When the story finds you...

I'd found just the tip of the iceberg when I had that dream about the women I'd decided were somehow related to me.  Most writers don't just sit down and start writing a story knowing exactly where it will go, how it will turn out, and what will happen along the way.  Some start with research and the characters sort of 'find' them.  Some start with outlines that act as a sort of map and lead them through the chapters.  Others, of which I am one, spend a lot of time doing other things and thinking a LOT about a concept.  A sort of 'what if' kind of premise.  
Early on in this blog series I mentioned a bit about the trauma I'd lived out in childhood, and later, in a difficult and abusive relationship.  Life smiled on me, and I managed to move on, raise kids, have a fulfilling career and do a lot of the things that I loved.  I thought I'd done a really good job of putting all the bad stuff behind me. But really, I'd just pushed it down very deep in my mind, while I found distraction in the things that needed doing. Work. Kids. Life. 
It's interesting to me now that my work started out as a sort of standard Human Resource role, but ended up as well - a coach.  Later I trained formally and that training forced me to look at all the things I'd buried.  And so emotionally, I began to move through them.  
It wasn't until I moved to London that I discovered another leftover from those early traumas that I simply never knew about.  
I'd had several surgeries on my cervical spine that resulted in some issues with my shoulder.  My doctor in England wanted an MRI and CAT scan to determine what exactly was going on. It turned out that the shoulder issue was basic muscle atrophy that physical therapy could correct.  So that was good. 
And then the doctor said something that would change my life. He pointed to the film from the CAT scan and smiled. 
"Your brain injury is healing quite nicely.  How long ago did that happen?" 
I stared at him blankly, sure I'd misunderstood.  Then I laughed. 
"Something funny?" he said, looking puzzled. 
"What brain injury?  Are you sure that is my scan?"   His expression changed. 
He pointed again, and explained that at some point, I'd suffered a traumatic brain injury, and he could tell from the area that looked like a paint spatter that it had been severe, and had happened a long time ago.  I shook my head, tears forming as a slide show of the abuse I'd endured began to play inside my mind. 
"You don't remember?" he asked gently.
"I didn't know," I said, almost in a whisper.  I looked at the scan and then at him. 
" He hit me a lot.  But he never let me go to the doctor." 
After that we talked for an hour, about everything. He suggested more tests and I told him I had years of memory that just wasn't there. That I'd felt sometimes that words would escape me and then weirdly come back. That I had trouble understanding conversations when multiple people spoke at the same time.  I was sixty one then, and I worried a lot about Parkinson's, as my dad had been diagnosed at 70.  What a gift to hear that it was most likely a natural consequence of the healing process in my brain,
I'll admit that it took me a while to wrap my head around this information. And as the doctor had predicted, a lot of those things have improved as the injury continued to heal. I started to tell people close to me who often reacted strangely, so I stopped sharing.  At least I knew what was going on.  
I went back to therapy and found a new understanding of what I'd felt over the years.  Things started to make sense. 
Something else that had helped was completely unrelated to what I'd gone through but would have a big impact on my emotional journey.  I had begun to do the research needed to gather the information about my Italian ancestry, to see if I would qualify for citizenship - if I achieved my dream of moving there. 
As far as documents, I would end up hiring an immigration attorney to do that work which was impossible to do from London.  But what I uncovered along the way was better than gold.  I learned that some of the stories I'd heard all my life about the people ( mostly women) in my family tree were... well - they were wrong.  
I really wanted to see if I could solve those mysteries, but it would turn out that I'd have to wait almost ten years before I would have the time and space to actually try.