I hope that this holiday finds you well. I know that some of you are spending the day with abusive family members. Please try to keep yourself safe. Others are spending the day alone and feeling very depressed. Please try to remember that you are triggered. Those terrible feelings will not last forever. You will feel much better as Thanksgiving becomes a distant memory.
Some of you, like me, are doing the best you can to make newer and brighter associations with Thanksgiving. I have made a big turkey with homemade stuffing. I am doing my best to make this Thanksgiving a wonderful memory for my son.
Remember to nurture yourself today. I do this by watching my favorite Thanksgiving episodes. Gilmore Girls has a great one where the “girls” have to go to four Thanksgiving dinners. I also like watching a bunch of the Friends Thanksgiving episodes as well. I laugh and find a way to enjoy myself, even as I work through the triggers of Thanksgivings past.
Please take gentle care of yourself. Know that I am very thankful for all of you.
Related Topic:
How to Endure Holiday Season After Child Abuse
Photo credit: Rosanne Mooney
Happy Thanksgiving to you too! I hope you are successful in your attempt to replace the bad memories with good ones!
Thank you. I needed to read that today. Sending you best wishes too.
Secret Shadows
Hi Faith!
Stopping in today to tell you I am thankful for you and all you do to try to help other on their path to healing! You are an inspiration!
I hope you and your family are enjoying a blessed and a memorable Thanksgiving Holiday today!
Many Blessings on You and Your Loved Ones,
KT
Hi. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
It is doubly hard for me as I try to forge new traditions with my own children after my husband’s death, and try to disconnect with my family. I am grateful for sites like yours and people like you and you readers.
Hi Faith–I really appreciated this blog and posted it this morning on mine. 🙂 I was wondering if you think tying preschool/toddler age kids to chairs to abuse them is a cult/ritual kind of abuse that might have been common back when it happened to us? It was the very early 1970’s when it happened to me and my siblings. I did a bit of Google searching on it and it does seem to come up in other sites and research…I just thought it was too weird that I was struggling with that memory and you posted a similar one…It was one of the first vivid flashbacks I had in therapy. Maybe if anyone else reading this can relate, they could post a message about it, too. regardless, thanks for your vulnerability and courage.
My mother is the one who brought my sister and me to the “cult meetings,” so it would not surprise me if tying the children to chairs is part of the process. This happened to my sister and me in the early 1970’s, too.
– Faith
Ive always hated them plastic chairs. The ones with the oval hole in the back.
Why did they do this??? Was it to brainwash us for life??? Or was there more to it than that?? Research into the physce perhaps??? – Or is that giving ‘them’ too much respect? Were they just crude and wanting sexual objects to control?
I guess ill never know these answers.
Happy Thanksgiving Faith. ( although here in UK i dont think its a holiday or anything) 🙂
It was a hard day for me… I cried as I woke up.. I did the best I could…. as I sat and ate breakfast I had tears streaming down my face.. not one person called me or emailed today, not one cared that i was even alive… I was invited somewhere but I didnt know them well and I ran during the visiting time.. because i was sitting alone and it all came crashing down on me… the reality of it all and of all the has happened to me.. who can love someone like me… ( I will leave the details out for your sake) and it was a really hard day…..
Zoe…. what happened to you is no reflection of you as a person. The fact you are alive to talk about it shows your strength and character.
There is hope. Ive carried on through so much with no promise of change, and somehow i have that spirit that tells me its worth it – Im sure you have that aswell.
((((( Zoe ))))
– Faith