My two letters to myself are below...

Dear Child,**my 41 year old self to my 11 year old self**

I have learned so much about you, but yet I feel like I hardly know you. 

A few nights ago, I held my 11 year old daughter on my bed as she put her arms around me and apologized for some hard things that she had said to me.  I wondered what I would say to myself as an 11 year old child.  I thought that I would want my 11 yr old daughter to be able to tell me anything.  But when I think of the memories and the pain that you have had, I tell you to stop.  I tell you that I have heard enough. 

They say as a parent you should always take your children serious if they say they have been touched inappropriately.  But I struggle to take you serious.  How could that possibly happen in my home?  How could it happen when your parents were at the Temple, serving the Lord?  I thought that when you went to the Temple your family was protected.  I was always told that if you went to the Temple you would find everything well when you returned. 

I wish I could tell you that I am here for you, that I am listening, and that I care.  Child, it seems like you are trying to tell me so much.  There are times when I am completely overwhelmed with the emotions.  I feel your pain.  I feel your fear, your frustrations, and your loss.  I wish I had the answers to all of your questions, and I wish I knew where to tell you to find the answers.  I am trying to understand just as much as you are.  I know that none of this makes sense.

Child, the pain that you feel is not going to go away over night.  You need to know that you did nothing wrong.  You trusted your brother to protect you and to love you as a brother should.  Your brother did not know how to be the kind of brother that you deserved. 

Child, even though your brother here on Earth did not know how to treat you right.  You have an older brother that loves you with a pure love.  Even though your brother took so much, you can have it all back.  Because your older brother Jesus Christ  suffered in the Garden for you.  You can be made whole.  

I wish I could tell you that you don’t need to be afraid but even as an adult I am afraid.  We are on this journey together.  It is not easy.  I have been told that we have survived the hard part.  No one can hurt us any more.  Every day we can become stronger.

 

Dear Adult ,

Wow, it has been over 30 years since the abuse started in your home.  You are still carrying the abuse with you.  You just didn’t know it and you don’t want to let it go.

You have ignored me for a long time.  It is as though you wish I didn’t even exist.  You have been learning of the pain that I endured but yet you close your eyes and hope it is a nightmare.  It is a nightmare that we lived.  But, you don’t even want to acknowledge it.  How do you learn and grow from it if you don’t acknowledge it?  You don’t even want to believe it happened.  How do you think that makes me feel?

Adult, you can’t blame Heavenly Father for what happened to us.  Ever since you were little you wanted to be married in the Temple.  Heavenly Father knows what happened.  He knew of our goals and he knew what it would take for us to get there.  That is why he gave us such a strong spirit.  He could not stop your brother and his friends from using their agency but he could help us to get to the Temple.  Because he wanted that for us as much as we wanted it for ourselves.

You say that you feel my fear, my pain, and my frustrations.  I remember hiding almost in plain sight, hiding from myself because of the fear and pain.  I hurt because I walked thru life almost wishing I wasn’t here.  You start to let me out and then you bury me again, again not wanting to acknowledge what happened, and not wanting to let us break free.

Your life could have been so different if you would have acknowledged the abuse when it happened.  Do you even know how to be a kid?  Because you don’t know how to be a kid, are you transferring that to your own daughters?  Don’t they deserve to know what it is like to have fun?  You go thru your memories and you have none or very little.  You have been trying so hard to let go of the past.  You have nothing to acknowledge that you even existed as a young girl.  No scrap books, no momentos, no treasures of the past.  To you they were junk but they were part of your history. 

I hate the fact that you can’t even acknowledge how amazing we are.  Nothing is ever good enough for you.  You are so afraid of what you might find in your past .  Adult, there is nothing worse than what I have told you.  It sucks.  You don’t know how to trust anyone.  You don’t know how to trust yourself so you would rather just not trust at all.  You will do it all.  How’s that working for you?

You know that you are the only one that is keeping you from the Temple.  You want to be closer to the Savior and learn more of Heavenly Father.  You are afraid of the thing that we worked for the hardest.  If you weren’t going to use your temple recommend, then why do you have one?

You have been trying for some time to figure out your needs.  I as a child needed protection, I needed trust, I needed love, I needed security.  I didn’t get any of that and because you can’t accept what has happened you are continuing to live without the trust, the love, the security, and the protection. 

You don’t even want me to feel.  I want to be mad, I want to be hurt, I want to be sad.  If you had your way I would have forgiven your brother and his friends the day after it happened, and every time it happened it was OK.  It is not that easy.  Those boys took so much and by you ignoring it, you keep giving it back to them.  Adult, they did hurt me.  I deserve to be mad.  I deserve to have the time that I need to feel the hurt and to figure out who I want to be.  You want to be done with all of this and not even give me the chance to recover.  You think that by keeping busy and trying to please everyone that it will all just go away.  It doesn’t work that way because it did happen.  I hate that you won’t let that happen for me.