eat the cupcake icing first

Take Back the Night Speech, Tempe. AZ. April 2023-Transcript

Speech can be viewed on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTd23_XoGBI&t=246s

There is great beauty to life. An Arizona sunset, the way a fantail grackle struts around searching for scraps. Pure white petunias, the smell of a citrus tree in Springtime. The fellowship of deep friendship, the unity of love. The swell of a symphony, and the colors in a painting.

These and more are the things childhood sexual abuse and trauma take away. Trauma injures the deepest places of the heart so that life grows dim and no beauty can penetrate. I exist in a place of darkness, constantly afraid. My brain searching for threat. My heart resigned to the misery that is life. 

It was 1966 and my mother had just arrived home from the grocery store. As she passed by, the smell of sugar wafted out one of the bags. I knew it before I saw it. Cupcakes! My favorite thing in all the world. My mother had bought cupcakes. I lifted my nose to sniff.

“Get out of the way,” my mother growled as she gave me a rough push. I stumbled backward nearly falling. She set the groceries on the counter. 

I was hated. That was common knowledge, but my heart still leapt at the thought of cupcakes. I helped bring in the rest of the grocery bags, hoping to make her happy. Dodging my mother’s frowns I searched for the wondrous treat. There they were, lodged between the celery and the bananas. 

Looking up, I saw my older brother Jimmy leaning against the door frame ready to take flight at the slightest sign of trouble. Far wiser than me, the scapegoat, Jimmy knew how to be so quiet my parents hardly noticed his presence. 

“She bought cupcakes,” I whispered in his ear. The smell of little boy mixed with dirt rose from his skin. 

His hazel eyes grew big. “Don’t touch them,” he warned. 

My mother placed the cupcakes on the kitchen table.  “You can have them after you eat your dinner.” She turned her angry eyes toward us and scowled. “But you better eat every, single bite.”

Tonight’s recipe was one of her favorite concoctions. She called it goulash.  A strange mix of tomato sauce, hamburger, shredded carrots and unknown spices was plopped on my plate. It looked like canned dog food, but I managed to swallow it down. Peeking across the kitchen table at Jimmy, I smiled. We were both finished. 

Reaching for my cupcake, I took a big, long, lick. The icing was sprinkled with tiny sugar flowers. I crunched one between my teeth, lost in the wondrous joy of the moment.

Pinching talons interrupted my reverie as they dug into my upper arm. My mother gritted her teeth against my cheek. “How many time do I have to tell you not to eat the icing first?” She shook me hard.

Dragging me to the den, she took a switch and rained hot welts across my legs. “You’re not to eat the icing first. You’re not to eat the icing first.”

And that was the way it was, all the years of my childhood. Jimmy and I lived under the threat of annihilation every single day. Terror and rage were the norm. There were no boundaries—sexually or any other way. My parents could do whatever they wanted and that was exactly what they did.

For me, the worst abuse was not the sexual or physical or psychological. It was being so hated you were punished just for existing.

The joy of having a beautiful daughter and a loving son. Of being grandparents. Of friendships and service to others. Of Merry Christmases and Happy Thanksgivings. The passages of life, of graduations and weddings and laughter and love. Of beauty and kindness, achievement and encouragement. Of growing old and passing on a legacy of peace. All these my parents missed. They missed everything that mattered or ever will matter. They threw it all away. 

I am a survivor of chronic childhood trauma. My family was filled with mental illness, narcissism, violence and rage.

Abusers brainwash you to believe you have no control over your life, that you do not have the right to make your own choices and that you are too weak and stupid to get out. They are liars. They lied to us from the beginning and they will continue to lie if we listen. The great hope of healing from trauma is to discover that you lived through it and now, you hold the keys to the rest of your life—not your abuser. When you begin, your heart will not believe that. But slowly, as you pick apart the lies and discover your own personhood, you will be empowered to make choices that give you the life you always wanted to have—one small step at a time. My website, blog, podcast and indeed, my mission is entitled defy trauma, embrace joy. If you don’t hear another word I say, hear this–I survived, I’m alive and I can eat the cupcake icing first every single day. And so can you.