I remember the moments when I began to realize that because of the intense manipulation and grooming which is an utter and complete mindf*ck, my childhood sexual abuse (incest, rape) had completely confused my understanding of God in almost every way. Here's how it confused my understanding of God's benevolence and gifts (grace, unconditional love, pure giving from the heart.)

The predator used to come into my bed very regularly and slide under the covers with me in the dark of night, under the auspicious lie that we were special friends and that he was servicing me because he loved me so much and he wanted to make me happy. This was during my preteen years when my young nubile body was developing and actually responding to his touch. Talk about the worst kind of manipulation. That's the kind that seriously fucks a girl up.

My soul knew how to exit my body every single night, and so I as my true self wasn't even there. But of course the body, mind, and spirit are so intimately connected that there was always a part of me that knew damn well what was going on. I was being manipulated and raped and it was part of my everyday reality for my entire childhood.

He knew exactly what to do to arouse me with his right hand. He told me THIS was love. He told me he did this to make me happy and because he knew I enjoyed it. He told me....it was all for me. All for me. All for me.

What a total mindfuck.

And yet what could be further from the truth?

As a grown woman I have struggled to allow God's love in to my heart for decades but I had no idea why. I knew God. I knew God is loving. But....how can God's gifts be free? How can Divine Love be free? Isn't there ALWAYS a cost? This man had made himself to be God to me--the one who gives me everything. He feeds me, clothes me, houses me. I was completely and utterly reliant upon him for every single thing in my life. Until I wasn't. 

As I lay there in my bed at night experiencing what is one of the most pleasurable sensations these human bodies get....there was the most extreme, mixed-up confusion imaginable. How could that feel good, when it was so wrong? How could he be telling me this was all for me, when he would take it all for himself later when he ejaculated? How was it so good when I also felt such extreme guilt and shame? How could this be? And where was my mother in all of this? Where?

And that inner conflict became far far too great for a girl of 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13...14. So the shame of the pleasure and the shame of the act itself kept being shoved right down the barrel of an already-loaded gun of isolation, pain, toxic circumstance, evil, conquest, love-not-love, confusion over right and wrong, questioning who or where was God, was he God????? Ah, yes....on some completely warped level, he made me to believe -- and I did -- that he....was.....God. Imagine. The unimaginable. That I could be so warped in my perceptions, so confused, so masterminded, AND so complicit, that I would over that decade from 4 to 14 be completely subservient to his own disgustingly inane, psychopathic god-complex.

By day, he showed himself to be a humble servant: Tried and True Boy Scout Leader (Yes, it's true!!!); Serial failure entrepreneur who made everyone feel sorry that he'd given his all, and it just didn't work....again; Man who takes old ladies out to brunch on Sundays and has them over for holidays (but only because they are wealthy and he wants treats at the end) (Oh by the way, she left him a sofa and a loveseat. He was furious.); Man who will drive you anywhere if you need a last-minute ride or cook you a salmon steak on the grill so you'll keep thinking he's so generous, as he gropes you at the counter and pours you another glass so you'll distort your entire understanding.

He got away with it because he was also my care-taker, and I was completely reliant on him for a home, food, clothing....and love. Or so I thought.

The sad thing for me is that ONLY in my 50s did I de-couple all of this and finally, over years, realize that this kind of love is....well, let's not even call it love in the first place. It was rape cloaked in a seedy worn blanket called love but that is not love, as we damn well know. It was a transaction. A service. Literally tit for tat. You get my body, I get food. It's that simple. You get my clitoris, I get shelter. It's that simple. You get me, you get to ejaculate, I get some strange feeling that I turn into love in my warped way. And then we get up and act like the Cleavers and do it again and again, over and over. Such routine. Such compete plagiarism of the real story of Real Love with a capital L.

But thank God, the REAL God, thank my angels, thank my earth angels....I began to uncouple from this rapist and start to isolate the truth in all of it. With so much help from above and here on earth, I began to unhook from his malicious deceit, give back what I was holding in shame, guilt, and the promises never to tell, and become autonomous. It's taken years. But today, I truly am sovereign. I see him for what he is and I will never even call him f*ther again. Fathers do not rape their daughters. They love them. They nurture them, and respect them. That's what fathers do.

I have grappled immensely with the teachings of my faith traditions that God is abundant, all-giving, unconditional, and that the gifts of the realm really are for me. I could not take that in because the gifts given by the god-head of my household had an extreme price tag associated. I literally gave my body; I kept a lie alive for 50 years; I stuffed and buried all of my shame, AND his; I covered for my family; I ignored the truth; I kept playing a game so that I might still have shelter (and I actually was staying at his home when the memories began to surface!); I kept taking, because I thought that's how it worked and I was not willing to stope the lies and figure things out, and heal.

Until I was. And I did. And I have. And it is healed.

And only now do I realize that the reasons for my confusion (and yes, extreme anger) stem from this confusion of that man's tricky god-complex telling me in day AND night that everything he did he did for me....but...at what price? An orgasm for the cost of a lifetime of pain, shame, trauma, deception, mis-trust, and ultimate confusion over where god was in my life? For there were so very many times I could not comprehend there IS a God, if this kind of thing happens to innocent people. I often asked, how can this even be allowed on Earth? 

The answer? It is a Free Will Universe. Period. Everything and I mean Everything is based upon a choice. YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE.

He made his choices. I made mine. And here we are. I have worked for years to unravel a lifetime of lies. And I don't give a god-damn fuck where he is or what he is doing.

So, here is the blessing of it all, after the mess of cleaning it all up that still continues to be a daily experience:

I know who I am and I know the truth and I know that God the Almighty loves me with a love I can't even really begin to quantify or understand. But I can perceive it. I know the truth now. And I am no longer afraid of the truth. Because in the most clear ways (over and over and over again), it is the truth--and the Love of God and the loving people in my life--that have set me free.

The truth matters. The truth is that you have to be willing to love yourself so much that you're willing to do what it takes to set yourself free. But you never ever have to do it all alone.

And the truth always always always outshines the lies. The dark lies and deception can't hold a candle to the light. Where we are brave enough to go...with even the smallest flicker of the Light....the Light finds and nourishes the truth. And this I now know with the entirety of my own sacred heart.

So ladies, gentlemen, teens, and children: Know that there is a place in heaven for everyone. If you have been deceived, or raped, or molested, or masterminded, the Truth is your medicine. You ARE loved, no matter what you think. Even that pedophile is loved by God.

Don't hide under a bushel basket. Get some loving help. Be brave. Speak it out. Go get a therapist or healer or best friend or loving grandparent. Have the courage to use your words with someone you love and who you know loves you, because in that sacred space, NO secret is too dirty, or harsh, or unbearable. Moving through the pain is worth the glory of the reward of freedom from your darkness. Your life is far far too valuable to let dark thoughts rule them. 

And if you'd like to arrange loving assistance from my team of compassionate healers, please reach out to me and set up an appointment to discuss your own liberation. 

Because darling, this I know is true: You Are Worth The Cost of Your Freedom. You Are. And, Amen.

Say it. Speak it. Heal it. The truth will set you free.

Namaste