I promise to get back to posting regularly in support of all the women who visit Not the Life in hopes of finding other women who have heard the knock on the door and are trying to make sense of a life they too Didn't Choose.but are trying to understand

I  haven't posted regularly because I've been finishing up my own memoir, The Sex Offender's Legacy, Silenced Lives. In the memoir I connect the dots between my own childhood sexual abuse by my father (which I thought began with me) and the generational transmission of sexual abuse down through 4 generations of my family beginning with my grandfather, my father, myself, my brothers, my sons and daughter  but ending now (if I can do anything to prevent the future by speaking out/ connecting the dots.) 

Maybe you too have heard 'rumors' have heard stories in your own family? Maybe "your" sex offender told you he was molested in his own childhood.  Not everyone who experiences being molested grows up to molest nor do they marry a man strangely like their father. My brothers were molested and chose not to molest but they've struggled with the after-effects of their childhood trauma all their lives.

Wives and mothers and family members are all so silenced and so afraid of "exposure" that we keep silent. We fail to share the wider story. We don't understand that often this sexual abuse didn't begin with us or originate in our little families but often has a larger (whispered) history of family trauma. 

I'm not sure if I'd realized it would take 6 years to write, edit and begin to understand what happened in my family of origin, that I'd have had the courage to begin, let alone continue. 

It's taken a long time to overcome my fear, to blog, write and speak honestly about what I've discovered about the traumas that led up to sexual abuse in my life and cycled through my extended family. 

I decided to go ahead and aim for publication on Create Space and Kindle this year in spite of my fear that shame, blame, and finger-pointing will result because I need to understand myself and want to prevent the continuation of sexual trauma cycling down into the next generation of my family.

In the process, I hope what I write about might help you connect the dots in your own family and prevent the transmission of all this trauma onto your children's children. The choices we make now might (just might) lead to a better understand and instead of a mindset that focuses on punishment after the fact, perhaps we can begin to focus on prevention and healing for the sake of our children and their children.

Anyway, I wanted to pass on the Cure-sort resource and explain why I have not posted regularly on Not the Life (but I hereby resolve to post more regularly in future!) 

I'm not sure if I had known what it takes to dig down into my life then write, rewrite and  (now) edit a memoir, especially one on this painful topic, that I would have found the courage to even attempt to publish this memoir. 

BTW once I realized that sexual abuse didn't begin or end with me/ once I connected the dots in my life I realized the memoir is not only a very personal family story of sexual abuse but I found after the fact that it's called "transgenerational transmission of sexual abuse"  What a term for 'connecting the very personal dots that made sexual abuse more likely to continue generation after generation!

The process of writing freed me in ways I never expected. Now I hope the publication of the memoir might help all of us to better connect personal and family dots, help recovery and maybe even better protect those we love from the repetition of the trauma which deformed our own lives.

I hope. 

Take Care, Janet Mackie