To be or not to be (a journey thread)

That's inspiring to hear about, and sounds like good system progress. We're happy for you.

wow i have a weird thing sometimes with pictures i draw too. i have had that feeling somewhat too. really cool that the therapist has an idea what it could be and that you could finish the picture? is that right? But that you got all the memories coming back, that definitely sounds like it must be progress!

Yeah the therapist was wrong about who it was because it turned out not to be us, but by being open to it, open to the idea that we were drawing a memory instead of getting frustrated at our inability to draw portraits or trying to imagine a cool background for this "charecter" we just let the drawing flow without concious direction and that mindset it allowed those memories back.

Glad to hear it helped you get some memories back! Is drawing therapeutic for you more often or was this a first?
Wish I could draw anything close to resembling a portrait haha.

Wishing for continued improvement in your life !

~ Grey/Knight

Thanks. Its a first for us bigs. Peter used art therapy with Dr Doug to express memories that he couldn't articulate. They did it cartoon strip style. As the frames got closer to the traumatic event they would get fainter, less filled, vuager like even drawing caused Peter to retreat.

Over all id say art is worth a try as long as you don't try to force it.

Certainly a first for retrieving happy memories.

Yeah and I like the idea of a cartoon strip.

We can't belive it. We are free. Its over. The verdict has been given.

One of our abusers was finally found guilty of our abuse.

No more court no more interviews no more treading through each others trauma and having to recount it again and again . We can finaly get back to the work of healing.

We arnt strong enough and there isn't the coroberating evidence to bring any of the others to justice but just to have one officially recognised is amazing.

This also meens we can get protection orders out if we need them in the future.

That's great news. Really happy for you all.

The elephant problem.

Some years ago there was a rash of elephant on elephant and elephant on human violence. It was eventually discovered that this sudden turn of violence was because poachers had removed all the bulls and matriachs from the local area leaving adolescent elephants in charge of vast territory. Adolescents who had no one to act as role model for how to behave, a large proportion of whom had witnessed the killing of a family member. Adolescents who had not yet memorised the migration tracks or where the communal graveyard was.
In short a community of scared teenagers with way too much responsibility and no cultural heritage or wisdom to fall back on.


When we first found this forum we saw people strong people who had been through so much and still somehow were holding it together. People who were decades into their healing journeys, people who could not just point the way but could empathise with you and reassure you that what you are going through is part of a process and by the way its not all doom and gloom here is some glorious part of plural culture.
There were significant others on this forum who shared their joy at being in a relationship with multiples. These elders of the community weren't perfect they had their downs and problems which they came to the forum with, looking for solace and that made it all the more beautiful. Here were people going through things like we go through things and they are still here they survived, so maybe I can to.

And I am so grateful to TheGang and Arbermonde for still being here still coming to offer their wisdom and guidance and friendship.

More and more when we login all we see are new names new faces asking newbie questions and its wonderful that they are here that they have discovered themselves. But it is also terrifying, I watch the comments and I realise there are so few members active from when I first joined.

I feel like one of those elephants, we arnt ready, we arnt ready to be and elder in the community, we are still waiting. Waiting for violet and Beth and zor and Leon and 12 and amethyst and Western and MDkids so many others to show us that you can live like this. You can exist in the world like this. Because we still have so many years of life so many stages of life to live through as a multiple and now we have so few people to look up to.

And just acknowledging this sence of betrayal, abandonment feels like an act of violence against the community.

Reaching out feals like an act of burden. A number of times now we have wanted to post a conundrum and not because we know the only ones with the life experience to give constructive feed back have spent most of the week helping new systems, to ask for their help feels like pushing them toward burnout.

Lurking feels selfish when I could help and release the burden of guiding new systems but we are only 5 years experienced as a fully aware system and it shows, often the advice we give when we do give it ends up being incomplete or somehow not nuanced enough and the gang or arbermonde have to jump in and correct mistakes or fill in gaps and rather than helping we have just added to their workload.

What happened to everyone?

We're sorry that the community has quieted down a lot since it's bustling days, and that you miss the people and friends you had here before.

The only thing we can think of is that life got in the way. It's like our old friend group. Most of them have drifted off as their jobs and their lives became different from ours.

Another thing is that, some of those people may have found other communities. We are part of a server on Discord which has a lot of systems on it.

We wish that we could give you words of comfort, but so much has happened over the last four years that the reasons why so many people don't stop by here is probably numerous. We wish the forum was more active too.

As for us, we quite often don't say anything because we don't know what to say.

Take care,
Violette