1: A Dangerous Road Home

Reading time: 15 minutes

Thanks for joining me! This email contains the first chapter of many bi-weekly releases of chapters from my Dreaming In the Real manuscript, a work in progress. I share how immersing myself in the natural world while preparing vibrational essences helped me gain insight and healing after my adult life crumbled due to unaddressed trauma and childhood adversity. 

I highly recommend reading the INTRODUCTION first.

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CONTENT GUIDANCE: This manuscript tackles sensitive themes of parental neglect, abuse, drugs, and domestic violence. Reader discretion is advised.

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“Traumatic events, by definition, overwhelm our ability to cope. When the mind becomes flooded with emotion, a circuit breaker is thrown that allows us to survive the experience fairly intact, that is, without becoming psychotic or frying out one of the brain centers. The cost of this blown circuit is emotion frozen within the body. In other words, we often unconsciously stop feeling our trauma partway into it, like a movie that is still going after the sound has been turned off. We cannot heal until we move fully through that trauma, including all the feelings of the event.”  ~ Susan Pease Banitt, The Trauma Tool Kit: Healing PTSD from the Inside Out

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Summer 1999

MY BOYFRIEND AND I were in Taos, New Mexico, enjoying dinner, drinks, and live music, when he noticed a small group of attractive young men and women standing near the bar. He was intrigued by their dance moves on the floor, where boys were dancing with boys and girls with girls. Their hands rested on swaying hips as if they shared one sultry heartbeat. He wanted in on it.

Chewing on the ice in my empty glass, a man ten years my senior, slightly overweight with thinning curly hair held back in a ponytail, left our table to join the group of intimate friends. A smile spread across a young woman's face as he leaned close to say something. My stomach lurched. A familiar rush of negative beliefs about myself cascaded into the cavern of my solar plexus, where inner darkness concealed the decaying and damaged undesirable parts of me. Instead of seeing him for what he was, a predator among prey, I revisited all the moments when I wasn't enough. I was never enough for him.

With a rumbling in my gut, I grabbed my bag and stood up from the table. Mustering what I felt was courage and dignity, I walked to the bar, gently placed my hand on his arm, and said, “I am ready to go home.”

Without taking his eyes off his new friends, he leaned toward my ear and whispered, “I’m not.”

He hoped for sex with no strings attached, which I didn’t want. I never did.

“Why don’t you give me the keys to the truck so I can drive myself home,” I asked.

Instead, he led me outside, where we began arguing. He was tired of my unwillingness to be more sexually free, but not wanting to make a scene in front of potential new friends, he agreed to drive me home.

His big blue diesel pickup rumbled down a dirt road toward Rinconada, the small community where we lived along the Rio Grande. NM 567 was the back-way home, a narrow, dangerous single-lane upper-rim gorge road with hairpin curves carving death into deep darkness. Sporadic barriers reminded drivers to avoid the shoulder and the steep drop into the river. Taking this road that night felt like retribution. It was dangerous under the best conditions.

Drifting and sliding around a tight corner, the side mirror revealed a cloud of dust behind us, glowing an eerie red from the taillights. Clinging to the grab handle, I raised my voice above the gravel pounding the truck's underside, "What are you doing? Slow down!"  

When he didn't, I shouted again. He laughed and pushed on the gas. I told him I wanted to get out. He ignored me and laughed even louder. My seat was on the uphill side of the road, and I concluded it was safer to jump out than to stay in. I reached for the door handle as he slowed for the next 180-degree curve, but he had locked the doors. Each time I pressed unlock, the recessed latch disappeared into the door as he locked it again. As we continued to veer dangerously close to the cliff's edge, I knew I had to act before it was too late.

Desperately, I grabbed the gear-shift lever on the column, slamming it into park. The transmission clunked and whined, and the truck slowed. A fist slammed into my face with a painful crunch, accompanied by a flash of light quickly fading to black. Seconds later, a second blow struck my ribs. The truck slowed to an almost stop, and I opened the door. I saw blood splattered on the dash as I tumbled out onto the dusty gravel shoulder.

The truck sped away, leaving me standing on trembling legs. I brushed dirt and dried weeds off my dress, only to discover a sharp pain in my ribs with each breath. My elbows and knees were bloody and caked with dirt and gravel. My nose was askew, listing to the right side of my face. I needed medical care, so I started walking back toward town.

With determination guiding me, I pushed the experience into a deep place where my other shameful secrets were hidden. Another car braved the gorge road as I walked. Waving at the oncoming headlights, I dared to hope. They slowed, but after a young couple saw my blood-soaked face and dress, they sped up and kept going. I don't know how long I stumbled in the dark in my leather sandals and green sundress, muddy brown from blood and the road's dirt before I heard the familiar diesel engine rumbling behind me.

Crying and apologizing, my boyfriend promised to take me to the hospital. Miles from town and desperately needing medical care, I climbed into the truck. We drove without a word. I stopped breathing, frozen in horror, as he drove past Holy Cross Hospital.

When I turned to look at him, he laughed and said, “Did you really think I would take you to the hospital? I am not going to jail because of you.”

Tension as thick as clay filled the cab on the thirty-minute drive home. I was grateful my son Tyler and daughter Katie were in Montana with their dad for the next two weeks. They had witnessed angry outbursts from my boyfriend that I wish they hadn’t, but nothing like this. The craziness escalated when they weren’t around.

I RESET MY NOSE with my hands, using grit and instinct as I listened for the crunch of cartilage to find its natural home. I hid there while my nose and black eyes healed, and my ribs no longer hurt to breathe. I don't know why I didn't get in my car and drive to the hospital or why I didn't reach out to anyone. Maybe it was the shame that consumed me as a man who could overpower me with one arm blamed me for his abuse and my reaction to it. He wanted me to know that I deserved my injuries. I withdrew from his verbal attacks and slept in my Coleman tent trailer parked under the old-growth Russian olive trees along the riverbank.

As I lay on the queen-sized bed in the screened trailer, contradictory thoughts and questions swirled through my mind. After a year of planning, we rented our Montana house to his brother and his family and bought a travel trailer. We planned to travel from Vancouver Island to the tip of Baja California. During this time, I made a living day trading with a cell phone and a laptop computer while homeschooling my children with a Waldorf curriculum. We traveled through the rainforests of Canada and the ancient ruins of the Southwest. After that, we spent six months on an isolated beach on the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. My boyfriend had a twelve-foot Zodiac that carried us to deserted islands where playful dolphins accompanied us. We floated among pods of curious fin whales and followed the feeding frenzies of blue-footed boobies. One evening, as the sun set and the sky burst with brilliant shades of orange and magenta, we came across a large gathering of baby dolphins. They were jumping, chasing, and tagging one another.

 How could such magical memories be made with someone who treated me so horribly? How could I have spent so much time and not truly know him?

I wasn’t aware of it then, but as a child, I learned to love people who didn’t know how to love me. I was good at it. Part of me thought his behavior was normal and that calculating my every move to appease him was love. I thought I was the only person strong enough and who loved this man enough to stand by him and help him. I didn’t understand I needed to provide for my safety and well-being before I could help someone else. I didn’t know unresolved childhood trauma was brewing a corrosive blend of unhealthy thinking and shame-induced self-destruction.

IN THE FALL, we moved home to Hamilton, in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. My boyfriend agreed to participate in couple’s counseling, but only with a therapist he knew and trusted.

Our first session was in a second-floor office decorated with Native American art, where we shared our perspectives on our relationship. I particularly mentioned the night when he broke my nose and the ongoing verbal abuse and threats of violence. However, I was caught off-guard when the therapist said something that felt like an emotional punch in the gut. "Marnie," she said, "I want you to think long and hard about what you do to make him so angry."

My boyfriend raised an eyebrow, and a corner of his mouth lifted just a bit. Stunned, I walked out of the session, but not because I recognized gaslighting. It just felt wrong.

I WORKED AS a substitute teacher at the elementary and middle schools, plus several other part-time jobs, including freelance bookkeeping and gardening, whatever I could find in our small town. With primary custody of my children, because their dad worked out of state, I took full advantage when his schedule brought him home for a few weeks. I registered for an intensive at The Meadows, a residential therapy center in Arizona specializing in codependency treatment. Without health insurance or other resources to pay for it, I cashed out my 401K to pay for it.

An exploration of my past and what is and isn’t healthy in a relationship began in one-on-one therapy, role-playing, and twice-daily group therapy. Each evening, I wrote in my journal, excavating my history for understanding and making space for newer and healthier information.

Unearthing my childhood revealed how I learned to see the best in those with the worst behavior. I learned that trauma occurs when we develop strategies to survive a reality we cannot bear and that trauma inflicted on children by those they love and trust are betrayals of the most profound order. I learned what boundaries were, but it would be many years before I developed the self-love and discipline required to develop and maintain healthy self-protection.

My therapist told me I was lucky to have survived my teen and young adult years. A middle-aged man with graying hair and eyes behind wire-framed glasses that saw deep inside me guided me through my father’s rage, my mother’s powerlessness, my teen years of chaos, and my time in foster care. He taught me about personal and energetic boundaries that I never knew existed. I learned that my childhood experiences influenced every decision I made. Fragments of my past self emerged in a tiny wood-paneled office. Sifting through the memories, I barely recognized the broken parts of me I had stowed away for so long.

“Boundaries, Marnie. Remember your boundaries,” he said when I left.

IN THE BEGINNING, my boyfriend’s passion and attentiveness fueled a profound attraction. For the first two years, we gardened, cooked, entertained, traveled, hiked, and danced together. He bought me jewelry and clothing and made beautiful love to me. I saw the good and ignored everything else.

Abuse only revealed itself when I became emotionally and financially dependent on our partnership. My boyfriend's passion then fueled chaos as gaslighting, blaming, and shaming eventually escalated to violence in Taos. I must have been color-blind. Looking back, I can see enough red flags to wallpaper a house.

When we traveled to Panama for three weeks, he became angry and abandoned me on a small, remote island in the province of Bocas del Toro. Three days later, I found him at the airport, where he stood with my passport in hand, waiting for our flight home as if nothing had happened.

For one of his birthdays, I hired a Thai massage therapist to come to the house to treat him to a two-hour massage. After the massage, I took him to a local mountain resort where I had rented a cabin with a hot tub. We shared an evening of lovemaking, a long soak, a lobster dinner, and karaoke. At the end of the evening, he wanted more sex, but I didn't. I was dead tired, wanting nothing more than to curl up in a soft bed and sleep. He glared at me and said, "You are the most selfish person I know! I am sick of your unwillingness to do what I want."

The worse he behaved, the harder I tried. Like many survivors of domestic abuse, I didn’t leave the relationship immediately. I did my best to shelter my kids from his antics, and I trained myself to notice how I felt in response to his actions and how I perpetuated the chaos I needed to change.

Eventually, he mortgaged thirty-five thousand dollars on our home’s equity without my permission and went to Arizona to record an album. Months later, when that failed, he flew to Thailand to find himself, leaving me with a mortgage and remodeling expenses I couldn’t afford on my own.

IN MAY 2002, seeking full-time work I could sink my heart into, I met a potential employer for a job interview in a small bakery cafe in town. Steven Johnson was a vibrational essence producer, researcher, and teacher. Over scones, chai tea, and the mouthwatering aroma of freshly baked bread and brewed coffee, I learned about the Alaskan Essences, remedies made from the vital essence of flowers, minerals, and the Alaskan environment. Feeling we had known each other for lifetimes and that our meeting was conspired by providence, Steve hired me to work with him.

At a production and shipping facility nestled on a wooded bench just south of Sweathouse Creek in Victor, I learned about essences made in Alaska’s wild and unspoiled environment from a man who became one of my dearest friends. Steve taught me how a co-creative sun-infusion and mindful attunement imprints the life-force energy of carefully chosen flowers, minerals, and environments into pure spring water without any physical or chemical components of the plants or minerals involved. This mother essence is diluted and potentized, then preserved with brandy, and made into stock for personal use.

These remedies embody nature's pristine and balanced energy. They work with our intention to restore the natural equilibrium between our body, mind, and spirit. Charles Darwin called a flower at the peak of its bloom the "crowning glory of nature," the embodiment of perfection. Through personal experience, I have come to understand that if we take mindful note of these blossoms, we engage in a subtle yet powerful interaction between the unseen aspects of nature and our inner selves. 

Just as plants sustain our planet with food, oxygen, and energy, creating conditions for all life to flourish, essences made from flowers help us thrive by strengthening our relationship with the earth. Flower essences increase our self-awareness and uncover our outdated ways of thinking, leading to new perspectives and a different way of seeing the world.

Earth's minerals serve as a fundamental support system for all life on our planet, similar to how our skeletal system provides structure, blood cell production, and protection for our vital organs. Likewise, essences made from minerals connect us to the Earth's structural integrity to provide us with energetic stability, support, and balance as we integrate enhancements to our growing awareness.

The Earth's ongoing cycles of change impact and influence all forms of life. All living beings, including humans, adapt to survive within unpredictable weather patterns, changing seasons, monthly moon cycles, and day and night. Because of the inherent connection between Earth's life force and our own, essences made from pristine natural environments can help strengthen our resilience and ability to endure the cycles of evolution and change occurring in our lives.

In a nutshell, vibrational essences are thought-responsive, working collaboratively with our focused intent and the life force of our mind, body, and spirit to perpetuate self-directed evolution. They catalyze and support change with an inner process of releasing, relearning, and awakening, all while encouraging mindfulness, self-awareness, and greater emotional intelligence.

Modern essence use began during the First World War with Dr. Edward Bach, a surgeon at the University College Hospital in London. While treating injured soldiers, Dr. Bach wanted to attend to the entire patient, not just his broken parts. Embracing an inherent connection to the natural world, he gave up his medical practice to devote his life to developing today’s version of vibrational essence therapy.

Over the years, I heard Steve emphasize that essences are not alternative medicine, “Essences are advanced medicine.”

I was in the right place.

Intuitively selecting essences for myself, I made formulas to address the issues influencing my life. Each formula lasted four to six weeks, long enough to notice subtle changes and shifts in my self-awareness and response to life. Vibrational remedies work most profoundly with the added benefit of a skilled essence practitioner, so I sought Steve’s guidance and expertise at every turn. Our friendship evolved into a messy blend of workplace stress, chai tea, a shared love of Neil Young and science fiction, mutual respect, and an ongoing quest for emotional and spiritual healing.

I had no idea then, but those early days at Alaskan Essences marked the true beginning of my healing journey. However, the path was longer than I had anticipated, and things got much worse before they got better.

NEXT: Chapter 2: Don’t Talk, Don’t Trust, Don’t Feel

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