The Silent Scream: An Anthology of Despair, Struggle and Hope

1

Introduction

photograph by Flora Westbrook

"I believe the three most important words anyone can say are not

I love you, but I hear you."

Oprah Winfrey

Anyone being consumed by their pain and suffering will understand the need to be heard, the need to have their feelings acknowledged and validated, to know that they are not alone in the swirling chaos of their rage, grief and fears, which we mask behind our smile as we make our way through the world. Yet, paradoxically, it seems the hardest thing to do at times; to give voice to our struggles, our feelings, our fleeting moments of madness for fear of being judged, ashamed and embarrassed by our imperfections. And so, we remain trapped in those silent screams, continually feeding our deepest fears about ourselves; that we are not worthy, berating ourselves and internalising our trauma, becoming disconnected and isolated in our experiences.

But when we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story begins to tell us. We develop symptoms, habits- addictions even, behaviours that we don’t understand, the truth of our pain working its way to the surface through any means possible, giving expression to the silent scream inside. Our constricted shame-based sense of who we are keeps us trapped in the cycle of self- sabotaging behaviours, which impact both our physical and emotional wellbeing. Our silence only reinforces that shame, inflating the ego which becomes a repressive agency under which we bury our authentic self. But until we can live more consciously, away from the masks and less through the ego, we will never be free from our destructive patterns, or our negative self- talk, which perpetuate our feelings of unworthiness.

It is through our vulnerability that our liberation from our inauthenticity starts. Through honest conversation we break down that fourth wall, which traps us in the illusion of our shame and isolation. We are never alone in our experiences. We are not broken, merely flawed, imperfect and messy, the same as any other human being on this planet. In sharing our stories we can become active observers of our thoughts and feelings, rather than passive passengers of our unconscious behaviours. We expose the falseness of our mind narrative, our self-realisation equipping us with the awareness needed to heal our wounds and interrogate the artifice of the dominant ideologies presented to us.

This process of exposition starts with the unravelling of our parental and social conditioning; the rules and boundaries passed down to us from culture and religion. The dogma which keeps our spirit bound and gagged. The indoctrination that would keep us enslaved to a system of consumerism where we will always be insufficient as we are. We need to break down those walls and stop identifying with form and start identifying as form less ; beings of infinite potential. When we deny our spirit and go against our instinctive nature, forcing and contorting ourselves to fit a mould too limited to contain our being, we suffer. Our mental and emotional health decline because our focus is on becoming that thing which we are not. And we punish ourselves for it. Or we comfort ourselves with substances and behaviours which help to mask those feelings of unworthiness for just a while. And why wouldn’t we? No one ever taught us that the solution to our suffering lies within; that nothing outside of us is ever going to fix us. Our inadequacy makes for profitable business.

Excavation of the soul takes great courage. It means venturing into unknown territory to rediscover the person you were meant to be. It is a messy, chaotic and uncomfortable journey. It means letting go of patterns and behaviours that no longer serve you, creating space for new track to be laid. You’ll have to rewire your brain to go against most, if not all, of the things you were taught your entire life.

Many of us as children were told to ‘be quiet’ and to not ‘answer back’. We were disciplined at home and in school for daring to speak up or speak out. We were trained from a young age to swallow our opinions, our feelings, our struggles, the message being that as children our voices did not matter; a habit that became so ingrained, that by adulthood we continued to shut down, unable to express our thoughts, feelings and opinions. We learned that we were not enough, that we needed to change. We learned to stuff down the feelings that were too uncomfortable to bear and suppress the true essence and whisper of our soul.

We grew into wounded adults, self-medicating with food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, sex, co-dependent relationships and various other forms of addiction to numb the pain of our ‘not-enoughness’. We became masters of our own betrayal, keeping up appearances to hide the depth of our suffering inside. And we remained silent, too afraid to be seen as anything less than perfect. Intentionally or not, we were taught to conform and obey the rules. Boys had to ‘toughen up’ and girls had to be ‘ladylike’. We were taught to seek out external markers of our success, our gender dictating what those external markers would be. We inherited from our parents their own emotional childhood baggage and the cultural ideals of the society in which they grew up, nobody knowing any different, or the damage it caused to our spirit. And as parents and carers of children ourselves, we repeat the same mistakes and many more besides.

In this age of technology, where we are more connected than we have ever been, our feelings of isolation and disconnection couldn’t be any higher. We are becoming increasingly separated and isolated from the Self with increasing external pressures. Our children are also being raised to be disconnected not only from the truth of who they are, but from their family and their peers, interaction happening all too frequently through screens and speakers, technical devices being used as baby sitters, replacing all real human connection and interaction.

We remain unconscious as parents about the effects of our own behaviour on our children, still battling through our own emotional burdens from our childhood, our children’s resistance often triggering our ego and causing the ensuing parent/child conflict. We shout at them to ‘hurry up’ and become infuriated by their reluctance to live life at our speed, our anxious minds always living in the future and the knowledge that time is short and our to-do list is long. Children are merely living in the present moment; the man-made concept of time has not yet stolen the joy from their lives. They are not deliberately attempting to make us angry and stressed. Those feelings are triggered in us because of our resistance to live life instinctively and mindfully in the way that children do. We are the ones setting terms and conditions to which our children never agreed. We are angered when our terms and conditions are not met, and then add a twist of hypocrisy when we expect our children to listen and move on cue and yet don’t model the same.

How many times when they ask us for our time do we say, I’ll be with you in a minute, with that minute turning into two, and then three, and then many more minutes besides? How many of us ever actually get around to really listening to our children- getting down on their level, looking them in the face and truly hearing each and every word they say? We may allow them to ‘whinge’ and ‘complain’ at us whilst we continue with the chores, or vaguely make out some complaint or other over the sound of keys being pressed on whatever device that currently holds our attention, but do we ever stop, and in that moment give our children the attention that they need? We are so consumed by our own conditioning to do, to perform, to achieve, that our own children’s demands- needs - are left unmet, the thing they wanted to tell us dismissed as insignificant by the very way in which we often respond to them.

In this quick-fix instant world we live in, we don’t have the patience or the time for ourselves, let alone our children, and so our children are forced into hiding themselves, just as we were, internalising their struggles because they are led to believe they are a slave to a system of control and domination. And that is a belief they will carry with them through life, just as we carried these beliefs; we conform and ‘fit in’ or we are outcast, rejected - disconnected- which intensifies our feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness. Is it any wonder therefore, with so much disconnection that we have a mental health crisis on our hands? Our children and teenagers are more anxious than ever, with self- harming behaviours on the rise.

The Millennium Cohort Study found that 16% of the 11,000 14 year olds surveyed reported they had self-harmed in the last year- that’s 100,000 children aged 14 and under based on these figures. 22% of girls and 9% of the boys said they had hurt themselves on purpose in the year prior to the questionnaire, with more than a fifth of 14 year old girls interviewed admitting to self- harming. NHS data released in August 2018 showed the number of admissions to hospital of girls aged 18 and under for self- harm had almost doubled in two decades between 1997 and 2017. i

With poor mental health being the number one reason for staff absence, ii and overall deaths by suicide increasing by 10.9% in 2018, iii we must rethink the very foundations on which we build our lives. We have to stop hiding behind the façade of social media profiles and stop buying into the fake reality of others, which only perpetuates the cycle of inauthentic expression. We need to stop wasting energy concealing our shame, projecting only the parts of us which we deem acceptable, and focus on destroying the system which preys on our insecurities, confirming our beliefs that we are not smart, thin, fit, beautiful and rich enough. We need to stop judging ourselves and others for not fitting a standard created by those driven by the ego and all the false values the ego seeks to attain. We need to change the culture of how we view our mental and emotional wellbeing; how we talk about it, how we view it as signs of weakness and hide it for fear of judgement. Moreover, we need to stop suffering in silence.

Silence not only hurts. It kills. Silence breeds shame. It keeps us trapped in isolation, but as humans we are wired for connection. The labels we attach to ourselves- our diagnoses, our gender, race, religion to name but a few- are divisive; they keep us boxed and categorised and away from what truly connects us all; our humanity . It takes a tremendous amount of courage to share your story, to feel vulnerable and exposed, the truth of exactly who you are out there for the world to see. Yet through vulnerability comes an incredible amount of power and connection, and this is a huge catalyst for healing, growth and change. Know that, as you read this book, the decision to contribute will not have been taken lightly by the co-authors. Yet each has shared from the heart and bared their soul knowing that if one person takes something away from their story, that’s one more person on the path to their own healing. As collaborators we have come together to say: me too. I’ve suffered. Not in the same way as you. But I understand your despair and struggle and I offer you hope.

So, let’s do it. Let’s reconcile ourselves- it starts with us. Let’s face our deepest fears that we are not enough, unworthy, invalid and insignificant and let’s raise our children to do the same, so that we can grow as a collective in love, understanding and compassion. Let’s release our pain and suffering by surrendering our ego defences and false masks, for it is through becoming vulnerable that we will discover our true and essential invulnerability. iv

So, I refer you back to the beginning, where I started:

The three most important words anyone can say to you are not I love you, but

I hear you.

Because more than anything in life, we fear being insignificant and un-loveable, not worthy enough of having our pain and hurt acknowledged. But being heard provides us with the acknowledgement we crave as part of a system, develops our self-worth and a sense of equality where all voices matter and no one voice is heard above anyone else. It keeps us connected; it brings understanding and healing. And that is where forces join to create a path of love; love for self and love for each other. So let’s come together in our fears by sharing them, facing them and healing them, for fear is the great divider and love conquers all.

If together we feel, together we heal.

Maria Alfieri

photograph by Shane Rounce

2

Honour My Story

Libraries of love, pain, passion and grief all woven together with spines hard, pages thin and words scribbled down.

To read my story I have to invite you to open me up.

To honour my voice, as you skim over the bits you don’t want to see.

You are blessed to be able to turn the page, but for me this is my history.

Honour my story.

Honour my sorrow.

Honour my soul.

You are a beautiful book that I’d be blessed to read, yet know it is yours.

You own your past.

You are the narrator.

And what a gorgeous gift it is to be a teller of stories, of adventure and of hardship.

The next chapter is waiting for you. It is time to start writing.

Kate Morgan

photograph by Flora Westbrook

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FORGIVENESS & LETTING GO

Photo by Florian Klauer

4

This. Is. Me: A Journey to Empowerment

photograph by Jessica Castro

Lost

I was eight years old the first time your penis touched the back of my throat. I remember the gagging sensation as you forced my head down; my small lungs struggling for air as I drowned in your phallus.

I recall the sour taste, the worry that you would wee in my mouth. I remember the panic and not really understanding what was going on.

You disappeared when you’d finished, leaving me confused and frightened on the bed. When you returned, my trousers came down. I lay limp beneath your malevolent touch, my voice and body taken hostage by fear. It was our secret. If I told anyone, I’d be taken away. Social Services always came for girls like me. I swallowed that lie. And it changed me.

My soul fragmented with the shame; your darkness leaked into those cracks. I was stained. Unworthy. Telling someone, anyone, was an impossibility; to speak the truth would be to detonate a bomb of dishonour on my family. Or at least that’s what I thought. You taught me that the girl you had sullied was no longer loveable. And so, I rejected her. I wanted nothing to do with that disgusting girl.

It started with small things, little ways to punish myself for allowing myself to be enslaved to you in that way. I’d hit myself in anger. Just tell someone. But I couldn’t. My mouth incapable of forming the words. I began to wonder if this was normal. Maybe this happens to everyone? I remember prodding my friends at primary school, trying to find out if this had been happening to them too. Of course, I didn’t reveal anything about my own humiliating experience.

By the time I was nine or ten, I concluded that I was very much alone in this experience. To have my body used and touched for another person’s pleasure without my consent was not normal. And it was certainly not acceptable. And yet, I had accepted it. By saying nothing. At least, that is the narrative I told myself. As I grew older, the sex word started being thrown around the playground. Kids would laugh and take guesses as to what it meant, what it involved. I soon realised that that was what this was. It was sex .

I was eleven years old and I had been having forms of sex with you already for three years. I really was that girl. A dirty slut- another word that I had heard batted around by other kids. That sense of being un-loveable and unworthy really began to cement itself. With all my might I wanted it to stop. But wrongfully, I thought I had no power over you. I was just a little girl. This was bigger than me. And I was being lost to it. Engulfed by a power, a system bigger than my own.

I wanted to trade the body I was in. To remove the blemish you’d marked me with. It started innocently. I just wanted to lose a few pounds. I began to leave out treats. Skip meals. As the weight dropped off, I found a way to cope with my burden; a physical demonstration of the pain I could not vocalise. That quickly spiralled into starving myself into almost non-existence. My parents and doctors closed ranks. Finally, I was safe from you.

But that wasn’t enough. Safety, I mean. I required escape. Escape from the reality of being me. By the time I was thirteen years old, I was hospitalised. I had thrown myself out of moving cars, taken razor blades to my skin and developed a fear of eating. I was on bed rest and calorie count. And when I continually