Pasted in from today's
Wolf's Daily Howl



The last weekend of winter. . . . .

Five weeks ago I emerged from my
backdoor to find an unfamiliar landscape.
A blizzard had dumped on my little part
of Connecticut, three feet of snow. The
back steps were buried, along with almost
everything else.

At that point, I did consider grabbing the
shovel and going back in, up the stairs,
down the front stairs, and out the front door.

But that would have required me to take off
my snow boots and lug the shovel (and of
course, my boots), through the house.

I innocently and foolishly forged ahead.

Very soon I discovered that I could not
walk straight ahead through the snow.

Basically, I half crawled, half swam through
the three feet of snow, all the way up the driveway.
It hadnt occurred to me to carry my cell phone.
As I made my way up the driveway at seven in
the morning, it felt to me that I could conceivably
slide beneath the snow, and not be found for a long
time.

I finally made it to the street. There was only one
lane. There was no one else around. The last flakes
of the blizzard were floating down. The end-of-storm
scene was utterly surreal.

Four days after the blizzard, I was still shoveling.

To be able to get parked properly in the back
and hopefully get the car turned around, I had
shoveled a car-sized canyon. The first time I
turned the car around in this space, the snow
was piled up around the sides of the space,
like five-foot high walls.

Again. . . . . surreal.

That was five weeks ago.

Connecticut wasnt back to normal
for nearly a week.

Now, driving around the area,
the only snow left are the grimy
piles pushed into stacks, by the
plows.

The walls of snow that had surrounded
my car that first morning I was able to
use my back driveway, are completely
gone. Imaging how it felt to be fearful
of drowning in my driveway, or to be
closed in, in walls of snow behind my
house, is nearly as surreal as the images
of how the land looked at the end of
the blizzard.

It occurred to me that, thats how the
memory of emotional abuse feels ---
after we escape the abuser. When the
crises and continual distress are fading
memories, it can become challenging
to remember how bad the situation
really was. Its easy to question our
recollection of what our day-to-day
experience within the abuse, was like. . .
just as its easy for me, now, with virtually
no more snow around, to question how
deep, how high, how scary, how much
work surviving the blizzard entailed.

Thats one reason that the piles of
index cards we wrote out when we
did the Clarifying Index Card exercise,
become so important in keeping on
track, when were recovering from abuse.
After the abuse becomes a fading memory,
the cards you wrote, to clarify and document
what you experienced, are like the piles of
dirty snow, final remnants left behind, that
can help you keep from second-guessing
your certainty that you were abused.