A story

A story
Tuesday January 05, 2010

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Dear Ms. Miller,

I am 50, and live in Ireland. I was happily married to a man I adored for twenty eight years and he died in July last. We had no family. My whole life meant nothing any more and I was on medication for arthritis and high blood pressure. Since his “abandonment” of me by his death I began to work in the office of a large community centre and we have a community drug team. My “enlightened witness” was a reflexologist, who gives his time voluntarily, there. He had a cancellation on December 1st last. My boss told me to go in but I had no enthusiasm for it…wanting to bury my head in the accounts…something I am good at. She insisted and “as the cliche goes…” the rest is history.

I have been blessed to meet Raymond Lambert; that he had found your work when he needed it; that he lives his life practicing “unconditional condemnation”; that I broke down and told him of my pain. He felt it in my body anyway and as he physically touched me my body screamed in pain and “remembered” my father abusing me as a small child and my mothers psychological abuse of me that was part of this “dance of intimacy” they had together. (Neither of them should ever have married and certainly not to each other). As a small,lonely only child I lived their lie that we were Jackie and John and lived in Camelot).

On December 20th I got a viral chest infection, which turned to pleurisy and now bronchial pneumonia. They are only words. The suffocation is passing. Since Kevin’s death I had begun drinking, at home alone. I have stopped now, feeling no need for it. I “stayed with the pain” on Raymond’s instruction and trusted him that it would not kill me. One morning I got up and put all my medication away. I went cold-turkey off the drugs!!

Raymond has been on the end of a phone, and met me every week for hours at a time, for the past month. He continues to anchor me in this process of finding out who I am. I write a lot and find photo’s that represent the time when the pain was taking place. I am very proud of my resulting ‘history’ and feel I am working my way back to the child in me.

This morning I went back to my GP who is a sweetheart and he coped well with the knowledge that my Blood Pressure is PERFECT without any medication. I do not have arthritis and should not have been on anti-inflamatories!! This was proved by x-rays during the week as I was being prepared for a double knee replacement!!! I have a badly damaged right knee from a fall, but my left knee and hips are normal. I carry an extra 100lbs on my body built up over the years but I have lost 14 of them since beginning this journey.

It is 3.30am here in Dublin, on one of the coldest nights of our winter when it is -10 and we are getting very excited, roads closed etc. I feel like a mammoth that has been reborn in the ice and has a wonderful future ahead of me.

I know the journey is only beginning and I take your advice to other readers, not to jump my fences before I reach them, but I would like to THANK YOU and send you a huge virtual hug. I hope some day to meet you/hear you speak but in the meantime I have added you to the list of people for whom I light a candle in Church when I count my blessings.

As an Irish Catholic we are very angry at the moment in the shock of “The Murphy Report” which exposes the collusion of Dublins archdiocese in protecting priests who ritually abused children all over the city. One man confessed to sexually abusing a child every fortnight for twenty years. Another, a chaplain in the children’s hospital routinely took photos of little girls genitalia “in curiosity and wonderment” as he was raised in an all male house!!.

We have all the priests that have been convicted in one low security prison here in Dublin, where they can be protected!!! I heard a Prison Governor lecture and he said it is the only prison in the country that the officers try to avoid. It is like a seminary and the officers have nothing to do but read the paper but they are fathers themselves and have no doubt these men are just ‘biding their time’ to get their hands on a child. No wonder they have to be protected from the general prison population.

Please take care of yourself and continue your work.

Thank you for the website.

Happy New Year!! OP

AM: Thank you for your story, it can encourage others.