I’d always loved the story of Thumbelina as a child. It was one of the only fantasy stories I took too. I’d seen a cartoon one time about the tiny girl who grew from a flower. I learned her name, memorizing it, loving it, and identifying with it. You see, I was three years old when I began my journey of abuse. I was 10 years old when I saw the talk at school about boys and girls. I had somewhat understood that when people live together, babies were born. While I didn’t understand the whole “birds and bees” concept completely, I knew enough to know that my abuse would lead to a baby. It didn’t help that my mother went around telling people I was pregnant because I wasn’t menstruating at the normal age; hence, I began to believe there was a baby growing inside who would be born “someday” that belonged to my wicked step-father. When that baby would be born, I never knew but her name would be Thumbelina.
Fast forward to 1997 and 30 years old, after I’d married, after I’d actually had a child, after that spouse had left me, and after I began to heal, even a little, from the life I’d had since birth. I was talking to a friend one day, telling her my deepest thoughts and this deepest secret, a secret no one ever knew before – that I was carrying a little one whose name was Thumbelina, my step-father’s baby. She said to me, “Sherry, you know that is impossible…right?” I looked at her, being the nurse she was, with a blank questioning expression full of vulnerability, wonderment, and anxiousness and shook my head slowly as I said, “No, I didn’t know that.” She hated being the one to tell me, to tell us, that it was impossible.
I’d already had a child so if a child was living inside, that child would have been born. I looked at her with dismay and disbelief as I grappled with what she was telling me. I couldn’t believe it; yet at the same time, I was relieved too. It was a mixed bag and a mixed bag of emotions. All that time, almost 20 years of believing something that was not true because of what I had learned and what my mother had told everyone.
As I heal emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, educationally, and socially, all the pieces and parts of me and all the personalities inside, heal with me. The name of this blog, “Thumbelina Thinks” is the story of our healing, our journey toward wholeness. It is a journey of hardship growing into a beautiful flower, experiencing freedom from the bondages a little girl was in, not only as a child but as an adult. Learning to think and do it conceptually and critically, basking in the world of words and learning without having to merely just survive, is an exciting adventure for a woman who is in her 40’s. Won’t you come with me as we fly away toward that freedom?
thumbelina thinks 