Dear Elizabeth...

It has been a while since I posted anything personal. I suppose that is good, because I have been engaged in living life, rather than regretting the past. It isn't that I have been pain and anguish free. Stuff crosses my mind, but I have pretty good coping methods these days and it seems I don't freak out as anxiously as much as I have in the past ....sounds like healing.

I have appreciated comments that you have given me from time to time, even when I am Missing....and you wonderful people who have been such an integral part of bringing me to this point of healing will NEVER be forgotten. You are angels who walk here on earth. Walking one with another, helping, lifting, healing.

With your compassion, your sympathy and empathy.
You are amazing and strong,
and your strength has helped me to find my own.

Please don't think ever that I forget you, that I don't recognize the pain and loneliness that you each might suffer from day to day. If you leave me a comment I get it that day. If you need me I will hear your plea. I just am a little more absent on the technological market these days. I am on the instant gratification mode of texting or FBing... or more often I am living in the moment with my children and family. Blogging has brought me healing, and the direction that I hear from you all is to turn to Him who truly heals...which has impressed me and I have turned to prayer. So....there I am, and here I neglect, and yet...I never forget, and have great appreciation for each one of your insights.


Today....today...WOW.

Today I need to write HERE, so here I have come. A couple of thoughts.

One, I have been writing with my mother an interactive history. It is amazing how engaging in a persons life can bring you to a deeper healing. Understanding her is helping me to understand me better. I always questioned how she could allow those awful things to happen to ME. Didn't she care??? I suppose this is a thought for me to further explore another day, but....it has been a good month of learning to Love her, and I do. I have forgiven her....weird, huh. I am sure some of you will question that being that all you have is what I have written here. It is a subject that I will come here more often to explore, for it is a HUGE part of my healing, and a HUGE insight to who I am, learning who she is and was.

......IS and WAS...for they are two very different people.

I have a lot of love and compassion and empathy and forgiveness for her.

So much to ponder.

Second, I have been really consumed with the Elizabeth Smart Brian Mitchell Wanda Barzee trial...insanity....kidnapping...rape....saga. From day one, when that beautiful young girl was taken, SNATCHED from her childhood, from her home, from the protection of her mothers love and fathers arms....I have been with her mentally and emotionally on her journey.

I have cried, prayed, pleaded, and terrorized by her story, by her pain, her anguish, her experience. She has come through this a strong beautiful woman....and yet, what will become of her...

Really Third and Fourth, and lastly that is what this post is all about...

Dear Elizabeth....





My point in writing today...my PAIN....my anguish....my torment is this:



When Elizabeth was taken I was awakened by cries...a phone call and many tears. We know the family, my son is their sons best childhood friend from the innocence of first grade.

That day I got two phone calls.

One...my sister called to ask if her children could come spend the day with us. Her husbands brother had killed himself that morning; the girls Uncle. She needed to do family things that day and be there for her husband, their dad. The girls needed a place to go, someplace loving and secure. Of course I said yes. TEARS.

The second call came from the school. Could my oldest boy stay home from school? His best friends sister was kidnapped that morning from her bed. The school knew my sons heart and that he would be anguished with the news. They felt it was best if he didn't come to school. He was in first grade...too young. TEARS.

That day we drove through
a tank of gas and two tanks of tears.

I honestly didn't think we would make it. The pain was awful. Two tragedies....so much uncertainty.

Of course as the story goes ... Elizabeth was taken by Barzee and Mitchell and made to be his wife. She was a young girl ....only 14.

Nine months later she was found back here. Months of rape, months of terror. Terrorizing her, her family, her community....my heart.

As the story unfolded....I wept. I read every paper. I prayed...I pleaded...and then I stopped praying....I stopped pleading...was anyone listening anyhow...



Her story was too real to me. I read the accounts...I had lived that nightmare. I knew what it was like to be afraid. To hear that your family would be killed. To be raped, to be terrorized. Too many years I personally knew that kind of pain.

I shut down. I remember not being able to come out of my room. I remember not speaking to anyone...I was silenced in my pain, my anguish again...

My husband asked if I wanted a separation...

I remember thinking I needed to be institutionalized...I went to therapy...I told my story...my therapist told me that he had never heard anything so terrible as the events I had experienced...he needed a break from my healing, he needed a break from me. He had worked with girls who had been sexually abused...girls who were institutionalized and he had never heard the things I told him...the things I had been through.

He "didn't know how I could be sane and how I could function."

If he didn't know ...than how was I suppose to know.


As I continued to watch Dear Elizabeth heal, I watched her blossom in her youth, I couldn't understand why I couldn't. Why can't I heal????


I didn't want this pain anymore in my life.


One day I took all the papers about her, her story, her pain, her return, her healing...I burned them in our fireplace...time to let go, of her pain, of mine...

I went back to school. Wanted to get my mind on something productive...not my pain, ...not what I thought defined me.

Something new.

I took a Criminal Justice class. I wrote something about abuse for that class....again, too personal, and TEARS.


I wrote a letter to Elizabeth at that time. I thought that I would take it too her...the time wasn't right. I still have the letter. I see her family all the time. Our kids play sports together. I always think of not just saying hello, and the usual niceties...How are you doing?

I always ponder just someday...stopping to talk to her family, on a more personal level, her mother...her father.

I should be able to do that...but they have had enough pain.
They have her to help heal...they don't need me and my problems.

I just wonder...what is wrong with me.

Why can't I heal?

Why can't I be strong? Why can't I be beautiful? Why can't I be forgiving...and move on....and stop being so consumed by this pain.


Yesterday....Last night....

...I heard on the news that Mitchell is finally going to be tried. They think he is competent to stand trial. To be accountable to raping this beautiful girl of her childhood...of having a normal and decent life and mind to live with.

I always hear in the news that she has forgiven him...That she is not going to allow him to have one more day of her childhood, or her future...her life. I am so proud of her strength. I can say that....I know her enough to say I am proud of her, and humbled by her healing. I am happy for her...

I want to have that kind of healing as well.


Last night...after hearing this on the news....I couldn't sleep. Again...same as when she was taken, ...and when she came home... and when each and every detail was exposed....I couldn't sleep.

I heard noises in my house. When my kids were littler...and all this terror happened, ...I put them all to bed in my room. For nine months they slept in our room...on our floor, in our bed. Beds and blankets and safety...all confined to the space that I could control. And then I could sleep....

Last night. I didn't sleep. I heard noises....In my lingering between sleep and consciousness I had TERROR. I thought I heard someone...not Mitchel. But HIM.....my nightmare...in our home.

he was there...he was in my daughters room...he was walking my halls. his breath was on my neck.

It was as real as my sitting here typing these things. I felt his beard on my neck as he told me again, like so many times when I was a child....I will kill you. I will kill your children, I will rape your daughter, and you will woe the day you EVER told anyone about us. You are mine. YOU WILL ALWAYS be MINE.

I must have been asleep because I couldn't make him stop. He was doing what he wanted to do...what he always threatened he would do.... and I was still helpless, and afraid, and weak. I tried to pinch B...my husband. WHY WASN"T HE WAKING UP....why wasn't he making him stop. WHY couldn't he hear her screaming????????

I was paralyzed as I laid there....and I kept feeling him.....his breath on my neck...his cold terrorizing words silencing my screams. I came conscious and the TEARS had soaked my pillow, again.....

I tried to wake B....I couldn't speak...my heart was pounding, and I laid there. For three hours I laid awake in my bed...Silenced, paralyzed by my fear.... My subconscious knew that it wasn't real...but I could hear him...I could hear her....and I laid there and let him. I couldn't move.

Finally my cat made enough noise that my husband woke up. He let the cat out, shut off the dishwasher and came back to our room. The only thing I could say was please hold me.
Finally I could breathe and speak....AND SLEEP.


When I awakened finally this morning, after two LONG hours of sleep I said ....I had a terrible nightmare.... B's response to me....Yeah...I had a pretty bad dream too.

A PRETTY BAD DREAM... what would it be like to have a pretty bad dream???

I suppose that is why I am here: In my closet...hiding myself, ...and writing...I needed someone to hear me. It seemed so trivial that I had these feelings today. We all have nightmares...fears...terrors.

We awaken from them and go about our day.

Or at least that is what most people can do.

I wish I could go about mine...I wish I had the forgiveness and peace and healing....Oh, Dear Elizabeth....I do hope that you are really healed...I hope that someday, when you have a daughter, and a husband...you don't have to fear the things that you experienced...I do hope that you can really be free of your terror, and not have to relive those feelings...I hope you never awaken to feel the breath of your nightmare on your neck....silenced in pain, anguished and paralyzed...I wish no one ever has to feel what I cant run away from....only hiding...like me...here in my closet.

Wishing for healing, praying for peace...

I almost feel I am approaching my Mile 191 again...God give me the strength to pull ahead...and not stop on the shoulder of my highway.

Help me to keep moving forward...for all I want is rest, all I want is for this nightmare to end...and somehow, somedays...I think that it is not worth the fight.

I don't want night to come...for with night... darkness, is terror.
I can't do that again tonight...please....