Crazy

Reclaiming Life from the Shadow of Traumatic Memory

by Lyn Barrett

Take a peek from Chapter 1: When the Bubble Burst…

It was somewhere between my thirty-fourth and thirty-ninth year when I began to go crazy. It’s hard to remember the exact date. Things moved from great to awful in small increments. My sense of being real to becoming unreal came in wisps and snatches. My love for my children consumed me until one day I lost it. I looked everywhere but couldn’t find it. I always thought I was sane until I wasn’t, and then I was crazy. Or at least I thought I was.

In the beginning, though, we were happy. My husband, John, our three children, and I had just moved into our new home in a small suburban Philadelphia town, and everyone was excited to be closer to our extended family. The house was three stories high with a yellow-brick facade and an oversized, fenced-in backyard. I loved the curly, twisty branches of the Japanese red maple tree that framed the turn-of-the-century architecture. It was graceful and called to be climbed. A crook in the trunk branched into several mid-sized limbs where my children used to sit or hide or magically transform the tree into an old Western fort. We were the perfect family, and I was the perfect wife and mother who had found my calling in taking care of my brood.

John was writing his PhD dissertation in sociology, so we designated the attic room at the top of a narrow flight of stairs in the yellow-brick house as his office. He was the breadwinner, who engaged his academic career in the traditional classroom and while drinking beer in bars where he said students were more relaxed and open to deeper discussions. Teaching with an informal flair, his trademark was casual attire and old, loose-fitting khakis.

Life was good. Things changed. Over the next ten years, our family would disintegrate. Each of us would leave the yellow brick house, one by one, broken, just a shadow of who we thought we were. And it was all my fault.

⚙︎

My eight-year-old daughter, Lizzy, barreled through the kitchen, grabbing a granola bar in one hand and balancing her bundle of baseball cards in the other, a whirl of energy advancing through the house on her way to the backyard to meet her friends. We were settled into our new home and getting down to the business of being family in a new environment. No doubt about it, Lizzy was a tomboy. Her silver-tongued negotiations would eventually yield her the best stack of players among her male peers. Steve Carleton? Pete Rose? It mattered little to them that the Phillies were having their worst season ever. Sprawled across the grass early on a sunny summer morning, she huddled with three neighborhood boys, examining, critiquing, and comparing their cards to figure out their next trades.

“Don’t get mud on your new jeans,” I yelled to my oldest daughter through the backdoor screen. All morning, the fast friends would hop up and disappear into someone else’s house only to reappear in our yard in the next thirty minutes or so, repeating the ritual over and over again.

In the meantime, two-year-old Chuckie finished his Cheerios, slid down from the table, and toddled outside to the sandbox. From a distance, I saw the sand slip through his fingers, then saw the inevitable hurricane of teeny-tiny stone particles flying around the yard, here, there, and everywhere. Bored after a few minutes, he waddled over to his sister, and fell kerplop on her back.

“Hey, get off me, you little oaf!” Lizzy laughed as she grabbed Chuckie in a bear hug. After a wrestle on the grass, Lizzy went back to her cards and Chuckie went off to throw the ball to Trixie, the mangy mid-sized pup who had adopted us not long after we moved into our pet-friendly home.

I watched them out the kitchen window and took pleasure in seeing how much fun they were having. In the back of my mind, I knew someone was missing. Where’s Kimmy? I had seen my five-year-old daughter reading in bed, so I knew she was awake, but she hadn’t made it down to the land of the living. I walked to the second floor and peered around the corner and up the steep steps to the third floor. My husband’s office door was ajar. An early reader, sometimes Kimmy liked to sneak up and hide among the books and maps and atlases and other grown-up learning tools John had accumulated over the years. Sure enough, when I walked the next flight of stairs, there she was, sprawled across the small twin bed squeezed in between the large office desk and floor-to-ceiling shelves. Surrounded by books, each representing her burgeoning list of passions, she sat there intently examining the globe.

“Mommy, Mommy, look what I found,” she blurted out, thrusting the colorful orb in front of me so I would discover, too, some country or continent she hadn’t known existed. I smiled and sat down next to her, sharing her exuberance and taking note of the fact that she hadn’t eaten breakfast yet.

“That’s terrific, Kimmy,” I said, giving her a hug. “Maybe we can do some research on the country later today. But for now, let’s get downstairs and have breakfast!”

The morning rolled on with everyone doing what you might expect of a family of three active children. Our lives were built around playing games, building castles in the sand, reading books, acting out stories, making gingerbread houses, going hiking, accumulating pets, dancing to the music, and creating the scariest haunted houses on Halloween. The children were living their own unique lives, but I was in the center, the connector, the lover, the wiper-of-noses, the hugger, the organizer, the mother. This was our family portrait, frozen in time, the best of the best, real and not posed, or so it seemed to me.

Endorsements

“As the founder of a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse and offering collective healing journeys for survivors, I can say without hesitation that this is a life changing book—for survivors, for those who love them, and for anyone who wants to educate themselves on trauma-induced dissociation, particularly its manifestation as DID. ~ Linda Crockett, Director of Safe Communities

“Barrett’s prose style is precise and rich, and she excels at communicating her complex emotional states, keeping the reader grounded even when she describes the experience of switching between personalities. … An engaging and deeply felt account of mental illness.” ~ Kirkus Review

Crazy is a beautifully written, exceptionally honest story of hope and recovery, and a beacon of hope to those who still suffer from the effects of childhood sexual abuse and emotional wounding. ~ Rev. Tilda Norberg, M.Div, Founder of Gestalt Pastoral Care and author of Consenting to Grace: An Introduction to Gestalt Pastoral Care

Personal and provocative, this book will invite you to embark on a holy adventure of self-awareness, healing, and spiritual transformation. ~ Rev. Dr. Bruce Epperly, Process Theologian and author of Healing Marks: Healing and Spirituality in Mark's Gospel

DID Unpacked: A Parable

A quick read to show what lies ahead …

DID Unpacked is a short ebook that will help you understand what to expect on your journey to recovery. Written as a parable, I hope all your parts will easily understand it. Welcome to the journey!

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