I used to draw down a wall between my life and the news.  As I anchored the news, reading about others’ pain, I didn’t feel my own.  I was inured from the intrusions of decades of sexual abuse.  I could focus on WhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHow and script the stories, read my own words, tell the story.  That’s over.  It’s actually been over for a few years until I could finally break down that inviolate partition.  I was healed.  I thought.

But this was a brutal news week.

I can’t get Penn State Assistant Coach Mike McQueary’s words out of me.  McQueary heard “skin-on-skin slapping sounds” as Jerry Sandusky sexually assaulted – call it rape, it was raping – a 10 or 12 year old boy, arms around the boys’ waist.  Their eyes all connected, McQueary testified – the victim, the perp, the young coach.  They all knew what happened.  No one told.

Let me say that again.  No. One. Told.  This is the biggest crime of sexual abuse, of raping children.  It makes the child complicit in the lie.  It silences the child until some horrific trigger unleashes a cascade of pain.  And, until then, all the brain synapses get connected wonky.  Nothing is normal again.  Smells wire with a touch on the back of the neck.  Ice cubes crashing into a glass wire with a pedophile entering a dark room in the middle of the night.  And, the skin-on-skin slapping sounds wire with another time, another place of shrieking sexual violence.  Scientists say “what wires together, fires together.” Violence done fifty years ago screams in every cell.

I’m telling you about my experience, as well as every other grown child who was raped by a “trusted” adult.

There were two other stories this week.  Two girls.  One was about ten, and the man kept coming to her in the middle of the night, saying it would be the last time.  It is now.  The man was killed in a hail of his own gunfire inside the home he set fire to.  The day before he had to turn himself in on charges he had been sexually abusing the girl.  The Washougal Washington man also killed his wife and her twin sister with whom he lived.  The Clark County records say the women didn’t believe the girl’s accusations.

“I just wish it would stop,” she told the deputies.

The other story. A mom let her fifteen year old daughter stay for a few days with a couple of friends last month.  The female allegedly plied the girl with booze and pot, and the 35-year old male raped her numerous times.  The mom figured it out through her daughter’s Facebook account, and, pretending to be her own daughter, communicated with the perp, getting enough evidence from her former friend to have him arrested.

The two girls survived.  The boy in the shower with Sandusky survived.  But not really.  Even after therapy, even after it seems there is healing, there are triggers.

Skin-on-skin slapping sounds.

I was four and-a-half when my stepfather first charmed my mother into believing he was just tickling me.  She walked right past me lying on the floor.  Under him.  Being raped. Skin-on-skin slapping sounds – my trigger today.  Not every day has a trigger. But today did.  Those five words turned multi-sensory, and tortured me all day.

My stepfather was a handsome man.  Looked like Dean Martin.  A few years older than Penn State Coach Joe Paterno, my stepfather had played Defensive and Tight End for the Nittany Lions.  Makes you wonder.

These pedophiles.  Often, they are family friends, father surrogates, physically attractive and seductive liars.  A study released this week via the CDC says one in five women reported rape.  35-percent of the women who had been raped as minors were again raped as adults.  I was – by at least three that I recall in this moment.  I don’t want to remember their faces or the weight of their bodies on me.  28-percent of the male rape victims were first raped before they were eleven years old.  Like the boy McQueary says he saw in the shower with Sandusky.

I’ve overcome DID – dissociative identity disorder – and PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder – that I got from the fifteen years I lived under my stepfather’s roof.  Under his roof – rape, violence, alcoholism, mental illness, neglect, suicide attempts. I never knew what would happen. I lived hyped in every instant. Any uncertain moment could explode in terror, rape, violence. Forgive me, if I ask for a definite schedule, if I seem fragile, if the uncertainty of going with the flow is a difficult fit right now.

It was a brutal news week.

If it felt this way to you, too, talk about it.  1,300,000 women say they’ve been raped.

Tell it.  Find a compassionate ear.  You must.  So it will stop.

I’ll begin with Non-Fiction…because that’s where we left off on the show.  And, in fact, these are the most perfect of adult books. For the girlfriend with the snappy sense of humor, there’s Thx Thx Thx.  For your friend with the warm heart, there’s Unlikely Friendships - about unusual, feel-good pairings, like the kitten and gorilla, and how they came to be.  Two magnificent books about John F Kennedy – one, through Jackie’s own words.  It’s an historical, first-person view we so seldom get – and it comes with 8 CD’s.  Plus, there’s Chris Matthews’ stunningly different portrait of the president.  Two of the most amazing books in my gift collection focus on cultural icons – one fantasy (Batman), one real (Marilyn Monroe).  Although one might argue that Marilyn Monroe is fantasy, as well as Batman.  Both books are evocative, magnificent art, and a complete treasure.

Adult Non-Fiction:

1.     Thx Thx Thx: Thank Goodness for Everything by Leah Dieterich; Andrews McMeel

2.     Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom by Jennifer Holland; Workman

3.     Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F Kennedy by Caroline Kennedy; Hyperion AND Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero by Chris Matthews; Simon & Schuster

4.     Marilyn Monroe: Metamorphosis by David Wills and Stephen Schmidt; HarperCollins

5.     The Batman Files by Matthew Manning; Andrews McMee

Another great gift idea is calendars.  And, Pomegranate is my favorite, especially an artist named Susan Seddon Boulet, whose work is mesmerizing – about Shaman and Goddesses.  Another calendar is the Reading Woman Wall Calendar.  Give it, along with one of the books on my list.

And here is the rest of the list – the highlights of our discussion on Martha Stewart Living – are The Third Gift for kids, The Hunger Games Trilogy for YA, Damned by my friend Chuck Palahniuk, and Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire.

Kids:

1.     The Third Gift by Linda Sue Park; Clarion Books

2.     The Happy Elf by Harry Connick, Jr w/CD; HarperCollins

3.     Stars by Mary Lyn Ray and Marla Frazee; Simon & Schuster

4.     Three Classic Children’s Stories – Drawings by Edward Gorey, Text by James Donnelly; Pomegranate

5.     The Wizard of Oz: A Scanimation Book by Rufus butler Seder; Workman

YA:

1.     The Hugo Movie Companion by Brian Selznick; Scholastic

2.     The Chronicles of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg; Houghton Mifflin

3.     WonderStruck by Brian Selznick; Scholastic

4.     Dearly Departed by Lia Habel; Del Rey

5.     The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins; Scholastic

 Adult Fiction:

1. The Christmas Wedding by James Patterson; Little, Brown
2. Damned by Chuck Palahniuk; Doubleday
3. 11 / 22 / 63 by Stephen King; Simon & Schuster
4. The Exorcist: 40^th Anniversary Edition by William Peter Blatty; HarperCollins
5. Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years by Gregory Maguire; William Morrow

No secret that I love books.  They saved my life when I was a kid.  They led me outside the abusive world I lived in, to know that there was a greater beauty where I could live instead. What these books have in common – while they’re from all genres – is that connection with that greater gorgeousness.  No coincidence that many of the books on my list were sparked by the authors’ insistent dreams.

Enjoy!  And, feel free to comment on any of these books.

Love,

Diana

l

But as the film continued, I found Michelle Williams more and more believable as the film icon.  She had the grace and playfulness, and eventually, I came to accept her portrayal of the terribly insecure and terrifyingly mesmerizing Marilyn Monroe.

The film was shot in dark and shimmery hues.  Like Marilyn.  A bit noir.  And completely inviting.  A line in the movie: “When Marilyn gets it right, nobody wants to look at anyone else.” That is true of the movie itself, as well.  When it was right, it was breathtaking.

Dame Judi Dench and Kenneth Branagh played the fabulously mature actors who wished they had Marilyn’s youth.  Dench, with patience and acceptance.  Branagh, with arrogance and frustration.

A small light on the short marriage Marilyn Monroe had with famous playwright Arthur Miller displayed more of her challenges.  Miller says,“I can’t work and smash all her insecurities.”

Exquisite talent.  Authentic music.  A brilliant slice of history we may never have known.

This is a chapter of film icon Marilyn Monroe’s story, unfamiliar to most of us, and yet a gorgeous metaphor for her life.

Footloose – the one with Kevin Bacon – was the first movie my older son ever saw.  He was weeks old at the time.  He smiled and laughed and bounced in the dark theatre.  So did I.

The music – Footloose and Let’s Hear It For the Boys– kicked ass then, and it does now, along with the eight new songs on the soundtrack.  That baby is now 27-years old, and, with a start in life like Footloose, you bet he can dance.

Suffice it to say I have fond memories of the original, but for someone who never sees a movie or reads a book twice, I am delighted with this remake.  I’m easy – give me a fast pace, slices of humor interspersed with tragedy, and dance dance dance.  I’m there.  And, usually, memorizing the choreography so I can dance it when I get the soundtrack.

But I wanted more dance from this new Footloose.  More singing. And, those red boots Ariel wore – oh, yeah, I wanted those, too.

I didn’t miss Kevin Bacon or Lori Singer – the maverick out-of-towner and the preacher’s daughter – from the earlier Footloose, because Kenny Womald as Ren McCormick and Julianne Hough as Ariel, dazzled and crackled.  They demonstrated dimension even while dancing.

And I loved the conversion of Ren’s sidekick. Not talking religion here.  Though, you may recall Footloose is about a big-city boy, Ren, who gets stuck in a small-town where a three-year ban is instituted by the preacher/councilman (Dennis Quaid in the 2011 film) after his only son is killed in a head-on after a booze-fueled dance.  No, we’re talking about the conversion of a slow-talking Southerner to learn how to dance.

Sometimes I wanted Director Craig Brewer to hang onto the scene longer – and more singing and dancing – but, you know what?  I would go see Footloose again.  And, next time bring my firstborn son.

***

Actually, we just came back from Redbox, and noticed the old Footloose on the display.

He said we should see the new Footloose.

I said I did.

Without me?  he asked.

Guess I’m going to see the new Footloose again.

]]> http://dianapagejordan.com/2011/10/14/footloose-its-everyones-time/feed/ 4 dianapagejordan http://dianapagejordan.com/2011/07/21/six-sizzling-summer-reads-on-studio-six/ http://dianapagejordan.com/2011/07/21/six-sizzling-summer-reads-on-studio-six/#comments Thu, 21 Jul 2011 20:16:50 +0000 Diana Page Jordan http://dianapagejordan.com/?p=3428 ]]> While most of the nation swelters, we in the Pacific Northwest are still waiting for summer.  I thought, well, hey, if I do a segment on KOIN Studio 6 on summer reads, then summer has to appear sometime.  Soon.  We hope.   In any case, I’ve come up with six sizzling summer reads.  Here’s the link to the show Studio 6 which aired Tuesday, July 19th.

• ADRENALINE by Jeff Abbott
  • This is a thriller – and it couldn’t have a more appropriate title
  • It’s about a young married CIA agent, Sam, whose wife is pregnant.  One day at the office, she calls him and commands him to get out of the building – which explodes.  Turns out his surviving CIA bosses think he planted the bomb – or maybe his wife did.  Either he’s a traitor or a fool.
  • Sam is imprisoned by the CIA, but he escapes, partly through his gift at parkour.  He heads to Europe – he’s trying to find his wife, whom he saw kidnapped.
  • A thrilling book, that is fueled by so many twists and turns.

• WITCHES OF EAST END by Melissa de la Cruz
  • Two witch-sisters and their witch-mother have been instructed to not use their powers again – or else.  But, after centuries of restraint, they loosen up.  And, it’s a bit too easy to do just a little magical love potion here, and a bringing-back-to-life there, and before they know it darker forces are unleashed
  • Melissa de la Cruz sets this book in a quiet section of Long Island, and it’s an adult book – after the author’s success writing YA books
    
  • It’s magical and gripping!
    

• IT LOOKED DIFFERENT ON THE MODEL by Laurie Notaro
  • I always feel so embarrassed reading her books.  These things never happen to me, but they could!  And, that’s the problem – like a car wreck, it’s impossible to turn away.
  • Some of her essays: seeing herself as the young woman she used to be in a much smaller size trying on a way-too-small top, and biting her nails as she does.  A character called Ambien Laurie who does naughty things late at night, and doesn’t remember them.  A stand-off at the tiny satellite post office in Eugene with the post office lady who doesn’t want to sell her four hundred two-cent stamps.
  • Yes, the stories are funny and embarrassing.

• THE SILENT GIRL by Tess Gerritsen
  •  I would read any of Tess’ books – she’s a former MD, and her plots are stunning and incisive
  • this book is about continuing characters M-E Dr Maura Isles and Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli – there’s a TV series on TNT, but I haven’t seen it yet
  • a beautiful victim is found – her hand, that was holding a gun, is severed, and found in an alley where a tour of Chinatown is going on – and her body, neck slit, is found on the rooftop above.
  • The clues point to an old Chinese legend, a deity called the Monkey King
    
  • This thriller is ancient and current at once.
    

• INZANESVILLE by Jo Ann Beard
  • Zanesville is a Midwestern town – it’s about a 1970’s girlhood – a late-bloomer
    
  • Remember being fourteen?   Baby-sitting, cliques, best friends, then different friends? And, being a late-bloomer.  I hated being a late-bloomer…but then, maybe that’s why I turned into a reader.  Then a journalist.  Then an author-interviewer and book-reviewer.  See? Silver lining!
    
  • Literary and lovely.
• THIS BEAUTIFUL LIFE by Helen Schulman
  • Ever hit “forward” on an email, and regret it? 
  • Fifteen-year old  Jake – who lives in a rarified upper-class Manhattan home – attends a party, and the 8^th grade girl who threw the party throws herself at him.  He brushes her off as too young. Jake’s dad is an executive at a large NY university. This girl Daisy is the daughter of a “label,” a guy like Calvin Klein.  And, the parents are not around for her, and definitely, not at the party. Then the next morning, there is a very seductive video of the girl, Daisy, in his inbox.  Jake freaks, and forwards it to his best friend.  And, it goes viral.  It’s called Daisy and the bat.
  •  Everything seems to get handled – but does it, really?

Enjoy your summer reading!  Oh, my favorite?  ADRENALINE! 

And, that process allows for magic.  Hey, I’m a journalist, and I observe magic all the time.

I’m at the Oregon Coast.  I can’t tell you the last time I broke away from my long list of to-do’s, and my sense of lacking money.  Probably three weeks ago, I printed up my 375-page manuscript, pulled out a brand-new red pen to edit the crap out of it, and there it sat.  Chelsea Cain, in Workshop, commented that I should just go somewhere where I’d never been, and bring the thing – not try to edit it at home, amid the dings, pings, and stacks of post-it notes with ideas, details, and things-I-must-do-now.

So, I put it out there.  Much like a dandelion wish, where you blow, and it’s carried away.

I also, many months ago, wished for an all-expense paid trip to a sunny place, knowing that that would probably have to be a plane trip somewhere.

Well, guess what.  4am Friday morning, I’m on a list of people who gets an email from a friend who happens to have trade at a wonderful hotel on the Oregon coast.  Lodging free, and more than enough script to cover my non-alcoholic, sweet-loving ways.  She can’t use it.  Use it or lose it, she wrote – who wants it?  I put in.  I got it.

I brought a small bag of clothes; my manuscript; and I remembered when I arrived, after a beautiful sunny drive, that if somehow I needed a bathing suit, I always carry one in my purse.  Hey, you never know!

I stayed in flow.  Didn’t fight the river.  Didn’t set any alarm.  Smiled a lot.  Laughed even more.  Said thank you thank you thank you all day long.  Because today was bikini weather!  Very warm and sunny, and I sat out on the deck overlooking the ocean, editing my manuscript all day long.  Except for a couple of long walks at the ocean’s edge, in bare feet.  Heaven.  I finished the edits.  My skin is sun-kissed.  And, those post-it notes didn’t nag me one bit.  Relaxing into one of the few sunny days I’ve ever experienced at the coast, it occurred to me that when you put those desires out there, and you don’t worry them, you just let them float aloft like a helium balloon, they get answered so creatively, you could never have imagined it this way.

Stunningly delightful.  I love living.  And, no, I’m not posting the picture of me in my bikini, editing out on the deck.  I ate oysters, burgers, scallops, french fries, creme brulee – too much!

And, one day, the gift of that childhood trauma becomes apparent.

First, the damage and danger twists synapses, neural pathways, belief systems, trust, whom you love and who you run from.  What does a four-and-a-half year old girl learn from being raped by her mother’s new husband?  Handsome guy, her mother head over heels in love with him, her cutting the little girl’s real father out of every photo, changing the girl’s name, and silencing her when she tries to speak it.  Mother, an alcoholic, suicidal, schizophrenic.  Real father, gone, after the little girl reaches age six, because the stepfather beat him up and told him to never come back.  She never saw her dad again.

Little girl escapes through books, seeks truth, becomes a journalist so she can ask her questions as close to the source as possible.  She moves 3,000 miles away to be safe.  And, when her babies are three and five, the wall slides back, and all the memories are released.  Years of therapy, changing one attitude, one neural pathway, one belief at a time – it’s glacial.

Until last weekend.  Marisa Russo, an Australian healer comes to town, and serendipitously, I end up with a rare individual session.  My grandfather was born in Australia.  Marisa had a similar childhood to mine. I watch her as a journalist, and sense that I can trust her.  I journal to the little girl inside me, telling her it is time to allow healing.  I have lived most of these years, as if I have one foot on the brake, one on the gas. And the stress of no sweetness in that childhood creates diabetes type two in my adult years.

It is time for the healing: Marisa pulls out a curse over me by my stepfather – I see his face leave my body, and I feel lighter.  And, a curse – a major oppression – from my mother.  Then, Marisa pulls a possession from me – I nearly vomit, tears spill down my face, I connect, finally, with the little girl inside, who is out of hiding, looking at this with amazement, and begins rejoining with me.  She is jumping up and down inside, not unlike Marisa, who bounces as she pulls energy, balances it. This time, after Marisa pulls out the possession, she collapses on the hotel bed next to the massage table where I lie on my back, covered with a soft blue blanket.  She’s only lying parallel to me on her back for an instant.  We are aligned in our unspoken celebration.

When I tune into my inner being, I smile, almost laugh – there’s my little girl inside playing and jumping and dancing with joy.  She feels safe.  This is new.  It translates to my adult life.  I am fearless.  My blood sugar is perfect – very unlike the rows of 200′s I had the previous week, twice what it’s supposed to be.  I even drive better.  With breath, without tension.  When I was sixteen, my stepfather taught me how to drive on four different vehicles – 3 on a column, 4 on the floor, a station wagon and a Renault.  And one day, in the middle of a five-way intersection, when my 16-year old self was driving into the center, he yanked on the emergency brake and demanded to know why I f*%@ing did something, I don’t know, I only heard a rail of profanity, and sat frozen in the center, cars whizzing by.  Now, even this is gone.  Just the story remains, not the connection.

I was invited to give a testimonial on Andrea Online when Marisa was a guest.  Here’s our section:

MarisaRusso with DianaPageJordan on AndreaOnline 052611

Toward the end of my segment, Marisa said “You did all the work.  And, you really worked hard.  I see you like an angel that needed a push on this planet.  You have amazing ability.  You’re a powerful woman that just needed a shift to now let you fly.  You can create those shifts and further changes for other people.  You can now reach out.  And, just sometimes, it takes someone, or direction, or more energy, to get there, and I’m just so honored and privileged that you chose me.”

Earlier today, I jotted down a few new rules for the little girl inside me, because, really, she had to follow some really crappy rules, growing up the way she did.  So, the adult me wrote these out for the little girl inside me – and for your little kid, too.

New Rules for the Little Girl Inside:

1.     You don’t have to finish everything on your plate

2.     It’s healthy to hug

3.     You’re allowed to win, and nothing bad will happen when you do

4.     Things are easier than you think

5.     If someone is angry, it’s not your fault, and you don’t have to fix it

6.     Breathe.  Go ahead, it’s okay.  Breathe.

7.     You can share if you want to – there’s plenty for everyone, and for you, too

8.     Trust your own rhythm

9.     When you act out of Love, Life is magical – in a good way

10.  When you don’t feel good, there are two ways to go: Up and Lighten Up

11.  Dance for joy, not just to rip out the pain. 

12.  And sing out.  Trust your voice.

13.  It’s okay to play.  And to chill out.

14.  You are powerful.  Really.

Love and blessings,

Diana

By Dan Millman

PublishedApril 14, 2011 (Hardcover) H J Kramer

I decided to take tonight “off,” and not produce the 30-minute podcastor, not prep for my next appearance on KOIN-TV’s Studio 6, not rework the last two chapters of my memoir.  Instead, my housemate, who is leading me into learning how to “play,” watched with me the Academy Award winning movie, The King’s Speech.

The film struck me deep.  What makes art divine, is its universality.  Truly, how many of us are heirs to the British throne?  But, then, how many of us face a challenge that blockades us from our true destiny?  In the film, the future King George VI keeps a wall up, doesn’t allow anyone to be personal with him.  It is only when a non-credentialed speech therapist insists on calling the future king Bertie – and probing for the incendiary incidents that caused a stammer to develop – that Bertie/King George begins to sense success.

It struck me then. The real memory behind my own speaking.

I joke about the way oy you-sta tawk, when I lived in New York and New Jersey.  And, when I moved to Iowa, and applied for the TV weathergirl job, dressed in a mid-thigh sweater-dress waving my BS with High Honors in Journalism and Communications degree, the TV station hired me on the spot – and then hired a theatre prof from the University of Iowa to teach me how to speak with that smooth midwestern non-accent.  Ten lessons.  Best hundred bucks I’ve ever spent.

What The Kings Speech broke free inside me was the memory that as a child, I was afraid to speak.  I only lifted my hand in class if the teacher asked a question and I not only knew the answer, but didn’t want the teacher to feel bad if no one else raised a hand.  I certainly didn’t speak at home.  That was too dangerous.

The memory that broke inside me – was that I lisped.  And, I stammered.  For most of my kindergarten and elementary school years.  It frustrated – and amused me – that I couldn’t even say the word lisp.  But, I did indeed lisp.  And when I spoke, it came out soft, sibilant, lispy, and with a stammer.  It’s ironic, perhaps, that now I am a news anchor, an interviewer, a host, a voice-over artist.

As with King George VI, the lisp and stammer arrived with an abusive authority figure around age five.  In my case, ages five to six was when I realized my sweet childhood had crumbled.  My violinist grandfather had died.  My stepfather beat up my real dad and told him to never return. I never saw my real dad again.  And, my stepfather, he took away the remaining power in that little girl that was me, by raping me.  Over and over.  For years.  My mother didn’t choose to see.  Instead, she drank till she fell down the stairs, she slit her wrists, and she popped pills till they pumped her stomach.

And all the words inside me got rattled and I finally fell silent.

Maybe – along with King George VI and me – someone abused your five-year old self, and you forgot how much power you truly have.  But,  you can take it back.  By facing every tough moment, and powering through.  And when you do get it back, unwrap that package.  Because inside – you will encounter the gift of what you were born to do.   That makes every one of us a royal.

Want to learn how to write a book that publishers will buy and people will line up to read?  Author Larry Brooks breaks it down for you in his book Story Engineering which he discusses with me on Open Book with Diana Page Jordan.

• View a list of all chapters
• Listen to Open Book with Diana Page Jordan on iTunes