Pamela Taeuffer's Blog - Posts Tagged "relationships"
Finding Intimacy
Married twenty-seven years, my husband and I had retreated to the darkest recesses of our caves, ignoring each other, sitting separately, often going to bed hours after the other, and barely kissing good-bye or saying “I love you” during the day.
I’d had the crap knocked out of me that year, by employees who’d gathered together and decided to bring false claims against me, all the while trying to steal clients and business away.
Is it my fault for trusting too much or becoming too relaxed? Yeah, I’ll admit that. But I’m also a romantic. I tend to dream and see the flowers along the path, while ignoring the slugs.
I can’t pinpoint the day when I began to see a brass ring shining again, but I presume it was one night while I sat up writing sometime between three and four in the morning. It had become a habit for me, staying up late, not having to go to bed and touch my husband or hear him snore, or feel the separateness of being together.
Does that make sense?
Even as we lay next to each other, we were both very lonely. We’d gone to therapy, we’d tried the dance of talking it through, but we always retreated after a few weak attempts at working it our.
The oddest part of it all, is that it wasn’t over money, or sex, or children. There wasn’t anything wrong in those areas. What it was, was that we’d become only friends, and I began to resent it. And I REALLY started to resent it when I started my books, The Broken Bottles Series, so named after my father’s alcoholism.
I waned to tell more than that. Sure, I went through what thousands and thousands of others have, a child of trauma, mental and physical abuse from the alcoholic or addicted parent, but what was it from all of those shadows that made me afraid to walk up to my husband and ask for intimacy and love?
Why were the words so hard? I only had to say, “Honey, I want more. I want your lips on mine, and your arms around my body.”
You’d think after that many years it would be easy.
But it wasn’t.
I began to examine why not. As I peeled back my layers, I began to understand what being a child of alcoholism does: it shuts you down, closes your heart, and makes you afraid — it made me very afraid. I knew I’d be abandoned because I wasn’t even the first choice of my father. He chose his bottle over me. How could I ever hope anyone would love me?
And also, why do so many couples end up as friends as they transition into their fifties (or even younger)?
What is it that fades away? Why can’t we each ask for what we want and find our voice with each other?
And that, my friends, is the crux of Shadow Heart, Fire Heart, and the novels to come in the Broken Bottles Series. I have three missions:
1. I want to show what the effects are from growing up in a family battling addiction. It’s not only the fears of mental or physical abuse, it’s the every day choices we make — the way we dress, comb our hair, socialize, participate — they’re all because of how we grew up.
2. I want to take the dirty our of sex. It’s healthy, it opens the heart, and keeps us talking, communication, and asking for what we want.
3. I want to encourage people, wherever they are in their lives to openly ask for what they really want from each other.
We can’t read minds, and we can’t guess. Say it!
DISCUSSION: What is the first step (baby steps) you could do to ask for what you want? Do you even know how? Don’t feel bad, I didn’t!
I’d had the crap knocked out of me that year, by employees who’d gathered together and decided to bring false claims against me, all the while trying to steal clients and business away.
Is it my fault for trusting too much or becoming too relaxed? Yeah, I’ll admit that. But I’m also a romantic. I tend to dream and see the flowers along the path, while ignoring the slugs.
I can’t pinpoint the day when I began to see a brass ring shining again, but I presume it was one night while I sat up writing sometime between three and four in the morning. It had become a habit for me, staying up late, not having to go to bed and touch my husband or hear him snore, or feel the separateness of being together.
Does that make sense?
Even as we lay next to each other, we were both very lonely. We’d gone to therapy, we’d tried the dance of talking it through, but we always retreated after a few weak attempts at working it our.
The oddest part of it all, is that it wasn’t over money, or sex, or children. There wasn’t anything wrong in those areas. What it was, was that we’d become only friends, and I began to resent it. And I REALLY started to resent it when I started my books, The Broken Bottles Series, so named after my father’s alcoholism.
I waned to tell more than that. Sure, I went through what thousands and thousands of others have, a child of trauma, mental and physical abuse from the alcoholic or addicted parent, but what was it from all of those shadows that made me afraid to walk up to my husband and ask for intimacy and love?
Why were the words so hard? I only had to say, “Honey, I want more. I want your lips on mine, and your arms around my body.”
You’d think after that many years it would be easy.
But it wasn’t.
I began to examine why not. As I peeled back my layers, I began to understand what being a child of alcoholism does: it shuts you down, closes your heart, and makes you afraid — it made me very afraid. I knew I’d be abandoned because I wasn’t even the first choice of my father. He chose his bottle over me. How could I ever hope anyone would love me?
And also, why do so many couples end up as friends as they transition into their fifties (or even younger)?
What is it that fades away? Why can’t we each ask for what we want and find our voice with each other?
And that, my friends, is the crux of Shadow Heart, Fire Heart, and the novels to come in the Broken Bottles Series. I have three missions:
1. I want to show what the effects are from growing up in a family battling addiction. It’s not only the fears of mental or physical abuse, it’s the every day choices we make — the way we dress, comb our hair, socialize, participate — they’re all because of how we grew up.
2. I want to take the dirty our of sex. It’s healthy, it opens the heart, and keeps us talking, communication, and asking for what we want.
3. I want to encourage people, wherever they are in their lives to openly ask for what they really want from each other.
We can’t read minds, and we can’t guess. Say it!
DISCUSSION: What is the first step (baby steps) you could do to ask for what you want? Do you even know how? Don’t feel bad, I didn’t!
Finding Intimacy - A Little Girl's Voice Begins to Form
Shadow Heart Jenise and I make faces when our dad opens a can of creamed corn to serve us for dinner. He doesn’t care that this is the one food my sister and I hate more than anything.
I can see leftovers in the refrigerator and other cans of food stacked in the cupboard we like, but it doesn’t matter. It feels like we could’ve been given garbage to eat if that was the nearest and easiest thing for him to grab.
As the opener tears at the metal of the can, grinding jaggedly and twisting it a circle, we sit and wait, and quietly understand: we’re going to bed hungry.
But we also know tomorrow our mom will reward us with presents for being good girls. It might be a new doll, or maybe she’ll treat us to a movie, or her favorite . . . bringing home a supply of sugary snacks.
I can already taste my favorite candy bar—milk chocolate covering caramel and a cookie. But if she brings me a quart of chocolate chip ice cream, that’s just as nice.
“Yuck,” I say to myself as I take a spoonful of the cold, canned corn, forcing it down so I can please dad and get out of the kitchen as fast as I can.
We swallowed everything that way—one spoonful at a time to survive.
Jenise isn’t eating. “Jenise,” I whisper. “Eat.”
Why won’t she eat? She will not give in. No, my sister isn’t that kind of peacemaker. She doesn’t seem to hear his feet pounding the kitchen floor, waiting, angry, as he counts down the minutes to send us to our baths and then to bed.
I watch in dread, afraid for what’s coming as her little body becomes rigid, bracing for what even she knows will be a storm.
She’s daring him! Oh no, don’t!
She plants her feet firmly on the black and white squares of linoleum and refuses every kernel.
“We don’t like creamed corn,” my sister says stubbornly.
This night, there’s no protection from the explosion lying just under his surface. It’s ready to boil, ready to burst, ready to—punish.
“Eat it now,” my father warns. His voice is detached and cold.
But my sister, my hero, she will not back down, and now my father’s face is a brilliant red, and his demons, the ones I’ve seen before, take him over.
Perhaps my father’s anger came from the disappointment of failing as a good parent. Maybe somewhere deep inside he was hiding, protecting his vulnerability, still the nine-year-old boy who couldn’t be soothed when his own father died.
Maybe it was the guilt that consumed him when he looked in the mirror and saw a young man who refused to stay home and take care of his mother as she sought relief from her addiction to prescription pills. Instead of facing that, he had joined the U.S. Army.
Did that tear his heart into pieces? She ended up such a delicate and frail woman. Did he feel guilty about leaving her? Or worse, did he feel by leaving, he made her that way?
Whatever the reason, tonight, his spark ignites. I watch in horror as his flushed face knots up in hatred because we stand between him and his liquid candy.
* HOW DID YOUR VOICE BEGIN TO FORM?
* WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY OF SOMETHING BEING A LITTLE OFF IN YOUR FAMILY?
I can see leftovers in the refrigerator and other cans of food stacked in the cupboard we like, but it doesn’t matter. It feels like we could’ve been given garbage to eat if that was the nearest and easiest thing for him to grab.
As the opener tears at the metal of the can, grinding jaggedly and twisting it a circle, we sit and wait, and quietly understand: we’re going to bed hungry.
But we also know tomorrow our mom will reward us with presents for being good girls. It might be a new doll, or maybe she’ll treat us to a movie, or her favorite . . . bringing home a supply of sugary snacks.
I can already taste my favorite candy bar—milk chocolate covering caramel and a cookie. But if she brings me a quart of chocolate chip ice cream, that’s just as nice.
“Yuck,” I say to myself as I take a spoonful of the cold, canned corn, forcing it down so I can please dad and get out of the kitchen as fast as I can.
We swallowed everything that way—one spoonful at a time to survive.
Jenise isn’t eating. “Jenise,” I whisper. “Eat.”
Why won’t she eat? She will not give in. No, my sister isn’t that kind of peacemaker. She doesn’t seem to hear his feet pounding the kitchen floor, waiting, angry, as he counts down the minutes to send us to our baths and then to bed.
I watch in dread, afraid for what’s coming as her little body becomes rigid, bracing for what even she knows will be a storm.
She’s daring him! Oh no, don’t!
She plants her feet firmly on the black and white squares of linoleum and refuses every kernel.
“We don’t like creamed corn,” my sister says stubbornly.
This night, there’s no protection from the explosion lying just under his surface. It’s ready to boil, ready to burst, ready to—punish.
“Eat it now,” my father warns. His voice is detached and cold.
But my sister, my hero, she will not back down, and now my father’s face is a brilliant red, and his demons, the ones I’ve seen before, take him over.
Perhaps my father’s anger came from the disappointment of failing as a good parent. Maybe somewhere deep inside he was hiding, protecting his vulnerability, still the nine-year-old boy who couldn’t be soothed when his own father died.
Maybe it was the guilt that consumed him when he looked in the mirror and saw a young man who refused to stay home and take care of his mother as she sought relief from her addiction to prescription pills. Instead of facing that, he had joined the U.S. Army.
Did that tear his heart into pieces? She ended up such a delicate and frail woman. Did he feel guilty about leaving her? Or worse, did he feel by leaving, he made her that way?
Whatever the reason, tonight, his spark ignites. I watch in horror as his flushed face knots up in hatred because we stand between him and his liquid candy.
* HOW DID YOUR VOICE BEGIN TO FORM?
* WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY OF SOMETHING BEING A LITTLE OFF IN YOUR FAMILY?
Shutting Our Hearts Down, Views from Childhood
Keeping my screams pressed down, I hold my hand over my mouth and watch when he takes the back of Jenise's head and shoves her face hard into the bowl of creamed corn.
She lifts her head slowly and turns to the side after he takes his hand away. I'm frozen as I watch her look at me, her shock mixed with the corn that drips off her nose, hidden in her burning eyes as she wipes them, and within her lungs as she gasps for air.
As soon as it happens, my defenses click in and I detach. My father's demon swirls around us, come to possess every breath we take. I don't look at the monster in our kitchen; I'm terrified he's going to hurt us—badly.
My dreams begin, and more than the physical act of violence itself, I notice the smaller details around me like the colors in our kitchen.
I see the pale yellow of the corn as it drips down Jenise's face. It matches the paint on the walls. I see the white of the porcelain bowl as it rocks back and forth from the shock of her face smashed down in it.
I hear the sound of dullness made by the spoon that once rested by the bowl of corn, now fallen to the floor, and I see the beautiful color of my sister's hazel eyes as they squint and blink.
THIS SCENE TAKES PLACE WHEN NICKY AND JENISE'S FATHER RAGES, WANTING DESPERATELY FOR HIS DAUGHTERS TO GET OUT OF THE WAY SO HE CAN DRINK. THEIR FATHER HAS JUST SHOVED NICKY'S SISTER'S FACE INTO A BOWL OF CREAMED CORN BECAUSE SHE'S CHALLENGED HIM.
THE POINT OF VIEW IS FROM NICKY AT 8 YRS. OLD.
I watch her mouth open as she tries to regain her breath and her white shirt becomes blotched with stains the color of butter. My eyes see the sky blue of the vinyl booth I sit in and the white rope of the leather ribbing that seams it.
A few years earlier I'd taken a knife and sliced it, making neat and orderly cuts about an inch apart, beginning at my father's seat and ending to my left at my sister's spot.
It was as if I tried to cut myself away from the yelling, terror, and disgust, perhaps even to cut myself out of my family. Anywhere seemed better than being at the dinner table with them.
Everything moves in slow motion, except when my father takes his belt from the loops in his pants; that move was so quick it seems blurred to my eyes.
One half of my mind knows my body is present within the trauma and craziness, and the other half is somewhere in the shadows, observing.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST MOMENT YOU FELT SOMETHING OFF? NOT NECESSARILY IN CHILDHOOD, BUT ALSO GROWING UP? HOW DID YOU FIND YOUR VOICE?
WHEN DID YOU LET YOUR HEART OPEN FOR DEEPER INTIMACY, NO LONGER AFRAID?
She lifts her head slowly and turns to the side after he takes his hand away. I'm frozen as I watch her look at me, her shock mixed with the corn that drips off her nose, hidden in her burning eyes as she wipes them, and within her lungs as she gasps for air.
As soon as it happens, my defenses click in and I detach. My father's demon swirls around us, come to possess every breath we take. I don't look at the monster in our kitchen; I'm terrified he's going to hurt us—badly.
My dreams begin, and more than the physical act of violence itself, I notice the smaller details around me like the colors in our kitchen.
I see the pale yellow of the corn as it drips down Jenise's face. It matches the paint on the walls. I see the white of the porcelain bowl as it rocks back and forth from the shock of her face smashed down in it.
I hear the sound of dullness made by the spoon that once rested by the bowl of corn, now fallen to the floor, and I see the beautiful color of my sister's hazel eyes as they squint and blink.
THIS SCENE TAKES PLACE WHEN NICKY AND JENISE'S FATHER RAGES, WANTING DESPERATELY FOR HIS DAUGHTERS TO GET OUT OF THE WAY SO HE CAN DRINK. THEIR FATHER HAS JUST SHOVED NICKY'S SISTER'S FACE INTO A BOWL OF CREAMED CORN BECAUSE SHE'S CHALLENGED HIM.
THE POINT OF VIEW IS FROM NICKY AT 8 YRS. OLD.
I watch her mouth open as she tries to regain her breath and her white shirt becomes blotched with stains the color of butter. My eyes see the sky blue of the vinyl booth I sit in and the white rope of the leather ribbing that seams it.
A few years earlier I'd taken a knife and sliced it, making neat and orderly cuts about an inch apart, beginning at my father's seat and ending to my left at my sister's spot.
It was as if I tried to cut myself away from the yelling, terror, and disgust, perhaps even to cut myself out of my family. Anywhere seemed better than being at the dinner table with them.
Everything moves in slow motion, except when my father takes his belt from the loops in his pants; that move was so quick it seems blurred to my eyes.
One half of my mind knows my body is present within the trauma and craziness, and the other half is somewhere in the shadows, observing.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST MOMENT YOU FELT SOMETHING OFF? NOT NECESSARILY IN CHILDHOOD, BUT ALSO GROWING UP? HOW DID YOU FIND YOUR VOICE?
WHEN DID YOU LET YOUR HEART OPEN FOR DEEPER INTIMACY, NO LONGER AFRAID?
A Romance Novel, Coming of Age, Intimacy, Addiction, Family
So to recap Chapter 1 of Shadow Heart, the first novel in the Broken Bottles Series.
What are the challenges of our heroine, Nicky Young?
The story opens up as we hear her voice, at some age, talking about a time when she was eight years old and witnessed her father's rage toward Jenise, her sister, just because they wouldn't eat the cold creamed corn their father served them.
We also hear Nicky open her story by talking about her little prayer, the way most little girls and boys pray, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . . and please make my father quit drinking."
In fact I prayed this way every night growing up, because you see, Nicky in many ways is me.
No amount of prayer changed my father. Sometimes he paused for a week, a month, a day . . . one time he was sober for eight months. What a joy it was to have my dad back. But you know what? It also heightened my anxiety.
Why?
Because a new edge was sharpened on my survival "knife." Now each day I waited, dreading the man who was bound to fall off the wagon, once again red faced, seeking sloppy love when all we wanted to do was push him away.
Have you felt like that?
Growing up under any trauma makes us not only survivors, but keen observers, adept at analysis, and listeners like no other, but we need to weave and dodge through the bullets of dysfunction.
So what do we know by knowing Nicky in chapter 1? She prays, which means she must have had some exposure to religion of some sort.
She talks about the things she knows:
1. Something bad is coming; it always does.
2. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed.
3. I can't talk about our secrets; no one else understands.
4. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Children of addiction/trauma learn by being abandoned. We are promised, day after day that this will be the holiday, birthday, school even, that our parent or loved one will be sober. But of course they choose the bottle or drug of choice over us.
We're sure no other family is going through it, and we know we have to keep secrets.
What else do we know?
Nicky's mother has gone through the same thing. She screams out loud in the Arizona desert in the summer monsoons to have the floods take her away from her home.
What does Nicky know now after watching her sister's punishment?
She's not safe.
Her mother can't protect her.
Her father is no longer who he once was.
She knows, it's all up to her, and she'd better pave her own road because no one is there to help her.
WHEN DID YOU REALIZE IT WAS ALL UP TO YOU?
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ROMANCE?
AAAHHH! JUST WAIT…IT'S COMING! DEEP, SENSUAL INTIMACY…WILL NICKY LEARN HOW TO GET IT?Shadow Heart
What are the challenges of our heroine, Nicky Young?
The story opens up as we hear her voice, at some age, talking about a time when she was eight years old and witnessed her father's rage toward Jenise, her sister, just because they wouldn't eat the cold creamed corn their father served them.
We also hear Nicky open her story by talking about her little prayer, the way most little girls and boys pray, "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . . and please make my father quit drinking."
In fact I prayed this way every night growing up, because you see, Nicky in many ways is me.
No amount of prayer changed my father. Sometimes he paused for a week, a month, a day . . . one time he was sober for eight months. What a joy it was to have my dad back. But you know what? It also heightened my anxiety.
Why?
Because a new edge was sharpened on my survival "knife." Now each day I waited, dreading the man who was bound to fall off the wagon, once again red faced, seeking sloppy love when all we wanted to do was push him away.
Have you felt like that?
Growing up under any trauma makes us not only survivors, but keen observers, adept at analysis, and listeners like no other, but we need to weave and dodge through the bullets of dysfunction.
So what do we know by knowing Nicky in chapter 1? She prays, which means she must have had some exposure to religion of some sort.
She talks about the things she knows:
1. Something bad is coming; it always does.
2. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed.
3. I can't talk about our secrets; no one else understands.
4. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Children of addiction/trauma learn by being abandoned. We are promised, day after day that this will be the holiday, birthday, school even, that our parent or loved one will be sober. But of course they choose the bottle or drug of choice over us.
We're sure no other family is going through it, and we know we have to keep secrets.
What else do we know?
Nicky's mother has gone through the same thing. She screams out loud in the Arizona desert in the summer monsoons to have the floods take her away from her home.
What does Nicky know now after watching her sister's punishment?
She's not safe.
Her mother can't protect her.
Her father is no longer who he once was.
She knows, it's all up to her, and she'd better pave her own road because no one is there to help her.
WHEN DID YOU REALIZE IT WAS ALL UP TO YOU?
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ROMANCE?
AAAHHH! JUST WAIT…IT'S COMING! DEEP, SENSUAL INTIMACY…WILL NICKY LEARN HOW TO GET IT?Shadow Heart
When is it time to talk about family secrets?
Shadow Heart* If you've been raised in family addiction, you know what family secrets are.
* When you cover family secrets, do you feel like no one will understand?
* When you feel alone, do you feel abandoned?
THERE'S NO RIGHT TIME TO BEGIN TO TELL YOU STORY.
EXPLAIN, EXPLORE, HELP OTHERS TO DISCOVER -- THEY AREN'T ALONE. MILLIONS HAVE COME FROM GENERATIONS BEFORE, TRYING TO STOP THE DYSFUNCTION.
When your story involves dark family secrets, secrets that need to be told, secrets that may offend dead, alive, those in denial, those willing to share, and reveal . . . just when do you decide to write those things?
Sisters ttrying to protect themselves against dark family secrets
I have a friend whose siblings curse her for telling her dark family story. Even though her book is magnificent, brilliantly revealing the raw, bare details of growing up in dysfunction, helping others better understand the effects of being raised in addiction.
I have a sibling who wants it out, along with me, so that others may walk perhaps a little more lightly when they realize "it's not them" it's the survival from four years old, it's the walking on eggshells every day, and it's the fear of being driven to the bar, then home, by a parent who is drunk.
When do those secrets come out and the feelings of being terrified and shamed and abandoned night after night as we took care of our own needs, even though my sister and I were only 4 and 7 years old?
When is it time?
Why should those secrets lay buried?
Should the ones who brought the darkness down on us be spared?
Should the ones who abused us stay hidden?
When is it time?
* When you cover family secrets, do you feel like no one will understand?
* When you feel alone, do you feel abandoned?
THERE'S NO RIGHT TIME TO BEGIN TO TELL YOU STORY.
EXPLAIN, EXPLORE, HELP OTHERS TO DISCOVER -- THEY AREN'T ALONE. MILLIONS HAVE COME FROM GENERATIONS BEFORE, TRYING TO STOP THE DYSFUNCTION.
When your story involves dark family secrets, secrets that need to be told, secrets that may offend dead, alive, those in denial, those willing to share, and reveal . . . just when do you decide to write those things?
Sisters ttrying to protect themselves against dark family secrets
I have a friend whose siblings curse her for telling her dark family story. Even though her book is magnificent, brilliantly revealing the raw, bare details of growing up in dysfunction, helping others better understand the effects of being raised in addiction.
I have a sibling who wants it out, along with me, so that others may walk perhaps a little more lightly when they realize "it's not them" it's the survival from four years old, it's the walking on eggshells every day, and it's the fear of being driven to the bar, then home, by a parent who is drunk.
When do those secrets come out and the feelings of being terrified and shamed and abandoned night after night as we took care of our own needs, even though my sister and I were only 4 and 7 years old?
When is it time?
Why should those secrets lay buried?
Should the ones who brought the darkness down on us be spared?
Should the ones who abused us stay hidden?
When is it time?
SHADOW HEART: Emotional and Physical Shock
My sister came home in shock.
She looked dead.
In some ways, emotionally, we were all dead.
My father numbed his body and mind with alcohol.
I numbed myself with staying busy.
My mom numbed herself escaping into her romance novels.
Now my sister would be numb in a different way.
“Where have you been?” My mother asked angrily. “I was so worried.” Calmly and without emotion, her body in shock, Jenise answered, “I was raped.”
I saw my mother’s face become stone, trying her best not to let the hurt inside.
“I want to take a shower,” Jenise said as if she were a zombie.
“Just stay right there. Don’t move, wash, or take anything off. Don’t even comb your hair. We need to go to the hospital first,” my mother said. She was well aware of the protocol for rape from taking care of the girls at “Juvie” who’d been attacked.
I don’t know if she wanted to take her daughter in her arms and tell her she was sorry for what happened and that she loved her, but she didn’t.
As always, she did a good job of pushing her emotions down, not losing control, or escalating an already delicate situation.
“Watch your sister,” mom said, as she rushed to her bedroom, got dressed, and then came downstairs. I heard her in the kitchen on the phone to the hospital asking for a “SANE” professional—someone trained in rape trauma—to be present with a rape kit.
After hanging up, she walked down the hallway and grabbed her purse and keys off the small table by the front door, while my sister stood motionless.
When Jenise finally lifted her head and looked at me so helplessly, her sad eyes screaming, “Why did this happen to me?” I turned away.
Her expression said it all. Her spirit was gone and I didn’t know how to process the pain I felt from seeing her that way.
She’d been my hero.
I didn’t want to hear her talk about her violated body, the strength that was ripped out of her, or the ways in which her innocence was lost, and taken by some power-crazed, sick man.
I knew she’d never look at life the same way again.
Won't you join the discussion of family dysfunction, love, romance, and seeking emotional intimacy?
www.PamelaTaeuffer.com
Facebook: /pamela.taeuffer.9
Pinterest: /pamelataeuffer
gmail: pamelataeuffer@gmail.com
She looked dead.
In some ways, emotionally, we were all dead.
My father numbed his body and mind with alcohol.
I numbed myself with staying busy.
My mom numbed herself escaping into her romance novels.
Now my sister would be numb in a different way.
“Where have you been?” My mother asked angrily. “I was so worried.” Calmly and without emotion, her body in shock, Jenise answered, “I was raped.”
I saw my mother’s face become stone, trying her best not to let the hurt inside.
“I want to take a shower,” Jenise said as if she were a zombie.
“Just stay right there. Don’t move, wash, or take anything off. Don’t even comb your hair. We need to go to the hospital first,” my mother said. She was well aware of the protocol for rape from taking care of the girls at “Juvie” who’d been attacked.
I don’t know if she wanted to take her daughter in her arms and tell her she was sorry for what happened and that she loved her, but she didn’t.
As always, she did a good job of pushing her emotions down, not losing control, or escalating an already delicate situation.
“Watch your sister,” mom said, as she rushed to her bedroom, got dressed, and then came downstairs. I heard her in the kitchen on the phone to the hospital asking for a “SANE” professional—someone trained in rape trauma—to be present with a rape kit.
After hanging up, she walked down the hallway and grabbed her purse and keys off the small table by the front door, while my sister stood motionless.
When Jenise finally lifted her head and looked at me so helplessly, her sad eyes screaming, “Why did this happen to me?” I turned away.
Her expression said it all. Her spirit was gone and I didn’t know how to process the pain I felt from seeing her that way.
She’d been my hero.
I didn’t want to hear her talk about her violated body, the strength that was ripped out of her, or the ways in which her innocence was lost, and taken by some power-crazed, sick man.
I knew she’d never look at life the same way again.
Won't you join the discussion of family dysfunction, love, romance, and seeking emotional intimacy?
www.PamelaTaeuffer.com
Facebook: /pamela.taeuffer.9
Pinterest: /pamelataeuffer
gmail: pamelataeuffer@gmail.com
Re-releasing Shadow Heart, and Book 2, Fire Heart
Re-releasing a book, my baby, and the reasons why
Re-releasing a book, my baby, and the reasons why
WHY GO TO ALL THE TROUBLE TO REWORK A BOOK, AFTER PAYING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO EDITORS, PROMOTION SITES, FORMATTERS, DESIGNERS, AND OTHER PROFESSIONALS IN THE BUSINESS?
BECAUSE READERS ASKED FOR IT.
WILL I EVER RE-RELEASE ANOTHER BOOK IF FEEDBACK TELLS ME I SHOULD CONSIDER IT? YES, BUT THIS BOOK, SHADOW HEART, IS DONE, FINISHED, AND THAT’S IT.
First I want to say thank you to all the readers, both with positive and negative comments, who gave me constructive feedback. To have a reader actually take time out of their life to read my book is a privilege and I sincerely mean it when I say I’m grateful.
Second, when I initially wrote the series (it’s twelve novels long) I wanted to end the first in a different place than where it ended. I listened to a New York City editor, a good one, but never-the-less I should have listened to my gut about my own story’s break. She suggested I leave a dramatic cliff hanger at the end of book 1 so interest would be strong in book 2, Fire Heart.
Sounds good, right?
Holy crap, the anger that came back because I’d done that without warning about it — I heard the feedback, corrected it, ended differently (where I wanted to originally) BUT!!! I will have severe cliff hangers in all books going forward. After all, that’s how it is growing up in a family battling alcoholism. We never knew what we were going to get, and neither should readers of this series.
Third, type-o’s. Well, I think I’ve caught them all, but if not, I can live with it and so should you. It’s part of self-publishing these days, and as long as there aren’t a barrel full, it’s pretty normal. Even so, I’ve worked with 5 editors trying to catch everything. And that’s the fourth point.
Every editor has their own style, opinions, strengths and weaknesses. They each see and catch different things. So being a movie in this (not so much anymore, but I was new, after all), I know that now and will stick with one line editor and one story editor. I get that now.
Well, I think that about wraps up my reasons. Now going forward, my story is set, I’m good with my endings, and happy with the way the story progresses, even though some have told me the writing is a little “different” which some have said means poetic, others juvenile, and still others have said as if written by a teenage girl.
Yes, indeed it is written by a woman coming of age, at least from her point of view. And I want the writing to reflect all her innocence, her discovery, her anger, and discovery of being intimate and sensual. And by the way, after the first three novels, this story will definitely take a very intimate turn. Will it be with Jerry or Ryan or even another young man? Who knows.
As I sign off and begin posting once again with my thoughts and input from growing up and living every day with mental abuse, fear, abandonment, and dysfunction, the things I’ve included in the story are how it was for me. If it’s sluggish, or slow, I’m sorry you couldn’t get into it. I hope the pace is fast enough to show you and keep you involved in what having an alcoholic parent does as you form relationships of all sorts–friends, lovers, family–they’re all affected.
We form our own obsessions and addictions as children of trauma. What are they? I hope you’ll read on.
Thanks readers!
I will also begin my newsletters now, and share with you many of the cut chapters and character backgrounds that are not longer a part of the books. And for the first twenty that sign up? I will be sure and send you free ebook versions for the entire series if you’ll be part of my street team and give me your honest feedback, and … if you like it … help me spread the word.
Rock on mustangs!
Next question - - - should I have another contest?
Re-releasing a book, my baby, and the reasons why
WHY GO TO ALL THE TROUBLE TO REWORK A BOOK, AFTER PAYING THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO EDITORS, PROMOTION SITES, FORMATTERS, DESIGNERS, AND OTHER PROFESSIONALS IN THE BUSINESS?
BECAUSE READERS ASKED FOR IT.
WILL I EVER RE-RELEASE ANOTHER BOOK IF FEEDBACK TELLS ME I SHOULD CONSIDER IT? YES, BUT THIS BOOK, SHADOW HEART, IS DONE, FINISHED, AND THAT’S IT.
First I want to say thank you to all the readers, both with positive and negative comments, who gave me constructive feedback. To have a reader actually take time out of their life to read my book is a privilege and I sincerely mean it when I say I’m grateful.
Second, when I initially wrote the series (it’s twelve novels long) I wanted to end the first in a different place than where it ended. I listened to a New York City editor, a good one, but never-the-less I should have listened to my gut about my own story’s break. She suggested I leave a dramatic cliff hanger at the end of book 1 so interest would be strong in book 2, Fire Heart.
Sounds good, right?
Holy crap, the anger that came back because I’d done that without warning about it — I heard the feedback, corrected it, ended differently (where I wanted to originally) BUT!!! I will have severe cliff hangers in all books going forward. After all, that’s how it is growing up in a family battling alcoholism. We never knew what we were going to get, and neither should readers of this series.
Third, type-o’s. Well, I think I’ve caught them all, but if not, I can live with it and so should you. It’s part of self-publishing these days, and as long as there aren’t a barrel full, it’s pretty normal. Even so, I’ve worked with 5 editors trying to catch everything. And that’s the fourth point.
Every editor has their own style, opinions, strengths and weaknesses. They each see and catch different things. So being a movie in this (not so much anymore, but I was new, after all), I know that now and will stick with one line editor and one story editor. I get that now.
Well, I think that about wraps up my reasons. Now going forward, my story is set, I’m good with my endings, and happy with the way the story progresses, even though some have told me the writing is a little “different” which some have said means poetic, others juvenile, and still others have said as if written by a teenage girl.
Yes, indeed it is written by a woman coming of age, at least from her point of view. And I want the writing to reflect all her innocence, her discovery, her anger, and discovery of being intimate and sensual. And by the way, after the first three novels, this story will definitely take a very intimate turn. Will it be with Jerry or Ryan or even another young man? Who knows.
As I sign off and begin posting once again with my thoughts and input from growing up and living every day with mental abuse, fear, abandonment, and dysfunction, the things I’ve included in the story are how it was for me. If it’s sluggish, or slow, I’m sorry you couldn’t get into it. I hope the pace is fast enough to show you and keep you involved in what having an alcoholic parent does as you form relationships of all sorts–friends, lovers, family–they’re all affected.
We form our own obsessions and addictions as children of trauma. What are they? I hope you’ll read on.
Thanks readers!
I will also begin my newsletters now, and share with you many of the cut chapters and character backgrounds that are not longer a part of the books. And for the first twenty that sign up? I will be sure and send you free ebook versions for the entire series if you’ll be part of my street team and give me your honest feedback, and … if you like it … help me spread the word.
Rock on mustangs!
Next question - - - should I have another contest?
Women in Transition
Yes, I'm into my fifties now. Hooray! Each morning I look for another line on my lips. Soon I'll give up. Maybe there will be so many of them they'll combine to form a nice new lip again. Yes, I'm kidding.
Somehow women in their fifties seem to get lost, don't they? We're not climbing the ladder any longer, and certainly can't claim any resemblance, physically or otherwise to our thirties and forties.
We're almost or are done with parenting, but we're not seniors. We don't get discounts, we have to hang onto expensive health insurance because we're not ready for medicare. I don't care about fancy trips or hotels and actually long for the days we camped out - but guess what? My hips would never take sleeping on the ground any longer.
Our hair has probably a good amount of gray in it by now, but damn if I'll stop coloring it. It's the one thing I have that's still lovely and beautiful – my long brunette hair with auburn highlights - even if they're created by tinfoil at the beauty parlor.
But I'm going off into a tangent . . . My real issue and pet peeve is, where are our magazines?
I don't want another literary magazine, or travel magazine. I'm tired of Wall Street, and Beautiful Home, Amish Country, Pioneer Woman, and Sunset.
Where are the things that bring smiles to our age group? Huffington Post? Ha! Either have money so you can travel, be prepared to read articles that promise we can be truly free and uninhibited now with sex--by the way, who in their fifties doesn't already understand we're no longer a mystery with each other if you've been with your partner any length of time? Oh, and the retirement publications and commercials - stop!
Are you kidding? I'm working harder than ever, even as younger people around me suggest I'm ready to retire and go out of business.
I've been trying to reach out to key friendships of my own age group because they're the only ones who understand the new pain I woke up with, or . . . shit, has my butt dropped a little more?
We struggle with bras, and spanx, and girdles – should we bother any longer? Isn't it nice just to let everything wiggle free around the house?
And the pills available? Please. Not another aritificial solution which may cause death, or a promise of smooth skin, or looking forty again.
Let's face it.
We're 50, we're beautiful with our fat, our bones, our smiles, and all our lines. And somebody please give me a damn magazine or place I can go to celebrate and rejoice with other women who aren't faced with articles and blogs and medicines and creams that promise youth.
So where are the articles that just celebrate who we are, where we are, and what we can offer?
Because honey--ain't no getting back the skin I had twenty years ago.
Please comment at:
www.PamelaTaeuffer.com
https://www.facebook.com/pamela.taeuf...
https://www.pinterest.com/pamelataeuf...
Twitter: @PTaeufferAuthor
Somehow women in their fifties seem to get lost, don't they? We're not climbing the ladder any longer, and certainly can't claim any resemblance, physically or otherwise to our thirties and forties.
We're almost or are done with parenting, but we're not seniors. We don't get discounts, we have to hang onto expensive health insurance because we're not ready for medicare. I don't care about fancy trips or hotels and actually long for the days we camped out - but guess what? My hips would never take sleeping on the ground any longer.
Our hair has probably a good amount of gray in it by now, but damn if I'll stop coloring it. It's the one thing I have that's still lovely and beautiful – my long brunette hair with auburn highlights - even if they're created by tinfoil at the beauty parlor.
But I'm going off into a tangent . . . My real issue and pet peeve is, where are our magazines?
I don't want another literary magazine, or travel magazine. I'm tired of Wall Street, and Beautiful Home, Amish Country, Pioneer Woman, and Sunset.
Where are the things that bring smiles to our age group? Huffington Post? Ha! Either have money so you can travel, be prepared to read articles that promise we can be truly free and uninhibited now with sex--by the way, who in their fifties doesn't already understand we're no longer a mystery with each other if you've been with your partner any length of time? Oh, and the retirement publications and commercials - stop!
Are you kidding? I'm working harder than ever, even as younger people around me suggest I'm ready to retire and go out of business.
I've been trying to reach out to key friendships of my own age group because they're the only ones who understand the new pain I woke up with, or . . . shit, has my butt dropped a little more?
We struggle with bras, and spanx, and girdles – should we bother any longer? Isn't it nice just to let everything wiggle free around the house?
And the pills available? Please. Not another aritificial solution which may cause death, or a promise of smooth skin, or looking forty again.
Let's face it.
We're 50, we're beautiful with our fat, our bones, our smiles, and all our lines. And somebody please give me a damn magazine or place I can go to celebrate and rejoice with other women who aren't faced with articles and blogs and medicines and creams that promise youth.
So where are the articles that just celebrate who we are, where we are, and what we can offer?
Because honey--ain't no getting back the skin I had twenty years ago.
Please comment at:
www.PamelaTaeuffer.com
https://www.facebook.com/pamela.taeuf...
https://www.pinterest.com/pamelataeuf...
Twitter: @PTaeufferAuthor
