Turning My Pain Into a Force for Good

I was the only brown-skinned girl in my class as a child.  I was the product of an interracial marriage when such couples were prohibited by law from marrying in 16 states in the U.S.  Then my parents divorced, which was cause for excommunication by the Catholic Church in those days.  My brother and I attended Catholic parochial school and our father dropped us off at Sunday mass each week, where we sat among the large Catholic families and felt other-than.  I felt like a freak.

            When I became a teenager, I discovered the social salve of alcohol.  It made me forget my feelings of inferiority.  But it also led me down a different dark path.  I was raped during an alcohol-infused black out, while another boy watched.  I did not tell anyone for decades.  It was not the first time I had been violated sexually.  Someone close to our family fondled my genitals.  I had no idea what he was doing at the time.  I was only seven years old.  Years later, when I understood what it was that he had done, I felt dirty.  I felt like I had done something wrong, which was compounded by the fact that I told no one.  I did not really have anyone to tell.

            I carried these “rocks” around for years.  I was full of self-loathing.  Eventually, I drank my way out of a 25 year marriage.  It took divorce, becoming sober from alcoholism, my children leaving for college, and my living alone for the first time, for me to face my demons and heal. 

            Initially, I felt rudderless and had to change almost everything about my life.  I had just turned 50 years old.  I decided to try 50 new things to determine how I wanted to live the next chapter of my life.  The things I tried included adventure travel, social activities, spiritual endeavors, lifestyle changes, learning and teaching, thrill-seeking ventures and physical challenges.

            The first thing I did was sell most of my belongings.  I put the rest in storage, then traveled to the other side of the world.  I volunteered in the poorest region of Nepal, high in the Himalayas.  The village where I lived and worked had no electricity or running water.  The floors of their homes and the school were dirt.  They had no chairs in their homes.  We had to trudge in the snow to use the outhouses.  We sat on the floor.  Almost everything the villagers needed in that desolate area had to be physically hauled up the mountain, as the road ended miles below the village.  I brought supplies, volunteered in a school and helped to raise funds to build a children’s library.  The people had so little, in the material sense, but they were the happiest I had ever encountered.  It set me on a course to adopt my own brand of minimalism.

            My time in Nepal was an exercise in cultivating gratitude.  I learned to focus on all that I have instead of all that I had lost because of my alcoholism and self-hatred.  I began to celebrate all of my blessings, from the prosaic to the profound.  I am grateful that I can walk.  I can see, taste, feel.  I have access to clean water.  I have people in my life that I love and who love me.  I focus on the joy in life, thereby magnifying it.  I infuse my life with positivity.

            I also learned to live with intention.  Many of us are more careful about how we spend our money than with how we spend our time.  Yet time is the one thing we cannot buy or create.  We never know which day may be our last.  So I spend time with people who lift me up and feed my spirit.  I practice the pause before taking on new obligations.  I ask myself if what I am being asked to do is something I would do more to please someone else or if it truly is something I want to do.  Is it bringing me closer to who I want to be?  Will it unnecessarily deplete me and keep me from having time to spend on my passions?  If the answers are no, I respond by saying that I have another commitment.  And that commitment is to me.  I need not explain that to others.

            I finally allowed some trusted women to bear witness to my pain.  I spoke out about my sexual assault.  One in four women will be sexually assaulted during her lifetime in my country.  Yet so few of us speak about it.  I spoke at the National March to End Rape Culture in Washington, D.C.  I told my story on a national stage.  After I spoke, a gaggle of young women approached me.  They asked, “How could you talk about it?  I haven’t told anyone!”  They said I helped them find the courage to talk about what happened to them.  We need not remain victims.  We not only survive trauma; we learn how to thrive.

            My goal in life is to make the world better because I was here.  Sometimes that is simply to pick up garbage that I see on the street.  Sometimes it means calling someone who is suffering.  Other times it is organizing an event to raise awareness or funding for compelling causes.  Every day that I help to lessen the pain of another person or do something that brings joy and light to the world, I know I have succeeded. 

For more information, see www.MariaLeonardOlsen.com, or follow me on social media at @fiftyafter50.