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Introduction
My Self-Injury Background
My Healing
Month by Month
If you are self-injuring, just finished, or are going to

I am not a therapist, nor a researcher, nor am I any sort of doctor - I can't tell you what is wrong with you, nor can I magickally remove it (though if I could I would).
What I am is......
a self-injurer and a writer. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a survivor. I am not a victim of anything! I was a member of the Bodies Under Seige mailing list for more than a year (see the secret shame website for more info on BUS).
I mention the BUS list because that's where these pages first appeared. You may find these pages in whole or part on other websites (if you find any on a site that I am not linked to, or where I am not given credit, please notify that webpage owner and kindly request they credit me in some way. Let me assure you that I wrote these all by myself.
They first appeared on the BUS list about July of 1996 as "Coping Methods". I wrote them to help me sort out things in my own mind - to help myself to heal. I hoped they would help someone else, and so I posted them to the list. The response I got was overwhelming....Alot of people asked for more, so a few months later I wrote the section for friends and family members....And that's how these pages began.

So - keeping in mind I'm not any sort of doctor - have a look around and I hope that there is something here to further your understanding, or to help your healing process. I used to welcome feedback, but recently have had my eMail box of SIX years overthrown by spammers whose trolling engines are pulling it from these pages. I am sorry to say that I have had to remove my address and instant messenger info from all of these pages.

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May Contain Triggering Material for Self-Injurers

Some Background

Well, there you have it. I tore down this section.
Before you dismay, please know that I have taken it down because I am now listed in a few search engines and relatives have been stumbling onto this site. While most of my family knows about my self-injury my husband's family is not too familiar with it yet. I haven't really made any attempts at hiding these pages, as this is part of my life and therefore a part of my family's.

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My Healing

I can't call it my recovery, really. Self-injury really isn't something that we recover from. It's something that we'll be dealing with forever. It's more of an ongoing healing process instead.

My cutting finally got out of hand (though maybe it never was "in hand"). Three times in two months I cut until I blacked out. I was cutting so deep on the first cut that it would actually tear at either end, and I was self-injuring two or three times every day. It was more than I could handle and it was more than my family could handle.
I had been a member of the BUS list for several months, but I was too afraid to even be myself there (or anywhere else, for that matter). Believing no one could like me and that everyone would always hurt me I hid behind other identities in an attempt to find love, acceptance, and friendship. And one day I woke up and realized none of my friends were really my friends. They didn't know me. They knew who I was pretending to be - they didn't know me.
That realization is what made the self-injury get so much worse in such a short time. I told everyone the truth then and "came out" about my own self-injury. I lost some good friends, but I felt that I deserved that. I hurt them after all, and I felt I deserved to be punished. And some of them (most of them) stayed. They got to know the real me and they have since become my friends.

It took me years to get up the courage to call a counselor. Once I did manage to call (with the support of the mailing list) it was harder than I ever thought it would be to tell this stranger on the telephone that I was a self-injurer. We set up an appointment for the next week, and she left me with instructions for what to do in an emergency. I was in counselling with her for about a year, and though it often seemed I was not progressing I can see that it isn't always as hard as it once was.

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Month by Month

UPDATE: It is October of 2002. In the past two years I have cut only ONE time, and then it was small scratches....After all these YEARS I am proud of myself, and often I AMAZED< because I can still remember a time when I believed I could not go three days without cutting, and here I am, whole, well, growing, and (as always) slowly learning how to love myself. i would never have come this far without the support I found on the Net. I often I think about Deb and everyone from the BUS list. I sit and go through the "NOT shower" cards they sent when I was pregnant with my second baby (he's now turning FIVE!). I wonder how they all are and where they all are (friends, my eMail has not changed in all these years! Please drop me a line if you ever come by!) I miss them........And I THANK THEM.

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