The Resilient Mind of a Child: Finding Outlets to Overcome Abuse - Written By: Lisa Zarcone
My name is Lisa Zarcone and I am an adult survivor of child abuse. My story is a very complex story, but one that many people will connect too.
At the young tender age of 6 years old, I lost my older brother to Leukemia. He was 9 years old, my best friend, and my hero. Imagine being six and loosing an important person in your life. Now take it a step further. After his passing I was not able to go to the wake or funeral, never gaining closure. He was there one day and gone the next, no further explanation.
Now add in a mother who struggled tremendously with mental illness, a distraught father who lost both his son and wife on the same day, and a vulnerable little girl lost in the shuffle. This was a very confusing and dark time in my life, and as time progressed it became much darker.
Fast forward a few years later and the dynamics in my home became horrific. My mother was quite frequently off of her medications, riding the mental roller coaster of ups, downs, and sideways bringing me along for the damaging ride. I had an absent father always working and staying out of the home as much as possible because he could not handle all of the pain, eventually leaving. When he left, I was not included in that equation.
As my mother continued to drop into a deep depression, and then flying high on her uncontrollable mania that raged inside of her, we both sailed on uncharted waters. Her poor decision-making brought many different types of people into our home, from homeless people, hitch hikers, and people who struggled with mental illness like herself.
I was preyed upon like a piece of meat! You could say I was ripe for the picking on a vine of disaster. I was a young girl already damaged by loss, abandonment, mental, emotional, and physical abuse (at the hands of my own mother), and I was lost. I lived in a silent world of hell, not knowing which way to turn next…….
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