Eye of the Tiger

Oh goodness. Honestly I'm not even really sure where to start with this one. Today I’ll be sharing a story that very few people know even a little about and zero people know to the depths that I’ll go today.

It’s taken me a long time to share this story for a few reasons: one, it involves other people and I didn’t want to sound slanderous or share their personal bits as I greatly value privacy, two, it’s taken a long time in different ways for me to process it, three, I wasn’t sure it was a story I could put into words that would make sense, four, I didn’t feel like I had a platform to share this story safely. Now I feel I am better able to share my story, accepting that talking about the people involved is a part of my story and that I can talk about them respectfully and without giving details about their business. I’ve had a couple years now to work through some of the things that have taken a bit more time to develop. I feel like now I can put all the pieces of the picture together in a way that is tangible for myself and those reading along to understand better. I now have a platform that I feel is safe for me to share these intimate things because it’s women only, and only women who I believe to be kindred spirits. That being said, this is a delicate topic so bear with me and keep kindness and compassion as your heart posture. I want to share this story and have wanted to for a long time. Now that I feel I have a safe place to do so I believe this story has such power and I am thankful that it has lead me to being a higher version of myself. This is the story my tiger tattoo tells.

(all photos from the month I got the tat! TB to my black hair days! mood!)

TRIGGER WARNING: I will say that this post is definitely a trigger warning for those of us with abusive family history, a history of sexual abuse of any kind and or PTSD from these things or from firearm related trauma. So if you are reading this and you have history with one or more of those things, this is your warning. Check in with yourself before continuing. If you know you will be triggered in an unhealthy way, it may be best to skip this post for now and maybe revisit it when you’re in a healthier state and able to read at a healthy distance.

This story is still a bit overwhelming for me to think about, and at times I still feel the sense of, “Is this really happening? Is this even real?” Even though it happened (past tense) sometimes thinking about it takes me back and It’s like I’m there all over again. For the sake of all of this making sense to the person who may not know me all that well or who is reading this and learning of it for the first time, I’ll start at the beginning.

When I was about 7 years old my birth mom was put in jail and I was taken by the government. My birth dad had since been deported to Mexico and could be of no assistance to me. In fact he knew nothing about my situation. When I was 8 my mom was sentenced to 5 years in prison meaning that I wouldn’t leave foster care anytime soon as I had no family members who were able to care for me properly. I was one of 5 siblings who were taken by the government and put into some kind of home. I stayed in foster care for about four years with a bitter Colombian woman in her fifties. When I was around ten years old I was put up for adoption and I met my, now, parents. I moved a four hour drive away from all my family and everything I ever knew and started a new life with my parents. In April the following year we officially “adopted each other” as my mom likes to put it. ️ They taught me what true parental love and a safe home looks like. They gave me permission to be a kid again, they shared Jesus with me through how they lived their lives and they showed me what it was to truly love and be loved.

Fast forward to May 2017. I went on a mission trip with a small group of people from my church to Iquitos Peru for 15 days. It was there God showed me my calling for teaching English abroad. I came home from that trip wanting to do it all again and then some! I knew I wanted to go out into the world and teach English somewhere it would be valued and appreciated! But, I didn’t have the knowledge, the resources, or even really the support for such an outlandish idea so it was on the back burner for a while but always on my mind. Since I knew someday in the near-ish future I would be moving abroad, for probably a very long time, I decided that I wanted to be a more active part of my birth family’s lives. Though I had an open adoption and my parents were very understanding and accommodating when it came to maintaining a relationship with them, I was still far away and I missed so much! So I decided to move to the Portland area and be with them for however long it would be before I went off into the world on my own.

In December of 2017 I had been living with my oldest birth sister and her family for about four months. It was an extremely rocky four months both because it was my first time away from what had been my home and who had been my chosen family for the last 11 years, and because, as much as I loved my sister and she loved me, we both realized we’d lived completely different lives up to this point and we didn’t really know let alone understand each other. We both made some mistakes neither of us were proud of but we tried to make it work because we’re family, “and that’s what families do” right? Wrong.

The first day of December my sister, her four kids and I, boarded a plane to Mexico that we all had soooo been looking forward to! It was such an exciting adventure! I would be living in Mexico with my sisters fam and we would all be staying with my brother in laws sister. The month of December passed quickly and was full of fun, food, culture, adventure, and of course — difficulty. My sister and I were and are very different people with different sets of morals, values, and beliefs and as you may have guessed, that caused some problems. She had a certain set of expectations of me that I never had any hope of living up to. I had failed before I even knew I was failing. And basically most of the time I was sentenced to staying in the house and watching the kids.

I got along much better with my brother in law because he was a lot more easy going and actually accepted me as I am and cared for me. I considered him a friend and I was grateful to him for that. He felt like an older brother to me which was such a surprise! There was a time we did not get along and I was so thankful that since I had been living with them, him and I had found some common ground when I never thought we would. I was honestly just so relieved that I had a good relationship with him because that was something I had worried about and prayed about when I was making the decision to live with them.

My sister, unbeknownst to me, did not like the friendship between her husband and I. As time passed something began to brew and rot and bubble inside of her. Something I never saw coming.

I am a picture person but she is not. So, I would generally ask my brother in law to take pictures: with me, of me and my nieces and nephew, of my sister and I -- I would take pictures of him and his fam and so on. We were each others photographer essentially and it was fun and silly. We were at a beach resort at the beginning of January and I had just had the most beautiful day on a tropical Mexican beach, checking that off my bucket list in a big way! I was so full of joy and gratitude to be in such a beautiful place with people I loved! The first night we had dinner and my middle niece had fallen asleep in my arms and I asked my brother in law to take a picture of us. It became the picture that ruined everything and left me broken, something I had no way of knowing at the time.

My brother in law took the picture and then my sister became infuriated. She yanked my niece out of my arms with such force that she woke up and cried in pain. I sat there shocked and honestly soooo confused and then my brother in law said, “you just ruined my marriage”. What the fuck?? I literally sat there with my mouth open not understanding anything even in the slightest! What was even happening?

My sister had stormed off and my brother in law after her, I woke up my other niece and grabbed all our things from the table (that they had left without) and held my nieces hand as my heart was ponding and I followed them. By the time I caught up, my brother in law had gone into the men’s room and my sister stood outside. I came up beside her and all hell broke loose. She accused me of trying to steal her husband, of being inappropriately friendly and even flirtatious with him. She exploded with a million different things that she’s been holding inside her, clearly, for some time. I stood next to her holding my nieces hand and all our things in my other arm — unable to speak, unable to even process what was being said and what was happening! I later learned that she had told her husband of her feelings and told him not to be so friendly with me and not to take pictures of me or with me because she had become extremely jealous of our comradery. Hence the whole “you ruined my marriage” comment from earlier. Keep in mind I was secluded and completely alone without phone service or wifi for several days while I remain subject to blame for the problems in a relationship that really had nothing to do with me at all. She asked me to stay away from her family so they could have a good time. Where was I supposed to go? The ocean became my escape, it was the only place I was welcome. And for the next few days, I stayed in the water from morning to night.

Fast forward 5 excruciating days and we are back in my brother in laws hometown in Michoacán Mexico. I finally have wifi again to reach out to my support system. I couldn’t call anyone for fear of being overheard and misinterpreted. I felt such guilt and shame even though I knew the things she was accusing me of weren’t true and that I never meant for any of this to happen let alone planned it the way she accused me of. My birth family are master manipulators. A fact I learned the hard way finally as an adult. I questioned myself, my actions, my character, my intuition, my intentions, what I was doing with my life, if I had a future apart from such pain, and even though I knew in my heart of hearts that I was not what she was accusing me of being, I still felt guilty because I gave her the power to let her change how I saw myself (but only for a short time cuz I snapped outta that shit real quick like!). I apologized to her profusely explaining how I never meant for any of this and I avoided my brother in law like the plague out of respect for her. (Not an easy task seeing as how we were all living under the same roof and in Mexico no less!)

I recounted the events of the last week to my dad over WhatsApp and explained why I couldn’t call. My parents, of course, were extremely gentle, loving, and understanding. Yet again, showing me true love. They were also outraged at the accusations against me as anyone who truly knew me would be! I told them it was time for me to come home and they agreed and accepted me with open arms. I told my sister that I had spoken to my parents and that when we returned to the states I would be moving back to Grants Pass. She told me that that was not what she wanted though I suspect deep down she knows it secretly was. There’s no other outcome a person could possible expect with something like this that ends with me staying with them. She knew it would happen this way and made certain that it did. I explained to her that I am not going to be accused of being a home-wrecker, especially not by my own flesh and blood! That clearly, the trust I though we mutually shared was not mutual at all and that I didn’t see a healthy option for all of us living under the same roof when clearly she had such a low view of me, her husband, herself, and her relationships really. I respected her, her family, and her relationship enough to leave. if I hadn't we would all be constantly walking on eggshells and that was not the life I wanted to live and it’s certainly not what I imagined when I decided to move in with her.

Fast forward again, it’s 2 weeks later and our trip is coming to an end. Our flight out of Guadalajara leaves in the early morning hours and it’s about a four hour drive from where we were staying. We loaded up the van with five adults, four kids, and countless suitcases full of souvenirs at around 11 o’clock at night. Mexico doesn’t have a ton of traffic lights in the mountains so they put a lot of speed bumps on the roads to encourage people to slow down and to help avoid accidents. About an hour into our drive, two of my nieces are sleeping and I’ve got my headphones in. We start to slow down as we approach a speed bump and as I’m looking out the window, I see movement and I immediately know something’s not right! My suspicions are confirmed when I look deeper outside and my heart stops. Our van comes to a full stop and I hear yelling. I take out my headphones and my sister looks back at me with so much fear in her eyes that I can’t even take my next breath. Even though I didn’t quite know yet what was happening and what was about to happen I immediately understood the gravity. I put my phone in the side of my bra as my nephew grabbed my arm and told me tearfully that he was afraid and that he didn’t want to die. I held him close and told him it was going to be ok — even though nothing in that moment was anywhere near ok. I held him as I squeezed my nieces hand and looked out the window. It was so dark outside I could only see figures moving in the bushes and big guns attached. The driver door flings open and an angry man covered from head to toe in dark clothing yells and pulls out the family member that is driving the van. He hits him over the head with his gun and pushes him to the ground then proceeds to get into the van and turn the key. The man starts the van back up and takes us to what I assume is where they take all their victims. A secluded place in the mountains just far enough off the main road that it can’t be seen in the dark. We are all just holding each other, holding our breath, and holding onto our prayers.

The drive to the secluded area seems to take forever because when you’re afraid, bone deep, time is excruciatingly slow. Looking back it was most likely about a 5-7 minute driven in complete silence. We come to a stop and the covered man who is clearly the leader gets out of the drivers seat. None of them have flashlights so as not to be seen from the road but with the driver door open the internal lights in the van are on and it feels as though we’re all just sitting ducks. The side door flings open and the leader begins to yell at us telling us all to get out of the van and do as they say. All of us get out of the van shaky legs, and on the brink of tears. One of my nieces is special needs and my sister explains this to the man and begs that we put the children back in the van. Thankfully they agree to allow the children back in the van after they search the seats for anything we may have hidden of valve and after they quickly pat down the kids.

We stand outside on opposite sides of the van : the three kids inside, my sister holding the baby on the left side, my brother in law in the back, his sister at the front, and me on the right. I can’t remember the exact number of men that surrounded us but there were several of them. A few of them came to me looking at my hands and neck for anything of value (aka gold). They took my necklace but luckily nothing else. They demanded we give them all our money and valuables. They kept asking me where my phone was and I them told I didn’t have it. They kept asking and I told them we had just visited the beach and I lost my phone in the ocean. They didn’t like it but they seemed to accept the story since their preliminary frisk didn’t reveal anything. They took my sister in law to the abandoned, half built brick structure near where they had parked our van. I stood there shaking so bad I thought I would fall over, sick to my stomach, trying not to freak the kids out even more by crying hysterically the way I wanted to. I asked the hooded figure nearest to me if I could sit on the edge of the van. He seemed to understand my fear and allowed me to sit, watching me closely.

What seems like an eternity passes as I hear the men yelling at my brother in law at the back of the van. My sister in law is no where to be seen and her husband, as far as we knew, was still on the street they’d taken us from. One of the men comes back with my sister in law and another is told to grab me. He tells me it’s time to walk, so I get up as he walks behind me, automatic riffle at my back. It’s dark, I can’t see, the ground is uneven, and I stumble. Annoyed at me he tells me to walk right and keep going toward the brick building. At the entrance, another man with a giant gun stands there, he moves aside so myself and the man behind me can enter the door less, roofless structure. In the moon light I can see the covered man that drove our van and who was the leader. I have a history of sexual abuse as a child and the moment I am standing in that room all of that trauma resurfaces like a rock in my lungs keeping me from breathing. Except I'm not a child anymore, I'm a freshly 21 year old young woman with a woman’s body, and with that comes the innate fear of being violated. I become more hesitant as I get closer to him and the man behind me shoves me forward with his gun. When I am face to face with the faceless man, he tells the other man to go away. This is when my heart completely just stops beating. Once the man is out the door and the other resumes his position guarding the door way my heart kicks into overdrive and begins to pound so hard I can hear it in my ears and feel it beat in my fingertips as my whole body tingles with fear. Every internal warning bell is going off just screaming at me, “DANGER!” If you’ve been there before, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, I hope you never will.

I stand in front of the man, hysterical on the inside, thinking the worst, only able to see his eyes in the moonlight. He asks me if I have any money, gold, or electronics. I tell him profusely that I have nothing. He asks me again and I continue to tell him I have nothing, knowing full well that my phone was in the armpit of my bra and praying to God he wouldn’t find it. (Luckily it was January so it was cold and I was wearing a jacket.) He became frustrated with me, clearly believing I was lying and he began to frisk me. He started by squeezing my arms roughly and then feeling my belly and back. At this point I am pushing at his hands racked with the fear of being violated. I repeatedly tell him I don’t have anything in a tearful voice full of fear. He pushes my hand away and barks at me to stay still and stop whining. He then starts to feel my bra. I’m both fearful that he’ll find my phone and hurt me for lying to him and also fearful that he will invade my intimate space looking for nothing more but flesh— which he does.

He then reaches under my shirt and bra feeling around for any hidden treasures he can steal and sell later. It soon becomes obvious that there’s nothing there for him to find but he’s not not really looking to find anything. He lingers on my breasts for a while as I struggle to get out from his grip at this point crying profusely and begging him to stop. He lets me go and tell me to shut up. He grabs my hips to keep me in place in front of him and then he begins to undo the bottoms of my pants. Pants I later threw away as soon as I could. I’m not wearing any underwear under my jeans so when he begins to feel around he’s immediately touching skin to skin. Something it was clear he would’ve done regardless of undergarments. I become extremely vocal in my protests as he pulls my pants to my knees and feels first my bare bottom and then my front. I'm crying hysterically, telling him I have nothing and begging him not to touch me that way. Even when it is clear there is nothing there he continues to feel me and I am in full panic mode! Right when I think the worst is about to happen one of them men yells something I couldn’t quite hear over the roar of my own heart beat. The man tells me to shut up, to stop being a whiny bitch, and to pull my pants up and walk. I fumble to do so as quickly as possible, grateful that I speak his language and understand his commands which allows me to avoid further harm. I walk quickly toward the door way where the man who was guarding had been watching us the whole time. I keep my head down, I control my crying and I walk back to the van with a man behind me. For the first time I see my brother in law. His eyes are full of worry, fear, apology. As I had gone into that half constructed building all he could do was watch helplessly knowing what I would be subject to. There wasn’t a single thing he could do to save me from what just happened in there and the sorrow of that fact was there in his eyes. It was a shadow that lingered in his gaze even after this was all said and done.

I get back to the van and immediately sit on the edge afraid I might pass out. They had since yanked off the brand new gold and diamond ring my sister had gotten, taking a chunk of the skin on her finger with it. Luckily they didn’t search her because she pleaded with them about the baby she was holding (my youngest niece). I sat on the edge of the van and closed my eyes, shaky hands on my heart trying to calm myself down again, thanking God that the worst hadn’t happened and praying that they wouldn’t kill us and that it would all be over soon. I kept whispering to myself to keep the faith and keep the eye of the tiger. To be still, and remain as calm as possible. I sat there for a while as the men around us spoke to each other in hushed tones and continued to search our belongings. After a while we were told to get back into the van and the family member who had been taken on the street has been walked to our location and was told to get in the van. We drove slowly and in complete silence back to the road. Once we hit the main road, we were going at lightning speed. As fast as we could safely go, to get as far away as possible from the trauma we had just experienced. Still not fully believing that we had just experienced such a thing.

After a few minutes someone spoke. I was shaking profusely and uncontrollably. Any semblance of calm and control I had previously mustered was gone with the wind. I sobbed in complete silence and shook so powerfully I swear I was shaking the van. My brother in law reached back and held my hand tightly. Any questions they asked me I could only answer with the nod of my head. We went on like this for some time. It was about 30 minutes before my body began to come out of the state of shock and I could speak again. We began to exchange the stories of what had happened to all of us individually as we drove behind a semi truck the rest of the way in hopes that it would protect us. We had to stop a couple times because my brother in law threw up as that was his body’s reaction to the shock.

Our plane landed in the Portland airport in the evening time late January and on the drive home we stopped to get taco bell. As soon as we got back I began to load my car with all my belongings. I packed for about an hour completely by myself as not a single person offered to help me and then I was gone.

It’s a week or so later, I’ve officially moved back in with my parents and I’m going out dancing with my friends. I had only told a couple people, very vaguely, what had happened and I didn’t share any of the details. That night, after we danced, we stayed outside for a few extra minutes chatting. As I stood there with my friends completely safe, the little hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up, I got goosebumps, and my heart began to pound. Being outside in the dark like that was taking me back in my mind. To this day, none of the friends I was with that night knew that I was struggling with PTSD — let alone what my PTSD was from. I didn't even know! I became distant in the conversation and my breathing became irregular as I slipped deeper into my fear. My sense of security had gone and my peace of mind with it. I became afraid of the dark for a time. I would lay awake in the middle of the night afraid to go to the bathroom in my own house. One night it got to a point where I was so fed up that I forced myself to sit on the kitchen floor in the dark, in the middle of the night repeating to myself “you are safe, God is with you, you have the eye of the tiger, they can't hurt you now.” I sat there rocking myself back and forth on my kitchen floor until I was able to open my eyes and feel a little less fear. I repeated this ritual night after night until I began to believe that I was safe again. Something no one ever knew I was going through until now.

I became more ashamed of my body and wanted to cover it. I never wanted to feel sexy again, or to even look at my body in the mirror. I thought that if it could be touched in such a vile way that it must also be vile. I knew these thoughts were from previous trauma and the enemy and I knew they were lies meant to keep me in the darkness but damn, it was hard to break through those lies honestly. I knew the truth. I knew that I was divinely created in Gods image. That my body was a vessel for goodness, life, joy, pleasure, and abundance. That it was a temple, a masterpiece. But something like this happens again after so long in recovery from similar childhood abuse and it’s so hard to break the cycle and not just know the truth but BELIEVE it wholeheartedly. Just like I sat in the dark to get over my fear, I sat in front of a mirror in the nude. At first it was so hard to look at myself — even painful. Most of the nights I did this in the beginning would be just me crying in front of the mirror, reliving all similar trauma, asking God to take away all the ugly feelings I had about my body that I knew weren’t of Him. I no longer saw myself as a beloved daughter. I saw myself once again as an object for a terrible kind of sin. Maybe even one of the worst kinds. After all that's something the church had also been teaching me to a certain extent for so long. It’s taken me years to remember what those feelings felt like without taking me back there completely, transported to that version of me. It’s taken a long time to see my body the way God intended for me to see it and for the rest of the world to see it for that matter! I'm am still very much on my journey to healing my gaze from such trauma.

This tattoo is the symbol that tells this entire story. It tells of the fear, of the pain, of the complete and utter brokenness. And it tells of the beauty that comes from the brokenness, the hope that arose from Gods promises to me, the lessons learned, the wisdom gained, and the healing. Now when I am faced difficult situations, this symbol reminds me that I am strong, yet delicate, fierce, yet compassionate and empathetic, wild, yet fully known and fully loved. It reminds me that my identity isn’t found in the things of this world therefore the things of this world can’t shake my identity. It reminds me that I’ve got the eye of the tiger and no one can take that away from me. It reminds me that no one has the power to change the way I see myself but me. It reminds me of my deliverance and it reminds me to remain rooted in gratitude.

As I’m finishing writing this at six in the morning (five hours after initially beginning the story) the last thing I want to leave you with is this. No matter how bad it’s gotten, or will get, “this too shall pass”. There is hope, there is healing, there is freedom and I am here to tell you that you are worthy and capable of finding all of those things. Keep doing the work, you can do hard things. Keep seeing the good, there is so much goodness to be seen everywhere. Keep asking the questions, you’ll find your answers. Keep fighting your good fight, you’re already victorious. Your trauma does not define you and it doesn’t have the power to confine you.

This piece consists of half the face of a tiger looking out from behind leaves and flowers of Mexican poppies and Mexican Chocolate Cosmos.

love, peace, and healing,

Sable