Nerved Up in the New Year – Publication of My Memoir

There is a lot of pressure as we enter 2023 to declare a resolution. I have
made my share of resolutions in the past, most rarely kept and remarkably
unimportant in the landscape of my existence. This year, I am tasked with a new
challenge to remain resolute. As much to my surprise, dismay, and delight, I
have signed a publishing contract for my memoir The Killing Closet.

The book, a story of hiding, will likely be released in the Spring of 2023
and I am nervous. When I shared my state of terror with a dear friend she replied,
“Of course you are afraid. All the nerve-endings are on the outside
now. This is something new. You’re not used to being vulnerable.”

I wrote my memoir in an angry tirade after my adoptive father, Jo died in
2015. A stranger had inherited my childhood home. I was cut from the will. The
inheritor of all my childhood things accused me of abandoning my father. She
dumped our photos in a dumpster and sold the rest of our memories in an estate
sale. As usual, I put pen to paper to prove a point. I wanted to show
all the ways that my father had abandoned and abused my family. I’d show the
inheritor!

After the initial throwing up and bleeding-out of words, I revisited the memoir,
and an unexpected understanding overcame me. I came to understand that I loved
my father despite all the years of hating Jo.

As a savvy reader, you have likely noticed that I have yet to use a pronoun
when referring to my father. This is because my father died a woman. She
transitioned in her 70’s.

While the book shares the horrors my family survived, I hope that it is so much more.

It is a story of adoption and the muddied river of methodologies used by social and private adoption agencies to place infants in the 1960s and 70s.

It is a story of embracing one’s truth and the truths of your
children. A child’s identity is not a parent’s to define or control. Only
nurturing their truest selves will help them to live happy lives.

It is a book about mental and physical abuse. Abuse is the extreme
outcome of control or lack thereof.

It is a book of strength, survival and finding safer ground. We left
our abuser and lived to tell the stories.

It is a book of acceptance. Accepting that we are a world of diverse
needs, wants, genders, sexualities, and identities is the pulse of the story.
My father’s parent’s failed her as did the society of her era.

Finally, it is a book of moving forward from our failures. I failed
my father in her last-ditch effort to show me who she was. She wanted to visit.
I refused her. The harsh judgement of the legions of humans who suffer abandonment and a lack of acceptance is where my fear of publication bubbles up most
fervently.

For all the evil she delivered, it was my human duty to give her a
final revelation of her truth. My dear friend argued with me on this point,
having witnessed the tumult of my childhood firsthand.

While it is my truth, and I cannot change my past, the real meaning of The Killing Closet will ultimately be defined by readers.

So, I march forth into 2023 ready for the revelations it brings while shaking in my writer boots! Happy New Year lovely readers, and friends.

With hope and a healthy dose of apprehension,
V.L.

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A Message from Purgatory

I set out on the morning of October 10th to get ready for a conference I was to emcee in Miami. Specifically, I sought to get my ragged fingernails tended and mended. I had heard about a new nail place from a friend and drove there first. They were closed. So, I headed across town to my usual spot.

I settled into the kneading joy of the pedicure chair, and the owner (whom I have known for years) introduced the ladies sitting next to me. “What a group we have this morning,” she said, “a powerful trio.”

One of my pampered cohorts explained how she mends broken victims of sexual abuse in a medical care center she established. With little community support and zero funds from the state and local government, she is an outspoken angel for voiceless victims.

The third of our trio is filming a movie at a lovely antebellum mansion in our area. She is also a screenplay writer.  Her movie, based on a novel, is a controversial look at mixed-race relationships in the 1800s.

We chatted and the filmmaker suggested that my father’s story, which is the basis of my memoir, The Killing Closet is important and that getting it picked up by a literary agent is all about timing. She explained that the author who wrote the book upon which her film is based penned it more than a decade ago and was self-published. The story (at the time of its original publication) was not popular. Yet, fast forward a dozen years and here it is being made into a movie that will be played at major film festivals around the world.

As an abuse victim who has authored a transgender story that the literary world seems hesitant to hear, meeting a victim advocate and a brave filmmaker at my early morning nail appointment seems rather incredible. Especially, in my small Southern city.

However, as I sat there, it dawned on me that it was no coincidence. The same spirit that saved me from despair as a child, intervened that day. Or perhaps, it was my father Jo sending a missive from purgatory (where I like to believe she is reviewing her life and my book options).

October 10, 2019 would have been my adoptive father’s 84th birthday. Thank you, Dad, for reminding me that our story matters.

Blessings to be who you are and always be right on-time,
V.L.

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Buy my novel Waving Backwards for Kindle $4.99 at Amazon.com-amazon.com/author/vlbrunskill

 

 

Four Years Since My Trans Adoptive Dad’s Death

Today is the four-year anniversary of my father’s death. I’ve been dreading the day for the way it reminds me of our shortcomings. He died a woman and left a daughter who could never accept the anomaly. Gender was one more dysfunction to add to the avalanche waiting to bury me, and so I refused to see Joann when she drove from her home in New York to Hilton Head, South Carolina for a surprise visit.

No longer a child rolling with the punches, kicks, and angry outbursts, I needed some warning to help me see Joann. Perhaps, had she let me know she was coming, I might have witnessed her bent posture in the old lady frock, as she limped along with a cane. Truth says, “Not so.” I would not have seen her. No matter how long one considers a coming tsunami, it will never be welcome.

Once, we danced, my tiny shoes atop his feet to Daddy’s Little Girl, and I was whole. Then it was crap. A battle fought too hard by a child too small. I could not get him to be the man I needed, for she lurked there under the calloused skin and hard edges. She did not love me for the daughter I became, but for my girlish things and female life. She wanted to be me.

Writing this today is so different than writing my memoir The Killing Closet. Our story is tragic and yet I have painted a thousand mental pictures of it in heroic beams of survival. Turning beatings into strength-building, honor. Truth says, “No. The character-building benefits do not surpass the suffering.”

It was a childhood no one would choose.

Joe was the father no one wanted.

Joann was a secret and we all suffered for her existence.

What have I learned in these four years since Dad’s death? I have learned that I loved my father. I have learned that he did not exist. I have learned that forgiveness comes with a price. One must pay with regret. I can’t forgive a man that never was but have come to forgive the woman tucked beneath the cloak of masculinity.

I have learned that the madness that was my childhood was born of a broken adoption process. That too requires a heavy mask of introspection. Love your captors. Love your saviors. Love the system. The adoption message bleeds for the childless. Forgiving them is distant, remote, untouched, as were the infants they placed in hell. Our fate makers were social worker Helen Steinman, Children’s Aid Society, money, income, the barren womb.

Four years and tears still run at the loss of innocence. My brother’s and mine. My father, miscast in a gender strict world, had no escape for Joann. They were beaten before he took a breath, or twirled in a sister’s skirt, or underwent the knife to make the gender correction.

I have learned that who we are inside often collides with exterior appearance. That we can never really know the heart of another human, and that to assume heartlessness is to deny the human condition. Joe’s heart was born with Joann’s being, or so I have heard.

I gave my father an opportunity to admit the way gender devastated our lives. She declined, blaming my mother for the violence instead. Joe spoke then, in defense of Joann. I did not know it was the last time. I got no closure, no admittance, no apology.

I have learned that Joann and Joe melded into one and that in the end, the angry man took up the cloak once worn by the woman. Hiding, blaming, hurting internally and externally was my father’s life fate.

I have learned that no relative has visited Joann’s grave.

I have learned to move forward, tip-toeing around Father’s day and the lucky ones born to men who put them first.

I have learned to breath when the thought of my father tries to steal my air.

Rest, Dad. I am still learning.

V.L. Brunskill

Follow me on Twitter- @RockMemoir

Like my Facebook page-http://www.facebook.com/vlbrunskill

Buy my novel Waving Backwards for Kindle $4.99 at Amazon.com-amazon.com/author/vlbrunskill

Domestic Violence Awareness Month- Memoir of Abuse (We Survived)

For the three women murdered every day in the U.S. by current or former romantic partners, and for those still trapped in abusive situations, I share an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir Transgressions in Rouge: A Father’s Gender Rage, a Daughter’s Reckoning.

This represents a typical night in my childhood home.  Domestic abuse is family abuse.

——Christmas Eve——

     Mom did not answer, and something about her silence made me inch towards the bathroom door. It was open when I peeked in. Dad had the bloody towel pushed to Mom’s face, obstructing her nose and mouth. Unable to breathe, I watched her fall to her knees.          

     Preying on her low position, Dad let go of the towel to grab her curls with both hands. Hurling her towards the toilet, he slammed her face on the porcelain bowl three times before immersing her head in the water.  Mom moaned, her breath bubbling at the surface.

     Fed up and fuming with adrenaline, I crossed to the corner of my brother’s room where his finally useful baseball bat rested. Taking the bat in hand, I closed Robbie’s door behind me lifting the weapon over my head. My heart slammed against my ribcage as I entered the bathroom swinging. I had no idea what I might strike as blind rage engulfed me. I only knew I had to end him. The weight of the first wide swing knocked the extra roll of toilet paper with the crocheted doll cover from the partition between the sink and toilet.

     Dad ducked, releasing Mom who came up for air, gagging and spitting. My next swing landed on Dad’s arm, which he’d raised in defense. “Why are you doing this?”, he asked in the victim’s voice he slung on like a holster after every battle.  I lost my footing then, which softened the impact on my father’s hand to a mere tap. He squealed like a newborn pup, grabbing his barely bruised hand with the other.

     Mom sat on the toilet in a trance, staring at the cheap butterfly art on the wall in front of her. Dad howled, “Look what you made her do. You turned my daughter against me. You see this, you bitch?”

     I grabbed my stomach, the angry scream of the ulcer and seism of my muscles nearly bringing me to my knees. My voice ricocheted through the bathroom, “It’s you, Dad. It’s always you. You’re evil. I hate you. We all hate you.”

     Dad stopped his venomous blaming to look at me. The mask of hate melted into a pathetic mourn of false accusation. He tightened the drawstring waist of his red and green pajamas which had loosed in the melee. I raised the bat again; sure he would punish my mother for my tirade.

     Dad turned away from my hateful stare, his voice deflated. “All you had to do is clean the fucking bathroom. Now, see what you done to my daughter.” He pushed past me, leaving through the master bedroom. I knew he was headed to his chair. The sulking throne where he rocked away his perceived wounds.

     “My daughter. You made her hate me,” he mumbled over the indignant creak of the rocking chair.

     Inside the bathroom, I coaxed my mother to her feet helping her rinse her face. Patting her cheeks dry, I watched her retreat to the semi-conscious cave that was her refuge. Her eyes were open, but she did not see me.

     Guiding her to her side of the bed, I kissed her forehead before pulling the blanket over her motionless body.  She stared at the ceiling, not blinking at my father’s rant in the other room.

    “You made them hate me you bitch” Dad chanted his spent soliloquy. “You turned dem against me.”

     Confirming that Mom was breathing by laying my head on her chest, I left my parent’s room to check on Robbie. He stirred as I shut the door, “Santa?”, he asked as I caught my breath, wiping away tears to hide my upset.

     “Yes, Robbie, Santa,” I lied, wondering if there would be any gifts under the tree. Spooning my brother’s back in the twin bed, we slept five hours as the malevolence of my birthday morphed into Christmas.

     I woke with Robbie’s finger poking the small of my back, “It’s light out. Let’s go see.”

---

If you know someone who is being abused, find a local resource and help save them.
My family escaped to a shelter for battered women.

If you are being abused- please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233 or TTY 1−800−787−3224.

Blessings for the safety of women & children everywhere,
V.L.
—————
Follow me on Twitter- @RockMemoir
Like my Facebook page-http://www.facebook.com/vlbrunskill
Buy my novel Waving Backwards for Kindle $4.99 at Amazon.com-amazon.com/author/vlbrunskill

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Waltzing with Ghosts (Forgive My Absence)

There is truth in memory. It is a truth laced with opinion built on years of re-framing life images. As I work on my second book (first memoir) spirits long since transcended, sit beside me urging me to their truth. I dig deeper and deeper to see them as whole human beings, frail, wanting to be loved, unsure, making their way in the best manner they could.

Haunted. It is the best word to describe the process of trying to uncover beautiful prose in a past so horrifying that I often think it happened to someone else. The words never seem right. Never large or accurate enough to tell the tale of honing my faith in hell. How does one describe God’s grace? When my finger left the trigger of my father’s rifle, on the day I planned to kill him, I looked up to the marble crucifix. Porcelain Jesus looked back. His suffering was more than mine, and somehow at that moment I knew my tortured family would be okay.

Denial. I have spent more than thirty-years hiding from my truth. I did not know I was running, swiping away what my heart owned. “I survived. I’m strong”, I would tell those who asked about growing up in a constant state of battle. Shhh. Don’t mention your adoption anger. Dysfunction cast in a light of character-building is easier for others to stomach. So, I swallowed the loathing, fear, and vulnerability of abuse in a great big pill called denial, riding the effects until earlier this year. Now, as I experience inevitable withdrawals, I withdraw from you my readers, and friends.

As I write, monsters who choked the justice from my childhood encircle. Scratching at my soul, they fight the exodus that will free me. They crowd my mind, pushing and hollering to be heard on my precious pages.  I dance with and away from the exposure they flaunt.

Winter is coming as I work to complete this book. As frigid nights zap the green from marsh grass to reveal roots and decay, so topple barriers long forged to hide my truth.  If I seem distracted, please forgive me. I am waltzing a glorious, tortuous last dance with powerful apparitions.

Blessings for a peaceful, loving Thanksgiving,

V.L. Brunskill

—
Follow me on Twitter- @RockMemoir
Like my Facebook page-http://www.facebook.com/vlbrunskill
Buy Waving Backwards for Kindle $4.99 at Amazon.com-amazon.com/author/vlbrunskill
View the Waving Backwards book trailer-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ufjmq0l-U