Well here it is! The very first newsletter for LIGHTCIRCLE! Thank you to everyone who contributed to the newsletter this month. I have purposely left names out of stories to protect the innocent.

I watched my beautiful eight year old preparing for another visit from her father, preparing with both anticipation and dread. Every part of us wants to know that we are loved and cared for, and she had been his princess, but also his mistress, when she was a toddler.

He called her to say he wasn't going to come this weekend, but that he loved her and wanted to see her. I listened to her ask him "Daddy, why did you do those things to me when I was little?" And I wished that I could hear his response. "I want to know. I don't understand why I feel so bad when I talk to you, and why Mom is so hurt." Silent response. "I don't think I want to see you again. I don't want you to hurt me again." And she hung up.

An eight year old. Such strength. She went into her room for hours, and emerged later with a box under her arm, which she took to the trash. It was the remains of the family photo album, with every single image of her father cut out. He was excluded, excised, exorcised from our lives by that little girl. The damage was not undone, but continues to this day. She is a young adult now, battling depression, damaged self-esteem, and demons of her own. But she is stronger than I could ever imagine her to be. She is resilient and wonderful, compassionate and aware of the world around her, innocent and worldly at the same time.

How Has Your Abuse Affected Your Relationship With Your Family?

This Month's Answers:

The person who abused me sexually was my mother's husband. They were married 18 years ago when I was 10 years old. My mother had divorced my father because he was physically abusive to both me and my younger sister.

This man was, of course, very nice and very charming and my mother's whole family fell in love with him, including me. The abuse began about 3 months after they were married and I finally told my mother about it approximately one year later.

They way I finally brought myself to tell about it was by my mother confronting me about a particular incident that was very suspicious to her. She had come home from work one Saturday around 3:00 PM and I was still in my nightclothes. She stayed home the following Monday from work and asked me about it that morning. She told me, seeing my reluctance to talk, that he had already told her about it and she wanted to hear it from me. When I finally did tell her she called her husband home from work. I remember I was sitting in the front room watching t.v. when he came home. He grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and dragged me into the room where my mother was. Needless to say after long hours of interrogation and many, many tears, she chose to believe him.

One day, after about 6 months had passed, I was alone with him again. I asked him why he lied to mom and he replied," Because I don't want your mother to be hurt." I was 12 yrs old. The years passed and I did everything in my power to keep mother from getting hurt. The abuse continued in subtle ways until I was 20.

I also had an uncle on my mothers side who also molested me. I decided to confront my grand- mother with this information in the hopes that perhaps this would encourage some belief in me about my story. When she came back to me about him and said that he had denied it and they didn't believe me, I was crushed. This was the second time I had been put aside for another male adult's feelings in my family.

I decided that day that I had had enough of pretending that everything was ok and just hiding it all under the rug. I had had enough of the false smiles and the look of worry that I would accuse someone else. I was constantly hearing whispers of," Be careful what you day to her. She's not stable, you know." I decided that day to see about pressing charges.

I had been in therapy for a year when all this took place. My therapist, a wonderful woman named Jo, encouraged me to look into pressing charges and finding out the statute of limitations in my state. I then went to talk to the District Attorney and ended up with the female Assistant DA. She was very concerned and very helpful in encouraging me to write down everything I could remember including dates and places. This was no mean feat because I was 22 at the time. Ten years had passed. Once the listing was complete she looked into my statue of limitations. Unfortunately for me everything that had happened before the age of 17 was a felony and the statute had just been changed, but , not in my favor. It had run out only 1 year prior. Everything else that had happened to me after the age of 17 was considered sexual harassment and was only a misdemeanor crime.

At the time of the investigation into whether or not I wanted to press charges I was married and had a 18 month old daughter and a 2 month old daughter. My husband was as supportive as he was capable of being, but unfortunately it didn't last. I had decided that if I was going to do this I would no longer have any contact with my mother or her husband or anyone who would accuse me of something I didn't do or find fault with what I had said about my mother's husband and her brother. So, for two years I didn't see my mother nor did she see my children. Circumstances did arise where I was forced to allow her back into my life, but more on that later.

I chose not to press charges. I didn't see the point if all it was going to produce was a slap on the wrist.

My mother got wind of what I was doing and took my sister's college tuition away from her and informed my sister that I was the reason she had to do it. My mother needed money for a lawyer, she said, and I was doing whatever I could to keep my sister out of college because I was jealous of her. There was no lawyer, the tuition payments did not begin again, and 2 months later a brand new Conversion Van sat in my mothers driveway.

I have since divorced my husband and I am engaged to marry again. It has been four years since I divorced him and three years since I was once again speaking to my mother. My daughters are 5 and 6 years old now and I am still not allowed to be at my grand-mother's home when my uncle and his family are there. He dictated to my grandparents that if I was there he wouldn't come and visit with them. I now have to make an appointment to see my grandparents and to allow my own children to visit with them.

I live in a small town and all of these people live here, too. I do speak to my mother when I happen to run into her at my grandparents home. My younger sister lives across the street from my mother and I cannot go to see my mother even when I am at my sisters. You see, my mother runs and in-home nursery for babies aged 0 to 2 years and I have closed her down once already. We cannot come over when she has babies in her home, I am assuming so that I won't know who the babies and their families are. And when she doesn't have children there she has this appointment or that errand to run so she is never available. For example, My oldest daughter is the oldest in her generation of this family. The first grand-child and the first great-grand-child. She graduated from Kindergarten this past school year and was awarded the top award for accelerated reading out of 82 kindergartners. My mother chose not to attend and also would not allow me to drop by and give her a picture that we had taken that day.

She has chosen to not get close to my children, I am assuming, in the fear that I will once again take them away from her. She never calls to talk to them or me, she hasn't seen them for more than a few minutes since February. She turns down all invitations to functions concerning my kids. She has chosen, in effect, to no longer be a grand- mother. I, personally don't care, but it is starting to affect my children. It breaks my heart when my girls ask me why their grand-mother doesn't love them anymore or doesn't want to see them. I am tired of making excuses for her such as illness or a busy schedule. Again.. we all live in the same small town. I have lived in my home for 2 and a half years and she has been here once.

I have decided once again to cut myself off from her if she doesn't believe me when I confront her yet again. I have remembered something that should give her the "proof" that she needs to believe me. If not I will once again resume my life as if they do not exist with the knowledge that I have done everything in my power to bring her back into my children's life. And my final confrontation will be done and my healing complete.

Next Month's Question:
How do you deal with your children and the subject of your abuse?

i wish i could vanish in a blink of an eye,
No one would remember-no one to ask why.

i can't find a reason to live with this pain anymore,
Everyday another piece of me dies, there's nothing left to fight for.

How can i live a life that has never really begun,
i've always felt a need to escape, but there's no place to run.

i need this isolation- i've never had it differently,
There are to many pieces missing that could've been me.

There are shadows and clouds that have followed me for years,
There's a hole in my heart that can't be mended with tears.

The tears won't come anymore, i'm safe behind this wall,
Its the only thing that protects me from losing it all.

Dark, painful thoughts fill my nights and my days,
Nothing seems to work anymore, to chase the demons away.

i feel cheated in a way i can't begin to explain,
And each passing year brings more of the same.

There's a detachment from everything and everyone i know,
i have no desire to hold on to anything, its time to let go.

Existing is not living, there's a world of difference between the two,
i can play the game no longer- there's nothing left to do.

There are pieces of my life holding large empty spaces,
I can't grasp the fragments of the events and places.

Darkness, fear, pain, and regret, the present and past melt together as one,
i don't understand when or even how it all had begun.

But at three am. the reality is that i'm completely alone,
There's no one to turn to, no voice on the phone.

The desperation and fear intensify in the darkness of night,
But the rising sun no longer can make everything right.

I can't flip a switch and make it all go away,
Kind words or pep talks won't make it all okay.

My life is a lie, lived in a way i thought would look real,
But its only taught me to hide, and learn not feel.

i don't know how much longer i can live this charade,
Nothing seems real, its all just a game to played.

Future is a word that's never had any meaning to me,
Getting thru the week, the year, that's all there'll ever be.

What is the purpose of living this way?
There's never been any hope of seeing a better day.

So i want to go away, where no one can ever find me,
Someone that ever was, someone that couldn't be.

August 03, 1994

Child of Light © 1997 K. Soto

When will it all end
The painful uncovering
of these memories?

I'm a child of light
The darkness cannot enfold
The light that fills me.

The soul is growing
Through a metamorphosis
Changing forever.

Silences enfold
Keeping the secrets hidden
I begin to tell

It starts with a dare.
I dare you to tell it all!
I double dare you.

So the thoughts come out
Each one coming into light
The light that will heal.

My silence ends now
The chains that bind are broken
The void is now light.

My voice will be heard
The lonely silence ended
The truth has come out.

The light is shining
From within my very soul
I'm a child of light!

LIGHTCIRCLE is dedicated to all of my inner children, whose bravery in the face of dragons and adversity, has shone through.

LIGHTCIRCLE: A group dedicated to bringing child abuse ( physical, sexual, psychological, emotional and spiritual) out into the light where the myths can be exploded and the stories can be heard. Bringing the tragedy of child abuse into the light (public and private), so that it touches the lives of everyone within the world to the extent that child abuse becomes something unknown and obsolete.