Dearest Daughters,

Incest is a family affair. Each week on Mondays I’m going to writing to my daughters and share it here with you. On Thursdays, my girls will write back to me.

We are The Three B’s. We hope our story brings reality, inspiration and hope to you.

Dearest Daughters,

Thank you for your sincere words of honesty and introspection. Each one of our observations in our home while you were growing up is going to be different. None, however, less valuable.

I could tell you each room you had with detail. It won’t make a difference. I could remind you that there were times I stopped my day to sit on the kitchen floor and read one more story to you. That won’t make a difference either.

What I had not done through those years was to see the hole that had been forged in your soul through incest.

I spent my time trying to please your father and change who he was. Therein lies the issue. I should have spent my time trying to change myself.

It’s taken me years to understand how to do that. I’m still learning.

I believed that if I could love your father enough, pray for him enough, be the best wife I could be, that he would change. Then, our world would have been better.

Maybe as a child the only hope I had was that someone would change. What other tools did I have at my disposal?

I grew up trying to be the best prisoner there ever was, believing that somehow my gift to endure hardship would buy me a pardon. Not sure what I needed a pardon from, but I certainly grew up in a prison.

As you both did.

As I told you this weekend, dissociation and denial are two very separate beasts. While they live simultaneously together, they are not the same.

For each of these I sincerely ask your forgiveness. I lived my days while you were young in fight or flight — sheer survival mode. I still do sometimes.

I cannot own what I did not do, but I do own what I did not provide.

I can certainly offer you the time I have left. I pray this platform proves and holds your stories, too. Not just mine, but yours as well. You are telling the truth and that is a very noteworthy, brave thing to do.

Whatever you need today or tomorrow, please ask me for it. I am right here. Dissociation and denial aren’t much a part of me any longer. I’m here. I see you. I hear your stories.

I don’t plan to be anywhere else except in the present, as painful as that reality can be sometimes.

I’m listening. I’m learning. I love you.

Originally published at http://prisonerbynocrimeofmyown.com on September 20, 2021.