Linda Crockett

 

Linda Crockett is a poet, social justice activist and community educator dedicated to the healing of the wounds of abuse. A founding member of a church social action group in Pennsylvania, she frequently traveled to El Salvador during the 1980s to lead church delegations and accompany refugees struggling to survive in war zones. She lives, works, and writes in Pennsylvania.

 

 

"The Deepest Wound: How A Journey To El Salvador Led To Healing From Mother-Daughter Incest by Linda Crockett, is a powerful and personal testimony of her own life journey that draws parallels between healing from sadistic parental abuse and recovering from political torture. An insightful journey to how the scars of terrible, repeated trauma can be accepted, and adapted, without sacrificing one's ability to pursue hopes and dreams. The Deepest Wound is profoundly candid, deeply moving and highly recommended reading." Midwest Book Review

 

 

Pageonelit.com: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?

Linda Crockett: I grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, an area known as the "Garden Spot" for its natural beauty, gentle wooded hills, and rich prolific soil that sustains a broad patchwork of small family farms. The movie "Witness" starring Harrison Ford and set in Amish farming country was filmed there. People who moved into the county 20 years ago are still often considered "newcomers" and viewed as interlopers by those within the traditional, highly conservative religious culture that is characteristic of families who have lived there for generations.

In the 1950s, my grandfather deeded parcels of land to his children. I grew up in a house built by my father surrounded by the homes of his siblings within the matrix extending out from their birthplace. It was an isolated rural community in which strangers were viewed with great suspicion. The reputation and privacy of the extended family was protected at all costs. My father frequently admonished his children that "what goes on in this house stays in this house." In a community like this, it is a greater crime to speak out about abuse within the family than to actually abuse a child. By writing "The Deepest Wound" and working to educate others about family violence, I have committed the unpardonable sin.

I loved to read as a child. It was a way of escaping the reality in which I lived. Like many children who are not safe in their own homes, I stayed outside as much as I could, taking refuge in the woods and meadows. Skilled at the art of dissociation developed as a means of survival, I learned to live in an imaginary world, and sometimes books could help me get there. My favorite was "Heidi", the story of a little girl who lives with her grandfather in a cabin on the Alps. Since the sexual and physical abuse I suffered was primarily inflicted by my mother, the idea of being raised by a kindly old man in a house where there was no mother appealed to me. My third grade teacher encouraged creative writing. One day, I handed in more than 30 neatly printed pages. She was astounded. My story was about a little girl who runs away from home and eventually ends up living in a tree shelter on an island with no companion other than a protective, older brother. This child only feels safe outdoors, and in a place where there are no adults.

Unfortunately, my mother was one of my earliest influences. As a result of her abuse, which focused on my femaleness and her obsession with eradicating what she viewed as my intrinsic dirtiness using painful methods I equate to torture, I grew up disconnected from my body. Like many survivors of childhood abuse, I was vulnerable later in life and was raped more than once by men. By then, I did not believe it mattered. What happened to my body was not important. It was no longer a part of me.

 

Pageonelit.com: Why did you write THE DEEPEST WOUND?

Linda Crockett: I started writing it as a part of my own healing journey, not even thinking about publication. But as I worked, I began to sense the spirits of victims of violence around me, those who were murdered by their abusers or who slowly killed themselves through drugs, prostitution and other forms of suicide. I was corresponding with survivors from the United States, Canada and Europe who were silenced by shame, carrying guilt that rightfully belonged to the perpetrators. Most did not comprehend that what happened to them as children was part of a much larger social and cultural problem. Children who are tortured within their own homes share common ground with political prisoners and survivors of Nazi death camps. Yet their pain is privatized. There are no public mourning rituals for a lost childhood, or monuments to commemorate the courage and resilience of the victims. And I gradually realized with great trepidation as one who had been lucky enough to survive and heal, I had a responsibility to speak. And that what I had to say about the connections between political torture, war and the violence that takes place within some middle class American families - was important for others to hear. "The Deepest Wound" is a message - and a gift - to the world. I want survivors of severe, long-term childhood abuse to draw hope from my story, to know that healing is possible. By being candid not only about sadistic abuse, but about how it influenced the self-damaging choices I made as an adult, I want to dispel the notion that survivors must be forever cloaked with shame and cast in the victim role. I want to stand as a counterweight to social prohibitions that disallow any real discussion on women as sexual predators. Children sexually abused by their mothers are doubly silenced by the idealization of mothers that still permeates our culture. For the safety of our children, we need to understand that not all women are safe and nurturing caretakers. We need to understand that abuse occurs across all lines of race, class and gender.

 

Pageonelit.com: Please explain the connections between your personal abuse/experience and the people of El Salvador. What was it you saw in yourself and in these people? Explain why you went to El Salvador?

Linda Crockett: I went to El Salvador numerous times during the years of civil war in the 1980s to accompany refugees who were attempting to reclaim their homes and lives after years of living in UN camps in Honduras. The U.S. supported Salvadoran military used scorch and burn tactics to drive large numbers of rural peasants from their homes in an attempt to isolate the armed resistance that formed in response to a brutal and repressive government. As a church volunteer and a U.S. citizen, my presence in a war zone acted as somewhat of a deterrent against military attack on unarmed civilians. Small groups of international volunteers accompanied the desperately poor refugees, despite great military opposition. We documented human rights abuses, largely committed by the Salvadoran armed forces, and made our findings available to the U.S. public so people would understand the situation in El Salvador.

As I walked with survivors of torture and massacres in El Salvador, fragments of memories of deeply buried childhood abuse began to surface. I started to experience nightmares, insomnia, and became extremely anxious. I was angry with myself for being distracted from the work with refugees, and did everything I could for several years to banish the emerging memories from my consciousness. But a strange thing happened. As I walked with these peasants, who had little education but great wisdom, I began to learn from them. They shared their joy as well as their suffering. They taught me about hope, community, resistance, courage. I had never learned these values in churches here. And in the process, I was transformed by the Salvadoran refugees. It was in El Salvador I encountered the God who accompanies the poor; the one who weeps at the carnage inflicted on the most vulnerable ---the poor; the refugees; those whose spirits are crushed by unrelenting violence. I discovered the God of raped children.

And the transformation that I underwent as my relationships with the Salvadoran people developed through the years eventually led me to confront own pain. Entering their war zones compelled me to face the internal war zones that had raged within me since I was a child. A child who is sexually abused learns to survive in a war zone. Unprotected, she is subject to psychological, physical and spiritual destruction, particularly when the abuse occurs within the context of her family. Incest is a war that destroys children.

 

Pageonelit.com: Was it difficult to write? Please explain. What does it take to be a survivor?

Linda Crockett: One of the effects of the abuse was that there were big chunks of my childhood that were almost completely blank. Yet in a cruel paradox, the past was always present in unconscious ways that greatly influenced my adult life and relationships. For me, healing was about journeying into the wilderness of those lost years and recovering my own history, putting together pieces of the puzzle of who I am. I finally reached a point in my recovery where I had remembered and relived so much pain that I felt compelled to take the pieces of my fragmented life and assemble them into a narrative. I believed that if I could just get the story down on paper, somehow I could hold the pain away from me. Reading journals I had kept as memories and emotions erupted during the turbulent early years of healing, I began to write. The words were raw pain pouring unto paper. I wrote as though I were pursued by demons, spending long hours at my computer and collapsing with exhaustion after midnight. Often, I could not go back and read what I had written because it drew past horror into the present and I fell down the "rabbit hole" into childhood. Fortunately, I had a wonderful mentor in my life who read each chapter as it emerged and helped to ease the pain the writing evoked. A successful author, scholar and lecturer, he recognized the quality of the writing and encouraged me to consider publication when I was ready.

There are no easy answers as to why some survive and others do not. Many researchers believe that the ability to dissociate, compartmentalize. and create an imaginary world in which one is safe is a common characteristic of those who manage to survive long term inescapable trauma, such as victims of the Holocaust, political prisoners, or childhood abuse. I believe that one of the keys is to never give up hope, to hold on to some small spark of yourself even when all those around you seek to extinguish it. Another is honoring whatever form of resistance helped you to survive. For example, dissociation was a form of resistance for me. When the pain of the abuse became too intense, I left my body and flew away in my mind. Years later, I engaged in bodywork as a form of healing. Whenever old trauma was triggered by the massage, I immediately went limp, pale, and my breathing slowed to almost nothing. My therapist said it was as though my spirit fled my body, and he was often frightened by my prolonged unresponsiveness. Unfortunately, one does not stop dissociating when the trauma is over. As an adult, I had to let go of my pattern of dissociating as a response to stress or any perceived danger because now it negatively impacted my life. But I let it go slowly, and gave thanks for this merciful gift that helped me to survive.

 

Pageonelit.com: What advice can you offer someone who is reading this interview who has been abused but doesn't know what to do?

Linda Crockett: I would say: What happened to you was not your fault. You were a child, totally dependent on the goodwill of the adults you trusted and loved. Your abuser may have twisted the truth to make you believe you were responsible. You may have been told that if your body responded with pleasure it was "proof" that you wanted the abuse. This is a lie. Our bodies are created to respond in certain ways to sexual stimulation. Your body did not betray you. It was simply responding to a selfish manipulation by an adult who used you for gratification of perverse desires. That being said, the next most important thing I want to tell you is: get help. Find a therapist or a support group. Very few people abused in childhood are able to work through the pain alone. Nor should you have to. You deserve all the help and support you can get. Don't believe family or friends who say you should just "get over it". Don't give up if the first person or group you turn to doesn't work out. Keep searching. Healing is incredibly hard but it's worth it. Until you see the beauty of the world without the fog of past trauma clouding your vision, you cannot even comprehend what you are missing. You deserve to heal. If you managed to survive, you have the courage it takes. Courage does not mean you have no fear. It means you move forward, despite your fear.

 

Pageonelit.com: You speak of getting your hair cut short as an adult in relation to cutting the hair of your dolls as a child -- Please explain these actions and what defensive actions like these have you seen in others who have been abused?

Linda Crockett: This episode is a good illustration of the way survivors often reenact their abuse before they remember what happened. After several years of therapy, I became less dissociative and began feeling like I actually inhabited my body. To my great discomfort, I became acutely aware that it was female like my mother's. I wanted to be nothing like her, not even in gender. I wore baggy, unattractive clothes and kept my hair short, trying to disguise the fact that I was a woman. One day, I walked into a salon and had my head shaved. I felt triumphant when I emerged - I had shed the last vestige of "femaleness".

Later that week I was cleaning out a closet and came across a sealed box. When I opened it, chills ran through my body. It contained an antique doll from the 1950s I felt inexplicably compelled to purchase shortly after my first trip to El Salvador five years before. When I bought it, I had not yet remembered my mother's abuse. However, when I got the doll home, I locked myself in my room. In a trance like state, I methodically cut off its hair, beat it with a wooden spoon, and cleansed its private parts with bleach. Afterwards, I packed it in a box and shoved it into the back of a closet. I promptly forgot I had ever purchased it until the day I rediscovered it after getting my hair cut off several years later. Memories of my mother hacking off my pigtails one day in a rage because I would not hold still while she brushed my hair came flooding back. And I understood why the smell of beach nauseated me as an adult.

Survivors often do things that are driven by past trauma without understanding why, and without feeling a sense of control over their own actions. This is extremely frightening, as survivors prize control above all other things. At times, self-harm is inflicted precisely as way of taking control - the abuser's prerogative to inflict pain is usurped if the survivor does it to herself. Survivors of mother-daughter sexual abuse in particular experience gender confusion, and are often repulsed by their own bodies. Being female feels like the equivalent of becoming their abuser. They go to great lengths to disown their femaleness - some become obese, others nearly starve themselves in vain attempts to distort and hide the fact that they are women. Others self-mutilate, and express their sexuality in distorted and unhealthy ways.

 

Pageonelit.com: What has been your feedback from readers? What do they say to you about their interpretations of THE DEEPEST WOUND?

Linda Crockett: I have been greatly encouraged by the feedback I've received from survivors since publication of "The Deepest Wound". Many write to tell me that for the first time, they feel a sense of connection with other oppressed peoples - they never thought about their suffering in the broader context of victims of torture and political violence. By finding common ground with groups who speak out about their unjust treatment and demand social change, they are able to shed some of the shame and isolation that surrounds childhood sexual abuse. Survivors of abuse by mothers write to thank me for having the courage to raise this issue. The feminist community was instrumental in raising public awareness about abuse by men, but they largely refuse to address the issue of women as perpetrators. This is one of the most secretive forms of abuse, and many victims in therapy dealing with the trauma of male abuse never disclose their violation by a woman. It is simply too shameful. Several psychologists wrote to say they are using my book as a resource for their work with clients. At times, I am overwhelmed by the horrific nature of some of the stories shared with me. My heart breaks when I hear from courageous survivors whose self-esteem has been so shattered by the abuse that they are convinced they have no worth as human beings, often despite considerable professional and personal achievements.

 

Pageonelit.com: You say you "want to be a healing path for other people." Please explain. And what does it take to be strong?

Linda Crockett: Healing from sexual abuse is like walking into the wilderness. Each experience is unique, and there is no map. However, there are footprints left by others who have gone this way before us, and every so often we can follow their paths. Each time a survivor heals enough to speak out and share her story with the world, the imprint of her journey is left upon the terrain of our collective memory. The wilderness is not as terrifying if you can see these faint footprints, if you know that others have walked this way and survived. One of the reasons that so many adults are now able to talk about their experiences of childhood sexual abuse is because the cultural, political and social space has been opened by other survivors during the past two decades. If we don't keep talking and widening the space for dialogue, those paths will slowly become overgrown with the weeds of societal denial and amnesia that always threaten disclosures of atrocities committed within the very institutions that are the foundation of our society, such as families and churches.

I think it takes a supportive community in order for a survivor to be strong. By community, I mean at least a few people who believe, affirm and encourage you as you heal, slowly claiming your own power and your voice. Survivors are incredibly strong people who are, paradoxically, also very fragile. Our wounds can and do heal, but we remain vulnerable. Our courage is nurtured and our strength is sustained when we make common cause with others to end the silence and secrecy that continues to allow child abuse to flourish, particularly when the perpetrators are solid, middle-class tax-paying church-going citizens.

 

Pageonelit.com: What's next?

Linda Crockett: I want to do more specific work and research on female sexual abuse. It is very difficult to have this issue addressed by scholars and other professionals, particularly feminists who have contributed so much to areas of knowledge surrounding abuse of women and children by men. Yet it's the proverbial "elephant in the living room" that we all tiptoe around so we can pretend it does not exist. Its time to acknowledge the elephant and begin to have a serious dialogue about women as perpetrators, as well as victims, of sexual violence.

 

Pageonelit.com: What was the last book you read?

Linda Crockett: "Woman's Inhumanity to Woman" by Phyllis Chesler. It's an incredible book, based on years of research and hundreds of interviews Chesler conducted to find out why women so often act in ways that hurt other
women, and typically deny that their actions were harmful.

 

 

Pageonelit.com: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they enhance your writing?

Linda Crockett: Hiking, swimming, just being outdoors are my favorite activities. I also practice yoga, walk a few miles each day, and enjoy eating nutritionally balanced but deliciously prepared foods. I try to keep a balance in my life between work and play, rest and activity. Its not always easy, as my schedule is hectic, and sometimes I become overwhelmed by stress, which presents the danger of reactivating a piece of old trauma. I also love to travel, particularly to Latin America. I dislike big resort hotels, excessive luxury, or cruises. I prefer to travel off the beaten path, staying at places not usually found in guidebooks but in which I can experience a sense of the culture and talk to real people.

All of this helps me to remain grounded, stay in balance, and nurture my creativity. It enhances not only my writing, but my life. I've made the journey from victim to survivor, and I've moved from surviving to thriving. Life is good.