Category: Polly Hansen

It was hard to admit I played a part in the sexual abuse I suffered as a teen. Finding what my part was changed my life. I found self-forgiveness, reclaimed my self-agency, and stopped feeling like a victim. Today, I’m a happy, confident person.

From age fourteen to age seventeen, I engaged in a sexual relationship with a man eleven years older than me who lived in my neighborhood. My family life was a wreck, my parents’ marriage was falling apart, and I had no friends my own age. Sex with “Hugo” was like a form of cutting, a way to numb the horrible loneliness I felt and convince myself I was loved and cherished by someone if not by my parents.

As an adult, it took years of therapy to recover from the pain of not just that experience, but what led up to it–my parents’ neglect. For example, when I introduced them to this guy saying he was my friend, they said he was charming and eccentric and an okay friend for me to have.

I finally began to know my boundaries outside my skin

In my mid-twenties I worked with a therapist who did body work to tap emotions locked inside muscle tissue. During one of our sessions, she did an experiment to find out where my physical boundaries were—at what distance did I feel most comfortable with people. She stood across the room and then approached me and asked me to tell her when she got too close. She got to within an inch of my face before I told her to stop, and even then I wasn’t sure.

“It’s as if your personal boundaries are beneath your skin,” she said.

It wasn’t until I joined a Twelve-Step program when I was in my fifties and did a Step Four moral inventory looking at all my so-called “character defects” and subsequently did a Step Five where I shared that inventory with a trusted friend that I finally began to see what my part was in the abuse.

Self-Forgiveness and Self-Agency Makes a Happy, Confident Person

During my inventory I made a list of resentments towards each man who had abused me—the name of the person, what the resentment was, how it affected my life, and my part in it. At first I thought, my part? No way! But I continued with the Step. It wasn’t just Hugo’s name on my list. After Hugo and even during Hugo, there were others. What I discovered was that I had given myself away each time. I had lost my voice and didn’t protect myself. I never said,  “No, I don’t like this. I don’t want this.” I let men use me however they wanted to.

That awareness was excruciating. I wept copiously. But the magic of Step Five was that I shared my shame with someone I trusted—my program sponsor in this case, who had done their own Step Five with their sponsor. They didn’t judge me, simply listened with tears in their eyes while holding my hand. I felt loved and accepted and so profoundly grateful to finally learn that I could take full responsibility for myself. I had given up my agency in the past, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t take it back. I could and I did

I learned to say no—to friends, acquaintances, and most especially to my husband. I found that people who loved and respected me accepted my “no” and my boundaries. That has been so healing for me.

I refuse to abandon myself

Today, I maintain personal boundaries out of a healthy respect for who I am. If I don’t feel safe in a situation, like for example in a Twelve-Step meeting if someone is not following the sharing guidelines and I don’t feel safe, I’ll raise my hand and say so. When my husband used to touch me in ways I didn’t like, I kept my mouth shut for fear of hurting his feelings. Fear of abandonment was the real issue. Not today. I refuse to abandon myself.

I don’t have the power to change anyone, but I do have the power to protect myself. I forgive my parents for not showing me how to establish boundaries. Most of all I forgive myself for being a poor steward of me. Today I proudly and firmly take agency over my well-being.

To learn about my memoir A Minor, Unaccompanied, click here: https://pollyhansen.com/nasty-girl/

To learn more about teen cutting and self-injury visit:

https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/teen-cutting-and-self-injury

How to be your own best friend? Speak up when you need help. When I was fifteen I fell from my bike and twisted my ankle. My brother had to carry me inside the house piggyback. Mom was out of town, so it was just me and the boys—my brother and father.

 “Does it hurt bad?” my dad asked.

I nodded, wincing, but because he didn’t suggest the emergency room, and my brother said I was milking it, neither did I.

I spent the entire night soaking that ankle in the bathtub switching from ice cold to scalding hot to take my mind off the pain.

At five in the morning, I heard Dad shuffle past the bathroom door and go downstairs. I waited long enough for him to have his breakfast and a cup of coffee, and to read a bit of the paper. I got dressed with great difficulty because every move was excruciating, then scooted downstairs on my bottom holding my ankle aloft. My purple ankle bone was the size of a grapefruit.

“Dad?”

He lowered the paper. “Have you been up long?”

“All night,” I said, trying to hold back tears.

“Emergency room?” he asked. I nodded. He folded the newspaper. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

Stoic or a cry baby?

I thought: Because I wanted you to suggest it. Because I wanted you to take care of me without my having to ask. Because I wanted you to know how much I was hurting without my having to say so. Because you should have known. Because I didn’t want to be a cry baby. Because I thought I should be able to bear the pain, to suck it up. Because what if it really was just a sprain and I put you to all that trouble for nothing?

But I said none of those things.

I thought love was people taking care of you without your having to ask for what you needed. They should just know and take care of you without your having to ask for help. I hadn’t yet learned that it was the opposite—that love is about being vulnerable and valuing yourself enough to ask for what you need when you aren’t sure what the response will be.

It turned out I had a very bad fracture and would be in a cast for twelve weeks. I had waited so long to ask for help that the bones had started knitting together incorrectly. So much for stoicism.

Dad said, “You must have a very high pain threshold.”

Stoicism was my fatal flaw

Back then I thought that was something to be proud of. But stoicism was one of my fatal flaws. Because it wasn’t just physical pain I tolerated—I was in emotional pain, too. And that needed attention as well.

Stoicism might be something to be proud of, but not when it exceeds healthy limits. We all need to ask for help and not be ashamed of needing it. Isolation is unhealthy and hurts us and everyone around us because the consequences are mental illness or disease.

It took me years to learn to use my voice and speak up for myself. Contrary to what I believed when I was a kid, asking for help shows friends and loved ones I trust them. Most people like to be asked for help, to be of service to help a friend. But most of all, by asking for help I became my own best friend. For many years, I wasn’t. Today I value the precious child of God that I am.

To learn about my memoir A Minor, Unaccompanied, click here: https://pollyhansen.com/nasty-girl/

And if you live in the Chicago area, here’s a great ecumenical place for an affordable personal, private retreat. It’s where I started writing my memoir: https://holywisdommonastery.org/visit/personal-retreats/

This month I’m featured on the National Association of Memoir Writers website,

https://www.namw.org/2024/03/polly-hansen-featured-namw-member/ There, you can read a synopsis of my memoir, A Minor, Unaccompanied.

Seeing the memoir synopsis in a different font, in a new setting made it seem foreign, and therefore helped me to see what is missing from it. The narrative is but a hull, the frame and shell that ignores the essence, the girl who lives inside that shell and what’s going on with her. The emotional arc is missing from the synopsis. That is the heart of any story, any memoir. I see now that I need to work that in as well, not just what happened.

Thank you so much, Linda Joy Myers, founder of The National Association of Memoir Writers for this feature opportunity. You can learn more about the association here: https://www.namw.org/about-us/

https://pollyhansen.com/nasty-girl/

I need to regulate myself, to bring more balance into my life. You too? Except that I’ve joined a three-week writing marathon that has me creating a new piece and critiquing others’ submissions every day. Talk about a wallop to my equilibrium.

When I get obsessed about writing, regulation goes out the window. I don’t do my qi gong practice in the morning. I don’t meditate every day. I go straight to writing, and then stay up late and don’t sleep well.

But I have started eating regular meals three times a day and no snacking. That’s something and let me tell you it is hard. No more cheese, crackers, and wine to my heart’s content right before dinner. No more snacking on gluten-free fig newtons or gelato.

Weight of a guilty conscience

And no more feelings of guilt and self-put downs either, which is such a relief. I haven’t lost any weight, except the weight of a guilty conscience. And that is worth the change.

My posts here have been irregular for some time because I figure no one is reading this anyway. It’s just a place holder for when I publish that book someday. I was surprised there wasn’t a pollyhansen.com out there already, but glad I nabbed it.

That’s it. I have nothing else to say except:

May you find balance in your heart, soul, and mind, and may we be kind to one another and to ourselves.

https://pollyhansen.com/nasty-girl/

I discovered something about myself and now I have to tell my husband. I was feeling at odds with me, with him, with the world. I needed to write it all out.  The act of doing so has brought me back into alignment.

Meaning, I have taken off my skin, shaken out the crumbs, and now I don’t feel so irritable. Except, well, now we have to have this discussion.

I binge watched a mini-series to escape all that I did not want to face in myself. This morning, I woke at six and wrote it all out.

I discovered I don’t want to bother with sex.

Ugh. There I said it. That’s what’s been on my mind. I’m too old and fat for it, not that I’m fat, but I am overweight, according to medical charts, by about fifteen pounds. I prevaricate. That’s how much I want to avoid this subject.

God. Such a bother. So much effort. Not like when we were young and nubile and moist.

You get the picture.

I love to lie next to him. To hug every morning for long moments after we make the bed. That’s about the tempo of our intimacy these days. Plus, we have a huge bathtub and get in together once in a while and just talk, chitchat, but sometimes more meaningfully.

What self-discoveries we have made lately

That’s one thing that has never changed regarding intimacy between us—the need to talk to one another, not about chores, not about work but about who each of us is in this moment, where we stand with ourselves and each other, what self-discoveries we have made lately.

Even if those discoveries are not, shall we say, pleasant.

Except that this isn’t a new discovery. It’s an old one I wish would change. But the older we get that’s not likely to happen.

I need to tell him that’s what I’m thinking about. Again. We talk about making more of an effort. Always the same old discussion, but nothing ever changes.

We exercise. We take long hikes in the mountains together and that’s fun. The baths and the hugs are nice. But I think we both wish we were different. Younger, perhaps. We laugh about getting old, about how difficult it is to stand from a squatting or kneeling position. We groan and exclaim. We laugh at ourselves and each other.

But this sex thing is no laughing matter. We haven’t learned how to laugh about that yet. I hope someday we do. It might be more fun than chastising ourselves for the lack of sex in our lives. In the meantime, we still have fun together, as I said. Just not in that way, or at least not as often, and I wish that was really okay.

This article from the National Council on Aging helped. This: “Sexual intercourse can be enjoyable, sure, but you can build intimacy without it.” Sounds like we’re doing all the right things. How reassuring!

Reading old journals from twenty-four years ago, I’m humbled by my bad behavior and the poor choices I made in the past. For example, I once carpooled with another young mom. This was before cell phones. I was five minutes late picking up my daughter and her friend after gymnastics. Rather than wait for me, they called her mom to come get them. When I discovered the other mom was on her way, I was furious and embarrassed, and left the ten-year-old girl there all alone in front of the gymnastics building. I drove off, jittery with hunger and anxious to get home. Even my daughter knew what I was doing was wrong because she asked, “Shouldn’t we wait?”

“Couldn’t you have just waited five minutes?” the traumatized girl’s mother asked when I called later that evening to apologize.

I had been thinking only of my needs, not that little girl’s.

Having been raised by damaged and narcissistic parents, I became infected and a narcissist myself. As a teen who left home at age fifteen with my parents’ blessings, I learned at an early age how to fend for myself and think only of my needs, no one else’s.

I was used to manipulating people to get what I wanted

It wasn’t until I turned nineteen and a mom invited me to live with her family for the summer between graduating high school and entering college did I learn the meaning of consideration for others. And I did not like it. I was used to manipulating people to get what I wanted. Considering other people’s needs was inconvenient to say the least! It’s a wonder they put up with me. I am eternally grateful that they did. It was the beginning of an important education in how to live with others.

However, by the time I became a mom myself, I still had a long way to go towards being a responsible parent and adult and made many mistakes. During my years of therapy, I addressed the pain of parental abandonment and learned how to take better care of myself, and thus, how to care for others. I began to see how selfish I had been, but also to understand that my selfishness had been a coping mechanism.

Decades have passed since those reckless parenting years. I will never be perfect, but now when I am rude or thoughtless, I usually know right away and can say I’m sorry or even avoid sticking my foot in my mouth.

I’m gratified looking through these old journals to see how much progress I’ve made. Today, I’m compassionate and considerate, eager to be of service to others. That old me, well, I have compassion for her. She didn’t know any better. And when she should have, like that time I drove away, she paid the price. That mom said, “I think I’ll drive my daughter myself from now on.” I completely understood. And was chagrined that I couldn’t even be a responsible carpool partner.

The ability to see my past faults, and present ones, and to forgive my parents brings me solace and peace. I send psychic amends to all those I have hurt in the past. Whether they forgive me doesn’t matter. What is most important is that I forgive myself.

Within a minute after turning out the light the twitches and itches begin—a zap, a zing like a jubilant pinball machine. And then the thoughts. How can sleep compete with all that racket? I try to resist them as I fall asleep, but it is impossible. I’ve learned that when meditating, I’m supposed to observe a thought and let it go, return to the present moment–my breath, the ambient sounds around me, this moment, this time, this now. But doing that while I’m trying to fall asleep keeps me awake. When I’m falling asleep, I find it’s best to follow the thought and let it unravel into a dream.

The other night I jolted awake to the voice of Richard Farina, the folk singer once married to Joan Baez’s little sister Mimi. He died as a young man in a motorcycle accident. I recently searched for his album Reflections in a Crystal Wind on Spotify. Dug it up from my memory from when I was in my teens. As my husband and I worked on a jigsaw puzzle for date night, I sang the lyrics to these sad, impossible songs of love and hate, war and peace.

“I know this music isn’t to your liking,” I said.

“That’s okay,” my husband said.

He could see I was enjoying myself. I knew all the lyrics. Well, most of them, but I certainly knew the tunes and hummed along with them. One of them stuck in my head: “Pack Up Your Sorrows”

“No use cryin’, talkin’ to a stranger,
Namin’ the sorrow you’ve seen.
Too many bad times, too many sad times,
Nobody knows what you mean.

Chorus: But if somehow you could pack up your sorrows,
And give them all to me,
You would lose them, I know how to use them,
Give them all to me.”

There are many more verses. It’s a great song worth checking out. If you like folk music, that is. That was over a week ago and I’m still humming that song even in my sleep.

So, here’s the thing. How could a decade of such pain and sorrow in my young life from the 1960s, early ’70s have an aura of such bitter sweetness that I would enjoy revisiting it in my old age, lighting up parts of me with dings and chimes like a thrilling pinball game? I don’t have the answers, except that perhaps because that period of my life was filled with such angst and yearning for connection, I still feel its pull.

It draws me inward like a wound needing succor.

Today, I have connection not just with my husband, but with my children, with recovery friends, with colleagues. Maybe the present appeal of that old song comes from the yearning I felt back then. It draws me inward like a wound needing succor. I give that wound, that hurt child succor today and gladly so. I am able to care for her in ways I was unable to back then.

So sing your heart out now, my child, and enjoy the gladness with which you now live!

In the meantime, I try not to sing in my head while falling asleep, but if I do get stuck on a brain worm, I hum Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and voila, brain loop vanquished. The zaps and zings though, only getting out of bed and lying in front of a space heater helps. Don’t ask me why but heat soothes me. Did when I was a teen, too. Some habits never die.

Last night while lying restless in bed for the umpteenth time I had an epiphany: My life is perfect as it is. I can enjoy peace and serenity regardless of whether or not I publish my memoir. For the past five years, which is when I started writing it, I have conflated publishing success with self-worth and life satisfaction. I’ve equated my ability to find an agent and publisher with success and therefore happiness.

No, no, dear one—you are mistaken. You are precious just as you are. Your life is perfect just as it is. Relax and enjoy it.

This epiphany didn’t help me get to sleep. I got up and went into the guest room to think about it some more, hoping it would soothe me to sleep; but only laying in front of the space heater and soaking warmth into my bones did that. I woke up in a sweaty drugged-like stupor and stumbled back to my cool bed, nestled next to my husband, and slept soundly for the next several hours.

So here’s the truth—while my passion is to write and even to be published and read, those things are not the measure of my worth, nor the conditions of my happiness. Only through acceptance and appreciation of myself as I am today will I experience serenity and joy.

I will endeavor to remember this from now on whenever my envy of other writers’ successes rears its ugly head. I will congratulate them, as I always do on Twitter, remind myself of my blessings, and continue to work, letting go of the outcomes over which I have no control. Why drive myself crazy trying to force certain outcomes according to my will when that is impossible?

Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. The only things I can change are my attitudes. Serenity is my reward.

When I take out frustrations on my husband, I make amends. After telling my husband I was closing my door to write, I made a detour into the laundry room. My husband called out something to me from the kitchen. I’m hard of hearing without my hearing aids, which I hadn’t put in yet, and besides, we have agreed not to shout from other parts of the house. I turned around and went back into the kitchen with false patience to ask him to repeat himself.

Could I please check the dryer before I started writing? I glared at him. “I’m doing that now,” I said, and marched back to the laundry room. Why was I being so unpleasant?

I hated that I was being unkind

After checking my clothes, which were still a tad damp, I started back down the hall, an apology on my lips, but passed the kitchen where he was painting one small section of the wall over the stove and under the cupboards and instead went straight to the antique clock in the living room to wind and reset it. I thought of re-passing the kitchen without saying anything, but hated how sour I was feeling, hated that I was being unkind.

I retraced my steps and stood at the kitchen entrance.

“I’m sorry I glared at you. I’m just frustrated with myself and I’m taking it out on you.”

He paused his paint brush and looked at me with nothing but compassion. “What are you frustrated about?”

“Oh, not taking life on life’s terms; feeling dissatisfied with my life just because what if I misinterpreted that angel reading that suggested I write my life story. And because it’s so hard being a writer. There are millions of writers out there all of us looking for readers.”

“But you love writing,” my husband said. “Why not do it just because you love to?”

He’s right, of course, and I told him so.

We hugged. “You can have the dryer now,” I said. “My clothes are probably dry.”

“Thanks for saying something,” he said as I was halfway down the hall.

My husband is my best friend. I shouldn’t treat him so poorly, but sometimes I do, and then I make amends.  We’ve been married for over forty years. Something about our relationship must be working. I think it’s mutual honesty, vulnerability, and saying “I’m sorry,” when we’ve been unkind that makes the difference.

Photo above is Mount Mitchell Trail.

My son came for Christmas this year. We sat on the front stoop in the warm sunshine (I live in Asheville, NC). I don’t remember how we got onto the topic of transgender women on sports teams. I said I thought it was unfair to the biological cis women on the team because a transgender woman was naturally stronger than a cis woman and placed any opposing team without a transgender woman at a disadvantage.

He said, “How about the basketball player Yao Ming who’s unusually tall? Is that unfair to other teams?”

“No,” I said.

“How is that any different from a trans woman being stronger than a biological woman?”

Uneven abilities among team members is common

I hadn’t thought of that. There are plenty examples of uneven abilities among same biologically gendered team members. Someone might be bigger and stronger than another team member. Just look at football. Defensive linemen are big heavy guys unlike the lighter physiques of quarter backs. Is that unfair? No, of course not. So how is a transgender woman being stronger than a cis woman any different my son wanted to know?

I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t.

Then we talked about J.K. Rowling and her beliefs regarding gender. I admitted I sympathized with her statement that a trans woman isn’t a woman biologically because she doesn’t have a uterus and can’t get pregnant. Same with a trans man. He can’t impregnate anyone.

“But does that make her any less a woman?” my son wanted to know.

“You know the character in the animated film WALL-E? What gender is that robot?” he asked.

“Male.”

“Right, and he has a girlfriend who you would call female, but do either of them have genitals?”

“Oh,” I said. “Right. No.”

In other words, gender identity has nothing to do with genitals. Not having a uterus or penis doesn’t make you any less female or male.

Why conflate violence and self-protection with masculinity?

That conversation made me reconsider a book review I’d written about a transgender woman. In the book she resorts to violence to protect herself and her staff. Then, a transgender man suddenly becomes self-confident once he commits murder. In my review I wrote “So, violence makes the man?” My son said no. It worked for those two characters in the book. But why conflate violence and self-protection with masculinity? Who says women can’t be strong and protect themselves?

It was a mind-altering conversation I was grateful to have, especially with my son who I hadn’t seen in person for a year and a half. It made me realize how important getting together in person more often with him is to say nothing of appreciating more deeply gender identity. That someone would be willing to change their body to conform with who they are as a person despite the prejudice out there–that’s a strong conviction. It doesn’t put any team at an advantage or disadvantage.

I vowed to visit my son sooner next year. Thanks for having that conversation with me, Ian. I love you.