The cloud has lifted from your eyes and you see the trembling of the stars in the sky. Creator you are. We are here listening to every word, beat, hurt, love and joy. Wonderful it is to love someone but start with yourself and be glad you are here experiencing for All that is. Sweet child of the Universe you are here in the now slipping through time.

Grandma told me once that I would never be satisfied.
That I would grow up never satisfied at all.
I was a skinny little stick of a thing probably 6 or 7 at the time. I remember we were in her kitchen and I was feeling such warmth towards her and wanted to show her how much I loved her and so I gave her a hug. And she said, "Pas ci fort ma fille, tu me fait mal." (Not too tight my girl you hurt me) I didn’t know at the time but she had a very bad heart and had just recently returned from the hospital due to a heart attack. I let her go and then she looked down at me and her next words hurt my feelings because I couldn’t understand what I had done for her to tell me I would never be satisfied. What had I done wrong? Except to squeeze her a little too hard. I never forgot her word and it has lingered with me for an awful long time.

Its been many decades since that moment in her kitchen Mother God, and somehow I must have flagged it as an important one because it's crept up on me many times over the years and I’ve always felt an ache deep inside myself as the seriousness of her declaration had set itself like concrete in my heart, for I was unhappy even then, feeling that somehow I wasn’t getting it right... getting life right. That I had failed in a way and didn’t measure up to whatever it was that I was supposed to be and I surmised it was going to be like this for the rest of my life. The little black cloud that had hung over me since babyhood now had been seen by grandma and she was very wise and so with a tired knowing smile, she patted me on the head and suggested I go play, then told my mom she was going to bed for a while and so we went home to let her rest.

I do have to say that I am insatiable in some areas of life but these could be considered normal and maybe even a very good thing depending on how you look at it.

I would never be satisfied she said. Well! I did ask my dad to give me the moon once when I first saw it from the baby carriage. I reached up for it only to be told, "Sorry sweetie, daddy would give it to you if he could but I can’t."
Maybe I’m still reaching for the moon but you know? It was so pretty and I could close my fist around it but it would slip out of my hands before I could bring it to my face to get an even better look. I remember crying in frustration all the way home, while mom and dad chatted away and said something like "she’s just hungry for her bottle."

I think since then I have realized that no one is here to give me the moon.
No one is ever going to rescue me from the frustrations of life but me.

Frustrations. There was lots of it growing up. I wanted peace so badly. Is this not being satisfied?
We lived crammed into a house between the crossings of the C.P.R. railroad tracks and a creek, on a dead end street in town, in a four room shack that eventually became a little bigger thanks to the carpentry work that my father did to it as the family grew to six children including me. I did get my own room eventually when I turned twelve thanks to menstruation. I wanted peace so badly and when I got it, it was laced with so much guilt because I remember my little brothers all looking at me with their huge eyes, wishing they could have been in my shoes. The first time I closed the door behind me I threw myself on the bed and cried myself to sleep... I felt so bad and so good at the same time.

The trains kept blasting through the house every 30 minutes, and my mother’s constant bickering to anyone within hearing distance about my father’s drinking would fill the spaces in between.
I supposed I can’t really blame her. Who could be happy with so much turbulence around? She seemed to always be pregnant and so the family grew to six children in a little shack by the railroad tracks. But I so wanted peace and quiet. Little bits of quiet moments would slip in once in a while amidst the havoc. For sure there were some good times but it seems to me they always ended with an argument over how much beer was consumed.

I might have tucked the really hard times so far within myself, that I hear them sometimes in a word or from the sight or sound of something, and then a sinking sick feeling creeps back in a sneaky way like a cockroach in a corner of my brain that finally has a dark place near the light to tease without being caught. Maybe this is why for years I felt so guilty when I had fun. I would wake up the next day feeling like there must be something I did wrong because that cloud of heaviness was there always to take away the good feelings.

Family get togethers, laughter, song, everything that comes with a big french Canadian family living in the fifties was my life, and they were interspersed with molestations, things heard in the dark, whispers such as heartbroken cries at times from somewhere in the house in the middle of the night that had to be mom or dad or both.Times were hard for all of us and I’m sure they did their best but in those days somehow things were felt, and done and kept inside much more than they are today and as a result I think we, the survivors of abuse have such a grip on our selves that sometimes even we have trouble unlocking our hearts for ourselves, and then to others even though we have so much that needs to be shared.

The road of courage sure isn’t easy I’m thinking, but once the mountains have been scaled there’s really nothing better than seeing the end of the lesson, and so you make the trips a bit battle scarred, but so much stronger and the wiser knowing after all of them your worthiness in the grand scheme of things.

I really am still the skinny little kid I was back then on the inside at least. I went back to my childhood a few years back in a dream to the little house by the creek and railroad tracks and walked through the door, sat beside that little girl in the kitchen living room and said hello.

Brown eyes looked into brown eyes and I gave her such a hug. We held each other tightly for a long time it seems. I told her I loved her. I also told her I was so proud of her and that she was going to grow up and be very very happy. That all the bad things she was going through would stop eventually and she would be ok and that none of it was her fault.
She believed me and held on tightly, and although I woke up to a very wet pillow I could still feel her inside me because I know we will always be together and life is good and the smiles are on the inside now as well as on the outside.

A very dear friend told me that this is a very common way to get in touch with your inner self, and is used in therapy. I had never heard of this but can see now that this wisdom is in everyone and that it can be tapped into when the person is ready to grow.

And so I dedicate this book to all the little children of the world, those that are still on the inside crying for a hug.

Love and hugs,
Paulette