Life as a Onesie Making a Difference
deJoly LaBrier’s August 2009 transcribed conference presentation from the Twelfth Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference.
deJoly LaBrier has been doing recovery work for 20 yrs. She has spoken publicly about her experiences in a military sex ring, Satanic cult and government experimentation; and is grateful for the serenity and sanity she now experiences. Her topic is: Life as a Onesie: Making a Difference
deJoly has written two books:
Diary Of A Survivor In Art And Poetry and All Together Now, A Multiple’s Story of Hope & Healing.
Please use caution while reading this presentation. It may be triggering. All accusations are alleged. The conference is educational and not intended as therapy or treatment.
Good morning, and thank you for being here. I want to say a few words of thanks to some specific people. First of all, I’d like to thanks Neil for putting this conference together over the past 12 years. I was here as a speaker at the first one through the fourth one. I took some time off to do a lot of work and healing and processing and this is my first time back since then. So I appreciate that he was willing to allow me to come and speak again on a totally different level, and I want to thank him for all the efforts he’s put together to have this conference continue over 12 years, which is quite phenomenal. I’d like for you all to give him a round of applause (clapping).
My topic is “Life As A Onesie – Making A Difference,” and as I was talking with my partner a couple of days ago, she asked me what my speech was going to be about. I said, automatically, right out of the top of my head came “spiritual evolution.” And I thought, “that’s not really supposed to be my topic.” So she asked me to explain that and we had a wonderful discussion about what that meant to me and it really ties in with my topic of “making a difference.” I’d like to go through that with you a little bit so you’ll know what I mean.
Back in 1989 or 1990 I coined the phrase “onesie” to refer to those people that some you also refer to as “one-brainers” or “mono-brains.” And so I began talking about other people that I didn’t know (were or were not) as “onesie’s.”
So I’m going to take you on a little evolutionary journey with me. Much of my childhood was spent praying to God who had obviously made a mistake and put me in the wrong family … because I wasn’t supposed to be abused. I was supposed to be loved and nurtured, and I prayed that something would happen that God would come and take me and put me in the right family… because he would realize that he had made a mistake.
By 5, I remember sitting on the edge of my bed and talking to God, saying “I know this is all a test. I know that if I pass these tests, you’ll give me something good. So I went about my life as a 5 year old and a little older, trying to be the best little girl that I could be. Picking up every thing; doing all the chores without having to be asked; doing other people’s chores so nobody would get mad. Just doing the best things I could do so that if God was around, God would know and would pick me up and place me in the right family. It was a really childish relationship with God of my understanding… because I was begging, I was pleading, I was being tested, I was at that place of understanding.
Then as a pre-teen, I had been going to a number of churches as we moved around the country. I don’t know why they allowed me to go to church. Oftentimes, pretty regularly, I was grilled – I don’t know if you know what the word grilled is – it’s when you’re badgered with questions one right after another – who’d you see there? Why’d you say that? What did they say back? – all that. So one of the things I realized as I came into therapy was that in my times in the churches, I would often ask the youth ministers why children had to die. Not knowing my history, mind you, at that time. And I kept wondering why there were wars. Why people had to die of hunger. Those kinds of things. The youth ministers response would always be “God works in mysterious ways.” And I’d think, “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s not right.” I didn’t know why I was asking these questions, but my relationship with God at that time was one of questioning. Questioning why he would do something like that; I think that reflects back in my questioning of my parents.
As a teen, I really got angry with God. He wasn’t putting me in the right family. He wasn’t living up to my expectations, and the abuse was getting worse. I hoped daily that God would just allow me to lay down and go to sleep and never wake up. I was completely consumed with ways in which I could allow that to happen… whether that was to drive off a cliff (which I lived in a very flat area, so that was kind of a problem AND I didn’t have a car). So oftentimes I’d just lay down and say “take me now, take me now, take me now”, and I’d go to sleep and be pissed as hell in the morning because I’d wake up, and I’d be in the same place as I was before. So that was my angry time.
When I left home and went to college, I met a man. He was from Brazil, raised Catholic, but when he left home he became a fascist and a seeker of truth. He was reading all kind of books – P.D. Ouspinsky, Gurdieff, the Vedas – and I read all of it. It opened a whole new world to me, other than what I’d traditionally seen in the regular churches I’d gone to – Methodist, Catholic, Protestant, Baptist. It brought me to a connection to my Self that I didn’t know. It was new to me and actually quite exciting to me. So that onward search to find, I think, a different life for myself beyond the abuse, lead me to some other kinds of paths. I picked up ECKANKAR at one time, which is an Eastern based spiritual teaching. I found Louise Haye, which was a blessing to me because, at the time, I thought I was totally worthless (I’d been programmed to be worthless), and I thought “Oh, my God, there’s no way that I could look in the mirror and say “you’re beautiful” or “I love you.” It was a matter of time – I think everything in this process take a lot of time – this didn’t happen over night. But as I learned about Louise Haye and her teachings, I began to do the work. And there IS work involved in every step of this process. I want to thank Louise Haye because with her, well, part of her work is in my book because I end each chapter with an affirmation. To me affirmations are a form of prayer.
Another thing I found was therapy. I was fortunate. I know I was fortunate. I think part of that was because early on I made a commitment to myself to do whatever it took and go wherever it took me, to find healing. That meant I would have to dredge up memories, I would have to feel the emotions that went along with the memories, and I would have to do the healing that went with all that. So, I said to myself, “this is it, I’m going to do this work.” One of the things I was told was “don’t read anything related to this topic, don’t read the newspaper about any kind of violent events, don’t watch any movies that could be sparking – and it wasn’t because she didn’t want me to be triggered, it was because she wanted me to know that whatever memories I was having were mine. They didn’t come from a movie, they didn’t come from a book, they didn’t come from a newspaper, they didn’t come from her, they came from me, INSIDE ME. So I knew as I processed my work, that I was getting memories completely from my past. It wasn’t always pleasant. It was very painful – all the way from the military sex ring in which I was passed around among the officers and other enlisted men to being transported in the dead of night from the US to Germany to carry information as a child (I was only 4 or 5 years old sitting in a huge chair with them questioning me) – to the ritualized abuse both in the daytime and at night in a satanic cult.
In the psychiatric hospital we had to participate in 12-Step meetings. The 12-Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous have been adapted to a variety of groups, including Co-Dependents Anonymous, and Al-Anon (which is for family and friends of Alcoholics) and so on. It wasn’t until I was in the hospital when my younger sister called me (a lot of this is in All Together Now) at the hospital – which I didn’t even tell anybody that I’d gone there – but she found me. I didn’t know until that conversation that my father was an alcoholic. He was what I call a dry drunk. He was brought up in a multi-generational satanic and ritualized abuse family. Strict Catholic French-Canadians that came into the St. Louis area then moved on into Missouri. We were raised in an obviously very strict family and oftentimes the abuse included mundane kinds of things like speaking to them required “yes, sir” and “no, sir”. We didn’t speak unless we were spoken to. A form of punishment would be for him to put a dot on the wall and we would have to stand at attention with our nose on the dot for hours…or until he was ready for us to not stand there. That was the daytime activities. Nighttime activities included anything from what I just mentioned to the satanic rituals and murder, etc.
I really don’t need to go into details. You’ve all heard this story, but what my story is about is the healing from all that. And the reason I’ve told you the story of my spiritual evolution was because it came alongside my emotional and discovery evolution.
All of that which I’ve described to you was amnesiac to me, so to speak. I knew that I had “others” inside of me. But I didn’t know that everybody didn’t have “others” inside of them. That came along in 2nd grade… I knew that because I was playing kickball on the playground and one of my parts, Butch, came out and caught the ball. I’m not a very good athlete. I was really praised for that so Butch came around a lot. I knew early on that I had parts, so it wasn’t a miracle of recovery when I said “yeah, I have parts.” My therapist in the hospital asked me to draw how it was for me to function inside my head. I thought “OK, she’s going to show me hers, I’m going to show her mine, and we’re going to have a nice little conversation about it.” Well, I brought it back; it looked like a flow chart, an organizational chart from some high up corporation. We talked about it then I said, “So, now show me yours.” And she said, “I don’t have one.” I said, “are you kidding me? How do you get to work? Who decides what you’re going to eat in the morning or afternoon? Or what time you’re going to bed? Or how do you get dressed?” Because there were times when I could stand in front of my closet for 20 minutes ‘til somebody actually decided to pick the clothing we were going to wear. So that was a process for me to understand that not everybody was dealing with what I called my “insides.”
As I progressed through the recovery process, I was told when I left the hospital, that I was to do what is called a 60/60 – 60 meetings in 60 days, find a meeting I really liked and continue going. That isn’t the only think I did. Obviously, I went to therapy quite frequently. But I did do my 60/60 – actually I did 60 meetings in 21 days! I was like – so ready to be there. I did find a couple of groups that I went to on a regular basis and I went to therapy. I ended up in the hospital again, for a total of four stays – two long term and two just suicide prevention – has anybody been there? That part of my recover, the process of understanding the recovery of memories, living through flashbacks – one of the things I was told is that if you experienced this and lived through it, you can definitely remember it and live through it.
What I learned was not that I couldn’t trust anybody, but that I had to trust somebody…that I had to trust other people’s experience of growth and knowledge…whether I believed it at that moment or not, I had to believe so that I could get to the next step. Because my goal was, remember, to go wherever it took me until I found healing…’til I was complete.
I continued doing that until an experience happened to me which was that my therapist of five years, who’d gotten me through quite a lot, died suddenly. I know there’s a book called “THE FLOCK” where her therapist dies suddenly. I could relate totally to that. I grieved and grieved a long time. I was very fortunate that she gave my file to her best friend and co-worker, who was also familiar with MPD and ritual abuse.
One of the things I wanted to express is that as I grew and gained an understanding of what I’d been through, I thought I would never forgive anybody for what had happened to me. In fact, I often said that forgiveness wasn’t a word in my vocabulary because I believed there are certain things that are unforgivable. I thought first of all I have to reconcile my unforgiveness of God because I was angry at God for putting me through all that. I always hated the statement “This too shall pass” – because I was pissed off that it happened in the first place. So once I did that and developed a relationship with the God of my understanding and became connected to my Self – my core Self – as it was referred to – and worked my program, I was able to have a deeper understanding and come to a natural progression to wholeness. In one of the meetings, there was a discussion about “what did you always want to do in your life?” A lot of people were saying the same thing – we wanted to make a difference – I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to make a difference so much in the world that I thought I have to tell this story and THAT would make a difference. But what I really got to the core of my being was that I made a difference in my own life because I committed to healing. Because I believe that my healing has a ripple effect out into the world – into the universe – that my healing raised the consciousness of those around me, including those that aren’t familiar with ritual abuse that could be informed. And through me and my growth – my progression through the hell of recovery to now being able to stand here and say I am myself – they see that healing can take place, they understand now what ritual abuse is, that there is really evil in this world, and that they can not go back into denial – just as we can’t go back into denial about what happened to us. I can’t. I also learned that I have choices. So I could choose to go back into denial if I wanted to, just like you could. You could choose to say, “oh, that really didn’t happen. I was hallucinating (as I heard earlier), I was on drugs (well, they did drug me, but that was back then).” So, as an adult, having gone through the recovery process, through all that I had to believe that I had the right to make choices and that “NO” was a complete sentence.
My making a difference came in a variety of ways. I want to explain a variety of ways that I made a difference. One of them was that I made a difference to some animals. I made a big difference to some animals. I was the assistant director of the Humane Society in the area where I live and I was a euthanasia technician. To make a difference in a dogs life who suffered from bleeding, oozing mange or with a broken back or with a skull concussion where they can suffer for hours and then die. I relieved them of their pain and I held them and kissed them on that oozing, bleeding head until they were gone. I know that’s painful for some of you who have and love animals – and I love animals. I’m not a euthanasia technician anymore but, if I was called by you to do it, I could do it. Because I do believe that we say good-bye from this world to the next, we just continue on. We don’t have to say good-bye. So all the animals I’ve said good-bye to really haven’t left. That was my experience with the Humane Society and my making a difference in animals’ lives.
Another way I’ve made a difference is that I’ve been writing most of my life. Whether it was me or an alter, we all wrote. We had poetry. We’ve written articles for feminist women’s magazines and we’ve written articles for other types of magazines and newspapers. I myself, have written two books, and I plan on releasing another one relatively soon – which will go into far more detail; this one (All Together Now) go into the healing process and there have been people who’ve asked me about specifics of the events that happened…For me, because I’m on this side of the black hole – I see it as – the events are not important to me anymore. They happened, but I don’t need to know every little millisecond of the events. I don’t need to re-traumatize myself. I just really need to have an understanding of what it meant to me through my evolution as a human being. The evolution through writing.
Another way I make a difference is that I advocate for young children who have abusive family backgrounds. I’ve put together some videos which will target children and teens who don’t fee that therapy can help them…that there’s no use in trying because it’s a lost cause – “I can’t get out of the situation,” and “Therapy’s not going to help me anyway, you cannot possibly feel my pain.” Because of who I am and how I am, they’ve asked me to put these videos together to show children and teens that “yes, you can get through this, and therapy does help.” It all takes a commitment to the healing process.
I also have gone to Hal’s classes for eight years. I went up there twice a year and stayed with him and visited him and spoke to his classes about the experience. What I saw myself doing over the course of those eight years is that I came with such an urgency to tell my story that I was “by-damn – you better believe me!” I was just on a tear. I didn’t get out there and yell or anything, but I was like “don’t you ever question my reality,” kind of thing, because my reality in my life had been questioned all the time. If I said the sky was blue, they’d say “no it isn’t, it’s white.” If I said “that hurts” they’d say “no it didn’t, get over it.” I saw myself going from someone who had such an urgency to tell the story to make the details so plain that they all squirmed in their seats and went out to vomit (laughter in audience) that they could not deny the truth of it (more laughter). Have you ever been there? (more laughter) To a person who came with such a peace of mind that I didn’t have to have anybody believe me. I didn’t even have to tell the story. All I had to do is show some pictures and talk about healing, and allow them to ask their questions, to have an understanding of what it was like for me, and how I got to be such a sane person (well, I was never really insane, I was just split, that’s all – it’s just a phenomenon). That was an evolution. That’s why I thank Hal. Because he was the conduit for my transformation – he and his classes, and the questions they asked, and the questions I asked myself after the classes (like, did you really get your point across? Were you really very effective?) I’d see that I was effective from their emails. My mind had to be healed. I went through that eight years of going up twice a year, and Hal seeing me and saying “How you doing?” and I said, “Well, I’m at a different place now Hal.” Bringing my 10 years of drawings up there with me and picking out a few and talking about them. (Getting) …to a place where I felt really comfortable within my own skin over the past few years and I think we went away from each other with a good feeling of friendship and that things were accomplished in those classes that really needed to be accomplished.
Another way that I’ve made a difference is that I do public speaking (obviously, I do because here I am!). Just prior to my getting into the recovery process, I had a business making anatomically correct dolls for child abuse counselors (laughter from audience). Who would have thunk it that I would be here from there? I was making these dolls, trying to convince counselors that they could use them with child abuse victims, and they were hem-hawing… it was about the time of the McMartin case in California…they weren’t thinking that it was really true, saying it didn’t really happen. Of course later they found out that it really did happen. But never mind that, it triggered me a lot because people weren’t believing me that these things happened and I was like “wait a minute! It happened to me! I know it happens!” So…I went into therapy. I went through an evolution of therapy there too. But I spoke to all kinds of altruistic organizations that could get out there and listen to me. However, after every talk there was at least one person who came up to me in private, including at Hal’s classes, who would say, “I never told anybody this but I was abused when I was a kid.” I can remember my first speech when someone said that to me. He was a 71 year old man. He never even told his wife of 57 years, but he told me. I believe that not matter what way you do it, whether it’s just talking to your family members that are safe, to your therapist, or neighbor or to an altruistic organization, if you can do any kind of public speaking about abuse, that’s an advocacy that you can take up. It doesn’t mean that you have to be a professional speaker, because I’m not. But you can make a difference that way.
One of the things I’ve found most profoundly in my life is my concept of time, which I was totally blown away when a previous speaker outlined my whole life relating to time in that I have a concept of multiple time zones here – not just in the physical sense. I did have an alter named “ME” who would go out into the universe and look back and see the world from different vantage points (some of her paintings are in my books) which brought me to an understanding that some people just really didn’t understand what time was all about. My drawings brought forth this understanding of what time was about because I could be inside of time, I could be outside of time, I could be in the moment. What I found is that when I got joy in my life… I found joy for the first time about three years ago. It was the first time I actually FELT joy. I realized that I was in the moment to be able to feel that and that brought me such joy to realize that I had been in the moment. I was at a Christmas parade in a town near me. There were two families that scooted in beside me. One was Spanish-speaking, one was English. They had three little kids and they had their blankets to put on the street to watch the parade. They had this communication between each other that went beyond language. They didn’t have to speak the same language to be able to communicate. Their parents were very loving, which was an unusual experience for me, obviously. As the parade progressed, the excitement in their eyes came forth and as the lights came by, and the floats went by, they got more and more excited, more thrilled. All of a sudden Santa Claus appeared. Their eyes lit up with joy. They were just in the moment seeing this white-haired man with a red suit who had all this fun attached to it and they were just excited. And I caught their joy. I was in that moment in joy. It was so profound to me that I have never forgotten it. I get goosebumps; as I stand here I have goosebumps just relating that story because it’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life. I never will forget it. That night I went to my Al-Anon meeting and the person who was supposed to lead the meeting wasn’t there. So I go to talk about joy! It was Christmas time, obviously, and everyone was talking about the hurriedness, the business, and I was talking about joy. And they were just totally blown away. And they started talking about joy. It totally lifted the meeting from down to up, like “Oh, yeah, that’s what it’s all about.” Living in the moment.
Another aspect of my life now is that I don’t live with expectations. I live beyond the need to have expectations. I allow people to be who they are at the moment…and the next moment…and the next. If I put a continuum of time together I would still find joy in that continuum. It brought me to a place of healing that I never thought I’d experience, and an understanding of the Creator of my understanding. I found a spiritual group that doesn’t have a particular dogma, doesn’t have any rules, doesn’t have any “understandings” that you have to “understand.” I am able to express with them my feelings about the God of my understanding.
I went to a workshop recently and found myself in the last stages of the workshop wondering if I was going to be able to walk on fire. The whole workshop was about finding my divine Self. I knew that I had walked through fire already. I had walked through the memories of my abuse and I had survived. I knew that my mind was a factor in that. I knew that my mind could make things real or unreal. As I circled the fire, hot coals, there were about 25 of us, we prayed, we did what we needed to do – I walked across the fire – five times. Did not get burned. Didn’t get a blister. Didn’t even get hot feet. It felt like I was walking on a carpet of little bumpy rocks underneath it. No heat. That was another profound experience which tells me that I can be and do anything I want (choose) to be and do. I can say from my complete personal self, my truth, and not have to have you understand it or believe it. It’s not important. I can live in the moment now more than I have in my life. I can be my true authentic Self as I am right now without holding onto the story because I’ve gone through the evolution. I know that it isn’t always easy, so I set my story aside for others to come to me with a question. And I can pick my story up again and tell them from that story what happened, if that’s important. I can tell them about the evolution. I can pick that up, but I don’t have to live it, I don’t have to live it in my everyday life. If someone comes to me and says, “will you come and talk to our group about ritual abuse?” I say, “sure.” And I’ll pick up that story again and I’ll take it with me. For that expanse of time, I’ll tell that story, but it won’t be affecting my life because I still have the joy in my life that I experienced those few years ago. I have to be mindful that others aren’t in the same place I am and that I won’t be in the same place I’m at now, in the next moment. I’ll be in another moment.
I probably sound pretty crazy to you right now, as I’m looking back at my talk. I think Oh, my God!, I can’t believe I’m saying all this, but that’s the way I believe and that’s the way I am right now.
About a week and a half ago, I was given a flute. I have listened to Native American flute music for years to go to sleep my because it’s very peaceful to me. We talk a lot about what it means in the spirit world to be conscious, what it means to live in the moment. I’m very very grateful for the opportunity to have a way to talk about it. That flute, to me, brings me to a place of peace. It I’m ruffled or if I need to have something to ground me or I just want to speak to my Creator, I can do it through the flute. I was able to play the flute here in this room, which is pretty incredible for me. I’m actually a very grateful person to be standing here, to be able to say these things to you and to hope that you have some understanding and see the healing that can take place. Know that you’re on a journey, just like the rest of us.
deJoly’s e-mail address is: insidedejoly@gmail.com .
To end, I’d like to quote from the last chapter in All Together Now: (Last 2 paragraphs)
We cannot wait for the government to fix what ails us, nor should we want them to. Our children’s very lives are at stake. Our personal involvement must begin now. We must look at ourselves, our communities and our world, see what we can do to make a difference in each of these cases, and then act on our sense of truth and human decency.
I’m grateful that I made it to the other side of the dark hole; many don’t. Recovery of my being, of my life, of my soul – has been very painful, at times. But I believe in the goodness of mankind, and that by seeking a higher consciousness as individuals, we can change the consciousness of the world. I no longer suffer from the effects of my abuse, but seek everyday to reach a higher state of consciousness. In writing this book, my true self emerged as a whole woman with value and self-worth.