CREATIVE ASSIGNMENT: RECOVERY POSITION DEFINITIONS - ANNOTATED 2026
RECOVERY POSITION DEFINITIONS - ANNOTATED
□ VICTIM
Core Belief:
"Something terrible happened to me and it still controls my life."
Description:
The Victim stage is characterized by overwhelming pain, confusion, fear, and helplessness. The individual often feels trapped by traumatic experiences and may struggle to understand how those experiences continue to affect daily life. Trust is often limited, emotional reactions may feel uncontrollable, and survival takes precedence over a person’s developmental growth.
Common Statements:
· "Why did this happen to me?"
· "I feel broken."
· "I don't understand what's wrong with me."
· "I am just trying to survive."
Primary Need:
Safety
Happy’s Addition: The facet of something terrible happened to me and it controls my life is one way to define the victim aspect of the witness. When I was living as the victim my life was controlled by the victimizers in my life. My parents had the power in the house and then the neighborhood was so frightened by them in the 1970s – 1990’s that I was limited on who I could play with in the neighborhood. My mother was a school teacher and had a tremendous power over the school district since so many of the male employees were either crimies or customers of my father. Children and employees of that school district disappeared and no investigations took place. My father and his father had been paying off local law enforcement for decades. Investigations would either be denied or if a file had been started my father would purchase that file and have it delivered to our house for review and then destruction. All the family members that were involved in this organized crime ring would repeat the same things, ‘No body no crime’ and/or ‘No file no time’. That something terrible was involved in my ecological unit and then that trauma compromised the protection of a larger community. All my safety factors had been removed and for those that tried to help me they would have disappeared so quickly that my dissociative mind erased them from having ever existed in my life.
MY CORE BELIEF
I continually thought of how I would be murdered or how I could kill myself due to the constant abuse. Thus, I repeated in my head, “No one loves me, everyone hates me, why can I not die”.
MY COMMON STATEMENTS
“Where can I hide”
“When will they attack me again”
“Did I hide enough food”
“Keep my eyes down my hands up and go to the floor and crawl as quick as I could”
“What could my brothers blame on me now, that will get me beat today”
PRIMARY NEED:
Escape with my shoes on (Bare feet limited my routes of safety)
□ SURVIVOR
Core Belief:
"I was hurt, but I am still here."
Description:
The Survivor recognizes that trauma occurred and begins developing coping strategies. While symptoms remain significant, there is growing awareness that healing may be possible. The individual begins separating their identity from the traumatic experiences they endured.
Common Statements:
· "I made it through."
· "I am stronger than I thought."
· "I want to heal."
· "I want things to be different."
Primary Need:
Stability
I was a perpetual survivor all through my childhood if you looked at what I had just survived moments ago. Even now at the age of 56 I move from victim into survivor mode depending on the content of the flashbacks that I am having currently. Some would say that you become a survivor once you escape your victimizer. In a sense that is true but that only stops that abuser from having access to you. Then you must contend with the tier 2 offender that can sense your trauma and come after you for their own enjoyment. Unfortunately, in my existence these have been found in three categories. The first is fellow students and co-workers who for some reason feel compelled to enlighten me to how much they dislike me. However, they will never tell me why. Then the second tier is occupied by Teachers and professors. The teacher part was easy they had been customers of my fathers, and they got cheated or my father threatened them and he considered then a squealer and they lost access to sex slaves and rape parties. The professors fell into two groups, they either abused everyone because they had tenure or they once again felt compelled to let me know how they despised me and that I was not intelligent enough for academic work. The final tier, which included direct and indirect administrators, was mostly located in the facilities that I worked in during my career in psychiatric care. The common theme in this one was that I was so eager to learn about this profession and would take on so much extra work so that I could learn about something that fascinated me. This would be considered by dysfunctional people as ‘kissing up’ to the other administrators. Then there was the belief that I wanted to take their jobs. For the record I wanted to work with clients not push paperwork and fill out work schedules. Through the decades I found out that many people who work in the psychiatric community were once psyche patients themselves and amongst these personality disorders were common. They couldn’t keep jobs in other fields, so they occupied this one niche and knew enough about the system to avoid termination. Then add that our field pays such low salaries, and these individuals would accept those payment schedules without fuss and then you have a long-term employee staying there until retirement. Then an eager and happy novice begins their career and as I have been told in many ways by administrators. Then in this instance by an assistant district director no less the following “You shine to bright why not let someone else shine for a while”. This would have been great advice if someone else had risen and I could learn from them, but no one would. I embraced mental health like it was my life’s calling; others just showed up for a paycheck. Even then at the start of my career my offenders made sure to harass me and continued to find me no matter what plans I put into place to avoid them. Stability was sought but could not be obtained due to the subconscious scripting of a victimizer persons persona.
CORE BELIEF:
Never have I been impressed with myself for still being alive, my belief was, “Why does my life have to be so difficult and how am I not dead”. So many people around me had committed suicide or they had simply disappeared and had been presumed dead. My mother told me so many stories about these people and yet though she has tried many times in my childhood she had failed to kill me and a few times beat me for trying to kill myself. Those others escaped this pain and I could not.
COMMON STATEMENTS:
“Maybe this time she will kill me”
“Why does God not want me” This was after I would wake from the unconsciousness caused by a beating and feel all that paralysis of torture in my bones.
“Where am I and where do I belong” This was a common statement that I would think to myself when I woke up, often naked but not always, down by the drainage ditch in the high weeds
“Will I survive this” That was what came up in my head when I could see that the Vice Principal in Junior High was racing toward me (he was a customer that wanted to become a proprietor of sex slaves and hated my father for not helping him get into the business) or that my mother was high again and running around the house naked in a psychosis. Sometimes she would corner me before I could escape, and I knew that beating would end me and then it didn’t.
PRIMARY NEED:
Again, my focus was ‘escape’ even after I had left the ‘house of hate’ since they continued to search for me and make themselves a part of my existence. An abused child is never free if they hold secrets of their homicidal glee.
□ WITNESS
Core Belief:
"My story deserves to be understood."
Description:
The Witness begins examining trauma with curiosity rather than avoidance. The individual starts connecting memories, emotions, and life events into a coherent narrative. There is a growing desire to understand what happened and how it shaped the self.
Common Statements:
· "I am beginning to understand my past."
· "The pieces are coming together."
· "My experiences matter."
· "I want the truth."
Primary Need:
Understanding
I can agree that my story deserves to be understood. This is difficult for me since I do not like the spotlight because it results in the over exposure of my quaky psyche. The strength it took for me to begin to tell Law Enforcement about my past had me quaking in my boots as I wrote them letters and organized files of cold cases for them to make cases from. After each submission I could see new faces in my neighborhood following me or employers would tell me that law enforcement had come by to ask questions about me. Then one day the FBI called and asked to talk about cases. My children and I cleaned that house from top to bottom and made banana bread. They did not come to talk about cases, they came with releases to search my computers. I signed that form and signed another when I turned even more cases over to them while they were at my house. When it became apparent that they were here to investigate me I told them to search the entire house and my phone. They did and then only special agent Merv Mason concluded this investigation with a smile and offered me his card. The other two were upset and I have always thought that perhaps they had a wager on my innocence and guilt and that these other two lost. If that seems like all that could occur to me in this life of abuse and betrayal it is not. In 2026 I found out that an extended family member of mine who knew of my father’s criminal behavior had been working in the background to stop any ongoing and all future investigations. This distant family member informed immediate family members that I should stop sending in cold cases and then went on to include that he and his fellow detectives would laugh at my efforts to seek justice. This is where I am currently, another family member has found me and is doing all they can to thwart my advancement toward wholeness and emotional regularity by attacking me once again for telling the truth.
CORE BELIEF:
I agree that my story should be understood but first it must be known and the dead must be sent home.
COMMON STATEMENTS:
“To know me is to love me” This became a motto that I never spoke out loud, and I said to myself often. I never hated myself like so many traumatized people do. I knew that inside I was a good person. I continually made the next right choice. The issue was that my choices were limited to survival and escape due to who I was born to and their black-market entrepreneurialism. My mammy and my nanna loved me and due to them I knew I was lovable.
“You be you and I will be me” This was more a philosophical saying that I comforted myself with. In the era that I grew up there was great contention about being different and the equation was always ‘might makes right’. The bully made the measuring stick and enforced it first with verbal abuse and later with violence. My parents were the same way, and this saying was my way of navigating past their abuses and knowing that who I was worked just fine for me.
“They’re going to be cruel just wait and see” Whenever someone was nice to me and I thought maybe I had a friend it would turn out that I didn’t. Once better options came along, they would exit my picture and tell everyone the details behind what happened at my house or how I couldn’t tell a joke or an interesting story. It’s true my dissociation was so high, and my abuse started when I was so young that I had been in special education classes since first grade. I routinely forget people’s names and would assign ‘him’ or ‘her’ to even family members who I grew up with. My head traumas had been so severe that while in elementary school I had to learn to speak again and had special classes on the fundamentals of walking and crawling since they said I walked like the scarecrow from the wizard of OZ. I had a flatfooted awkward gate, and I fell over a lot or stayed leaning up against a wall as I traversed the hallways. In adulthood the MRI showed two traumatic brain injuries and led to a great deal of conversation with the neurologist about my history as a child. I could not handle friendships but how I tried to have friends in whatever package I could find them. Even though they betrayed me I would play with them again, given the chance just so I could escape loneliness for a while.
PRIMARY NEED:
It’s true that I wanted to be understood but I wanted to understand myself more than I wanted others to understand me. My depressions were so deep, and others treated me so awful while the remainder just ignored me. I have never experienced the comfort of others understanding me and only recently have I begun to understand my suffering enough to believe I have a small and delicate handle upon how best to proceed.
□ TRUTH-TELLER
Core Belief:
"I will no longer hide my story."
Description:
The Truth-Teller openly acknowledges their experiences and refuses to deny the reality of what occurred. Shame begins to lose its power as the individual develops confidence in their own perceptions and memories. Personal truth becomes more important than external validation.
Common Statements:
· "This happened."
· "I am no longer hiding."
· "My voice matters."
· "I refuse to carry someone else's secrets."
Primary Need:
Authenticity
Yes, it is true that I must become the truth teller and help all of those that follow me in my quest to heal from my past and inevitably send the dead home. Now I have CPTSDcoldcase on 14 separate social media sites. I do not know which one will work to gain the attention that I need. It amazes me that I am working so hard with my journaling and still have strength for this social media campaign. However, after my own extended family member has decided to stand in the way of my attempt to seek justice. I have determined that part of my new strategy will have to involve social media.
□ ADVOCATE
Core Belief:
"My experience can help others."
Description:
The Advocate uses lessons learned from trauma to assist, educate, support, or protect others. Pain begins transforming into purpose. The individual often becomes involved in helping professions, mentoring, teaching, writing, public education, or social change efforts.
Common Statements:
· "I want to help others heal."
· "I want to prevent this from happening again."
· "My suffering can serve a purpose."
· "I want to make a difference."
Primary Need:
Contribution
This is who I am. I have been telling the truth since I was young. Some would say that no one listened, the truth is that they all listened but either they were too afraid, had been compromised by payment, benefited from criminal activity by selling or buying slaves, or enjoyed the act of abusing me too. Many occupied several slaves of this criminal pie all at once or in the progression of life. Some in their youth could lure the young ladies and wrestle them into ropes and then carry them into the market for sale. Then as the decades passed, they couldn’t hide that behavior anymore due to marriage or a job that would notice scratches on their face. Those men then moved either up the chain and ran a crew, or they moved outside the circle to the customer side as a physical participant at a rape party or a voyeur at a barn party. This is an example of what I learned through my flashbacks and confessions by my mother and father who would answer my questions as my memories started to arise from my amnesic box. I have been telling these truths since they began to enter my recall in 1999. Prior to these events when I was young up until Junior High, I truly thought that every other kid was treated like I was because both my parents told me so. It wasn’t until high school that I started to put it together that my home life was different from my classmates.
I knew that both my parents beat me and my brothers. I watched it and I heard them scream for mercy but no one in the ‘house of hate’ was beaten as viciously as I was. My mother had borderline personality disorder and splitting was her main tactic and then right behind that dysfunctional behavior that kept everyone on edge. Then she had her addiction to pharmaceutical pills and could never accept the word ‘no’. The biggest ‘no’ in her life was that my father wouldn’t allow my older brother to live with us, he could not come home. This led to my mother blaming me for my father’s choice and she began to call me ‘favorite’. She had so many manipulative plans to get permission to bring my older brother home. Then when they failed, she would scream the name favorite and attack me, and I would wake up in the dark soiled and bloody with scratch marks on my neck and testicles and so much rigidity in my arms and clavicles that I could help myself up and I would have to crawl to my bed. At the ‘house of hate’ it was up a flight of stairs.
As an example, to evidence her commitment to this endeavor I offer the ‘shrine’. Upstairs in the ‘house of hate’ at the end of the hall there was a room the size of a two-car garage. My mother had filled that room with antique furniture that she had gotten from various relatives through hook and crook, my father helped her steal some of these items and a cousin in Weatherford Texas was strangled to death since she had walked up on them while they were busy loading that furniture in a truck. I was small but I knew who she was and she was just a teenager with black hair. She had played with me often when I saw her at the store our family owned. Many of the cousins lived close together on family land and when she saw the truck she just walked over to be neighborly. She had no idea what she had walked into and neither did I until she was attacked by both my parents and then that memory became stored in my amnesic box. Her face and the confusion that it emitted as they leaped upon her without a warning still sits in my mind even right now.
(I am glad that this cousin came up in the section about truth, she could have been blood or bone, but my mother told me she was a cousin of ours. She always was so kind to me and carried me around on her hip every time she saw me, and she would sneak me these gums that cost a penny. I was intensely afraid of these wild cats that hung around the store since they often hissed at me and would come at me to get me to leave their kittens alone. I had nothing to do in the summer of the 1970’s and then a kitten would wander out of a bush, and I would want so much to pet it and then the momma would attack me. Hence, I developed a fear of those larger cats and would run if I saw one. I was too young to put the combination of a protective mother together with wanting to pet a kitten. This is just a good moment of remembering her and an example of once again me telling the truth. I couldn’t find a grave for her in Weatherford under the name Murrell so perhaps she was a bone cousin (this was slang for someone we called family who wasn’t in the blood line). She would swing me between the family store and my mammies house on the white rock that made up the driveway. At times she would share her sandwiches with me especially when she saw me sitting on the outside steps. My mother would make me sit on those steps out in the sun while she visited with my mammy. It was so hot and then she would call me, and we would play and then run back to the steps in case my mother was coming and then she would bring her sandwich over and share the meat and cheese with me. It was like having a real big sister. I may never learn her name while I am alive because she was one of the people I called ‘her’. In her afterlife I know she can feel that love I have for her and that for a time her memory will live on in a social media post until all are gone that remembered her. For me that won’t be so bad since I will have been reunited with her and then she can once again remind me of her name lol.)
Back to the shrine lol. That room was elegant and not really fit for a boy my brother’s age. The reason that I call it the shrine was due to how many pictures she had of him in that room along with what accounts as their family portraits. Just my mother and my older brother together in a frame with the words Olan Mills down in the corner. Which means that my mother would have had to make a separate appointment and then pick him up from whoever was raising him and drive with him whatever the distance was to pose for this picture. This was her golden child, and she paid a premium price for these photos. Every year we received coupons for family pictures and we would use them. That means that these pics and these frames were all full price. She had several frames set across his bureau at least it would have been his had he been able to live with us. She filled the two large closets that this room had with new clothes for him. This was in addition to the new clothes she had bought him, and he had at whoever’s house he was living at. If I entered that room or disturbed any of the new things that she had bought him and laid out for some arrival she thought was going to happen and never did. The beating would be severe and often carry on for days as she would be reminded how much she hated me since due to her illogical reasoning from a personality disordered mind I had some magical power that denied my older brothers return home.
Here is a truth to put under this topic heading. This is the room and the bed that I attempted to kill myself on. There is a long story to this event but here it is in a reduced fashion. My mother always threatened to kill herself when she didn’t get her way. She would tell people either on the phone or in person that she would take a handful of pills and never wake up again due to something they did. I was in first grade, and this made total sense to me. If she could escape and go to heaven, then so could I. So, I went looking for pills and all I could reach was the baby aspirin that she kept on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. I don’t know why but she kept all her pharmaceutical pills in the refrigerator and these were so tall they barely fit and then she had so many that one whole side of our fridge was for her pills. She had the fridge open and I reached in and grabbed the baby aspirin and asked her how many I would have to take to kill myself. She didn’t miss a beat, she said take them and find out. So, I held onto that bottle and took them upstairs and had them in my possession the entire week that I was telling teachers at Thomas Haley Elementary and I had many teachers. When you’re in special education you have a primary teacher that runs the room and then several other teachers that specialize and work with you on specific tasks. At that time, I saw about 7 teachers in a day. Some did flashcards for spelling and pronunciations with me, another worked on my walking and always had me on a balance beam or walking heel to toe then on other days we had endless crawling exercises, then there was a speech teacher, and I never could make her happy. Each of these had assistance who would take me over for one-on-one time since I was so far behind. I told all of them about my plan and only the janitor told me that she would miss me.
This event was not about sadness to me, I was so proud of myself. Finally, I had a plan that had to work since it was my mother’s plan to begin with. I was not telling these teachers as a cry for help, I was informing them that I would be escaping from a horrible life and from them too. Those special education teachers were horrendous in the way in which they approached my education. They had been told by my mother who worked there as a teacher that I was faking. So, in their minds my mother’s professional opinion outweighed their own and they treated me like I was faking. The slaps the ridicule then the speeches where they would try and shame me into complying with their demands. I would get slapped again for laughing but to me their words came out so fast that it reminded me of Charlie Brown's school teacher, “wah-wah-Wah.” My day started in Mrs. Star’s class, down by the cafeteria if I remember her name correctly and I would have to deliver notes to her in the morning that my mother had written. Then she would make the accusations of the day. She would look at me disappointed after reading the note and told me to stop jumping off the bunk beds and then when I tried to speak, she would snap at me and tell me to go to my desk. I would turn and walk away but my thoughts would be about how we didn’t have bunk beds at least not at that time. This teacher knew as did they all but they either feared my mother and consequently what my father would do or they had become team Glenda and reveled in acting their frustrations out on me.
Another time when I had a wound on my face and head, it was so large that the principal heard about it and called me to his office and then told my mother that I would need a doctor’s note to be able to stay in school. The new note led to questions all about football and how I played too rough and the big kids clobbered me. Of course, this was not what happened. My mother and father attacked me the night before and slammed me out of a kitchen chair and left me on the floor until the next morning and then I was dragged to school. My mother wouldn’t let me look in the mirror or even go into our bathroom at the house when she woke me up. I had been unconscious on the living room floor for so long and I had soiled my pants resulting in my clothes sticking to me, and I had to pull them out of the creases they made in my crotch and all along my legs. My urine had caused my pants and part of my shirt to become stiff, and it felt like someone had ironed my clothes with me in them, but everything was crooked lol. When you pull your underwear and blue jeans out of your crotch after a night of bodily chemicals solidifying that fabric to your skin. You end up becoming chaffed due to chemical burns which will make you walk wide legged and advertise you to your classmates as a slow-moving target. The boys spend their morning trying to slap your legs or kick you in the crotch to act cool and make the girls giggle. You are not a part of their classroom as I had heard before many times you are the visiting retard. So later after they have gotten you once or twice, and tears are streaming down your face and you're defending yourself with a book that you took from one of the boys who was using it to hit you and a pencil that you took from another boy who had thrown it at you. The teacher sends you to the special education class when it’s not your time to rotate.
They don’t want you and they will not let you in. So, you can either go sit on a commode and try to guess how much time has passed or you make a game of it. My game was to walk and touch the special education door which they had closed on me to refuse my entrance and stop me from asking to come in and then walk back to my classroom door which they had closed on me too and touch it. Seems simple but in my head, I am a sheriff trying to stop the escaping prisoners or I am an army man trying to stop that bomb. An entire story plays in my head as I walk, and those two doors are about 100 yards apart and part of the game is how I must have my ending ready to complete before I make it to that next door. Then one of two things will happen over that time span. Either special education lets me in or my class lines up for lunch and I follow them into the cafeteria. I cannot eat with them; the students will not allow me to either and they will push my tray off onto the floor if I have a tray. When events like this happened and I had been dismissed from a classroom the punishment was that I couldn’t get a tray of food. The lunch ladies would just ignore me, and nothing would be served to me.
So, I had two options: there was a table where students would leave any item they didn’t want to eat, which usually was whatever tasted grossest that day. If I was fast, I could out speed the teacher and swallow most of it before they took it from me and threw it in the garbage. Then there was the second attempt that I could make if I wasn’t being watched too closely. Some days they only had skim milk and no chocolate milk so many of the students threw that skim milk away. It was gross and tasted like milky water and often it was warm. The cafeteria had these large metal drums that had liners in them. If several students had thrown their unopened milk into the garbage, then I could bolt toward the canister and throw my head and arms into it. I had to make sure that I knocked the container over since that was the only way I could escape with milk cartons in both hands. I had to be looking away from the canisters and then watching the teachers either peripherally or by glancing on occasion. The time to bolt was when a new class came in and the other teachers were lining up my class to leave. Then I could run, jump, dive , seize, fall and bolt so fluidly that I could have two milks and be out the side door in a flash.
Sometimes they would pursue me to take away my two milks, so I learned to keep running and across the street. One time I ran to the playground and two younger teachers chased me in there and cornered me against the chain link fence and smashed my milk down and squashed them with their feet and I could hear them laughing as they walked away. This was all acceptable behavior because my mother worked there and had told them all that I was incorrigible and even worse at home. It was during this time that I was outside and reluctant to go back in since I had been slapped a lot that day and my face hurt. This was when one of my facial wounds had healed enough not to be purple anymore, but it still was puffy and it was in my lower eye socket and then across my cheek bone. It was branded on my face by my parent’s right-hand swing, and it just so happened that almost all my teachers were right-handed so that puffy part took a beating that day. There was this soccer coach who would come up to the school and help in the gym, he was not an employee. He continually tried to drag me into the bathroom when he would watch me playing my walking game in the hall. He would put his arm around me and tell me about how sorry he was that everyone was so mean all the while trying to guide me into the bathroom. This did not work on me in fact it had an explosive counter reaction.
This technique I was familiar with and had seen it up close when my father used it on other people, he was about to assault, or my mother would attempt to use it on me when she wanted to get me out of a public space and beat me in private. The only thing that works is to get loud fast and pull away and get to where people can see you. Then point that finger you have and tell the world what’s happening as loudly as you can. With my parents it will save you for a short period of time and they will always get you later but if you can avoid that beating until you get to your neighborhood then you can escape and hide amongst the bushes and some of the mothers will feed you. The game plan is to stay away until the next morning and hope they have simmered down some and sometimes they did when they found something else to be mad at. My initial scream opened that special education door and out a few teachers came and immediately they were scolding me about being loud and then I was pointing at that man and telling the special education teachers about what he was trying to do. That man smiled and said, “I was only trying to help” . That was enough for the teachers to let him leave the scene and then I was slapped hard in the hallway and one of them grabbed my ear and pulled me into the special education room.
I didn’t see any children in there , just many teachers, and all were females. Then the one that had my ear introduced me as their biggest failure all while she had a hold of my ear and in front of about 10 women some that looked like high-level administrators due to their advanced age and quality of dress. I was slapped by three separate teachers that I had seen before, and they were swinging hard and moving my hands so they could get at my face. Then one of them apologized to the older ladies sitting at some table they had arranged for their meeting. “I apologize but this student is incorrigible and we have had all we can take” then the older lady with grayish to white hair and wearing this fancy blouse that had a black field and white polka dots and a matching ascot that had reversed those color patterns with a gold beetle broach attaching it to her top. Began to speak, “We are seeing more and more of that these days, children you refuse to listen and follow instructions” then she stood up and was walking toward me my hands where down and I was looking right at her mostly since I was concussed but also since I thought she was going to preach at me and during this time in my life if you were preached at then you had to make eye contact or they would lay their hands upon you and while pretending to bless out the devil they would be pounding the top of your head with their palms and making sure that their ring was making contact.
I didn’t see it coming, I had not flinched or moved in any manner. I was expecting a preaching about how I was the devil or a wayward sinner. I was focused on the palm to my head technique that would hurt since she had many rings but at least it wouldn’t be my face. She really laid one on me. It hurt so bad that the pain was delayed, and I felt that swollenness in my face move and then spread and rise higher than it had before. I was woozy and thought I would fall and had to place my right hand up on the wall to stay upright. Then as I was staring at a black and white blur that impact came again and I fell into the arms of the woman who I believe had twisted my ear. She had her hands under my arms and pulled me into the hall and pushed me against the wall that was just outside the doors alcove and held me there as my body loosely fell to the floor. Then they left me there, I heard the door shut and I must have gone unconscious because a line of older students had stopped across the hall from me and were giggling. Classes often lined up on that wall when their teacher had to run into the front office for something. I was working diligently to get up but as I stood it was evident that I had soiled myself again and a puddle had formed below me. The children laughed even harder and then their teacher walked past me, turned the class around and walked away toward the 5th grade hall. My pants were wet and my socks felt squishy, could have been urine or maybe heavy sweat. I had no idea what day it was or what time or where I was supposed to be. All I knew was that I was alone in the hall again and I wanted to get out of the building for some reason but only one eye was focusing and if I let go of the wall then everything would twirl and I would start to go down again.
Somehow, I made it all the way down that hall and past the cafeteria and out to the play area. All the cars were still there so school had not ended and of course I wasn’t clued in as to why my face hurt, I just knew that one side of my face was throbbing and painful to the touch. I had to look down at the ground and if the sun caught my eyes it would turn into a telescope view of linear circles that started small and then got bigger and my eyes would feel like they burned and then tear drops would form and begin to fall. The sensation to rub them would kick in since it felt like someone had put salt into my eyes, but I learned about that pain quickly. Then I threw up and I had nothing in my stomach but phlegm and out came a ball of gunk that tasted like blood. This action cleared my eyes for a moment as all of that stomach acid assaulted my taste buds and I was trying to spit from swollen lips when I spied the cafeteria ladies up on a concrete dock pushing metal canisters and then setting garage bags in the parking lot while they helped each other arrange all of these items. My thought jumped to the possibility of unopened milk cartons and how bad I wanted this stinging sensation out of my mouth. I couldn’t put it together then, but I believe that those rings must have torn my lips and that the salty bile had found purchase there and dug in deep. I was staggering across that parking lot as all these women wearing white aprons stared at me and seemed to me like they had seen a ghost.
They began to talk fast in Spanish and then one of them put both her hands up to stop me. I was wobbly and she was small. I endured her push without falling and I wanted those trash bags believing that I would find skim milk in there and could rinse my mouth and remove this sting. (Something is blocking me, it’s more intense than that locomotive from my last flashback that kept my conscious and subconscious mind separated by racing down the train track. My dissociation is high and I have too many images racing at me for consumption and consequently illumination and placement into a sequence of events.) This is no longer the school my mind just opened upon a group of nuns in black and white but wearing white aprons and carrying trash bags conspicuously as a group. They all showed signs of being upset and a few were stumbling as they tried to guide one that was staggering and seeming unable to walk without assistance. This was occurring someplace else. My mind is intermingling two separate events. The nuns are deeper and had been hidden with more complications but seeing the group of cafeteria ladies in a huddle with similar colors opened a door. In one of my mother’s attempts to punish my father for not allowing my older brother home she had attempted to drop me off at a catholic orphanage. She could not get anyone to answer the door as she banged and then took me around back to bang on these other doors, and they had a small parking lot just like the school and this playground that had swings. The school did not have swings when I was there, they had a green jungle gym.
Glenda had been threatening to take me into the woods and shoot me, and she did have one of my father’s small black guns. We were in the station wagon, and I was in the back seat and listening to her rage about how I had this coming and she was going to kill me and never tell my father where the body was. If he wanted to play games with my older brother, then she would play games with me. Then all her ranting had stopped, and I was in the backseat with a bloody lip and tasting salt and feeling that sting. She had attempted to drown me with salt in my mouth since I escaped the bathroom. It was just her and I at the house of hate and this had been set off by some argument that had happened over the phone with my father. Then she was able to catch me, and the bleeding mouth had occurred during the struggle to drown me in the tub. This drowning thing had been one of the events that had damaged one side of my face. She was fighting her hardest to drown me and I was fighting my hardest to live. I was exhausted after that escape but she was raging and was able to grapple me into the back seat of the station wagon and had the car engaged at a high speed so quickly and made turns so abruptly that we had exited my neighborhood so fast my escape plans had withered to nothing since I didn’t know the terrain.
I was not afraid of dying, in fact this seemed like a promising idea since I had failed with the baby aspirin then had been returned to school and those special education teachers took turns attacking me. I can now recall the timeline of this event. After the special education slap happy coronation of group unity occurred then Robert, my father was angry about my face and lips and did not want me to go back to that school. Glenda was the head gangster there and had her following and at the beginning of my arrival a principal that stayed in his office all day and did not intercede on my behalf. My father was telling my mother that she was about to lose again and she couldn’t handle that. The phone was slammed by Glenda many times and then thrown, and I knew it was coming and had grabbed my coat and was headed to the front door since she was between me and the sliding glass door. This confrontation must have been forthcoming since she had wedged something into the bottom of the door, and I could not open it as fast as usual. The time it took for me to remove that magazine she had wedged in that gap was all she needed to catch me. Then the bathroom thing happened and she tore my lip again and now we are in that station wagon headed to the woods for my murder.
(I WANT THIS TO BE KNOWN AND UNDERSTOOD BY ANYONE WHO READS THIS. KNOWING THAT I WAS ON A RIDE INTO THE WOODS TO BE MURDERED COMFORTED ME TREMENDOUSLY. MY LIFE WAS HORRENDOUS AND I HAD TRIED TO KILL MYSELF JUST RECENTLY BUT FAILED BECAUSE CHEWABLE BABY ASPIRIN WILL NOT KILL YOU IT JUST CHALKED UP IN MY LIPS AND MOUTH AND MADE ME THIRSTY. I HAD BEEN TAUGHT BY MY MAMMY AND NANA MANY TIMES THAT DEATH LED TO HEAVEN AND THEY BOTH SAID THERE WOULD BE PEOPLE THERE TO TAKE CARE OF ME IF I ARRIVED BEFORE THEM. THIS WAS THEIR ATTEMPT TO COMFORT ME AND ADD A FORESHADOWING TO MY EXISTENCE SINCE THEY KNEW MY MOTHER WAS LETHAL. I HAD BEEN TAUGHT HEAVEN WAS HOME THAT WE STARTED THERE AND WE WOULD RETURN THERE. GLENDA WAS SENDING ME HOME AND FINALLY AFTER FAILING AT MY ATTEMPT. GLENDA WAS GOING TO FINISH ME OFF AND SEND ME HOME. I COULD LEAVE THIS HORRIBLE EXISTENCE AND BE WITHOUT MY PARENTS CONSTANT ABUSE.)
I had calmed down and in my young mind my thoughts were busy with all the things I wanted to do once I got there. That roulette wheel of choices had me centered down on horseback riding. Not the old mean horses that my grandfather Max had once shown up with but new horses that would be nice to me and not try to bite. As my mind filled with all the places where I could ride my new horse and the adventures we would have, the car slowed down and the ride became less jerky. Then Glenda’s face looked over the back seat, and it was kind and had a rosy glow to its cheeks. It spoke like an older woman, maybe even a grandmother and it had a pip to its inflection as if it had been excited to see me. Then it pulled over and turned completely around and from the height difference I believe that this body was on its knees. Another face had filled its dimensions, and it seemed younger and shy. Then the head flipped a turn and another contour within that facial musculature appeared this one was happy to see me too and said, “She’s a monster and she won’t stop fighting us” then a giggle and that one was gone and the older lady came back out and said, “We know where we are and where to put you”. Then the body turned around and eventually we parked and this time the back door was opened for me, and I was ready to exit and then die.
I did not understand all of what Glenda had just said and done but she often did so many odd things when we were alone. I was encouraged to follow the body, and we ended up at that first door and then as you know we ended up at the back door and no one came. Then the older lady took my hand and led me to the playground that was across a small parking lot, and she placed me on the swing. She looked at me lovingly and had her hands crossed on her stomach area then she sighed and her face blew up. It contorted multiple times and her head had jostled so much that I thought she would fall over backwards. Then a face I had not seen jolted out of this choppy sea water that seemed to be caught in various storms from different directions all at once. It fought for clarity for just a moment and its eyes were big and its teeth clenched as if it had to fight free to tell me, “Stay here we must go”. In my first-grade mind I believed this to be part of that murdering that was going to happen and so I returned to my daydream. Then I saw those nuns with garbage bags and I walked toward them. I was confused and thought maybe part of this death thing that I was awaiting would happen inside that building and I had to turn myself over to them. Then that one nun pushed my shoulders, and I felt again that Jesus or God or both had rejected me. These nuns had been surprised to see me, and they scurried away from these bags and to me that was odd behavior but since they had on those aprons like the lunch ladies wore I believed that these would be the garbage from their cafeteria and that I would find unopened milk cartons inside.
I was alone, the bags were there, I could feel my lip burning, and my stomach growling and I opened this bag to begin my search. Then I froze, it was the smell at first that started my frozen stupor and then atop these white and bloody sheets I could see babies. A few were in their embryonic sacks just small shapes in perfectly round unpunctured fluid filled sacks with tiny cords extending from the body off into the distance. They were smeared with blood, and some had handled them since the edges had been made into ridges as a finger will do when your finger painting. (I am so comforted now, this build up led to peace, this release made all the squares fall into place and my mind is now out of flux and into harmony. Actually, something deeper is occurring and I cannot place it into words. I wanted to die and I was ready to receive that release and now I am staring at death and yet I feel that I can see heart beats in these tiny structures. In the larger fetuses there are no heart beats and those two have small dabs of black hair so I am not sure where that would place them in the development cycle. I am mesmerized and tranquil, but the frozen Stuper is taking more of me away from this encounter. In my young mind I recognize that I am here in this moment as lives are passing and I know that it is not my time to go with them. This is a spiritual moment lost to me in the depths of dissociation. This revelation means that my trajectory in my current life is about to occur too. As with all things in my life cycle that occurred as a part of change, I am sure this will hurt too until I understand why it occurred the way that it did and I have eventually made sense of it.) Someone must have found me, and I ended up inside a building on an office couch of sorts that was made for laying and not sitting. An older man with black hair and male pattern baldness and who was thin and wore metal rimmed glasses had me in what I believe was his office. He was attempting to speak to me but all I could do was look at him. He wore black and had that small white collar around his neck. To me he was religious and I was once again in an office of a preacher of sorts. I felt too good to disturb this tranquility that I had embraced to spoil it with speaking.
Many times, as I was subjected to my parents’ abuse, I felt myself dying and I welcomed it. As that tunnel vision grew smaller and began to collapse, so too did my ability to hear and then I felt no more pain. Hours later, usually at night I would wake up and feel that I had crossed over and seen my ancestors at a distance and that they had been looking right back at me through this haze that wouldn’t allow facial clarity. I felt comforted by their presence but denied or rejected by my inability to join them. As I laid upon that priest’s lounger I did not recall any of what had occurred to me. All those traumatic events had been washed far away into my amnesic box and at this moment, I had achieved a peace that I know many have sought due to the anguish they shared with me and few will ever reach but I could not stay there. What all of this means I do not know but I am so thankful for having had this experience. I was able to see more of my mother’s altars and just as my father’s altars had, her altars chose to help me too. Then saying goodbye to the babies as their internal clocks ran down was a remarkable sight to behold and a cherished moment of creation and death. A life cycle from birth to death held in the cataclysm of a trash bag lol. What an experience for you, the reader, I have shared my truth.
□ RESTORER
Core Belief:
"Healing is possible for individuals, families, and communities."
Description:
The Restorer seeks not only personal recovery but broader restoration. Trauma no longer serves as the primary organizing force of identity. Wisdom, compassion, leadership, and service emerge as dominant themes. The individual focuses on building, teaching, guiding, and creating opportunities for healing others.
Common Statements:
· "I want to leave things better than I found them."
· "Healing can spread."
· "I help build what trauma tried to destroy."
· "My life is larger than my wounds."
Primary Need:
Legacy
This all started at the psychologist Marie Bannister's office at the University of Texas at Arlington while I was in graduate school. I had my first flashback there around 1997, I think. Those first flashbacks were all about my abuse at the house of hate and how it was far more sadistic and satisfaction based by both my parents. Then that all changed once I had graduated and I couldn’t afford talk therapy. I opted for a hypnotist and asked her to put me under and then present questions to me about my abuse. I had no idea that a murder would reveal itself. Then with a head full of homicides and all the emotional baggage that comes with it I began my profession with no money for therapeutic support. It wasn’t until December of 1999 during my first hypnotherapy session that I had my first flashback that showed me a murder. I was fortunate that this professional allowed me to set up my video camera and record. I tried to stay in service with her, but I was always running out of money due to the kiddos and the fact that I had to take a pay cut to practice my profession. It was that same month of December when I called the FBI to report what I was experiencing. I dialed that number many times and then hung up. When I finally did make it through, a man answered and told me it was too close to the holidays and to call back some other time. The day I found strength was the first day that I was denied by law enforcement.
That first phone call then became me trying to find help through a private detective. That’s when I found one person whose name eludes me now, but he did offer to help. He retired from law enforcement and wanted to help me due to his godly convictions, he said. He was a devout Christian and told me many quotes. I asked him if he would stay away from the biological’s, since they all were so invested in the lie. He didn’t want to and then against my advice he began to show up at my mother’s house and then my father’s. He told me that my father threatened him with his pocketknife which I agree is something he would do. Apparently while standing on the porch of his house my father pulled his pocket knife out and began to clean his nails. I have never seen my father use that tactic before lol this was his passive-aggressive manner to build his boundary and try and alter the course of that conversation. Of course, all of this fell upon me and through the actions of my brothers. Once again, I was that scapegoated child who could do no right and had concocted a whole menagerie of fantasies because I was mentally ill. These were the Shelton golden boys carrying out their inherited truths. They had to buy in and sell every lie they could. One wanted to know that he was loved by at least one parent and he had a Slytherin type pride about how he forecasted his lineage to others to impress them. Then the other had his eye on the prize and spoke of it often. His inheritance was his biggest focal point when it came to family. He was always trying to calculate how much and then figured out who was in his way. He was always conspiring with treachery, and he shared his plans with me whenever we were alone. If I tried to change the subject, he would accuse me of being the same as him and then demand to know my plans for the inheritance. My family was an iron maiden, and I was their constant victim.
I now find myself an old man of 56 years who is disabled physically, mentally, and has profound learning disabilities. I worked so hard to obtain the degrees that I needed to help others and now I am sidelined due to being a fall risk. The only complaint I have is that I am not dying fast enough. Lingering is more painful than the pain that assaults me when I am experiencing flashbacks. My plan is that I will fill as many free blogging sites as I can with my story so that if I am able to slip this mortal coil, I can leave enough bread crumbs if someone wishes to, ‘send the dead home’ at a later date. If memory serves, I have posted 24 sites, and I am trying to make each different so that reading one doesn’t tell you everything about the next. Some require tremendous improvisation since they only allow bubbles of information with limited characters. I find myself making up poems on the fly. This writing exercise has taken me more than a month to complete due to the number of flashbacks that I have been having. Today is July 5th, 2026, and I emailed out the largest bundle of attachments asking the international community for help. Then after working on that for hours and believing that it was ready to be sent, I pushed that button. At that moment so many ideas came into my head about what else I should have added LOL. This is my life. I have memories that demand to be known and then journaled before they will leave me alone. My experience is this style on one end of the spectrum and then on the other is my inability to recall all the things I want to draw from that mass archive of flashbacks to present for the purpose of ‘sending the dead home’. My bewilderment astounds me as I am involved in a level of recall that I have never seen before and then limited by my inability to build something suffices enough not to overwhelm the reader.
My goal is to leave behind all that I can to advance the next generation so that children who suffer like me can be rescued sooner. That’s why I started ‘Happy Smiles’, it put me in places where I could work with younger children and be available to parents for 8 dollars a week. I built inflatable play stations and performed puppet shows. Then I made myself available through phone, email and my attendance at their school to answer any questions that may arise. I grew old and the equipment stayed just as heavy as before and I moved back into psychiatric work. Towards the end of that entrepreneurial cycle, I unloaded more than 1200 pounds of equipment. I had a full set up for activities that expanded to the circumference of a gymnasium and then I had an entire puppet stage. Though days were so blissful and I really did make an impact with all the families that needed my help. Funny thing was that I worked little with the children once they needed help. It always became a marital issue and the little ones either played on the floor of my office or watched TV in the waiting room. The Bryanson Institute was a huge contribution to society. I worked hard to see as many clients as I could and many for reduced fees or for free. Then on top of that I had all my foster kiddos and since I was physically able, I could handle all their activities. My profession, my entrepreneurial adventures, my kiddos, and then my limited social life all began to end as the pandemic waned. By the end I had covid twice, my body had deteriorated to the point that I had to use crutches, and I went on disability then became homebound due to the swelling in my feet and the pain of my bones. I had a good long run and now I am ready to go but God will not call me home as my mammy would say.
MY CORE BELIEF:
“I have never seen healing complete itself. My flashbacks still occur and more memories of the dead rise from my amnesic box, the gene pool still lies about and distorts the past, and my community simply disintegrated over time as all the families died off or moved away. While all those bodies still lie buried in the backyard.”
MY COMMON STATEMENTS:
“Healing has never spread in my gene pool. My family members just dug deeper into the lie and vested their altered realities as a protection against accountability.”
“I have dedicated my life to rebuilding what trauma has destroyed in myself, my community, my works, and now with my social media blogs. I still have not reached anyone in my gene pool.”
“My wounds are huge, but my works are bigger and I am now attempting to grow them again so that I may send the dead home. I believe after all I have been through that at this juncture in my advocacy for my cold cases. That it will be my notoriety that will get their cases reincarnated and then re-investigated. My ability to keep that notoriety at a heightened state will eventually get them exhumed and then identified. It will be my longevity in the game of notoriety that will fly their remains to their families, purchase tombstones, and then, if necessary, create an orphan’s graveyard for those that remained unclaimed. That is a great deal of work to ask from a man who is dying lol.”
“Will I leave this life better than I found it only the historians will know”
PRIMARY NEED:
To see the dead sent home before I die.
CONTINUUM OF RECOVERY
Victim → Survivor → Witness → Truth-Teller → Advocate → Restorer
Important Note:
Recovery is not linear.
People often move back and forth between stages depending on stress, life circumstances, triggers, losses, and new insights. The goal is not to achieve a perfect stage but to recognize where you are currently standing on your journey.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I can believe that recovery is not linear. I am always circling back to educate those I do not know and then circling again to deal with those that refuse to recover and are trying to hold others back. Then I find that my gene pool requires a great deal of circling back since they use the same attacks repeatedly and I must recall quickly what worked the last time. They all have these preset buttons that they respond to. Since they haven’t advanced emotionally what worked in the past works in the present. Nothing is therapeutic with them; you simply are stroking an ego until it simmers down and feels that it has prevailed. However, it is by practicing this constant compassion for others that I gain the wisdom to advance myself even further. It’s a roller coaster with many loops but each loop takes energy and then offers a different momentum and that’s what I utilize to solve my next puzzle in life so that I too can recover and progress.
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