The Lantern Bearers

My fear of the dark began in my childhood bedroom in a brick apartment house in Denver, Colorado. I might have been 6 years old, but I’m not sure.

I would wake in the early morning hours paralyzed with fear. I could not call for my mother or utter any sound. My sister was asleep on the upper bunkbed, yet that did not comfort me. It was hard to breathe with such great petrification. My knees would shake under my covers and continue shaking until the sun rose, casting its light into the bedroom. Then and only then, I would be able to shift my body and fall asleep.

Dark rooms, dark hallways, the night time outside were all places I avoided. In my home, no one talked about being afraid. This was not a topic to bring up to discuss.

places

A participant in an art class shared the above work of art. The art work resonated with me so deeply it started me on a process, a journey of re-telling my childhood - diving head first into trauma - because I am in many ways that woman at the train station.

I began by asking questions of perspective. What I perceive at 64 is very different (at times) from what my 2 to 6 year-old self surmised. The question of location, family interaction with neighbors, set of unspoken home rules, personal space, sense of belonging to have an identity and feel ‘self’ - are self concepts of self worth and formed in places.

The question is of places in relationship to one’s environment: the affects can be lasting or momentary. Specifically, places significantly affecting one by influencing moods, behaviors, personality, and sense of identity through the physical environment's sensory stimuli, such as light, color, and nature.

influences

Let’s dive deeper and add the unseen realm - the spiritual. This is the realm that influences one’s emotions of love and trauma in either a positive or negative way. It can be a full spectrum from belonging and identity to fight and flight and numbness.

The concept of a spiritual realm influencing love and trauma is interpreted differently across spiritual and religious traditions. This influence can be positive, promoting healing and intimacy, or negative, contributing to trauma and dysfunctional relationship patterns.1

A profound and intrinsic relationship exists between trauma and spirituality that can foster emotional maturity and psychospiritual growth. The survival response embedded within trauma has the potential to catalyze authentic spiritual transformation - 2 [to transform or bring significant change quicker.]

Here are some signs of experiencing the effects of religious trauma or spiritual abuse:

• Fear and Anxiety.

• Guilt and Shame.

• Depression and Hopelessness.

• Isolation.

• Intrusive Thoughts.

• Avoidance.

• Anger or Resentment.

• Shunning or Excommunication

• Suppression of Individuality

• Unhealthy Dependency3

places we go when we feel wronged

anger
contempt
disgust
dehumanization
hate
self-righteousness

I believe there are no mistakes in life, nor coincidences. Absolutely nothing happens by mistake. So then Why? Why do bad things happen to children? Why does tragedy strike the best of families? Why does the cancer come for the kindest relative? Why did my father do that to me? Why did my mother stand by and watch in silence?

For now, I am content with knowing their is a Divine reason behind the suffering, heartache, and heartbreak experienced by earth dwellers. I also believe there is Heaven and this is not it. I believe in the biblical view which is a hoot after surviving a childhood born into a Christian cult based on doomsday theory, terror, pain and fear.

anger
contempt
disgust

This is long term sobriety for me - 40 years and counting. The miracle of surviving long enough to get into a recovery room after failed attempts at suicide, drug addiction, fascination with evil people, suffering from a great cocktail of anorexia nervosa and bulimia, no self-esteem, no self-worth, no purpose in life - all before I turned 24. I am one of the lucky ones. I came to. Then I came to believe in an omnipotent, omnipresent High Power on loan from my first sponsor, until I could find my own God. A God of love and goodness. A God of second and third chances. Of 7 x 7 x 1000 chances. It worked.

I did not see the changes in myself, but I kept coming back because I saw the changes in others. They heard the music. I wanted to hear the music too. Earnie Larson talks about hearing the music in his book Destination Joy: Moving Beyond Fear, Loss, and Trauma in Recovery (2003) - I recommend reading this book.

Over the decades I have come to know a new happiness and joy. In the Big Book of Alcoholic’s Anonymous it’s called the promises of the program coming true.

My sister followed me into the program of recovery a few years after I got sober. We talked about the wonder of sobriety, we were miracles coming from where we did. When we talked of the shared childhood memories, our husbands stood afar off from the conspiracy sisters talking of their emotional baggage.

ANGER. CONTEMPT. DISGUST. We were angry about how we were treated, the hypocrisy we endured, and the unaccountability for the damage done to our individual selves. Our childhood had been hijacked. Our teenage years had been taken. And now as adult women: We raged. We blamed. We judged. Regardless of the caution of not carrying resentments - the biggest offender to sobriety, we dined on our hatred.

Years passed. My sister and I spoke in a couple sentences rather than hours at a time of trashing the memories of our parents participation in the life of religious deception. Our mother’s death from cancer coupled with our father’s choice to avoid all contact with family de-fueled our witch hunt fires.

But, I was still left with me.

It is said, more will be revealed. - The Big Book
This program is about spiritual growth not spiritual perfection.
I am either in recovery or relapse. Grow or go.

dehumanization
hate
self-righteousness

This feeling that I have lost the happiness and joy of the program led me to a creative shut down Fall 2024 until this summer 2025. My normal program of recovery was not working. I began searching for answers. God works wonders. I found a title of a book produced by A.A. Grapevine called The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety I & II. The beautiful watercolor art insert is the reproduction of the article Bill Wilson wrote for the Grapevine in January 1958. Without emotional sobriety one can never experience true freedom from unhealthy dependencies and resulting demands. But it wasn’t until reading the title of Earnie Larson’s book Destination Joy, the other part of my answer came clear: Overcoming Trauma.

I have faced and overcome my greatest fears by taking action. I have mourned and grieved my losses until I was done with the grief cycle and the grief was done with me. I have never dealt with my trauma as something to overcome.

DEHUMANIZATION. HATE. The dehumanizer was my father. My father’s dehumanizer was the Christian cult who led him to believe that he would please God by thinking of himself as a loathsome worm. That is what they called being humble. He was following their doctrine by breaking the will of his carnal-minded children via extreme physical punishment, degradation of the mind through mistruths, deprecation of self-worth, and dehumanization of the person.

I hated my father. I had murder in my heart for years. But, like the baby elephant chained to the big log, I had been programmed to believe myself helpless and hapless. With the duo life led by the family: lifetime church members / worldly music performances - I was torn between the life I hated and the life I loved. He was center of both.

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS. Definition: the conviction that one’s beliefs and behaviors are the most correct. I grew up being told I am a loathsome worm, but at the same time The Elect, The Chosen of God. What?

I can pick out the self-righteous individual from a group of people, but I cannot say I am that sort of person. I just had a lifetime watching one operate without controls.

I am the one that after acquiring 25 years of sobriety, I finally reached the starting gate. I stopped looking at them and started looking at me. I’m in the race and I am running, but thankfully not all character defects known to mankind have attached themselves to me. It could be a YET.

I believe I will find out the full answers to all my questions on the other side. But for now now, I can only see the threads being woven on this side of life’s tapestry at times. If I wish to see the entire tapestry of my life - the masterpiece - this will be revealed by God Himself at a date yet to be set.

For now, I have the work of overcoming trauma. Oh, Lucky Me!

And, this is what long term recovery looks like for me.

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