insilentmeditation | Phoenix Take Back the Night 2022 (Reply)

Following is the transcript for the speech I gave for the 2022 Phoenix Take Back the Night virtual event on April 7, 2022. You can watch the video here.

Hello. My name is Suzy Jacobson Cherry, and I would like to begin sharing my story with this poem. It is called “Regret.”

When I was young

I was afraid

Boys were a mystery

But I…

I knew myself

And I was sure that I was the

Ugliest, most undesirable, fattest

Person to ever walk the earth, all

Five foot, three inches

one hundred and ten pounds of me

and no boy would ever

ever want me

but oh, how I wanted one of them

I wanted to be loved and cherished

Forever and ever, so badly

That when the first one came along

Who declared his undying love

For me, in tears, I fell head

Over heels, heels over head, and

Straight into the bed

Of terror

Oh, it took a couple of months

After wedding bells

For him to destroy what little self

Esteem I had, only a few months

To tear out my heart and my soul

And shove them into a closet

Where they cowered in fear

In those days there was no name

For that thing that I did with the

Wire cutters, the knives and the scissors

To my arms, but I

I knew that the only way to release

My fear, my frustration, my anger, and

My …

Hope less ness

Was by rending my very flesh

Until the day

After eight years I gained the courage

To rescue my heart and my soul

And walk away

I have no regrets about those years,

For me…you see,

Today, this day, I know who I am

I know I am beautiful

I know I am sensual,

I know my strength and my power and

My control over my future

And I also know that girl

That girl, who at 15, 16, 17, 18…25

Did not know who she was

Did not know she had power

Did not know she was beautiful

I know her, and I know her loneliness

I know her fears and I recall her tears

For her, I have regret

I regret the loss

Of her innocence

The loss of her dreams

And the loss of her years

To the legacy of tears

For these things…

For these things,

I have regret.

When I wrote that poem in 2010, I thought my greatest and first trauma at the hands of others was this marriage, this abuse that took me by surprise. When I became a victim, I truly had not known that someone who professed their undying love could turn from lover to tormentor, from beloved to dreaded. I did not know that I would lose a child to CPS in 1978 because I was unable to find myself in the darkness. I could not protect her because I could not protect myself.

By 2010 I knew full well I had not been alone in my experience and I had begun to think of myself as a survivor. By then, I had been writing my first book, a fictionalized memoir about my experiences called Phoenix from the Ashes for years. When I started writing it in the early 90’s, I was so angry that I punched the keys on the small manual typewriter I was using so hard that they would pop off and fly into the air. Writing was cathartic but it also forced me to question my own part in my continuing torment and anger. If I didn’t release the anger, I knew I would eventually implode.

Forgiveness for my first husband came in an instant one afternoon in the late 90’s. By then I had been married and divorced twice more. I had borne three more children, whom I was determined to raise in love, acceptance, and wholeness. I had set the book aside for a time and was focusing my attention on my children and my spirituality. I was not thinking about my past or how I had gotten to where I was, living with a friend, caring for her children, my children, and the house because I was afraid that I could not hold down a job. Chronic pain from what had initially been diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis but was eventually declared to be fibromyalgia had forced me to quit my government job. I was struggling once more with my identity. Was I really a survivor? Was I spiraling back into invisibility? Then one day as I walked across the kitchen, I found myself stopping in the center as I felt a weight being lifted from my shoulders. I was no longer angry at my first husband, and I recognized in that moment that the fathers of the children I was now raising did not deserve the residual anger I harbored for what I had endured before I ever met them.

Within a couple of years, I went back to school at ASU. I earned my BA with a major in Religious Studies and a minor in Anthropology in 2003. I was 45 years old, and it was time to readdress the book I had been writing. I brought the story forward a bit, brought it up to date, and asked a couple of others to read it for me. When they pointed out how angry the writing was, I was able to see it too. Anger was not the message I wanted to convey. I wanted to share my story with others who were in similar situations, so they would really know they weren’t alone. With the help of supportive friends, I reworked the book until I felt I couldn’t do any more, and released it as a chapbook which I shared with anyone who wanted it. I felt as if I was answering a Call from the Divine whenever a reader came to me to share, cry, and thank me for sharing my story. For a while, I thought I had truly become that Phoenix who had risen from the ashes of her previous life. I pushed forward, working a full-time job, going back to school for my Master of Divinity, and raising my three kids with the help of my parents and my small circle of single mom friends. My friends and I, we relished our individual strengths and our ability to be all things to our children while secretly dreaming of finding that “One True Love” who would come into our lives to share our burdens and love us unconditionally. We didn’t know then that our One True Love is ourselves.

When my current husband came into my life it was a bit like a fairy tale. We had been friends long ago when we were both married to other people – he to his first wife, me to my second husband. We’d dropped into one another’s lives periodically later, first in person, then through MySpace, and finally through Facebook. Now, we had finally discovered that we loved one another. At first, I was elated, like the young woman I had been when I first met my abuser, before I knew who he really was. As time went by, I began to realize that perhaps the Phoenix had not truly risen from those ashes. I found that I had emotional responses to things he said and did that were not only inappropriate but completely out of proportion. I kept them inside while outwardly talking with him about open communication and positivity. I devised ways of envisioning myself taking that old baggage and putting it outside of myself, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. He had no idea how many times things he said or did would trigger me, and I didn’t understand why it was so. I was determined to make this marriage work in spite of the challenges of the transition from a single parent family to having a new adult in the house. I was thankful there was only one child still at home. With the power struggles between my son and my husband, and my own need to have control over everything, I think we are very lucky that we will soon reach our 11th year together.

My chronic pain had become almost overwhelming at times, my brain was foggy, I was not able to think critically or quickly. I was fired from a pastoral internship that was already my third attempt at ordination in a large mainstream denomination, and I was laid off from my secretarial job at a church. I don’t know exactly where we would be today if I hadn’t gotten a job working in behavioral health after that. In my new job, I was able to use my experiences to help others. I began to feel that while I do not believe that things “happen for a reason,” we can use reason to make new things happen. I had coworkers who had been in some similar situations as I had, including being females in the military. When I began to meet more women who had been in the military and discuss our experiences, I began to remember what had happened to me. I connected with the VA and started counseling. I was already over the age of 60 before I realized that I had been raped, not once, but twice, when I was in the Air Force. Both were date rape. The first time was when I was still at tech school. I had been “roofied”, which was why my memory of the time was so mixed up. The second time was on Guam before I started dating the man who would become my first husband. At the same time, I was being sexually harassed by a higher ranking, older, and much bigger male coworker who would corner me against the wall. I was so intimidated, I had no idea what to do, so I endured it. For all these years, I had felt guilty, believing I was at fault for what happened, and I had put those memories so far inside that I didn’t realize how that first experience affected me and my relationships with men and people in authority for years to come. Counseling helped me understand that by the time I met and married my first husband, I had been damaged spiritually and emotionally. I was already a victim before I became his victim. I also came to know without a doubt that the day I made the decision to leave him and made that a reality was the day I became a survivor. After I left him, instead of seeking out a therapist, I partied. I worked in the world of rock-n-roll in Phoenix and Hollywood. For a couple of years, I made some extremely foolish decisions and got myself into some dark and dangerous corners, but I got through them. Now I better understand why I made those decisions.

I also understand that part of my strength and my ability to survive stems from the fact that I have always held on to an element of hope and a resiliency that comes from being open to new ideas and experiences. I am still learning and growing, and I know that I always will be. It isn’t that I haven’t had dark moments where I wished it was all over. I have. It isn’t that I don’t sometimes still get a little caught up in the negativity of my past experiences. I do. It isn’t that I’m not sometimes afraid. I sometimes am. What it IS, however, is that I have a strong faith in my ability to overcome the challenges I encounter. I am not afraid to try new things. Most of all, I think, it is that I am no longer afraid to explore the darkness inside myself and to bring the hidden memories into the light. Having a good counselor through my Cognitive Processing Therapy has helped me to realize that it’s okay to find out where I am vulnerable. It’s okay to admit being human.

Somehow during all of this, I completed my Master’s program when I was 53. I was ordained in a small inter-spiritual denomination by leaders who could see my potential when even I was unsure if I was worthy to hold out my hand to others. Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s too late to do something you have always dreamed of doing.

My book, Phoenix from the Ashes, has been available on Amazon since I completed another reworking and added resources in 2013. It was the book that led my daughter – the one I lost to CPS – to find me in 2019. She sought me out on Facebook through a relative she connected with after having a DNA test through 23andMe. It was a poem in the book, written at her 11th birthday, that convinced her she had found the right person. Our meeting and the connection of her family with ours has been one of the greatest lights to come out of the darkness.

If you’re interested, you can probably find the book by searching my name, Suzy Jacobson Cherry, on Amazon. If you do, I hope it speaks to you. I want you to know, though, that it is only part of the story. There is so much that I didn’t share, because I was afraid of the consequences of truly opening up. Everything in it is true, but the names have been changed to protect the innocent, and it is very, very far from being the whole truth. There is much that I didn’t share, because even I didn’t know the whole truth. I’m no longer afraid to face the shadows. Maybe one day I will pull them all into the light.

Finally, I want to remind you – all of you – that you will be okay. You are strong. You are part of the light that illuminates the way for others who find themselves in the dark. I want you to know that even when we are at our darkest times, there is always hope and a path to life. Though we may think we are alone, we truly are not. If we pay attention, if we listen, we will hear the stories of others that will help us to see the cracks in the darkness. Once we find the light, we must share our stories to help those who stumble into the dark to find their way. For me, it is important not to think, “why did this happen to me?” but “how can I use what happened to me to make my life and the lives of others better?” You are here tonight because you know that there is always hope. I am proud to share this moment with you all.

Thank you.