written purpose troy white

story by | patricia carlson

This was it. He had written what he needed to write. As Troy White stared at his computer screen, he second-guessed himself.

Was this the right time?

What would people think?

Making this Facebook post meant everyone would know; did he want that?

Maybe he should wait…NO!

This was right. This was the time. This was all about helping others, not just himself. He took a deep breath… clicked post… one step closer to his purpose.

Troy White remembers a lot about his childhood. He remembers consciously thinking he would never forget what it is like to be a child; to see the world through a child’s eyes. Children are innocent, literal, curious, and loving. Even as a young boy there was something guiding Troy to his future…regardless of the domestic violence he experienced.

“When dad was coming home, that was a terrible time,” says Troy. “I always wondered, ‘What dad am I going to get?’”

His father could be gentle, caring and kind, but when fueled with alcohol he became explosively violent.

“He wasn’t an everyday drunk,” explains Troy’s mom, Elaine. “But he couldn’t stop after one drink and he became so violent. He was so angry about everything that had happened in his life. We felt in danger all of the time.”

Elaine knew, and was devastated by, the emotional turmoil she and her children were experiencing. But like many battered women, she lived in fear that if she reported her husband’s abuse that he would return darker, angrier, and more violent.

For years Troy’s family lived in fear. “He was supposed to be the family protector but we needed protection from him,” says Troy. He recalls being choked, verbally demeaned, beaten, and threatened. He remembers a night his dad held a gun to his mom’s head as Troy and his sister held each other crying in a bedroom, waiting to hear the sound that would change their lives. Terrifying moments no child should experience.

Elaine knew she and her children couldn’t live like this and eventually she found the courage to leave. She sought and was granted a divorce, but Troy’s dad was awarded weekend visitations. “That’s when things got worse, to be honest with you,” says Troy. “We, as children, became a tool. The one sure way to hurt my mother was to hurt us. I’d be pulled from my bed in the middle of the night because he would call and say he was going to come and kill us. That was normal for us.”

Over the years, the abuse lessened, but the damage had been done.

Lost Identity

As Troy entered his teenage years, he was able to hide the struggles of his young life with an outgoing personality, friendly smile, and sense of humor. But internally he was plagued by self-hatred, anxiety, and depression, although he wasn’t really able to identify what any of those things were and why he was feeling them. Like many victims of domestic violence, he had compartmentalized and buried those memories, hoping to erase them from his psyche.

“He’s experienced inconceivable violence as a child and young man. He’s endured pain that no one should ever know,” says Stephanie Gerhardt, Training Coordinator for CAWS North Dakota [formerly known as the North Dakota Council on Abused Women’s Services and Coalition Against Sexual Assault in North Dakota], who is familiar with Troy’s story. “Initially my heart hurt for him and I had to stifle my tears. His childhood was essentially stolen from him and his circumstances taught him how to survive, not how to live.”

Because of their matching looks and similar laugh, Troy could never truly escape his connection to his dad. Every time he looked in the mirror Troy could see his father and he hated it.

“I was really afraid of me being that person,” he says. “When someone would say, ‘You’re just like your dad,’ I was terrified of becoming that person.”

That negative self-image played out through Troy’s early relationships. He found himself dating women who needed to be rescued. Even if they didn’t love him, they needed him and he found self-worth in that. Until he met Kristi.

Facing The Future

“He came up to me at a party and was talking on the phone,” Kristi recalls with a smile. “He asked me if I could write something down for him and I said yes. Then he said, ‘Your phone number.’”

At 16 years old, Kristi was immediately smitten with Troy’s charm and sense of humor but they didn’t begin to seriously date until five years later in 1994. In 1996 they got married and settled in Fargo.

While Troy had shared some of his past with Kristi, she had no idea the depth of the abuse her husband had experienced. He wasn’t yet ready to share that secret. But as the years passed and the subject of children surfaced, Kristi suspected something was wrong.

“We both wanted children and we both had even talked about having just one,” she says. “But when it came time, he was like, ‘I’m not sure if I’m ready.‘ and I asked him why and he said he was basically scared of being a bad dad. He didn’t know how to put the abuse into words at that time.”

“I was deathly afraid of being a father,” he says, as tears fill his eyes. “But then I remembered being eight years old and making the determination that this is the kind of dad I want to be. I never wanted to forget what it’s like to be a child. I wanted to remember how they think. I wanted to make sure to give my children a voice and respect.”

Despite Troy’s hesitations and limited explanations, Kristi never wavered in her belief that her husband would make a remarkable dad. She saw compassion and love in him. She saw how he strived to understand people, in his personal and professional lives.

“I think it was something inside him that was insightful,” explains Kristi. “He’s got a moral compass and a feeling of justice and how to treat people. He decided at a young age that he wasn’t going to treat people the way his father did. His mother was certainly a good influence on him, too.”

Elaine humbly shuns any credit, saying Troy’s introspective spirit, considering the environment he grew up in, is a testament to his inner strength and drive to thrive. “I was trying to be a mother and father,” she says. “I never felt that I failed him as a mom, but I did feel I failed him as a dad. Most of the credit goes to Troy. He became his own role model. He kept in touch with what he wished it would’ve been like growing up. He was a good father for himself.” controlling the silence

Troy finally got his chance at fatherhood in 2004 when he and Kristi welcomed their twin daughters, Avery Grace and Victoria Faith. It was a joyful time—the girls were healthy and happy, the couple had just moved into a historic home in Barnesville, Troy had successfully launched an advertising business, and his mother and stepfather had moved in down the road—but Troy’s inner demons were returning to the surface. His anxiety was ever present.

“Living with anxiety is exhausting,” explains Troy. “You are in this constant state of fight or flight. You know you shouldn’t feel that way, but you can’t stop it. You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. It is truly exhausting.”

The abuse that Troy had buried for so long started bubbling to the surface. “We forget how immediate

My Beautiful Son

written by: troy white

As you lay sleeping, I lean down to kiss your cheek and taste your salty tear I gently touch your soft hair and you sigh deeply, releasing this day’s fear My beautiful son

For the first time I see you with my heart and I weep I know what your future brings and the pain your heart will feel I have lived the horror your eyes will see Don’t worry son, you will survive

When you need me the most, I will abandon you I will tell you I hate you, and mean every word I will be demanding of you I will test and drive you to exhaustion to prove yourself to me, but I am impossible to please The stronger you get, the weaker I will say you are The more encouragement you need the more I will make you doubt yourself The brighter the light that shines on you, the darker the shadow I will cast I am ashamed at how I will treat you

But from this day forward, I will love you with all my heart I will help you through to the other side until we meet face to face I am not your father from heaven or this earth I am the man you will someday be, who has come back to tell you you need not be afraid You will not be alone This time, I will be with you the entire way and traumatic things can be for kids,” he says simply. Now he was ready to face his past.

He visited counselors. He tried medications. But nothing was working. “I knew what I should feel and wanted to feel,” he says. “I was trying to make it happen but my body wasn’t listening.”

A fateful moment in a waiting room provided the spark, the guiding light, he needed. He read a pamphlet about finding your purpose in life based on the best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life. Troy took its premise to heart and started reexamining what he was truly supposed to do with his life. He decided to simplify. He sold his business. Spent more time with his girls. And faced his past head on through hypnotherapy sessions. “The whole premise is that you do this on a subconscious level,” explains Troy.

Using imagery, Troy’s hypnotherapist helped him to re-visit his past. She urged him to remember a time when he didn’t feel anxiety. He latched onto a memory of his mother tucking him in and singing a bedtime song. When she asked how he felt in that memory he said, “Safe.” “That was a breakthrough for me,” he says with tears in his eyes at the memory. “There was an awakening and my purpose started coming out and what I was supposed to do with it.”

Healing Words

Troy began to write. The secrets poured out of him, and with each word he typed another demon disappeared. “It hit me so hard,” he says. Those writings began to free him from the mental and physical torment he’d felt long after the abuse ended.

Writing offered him a newfound clarity about his past. He was taught to be silent about the abuse. Talking about such things would be shameful. But he was starting to see that being silent was wrong. He had pages of memories and insights. He wanted to reach out and help others who were struggling with an abusive history or mental illness. Troy believed he had found his calling.

“I believe in a higher power. I believe that there are things that are beyond you and beyond your control,” he states. “There are little clues that life gives you that you have to listen to.”

Troy began embracing the clues around him and found himself on the path to understanding and forgiveness—of himself and his father.

“Instead of poor me, I began thinking, ‘Why was I given this?’” he says. “If you don’t look for that, then you won’t know to go there. This all makes sense now. I found my purpose. These experiences were given to me because I have the personality for them. I’m supposed to do something with them. I can help other people.”

Troy decided to create a website and share his experience, writings, and provide a community for those needing to heal like him. But would his family and friends support his desire, his need, really, to share the secrets they’d kept for so long?

Yes, says Elaine, because it freed them, too.

“We had to be silent for so long,” she says quietly, pausing to let some tears fall. “And it needed to be said. It was a release for him and me and his sister.”

Although Elaine was a little apprehensive—would the website spark another cycle of violence in Troy’s father who had long been estranged from the family? She gave her blessing because she saw the purity behind Troy’s request to use his story to help other victims. “People who are abused feel lost, alone, helpless, hopeless,” she says. “If he could spare even one person from that pain then what we all went through was not in vain.”

Troy’s writings also allowed him to finally and fully disclose his story to his wife. Kristi had always known there was more behind Troy’s hesitations about fatherhood and his unwavering need to remain strong in the face of adversity, but even she wasn’t prepared to see the mental picture of her husband as a scared little boy clinging to the hope that one day all the torment would end.

“The first time I read one or two of his writings, I cried,” she says. “You know he went through some stuff but you have no idea how bad it was and how it affected him. It made me hurt, too.”

The night he was to launch his website, www.deepscythe.com, Troy sat frozen in front of his computer as he prepared to announce the launch on Facebook. With one click, the world would know his story. His family’s story. He would no longer privately carry the secret and shame. “Anybody who thinks it takes strength to be silent has never done anything like this before,” he says. “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”

The response was overwhelming, says Troy. Within hours, people he’d known his whole life admitted they, too, had suffered abuse or struggled with mental illness. They never talked about it either - until reaching out to Troy because he reached out first.

“Everybody’s got a story,” says Troy. “I don’t think mine is the worst. It’s not the best. It’s just unique that I’m willing to share it. I’m not always sure that that’s the right thing to do but that’s what I feel I have to do.”

A Voice

As word of Troy’s website spread, domestic abuse advocacy groups in North Dakota and Minnesota began to take notice of the brave man with a story to tell. They invited Troy to share his path of victimization, survival and, ultimately, thriving. Seeing the opportunity to help even more people, Troy began sharing his story out loud. He was giving a voice to the voiceless.

“It takes great courage to speak out publicly about an issue that has been shrouded in silence and that has caused so much personal pain,” says Kathy M. Smith, Program Services Support Coordinator at the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center in Fargo. “The social code or norm around privacy and silence in relation to domestic and sexual violence has served to hide the true nature and extent of the problem. The tendency of others to blame victims of domestic and sexual violence for the problem also serves to keep them silent. When Troy speaks publicly about these issues he is taking risks and allowing himself to be vulnerable.”

Last year Troy was one of the featured speakers at the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center’s Summit to Prevent Domestic and Sexual Violence. His writings have appeared in Authentic Voices, a collection of creative writings by North Dakota authors who are survivors of childhood abuse and sexual assault. This year Kathy recommended Troy as a presenter at CAWS North Dakota where he connected with Stephanie, who hopes that Troy will help her work herself out of a job.

“I think he knows that when he speaks he’s surrounded by people who truly care and want to see changes made to end the cycle of violence, which might make it easier for him,” says Stephanie. “I’ve seen a transformation in Troy each time he shares his story. He becomes stronger, gains confidence. I think in a sense that it provides him with a little more closure.”

Forgiving

Troy, now the Executive Director at Bonanzaville in West Fargo [something he is very passionate about], continues to help others through his writings and speaking engagements. Finding closure in his own situation is also important to Troy these days because his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer a year ago. When Troy and Kristi learned of his father’s diagnosis, they asked their daughters if they wanted to meet their grandfather before he passed and without hesitation they said yes.

“That wasn’t what I wanted to hear,” Troy admits, but he gave in to his daughters’ requests. This was the beginning of the end to the decade-long estrangement from his father.

Seeing his dad again, shriveled from cancer and yearning for repentance, reaffirmed Troy’s decision to reconnect with his dad.

“It was shocking,” he says. “He was this gigantic force in my life. A giant, powerful man. But now he was frail and humbled and our conversations were great. He hugged me and said, ‘I love you son.’ It’s the kind of relationship I never thought I’d have with him.”

During their conversations Troy gained a deeper understanding of his father and the demons he fought. While it doesn’t abdicate his father of the abuse, it may explain why he tried to dilute his anger with alcohol.

“Both of his parents suffered from alcoholism and he was an outsider from the rest of his siblings,” says Troy. “He had to fend for himself and suffered silently for years with depression and anxiety just like I did. I’m not making excuses or feeling sorry for him but I do realize that I have more at my disposal and knowledge and information than he did. I don’t condone, but I understand.”

In a recent conversation with his father, Troy discussed his battle with anxiety and depression. His father told him that because of his terminal illness, his doctors put him on an anti-depressant. “I didn’t know you could feel like this” He confided in Troy. “I wish I had been on this 40 years ago. Our lives would have been much different.”

Troy also believes in the power of sharing his story and doesn’t plan to stop because his father is a changed man. He wants to be a catalyst for change. He wants to help others break the cycles of abuse that silently and shamefully run rampant through families.

“If I don’t share my story, my father’s actions are just a series of unfortunate incidences. By sharing my past, his actions now have the power to do something positive.”

Over 20,000 people have visited Troy’s website in its two years of existence. Some have emailed him regarding the influence he has been on their lives. Others visit quietly.

Troy has spoken at nearly a dozen conferences, reaching thousands of people. Some have approached him and expressed the importance of his words on them. Others sit quietly, listening intently with tear-filled eyes.

Troy knows he isn’t supposed to be quiet any longer.

“Why was I given this?” Troy reflects. “I believe God gave me this experience because I could handle it and do something good with it. I don’t look at it as a curse. It’s a gift.”

It’s his purpose.

Follow Troy and view other writings at: www.deepscythe.com www.facebook.com/dpscythe

Do you need help?

Rape and Abuse Crisis Center

701.293.7273 or 800.344.7273 www.raccfm.com

YWCA Emergency Shelter

701.232.3449 www.ywcacassclay.org

Prevent Child Abuse North Dakota www.stopchildabusend.com