"Cinderella came home from a fabulous ball. It was so vastly different from her routine lifestyle that the whole evening might have been a dream, except for one tiny detail: she still had one of the glass slippers. She knew she hadn't 'made up' that glass slipper because she could see it and touch it. It was tangible proof that something unusual really had happened.
    "I had not been to a wonderful royal ball--quite the contrary, but I had suffered total amnesia about the sexual and satanic ritual abuse that had happened to me when I was a child. Nevertheless, there were always 'glass slippers' in my 'closet'--those tangible things that told me something important had happened to me.
    "These conscious evidences were important not because they, of themselves, 'proved' that the abuse was real, but because they helped validate what I was experiencing and gradually beginning to remember. When I looked at my 'Cinderella slippers' in combination with my emerging memories, the medical evidence, corroborating statements, and the terror that was a part of my life, a real picture began to take shape. . .
    "The body never forgets; it contains a literal record of everything that happens to you in life. Various problems with my body were 'Cinderella slippers' for me. Unexplained scars and broken bones can be powerful objective evidences of abuse that has been 'lost' from the conscious mind. In addition to scars and broken bones, unusual 'body memories,' though less convincing to skeptics, can be very validating 'Cinderella slippers.' It seems the body has its own ability to remember even when the mind cannot. In my case, there were both kinds of evidences." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 37-38.)

    The total amnesia I experienced throughout the first few decades of my life was a gift. God allowed me to forget the terrible things that happened to me and didn't let me remember until I was an adult. When the memories did come back, I was shocked that the pieces of my puzzle began to fit together. Knowing how much of my life that I had forgotten, helps me to look at other people with more kindness. Who knows what went on in their lives--perhaps even things they don't remember--which affects the choices they are currently making.

    "My sensitive nature was evident in the first grade when I became concerned about stepping on ants. I was very careful walking on the sidewalks because I didn't want anything to die. Specifically, I didn't want to be the one who killed any living thing and this concern extended to flies also. When my mother would ask me to grab a fly swatter and kill some flies in the kitchen, to her chagrin I would say, 'I don't want to kill flies. I don't want to kill anything!'"
    "'Oh don't be silly,' she'd say with frustration in her voice. 'The commandment not to kill doesn't apply to flies.'"
    "As a thirteen year old, I was accustomed to walking to school every day with a group of friends including my friend, Kathy. One day we were walking home and Kathy was not with us. The other girls told me they wanted to be my friend, but that if I wanted to be in their group I would need to drop Kathy as my friend.
    "I stewed over that decision because these were popular girls, but Kathy had been a good friend and I didn't want to hurt her. I hoped the other girls would just forget about the 'Kathy thing,' but they didn't.
    "They told me, 'Since you didn't drop Kathy, we don't want to be your friend anymore. You can't walk home with us or hang around us anymore.'"
    "I had to hold the tears inside until I got home to my bedroom. I felt like my heart was breaking inside. How could anyone be so cruel? I hurt so badly inside; how could they hurt me on purpose like that? Looking back on this event, it was the height of irony that a part of me was so surprised and perplexed that teenaged girls could be so cruel.
    "The reality was that even while dealing with this juvenile 'cruelty,' parts of me had hidden away memories of much, much greater cruelty. In fact, these parts had had first-hand experience with some of the most depraved acts humans can inflict on each other." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 31-32)

    The calculated evil of my childhood abuse was so vast that I created many 'pretend friends' to hold those memories. In my mind the terrible things happened to 'them' and not to me. As a result, I had no memories of the evil inflicted upon me, but the fear of evil was so deeply ingrained in what was left of me, that I couldn't bear the thought of any cruelty or evil even existing in the world. SO, I created a world I could handle, a world where no one was ever unkind and where there was no such thing as evil. When events happened to rock that belief system, I was devastated, but would quickly return to the belief system of the world I had created. Unfortunately, this make-believe perfect world was eventually shattered.

    "Looking back on my life as a child, it is no surprise that I often developed friendships with women my mother's age. I would try to attach myself to a camp leader or a school teacher, only to have my mother disapprovingly say, 'Oh, don't bother her!'"
    "Despite this craving to attach myself to other 'mothers,' the early 'training' from 'the mom,' combined with very deliberate brainwashing by other adults (which will be discussed later), produced an extreme reluctance on my part to open up to people. I was obsessed with thoughts of:
    "'I'm too much trouble.'
    "'I'm in the way.'
    "'I'm bothering them.'
    "'They wish I wasn't here.'
    "'The whole world would be better off if I didn't exist.'"
    "I was a sensitive child and at least one part of me was overly concerned with perfection. I wanted so badly to be good, to be a perfect child, because I believed that if I could somehow be good enough and perfect enough maybe someone could love me. Maybe even God could love me.
    "As a kindergartener, I was given an assignment to draw lines connecting pictures arranged in two columns. Each picture in column A somehow related to a picture in column B and I was to draw lines connecting the associated pictures. I just knew that I would do the task perfectly, and I naively said to myself:
    "'If I try really hard, I'm sure I can do it perfect. In fact, if I try really, really hard, I can do all my assignments perfect forever. I bet I will be the first person to ever go through twelve whole years of school without making a single mistake on my papers!'"
    "But this was not to be. The teacher saw that I had simply drawn horizontal lines from one column of pictures to the next, not paying attention to whether the pictures matched or not. She told me that I had done it incorrectly, that I had misunderstood the directions. I tried not to cry, but the tears just wouldn't stay inside. I was so sad and dejected. Why? Because I was desperate to be a perfect shild in order to be loved." (My Tears Fall Inside, selections from pages 29-31.)

    Do you know anyone who struggles with perfectionism? Is this a challenge for you? Is the underlying reason for this thinking because of the deduction that perfection is necessary in order to be lovable--even by God? It took me many years to realize that God loves me (and YOU) the way I am right now--even with my imperfections. (Do you cease to love your children because they make mistakes?) He sees our life as a process and is just happy with however we are learning and growing along the way.

    "When I was a child, my family lived in a rundown farmhouse. . . You might say we were 'land rich but cash poor.' . . .
    "My father was rarely an emotional presence in my early life, and he even had trouble being a physical presence because of the massive amount of work involved in running a farm. . .
    "When I was only three years old, my grandfather, my father's father, died, leaving the entire burden of the farm to my father. He inherited the 360 acre dairy farm and was responsible for 50 dairy cows that required milking early every morning and evening. My father's burden included growing a potato crop and hay for the cattle each year. . .
    "My life as a farm girl lasted only until I was ten. . . Financial pressures finally caused my father to explore other possibilities. He chose to leave the farming life and go back to school.
    "Throughout my life, my Swiss-German mother made sure her children had the physical necessities of life. We were clothed and fed, but that's about all she was capable of providing. By the time I came along, my mother had given birth to three children in three years.
    "My older sister died after only 24 hours of life. By the time I was five years old my mother was raising five children under the age of seven. She was under extreme stress and was continually too exhausted by her efforts to meet our physical needs to be sensitive enough to our emotional needs, including providing comfort and nurturing.
    "In reality, I was unable to find safe love anywhere in my childhood. . . My extended family included a paternal grandfather who died when I was only three years old. My maternal grandmother also died that year, and my paternal grandmother had already passed away before I was born. The only possible relationship I could have enjoyed with a grandparent was with my mother's father. My grandfather lived nearby for the first two years of my life, but then moved back to his native Switzerland, rarely returning to visit us.
    . . . "Only in looking back on this experience do I appreciate the irony that the only person in my life who was truly capable of providing effective warmth and nurturing lived thousands of miles away and hadn't been a part of my childhood. Ironically, everyone (including me) thought my life was happy and perfect. Because they were busy raising nine children, my parents were unaware that I was hurting and needed an outpouring of love and support." (My Tears Fall Inside, excerpts from pages 25-27.)

    Sometimes parents are innocently unaware of the internal pain their children are suffering. As we observe the children and adults around us, is there someone we can reach out to, and help them feel loved and important?

    "Holding up two small photographs, my friend shook his head in amazement."
    "'These can't be the same person,' he said incredulously."
    "He was right. Even though both photographs were childhood pictures of me, the     'me's' in each image were as different as two completely different people could be. Sifting through the many photos in my album depicting the person known to the world as 'Shawna,' my friend seemed confused."
    "'There's no common thread,' he complained. 'As I see you growing up in these pictures, I honestly can't tell that there are similarities from one picture to the next.'"
    "I picked up a black-and-white photograph of a 'me' that was three years old. This particular version of me stood next to my smiling mother. In the picture, I was looking directly into the camera with eyes framed by 'dirty blond' hair, my left arm raised to my mouth, and I was chewing the back of my hand.
    "As I lifted this picture from the table, I suddenly realized that as an adult, whenever this three-year-old child would come forward from inside of me to express her pain, she would always bite the back of her left hand. . .
    "My friend continued to look through the photo album. There were faded photographs of me at various stages of maturation. In one, I was five years old; in another I was ten. In others I was pre-adolescent and in others, a teenager. Several of the photgraphs were family pictures, but in each picture my friend was unable to identify which of the children was me. . .
    "It was obvious, when looking over these photographs, that I was capable of becoming completely different people at different times. The result of my ability to 'split off' into other 'people' or 'personalities' were obvious, even to someone who sees only my frozen image without being able to observe the different ways I behaved, and/or hear the altered voices coming from my mouth. While the differences were obvious, the causes were not. What caused little Shawna to split into multiple parts that would look so physically different when captured on a still photograph? I later realized my ability to 'split off' was God's way of allowing me to live my life normally until I became old enough to deal with the horrors of my past." (My Tears Fall Inside, selections from pages 21-24) 

    Normal young children are very creative and many have a pretend friend. My childhood abuse was so extreme that I created many "pretend friends" to help me. In my mind, those terrible things happened to the "pretend friends" and not to me. In that way, I was able to separate my conscious self from the bad things I lived through. With the memories forgotten, I was able to live my life normally. These wonderful "pretend friends" or "parts" kept all the terrible memories hidden from my consciousness until my mind determined that I was strong enough to process those hidden memories.