Dearest Alice, Thank you…..
Tuesday December 05, 2006
Dear Alice Miller,
I am a 46 years old retired police officer from Victoria in Australia.
I could, and may still, write a book about my life and the consequences of the evil and cruelty dished out to me in my growing years.
I found you through my study of John Bradshaw’s 1985 series on the family in crisis.
I kept hearing your name and finally it clicked and I searched for and found and dveoured your books and knew I had found the truth.
In my life here and the culture around me I have extreme force against the acknowledgement of my truth. You spell it out in clear language and even as I write this I feel the weight of resistance against my truth.
It is like one is considered ‘weak’ and ‘ungrateful’ and ‘flawed in character’ if, like me, she/he remembers and finally feels thses horrid and gleefully accepted atrocities.
My scars are deep but not without compassion for those who created them. Yet today I do not cover up.
Consequently I am banished from the inner circle of my nuclear family.
My truth surfaced as I developed Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in my police career.
I look back now and see the same process directed at me by the legal and medical system.
I have lost faith in my fellow man and I defend my rights at all costs.
This pedagogy is epidemic, sick, deep, sad, insane, addictive, and hidden from 95% of those around me.
YOU HAVE TOLD IT HOW IT REALLY WAS/IS ALICE AND I THANK YOU FOR HAVING THE COURAGE AND THE FAITH IN THE GOODNESS OF CREATION TO KNOCK DOWN THE WALL OF INSANITY IN THIS WORLD.
When I could no longer cope with the hopeless task of trying to help people to love each other I had to stop work. It was then my repressions broke and the feelings came flooding to the surface.
I told those around me the truth and it was like I was an alien to these people. They can’t see what my problem was/is.
I now understand why they don’t. I was just like them until the force of reality pushed me to throw in the towel and accept the horrible reality of my childhood and the fact that my parents not only did not love me but were cruel and violent, neglecting and abusive, and used me to fulfil their needs.
There is much more.
I have written some stories of truth but I have kept these facts in a private file as I would be treated with further derision should I attempt to publish them.
I hope you are in good health and if I was close enough I would to your door and hug you with all the love in the Universe.
Thank you Alice, R. F., Australia.
P.S. And it still feels terrible telling it how it really was…the guilt and the knowledge of how we are hopeful to the extent we lie and lie and lie and get sicker and sicker and sicker until we can’t do it any more.
AM: Thank you very much for your letter; it shows how much you have been suffering in your life and certainly seen others suffer too. I think that your profession provided you with all that one needs to understand how people become criminal. But as you say, there are only few who are ready to see the truth, which they daily are confronted with. You write:
“My scars are deep but not without compassion for those who created them.”
Maybe you will suffer less when you give up compassion for those who created your deep scars. You can try at least and see what will happen. And you can tell us then how you feel. Having compassion for people who hurt you, hurts your body and soul. Be true to yourself. You certainly need unconditional love and compassion – for the small boy who suffered so much without being guilty – but not for the perpetrators. With the moral lessons we received as children, it is hard to become emotionally honest, but it is not impossible – if you dare to know your story. And you seem to dare.