"A look at the journals from my youth and adulthood reveals another 'Cinderella slipper.' My handwriting would change dramatically, as if the writer were different people. Sometimes on only a two page spread, there were three or four totally different styles. On one page, my cursive letters would be very large and full of big loops, and only a few sentences later it would turn instantly into tiny printing. . .
"What I didn't realize for quite some time was that I was a person who had distinctly different parts of my personality. These parts were so different from each other, in fact, that they had different mannerisms, different ways of talking, and different handwriting. Several of these parts would take over at different times while I was growing up. Some simply waited quietly in some mental 'closet' for a later time when I was ready to heal. In the healing process, personality parts would act as 'guideposts' to help me map my way back to wholeness and healing.
"From my childhood to my adulthood, I did not consciously know all the horrible things that had happened to me. . . Later, in my 30's, I experienced triggers, body memories, panic attacks, unexplained bruises and the realization of broken bones, as previously described. Conscious recognition of the reality and enormity of what had happened to me came to the surface one piece at a time, paced in a way that would allow me to 'survive the healing.'
"Having multiple personality parts was ideal for a paced healing process. Each part retained only a small portion of an experience, thus the process of gaining a conscious awareness of my childhood abuse meant I had to wait until each part of me felt safe enough to share with my whole. If I had taken years' worth of horrors and processed them all at once, I would not have survived." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 49-50)
Sometimes God gives us unusual gifts and we don't even recognize them as gifts until many years later, or not at all. The fact that God gave me the ability to develop multiple personalities as a very young child, also gave me the ability to totally block out all of the horrible memories. In this way, I was able to lead a normal life and the memories did not come back to me until I was "capable" of dealing with them. Look carefully. What gifts has God given you?
"What I didn't realize for quite some time was that I was a person who had distinctly different parts of my personality. These parts were so different from each other, in fact, that they had different mannerisms, different ways of talking, and different handwriting. Several of these parts would take over at different times while I was growing up. Some simply waited quietly in some mental 'closet' for a later time when I was ready to heal. In the healing process, personality parts would act as 'guideposts' to help me map my way back to wholeness and healing.
"From my childhood to my adulthood, I did not consciously know all the horrible things that had happened to me. . . Later, in my 30's, I experienced triggers, body memories, panic attacks, unexplained bruises and the realization of broken bones, as previously described. Conscious recognition of the reality and enormity of what had happened to me came to the surface one piece at a time, paced in a way that would allow me to 'survive the healing.'
"Having multiple personality parts was ideal for a paced healing process. Each part retained only a small portion of an experience, thus the process of gaining a conscious awareness of my childhood abuse meant I had to wait until each part of me felt safe enough to share with my whole. If I had taken years' worth of horrors and processed them all at once, I would not have survived." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 49-50)
Sometimes God gives us unusual gifts and we don't even recognize them as gifts until many years later, or not at all. The fact that God gave me the ability to develop multiple personalities as a very young child, also gave me the ability to totally block out all of the horrible memories. In this way, I was able to lead a normal life and the memories did not come back to me until I was "capable" of dealing with them. Look carefully. What gifts has God given you?
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