When a Movie (& People!) Heal

7/27/23

Dear delightful person, 

How you be doin’? 🙂 

Can you laugh at yourself? I’m really glad to be doing that more and more; gives me ample chances to guffaw throughout the day! (Not that I always take the opportunity, though! :))

While walking with a friend, ‘E’, there was a type of tree I’d never noticed before and went on and on about how unique it was, touching the various parts of it, etc. E told me it was a Smoke Tree. 

A couple days later I was looking around my yard and noticed, there was Smoke tree that’s been thriving here for at least as long as I have! Wonder how many times I’ve mown around the thing? 

(Doh!)

Went to see the “Sound of Freedom” movie twice. 

(Yikes!)

Much gratitude to the friend, ‘R’, who went with me the first time. 

(Thank you ‘R’.)

I was asked by several people to go with ‘groups’ but wasn’t going to do that the first time because I figured the movie would roil up some hellish memories and emotions and I didn’t want witnesses.

But wasn’t sure I wanted to go alone, either. Sometimes I just want someone SAFE next to me when facing some of the darkness and past. 

Anyway, R initially asked if I wanted to go with a few people; I explained why that wouldn’t be a good idea.

She understood and asked if I would go with just her. 

How cool was that?

So, we went. 

I think the hardest part of the movie was at the beginning, when they were focusing on the child sexually abusive material.

That brought back a couple of the memories of that era of hell, along with a subdued sense of the horror, terror and shame.  Got to wondering once again, who all saw the pictures, if there’s any still around, and how horrifying it is for every other survivor of that heinous crime, especially now-a-days with the ‘world wide web’. How many perpetrators potentially witness the abject horror and shame and humiliation that a survivor experiences? Not to mention knowing so many people are laughing, denying, minimizing, and/or ‘getting off’ on some of the most horrific, traumatizing and terrorizing times of our lives. 

That left gratitude that my personal experiences happened before the digital age, and more empathy for those who’ve survived it since.

Those digital images can never be completely expunged off the internet, nor out of the memories of those who chose to perversely look at them, and more importantly, in the minds and hearts of the survivors. 

Trust me, one cannot ‘overstate’ the horror of it all, nor minimize the effects when honestly and fully acknowledged. 

But thankfully, after getting out of it and as time goes on and we deal with it, the effects become increasingly muted; but there are still moments, when triggered, the intensity ramps up again. 

(Ouch.)

So, back to the movie. 

Not sure when it happened, but my friend just quietly reached over and grabbed my hand, and that meant so much. She didn’t say anything nor look at me with pity or anything, just reached over and let me know I wasn’t alone anymore. Don’t know if she fully understands the full impact and effects of surviving child sexually abusive material and trafficking but for a couple of hours she was an antidote to it. 

(Thank you, R.)

What surprised me most about the movie was, for the first time EVER I could actually accept that the men trying to rescue the children genuinely CARED. Never realized how much I had previously believed that any man would SAY they’re trying to help a child in that situation, but then use the child later, after ’rescuing’ them, for their own private perversion. 

So Hallelujah! God (and I!) are healing the heart and mind some more!

Another part that really got to me was when they showed the little girl about to be annihilated in the motel room, then her sobbing in the bathtub afterwards. I so get that desire to wash yourself clean of something that also broke your mind and heart so much, which cannot be scrubbed away no matter how hard you try. BUT,

Thankfully, with faith and doing the work it takes to heal, survivors gain perspective that the awful shame and guilt were never ours to begin with. We can then start the process of putting it back where it belongs – on the perpetrators and those who protect them. 

What’s been amazing pertaining to that is, I’ve had a couple of times recently where I was completely free of the old shame and guilt. Not sure why they didn’t last, but as I remember them I can take myself back into that freedom and just SMILE and wonder at how much more lighter and fun and easier life is when that onus is lifted. 

It also causes me to realize how so many things I did over the years I’ve put a dark connotation on, believing the worst in the actions and myself (like I imagine everyone else does). I can now see I was rarely ‘guilty’ to begin with. 

And the thing is, until I had those moments of freedom, I never fathomed just how much (unearned) guilt and shame I was carrying, and how it was literally tainting e-v-e-r-y thought and action. 

(Someday soon I’m gonna write a post about things survivors do to protect ourselves that others can judge pretty harshly because they don’t understand.)

The second time I saw “Sound of Freedom”, it was with a group. I knew several of the people personally, and to be honest, didn’t trust any of them with the emotional pain. 

At the end of the movie I didn’t want to leave until after everyone else so as to avoid having to be socially ‘correct’ in that state of mind. Before they couple of the women who know my story looked at me with what I think of as ‘mock pity’. Don’t think THEY mean it that way, but when someone looks at another who is in real pain with a mixture of pity and smiling in their eyes, I can’t take them seriously and it just ticks me off. 

But what shocked me was, even though I had ensconced myself in emotional barbed wire to keep them at bay, one of those ladies plowed right through it and gave me such a tight hug and held me for a few moments. That broke the chains from the proverbial self protective fence and I started weeping and babbling and releasing some of the pent up emotions. 

Thank you, T.

Facing one’s own demons can be so difficult, especially when we don’t now how it’s going to end. But when we step towards them and relinquish control to a HIGHER Power, that’s when God can provide the ‘omni’ strength and wisdom we don’t have, and the antidotes to heal us.

If you’re carrying any mental/emotional baggage please know you, too, are worthy of doing what you can be freed from it and live a full life. It’s what we all deserve.

AMEN!

(Still haven’t had the modem repaired from a lightening strike several weeks ago so I’m borrowing someone else’s internet right now. I know the post could use more editing, and I don’t have the time to figure out a song again. I hope the post still ‘works’ and is understandable. ~ Pearl)