[Benjamin Fry]

Iím terribly sorry to hear of your childhood abuse. There really is no worse start in life. Others can say that the problems of many third world children who live without the food and medicine that we take for granted are worse, but really what is worse than to be able to live adequately, but to be tortured by the crushing emotional weight of having that life?

Worse still is the reaction of your own family to your attempts to help yourself and reconcile yourself to your past. However, as you may be aware, this is a very common scenario in the recovery of those abused in childhood. Faced with a family member articulating the taboo, it is not unusual for all the rest of the family to lock together in a system of denial that turns its back on the one family member trying to tell the truth and trying to heal the wounded system. There is no more painful reflection of this than to see the effect that it has on your own children, who are young and innocent of all of this. They should be spared the consequences of your own familyís desire to reject you, but unfortunately this is not happening. I have experienced much the same in attempting to clear certain issues with my own family so I empathise with you greatly. You will find however (if you havenít already) that there are many who are in the same boat as you. If you can find and participate in groups that support survivors of sexual abuse, single mothers, or just those in therapy, then you may find that you can begin slowly to replace some aspects of the support system you have lost.

Somewhere deep inside of you is the person that you were born with. Before the bullying, the yelling, the touching and the pain, you were happy to be yourself and comfortable being that person no matter what anyone thought or said about you. You can recover this state of grace, but it is a hard painful slog. In a nutshell, you will need to relieve yourself of all of the pent up emotions that were caused by the trauma of your youth. To do this, you will need to find a way to feel safe experiencing these awful feelings all over again. Sorry, but that is the role of trauma; it protects us at the time when it would overwhelm us to feel, but it demands to be balanced by letting these feelings out when the coast is clear.

This safety can come from relationships, ideas, support groups, god, self-care, all of the above and many other places. Therapy is a great start. Try to balance it with some physical therapeutic practice like yoga, tai-chi or meditation. The see-saw between the physical system and the intellectual system can help to keep things moving ñ perhaps better than just one of them alone. Donít be alarmed if you actually feel worse as you start to do ìbetterî. Your negative feelings are your friends, since it is on the other side of them that you will find the true self that you so long for. Then you will be able to instinctively understand that you are uniquely valuable just for the simple fact of your existence. And that will release you from thinking that you have to please others constantly to be worth a damn (a common consequence of childhood abuse).

The world can be harsh and uncaring, but it can also be a place of unexpected and extraordinary love and kindness. It is just that this doesnít make for good TV. I am a trustee of an organization that uses volunteers to help released prisoners rehabilitate themselves to normal life. They have thousands of volunteers who give so much to others in return for nothing. Youíll find that people like that are everywhere. One way to begin to notice them is to try to put yourself into that same mental attitude.

Anger is a great healer, but blame has to be seen as a phase we must pass through. In the end, whatever has been done to us, everyday (as adults) we wake up with the responsibility of making our own choices. A very tough but empowering mental practice is to acknowledge that all of our emotions are in fact our own. They are not ìcausedî in us by others, but rather our reaction to othersí actions and therefore in that sense start within ourselves. I use this idea often when Iím angry. It helps me to separate my own issues from whatís going on outside of me. Often I find that in fact the reason that Iím angry is that Iím scared. If I start throwing insults around, I get little comfort in return, but if I admit to my fear, others treat me very differently. And as a bonus, I get to know myself that little bit better.

The Dalai Lama said something like the following: treasure your enemies because only they will teach you anything. If you let your misfortunes overwhelm you then they will remain nothing but your own tragedies. If you use them to learn about yourself, then they will be your teachers and cherished companions.

Oh, and donít worry about your 12 year-oldís abuse: thatís very normal! What you need to do is to make sure that when you react to it, you use that reaction to explore your own sense of worthlessness and donít blame her for upsetting you. She also needs a safe place where she can blow off her emotional cobwebs and it sound like you are all sheís got.

And I can guarantee it will get worse before it gets better. One day youíll have two teenage daughters.

[Benjamin Fry]

What I like about what you have written is that you ask questions and then immediately answer them yourself! This shows that you have a very good instinctive understanding of how to progress from this point in your life. Clearly a great deal of very difficult experiences are beginning now to be behind you in some respects. The issues you raise about how to cope with finding a future when all of this is still in the balance are very important.

You talk about needing to learn ways of letting go of the past while accepting it as part of you, and I can see that this is very difficult while you are currently dealing with its consequences in the legal system. However equally important is what is going on in your emotional system. It may be that you can get justice in the courts and yet still not find the inner closure that allows you to forgive and move on; or vice versa. My advice would be to accept the emotional consequences of your external circumstances and see every up-and-down of the legal roller coaster as an opportunity to exercise your own emotional apparatus. Ultimately the legal consequences are not as important that your own inner development.

You also ask about letting go and accepting yourself. You then talk about your meditation. Meditation is an excellent path to training mind to being more adept at letting go and accepting yourself. However it seems that during your meditation you encountered a part of yourself that you are finding it hard to accept. You have done so much good work on your inner development that you are beginning to encounter your intuitive and spiritual gifts. There is nothing wrong with this. You would have had these gifts as a young child. You only lost these gifts because of the trauma of your childhood. Recovering these gifts is a great sign of your development.

You are not delusional; you are healing. Try to listen to the part of you that feels calm. This is usually your higher self. Try to let go of your logical conclusions. These are usually not much use for anything except algebra.

It sounds like you are making excellent progress. I hope that continues for you.