every Saturday. He doesn't have to scrub and wax
1 14 BEYOND DON'T
floors, iron clothes, clean the bathroom or do dishes for twelve
people three times a day — and he doesn't have to bleed every
month. I hate being a girl. I hate it, I hate it.
Finally I get permission to lie down for a while. And this is when,
lying on the couch listening to Saturday morning cleaning rituals
going on withou t me, I first begin to hate myself. I am a prisoner in
a body I did not choose. I am a prisoner in a life that becomes more
of a nightmare each year, showing me over and over again things I
cannot do, or have, or be, simply because I am a girl. Being a girl is
the worst thing in the world.
The greater my hatred of my body, the worse my cramps, but I
didn't make the connection then. The greater my hatred, the worse
my "attitude." No one could come anywhere near me. I snapped
and snarled; tried, with a hatred I can barely acknowledge even yet,
to scratch my oldest brother's eyes out once. And scared myself so
much I finally realized that this course, this expression of my rage,
was much too dangerous.
Before the onset of my menstruation each month, I fantasized
about killing myself. I could not go on like this, couldn't live wit h this
hateful body, wanted out of it. Oh, how much I wanted out of it! It
gave me nothing but pain. First I learned that my father and his
friends could do anything they wanted to me. Then I learned that I
would bleed every month with pain and discomfort and creepy
odours. Was there no end to what this body meant in terms of pain?
I felt that my body had betrayed me, had become an alien thing
to which my min d was bizarrely attached. I finally found the courage
to ask my mother if there was no other way than old age to stop the
bleeding and misery. She told me that it was possible to have an
operation to remove the parts that caused the bleeding, but that
meant you couldn't have any children, and that it wasn't allowed
unless you were very ill. From the moment she told me about the
operation, when I was nearly thirteen, it became my goal. I didn't
know how I was going to do it, I just knew that at the first
opportunity I would have the whole troublesome mess removed
from my body. And life would not be able to go forward in the way I
dreamt of unti l that had been taken care of.
InSearchofMyMothe r 115
I had been dreaming, secretly, of what I would do when I was
finally able to leave my father's house. I would be an archaeologist
and a writer. I dreamt of travelling to Egypt. I would explore the
Valley of the Kings and discover the burial places of the lost queens
of Egypt. I would unearth the tomb of Hatshepsut, for I was sure I
knew where it was. Hatshepsut, the queen who, whe n she was told
by the priests that she could not rule because she was a woman, had
herself proclaimed a man and wore a ceremonial beard strapped to
her chin for state occasions. I thought: Hatshepsut never bled.
Hatshepsut never had time for this girl nonsense. She knew she was
a queen from the moment of her birth and she had the power to
banish whatever she didn't like from her life.
How I wished for the power of my heroine queen. Instead, my
cycles caused meever greater pain. Pain thatMidolor222s couldn't
touch. Pain that was not only physical, though that was how it made
itself known. By the time I was fifteen my mother thought I had
better see a doctor. My father gave his permission. He wanted to
know if I had been damaged in someway. How? By whom? Never
mind, the doctor will check.
The doctor will examine you now. With what terror we hear
these words, when they introduce a first visit to the gynecologist. A
gruff man in a white coat tells me to take my clothes off and hoist
myself up on the examining table. With his foot he pushes a stool
toward it so I can climb up, and he tosses me a small sheet with
which to cover myself. I'll be back in a few minutes, he says.
It is cold in the little room. Th e examining table on which I mus t
lie and wait for the doctor looks, wit h its stirrups, like some torture
device, and just like the one my aun t told me she had been strapped
to, screaming, during the birth of her daughter. There are strange
instruments strewn about on a couple of trays on the window sill.
What will he do to me? Why can't my mother be here with me?
The doctor comes back into the room with a stern nurse in tow.
He proceeds to the foot of the table and I hear him move things
around on the trays. As he does this he tells me to move myself so
that my feet are in the stirrups and my ass is exposed. Oh no, not
me. I'm not going to do this. I do nothing, pretend I haven't
1 16 BEYOND DON'T
understood him. The nurse comes toward me and informs me that
I must cooperate with the doctor, and she places my feet in the
stirrups and pushes me toward the edge of the table.
Relax, he says. This isn't going to hurt. What ? What ? Suddenly
he is fumbling about "down there." Oh, oh, what is this, why is he
doing this? Take a deep breath, he says, as he shoves something
hard, cold and large into me. My whole body contorts in shock and
pain. My back arches and I lift myself off the table and try to back
away from him. Lie still, he snarls. If you lie still it won't hurt. Some
echo in this, surely? Haven't I heard this before? Get away from me,
I scream, get away. The nurse is beside me now, telling me not to
upset the doctor. The doctor is nearly finished his examination and
is telling me to do as I'm told. Echoes, echoes. I realize I'm crying.
The doctor has removed whatever it was he put into me, and for no w
the assault seems to be over. I hear him tell the nurse to "get her
dressed and send her mother into my office."
My mother is furious when we meet in the waiting room. I have
embarrassed her by being, once again, uncooperative, and by mak-
ing the doctor upset and angry. Is there something wron g with me
then? Do I need the operation? Wha t operation? The one that will
stop the bleeding. She looks at me as though a more stupid person
has never walked this earth. There's nothing much wrongwit h you,
she tells me, but he's give n you a prescription. What's it for? For the
pain? No, it's to make you more cooperative. I hope it's wort h wha t
it's going to cost.
But the pills do not make me more cooperative. They make me
slow, dull, uncaring. I tell herl don't think I need them except jus t
before the bleeding begins. She agrees that my "problems" are
worse then, and that the pills can be saved for those times.
.;. <• .j.
My mother loved flowers. Of all the things she missed from Hol-
land, what she missed most were the flowers. I remember her
sitting at the table on a Saturday morning with a very special kind
of coffee she rarely bothered to make for herself, trying to tell me
about the flowers in Holland. I had no memories of them and my
In Search of My Mothe r 117
ten-year-old imagination could not grasp a world so filled with
sunshine, colour and scent.
The scent of flowers is stil l mixed for me with the scent of coffee
and floor wax and spring. For only if I worked very fast and very hard
and got most of my work done before ten o'clock could we sit
together for twenty minutes whil e she drank her coffee.
I wonder now if she rarely made the special coffee because
drinking it always seemed to bring her wave after wave of nostalgia
for Holland. I would see this wash over her face and ask her, "What
is it, Mom? What are you thinking?" — knowing she was thinking
about things far away, things that did not include me, things I
wanted, at least then, to hear about. But she told me very little,
considering it an indulgence, given that her husband wouldn't like
her to tell me much about her past or her childhood .
And these were the only times she sat still with just me. The
other kids would be outdoors in spring while we two cleaned the
house from the front porch right through to the back step. When I
was ten, most of my sisters were still too small to help much, thoug h
the sister born just after me would have the care of the little ones.
My oldest brother, who was old enough to help, was never required
to do anything like housework or dishes.
I didn't mind, then, what work there was to do. The reward was
so great: to sit with her, to have her look at me, only me, for jus t a
few precious moments. To hear a little, however little, about her
childhood. I remember asking her once who she was before she was
my mother. I remember the stunned look on her face as she tried to
fathom my question.
The last sip of coffee would mean the end of the magic, and I
would be back on my hands and knees scrubbing the bathroom or
kitchen floor. As I scrubbed and rinsed, scrubbed and rinsed again
to meet her exacting standards, I plotted strategy for the next
Saturday, considered other questions I might ask, tried to figure out
ways to get her to take a longer coffee break so she would have more
time to talk to me.
One spring the talk of flowers and her mother brought such
emotion from her that I was surprised — and appalled when I asked
1 18 BEYOND DON'T
her (didn't I realize the import of this unti l then?) how long it had
been since she had seen her mother. Five years? I knew I wouldn't
be able to live if I didn't see my mothe r for five years. She'd just have
to go and see my Oma, that was all there was to it. And my mother,
my tough, stern, in-control mother, broke down and wept. I can't
go, I can't, I can't. Who would look after all you kids andyour father?
I can't go. There's no money. I can't go.
I knew her parents were not particularly well off, but neither
were they poor. So I asked the obvious question: If she had a ticket,
if my Oma and Opa (grandfather) lent or gave her the money for a
ticket, would she go? Sh e looked startled but interested. And, I said
— becoming very excited for her, not realizing wha t any of it woul d
mean for me, not realizing, not realizing — I could help look after
the house and the kids. I do lots of that now.
Reality dawned hard and cold in her eyes as she said: Your father
won't let mego. I countered with, tell him you need to, tell hi m you
miss your mother so much that you have to visit her. And tell him
you'll feel better and be happier whe n you get back. And you should
write to Oma right now and tell heryou need to see her.
I knew that in order for my scheme to get her a visit with her
mother to be successful, she would have to write while she still felt
strongly about it, before the rest of the many reasons to prevent her
leaving us came to the surface, and before she had a chance to tell
my father. I fetched her writing case, handed her an aerogram and a
pen. Write to Oma now, I said. Tell her how muc h you miss her and
want to see her. I'll bet anything she'll help you with a ticket. I just
know she will. And I'll mail the letter before Dad comes home for
lunch.
It was urgent that the letter be mailed before he knew about it,
and it was also urgent that Oma's reply simply invite her and not
refer back to her letter. I told her to make sure she found someway
to tell Oma this. I can still see the look on her face as I told her, wit h
this warning, wha t I really knew about my father. I had learned my
lessons well and early, and they were not necessarily what she
thought she had taught me. I knew his iron grip on her life. It wasn't
any different from hisgrip on me or on the rest of the household.
In Search of My Mothe r 119
I held my breath. Somehow I knew how much she needed to see
her mother, to be away from us fora time. All winte r she had been
desperately unhappy, and when I tried to ask her what was wrong
she would not answer me, or would tell me to never mind and get
back to work. As I held my breath, I tried to will her the courage to
write the letter. The pen came near the paper and stopped. She
looked at me. Do it, Mom. Please, please. The pen descended to
the paper this time and I watched her begin: JJeve Moeder. She
stopped again. I waited. And then the words flowed and I knew it
would be all right until she got to the end. I went back to my
assigned task but kept watch to make sure she continued to write
and did not need more encouragement.
Once begun, the letter did not take long to write. She folded it
and sat and looked at it. I stood beside her for a few moments,
watching the struggle in her face, before I reached out to take the
letter. I'll run to the mailbox with it now, I said.
I had expected her reply: I can't send it, your fathe r won't let me
send it once he reads it. He doesn't have to see it, I said. I'll mail it
right now. You wan t to see Oma, right? You wrote to her about that,
right? Then I'll mail the letter for you. He won't know if you don't
tell him, and I won't tell him either. I only wish I could go wit h you.
She handed me the letter and looked at the clock. Run then, she
said, and tell the kids you're going to the store for me. Run. He'll be
home for lunch in ten minutes.
Every letter from hermotherin theinonrh after that excited me.
I tried to be near her when she read, so I could watch her face. I
questioned her closely. What did Oma say? Can she help? Wha t did
Dad say? Can you go? When are you going? Who's going to look after
us? Can I go with you? I can't remember now if she went that spring
or the one after it. All I know for certain is that she went to Hollan d
for five long weeks, and that it was before my menstrual cycles
began.
She almost didn' t go. My father did not want to lose her services
for so long, didn't know what he'd do without her, didn't think she
should waste the money to see her parents when he wanted to
spend it on more new toys for himself: camera, stereo equipment ,
120 BEYOND DON'T
guitar, amplifiers. There was so much he needed, and here she was
wasting it to see that stupid old man and her bitch of a mother. I
don't know what she said to him finally to get permission to go, but
one day he seemed suddenly resigned to the idea, and plans went
forward from that time.
A neighbour girl would come in every day to look after us and the
house while my father was at work. My father's mother would check
in to make sure the hired girl fed him properly. We were to be extra
good and not make any trouble for Dad while Mom was away. We were
to do as we were told and do it quickly so he wouldn't lose his temper.
There were lists for me: things I had to do for my father because
the hired girl could not be trusted to do them. I was instructed how
to prepare and when to present his breakfast tea and rusks. I was
taught how to properly iron his shirts, press his pants and polish his
shoes, and how to lay out all his clothes as soon as he went to the
bathroom to shave. I learned how to clean up after him and how to
try to stay invisible and out of his way. And I had to move fast in the
morning, for everybody had to be dressed and the breakfast porridge
had to be made at the same time, so that the older ones could be in
school on time and the little ones cleaned up before the hired girl
arrived at 8:45.
If my brothers and sisters made too much noise or didn't eat
their breakfasts, it was my fault and I would have to pay for it. My
father's morning contribution was to yell, shu t up, shu t up all ofyou,
from the bathroom. And if he was not obeyed instantly, he would
storm out, hi s face contorted and half covered in shaving lather, to
threaten us with a beating.
•:• * *
I wonder, did my mother ever walk along a Dutch seashore and say
what it was she dreamt of doing with her life, to herself or to a
friend? And what would it have been like, in her teens during the
1930s, to have dreams as the nightmare of Hitler gathered on the
horizon?
Both my mother's and my Oina's generation experienced the
devastation of war. Did this influence how they saw the world, how
In Search of My Mothe r 121
they lived their lives and how they raised their children? What is the
relationship between the emotional and physical violence of living
in a war zone and the health of the soul even many years after the
war is said to have ceased? Does one not carry wounds, great
wounds, from such experiences? And if wounds are not properly
tended, do they not become greater wounds?
My parents refused to speak about the war. I heard, in all my
childhood, only three stories about my father's experiences, and one
from my mother, but only in relation to their courting time. My
father told me once, as he held me down and forced me yet another
time to do what he wanted, that he had used his hands to kill before
and that it would be no hardship to do so once again and remove me
from the face of the earth. Twice he tried, and these events were
pivotal to my understanding of his power to destroy me. Usually all
he had to do was bring his hands near my throat for me to comply. I
learned that his threats could be carried out, that they were much
more than talk, so that every threat he made had the force of fact.
It could be done. I could die if I did not learn to obey.
Where and how did he learn to conduct himself in this way?
Where did my mother learn that it was better to give in to him, to
let him have his way, to comply with his every whim, than to stand
her ground and say with the force of her own adult authority that
these things would not be done in her house and in her life? Where
did my mother acquire such intense loyalty to this man that she was
prepared to, and did, sacrifice the health and safety of all her
children? Where, and how and why did they learn these lessons?
And what, looking at what I know of these lives, can I learn from all
of this?
Those of us who tried to grow despite the abuse conducted
against us never received the basic respect owed to us as human
beings. Our personal integrity, the integrity of our bodies and
minds, was violated again and again and again. And while this was
done we were lectured about respect by our parents, by our teachers
and, on Sundays, by our ministers. And what did we learn? We
learned that power is respected, that violence is respected, but that
such respect is prompted by fear for the consequences, which, as far
122 BEYOND DON'T
as I am concerned, has nothing to do wit h respect and everything to
do with terrorism.
In every context I was threatened. If this or that wasn't done, if
I didn't give my father what he wanted, I suffered the miserable and
painful consequences. At school, if I didn't do what I was told, I was
hauled up before my classmates and strapped across the hands wit h
a thick leather strap. Even among my peers, some would threaten
on the playground with the bullying that they had learned from
their fathers at home. There was no place I could go where violence
against me was not a consideration and a possibility. And if the
violence I lived with every day was not enough, in church I was
promised that there would be further violence awaiting me the
moment life was over.
So what I learned was that there are two kinds of people: those
who do and those who are done to. And those who are done to are
always the weakest and most vulnerable: children, women, the
disabled and the old. And those who do — who neglect, abuse,
destroy — are usually men. And I thought it would be far better to
side with the doer, for he had power, than to side with the done to,
for she did not. As I entered my teens I learned to despise my
mother's weakness. And so, to make my destruction complete, I
identified with my father and the power I thought he had, by the
right I was taught to believe he certainly had, even as he used my
child body.
It is a mistake to believe that only my child body was violated.
My woman's mind, psyche, soul, were as well, and in many ways.
The beginning of healing is to recognize in how many, many ways I
have identified with the abusers. Psychologists call it the Stock-
holm syndrome, when, in order to survive, hostages (and I was a
child hostage) identify with their captors. Withdrawing identifica -
tion with the abuser is much like unravelling a matted and tangled
skein of yarn. It takes patience and it takes time — a great deal of
patience and even more time.
I grew to adulthood withou t ever having seen a woman who was
strong and healthy and empowered in her own life. So I had no models,
and therefore no way to know wha t goals I might appropriately set for
I n Search ofM y Mot he r 123
myself. And I thought that, without this identification with power,
and the world view that comes with it, there was nothing — or if
there was something else, it was bound to be unnatural. Certainly a
male-supremacist culture would like me to believe there is nothin g
else but what they have decided and decreed to be natural for me
— which translates into power for them, and victimization for me
and everyone else.
The greatest empowerment in my woman's life came when I
realized that men and the gods men have constructed in their own
image to perpetuate their power and serve their needs are respon-
sible for how I have been defined, and for deciding wha t is "natural"
for me as a woman — and that the men who have done this are very
much like the men who abused me, with all their huma n frailties
and fears. And I learned that, as an adult, I need no longer fear them
or their gods, the way I had as a terrorized child.
* * *
I had hoped, that first time my mother went to visit her mother in
Holland, that the little yellow rosebush near the lane would be in
bloom by the time she returned so that I could give her a bouquet
as soon as I saw her. It was too early for the roses or garden flowers,
but I remember insisting that my father at least purchase some
flowers, even though that meant that they would be from him and
would have nothing to do with me.
Weeks later, when the roses in theyard were in bloom, I told her
what I had wanted to do on her return. She stunned me by tellin g
me thatyellow roses meant treachery and that one must nevergive
yellow roses to a friend. When I asked for an explanation, she said
that if a man gave yellow roses to his wife it meant that he had been
unfaithful.
I was instantly consumed by a guilt I had not felt until then. He
had explained to me that what he asked me to do was something he
had been told by my mother I was to do for him. It was not on any
of the lists she had made for me before she left, he said, because she
had forgotten to include it, but it was something she wanted me to
do for him nevertheless. I didn't quite believe him, bu t he assured
124 BEYOND DON'T
me that it was part of caring for him and that she would want him
properly cared for.
It was reasonable, he assured me. I was the oldest daughter, and
just as I was required to take her place in the housekeeping and
mothering, I must also take her place in bed. It was my role, the
work she had been training me for. I must do whatever he asked of
me, so as not to disappoint her and betray her faith that I could
handle whatever was necessary while she was away. My mother
wanted this, he said finally, but had not known how to ask me.
My motherwanted me to do this. Powerful, powerfu l words: My
mother wanted this. And oh how I missed my mother, and oh how
afraid I was that she would never come back! I knew how unhappy
she was. And he wasn't sure either that she would come back,
though he never said as much. What my mother somehow left off
the list of things I was to do was that I was to sleep in their bed,
beside him , so that my body was always available to him .
In the beginning he tried to be what he thought of as kind, and
said he would teach me what it meant to be a woman and a lover.
But I proved untrainable, refused to relax, refused to take part in
the ways he demanded. No matter what he tried, my body remained
rigid, my thighs clenched, and he satisfied his never-ending hunge r
by ejaculating against my thighs or back. I soon wore out his
patience and the threats began.
When I saw what it meant — to, as I thought, obey my mother
in this — I decided that, no matter what it cost me in terms of her
anger, I could not obey. But that did not mean I was excused from
sleeping with him. I had a duty to perform and it would be done
whether I agreed to it or not. My mother was gone for five weeks.
Each night, because of my responsibilities for house and children
and the comfort of my father — for there was much the hired girl
refused or was unabl e to do — I was the last child to bed. The other
children were in their own beds by eight. I was the first one up in
the morning, because my father had to have his tea and a buttered
rusk as soon as he woke. When the other kids came downstairs, I was
already in the kitchen. None of them ever knew where I had spent
the night.
In Search of My Mothe r 125
His demands exhausted me. I remember asking if we children
could not take turns doin g these things he continuously assured me
he needed. No, he said, my mother's instructions were clear. I was
the one she trusted to look after him. I remember bits of his
conversation and one or two incidents from this time; most of the
rest is a blur. I remember lying on my back and memorizing the
pattern in the stained-glass window that I could see from where I
lay. I remember thinking how strange it was to take my mother's
place. I examined this from every angle, wondering, wondering,
wondering how my mother could live like this with him .
I remember trying to make myself into someone else, someone
from the fairy tales I read with such compulsion at that time. I was
both the child who was lost and needed rescue and the one who did
the rescuing. I rode a beautiful horse across a land of beauty and
wonder. I was a princess with enough wealth and power to demand
that other girls take my place in my parents' bed. I was someone
else, always, torn between doing what my mother wanted and my
sense that, if this was what she wanted, there was no way at all for
me to live in my body.
I remember conversations wit h him. Remembe r how loath
he was to touch his own genitals, and how curious and insistent
he was about touching mine . My stubborn refusal to relax and
accept my responsibility and fate as girl eventually resulted in
different tactics, and he demanded that I use my mouth on his
penis. And here too I could not do adequately wha t he wanted,
and from this began the notion that I was stupid. Too stupid for
words. Stupid, stupid, s o stupid I could not follow the simplest
of instructions .
My mother returned to an excited and joyful welcome. I hoped
that as soon as she saw me she would acknowledge what I had done
for her all those weeks, and I hoped that she would do this wit h a
gift and would thank me. For if these things were done by my
mother, the nagging sense I had that what had happened would not
be all right with her would leave me. And perhaps it would be
possible then to tell her that it had been too difficult a task for me
and to complain about his treatment of me.
126 BEYOND DON'T
In my turn I stood in front of her to greet her, and waited. She
said nothing. Perhaps she had forgotten? Well, she said finally, were
you good while I was gone? Yes, I said. I did everythingyou told me
to. And I was so good that I only needed one spanking, but it will
last me the rest of my life. She looked from me to my father and he
said, "I'll tell you later." And I was nudged from my place in line and
the next child said hello. Only the very small kids got anything like
a hug. I got a frown, a severe look and dismissal, nothing like the
thanks or acknowledgement I wanted so much.
To say I was disappointed would be a gross understatement. I
was devastated. How could she not know what it had cost me to do
all the things she had left for me to do? How could she dismiss me
like that? How could she be so cruel? As I walked away I folded in
on myself, holding onto tears until I was well out of her sight.
Behind me I could hear the conversations she had with my brothers
and sisters, and these seemed to me to be filled with warmth and
interest. For me there had not even been that. And I had been
dismissed, there was no mistaking that, while the others could
hover round her with their chatter, and that was fine with her.
A spanking to last my whole life was wha t I had said. And she had
not asked what it was for, let alone why I described it that way.
"Spanking" was the word he had used for the beating he gave me, a
beating he applied with his hands and a wicker rug beater. A beating
so severe that I passed out and had to be shaken awake so that I
could be sent to bed. A beating so severe it left welts on my lower
back and buttocks, some of which bled enough to make my night-
dress stick to them. A beating so severe I was in bed for three days,
unable to move.
I remember that my father's mother arrived on the third day to
demand why I was pretending to be sick. Before she came upstairs,
he had been up to see me and tell me that, if I told her what he had
done, he would finish what he had started and kill me. He need not
have worried. I neither liked nor trusted his mother and would have
told her nothing. She demanded that I stop my laziness and get back
to work; didn't ask me what was wrong; assumed that, as I was my
mother's daughter, I was lazy.
In Search of My Mo t he r 127
I knew his mother's opinion of my mother. She made no secret
of what she considered to be my mother's physical flaws and
personal as well as housekeeping defects. I vacuumed her rugs every
Saturday. I knew what she thought of my ability to do a thing right:
non-existent. And here I was, just as she'd always thought I would
be some day, hiding out in bed instead of working— my mother's
daughter to be sure.
I wonder how anyone, ever, can make accusations of laziness
against a woman (or her helper daughter), who keeps a spotless
house and whose eight, nine, then ten scrubbed kids show up in
church every Sunday morning i n nearly ironed clothes and polished
shoes. And I wonder why.
His motherwas dissatisfied with the interview she had with me.
I heard her downstairs telling my father that she had given me a
talking to and that there was nothing wrong with me. But she could
not tell him when I would get up, for I persisted in saying I was too
sick to move, even though she thought I didn't look a bit sick.
And this is how I was trained to be a slave, putting my father's
interests before my own, always. For as a slave I had no legitimate
interests to see to or protect. And I had no power. This is how I
learned to lie to save face for a master, first for my father and later
for the other men I had contact or relationships with. Saving their
reputations became more important than saving my life.
What I should have done, I see now, was show her my back and
scream and carry on about what he'd done to me. Instead I pro-
tected him — partly because I believed I had somehow deserved it
(even if I could not figure out precisely what I had done) and was
ashamed, and partly because I knew that, if I did show her and
complain, he would beat me again, and I truly did not know if I
would survive a second beating that severe.
* * *
My father did not believe that my mother should get what she
needed, or wha t she wanted. That privilege he reserved for himself .
Nor was she entitled to keep what she brought from Holland. At
least, this is the conclusion I draw from years of watching him
128 BEYOND DON'T
destroy everything her mother had given her for her home. If my
mother was to have anything, it had to be something like a dress so
that she could display her body in a way he called sexy. The
ornaments and figurines she enjoyed so much because they came
from Holland, or reminded her of Holland and her mother, he
destroyed, every one.
I remember thinking tha t the little bronze lizard, one of the last
pieces to survive, would make it because it would not break if
dropped. I thought the lizard ugly, but dusted it with care each
week because it was one of the few things left from Holland for my
mother to love. The other figurines fell to pieces when he moved
the furniture without taking care to move them to safety, or when
he placed something too near them, and knocked them over the
edge of the table. The little lizard survived many trips to the floor
without so much as an extra dent in its surface, unti l the day he had
to make some adjustment to the back of the television. He reached
for the little lizard and used its body as a hammer, and in doing so
snapped off the tail. I think my mother was beyond tears by this
point, for she did not react at all.
In the household where I grew up, only my father got to buy
things he wanted. It didn't matter what it cost the rest of us for him
to spend our resources on rye whisky to entertain his friends, or to
buy a camera rather than pay the grocery bill. If we didn't eat, that
was jus t "too goddamn bad."
The summer I was fifteen I got a job in a local drugstore and was
paid ninety-five cents an hour. I worked from twenty to thirty-five
hours a week. At the end of the week I was to give my unopened pay
packet to my father. Out of my earnings he would hand me five
dollars, and pocket the rest.
Once I was launched with my own job, he no longer felt it
necessary to contribute to my maintenance in any way. If I wanted
clothes, shoes or underwear, I had to save my five dollars a week and
purchase them myself. If I wanted to take the bus to and from work
rather than walk, I had to take that out of my five dollars. If I wanted
to eat a plate of fries before nine-thirty at night, whe n I got home to
a dinner that had been kept warm in a bowl in the oven since
In Search of My Mothe r 129
five-thirty, that too had to come out of my five dollars. If I wanted
butter on my bread, as he had, rather than the margarine the
children got, I had to pay him a dollar a week for the privilege.
And when, two years later, I quit school, depressed beyond
belief because I was convinced he had the power he claimed to
make sure I never got to university, and began a full-time job with
a salary of $160 a month, I got $40 and he got the rest. No amount
of begging could change this, and I certainly did beg him to be more
generous. For I was by then saving, or trying to save, enough money
to buy the things I needed to leave home.
Who tells me that I may not have what I want, and why? Who
tells me that if I have the money and buy what I need, I will be
punished? Who tells me I may not spend whatever money I earn in
whatever way I please? Who tells me that if I spend this little bit of
money my way, I will never get any more? Who tells me that if I
spend my money now, I will starve next year? Who tells me, and
why?
I begin to see something of why I twist myself so out of shape
about money. Even yet, my own money makes me uncomfortable,
as though I have to spend it before he? — someone? — finds out
and takes it from me. Buying something I need for the kitchen
seems a gross waste of my resources. Buying clothes, even on sale,
results in terror that I am spending grocery money foolishly, when
this is certainly not the case. This year, at least, I have more than
five dollars a week.
* * *
The list of things stolen from me seems endless. And now I have
come to a place at the core of my sense of my writer self. My first
language was not English. In nursery school in Holland, when it
became known that I would go to Canada, we all began to learn
words and phrases in English. I loved English the way a child loves
a secret language she speaks to her dolls.
It was exhilarating to learn the way things were described in
another language, that flagfiteug was a "plane," that dank u wel
became "thanks a lot," that Oma became "Grandmother," and that
130 BEYOND DON'T
when asking for something in Canada I would have to remember to
always say "please, may I" before making my request. My school-
mates and I were all highly amused by the strange sounds we made
trying to say things in acceptable English.
I practised and practised. It was such fun. Though I did not want
to leave Holland and my Oma, I was excited about the idea of being
in a place where I would get to try out my English. I suggested to
my mother that I would like to visit just long enough to speak
English for a little while, and then I wanted to come home.
On the train from Montreal I was finally brave enough to
attempt English. I asked a conductor for something, once, twice,
three times. He appeared not to hear me. And it dawned on me that
I must not be saying it correctly, for he did not understand what I
wanted. I was so disappointed. What could be wrong? I didn't have
any sense that I had a thick Dutch accent on my English phrase. All
I knew was that I had practised so hard I must be saying the right
words.
It did not take long for me to begin to miss the sound of Dutch
around me. It is difficul t to suddenly have to live you r life in another
language. Initially you understand so little. You become more and
more certain that you aren't understanding thing s the way they are
meant. It is embarrassing to ask for an explanation for every phrase
or euphemism. And you take everything literally, and have the
neighbour kids hooting with laughter at your stupidity. So you stop
trying to understand and only pretend that you do, that you always
know exactly what is meant, even though you're still in the dark.
At school it was worse. There were rules and there were inter-
pretations of rules. If I missed the sense of something, I was in
trouble. So I learned to do nothing unles s I saw someone else do it
first and win approval. I learned to keep my mouth shut because
only the wrong words seemed to come out when it was open. I
pretended stupidity when I was merely afraid of making a fool of
myself and being laughed at.
The language of my childhood, the language I shared with my
mother and grandmother, was no longer mine by the time I was
eight. My mother still spoke Dutch to my father, but he had made
I n Search of My Mot her 131
it clear that he did not want her to speak Dutch with us, for we were
to be Canadian now. The nuns punished me for speaking Dutch to
my sister in class and then separated us so we were no longer in the
same room. I was told that I was not allowed to speak Dutch on the
school grounds, not even to my sister, not even at recess.
I rarely heard Dutch spoken and there were no Dutch books to
read. I tried sometimes to make lists of the Dutch words I knew,
but I'd never learned to spell them and I found I had no vocabulary at
all, could not write words like "sister," "house," "school," "teacher,"
and I did not know enough words to write letters to my Oma. Even my
accent, which I learned to cherish as a reminder of who I was, faded
from my speech.
I had lost my ability to speak in my own voice. It had disappeared
somewhere between having to lie about what was happening to me
and the loss of my Dutch. English became, for me, the language of
lies. This has many interesting reverberations in my life as a writer
since it makes me so wary of my own words that the writing process
is much slower than it needs to be. When I visited my grandmother
in Holland on the book tour for Don't, the first thing she said to me
was: "Where's your Dutch, girl?" Where indeed?
I transferred my allegiance to English when I realized that it was
possible to read books in English. I decided that I would now sing
"God Save the Queen" and mean their queen, not the one I consid-
ered mine because she was the Dutch queen. I thought about this
carefully for many weeks before deciding that, because I did not even
have a picture of the Dutch queen in my mind any more, and there
were beautiful pictures of Queen Elizabeth II available, it would
make more sense to pray for and sing the song for someone I could
imagine, and even see in the official portrait that hun g in the school.
I tried to discuss with my mother what, forme, was an important
issue: whether I should give up being Dutch and wishing good
health for the Dutch queen, and become English (not Canadian,
never Canadian) and sing for the English queen. My mother did not
seem to understand how important my decision was. She assured
me that — no matter that I no longer felt Dutch or spoke the
language — I was still Dutch because I had been born in Holland.
132 BEYOND DON' T
For the next twenty-five years I did not know who I was, or even,
for much of that time, who I wanted to be. I was stranded between
languages and countries, unhappy here and surer all the time that
the country I had left behind would not be home either. Where was
I to find a home and a place in which I could finally be myself? And
was I Dutch? Canadian? Something else entirely?
As an adult and a writer, I experience the loss of my first language,
my mother tongue, as a trauma in the order of a major amputation .
Some part of me is gone, I think, forever. Only the hunger, a distant
echo of it once having been there, remains. For it is not only the
language, the words, that seems closed to me; it is the culture, an
understand ing of my mother's and grandmother's worlds.
I grew up bereft of a language and culture that I loved and
needed, and then was required to somehow fit into a language and
culture that had no place for me — an immigrant, a foreigner, a
woman. I was thousands of miles from the one culture, and , though
I lived surrounded by the other, there was no way I was allowed in.
To say I was lonely, lost and confused barely describes how I felt.
I thought that the reason I did not fit into Canadian culture was that
so much of my Dutch self, though I could not see or feel it any more,
was still vitally present. What I finally realized was that my origina l
language and culture were not nearly as problematic as my gender.
As a woman, I am always a foreigner in, and never a citizen of, the
patriarchal country. It would not have been any different had I
remained in Holland.
* * *
The destruction of my being, sense of self, personal integrity, and
connections to my mother and grandmother made relentless pro-
gress, so that by the time I was eighteen I was withou t any sense of
self; a shadow in my own life, without feeling, without energy,
without hope. The young woman who left home at eighteen had
nothing with her when she left. She was a husk.
The woman who found an abandoned church to crawl into when
she was twenty-seven was not much different from the eighteen-
year-old who had left her father's house hand in hand wit h her new
In Search of My Mothe r 1 33
husband, except that her pain had increased so much that she was
forced to do something, anything, to change her life.
Suicide was always an option. For more than ten years I kept
enough pills on hand to kill myself. My emergency supply, I called
it — the emergency being when I could tolerate the pain no more,
the pain that everyone told me I did not have. To get pills I had to
be sick. And all my pain was focused on my menstrual cycle. If I did
not have these things, a womb, ovaries, if I were not a woman, if I
did not bleed, if I did not have hanging over me the sentence of
pregnancy and a child to care for, I thought, then I would have a
chance in the world. I would be able to do something other than feel
so trapped and afraid.
One of the things we do as abused children and adults is slash
and hurt ourselves. The extent varies, from scratches to suicide. I
did not technically slash myself; I went to doctors and asked them
to do it. I found a way to slash myself and keep my denial intact, for
the operations, all of them, were legitimate, thing s I needed to help
me get well. The first one was abdominal surgery to tie my tubes.
The second was to repair damage done in the first operation and to
do a partial hysterectomy. The third was to remove a tumour that
had attached itself to the remaining ovary. The first was at twenty-
six, the second at thirty and the third at thirty-nine. Each surgery
was through the abdomen, with an incision from navel to pubic
bone. Each, I think now, was an attempt on my part to remove
anything that related to my woman self. If my reproductive system
could be excised, I would not have to be a woman, have a woman's
life, be sentenced to what my father and society assured me would
be my fate — living chained to a man, doing wha t I was ordered by
hi in to do.
Each surgery made me inordinately happy. I rejoiced in the tiny
hope that now I could do something wit h my life. Now I would not
have to worry about pregnancy, deal with a body that always
betrayed me in some new way through my reproductive system.
What a bizarre concept, betrayal by my own body. How can a body
betray itself? Perhaps in this sense: I did not want to be what my
father assured me was all I could be — a vessel (more like a toilet
134 BEYOND DON'T
than I like to think) for men. The difference between being a girl
and being a woman was that, as a girl, I had less control over which
men used me. What was constant, not negotiable, ordained for
always, natural, was that I would be used because I was a woman .
No, I did not ever wish that I had a penis instead. That's anothe r
one of those male egocentric!ties that men have sanctified as
theory. I simply did not want to be used. If my body meant that I
was to be used, and have no life apart from being used, then my body
had betrayed me, and it made sense that I should remove the parts
that men used me for. My sense was that men wanted to use me to
get children out of me, and then trap me into caring, alone and
without resources, for whatever children I produced.
Each month I fought the war wit h my body: against use; against
the possibility of reproduction; against the reminders, reminders
that it made so obvious and with such pain that I was a woman, one
of the done to and used; and against the creeping awareness that
something in my life was desperately wrong. Denial was so much
harder to hang onto during the time of my menstruation. I never
understood, then, why.
I must have made hundreds of visits to various doctors, until I
found one who would do a hysterectomy. It was a search I began not
long after my son was born. The tubal ligation still left a fraction of
a chance of pregnancy, at least in my mind, and menstruation after
it was even more pain-filled than before.
* * *
I look at this life and wonder wha t it all means. Wonde r why this had
to be my life, why I could not have what I wanted. My mother told
me when I was small that people never got what they wanted and
that no exception would be made by life for me. I think now that
this must have been what she was told, and her mother before her.
I don't believe for a minute that men with power don't get what
they want, but there is a cost they have never acknowledged or
counted. Just as there is a cost and constant hunger born of not
getting what you need and want, there is, I think, a great cost to
those who take more than their share.
InSearchofMyMotlie r 135
I believe the planet has more than enough resources to nourish
all of us. All of us. And I further believe that, if some of us do not
have what we need and others have more than they can ever use, it
is the greed of those with too much that keeps the rest of us from
having enough. And this works on the level of household economy,
where my father had more food and protein than he could eat and
the rest of us went hungry, as well as on a more global level, where
colonial powers have monopolized resources and have created sys-
tems in which a few whit e males have had the power to keep women
and children and people of colour from having enough to feed
themselves; or from having proper housing and clothing. So if the
injustice of my father's house offends, how much greater is the
offence of a system that reproduces this same life, with variations,
for millions of women, children and minorities the world over?
Bur it is much easier to demand that my father and others like
him be punished than it is to demand the end of the system that
allows and encourages abusers of power. Much easier to single out
one individual for punishment than to demand that those with
power be accountable for the way they treat children, women and
the planet. I believe my fathe r is not some aberration of the ideology
called patriarchy. He is doing just what he always knew he was
entitled by it to do. And this is what causes me despair. Nothing
done to my father, no punishment he received, would change my
life. Nothing he could be made to suffer, by any prosecution or
punishment, would return my childhood to me and give me a
healthier one. And yes, I think he ought to be accountable for wha t
he did. But exactly what form would this accountability take, and
what compensation could ever be enough?
One of the things it took me the longest to understand was that
my father's behaviour was not unusual. By late in my thirties I
realized that the statistics I read meant there were many, many
other women and men who had been beaten and sexually assaulted
as children. But statistics do not have faces. It was only when I
began to meet the women and men behind the statistics that the
realization really connected. An abused child such as I was is taught
to be a selfless slave whose sole purpose is to serve the interests of
136 BEYOND DON'T
the master, even at the cost of her or his life. I see the results of this
abuse of power in myself and in many other adults I have met who
are struggling wit h their pasts.
I recognize the residual effects of this violence against me in the
many ways I continued to serve my father's interests even after
writing Don't. I almost burned the manuscript whe n it came back
from the publisher for minor revisions — not, as one might think,
to protect myself, but to protect my father and the other men it
described. And this is one of the things I thought: What if I'm
wrong? What if I have misremembered it all? Knowingfull well that
I only wished my memories to be inaccurate. And another thing I
thought was that I now had a responsibility to protect my mother.
But the main reason I wanted to destroy the manuscript was
because I was still afraid of what my father would do to me once I
told. This was how I was enslaved, cowering still as an eleven-year-
old before his viciousness, even though I was then forty.
The fact that I could not tell my story and be heard as a child is
understandable, though certainly not acceptable. The fact that as
an adult I still find the lessons I learned as a child reverberating so
strongly in my life horrifies me. For this is how child abuse contin-
ues to exist; by not telling ou r stories when it is finally safe to do so,
we allow child abuse to continue in our families and in our commu-
nities. Silence literally kills. It kills us first, and goes on to destroy
those around us. Our silence protects, not ourselves, but the abus-
ers.
I dream of a time when every woman wil l have a healthy enoug h
sense of her self and her safety that she can tell her story. Not all
abuse looks like mine. There are many, many ways to abuse and
destroy a child, each method vicious an d all equally devastating. We
are so fragile as children, s o in need of care and nurturance; it takes
so little to harm us.
I n Search of My Mot her 137
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Seve n
Dreaming Past
the Dark
I wonder if the world is any different today fora child
at risk of abuse than it was ten or thirty or fifty years ago. And if it
is, what exactly is this difference? And if, as I suspect, very little has
changed for children in abusive situations, why?
In the 1970s, the first books were published that documented
the horror and extent of the abuse of children. Between the mid-
1960s and late 1980s, the incidence of child sexual abuse went from
an estimated 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 1,000, to 1 in 4. By the end of the
1980s, hundreds of books on the subject of child sexual abuse had
been published. The authors of many of these books did the
television talk-show and radio open-line-show circuits — and were
promptly co-opted as entertainment.
Entertainment was never the goal when these books were
written. Change was the goal, real change: protection and rights for
children; changes in political will to ensure rhar we find, and
139
implement, effective deterrents and treatment for abusers, that we
find a way to compensate those who have endured the gross torture
that is child abuse and that we stop abuse — now.
I am becoming increasingly concerned about those many chil-
dren, women and men who have survived abuse in childhood only
to be further abused by the prevailing notions of what this means.
Current efforts to have abuse taken seriously appear to have gener-
ated a cult of victimhood, instead of a societal will to change; those
who suffer are absorbed into a system whose interests are served at
the expense of, and are deemed to be much more important than,
the rights and needs of the abused.
The focus of the media has nearly always been the same: the
victim and plenty of details about how she or he was victimized.
During most of the television and radio interviews I did forDon'f, I
was never described as anything other than a victim. I was not an
author wit h a political agenda, not a survivor of child abuse commit -
ted by a group of men, but always, relentlessly, a victim. And what
was done to "victimize" me was of much greater interest than who
the perpetrators were. The perpetrators were erased, made invis-
ible. How very convenient for them!
I tried to make the point that I am a survivor; that , if I were still
a victim, I would not be in that studio, giving that particular
interview. It didn't matter, though. In the next breath I would be
called a victim once again. The fact that I had survived to tell about
my childhood appeared to be of no interest whatsoever. The fact
that I had written a book was rarely discussed and apparently had
no importance in these contexts. Some truly enlightened media
types appeared to think I had vomited the book, so perhaps that was
what was behind their unwillingness to call me the author of it.
What does it mean when a society and the media that represent
it are willing to parade the pain of women and children across the
television screens of a nation, bu t are not willing to do anything that
in any way points out that there are abusers and an entire system of
privilege that supports those who abuse and absolves them of guil t
and responsibility for wha t they do? Why do we not have television
talk shows ad nauseam where the abusers are required to explain
140 BEYOND DON'T
what they did to the children, where they got their ideas from, how
they felt about what they did and why they enjoyed it? Why do we
not make a circus of their lives?
But, you see, it doesn't make for good entertainment to zoom in
on a bunch of ordinary male citizens accused by their children of
being abusers. Child abuse is a crime in which only the victims have
entertainment value, and there are big bucks and great ratings in
celebrating all the different ways women and children can be
abused, humiliated and tortured.
As long as the issue of child abuse is made into a freak show on
the talk shows every afternoon, any call for change, however pas-
sionate — and eventually any reporting of abuse, however horrible
— will be effectively silenced, slotted, as it is, in between advertise-
ments for new tampons, hair colour and the latest super-clean,
non-polluting, biodegradable detergent. The abuse of children will
not stop, or even become slightly less prevalent, but it will be nicely
swept back under the carpet as the media go on with their cultura l
mandate to manipulate the next issue.
I once thought, naively it turns out, that the reason nothingwas
being done to protect children or deal in anything like an appropri-
ate way with abusers was that people didn't know the abuse was
happening. If people knew what sort of things went on, I thought,
they would be stopped. I believed the rhetoric I had heard about
how valued children were and how deserving of protection. Yet in
my travels to promote Don't I found not only that people did know
about this issue, but that an amazing numbe r of them had experi-
enced abuse and were now dealing no r only with their own painfully
remembered abuse, but also with the stones they were beginnin g
to hear from their own children. W e were not talking about abuse
much in the early 1980s, but it seems everybody knew about it —
from experience.
I now see that I and numerous colleagues over the years have
been breaking the silence over and over again, only to have it
subsequently swallow us up again moments after we speak. The
abuse of children, especially of girls, remains normal, invisible and
silenced. The media report only those sensational cases where large
Dreamin g Past the Dark 141
numbers of child victims are involved. Why? Do we as a society
really not give a damn about kids? Do we cherish children only as
some idealized image, status symbol, fashion accessory? What could
possibly explain the contempt and abuse children so often receive
instead of the nurturing and respect they need and deserve?
The simple answer is that people replicate what they know. In
the words of one of my sisters, as she slapped her six-month-old
baby with a wooden spoon, "If it was good enough for me, it's good
enough for my kid. That's how I learned" — an argument that says
that, if you were abused or starved or tortured, the only way to feel
better is to do exactly the same thing the first chance you get. We
need to take revenge? On children? Whose agenda is this?
The more complex answer is that, to a degree I wish I didn't
have to see, children share the low statu s and value stil l accorded to
women, while they have the added problem of not being old enough
to leave an abusive situation, have their stories believed or, most
important, vote.
In the past, abuse was rarely disclosed. Now that disclosures are
made and more often believed, and women try to take action to
protect and support their children, I wonder how much children
and mothers benefit from current societal responses.
There are now for-profit therapies that cost more than I or most
other women earn in a year. At a recent conference on child abuse,
I saw an eighteen-metre row of tables groaning unde r the weight of
self-help books on aspects of abuse I had never imagined. Child
sexual abuse has gone from being an issue on which every magazine,
newspaper and television program does a special, to being an issue
that fuels a proliferation of books and psychological services that
many who suffer from abuse simply cannot afford.
Too often, despite the mother's active campaign, the child gets
minimal, if any, help or therapy, often because the mother cannot
afford to pay, or because programmes have been cancelled after the
funds for them have been cut. Symptoms of the child's distress are
papered over with drugs like Ritalin. Ritalin may be better than
nothing, but it isn't a solution, merely a postponement of the
problem. Real help in the form of extensive and appropriate therap y
142 BEYOND DON'T
is costly, while Ritali n is cheap. I fear for the children who are given
such drugs instead of help toward healing their wounds.
In Canada, the public was for a while (six months, a year?)
willing to listen to stories about abuse of children and give a
collective "tut, tut, isn't that terrible" response. For a time it
seemed to me there would be real movement in all aspects of
dealing with the abuse against children. I heard of an occasional
aggressive prosecution of perpetrators, though too rarely did I hear
of even well-prepared cases succeeding. The most appalling exam-
ple of injustice I heard was the story of a thirteen-year-old girl. The
father was convicted and given a three-month sentence for abusin g
his daughter. Upon his release from prison, he applied for custody
of his daughter and it was granted.
Today, only dramatic cases with multiple victims make much
headway in the courts. One or two children accusing a father,
stepfather or mother's boyfriend have considerably less success in
getting serious attention from the justice system, less chance of
conviction, and still less of adequate sentencing should there be a
conviction. Too little is known about the proper questioning of
children once allegations are brought forward; too few social work-
ers, police, lawyers, crown prosecutors and judges have specialized
training in the field of child-abuse prosecutions .
One reason for cases foundering in the courts is that groups
promoting the concept of false memory syndrome publicly call into
question the credibility of the victims, and defence lawyers call
members of such groups as "expert witnesses." The result of the
actions of these organizations, whic h appear to be dedicated to
destroying the credibility of children and survivors, is to make us
doubt ourselves. For if we doubt ourselves, we will not fight back. I
consider the existence of these groups a predictable reaction to
bringing these cases to court, for their adherents often include
individuals who have been accused of the sexual abuse of children
bur who, for various reasons, were not convicted. It is the messages
these groups are giving to the world that make me uneasy. What am
I to make of statements such as this from a recent group newsletter:
"We are a good looking bunch of people: greying hair, well dressed,
Dreamin g Past the Dark 143
healthy, smiling ..." Is this supposed to mean that nice guys with
grey hair and big smiles don't rape children? This certainly has not
been my experience.
Apart from the lack of headway in the courts, it is difficul t not to
be overwhelmed by cynicism in the face of devastating cuts to
welfare and social programmes, many of which impact primarily on
women and children. Without the support of welfare, interim
shelter in transition houses and numerous othe r social programmes,
women often cannot leave abusive husbands. And what becomes of
the children then? It is as though society is ever willing to absorb
the fact that thousands of children are being or have been abused,
but unwilling to allocate sufficient resources to stop the abuse, to
provide appropriate services to victims or to make restitution. What
we have is plenty of rhetoric about the horror of it all, and nothing
much in the way of cash for programmes or protection.
Rebuilding a life that has been devastated by child abuse is, as I
hope is generally now known, no easy task. It is an even more
difficult task to imagine rebuilding a society where vast numbers of
the citizens have suffered severe and debilitating trauma as chil-
dren. Perhaps things are changing — I'm not convinced yet — but
if they are, they are changing muc h too slowly. There are ever more
child victims, and ever more adult survivors who finally feel strong
and safe enough to remember what was done to them when they
were small.
The long healing process I went through prior to writing Don't
demanded that I devote enormous amount s of quiet time to it: time
without the demands of relationship, job, family and all the other
things I expected for myself. The patriarchal society in which we
live isn't structured around long sabbaticals during whic h people
can retire to work out their personal difficulties. I think that since
child abuse is the product of this same patriarchal society, we are
entitled to find our healing path as we choose. What society de-
mands instead is that we get quick fixes through instant-recovery
programmes lasting three months or less. The healing work we
must do, however, requires time out, and the length of time varies
from person to person. What we are told then is tha t we are lazy, and
144 BEYOND DON'T
that welfare won't support or encourage us in this folly we call
heal ing work.
Children's rights, well-being and protection, and all the re-
sources needed to achieve and maintain them, must be on every
political agenda. We must find a way to protect ch ildren and women
from violence. No society that preys on its young has any chance of
survival. A society that does not commit adequate resources to
stopping violence and to healing the wounds cannot expect to be
healthy, productive or successful in any way that counts. If we
continue our short-sighted patchwork approach to dealing with
child abuse and violence against women, it will wind up costing all
of us in ways we haven't even learned to measure yet.
I've been givinga lot of thought to this state of affairs. I've been
asking that age-old, discomfiting question : Why? Why as a society
do we deem it important to study issues, but nor important to
provide the financial and human resources to deliver services that
make a difference to the lives of women and children? It's not that
we don't know wha t needs doing. It's not that we don't have willing,
trained, committed people to do the work. It's something else. But
what?
Somehow the entire dialogue around child sexual abuse has
stayed focused on individual horror stories, on the problems of
individuals and how well they do or do not cope. But society as a
whole denies there is a problem, even as this problem is studied to
death. Victims are the problem; victims are studied. Isn't some-
thing missing here?
As long as people who struggle with everything from stresses
caused by poverty and unemployment to the residuals of a child-
hood like mine are busy just trying to get through today, they are
not demanding tha t the society in which they live in effect changes
that will make it possible for them to live full and healthy lives. A
destabilized population, where trauma-induced illness is rife, is
easy to gouge, to govern and to oppress. Of course, such a population
requires occasional mopping up, but there's a vast and growing
infrastructure of volunteer organizations tha t can keep things from
getting too far out of hand.
Dreamin g Past the Dark 145
The escalating body count will continue as long as society as a
whole maintains the following denial-based illusions: that child
abuse is the individual problem and responsibility of the victim
rather than a social problem requiring political will and extensive
public resources to resolve it; that the nuclear family as currently
constructed is a safe place rather than a threatened primary social
unit that could be improved by a rethinking, and perhaps restruc-
turing, to ensure that it functions as a nurturing environment for
children; that children are the sole responsibility of one or possibly
two adults rather than the responsibility of all members of a healthy
community; that there is no effective treatment for abusers and no
possible deterrent, when what is really at issue is the lack of
resources to fund programs and seek solutions; and, finally, that
everything will be fine as long as we can find a way to process a few
of the most adversely affected victims by applying what I can see
only as Band-Aids, such as inadequate short-term therapies, fol-
lowed by injunctions to the victims that they simply get over it.
This is denial at its most pervasive and dangerous.
I don't think I'd get much argument about the statement that
healthy people make a healthy community. But do we really want
healthy communities? If we consider the social ill represented by
the abuse of children, we don't have to search far for its cause. We
know that more than 95 percent of abuse is perpetrated by men;
that these men feel they have some sort of inherent right to do the
vilest things to children or women; and that they need not fear
punishment unless they get carried away and kill. The rule of law,
which we supposedly live with in a democracy, implies redress for
wrongs and compensation for hur t and harm, ye t this rule does not
apply consistently and significantly to the crime of child abuse. Why
are we so unwilling to look at what this means?
Child abuse is a shell game played with the victim. Th e victim
is a shill, a decoy, to keep our attention off the perpetrator and the
deeper issue of child abuse in society. The victim is the person we
hear about in the media, and things are fine as long as the story is
kept at this level. If the victim tries to effect change in the status
quo, however — say, by taking her story into a court of law and
146 BEYOND DON'T
making allegations against the abuser— nine times out often the
fact that she has been abused is deemed to make her allegations
suspect. Is this justice? Or is it, rather, gender politics? Now we see
the crime, now we don't.
If the focus is kept on the victims, we are not th inkin g abou t who
abuses and why. If we talk about dysfunctional families or family
violence — which is the other side of this coin — there are victims
and families but never abusers. And "dysfunctional" is such an
all-encompassing term that it is being applied equally to families in
distress over poverty and those in which children are raped. While
there is no doubt that poverty is wretched, it is not the same thing
as incest. The concept of dysfunction is neutral and has no political
charge. Child abuse, seen through a feminist analysis, has a potent
political charge, and that lias now been all bur silenced in the
mainstream media. This feminist analysis describes power rela-
tions, and child abuse is about power over children and the adults
they grow up to be.
Why is there such resistance to naming the abusers? And just
who benefits from a myopic focus on the victim, whether as a
statistic or as entertainment? Not the children and not the thou-
sands of adults who are haunted and crippled by what they endured
as children. It is the prevailing distribution of power and privilege
of a patriarchal society that benefits — and it benefits mightily.
How else are we to understand the fact that, although there have
been two major federal studies in Canada in less than ten years, and
hundreds of smaller studies and needs-assessment surveys, we still
do not have anything lik e major financial resources dedicated to the
issue of child abuse — for children, adul t survivors or perpetrators?
Yes, I know there are programmes and thousands of caring individu -
als, many of them volunteers, who give generously of their time and
energy. There are hundreds of organizations doin g their absolute
best and more. But every single programme in the country is under -
funded and struggling dail y with increasing demands for services.
Power over children, and the right to do to them whatever one
wants, is the very basis, cornerstone and underpinning of our social
structure, especially withi n theapparently sacrosanct nuclearfamily.
Dreamin g Past the Dark 147
If children have rights — and some people acknowledge that they
do — these rights, even those defined by the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child, are not considered if they
challenge adult rights, whether in society generally, in the home or,
especially it seems, in the courts. The rights of the most heinous
perpetrator are weighed and protected before the right of a child to
safety and health. To do otherwise, it is claimed, would subvert the
entire judicial system — a statement then used to justify doing
nothing or little to address the needs and rights of children.
As a child who was abused, I experienced life as a war zone. I
knew as a girl that war was being made against me, against my body,
against my buddin g sense of who I was or might become, against my
being, because I was young, female, vulnerable and unprotected.
No war is waged if the would-be conqueror believes there is a
danger of defeat. War is waged because the victory is assumed to be
easy. And it is very easy in today's society to conduct war against
children. The atrocities committed are not only sexual assault.
There are many other tortures inflicted on young bodies, minds and
souls. And what do you have as a society, what product do you have,
in the child who has been abused and assaulted all through her or
his growing years? Do you have a strong, healthy, capable young
person ready to take on life's tasks with commitment and joy?
Hardly.
Children who grow to maturity in a war zone, what are they like?
Are they happy, healthy, contented, sure of themselves, pretty
much like other children deemed not to have grown up in a war
zone? Or are they anxious, fractured in spirit, destroyed in body and
mind, living lives of barely concealed terror? How does the happy
girl child conduct herself? And what behaviour do we see in the
damaged girl child?
What is too often found is a cowering slave so afraid of her own
shadow that she won't go out of doors, so afraid of life that she will
do nothing to engage with it but instead follows the narrow track
patriarchy has always decreed as "natural" and God-ordained for
her: silent, obedient, demanding nothing . For example, the residual
effects of abuse in my life mean that for thirty years the energy
148 BEYOND DON'T
required to realize my potential as a writer and artist was entirely
absorbed by the need to cope with the effects of my childhood.
Worse, an abused child learns, as an adult, to abuse herself. This is
not an accident that happens to a few of us by some bizarre twist of
fate.
I hear your incredulity: Oh, come on, you say. People are no
longer enslaved. Women's lives are pretty good, all in all. Look how
far we've come. Yes, and we can own property now, and we can keep
the wages we make from our jobs (at least we have a legal right to
do so), and we make almost 70 percent of what men make. Yes,
right, that's pretty good, I suppose, considering where we were a
mere hundred years ago.
Children who grow up with respect of their persons, with love
for who they are, grow into strong and healthy young people.
Children who have resources, from food to housing to education and
beyond, are less likely to grow up to destroy themselves, each other
or the planet. I believe that if you respect a child, that child will
respect you in turn. I believe that you teach children respect for
themselves and others — and that includes all other life forms, and
the planet — by, first and foremost, respecting them. And I believe
that adults must earn the respect of children.
If all of us truly cared about the health of children and the planet
they will one day inherit, we would change how society treats
children. We would build daycare spaces with one worker for every
three children, or creches at workplaces so mothers and fathers
could care for children. Maternal or paternal leaves would be as long
as necessary for both the child and the parent. Abused children
would get instant attention and access to a long-term (lifelong, if
necessary) programme designed to meet their needs in the healing
process. We would put our society's resources first into caring for
and educating children, an d then into everything else.
Yet even if tomorrow we had programmes for all the children,
women and men who, against great odds, have been able to speak of
the abuse they endured, it would not be enough. For as long as the
focus is only on bandaging the seriously wounded, we will always
have greater numbers of damaged than we have resources to help
Dreamin g Past the Dark 149
them. It isn't difficult to see that the abuse must be stopped at the
source, must never take place in any child's life. It's obvious enough
that merely acknowledging the pain doesn't heal the scars, though
we certainly need to begin there. Doesn't it make better sense, in
both humanitarian and economic terms, to stop the plague, espe-
cially since we know the cause? For child abuse is primarily perpe-
trated by men who lack, among other things, a basic empathy for
others. Perpetrators get away with their crimes because society is
structured to protect such men.
The most frightening thing about admitting that there is a
problem is the potential that such an admission has for effecting
change in our lives. Regardless how large or small the problem is, or
whether that problem exists in one life or in society as a whole, as
long as individuals cling to denial, thing s pretty much muddle along
the way they always have, whether they are negative or even
downright self-destructive. What we know is more comfortable
than what we don't yet know and therefore fear. As long as society
clings to denial, child abuse and violence against women serve to
maintain the status quo, replicating pattern s of abuse through the
generations. If these issues are ever addressed with the sort of
commitment they require, things are going to change. And this
change, because it will affect the power distribution in society, is
feared.
I believe child sexual abuse and violence against women are an
integral structural parr of patriarchal society and culture. They are
how we — especially, but not only, women — are socialized to
accept powerlessness. If this were any other issue with such a
devastating effect, we'd have a massive mobilization of resources,
we'd have comprehensive programmes, we'd have a blank cheque to
enable us to do the work that needs to be done. If any other sort of
plague or vims than the one called child abuse ravaged the children
and left them crippled or destroyed, we'd find the resources to stop
it. We'd immediately shift ourattention from remote enemies in the
oceans and skies and begin to deal effectively wit h an enemy closer
to home. For if we do not have healthy children who have a reason-
able chance of growing up to be healthy adults, we have nothing .
150 BEYOND DON'T
We urgently need to work to eradicate the privileges and abuses
of power over others in society that makes every vulnerable person
— child, woman, poor, disabled, disadvantaged, from a minority
community, or old — a sitting duck ora victim. We need aggressive,
effective and generously funded advocacy programmes to ensure
that the rights of children are respected. We need to build commu -
nities in which the priority is the care, protection, nurturance,
needs and rights of children and other vulnerable people. As the
entire community becomes better sensitized to the needs of chil-
dren, we will become more responsive to those of other disadvan-
taged people among us. And we will become a more generous, more
cooperarive and happier people. Then, and only then, wil l we be a
truly healthy community.
Yes, what we must do is difficult, very difficult, but it is not
impossible. Yes, there is help — for working together we can do
anything. Yes, it can be done, if we allow ourselves to care enough .
Each of us has an important contribution to make. All we have to do
is begin. Today.
Dreamin g Past the Dark 151
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Epilogu e
Turning fifty feels like a muc h more important marke r
on the road of life than turning thirty or forty did. Each decade has
its own particular issues, tasks and joys. At thirty I wanted a home
of my own; at forty I felt an urgency to deal with the baggage I was
carrying from my past; as I approach fifty I feel it is time to have
more fun, delight and joy in my life, to relax and be a little less
serious — at least some of the time.
I feel physically and emotionally better than ever before. It
seems like a time to make changes I've been postponing in the vain
hope that I would someday be able to afford them. I think it is time
to act and hope that it works out, whether there is money or not.
I also feel that I can now engage wi th my fu ture i n ways that were
not possible before. I can make plans, set goals, go after my dreams,
instead of merely wishing that things would change and all my
dreams would magically come true.
There's a change of focus brought about by turning fifty; if
important things are postponed much longer, there may not be time
153
to do them at all. So there's a sense of urgency to the plans I'm
making now. There are more books to write, and to make them
possible I need to change my working environmen t to write them in
health. My present universe feels too lonely, small and cramped, as
though I'm root-bound and need more space to stretch and grow.
I want to live as part of a community, wher e new friendships are
possible and where I can find a way to earn a living in the times
between books. I'm not sure where I'm going to find what I want,
but I'm determined to make a move in some positive direction as
part of the celebrations of my fiftieth year.
154 Epilogue
Suggested
Reading
Armstrong, Louise. Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Politics: Wltat Happened Wlien
Women Said Incest. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994.
Bass, Ellen and Laura Davis. TlieCourageto Heal: A Guidefor Women Sunrivors
of Child Sexual Abuse. New York: Harper Perennial Library, 1991.
Bell, Vikki. Interrogating Incest: Feminism, Foucault, and the Law. London:
Routledge, 1993.
Bolen, Jean Shinoda. Crossing to Avalom A Woman's Mid/ife Pilgrimage. San
Francisco: HarperCollins, 1994.
Butler, Sandra. Conspiracy of SUence: The Trauma of Incest. Volcano, CA:
Volcano, 1985.
Cameron, Julia. The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path lo Higher Creativity. New
York: Tared er/Perigree, 1992.
Carlson, Kathie. In Her Image: The Ihheakd Daughter's Search for Her Mollier.
Boston: Shambhala, 1989.
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Natrativeand History. Baltimore,
155
MD: John Hopkins Universicy Press, 1996.
—. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 1995.
Davis, Laura. Allies in Healing: Wlien the Person You Love Was Sexually Abused as
a Child, a Support Book. New York: Harper Perennial Library, 1991.
—. TheCourageto Heal Workbook: For Women and Men Survivors of Child Sexual
Abuse. New York: HarperCollins, 1988.
Dueck, Lynnette. Sing Me No Afore. Vancouver: Press Gang, 1992.
Dworkin, Andrea. Pornography: Men Possessing Women. New York: Putnam,
1981.
—. Woman Hating. New York: Dutcon, 1974.
"Family Secrets: Child Sexual Abuse." Feminist Review 28, Special Issue
(Spring 1988), London, UK.
Forward, Susan and Craig Buck. Betrayal of Innocence: Incest and Its Devasta-
tion. New York: Penguin USA, 1988.
Gilbert, Lucy and Paula Webster. Bound by Love: The Sweet Trap ofDaughter-
hood. Boston: Beacon, 1982.
Griffin, Susan. Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge against Nature. New
York: Harper Colophon, 1982.
—. Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. New York: Harper Colophon,
1978.
Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence — From
Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
Hester, Marianne. Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of the Dynamics of
Male Domination. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Kaminer, Wendy. I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Move-
ment and Other Self-Help Fashions. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1992.
Kane, Evangeline. Recovetingfrom Incest: Imagination and the Healing Process.
Boston: Sigo, 1989.
Lee, Sharice A. The Survivor's Guide: A Guide for Teenage Girls Wlio Are
Survivors of Sexual Abuse. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1995.
Leonard, Linda Schierse. Witnessto the Fire: Creativity and theVeil of Addiction.
Boston: Shambhala, 1990.
MacKinnon, Catharine. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.
156 Suggested Reading
Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff. Assault on Trut/i: Freud's Suppression of the
Seduction Theory. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.
Meiselman, Karin G. Resolving the Trauma of Incest: Reintegration Therapy with
Survivors. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.
Miller, Alice. Thou S/ialt Not Be Aware Society's Betrayal oft/te Child, New York:
New American Library, 1986.
—. For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearingandthe Roots of Violence.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.
—. The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for theTrue Self. New York: Basic
Books, 1981.
Morris, David B. The Culture of Pain. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1991.
Murdock, Maureen. The Heroine's Journey. Boston: Shambhala, 1990.
Fresco 11 , El 1 en. Mondays Are Yellow, Sundays Are Grey: A Mot/ier 's Fig/it to Save
Her Children from the Nightmare of Sexual Abuse. Vancouver: Douglas &
Mclntyre, 1994.
Revoize, Jean. Innocence Destroyed: A Study of Child Sexual Abuse. New York:
Routledge, 1993.
Rico, Gabriel. Pain and Possibility: Writing Your Way through Personal Crisis.
Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1991.
Roberts, Julia n V. and Renate M. Mohr. Confronting Sexual Assault: A Decade
of Legal and Social Change. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
Rush, Florence. The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1980.
Russell, Diana. The SecretTrauma: Incestin the LivesofGirls. New York: Basic
Books, 1986.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: TheMalnngand Unmaking of the World. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Sher, Barbara. Live the Life You Love. New York: Delacorte, 1996.
—. I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew Wltat It Was. New York: Delacorte,
1994.
Smart, Carol. Regilating Womanhood: Historical Essf/ys on Marriage, Mother-
hood, and Sexuality. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Terr, Lenore. Unchained Memories: Tnie Stories of Traumatic Memories, Lost and
Found. New York, Basic Books, 1995.
BEYOND DON'T 157
—. Too Scared'to Cry:Psycfiic Trauma inChildhood. New York: HarperCollins,
1992.
Ward, Elizabeth. Father-Daughter Rape. London: Women's Press (UK),
1984.
Whitfield, Charles L. Memory and Abuse: Remembetingand Healing the Wounds
of Trauma. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1995.
158 Suggested Reading
Author Information
The publication of Don't: A
Woman's Word in 1988 cata-
pulted Elly Danica to the lead-
ing edge of the sexual abuse
survivors movement. She has
toured extensively in North
America and Europe, given
hundreds of lectures and in-
terviews, and met thousands
of survivors who touched her
deeply with their stories. In
the process she has gained
public recognition and respect
internationally.
Even today Don't has an undeniable impac t on the way we, as a society,
view child sexual abuse. The power and clarity of the writing in Don't
have made it impossible to ignore the reality of child abuse. The skill
with which this award-winning author has expressed her experience
has earned her the admiration of many readers: from survivors to literary
critics, from conference organizers to policy makers. Her long-awaited
second book, Beyond Don't: Dimming Past the Dark, is the continuation
of Elly Danica's brave and inspiring story.
Elly Danica lives in an old church in Saskatchewan where she found
sanctuary twenty years ago. There she continues to heal, write, paint
and create her life. In 1996, she was awarded a year-long writer-in-
residence position in a Saskatchewan community.
Elly Danica is available for lectures, workshops and consultations
on topics related to recovery from child abuse and Life Writing. To
contact Elly Danica, please write to her care of gynergy books or send
e-mail to: e.danica@sk.sympatico.ca.