Our Archived Words

In Search of My Mother Tongue

Posted by Elaine on August 04, 2004

My mother, who abused me when I was a child, told me that she wanted me to grow up to be a writer, so that I could tell the story of her life. When I got old enough to do so, I couldn't write any words about her. She and her family and contemporaries were still alive and present.

My maternal grandmother, who was the only person to whom I ever 'told on' my mother, had advised me when I was four years old never to talk to anyone about this. Especially, she said, I should never, ever talk to my father, who had a drinking problem. It would just make things worse. So, until I was 40 years old, or maybe 39 or so, I never spoke to anyone about this, not even to my own sister, who was equally abused by our mother.

This was the ashamed secret I lived with, but, worse, was unable to write about during the time after college, where I studied to be a writer, until years later after becoming a teacher of emotionally disturbed children.

As I matured and worked more and more with adults who as children were abused and who still lived with the scars from that history, I became determined to do something about children and the abuse of children in my lifetime. In the past years, at every opportunity to speak before a public forum, I have made the announcement that it is my goal within my lifetime to work with others to end the problem of child abuse. To end it now, before I die. Now, in this lifetime.

I know what a complex and seemingly impossible goal this is. I know that this child abuse issue has historically been a human condition in every generation from the beginning of society. I know that it is a worldwide reality that grows worse every year. That it is an international cataclysm fed by wars, sex trafficking, complex international politics, nascent racism, and underdeveloped educational systems that are in turn fostered by poverty, bad planning, and general spiritual myopia.

In developing our website, what I aspire to do more than anything else is to develop a community of people who are networked nationally and internationally, who have as their mutual goal the elimination of child abuse. To achieve this goal will require huge amounts of money and dedicated action that delivers beyond any individual's singlehanded ability.

I intend to write this series of articles 'in search of my mother tongue' for her, my mother. I know that the forces that drove my mother to abuse me and my sister stemmed from her inability to recover from whatever happened in her own childhood. I honor my mother and, in this period of my life, I will try to keep to her real desire for me as her sometimes-adored and always-adoring daughter to write about the story of her and me. To write about my grandmother and to express fully what I was too frightened and inhibited by fear to ever write before.

I invite you to play with me in pursuit of this goal. To contribute with your own words and to connect our community into every network possible to bring the dream I have into reality. I believe there can be a world where all sentient beings respect and care for each other. Where nurturing is boundless and feelings for each other are deep and abiding.

Love, el

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