Requiem for the child I leave behind

I first published this November 2016 on Medium. I’m putting it out there for anyone feeling pulled back by an old childhood story and the wound it hides.?Trigger warning that there is mention about SA, abortion, and death of a loved one.

“You are not a closer,” an old friend said to me, “you need to hire someone who is a closer.”

It’s true what he saw: in that moment I lacked the stomach to push my discussion with him to a close. I failed to ask him to invest in Story2.

I have sold many things; I have closed sales of things I believe in far less than this storytelling company and its enduring value teaching people how to speak and write honestly. What is it that makes me so unable to use the tools I teach to others when my company needs them most?

It is the secrets I hid for so long that hiding became a way of being. I was raped when I was in third grade. When my father died I feared I’d killed him. And I had an abortion when I was 16. There, now you know all of it. I can tell you for sure that the years I hid all that, long ago, live on in my bones and in my blood, pulling me inward, pulling me back into the dark.

Since June that self-doubting part of my soul has been in ascendance.

It is more than 40 years ago, and yet I am some part there, and only part way here. I watch the days unfold, as a spectator almost, after my father dies. I am not alive in the present. I am afraid to tell anyone, afraid to ask for help. I lack the money I need — several thousand dollars — to get a safe abortion in another state. I ask relatives; they find me a place to get help but say I must tell my mom.

I’ve written this story before. My mother helps me. But I must tell my sister too. My mother pays for it. I pay her back, much later, after I’ve had three children and feel crushed with the burden of desperation and doubt.

Every time I go out to raise money, it’s as if I am that needy teenage girl who has gotten herself in trouble and lacks the resources to take care of herself and her own needs. The queen of words, I lose the ability to speak on my own behalf.

This is my first and last demon, the dragon I slay again and again. I don’t talk about it much. But it’s always there. I grew up in a closeted blue family in an extremely red state. I got in trouble, again and again, for speaking my mind.

Somehow my father made it all ok. And then he died. And the little girl in me recreates that moment again and again:

My father died. I buried my sadness in somnolent sex. When I woke up, I wanted my body back.

I have hidden this story and this feeling for so long. I need to proclaim this publicly, to step out of that time long ago and, for the first time, claim what I chose and who I am.

It is not for myself I am telling this story. For me to do anything else, I need you to know who I am.

Sign up for the Storyhood Newsletter to receive updates, course releases, coaching opportunities, and more.