Since I am a multiple, I guess I have to belong to multiple webrings!
So far, I think I'm up to eleven. So I started a new blog, to just contain the navigation bars for these rings. Check them out and visit the many valuable and wonderful sites contained in these rings. 
This writing came out of an email reply to a survivor friend of mine, who was asking for advice about how to handle her children’s negative feelings about her decision to separate from her family of origin because of ongoing problems, stemming from years of sexual abuse that she endured at the hands of her stepfather, and her mother’s lack of protection, even though she knew about the abuse, but chose to blame the victim, which, unfortunately often happens in these sorts of families.
She has been through therapy and has achieved a degree of freedom from her past, but has never told her children what happened to her. They are now in Junior High and College, and don’t understand her decision to do this. So, this is what I told her:
When I came out of my family, and started my own, I vowed that I would not live by the same principles that they lived by. I vowed that my children would have a different life than I. This is what has kept me going, and kept me fighting throughout the years.
I was raised in deception, betrayal, and lies, and I refuse to live my life that way. It is why I am where I am today. I have chosen to be a truth seeker, and a truth liver.
"Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place."
Psalm 51:6
So, what I am saying is this: Nothing good can come from secrets. You have nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing that happened to you was your fault. Why protect a false image of a man, and of a family?
These things happened to you, and your children deserve to know. They need to know so that they can better understand the situation, and you. They need to know so they can consciously choose to build a new family legacy. One based on love, not betrayal. One based on truth, not lies. One based on light, not darkness. One based on openness, not secrecy. This they can do, but only by knowing from whence they came.
By you shining your victorious light as a survivor, and an overcomer, they can see the strength of who you are, and why you have made the decisions that you have. They will know that you made them, not just for yourself, but for them and their children, and their children's children.
If the past remains secret and hidden, what good can come of it? How can God transform what evil meant for destruction and decay, into what good means for growth, transformation, and healing. And this, not just for yourself, but for your children, your descendants, and also for hurting survivors of these travesties everywhere. Decay and rot happens in the darkness. When it is brought out into the sun's lifegiving warmth, it slows down, stops spreading, and dries up. Yes, you will always see where the rot has taken place. There will always be an indelible mark on your soul, but it will lose its power to destroy. It will stand as a testimony to what was, and what God has taken and transformed, as only He can do.
These are battle scars, and we wear them proudly.
Consider this quote from JRR Tolkien:
"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." JRR Tolkien~ The Return of the King pg. 190
Severina
A friend and I were talking and speculating about headaches in people with DID, and various explanations for them.
As far as head phenomena is concerned; that is what brought all of this to the surface about a year ago. Last year, this time, I only knew that I was DID, and of the abuse occurring at my dad's house. Sometime in November, I think, I started to have this weird head/body thing. Its hard to explain, but it would suddenly feel like my brain was physically shifting back and forth very quickly in my skull. At the same time, I would hear inside my head, a zapping noise, sometimes, not always, and also shooting numbness/tingling down my right arm/hand. It would happen quickly, and afterwards I would feel dizzy and off balance for a little bit. When it happened over and over, I would eventually feel very dissociated/depersonalized, and nauseous.
I didn't go to the doctor, because it was too predictable. It happened the most intensely on Thursdays, which was my therapy day, but, Tuesday was also, and it didn't happen all day on that day. It would happen so much on Thursdays that I had to call in sick for work, for about 3 Thurs. in a row. I had to take Thursdays off, and then switch my schedule to every other Thurs. off to keep full time. It also happened some on mornings before therapy, and sometimes when I looked in the mirror. This was, of course, very bizarre. Neither my T, nor psychiatrist had any idea what could be causing it, so I had to pursue and answer, since it was significantly affecting my functionality. On Thursday, the only thing that would make it stop was to lay down and be still.
I scoured the net for journal articles, but didn't have full text privileges. I collected the citations and was going to go to the medical library and look them up. I asked around to online survivors that I knew (which were few at the time), and while most acknowledged different weird head phenomena, especially headaches, often on one side, none had phenomena quite like mine. One girl that I talked to online who lives in Utah, was going to a T who was an integrated DID person herself, and had lots of experience both personally and professionally with DID. I told her about it and she said that she would ask her T if she had any ideas about it. The T, sent her back an email which she forwarded to me, where she postulated, based on my symptoms, that there was great conflict inside. She guessed that there was new information coming to the surface, and that my presenting system was fighting it. When I read that, I started crying, because I just "knew" that I had my answer. Then I got a consistent picture in my mind of a paved street with a covered man hole in it. As I looked at the man hole, it was moving like there was something underneath that was trying to come up through it. I could also see the alters that I knew, from my presenting system, stomping all at once on the man hole cover for all they were worth, to keep whatever was coming up from emerging.
Right after that, I wrote in my journal, and a new place showed up in my internal landscape. It was a room on the top layer, but as I have since discovered, it is a portal room to other parts of the landscape and to other systems. Its a common meeting place, like an in between place. It is a very dark library. It's only light is a fireplace at one end. The wood is all dark wood, and the walls are bookshelves with books from floor to ceiling. Close to the fireplace is one of those dark reddish velvet upholstered wingback chairs. The room reminds one of a setting of some guy introducing a masterpiece theatre or something like that. Further back, are chairs lined up along both sides of the room. there are 4-6, maybe. They are kind of medieval looking with the backs pointed at the tops and ornate wood. They are further back in the room, so they are shrouded in darkness, but I know there are people sitting in them, silently. A new alter, who I had seen pop up here and there during the last year in my writings, and sometimes talking to Brad, named Becky was sitting in the leather chair at the front by the firelight. She had talked to us in the previous months, but pretending to be other alters, not showing her true identity. I gather, that she was testing the waters, checking things out to see if it was safe to bring us to this next level. She was dressed in a tan color Ancient Greek style long tunic, had long straight brown hair, gold bracelets, sandals on her feet, and a gold circlet on her head. She stood up and introduced me to "The Dark Ones", who still remained silent. Then she lead me to a door in the opposite side of the library which opened up into a dark forest at night with a full moon. There was a path through the forest through which she guided me. Torches along the path at intervals lit our way. The forest seems alive, like it contains many feelings like fear, sadness, anger, and creepiness, but they just seem to be held there. I start to see the ruined abbey, where I have been before, where I previously had met Grace (an all good, God connected alter. A kind of guide, or ISH of sorts). I call for Grace and she says to come into the ruins where there is a warm fire. She is sitting by the fire with a white hooded cape on, with the hood up. She looks up at me very somberly, and says, "Beware of the Destroyer. He will try to stop you." "What can you tell me about this head thing?" I ask. "Its a shifting between landscapes. The others are trying to break through the resistance." " But its so strong. I'm so tired. Help me, Grace." I plead. She replies, "I can't tell you more than this. I can't tell you what you are not ready to hear." "The picture thing is a good idea (collages). Becky is not always as she appears. This is a new system that exists on a different level. There is different stuff to deal with." "Any advice for me?" I ask. "Hang on to faith. Trust God. Resist evil. It will come."
~ 11/23/04
That was the beginning. I knew what the presence of "The Dark Ones" meant, and I had a sinking feeling. After this, I tried to avoid it, until I had a panic attack at work, after which I met Seth, who drew the picture of the fire and crosses. Then, I spent a couple of weeks madder at God than I had ever been. Not because of the unremembered horrors that I knew had happened, but because I knew that he was asking me to go into this dark place, to walk through the "valley of the shadow of death", and I so desperately did not want to do this. I pleaded with him to just make it all go back down, make it disappear, and free me to live and enjoy my present life. It was my personal Gethsemane. Then he gave me the vision of The Gate, after which I decided to accept the cup which was given, as my personal cross to accept and carry along my own personal Via Dolorosa, which would eventually lead to my own Golgotha, place of death, but hopefully, to a new resurrection into a new life.
And so, began the Journey, which I continue. At this point in the journey, I think that I am carrying that cross, and am somewhere along the Via Dolorosa, and at present have fallen under the weight of it. I am in need of a Simon, probably a whole bunch of Simons, to help me and carry the cross for me, along the way. I have one in my husband, but he is buckling under its weight and stumbling too. We are in need of others. It is heavy. It is dirty. It is bloody. It is painful and exhausting. The crowd will insult you, throw rocks at you, spit on you, hurl insults at you. You will have to count the cost, dig deep and ask God if it is something that he wants you to do. But if my journey continues to parallel that of Christ's, the miracle at the end of the story will change things for the good forever, and you will be rewarded for being willing to be a part of the hardest part.
Severina
