The Early Years (1970-1980)

My mother was born on August 5, 1950 in Evanston, Wyoming, and my father was born on June 5, 1946 in Arlington, Virginia.  My parents met on the campus of Brigham Young University in the spring of 1969, and they were married in the L.D.S. temple in Salt Lake City, Utah on September 12, 1969.  On July 3, 1970, I was born, the oldest of 7 children in a religious L.D.S. family.  Contrary to popular beliefs about Mormons, my father had only one wife, and it is currently against church policy to have more than one wife.  There were six more children to come into our family, and most followed me in quick succession.  I have three sisters (born on April 3, 1973, April 4, 1975 and June 26, 1976) and three brothers (born on February 25, 1972, November 30, 1984 and June 18, 1986). 

I have very fleeting memories of my earliest years, although there were a few incidents of abuse from very early on that I can recall.  My mother told me that the physical abuse began when I was about 11 months old, and that the first incident of abuse had involved my father picking me up by my hair and throwing me.  I don't remember this, but it doesn't surprise me that it all began in infancy. 

One of my earliest memories is of being in my crib awaiting my mother to come and get me in the morning.  I remember that there were yellow curtains on my window, and that I did not really understand where my mother was when she left me in my room in that crib.  I remember feeling lonely, and feeling sad almost from before I have clear memories, but there has always been a sense of fear and distrust when it came to my father.  My mother told me that as an infant I would cry uncontrollably if anyone else picked me up but her, especially him.  It is not hard to imagine why I had that fear, but it makes me sad to think about the things that happened.  Babies should be cared for and nurtured by their parents, it is every child's right to be safe in their own home.  How very sad that this is not true for so many children.

Earliest Memories

Memories of my mother during the early years were very positive ones.  I remember sun-filled days at the park, trips to the beach, and stories.  I remember loving my mother very much, and enjoying her attention and company.  However, memories of my father are much darker and filled with fear and distrust.  I don't ever remember having positive feelings towards my father, not even in early childhood.  One of my earliest memories from my childhood is of my father kicking the furniture with his steel-toed boots and telling my younger brother and I that we had better behave or we would be on the receiving end of those kicks.  I remember not understanding what we had done wrong, and wondering how I could avoid being hurt by him.  I used to hide from him when he started yelling like that, and I remember the quickening of my heart and the rush of adrenaline that came when I thought he might find my hiding place. I don't know if he did ever find me, because the memories are foggy and unclear.  I couldn't have been older than 2.

My first clear memory of the abuse was when I was about 3 years old.  I don't remember why, but I assume I had misbehaved, because I was locked in my room.  I had been told by my mother that it was time to take a nap, but I had not settled down for one.  There were far more interesting things to do in my room like look at my picture books or sing to myself.  I really loved singing primary songs from church, and I think that I had been singing them that day.  Being locked in my room like that, I found that I had to go to the bathroom, but there was nowhere to go.  As afraid as I was of my father, I was not going to ask to go the bathroom and risk unleashing his wrath.  I was wearing the thick white type of training underwear children wore in 1973, and I wet my pants.  Following the simple logic of a toddler, the best thing to do would be to get out another pair from the drawer in the dresser and put them on.  So I did.  As I finally succumbed to sleep, I found that when I woke up I had wet my pants again.  So I changed them again, and waited for my parents to come and get me.  As I drifted off when I was waiting, I again had awoken with wet panties.  I changed them once again, and waited for my parents to come and get me.  Looking back now, I probably had a Urinary Tract Infection or something, but I waited for my parents to come and get me, and to figure out what was wrong with me.  Maybe they could help me. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to tell them what was wrong.

I didn't know that my father wasn't home yet, but he must not have been because finally after what seemed like hours, he came into my room.  My mother must have told him how bad I had been (after all, I was locked in my room).  When he came into the room and saw the little pairs of wet underwear on the floor, his face contorted into an ugly, twisted rage as he shouted at me.  All red in the face and terrifying to a little child, he yelled and yelled at me, calling me names, calling me stupid.  I didn't know how to escape, and I just cried.  Soon he spanked me with his belt, stinging and angry.  I remember continuing to cry, and being yelled at to shut up.  I was unable to stop the crying, and I knew that it wasn't going to end.  There was a primal terror that I felt, wondering if maybe he was going to kill me.  I said a muted prayer to God to please help me to live. Then there were the terrifying sensations of being struck over and over, and sailing through the air towards the wall.  I hit my head on the wall with a sickening thud, and lost consciousness for what had to have been only a few seconds.  I saw stars, and my head hurt.  I awoke to my mother entering the room and yelling at him to stop.  My mother comforted me briefly, telling me that I shouldn't be such a bad girl, and he wouldn't hurt me.  I was locked in my room again, and I cried myself to sleep.  Even back then, I knew that what was happening to me was wrong.  Wrong or not, I was only three years old and there was nothing I could do to stop it.  I tried to be a good girl, but that never worked. I didn't seem to matter how good I was, he still continued to terrorize me. 

When I was a child, my parents took me to church faithfully every Sunday.  I always loved Primary, the part of church where parents went to meetings, and children got to sing and learn about Jesus.   I remember very early on, Sunday School and the worship service, Sacrament meeting, were on Sunday, and Primary was during the week.  There was a particular song we used to sing in Primary, called "Daddy’s Homecoming.”

These are the words:

I’m so glad when daddy comes home,
Glad as I can be;
Clap my hands and shout for joy,
Then climb upon his knee,
Put my arms around his neck,
Hug him tight like this,
Pat his cheeks, then give him what?
A great big kiss.

Words: Anon.
Music: Frances K. Taylor, 1870–1952. Arr. © 1989 IRI
Children’s Songbook of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 210

When the other children sang this song enthusiastically, I was confused.  "What child would be happy that daddy was home?" I wondered.  Daddies yell and hit some of the time, and ignore you or call you names the rest of the time.  I didn't understand why anyone would feel this way about their daddy, but I sang anyway, content that this was something I just didn't understand.  Something that I might understand later, when I grew up. I didn't understand most children's emotional attachment to their fathers, because I had not formed one to mine.  It is said that because of traumatic bonding that children are more closely bonded to their abusive parents than is the case in a normal parent-child relationship.  That was never true for me.  The only thing I ever remember feeling for my father is contempt. 

One time when I was about 5 or so, I was playing with my friend at a church function, and she invited me to come with her and to sit on her dad's lap to watch the performance. I was terrified, thinking that if I tried to do that, her dad would be mad and hurt me, like my dad had when we tried to get too close to him. My friend insisted that it was okay, and we both sat on her dad's lap after much coaxing. Nothing bad happened, and I was amazed. Her dad was very nice and loving with her, and was even nice to me too. I remember being astounded, and feeling very sad that I could not sit on my dad's lap that way. I remember feeling very dejected and depressed about it, even at the tender age of 5. However, that was certainly not the last time I would feel the sting of hostile rejection from my father.

Another thing that is commonly suggested is that when children are in abusive situations they tend to dissociate and block it out.  Although I know I used dissociation extensively, I rarely blocked it out, with an exception of a few years during early childhood. In fact the memories are horribly vivid, etched in my mind like forgotten and discarded magazines that pop up when I least want them to.  The thing I remember the most though, more than anything else, is the terror that I associated with his rage-contorted face.  That face was the face I saw in my nightmares, and that I sometimes still see. 

With my father, you would suspect that maybe he had some horrible drinking problem or that he was deeply involved with drugs.  Not so.  I never have seen my father drink anything stronger than a Diet Pepsi.  So to those that suggest that substance abuse causes abuse, I can assure you that it does not.  Everything my father did to us, he did stone cold sober.

Starting School

The years between the ages of 4 and 6 or 7 are very indistinct in my mind.  Although I should have been old enough to remember what happened to me during that time period, my mind is mostly a blank for the years 1974 to 1977.  I remember beginning Kindergarten, but I don't remember my teacher's name or what I did there.  I don't remember much of anything about  1st or 2nd grade either.  I know that we moved around a few times, so that may have contributed to my distruption in memory, but I have little recall of those years.  I also know that these years may also be a time period I have repressed or blocked out.  I hate to think that this is the case, but I know it is certainly a possibility.  I know that this is the time period when most of my siblings were born, and there was a lot of stress in our household.  Gone were the good times with my mother, and a few times I saw her crying while my dad yelled at her.  Most of the time he wasn't around, and maybe this was just a quiet time when the beast was still, not raging at us.  In my heart though, I know that it wasn't.  I know that the beast in him is never still for long.

The Elementary School Years

I know that my first two years were spent in Ventura, California, and that in 1972 we briefly lived in Indianapolis, Indiana.  In 1973 to 1975 we lived in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and in 1975 we moved briefly to Sandy, Utah and then to Kearns, UT.  Finally, in 1977 my parents purchased a house in West Valley City, UT (then known as Granger, UT) at 3266 South 4355 West.  It is with the move into this house that I have clearly lucid memories.  The house was supposed to have been painted white or yellow, but for some reason the contractor had it painted Harvest Gold.  It was a horrible color, much like the rest of the general decor of the 1970's, but to us it was wondrous because it was our house.  My parents made a big deal out of this, us finally owning a house.  I remember them telling us proudly that they had paid $30,000.00 for it, and that the payment was $300.00 a month. The house was hyped up to us kids, and we were so excited when we finally got to move in. 

I remember this time, because this is when my brother and I began to bear the brunt of most of the abuse.  In 1977 as we prepared to move from our rented house on Montgomery Drive in Sandy, Utah to our rental house in Kearns, UT, my mother was taking turns bringing one of us with her as she went to the house in Kearns to clean it up for our move in.  Each of the children got a turn to go.  The babies, age 2 and 1, always got to go, and my sister, age 4, and my brother, age 6, had both gotten a turn to go.  Me, being the oldest, I had to wait until last.  I was really excited and looking forward to going.  I never got time alone with mom anymore, with so many little kids around, and I was going to sort of get to be alone with her (and the babies).  I had been so good all day, to make sure that I would be able to go.  Right as my mom was getting ready to leave and to take me with her, my father told me I couldn't go.  He didn't say I had been bad, just that I couldn't go.  I had been talking about going all day, so he had to have known how much I wanted to go.  He refused to give a reason why, he just forbade it.  My mom didn't stand up for me, she just left me alone crying on my bed and left me behind.  I remember how heartbroken I was about it, and I remember hating him because I realized he had done it to hurt me.  It wasn't about me being bad and being punished by not being allowed to go, it was his cruel vindictiveness.  Before, I simply hadn't understood why he hurt me.  Now I understood why he did it.  He hated me.  He had always hated me.

The Move to "Our House"

As much as we anticipated the much-touted move into the new house, I was profoundly disappointed when it happened.  I was disappointed because instead of being able to move our bunk beds into one of the new bedrooms upstairs, we were told that we would be sleeping in the basement.  The bedrooms upstairs were going to be used as a TV room and an office for my father, and we would be sleeping in the dark, cold basement.  There were no walls, no ceiling, and no carpet.  Just the cold cement slab floor, and all of the creepy, crawly things that might be lurking there.  I was scared as I fell asleep in that room (or lack of room) and I longed for my old room where the walls and carpets kept me feeling safe and protected, even though I really wasn't.  At least I had the illusion of protection in my old room.   Here I felt vulnerable, more vulnerable than I ever had before.  Now not only was I at the mercy of daddy, but I had also lost the security of having a bedroom to hide in. 

Even as horrible as it was to sleep every night in that basement, I did find good things to love about our new home in West Valley City, Utah.  One of the best things about living there was school.  Although I had always loved school, it was here that I discovered just how much I loved it.  School was a wonderful and much-needed distraction for me. 

In our new home, the weekends were horrible.  I hated the thought of Friday, because I knew that once we had settled in to go to sleep in Friday night, we would be awakened by my father and told, "Clean up this mess you pigs!"  With the light rudely flipped on, sometimes at 1:00 A.M., he would storm in and demand that we clean things up.  Confused and blinking at the bright light, sometimes we didn't respond quickly enough, and sometimes that precipitated a beating.  As frightened of my father as I was, and as horrible as he was to me, I was not the one who got it the worst.  My little brother did.

I don't know why he got it worse than I did, because I really think that my father hated me more, but my little brother was often brutally beaten.  My brother was a spirited little boy that acted up quite often, and my mother had said that she wasn't going to spank him because she was afraid she might get too mad and hurt him.  But what that meant is that when my mother had problems with my little brother, she turned over discipline to my dad.  I will never understand why she did that because sometimes my brother was savagely beaten.  I don't remember now what all his infractions were, but most of the time they had to do with my brother hurting one of the "little kids" or getting in some other kind of trouble with the neighbors.  Sometimes it was about the mess that my brother hadn't even made, or occassionally, there was no reason at all.

My dad had a way of singling us out for his abusive treatment, by making irrational distinctions between the "good" kids and the "bad" kids.  The way he did this was to call the oldest three kids (ages 7, 6 and 4) the "big kids" and the youngest two kids (ages 2 and 1) the "little kids."  Although there was only a 6 year age difference between the oldest and youngest of us, and we were, in reality, ALL "little kids," my dad used this as an excuse to punish and beat the "big kids" and give preferential treatment to the "little kids."  Even as the "little kids" reached the ages we had been when we were called the "big kids," nothing ever changed as far as his treatment of them.  They were the "golden children," the ones that didn't "deserve" abuse, and we were the older, horribly behaved children who didn't even deserve to live, let alone be spared abuse.  I remember a time when my sister (a "big kid") was about 5 years old, and she told my father that she loved him.  His response? "Well, then why don't you treat your mother and me better?" 

When my father singled some of us out for beatings, it was usually myself and my younger brother.  We would be accused of some offense, real or imagined, and this would then be used against us as an excuse to engage in criminally dangerous and sometimes life-threatening acts of physical abuse.  My father would hit my brother with a closed fist when my brother couldn't have been more than 5 years old.  He would get angry with my brother, and then hit and toss him around the bedroom like a rag doll.  I remember being afraid that he would kill my brother, and trying to distract my father to get him to stop hitting my brother.  I sometimes ended up getting the belt for it, and even got thrown around myself a few times.  It was an ethereal sensation being thrown though the air, and it was terrifying not knowing when something like this would happen, and what event might precipitate it.  But I was not afraid of the pain associated with the injuries, I was afraid of the fear itself.  The anticipation of abuse was much worse than the actual event.

When I was about 8 years old, and my siblings and I (the "big" kids) discussed how we were tired of being hit with belts and thrown across the room for random and unpredictable reasons, and we decided that we were each going to get a belt and we would beat him the next time he tried to beat us.  However, we quickly realized this plan wouldn't work because we were too small, and so we decided we were going to get the belt and cut it up.  We were disheartened to realize that even if we did this, he would only get another one.  It was hard being so powerless to help ourselves as such young children.  We didn't really blame our mother because our father was way too mean and scary for her to be able to do anything about him.  He was mean to her, too, after all.  But he didn't hit her. Not once did I see him hit her.

After moving into the new house, our parents' stress must have increased quite a bit because the beatings were more frequent and severe.  It was like clockwork, it was predictable that dad would have one of his "episodes" of "being mad" as we called it, every weekend.  We would have a blow-up either Friday or Saturday as he complained about how messy the house was and blamed it on us kids.  The house was messy, and my mother must has been too depressed or lost in her own misery to clean it very well.  My father blamed us, and we readily accepted responsibility, as we had messed it up.  What we didn't understand back then is that although we should have had regular chores (which we didn't), the overall upkeep of the house was not up to us, but should have been an adult concern.  For all I saw my father complain about the house being messy, not once did I see him help our mother clean it (with the possible exception of cleaning the kitchen a few times).  All he ever did is rant and rave and beat us when he was disgruntled about the messy house. 

When one of these blow ups happened, the result was very predictable.  We would be ordered to clean the house, we would do it until we thought it was reasonably clean (we were kids, what did we know about what objectively clean was), he would say it wasn't good enough (and sometimes mess up whatever we had cleaned, like dumping the toy chest all over the floor) and we would be told to clean it again.  After we had done it again, he was usually tired of raging, and we would be allowed to watch TV for a few hours, or go out to play with friends.  Then, we had to be home by 6:00 PM for dinner, and the raging would start all over again.  The "big kids" would then be required to go to bed while the adults and the "little kids" stayed up watching TV (not just on weekends, but every night).  My mother said that the "little kids" got to stay up because they would fall asleep watching TV, but I still remember the sting of injustice when we were told to go to bed while babies got to stay up.  I know that she did it because it was easier for her, but it sure was not easier for me.  It seemed to me that the privileges of being older just weren't present for me.  Not ever.  That never changed much.

Sometimes the rages wouldn't happen on the weekends, but more often that not they did.  They happened during the week too, but more often on the weekends.  As a result, us kids became very attuned to the moods of our father, and we dreaded the sound of his footsteps coming down the stairs.  We always wondered "if dad was mad" and if so, what we should do to avoid getting into the line of fire.  Sometimes we tried to clean things up, but it was difficult because we had very little room to store our things, and practically no way of organizing them.  We would get yelled at for throwing our toys in a heap in the toy chest, yet there was no practical alternative other than throwing them under the bed or on the floor.  It is a battle we could not have won even if we had been able to figure out the rules and follow them.  The problem is the rules were not consistent, and the consequences were constantly changing.  It was a little bit like trying to find a grain of rice on the floor, blindfolded.  We could never do it. There really was no way to avoid the rage. 

In the way that dogs that are shocked over and over again adapt to it and cease attempting to escape even when allowed to, so were we habituated to our chronic maltreatment.  My father convinced us that the police (and anyone else in authority) were evil and conniving.  We had no one to tell, and we knew that we couldn't tell anyone anyway, because he may well have killed us had we told.  Our mother also told us not to tell.  One of the few times I remember my father punching my sister just younger than me, and leaving a bruise, my mother told her not to tell anyone, not even our father, because "he might feel bad." We were told to keep this a secret, to not tell anyone, not even family, about what was happening to us.

Eventually there was drywall and carpeting put into the awful basement bedrooms (but never a ceiling), and there were 3 children in one room and 2 children in the other.  Our parents also had a bedroom in the basement, but their room was finished before ours were.  It was shortly after this finishing of the basement that one of the most terrifying incidents of abuse happened to me.  I was probably about 9 years old, and it was around bedtime.  We had been told to go to bed, and I was in my pajamas, getting ready to do my homework.  I had a folder that had my homework assigment in it, and and found that my youngest sister had been playing with it.  She was about 3 years old.  When I took it away from her (to do my homework), predictably, she started crying.  She ran upstairs to tell mom and dad, while I stayed in the basement.  I didn't dare leave my room in case I might encounter dad, who would flip out and hurt me if he saw me up after I had been told to go to bed.  I couldn't defend myself.  We were terrified (the "big kids") to even leave our room to go to the bathroom after bedtime.  More than once we had been beaten for doing that, so we came up with a solution.  If we had to pee after we had been told to go to bed, we did it in the laundry hamper.  That was safe.  The clothes in there usually smelled like pee anyway because of the little kids. 

Eventually, my little sister came back downstairs to tell me that dad had said that I had to give the notebook back to her.  I was incensed, and told her, "You march right back upstairs and tell dad that I need that notebook to do my homework!"  Apparently, dad had been on the stairs listening to the exchange, and came at me with a terrifying rage.  He started punching me so hard that I peed my pants, and then he yelled at me for that.  Then, as I stood there crying, with bruises forming on my arms, he punched me square in the face.  My nose immediately began gushing blood as I ran up the stairs to get away from him.  I knew if I stayed there I would certainly be killed.  My fear of death began outpacing my fear of dad, and I ran for upstairs, looking for my mother.  As I ran up the stairs, my nose dripped blood.  When I reached to top of the stairs, with my dad close behind me, he ran into the kitchen, hurled a rag at me, and then snarled, "You clean up that mess you f**king pig!"  As I started to wipe up the blood and more dripped from my nose, my mother finally came in to see what was going on.  She gave me some toilet paper, told me to go back to bed and that she would clean it up. 

After this incident, I never made that mistake again.  I didn't stand up for myself  with my parents or my siblings, and I began to clearly understand the situation, my position in life.  I understood that my father hated me, and my mother couldn't, or wouldn't, save me from him.  My only defense was to avoid him, to avoid the rage.  In many ways, I lost my childhood that day.  Not only was my father willing to hit me with a belt and throw me against the wall, he was also willing to punch me with a closed fist and try to kill me if he were given the chance.  If my mother had not been there to intervene that time and many others, he certainly would have succeeded in killing me, my brother, or both of us.   That fact still haunts me today as I wonder how my mom could still be with him.  She lives, to this day, with a potential murderer.

As scary as that incident was, and as much as I feared for my life, that wasn't the worst thing he ever did.  One time when I was about 10 years old my brother (age 8) and I were upstairs in the family room where the TV was, and we were fighting.  We were probably fighting over what to watch on TV, but whatever we were fighting about, dad didn't like it.  He came at us like a freight train, hitting both of us with his fists, yelling at us both to "Shut up!" and "Stop with the racket!"  He then abruptly disappeared toward the kitchen and we, thinking the incident was over, sat down on the couch to watch TV.  Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, we see a knife come hurtling into the room, just over our heads, and land on the floor, along with some other objects.  I couldn't believe it.  I knew that mom would do something if she knew that he was hurling kitchen knives around (mom wasn't home), but when I told mom what he did, he denied it and my brother denied that he had done it as well.  Not only had he hurled a knife at us, he had also denied doing it.  Why had my brother also denied that our father did that? I couldn't understand it. But that wasn't the last time my father lied about being an abuse perpetrator.  I knew that my father was a dangerous, evil man, but no one else outside our home did (and some inside the home were also in denial about it).  No one else would have ever even guessed what happened behind the closed doors of our home.

The Good Father

When we were young, our father had two personas, the at-home Mr. Hyde dad, and the public Dr. Jekyll dad.  Whenever we were in a situation where others were (or potentially could be) watching, suddenly my dad was the greatest dad in the world.  He spoke kindly to us, lavished us with attention, and was the model of attentiveness.  This usually happened at church, at family functions, or sometimes at home in the front yard (if there were witnesses).  He was so convincing at his performances that during some of the worst abuse, he was called as 2nd counselor in the Bishopric (the leadership at Church). 

How would anyone ever believe us if we had told someone what was happening in our home anyway?  Even if we had, what could they have done?  The laws against child abuse were much less stringent back in the 1970's, and unless the police had witnessed an assault, there is probably little they could have done.  My father was also very convincing in his portrayals of himself as the Good Parent.  My cousins often really liked my dad, and loved that he played with them.  Little did they know who he really was.  Some of them might have known, the cousins that were children of my father's siblings, because I believe that many of them received some of the same type of treatment at the hands of my father's sister, my aunt.  I once saw her rage unleashed on her children, and it was just like watching my father when he beat us.  She was brutal, ruthless and had no mercy.  I witnessed her beating my cousin for getting his church clothes dirty when they were at our house. I have often wondered what happened to my father and his siblings in the home they grew up in, but on some level I know that perhaps I don't really want to know.

School

I have been asked by my therapist and others how I coped during the times when I had to endure the sometimes terrifying abuse meted out by my father. When I think about it, there are two ways I coped. The first was through my religious beliefs, and the second way was through school. School was like a welcome distraction to me. I had trouble understanding kids who didn't like school because for me it was a safe haven. It was a place where there was no yelling, no hitting, and I was free to be who I really was.

When I was a preschooler, I was set in front of the television a lot, probably because it was a good babysitter. One of my favorite shows was Sesame Street. I loved watching it not only for the characters, but also for the learning. This is how I learned my numbers and my letters, and I picked it up easily. I had mastered basic phonics and simple words by age 4, and I had taught myself to read by age 5. I still remember the first book I read to myself, it was Walt Disney's Cinderella. My maternal grandmother had signed up for a Walt Disney book club, and she got a new Disney book every month. I remember I loved those books, and I looked forward to reading the new ones each time we visited her.

By the time I entered Kindergarten, I was anxious about the whole process of attending school. I was afraid that my father was right and that I was too stupid to go to school, and I was also worried that maybe there were people like my dad at school. I do remember the first few weeks of Kindergarten, and the anxiety I felt that maybe I wouldn't be up to the tasks they were going to ask us to do at school. After all, I knew that I was stupid because my father had told me that so often, and I was concerned that I would fail at school, just as I had failed to do what it took to make my father happy. I was very happy to learn, however, that school was easy. Everything they were teaching us in Kindergarten I had already learned from Burt and Ernie, Big Bird, Oscar the Groch, Grover, and Snuffalufagus on Sesame Street. School wasn't hard at all, and in fact I was good at it. I had finally found a place where I could do things right, and I was even praised for doing things right. From Kindergarten to 7th grade, school was a place of safety and freedom for me.

Church

Although I do remember having a bad experience with a Sunday School teacher yelling at me when I was about three years old, I remember Church as being a mostly positive experience as well. At Church, Primary was my favorite place. Sacrament Meeting (the worship service) was sometimes scary because my dad would beat us for misbehaving (after church of course), but mostly it was just boring. I remember one time my mother got up in that meeting to bear her testimony (tell everyone her feelings about her beliefs in our religion) and she was crying because she was emotional about her religious beliefs. I remember that seeing my mother crying scared me because she was the person I depended on to keep me safe. It made me feel vulnerable to realize that she cried like I did.

Church was mostly a wonderful place for a child, because in Primary we were taught, from a very early age that we were precious children of our Heavenly Father and that He loved us very much. We were also taught that Jesus loved us as well. I remember seeing pictures of Jesus in Primary, and feeling like I knew Him. I knew somehow that what the teachers were telling me was true, that Jesus did love me. At Church they taught us about things like Honesty, Integrity, and the importance of Prayer. They taught us about our value as children of God, and about how God loved us very much. One concept that kind of confused me was the teaching that Families can be Forever. At Church they taught us that if we were faithful, our families could be forever. As a small child, the thought of that scared me. I knew I didn't want to be with my father forever, in fact one of my fantasies was that someday I would escape him, and never see him again. I wouldn't have minded being with my mother and siblings forever, but I knew that I did NOT want to be with my father forever. I didn't even want to be with him back then.

As I grew, Church sustained me. Even when things were really hard at home, and my self-esteem was almost non-existent, there was a place I was always loved and accepted, and that was Church. I had many compassionate teachers during my early years, and I looked forward to being able to go to Church, at least when I was very young. Even if my father didn't love me, God did. And I knew from what I learned at Church that the way my father treated us was wrong. I knew that if Jesus knew what my father had been doing (and I was pretty sure He did) he would not have approved. I knew that parents were supposed to love and teach their children, not hurt them. I also learned that someday my father would have to answer to God about what he had done. Somehow, that made things just a little bit easier, knowing that at some point there would be justice.

Realizing the Truth

As a very young child, I realized what was happening to me was wrong, but I failed to understand that it was possible for things to be different. I just accepted how my life was, bereft of the capacity to understand that things did not have to be the way they were. I didn't wish to be someone else or wish that things were different because things just were. I did not subjectively experience my life as miserable because I thought that everyone had fathers that beat them, and that everyone had to deal with the kinds of things that I did. I didn't realize that what was happening to me did not happen to everyone.

I eventually realized, through observations of my friend's families, that not all fathers were mean, and that I was, in fact, living an nightmare. I came to understand that most fathers not only didn't beat their children, they talked to their children and were involved in their daily lives. They were nurturing and understanding, and they were supposed to provide guidance and direction for their children. I didn't have any of that. For us "big kids," we were treated like annoying gnats if we ever approached our father for any kind of connection with him. I didn't even know my father at all, because he never even spoke to me or acknowledged my existence in any kind of a positive way. The truth was, I had no relationship with my father, only a tyrannical master-servant type of connection. He provided me no guidance or advice, only loneliness and fear. With my father, my major concern was avoiding his wrath. I had to stay distant from him to remain safe, at least when I could.

Very early on, this realization, which came to me around age 9 or 10, led me to see life in a different way. As a young child, I had managed to lead a fairly happy life despite the abuse, both because of my mother's positive involvement in my life and because I did not realize that my existence was an aberration. I was afraid of my father a good majority of the time, but I also found a way to enjoy life when he was gone. Fortunately for me, when I was vey young he was often gone. There was one place that I knew that I would always be safe, and I always looked forward to going there. This was my grandmother's house in Mountain View, Wyoming.

Home in Wyoming

My grandmother had lived in Wyoming all of her life, the daughter of immigrants from Scotland. My grandmother was born on December 6, 1913 in Elkol, Wyoming and lived in Wyoming most of her life. She married young, at age 17, to my grandfather, who I knew very little about. My grandfather was 7 years older than her, and he had first been interested in my grandmother's sister. I was told how he was so taken with my grandmother because she was beautiful. I never knew her as beautiful because she was quite elderly when I was born, but I had seen pictures and she was pretty.

The reason why I never knew much about my grandfather is because he died of cancer when I was only a year and a half old. I do have a very faint memory of his last Christmas with us. I remember that I had gotten a potholder for Christmas, the kind that you weave together, and that I had been jealous because my grandfather had gotten so many gifts. Of course I didn't understand that he was sick, and in the egocentric way of very young children, things were all about me. But I do remember how much everyone seemed to love him. I also have a faint memory that my uncle, my mother's younger brother, who must have been about 12 at the time, helped me to weave the potholder I had gotten, and that he was also very kind to me. My mother had another brother, an older brother, that was also very kind to me.

In Wyoming, my father was hardly ever there. My mother would take us there for a few weeks in the summer, and we also visited frequently during the year. The wonderful thing about Wyoming was that it was relatively abuse-free. Although we were sometimes abused by our father on the way there or on the way home, when we were there, he didn't abuse us. I don't remember being afraid there the way I was at home because when we were in Wyoming, he had an audience. He couldn't do the things he did to us behind closed doors at home because someone might find out.

I have lots of very positive memories of visiting my grandmother in Wyoming. Not particularly because she was close to us, but because when we were there we were safe, safe from our father. Out behind my grandmother's house there was a small area of willows that we as kids called "the woods." These willows were a place of refuge and fantasy for all of us kids. There were well-worn paths that weaved in and out of "the woods" where we could escape into a fantasy world. A place where we could be or do whatever we had imagined in our minds, and most importantly, a place where dad was not. The only time I ever remember dad coming into "the woods" was to find us to go home or to go back in the house. In "the woods" we spent hours and hours playing with each other, and with our maternal cousins. We were able to form lifelong bonds with some of these cousins, and in some way we always found peace in these woods, and at my grandmother's house. My very happiest childhood memories were created at my grandmother's house, and even to this day Wyoming is the only place that really feels like home.

But even though we had Wyoming, this could not save us from the eventual realizations that we all had to make about our father. We had to accept what was happening to us, and to understand that nothing we did was going to change that. For the first 10 years of my life, I had avoided accepting this entirely, and was blissfully unaware of the fact that life was not like this for everyone. But unfortunately for me, the Early Years of my life did not last forever.