Sizzling at Seventy: Victim to Victorious

by Lyn Trail

Overview

For Lyn Traill, childhood was scarred by violence and abuse ranging from the emotional to the physical. But through it all, a shimmering flicker of hope stubbornly refused to be extinguished. Now she shares her story, told with honesty, pathos, and humor.

Lyn’s resilience in the face of abuse illustrates how life can change dramatically when we are open to becoming better observers. Her journey travels down some dark pathways before revealing a remarkable transformation. Here, she shares the strategies that have taken her from victim to victorious.

A major turning point in her life appeared when she discovered ontology, the study of being—what it means to be human. Ontology focuses on the dynamic interrelationship among three areas of human existence: the language we use, which creates our reality; the emotions we live in, as our moods and emotions have a direct bearing on our actions; and the effects of both on our bodies. The role of the body in sustainable change has been greatly underrated.

Are you seeking a way to untangle and improve your life? By clearing away the dead embers of old flames, you can ignite the sizzle you may have thought had disappeared. Lyn’s victory is proof that it is never too late to start sizzling!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452505831
Publisher:	Balboa Press AU
Publication date:	06/28/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	196
File size:	410 KB

About the Author

Lyn Traill is a successful author of children’s educational material, and an executive coach, trainer, and public speaker. A mother of three and grandmother of four, she and her blues musician husband live on the Gold Coast of Australia. Sizzling at Seventy is her first book for adults.

www.traillblaze.com

Read an Excerpt

SIZZLING at SEVENTY

Victim to Victorious

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By Lyn Traill

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2012 Lyn Traill
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-0582-4

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Chapter One

LIVING IN A SOUP OF NEGATIVITY

From an early age I observed that my family and others around me all had what I term as a forehead furrow, a deep forehead frown inflicted by a disturbed life and World War II's collective despair. I remember distinctly one day, out of the gloom, an angel arrived at our house. The angel was Marcia, a cousin of my mother. I was transfixed by her face. There it was-the exquisite smoothness of an unfurrowed brow, a pristine canvas, untouched by the heaviness of existence. I couldn't peel my eyes away. This was a phenomenon, something new and wondrous for me. It gave me hope. Having been forever surrounded by adults whose brows were deeply etched with the crevasse of grief and pain, heavily engraved on their troubled foreheads, the appearance of this magical being became imprinted on my mind. I vowed that I would never allow my forehead to become so disfigured. Has this vow embedded itself in my subconscious, guided me to a half full attitude to life and enabled me to eventually sizzle? I cannot answer that. It was only as my life unfolded that I began to understand the stories behind those deep furrows-the story hidden behind the lace curtains of suburban Melbourne. It was the darkness of the Ruby and Tom story.

It was a different world, in 1941 when many faced an impoverished existence that promoted a feeling of powerlessness and fear. My family became locked in a cycle of disempowerment and I'm sure frustration was a common emotion. My parents, Tom and Ruby, had met as missionaries, promoting their brand of salvation on street corners in the city slums. Religion had given comfort to Ruby as, emerging from a fractured childhood, she struggled to find her place in this world. Tom had an initial dilemma when he could not make up his mind whether he loved my mother or her sister, Alice! I believe that his choice was made for him when Alice made it plain that having successfully dragged herself out of her tawdry background she was after a bigger fish. She no longer intended to live in poverty and her quest was later rewarded when she married a fine man of genteel background with more than adequate means. Sadly, whilst Alice managed to change her story and become a successful career woman, my mother remained trapped in the narrative of not being good enough. Her life and intellect were constantly dampened by her feelings of inadequacy and she never did reach the potential that her intellect may have provided.

Nature played a cruel trick on my mother by providing her with a distinctively large nose. It preceded her wherever she went. I am sure it seemed more prominent because of her severe demeanor. I remember an incident when my mother was chairing a meeting at church. My friend and I were reluctant spectators as a group of women were being subjected to my mother's confrontational manner in trying to put her point across. There was tension in the air and my friend was nervously playing with an elastic band. Suddenly the elastic band sprang free, soared through the air and landed on the end of my mother's nose. There was absolute silence as for a brief moment it dangled there. In other circumstances this would have provided the group with much amusement but we had to stifle our giggles as my mother was far from amused.

She was stocky in appearance and her rather short legs ended in thick ankles which were always encased in unflattering shoes. In hindsight I can now appreciate her positive attributes. She had large brown eyes that could have been immensely attractive had they danced with humour and happiness. Her dark wavy hair could have framed her face beautifully and possibly lessened the effect of her nose, however it was often shrouded in hats that did nothing to enhance her looks.

It was only after she passed away at the age of fifty three, that I learned of her early life, which she was at pains to keep secret from us. Her mother had committed the unpardonable sin of becoming pregnant, at the age of fifteen, by the local Methodist minister's son. Her punishment was to be banished to a solitary room for the remainder of her pregnancy and denied any human contact, apart from the silent delivery of food, and whatever was necessary for her ablutions. This was to make amends for her unpardonable sin. It appears that during that time, in place of the pious, repentant person it was envisioned she should become, she developed an unrelenting bitterness and spite. A visit to see our grandmother as children was deemed as a punishment and, on reflection, she seemed to revel in turning members of her family against each other.

At fourteen my mother, who lived in the rural Victorian town of Rutherglen, was sent by train to Melbourne to find a job. Through a relative she was successful in finding domestic work at a doctor's residence. I found this out after her death and only then was I able to comprehend how someone from her background could be so particular about our manners and deportment. We were taught correct table manners from an early age and our speech and clothing were always an ongoing project.

As for my father's early life, there really wasn't much to tell! I loved my father with unreasonable passion, I thought he was the most handsome, wonderful man in the whole world, but that passion was not returned and he became a stranger to me in my later life. I don't think I ever knew him. I do know that his mother was warm and loving. His father was a talented carpenter and a more remote figure who mourned the loss of his wife when she died in her early fifties. Although he lived until he was ninety, he never married again.

In many ways, my father's childhood was quite opposite to that of my mother. The results of their unlikely coupling produced three daughters. My older sister appeared on the scene rather quickly and unexpectedly, but was happily welcomed into the family. After my birth four years later, everything had changed. I believe my mother suffered a mental breakdown from which she never really recovered.

My mother's childhood had perhaps not provided her with the resilience she needed to cope with some significant family issues. My father could not provide her with the emotional stability she craved and as her moods became more difficult, he retreated more into his work life and became a phantom figure in our lives.

My mother had four sisters. After Ruby came Alice. I remember her having the most beautiful hair and a strong, interfering personality. Then there was Eunice, more timid and often abused. I remember seeing her father kicking her all the way along his front path. Dorothy came next and will always be remembered for her premature death. Lastly there was Alma, belligerent, self righteous and the most pugnacious of all. Each of them had emerged from her childhood with different degrees of damage. I remember them mostly as difficult and argumentative creatures, except for Dorothy who appeared to be cut from a different cloth. My older sister, Brenda and I have early memories of her as a warm and bubbly woman who sang to us as she swished us up and down in our bath. Maybe our memory has been coloured by the subsequent tragic events. Dorothy became a nurse and devoted herself to nursing terminally ill patients. The stress of doing this played havoc on her fragile mental resilience. To complicate matters even more, it appears she fell in love with a man who neglected to reveal his marital status. He was what was known, with due deference, as the railway Station Master. As her mental health deteriorated, my father would find her sitting at various railway stations. Eventually she totally collapsed and spent her remaining few years in a psychiatric facility. It was as if she had lost all will to survive. She died of a broken heart in a padded cubicle fitted out to protect those that were labelled insane.

I was quite young when she died and it seemed as if a piece of my mother died with her. I remember hearing her read a poem that Dorothy had written prior to her death. It hung in my memory and I tried for years to obtain a copy of it. Just preceding my father's passing many years later, he took out a round cake tin which contained some papers belonging to Dorothy. One can only guess at the reason for his reluctance to share the contents of this ordinary looking cake tin, but at last he allowed me to read the poem that I had sought for so long. I had built up such expectations of these words over the years that actually reading the poem again was slightly disappointing, however it did give me some insight into the trauma that inhabited my lovely aunt's fragile mind. The poem began like this:

    I hung my heart on a black thorn tree
    For I was young and gay
    I feared that love would follow me
    And my poor heart betray
    But who can guess what the end will be?
    Love played me a bitter jest-
    I dance though my tears fall salt as the sea-
    I sing with a thorn in my breast!

As part of the perpetuating story, my mother's youngest sister, Alma, became pregnant and hastily married a young man, Brian, who was barely nineteen. My father arranged for a bungalow to be built in our backyard to house the young couple and the baby boy that was born soon after. It was not a happy situation and only provoked more tension in an already strained environment.

Brian was a charming conniver who used manipulative measures to gain his own advantage. I believe my mother fell under his charms, and whilst I don't think for a minute that she let her rigid guard down enough to act out her fantasies, initially she was certainly seduced. He had brushes with the law because of dishonest dealings, the details of which are still not known to me. Initially, my mother would rescue him, but one night he and my aunt disappeared from our home in mysterious circumstances. I woke up one morning and they were gone. Brian has long disappeared out of our lives, but his legacy lives on. Unfortunately Alma remained and her presence was often the focus of friction between the sisters.

So my early childhood memories are fashioned around family feuds of immense proportions. Not only were there ongoing battles between my parents, it was not uncommon for my mother and her siblings to vent their rage upon each other. One such feud, viewed by us as small children, resulted in my mother breaking a mirror over Alice's head. I'm still baffled that they persisted in seeing each other when I do not remember any positive outcome. As soon as one of my mother's siblings appeared at the door, I would immediately feel sick in the stomach, being fairly sure of how the day would pan out.

As a little girl, surrounded by fraught relationships, I escaped into my own world of fantasy. Our home was dark and modest. As I mentally trace through each room, I cannot recall any place where I found comfort, apart from the roof. I remember the small dark rooms typical of that era, wall papered in a dull beige colour which led up to picture railings from which hung dull prints of various mottled landscapes. One picture became an obsession with me. It hung above a dark stained piano which was used occasionally by my father to play hymns on Sunday evenings. The picture depicted an old ship floundering against a jagged cliff face. The menacing storm clouds appeared as a metaphor for the lives that were living within the confines of our unappealing house. The kitchen, with its old combustion stove, always appeared dark and the large wooden table, painted green, took up most of the room. This table became the subject of many sinister nightmares for most of my life until recent years.

We did have a basic playhouse in the backyard donated by our clever paternal grandfather. It was made of fibro-cement with a gabled tin roof. He had gone to a lot of trouble in putting in a window with a border of stained glass which I thought was magic. It was just a little square building but in my imagination it became a fairy palace, a castle dungeon, a log cabin in the woods or an igloo in the snow. Along with the roof of our house, it became a refuge for me to act out characters and situations that I read about in books.

Sometimes these fantasies would escape into my real world. At school I would tell anyone who would listen, that I lived with foster parents. I would say that my real parents were beautiful and rich and would one day come for me and take me to live in a splendid house by the sea. So real was this story to me, I could visualise it in detail.

I also learnt at an early age to play the glad game. I am thankful that my mother responded to my early passion for reading by buying second hand copies of current books. This was mainly to keep me out of the way and it certainly worked. As books arrived I would shut myself in the playhouse and hungrily devour my latest book. If I could smuggle a torch into my bed, I would read under the covers. One of my early reading memories was being given the book, Pollyanna, which by today's standards could be viewed as a little sycophantic, but at that moment I became Pollyanna, who, as an orphan, had come to live with her crabby aunt. I empathised with Pollyanna in all of her bitter childhood experiences. Her father had taught her to play the glad game which consisted of finding something to be glad about in every situation. Much to my older sister's disgust, I decided I would apply the principle to my life and, as was my practice, managed to go totally overboard with my forced gladness which drove my sister crazy! Maybe I have been fortunate to have a more naturally optimistic nature as my sister still tends to see the glass as half empty.

I recently read a book called The Amnesiac by Sam Taylor, about a man who has a three year memory loss of his life. Taylor references a man called Tomas Ryal who was famous for his controversial repudiation of the existence of memory. I found the book fascinating and it also prompted me to reflect on the four years of my life that went completely missing. I remember vividly my first year of school when I was the teacher's pet. Her name was Miss White and I treasure her memory. The next four years, from when I was six years old to ten, were a complete blank. However, since I have come to terms with the sinister reason for this block of amnesia, fragments of those years occasionally come floating back.

I often felt completely alone and desperately wanted a pet. My father was adamant that there would be no pets, so I tried to capture a pet for myself. I would pick up animals on my way home from school, mainly cats. I assured my parents they were strays that didn't have homes. Sadly this wasn't true and my parents would return my captured pet to its rightful owner. I then thought I would change my tactics by smuggling a cat into our playhouse. I seemed to be the only one that occupied it so I concluded it would be safe to harbour my pet there and feed it scraps of food each day. Unfortunately the cat that I chose as my first captive was more stubborn than I was. It did not like its enforced imprisonment and managed to jump straight through the glass window of its prison. I was devastated and I'm sure that the cat didn't particularly enjoy its adventure! My parents got the message that a pet may be necessary to keep me from my relentless preying on other people's animals.

A rare moment of happy surprise occurred one day when my mother called me inside. She was holding a large box which had circular holes all around the top of each side. As I peered into one of the holes, a wet tongue licked my eye and I thought I would burst with joy. I had my very own puppy, a little Australian terrier, which we called Monty. Monty became a big focus in my life and he rewarded me with lots of licks. Sadly he was only in my life for a few years as he was run over by a taxi that had come to pick up my mother's sister. She had left in a hurry after yet another family squabble. Possibly I was unfair in my blame but I resented her bitterly for causing my dog's death.

At this stage of my childhood we lived in suburban Melbourne. In subsequent chapters I paint some bleak scenarios of aspects of my childhood. In later years I have learned to glean the positive aspects of my upbringing which provided a pathway to my subsequent success in life, but my early years do not yield many happy memories.

I have mentioned my mother's insistence on manners, speech and deportment. To be fair, I presented more of a challenge for her in this department. My sisters were fairly compliant but I seemed to have been born to climb trees, and build cubby houses, so my clothes were constantly torn and dirty. I begged to be allowed to wear trousers, but in that era it was considered unladylike. We were made to wear aprons over our dresses, a practice which did not sit well with me. There was a moment when the dreaded aprons came in handy when one day I wanted desperately to play outside with my friends across the road. I was rarely included in their games so I was keen to make the most of the moment. I sometimes wonder if my mother had something against me enjoying myself and in this rant she said I had no clean clothes left and must stay inside. Never one to be daunted, I grabbed two aprons and put one on the front and one on the back, effectively inventing a makeshift dress. Unfortunately, my mother did not appreciate my new creation. I was caught sneaking out and received a heavy beating.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from SIZZLING at SEVENTY by Lyn Traill Copyright © 2012 by Lyn Traill. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Prologue....................xi
1. Living in a soup of negativity....................1
2. A mother's legacy....................12
3. ... and from a father....................21
4. Jumping into adolescence....................28
5. From the frying pan....................39
6. Experiencing motherhood....................48
7. Looking for answers....................56
8. Ying and yang....................63
9. A body under siege....................70
10. The accident....................77
11. Running away?....................86
12. No looking back....................96
13. Coping with single life....................106
14. Getting hitched....................112
15. Stepping into power-almost....................123
16. Unforgettable adventures....................134
17. The green table....................141
18. Finding nirvana....................151
19. This sizzling life....................163
Appendix....................167