It All Started With Mud Pies

Kathleen Howe

In search of the true meaning...

In my efforts to find an article that describes the true meaning or feelings of disgust for all of you, I'm sorry to say that I've come up short of what I truly wanted you all to understand about that word, "disgust."

There's many an article describing the reasons for feeling disgusted, such as child abuse, overeating, unacceptable substances we're faced with in our daily world, but not how horribly dark the feeling of being disgusted truly is.

Since I've been disgusted with myself for most of my life, I thought I might take a stab at describing my own feelings of disgust. Although you may see "notes" from me throughout the websites, this is my first stab at actually trying to write an article concerning an emotion or feeling.

I truly believe that this challenge is worth the effort since the feeling of disgust is felt by so many people today. It's not a pleasant feeling. It's not easy to let go of either.

As a very small child, one of my favorite pastimes was making mud pies. I had many fun quiet afternoons in the shade of the big tree in my grandparent's backyard, pouring water into small tin pie pans, mixing in just the right amount of dirt & stirring until thick & sturdy.  

If you can picture the scene in your mind, you might think of a blond, curly haired, peach cheeked little girl of 5 years old with wide brown eyes full of wonder & very light eyebrows that expressively moved with each measurement of water & dirt.

Perhaps I had been dressed smartly in a white sleeveless sundress, decorated with little red hearts upon the yoke that had been hand smocked with small even gathers. Those of you familiar with "Polly Flinders," would recognize my wardrobe.

My grandmother set out a wooden pale blue table & matching chair for me to cook on. She has "special" equipment for my very unique talents in mud pie making, a flour sifter, the small tin pie plates left over from pot pies & of course, a very special real silver spoon for stirring. She did however bow down to a measure of safety when it came to my measuring cup & bowl, not allowing me to use her glass Pyrex, they weren't plastic though; which I'd always hated the texture of, they were melamine.

It twasn't the thought of eating one of those deliciously sun-baked mud pies that would make one think of something, "disgusting," it was what was considered a horrible problem in clean up after my wonderful delectables were finished!

Those of you who are baby boomers may have heard of this dilemma I faced, "dirty fingernails" after making mud pies!

My dainty little fingernails that had been cut & filed religiously were filled with the most essential ingredient in mud pies; dirt! At the tender age of 5 years, I found that the easiest way of extracting that dirt was to bite my fingernails, tearing off the tops so the dirt would easily slide off my fingertips when I washed my hands!

It was my first exposure to the word, "disgusting" once my Grandma saw me concentrating on biting off my pinky fingernail. The first thing that drew my instant attention to my Grandmother was the tone of her voice as she grabbed my little hands & said, "Don't bite your nails!"

I had never heard that tone of voice out of her before. It made me stand up straight & pay attention to her immediately. It was frightening, foreign & not nice at all. It was almost the same tone of voice I had heard from my father when he had been forced to change my brother's dirty diaper. It was a low, earnest, forbidding tone of voice that I certainly didn't like.

"Dirt has worm eggs in it & when you bite your fingernails, you're eating worm eggs.... do you want to eat worm eggs? Worm eggs are disgusting!" she sneered.  (Did that mean that I was disgusting? Somehow I got that feeling. It was a shameful & uncomfortable feeling nonetheless.)

The tone of her voice as well as the words she was saying made me feel as though I'd done something very wrong. I felt small, tiny like the shrinking Alice in Wonderland, horribly choked up & visibly upset. I imagined I had disappointed my own Grandmother & I couldn't imagine anything worse than that. She was my most beloved caretaker.

I certainly remembered each word out of my Grandmother's mouth that day. I remembered the tone of her voice. I understood how disgusting it would be to eat worm eggs.

I didn't want to make her unhappy with me or make her sick by biting my fingernails ever again. She obviously wasn't happy with me over what I had done. I didn't like it when she was unhappy with me. It almost never happened before that day.

She had always spoken to me in a pleasantly soft & loving voice. It made an impression on me. She had told me, "Eating worm eggs is a disgusting habit."

I believed that she was inferring that I was disgusting because I had bitten off the tops of my fingernails, ingesting worm eggs.

I didn't hear that tone of voice again in my lifetime until I was in puberty. I'd always been very slim as a child & when my body began to change, my mother would always reprimand me by repeating over & over, in that same demeaning tone of voice my Grandmother had used that afternoon, "Stand up straight or you'll look fat & your butt will look big."

My mother was obviously upset with me for looking fat & having a big butt, I thought; or was she stating that I was fat & that I had a big butt that was fat? The way all kids always seem to acquire their beliefs thru listening to what their parents say & believing them because they would never lie to you about anything; I began to believe that I looked horrible. I felt as though I looked fat & my butt was the size of a garage right from the beginning of my teen years. I began to believe that I looked disgusting. I also believed that it really bothered my mother.

Does my mother realize that she has been the cause of my lifetime belief that I look disgusting? Not a chance of it. She was trying to teach me about good posture. It was probably the same thing her own mother had said to her. Her own mother, my Grandmother, had probably used that same tone of disgust in her voice when she told my mother about bad posture. It was like talking about "mud pies & worm eggs."

From hearing this description of my body, over & over throughout my teen years, I formed a picture in my mind of what I looked like & I saw that picture in my mind every time I looked into a mirror - fat with a big butt.

I knew that there was something wrong with looking like I did because of the tone of disgust I had heard in my mother's voice. It made me believe that I looked disgusting. I've fought with this image my entire life.

Soon, as clothes became an important part of my life, I rejected dressing in a fashionable manner. I refused to go shopping with my mother, if at all possible, because not only did I have to hear her say, "Stand up straight or you'll look fat & your butt will look too big," while modeling the clothes she wanted to buy for me....

I had to then face the added music, which was of the same disgusting tone of voice, hearing, "No, we can't get you that because you have the wrong body for that kind of pants or dress....." or something else like, "You're so short that we can't find anything to fit you..." or "If your butt wasn't so big, those pants would fit you fine."

I was disgusted with myself. It was a lonely, dark & shameful way to feel & look. My earliest avoidance behaviors began then when I formed the habit of avoiding all mirrors.

The only thing that I liked about myself was my face & my hair. In every picture that was taken of me, I'd think to myself of how disgusting I looked with that fat body & big butt.

In reality, I was a perfectly normal weight & size. I just wasn't built tall & slender like my mother. 

If my mother ever told me that I looked nice, I don't remember it. That disgusted tone in her voice, measuring me up, comparing me to the disgusting worm eggs beneath my fingernails, soon began to make my mouth water, like just before you vomit. I felt depressed, anxious & so sorry for making my mother be so disgusted with me. I soon felt that she didn't love me because I was so disgusting.

It got to the point that all I heard was that tone in her voice that said she was disgusted with me....

To make a very long story much shorter, I offer you these questions...

What do you think happened to me when the first upper classman told me that I had a beautiful butt?

What kind of reaction do you think I had to that remark?

What kind of clothes did I begin to wear when the guys began to call me, "sexy?"

What do you think happened when I began to believe that the only people that loved me & thought I was pretty were the guys at school?

I believed them all right. I believed that they wanted to spend time with me, that they liked me for who I was & that there may be a possibility that if I needed positive attention, I'd only get it from guys.

Thus, my first love when I was in the 8th grade was a junior boy in high school. He made me feel pretty. He made me feel loved. He accepted me as I was. I wanted to do anything he wanted to please him. I felt happy when I was with him.

And while I felt happy when I was with my boyfriend, there was still an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. There was also an ache in my heart, a longing for my own mother's approval of my body & me. I could not feel satisfied with my body, it still disgusted me. I still couldn't look in a full-length mirror. I still wanted more than anything to hear my mother say, "I love you just the way you are." I would have settled for, "I love you." It never happened though. The disgust I felt was as deep as the ocean causing me to become depressed. I was in so much mental anguish. I began to make very poor decisions.

Disgust. A deep abyss of hatred towards yourself. Feeling as though you wanted to get out of your own skin & be someone else. I listened to the radio station from Boston on Sunday nights that talked about the prostitutes & their tragic plight, I could identify with them & wondered if they felt loved when they sold their bodies. I knew I was as worthless as they felt. I fell asleep many Sunday nights, listening to those radio shows & thinking about it all. I wondered if those prostitutes kept doing it because they felt loved from having all that sex. I was so naive. I was so confused.

Disgust. How could I tolerate looking at myself for the rest of my life? I couldn't change my body shape. I felt despair. There was nothing I could do. I was destined to look horrible, disgusting & unacceptable to my mother. I began to have suicidal ideations. I wanted to die.

Disgust. I thought about cutting myself. Long before I realized that it was a method of coping, long before I knew anyone else ever thought of doing it, I scraped a razor blade over my skin. Wanting to release the misery I felt inside, I needed to cut open my skin. I was chicken though. Just another horrible thing about me, I thought, but I did it. I cut my skin across my wrists, not really deeply, just enough to raise blood up over my skin... I watched it. Then I got really scared. I put some rags around my arm because we didn't have any bandaids. I remember lingering around in the hallway at school by the nurse's office. I wanted to tell her that I wanted so badly to kill myself, but I didn't.

Disgust. I began to smoke cigarettes, a disgusting habit. I began to abuse alcohol, another disgusting habit. I smoked pot - well that was just wrong & I began to have sex, confusing sex with the love that I needed to feel so badly from my parents - the love that I longed for..... At 16, I got pregnant, like other disgusting girls did.

I began to hide food underneath my bed because I was so hungry. I had this craving for hot pastrami subs. I had a friend (guy friend) who always wanted to buy me lunch so I let him. He would buy me a pastrami sub for lunch after school and then he'd walk me home. I'd take the remainder of the sub that I didn't eat which was usually most of it & hide it under my bed. I'd get up in the night out of a sound sleep & eat it. This was an escalation of my night eating habits, which before had been limited to eating handfuls of homemade cookies, pies, cakes or white bread & butter before that.

My mother forced me to have an abortion. It was the most disgusting thing that ever happened to me. Abortion was still illegal in New Hampshire, which forced her to take me to Boston, Mass General Hospital, for the abortion.

I begged her to let me have the baby. I wanted the baby. I wanted that baby because I wanted someone to love me unconditionally, big butt & all. I can identify with those teenage girls of today who think that they want a baby. What they really want is unconditional love from their parents, but they're not getting it.

And then I heard that tone of voice again....disgusting disgusting disgusting....

One night I was crying in my bed, a few days before the abortion. I was so upset. I was simply inconsolable. My mother had heard me & for the first time in my life, she came to me when she heard me sobbing. She asked me what was wrong & once again I pleaded with her to not make me have the abortion. Her response,

"I refuse to let you ruin your life by having a child."

Mud pies, worms, big butts, fat body & now........ she had ruined her life by having children. Disgust can make you feel invisible in the end or wish that you were.

I felt my misery was invisible as I followed my mother down the cold gray hallways of Mass General Hospital. I felt invisible as the nurse explained to me that I'd have to have an internal examination before I went to surgery. I felt disgusting as the female doctor admonished me for getting pregnant as she pried open my legs to do whatever it was she had to do to me. No one had explained any of it. The doctor made some crude & confusing joke up about the fact that I was still wearing knee socks & I was pregnant, imagine that....

As I laid on the hospital bed, in an ugly green hospital gown, with only my socks on, I listened to a woman hear the news that she had breast cancer. The disgusting sounds that emerged from her throat I'll never forget. It was horrible, undeniably painful, almost unbearable pain that was emerging from deep inside her. She was quite obviously horrified. I didn't know that you could lose a breast to cancer back then. I didn't know anything except that I was a disgusting person.

When they took me to surgery, I heard another girl screaming loudly. This hospital scene was scaring me to death. My body was shaking, my leg with entwined together, stiffly shaking beneath the white sheet. My hands were freezing cold, they were stiff, unmoving. I asked the nurse what was wrong with her as I caught a very quick glimpse of her swollen belly, naked to all who passed by, her body draped in the ugly green color of the hospital, a silver pail at the foot of her hospital bed, her legs in those stirrup things...

The nurse informed me that the girl had waited too long to decide on an abortion & now she had to go thru labor because she waited so long. She had to be induced by drugs. I didn't know what any of that meant. All I realized at that very moment was, I really had never thought about how babies were born. I instantly recalled seeing that pail at the foot of her bed, thinking & picturing in my mind the disgusting scene of seeing her baby fall into that pail. I was horrified. It had only been a few months before having sex for the first time that I thought a woman needed a doctor to operate to get the babies out of their mommy's stomachs.

I felt like a disgusting piece of garbage as the doctor & nurses admonished me by ridicule as they performed my abortion with no pain medication. That's what disgusting 16 year old girls who get pregnant deserve they told me. I cried & cried. I couldn't stop crying for days. I'd been humiliated, degraded, demeaned & now was thoroughly disgusted with myself. 

That's the childhood base of the feelings of disgust that I've felt for myself before advancing into my adult years.

I simply can't put into words the intensity of the feelings of disgust that have haunted me, plaguing me with insecurity, mental illness, abuse & so many other horrible situations.

I still struggle with knowing that I'm unconditionally loved by anyone.

I still don't look in full-length mirrors.

I still don't go clothes shopping.

I'm almost 48 years old now.

Recently my adult, 27 year old daughter informed me that she was in tears because my mother made her model some new clothes she had bought for her. My mother had forced her to zip up her pants on one of those "bloated" pms days. She told me, "Mom, I knew exactly how you used to feel." I felt so helpless to console her.

Disgust..... it's a deep trough of misery that grows deeper & uglier with time. It engulfs you, makes you invisible & wreaks havoc on your life.... I'm working myself out of it, but it's a long track back to mud pies & worm eggs. 

Effects of Child Sexual Abuse

How are sexually abused children affected?

The most important factor regarding the effects of sexual abuse on a child is how the child perceives that abuse & the response of the adults in the child's life.

Some children understand that the abuse is about the offender & not about them. They're able to integrate the abuse experience & go on with life with little disruption.

What is the most important factor in how well a child who has been sexually abused does?

Being Believed & Protected. The most important factor is for the child to be able to tell about the abuse & to be believed & protected by the important people in the child's life. It's critical for the abused to have his or her reality confirmed.

When a child has been sexually abused, important people in that child's life must acknowledge what has happened to the child, acknowledge that it's a problem.

How are sexual abuse adult survivors affected?

The impact of child sexual abuse may be different for each individual. Certainly there are individuals who've been victims of childhood sexual abuse & have managed their victimization in a manner that has resulted in little negative impact.

However, due to the fact that child sexual abuse happens to children & the offenders are usually powerful people in the child's life, the potential for negative effects is high.  

In addition, many victims creatively figure out how to survive the horror of childhood sexual abuse. The fact is whatever behavior or method a child uses to survive, the outcome is that they've survived.

As the child victim grows up, sometimes the behaviors that they developed to survive as a child begin to get in the way of their adult functioning.

i.e., to manage the fear or pain of sexual abuse, a child may stop feeling. This survival behavior works for the child, but when the child grows up & is safe from sexual abuse, not feeling can become a problem as it limits the survivor's ability to fully experience their life.

When you stop bad feelings, you also tend to stop good good feelings. Survivors may want to seek treatment to undo their earlier survival behavior of not feeling & begin allowing themselves to experience their feelings.

Another example may be that the child avoids others due to not being able to trust. This may be a good survival behavior for the child who is being victimized, but if carried into adulthood limits the survivor's potential for emotional closeness with others.

Survivors who believed that the abuse was their fault may feel guilty & have a sense of not being okay as a person. Feeling negative & bad about oneself may result in feeling depressed & at the extreme may lead to thoughts of suicide.

Feeling bad about oneself may also lead to negative behaviors that result in negative feedback from others. i.e., if a survivor believes that they're bad, they may do bad things that causes others to tell them that they're bad.

This may seem like an oversimplification, but individuals do act based on what they believe about themselves & those actions then reinforce what they believe.

Many survivors feel angry about being victimized. Children who are victimized often have little opportunity to learn how to identify or respond to their feelings of anger.

They may be smart enough to know that exhibiting anger isn't safe. This learning then interferes with the management of anger during adulthood. Survivors deserve to feel angry about being sexually abused.

They also deserve to learn behaviors that allow them to express their anger in a manner that doesn't get them in trouble or doesn't harm them. i.e., acting out anger by hitting others may put the survivor at risk with law enforcement.

The survivor deserves to learn new behaviors such as how to verbally express anger that doesn't create risk.

Some victims believe that if they're perfect that no one will know that they've been sexually abused. Their effort to keep others from knowing of their victimization is usually in response to feeling that they'll be blamed or shamed if others know.

Although achieving & doing well may be a positive outcome of having been victimized, victims don't deserve to believe that their value is based only on their positive achievement.

Survivors may have tried to protect themselves by "getting away." This may have resulted in their actual running away or in the use of drugs or alcohol to "get away" from the reality of their abuse. These behaviors may have worked at some level for the victim, but may interfere with their life, which suggests a need to reevaluate

Survivors who feel like "damaged goods" may feel inadequate & not worthy of close relationships. Those who believe that the abuse was the result of their physical appearance may develop eating disorders or purposefully make themselves less attractive in an effort to protect themselves from the sex offender.

Survivors who were taught by the offender that sex was a way to get attention & be close may have learned to use sex as an adult. This may result in sexual promiscuity without emotional intimacy.

Whatever survival behaviors were developed by the child sexual abuse victim, survivors deserve to honor the fact that they have survived & deserve an opportunity to decide what of those behaviors they want to keep & what behaviors they may want to change.

In general, the severity of the aftereffects of sexual abuse on the victim depends on a variety of characteristics.

These include:

• the duration & frequency of the incest

• the type of sexual activity

• the use of force or aggression

• the age at onset

• the age, gender & relationship of the perpetrator

• passive submission or willing participation on the part of the child

• overt or disclosed incest with lack of assistance

• parental reaction & institutional response