What is inner knowing? Is it a feeling? A thought? The ability to trust yourself? Spirit guiding the way?
All my life, inner knowing had been evasive, the connection between my head and my heart not aligned. I've been self-betraying, people-pleasing, and trying to be what others wanted me to be. There comes a time in a person's life when the suffering becomes so great it no longer feels bearable. This is when it is time for a change.
The first time this showed up for me was around age twelve. I remember wanting to die. I felt stuck in a life I could not find joy in, powerless to make any change. The ways of the world told me I should be a certain way, but that way I was not.
I tried hard to be what everyone said I was. They named me Ruth, a biblical name that means "a good friend." I hated that name. It felt like an old grandma name, and I was a young girl, not an old lady. I thought it was boring, a name that sounded like barf. Yet inside, I felt old. Nothing in the world made sense. People did things that didn't feel good: negating others' feelings or blaming others for their own poor choices.
I experienced a lot of "abuse" by the time I was twelve. I sometimes put the word abuse in quotation marks, not to minimize what happened, but because part of this book is about shifting the context from victimhood to empowerment and reclaiming my relationship to what once defined me.
I figured I must have been a rapist in a past life. This was not truth; it was a child's attempt to make sense of unbearable pain. What a blessing it is that we forget: past lives, karma—what goes around comes around, what we receive, we give, even when we don't mean to. "Atone," the word my phone's spell check autocorrected to instead of "around." Interesting. Atone is defined as "to make amends or reparation, as in 'He was to atone for his sins.'" I knew at a young age that the experiences I was having had something to do with karma. Maybe there was something I needed to atone for. When I first started having these thoughts, I didn't know what "karma" was. I believed I must have done something "bad" for all these "bad" things to be happening, but I couldn't imagine what it was.
I never got mad at the first one—the first person who took advantage of me sexually. Now that I think of it, I don't think he ever spoke to me. There was never a conversation. I never said no, not because I consented, but because a small child does not win a wrestling contest with a 200-pound man. I always tried to get away. My body was overpowered.
My best friend would communicate for me, or so I thought. Who knows if what she was saying was true. Looking back, I can't imagine that she ever confronted him for me. I wonder if she ever told him that I was going to tell my parents. I'm guessing not. She gave me an instant reply. There's no way she could have spoken to him. I'm sure she was scared—probably why she told me that he would kill her if I said anything. He may have told her that he'd kill her if she said anything. She passed that fear along to me. She never had time to ask him. I didn't realize this as a child. I thought it was him who had said it. Trauma blurs timelines and conversations. Fear moves faster than facts. It was such a strange relationship. It's strange to think of it as a "relationship," but it was.
The remainder of this book consists of stories, poems, songs, and quotes. They all have to do with inner knowing and listening to that inner knowing. As you read, I invite you to listen to your inner knowing and allow it to guide how you move through these pages.
I must give you a warning: the first half of this book is raw, unfiltered, and may be difficult to read. Sharing the first half of this book—without self-protection and without caring how it would be received—was challenging. The second half is where I became empowered and the flow of the book really took off. My hope is that you will become empowered too.