This story contains graphic or mature content.
“I don’t think I cried, but I do remember hearing a little girl’s voice whimper: ‘I want to go home.’ I was very sore.”
This is from a second excerpt about my journey, and initiation into the unknown, when I undertook an innocent move to the “simple” life on a farm that actually came loaded and charged, and I was about to meet it all head-on. Life on the farm was both a backdrop and a blank canvas, to give me the opportunity to reflect, renew, and integrate. This was especially true for facing childhood rape.
I wrote a book, Lemons & Angels, of this time, as it evoked all the dark challenges to overcome, and all the intense beauty of life that we all enjoy in our own unique way. This is a universal story; it is everywoman’s story, no matter where in the world you live.
This excerpt is about opening up the past to face it, to find the link between the dance of money and deserving and healing, and how the hologram of life affects us:
“Somehow, in my upbringing, a deep sense of civility, politeness, giving others the benefit of the doubt first before listening to my own doubts, courtesy, manners and duty was imparted. The resulting mindset overshadowed any raw, primeval, pure instinct to respond differently. Nor did it afford me the sense of permission to respond differently.
It didn’t feel like I had any permission to display the cleansing and empowering emotion of a temper outburst, which could have vanquished all manner of people who demanded or took harmfully from me. It certainly would have altered the course of events in my life and some of the really not okay stuff that happened.
I cannot say if it was only from my parents although, in the early years, their example of archetypal roles being played out in their own marriage—autocracy combined with passive-submissive appeasement—certainly had something to do with it when the foundations were being laid. It was probably also simply a result of the times in which we were living. Maybe it had been ingrained for eons already. But it was there right from the start. Even as a small baby, my mother said that when I woke from sleeping I didn’t cry to be changed or fed. I would just there lie quietly in my pram, waiting patiently and making no demands.
Once, when I was about ten years old, I was lying on the couch reading a book in the lounge next to the fire. I looked up and saw the ceiling board had caught alight. I got up and went to the next room where Uncle Tim was busy with a business meeting. I was extremely anxious, but I just stood still in the doorway, politely waiting for him to finish what he was saying in his meeting before I could speak - because that was good manners. Finally, after a few long minutes, he looked up, slightly annoyed at being interrupted, and muttered, ‘What is it?’
‘Um, Uncle Tim, I’m so sorry to disturb you, and I was going to wait until you finished,’ I said in a timid voice, ‘… but … um … the lounge ceiling is on fire.’
'WHAT! Why didn’t you call me immediately?!’ he shouted, jumping up to run to the lounge. Just to add that, with some quick creative thinking, he doused the fire in the ceiling with a handy enema pump from his wife’s bathroom cabinet.
But this penchant for being painfully polite has also got me trapped and into serious trouble along the way. For one thing, it got me raped. I was five years old, playing at my grandmother’s house, and for some reason I went down to the bottom gate and out onto the street. This was in the sleepy, conservative, seaside suburb of Fish Hoek. A sailor in his white uniform came walking toward me, and he said I must go with him. So, politely, I did as I was told and followed him. Even though instinctively I absolutely knew it didn’t feel right.
