The Fractures in Rainbows (Intro/Opening Blog)

September 22 2023 

Well, here is where I finally start writing again. I had once been a prolific blogger and vlogger, and in 2014 I even wrote a book...but for years now I've been suffering with writers' block which has been due to layers of complex trauma along with profound physical pain and fatigue due to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It's a very challenging and debilitating yet mostly invisible chronic health condition that's frustratingly - and heartbreakingly - held me back from reaching my dreams and living as I truly desire to. Instead, I have been cautiously sticking to my safe spot on my personal Facebook page, sharing mostly the more positive bits of my life with a smaller number of friends - my closer circle. Even then, I have to admit, I haven't been entirely forthright, though it's not as if I've been untruthful either. I just don't like to show vulnerability. I've been afraid to step back out, to find and use my voice again, especially as it pertains to where I'm at now at and why. Thanks to those layers of scars, especially the more recent ones from having been bullied and trolled when I was ill and at my most vulnerable, I've been reluctant to open up about how much I've really been suffering and about the true origins of my story. 

In spite of my physical and internally emotional suffering I tend to make a perpetual effort to do what I like to call 'steal joys' on a daily basis. To an extent, this is not a bad thing, and stealing joy is important for anyone entrapped in a state of chronic suffering, especially as it relates to chronic pain, illness and residual mental health struggles. Just as long as folks know that there's a difference between the goal to periodically steal joys for oneself as opposed to the social pressure to be toxic positive. I'm always looking for little ways to momentarily divert from the pain and grief that eats at me inside - and it's important to keep doing that to an extent. I try to celebrate small achievements; dressing up for the day, cooking a nice meal, spending time with my close friends - my 'chosen' family - and with my teen sons and at times my husband whom I am separated from but still love as a best friend. 

When it comes down to it, though, I remain feeling repressed, oppressed and frustrated that I can't express myself and reach my dreams in the ways I'd always hoped I would from the time I was young. I'd dreamt of being a significant music artist, out there performing and sharing, though due to the overlaps of being an autistic empath with complex PTSD while battling physical illness I have been kept from walking down that path as I'd originally envisioned. Instead, I am now faced with the need to make a choice to transform that original dream into something more realistically doable for me as it stands but just as, if not more, meaningful and impactful. 

I've been stuck at the crossroads for a while now, in the throes of trying to manage this profound chronic illness with limited resources, wondering where to go from here and how I will actually achieve that. I've been looking for my rainbow following a storm. I'd describe that storm as the one I was caught in for years on end whilst trying to the get the validation I needed so that I could access the resources I needed. At least the ones the were available to me. I eventually got through that and won that battle - but it was a battle that was hard-won and now I am scarred and burnt out from it. I have felt compelled to write about this experience though that's also incredibly hard to do because it can bring up trauma as well as leave me vulnerable to potential criticism and attack on sensitive matters. 

Nevertheless, I can't let those aversions and fears hold me back any longer. I feel that I can share my story in a way that will be less harmful all around and instead be a learning and relatable experience for not only others but for myself. I also believe that I can prepare myself for potential naysaying and attempts to bully, by practicing rising above that as well as standing in my truth and with the facts, regardless. There's simply no need to let others who don't know me, my story and the facts - especially when they're intentionally being malevolent and purposely want to make me feel bad and to question my worth - gaslight me anymore.

My story is one that needs to be told in one way or another. I don't want others to go through what I had to in order to simply be accepted for who they are and where they're at, and why. In order to help with the effort towards more thoughtful prevention I feel compelled to open up in a reflective manner about my experiences and traumas, what I learned and why, and how that shaped me going forward. At 38 years old I am far from the person I was as a teen and young adult, but not in a bad way. The diamond in the rough that I was has shaped into a smooth although fractured crystal. 

Amid my battles I learned a lot, and not from books, but from life. A lot of that learning came as an initial shock to me and was painful to contend with. Before that I was naive. I really thought people would just accept and believe me when I expressed myself as me and when I'd describe what was going on for me in hopes to actualize, connect and get my needs met. That's not how it went though. Instead I was met with a lot of refusal to listen, denial, harsh criticism and gaslighting. Throughout the battles I had a small handful of supporters, those who knew me well enough to know the truth. I was and still am so grateful for that because it reinforced the light in me which kept me going in the dark. However, then there were all the judge-ers, and naysayers, and even the flat out haters and heretics. They were people who were averted to listening and to observing with an open, objective thinking mind, and to accepting me for me... and that hurt. They were people who were threatened by my light, my hopefulness, my tenacity, my divergence and also my human mistakes which I earnestly hoped to learn from. They were people who judged me based on a narrow scope of knowledge, life experience and thus with an often vicious form of subjectivity. 

At times I was even flat out hated and vilified - and that stings hard when you're a surviving daughter of narcissistic parenting, a broken home, and subsequently attracted further narcissistic relationships and experiences. The trauma of being berated, vilified and gaslit is already there and therefore those old scars got ripped off and even bigger scars were made from them. I became marred and wilted. However, in retrospect, I can now understand where these things really came from and this'll help me clarify throughout all the matters I intend to bring up.

Having to go through being disbelieved, disrespected and flat out neglected and abused by underfunded and resource-limited and thus narrow thinking medical and social systems - when I'd come from a painful background that already caused me scars - was indeed a living nightmare. Especially when it came to the medical system. It was the second warzone after having emerged from a warzone before and being battle-scarred as it was. Ironically it's the last thing a survivor needs to be put through when what they're seeking is healing and peace. Only a small number of the people and systems I had to deal with and interact with, in attempts to adequately assert my truth, be validated and get connected were trauma informed and astute. However most were, instead, further harmful and trauma inducing....and that was a real shame. I now feel compelled to speak out so that this can change for the scores of others like me out there who don't deserve to go through such things.

In my speaking out, however, I am reaching for the courage to be more forthright about who I am, my real story and various imperfections, where I'm at now and why. Only then will it make the most sense. Can I do it? I have to believe that I can. I have to believe it because it's this belief that needs to push me onto a path and away from these crossroads.

There is a path where all of my dreams, goals, and hopes can meet and be one so that I can finally walk down a path that I feel is my destined mission in life. It's a path where I bring my experiences via my preferred forms of expression, writing, poetry, speaking and music, to others in order to advocate, educate and of course resonate. It has to be my road, led by a new rainbow refracted from these scars as I let the light beam through them rather than hide them in shame. The rainbows I originally dreamt of and chased are broken, but I am hoping that at the end of the storm I can transcend my broken soul into a new rainbow, and these fractures can be rainbows again.

My soul is like a fractured crystal. I am, at the core, a good earnest and empathetic person who at one point was a naive idealist but has since learned better. This crystal has been fractured through and through from repeated heartbreaks which I'd never expected but endured throughout my life. I need to let the light in rather than smiling and presenting little 'steal joys' rather superficially but while covering up my scars with a dark, opaque curtain. It's time to come out from behind that. It's time to let light shine through. When light refracts through a fractured crystal a rainbow will appear on the adjacent wall. 

At this point and time in my life my health condition affects me profoundly, and I am painfully aware that my lifespan will likely be shortened and it's most likely that I will pass away prematurely. I can't hold myself back anymore with shame and fear of bullies, haters, toxic family and energy vampire fixaters. My new shield can't be a dark curtain, it has to be beams that repel. It's time to let the light through me and use that to repel the bad and the fear while also propelling me forward, expressing my true colours. As I walk forward, on this new and final path, with my boundaries up in a non fearful but instead positivity-focused and confident way, the fractures can become rainbows again. 

The colours don't have to be nitty gritty and overly exposing in a way that incites more distress and tension as opposed to helpfulness, nor do they have to be bright and only-positive without balancing solemn truths and aspects to my story and it's subsequent lessons and reflections. They can just be true. A rainbow of true colours is the path that I must walk as I use my voice to propel me forward and thus reach ears and minds open enough to receive and themselves reflect. 

My name is Scarlit-Rose Ashcraft, and I specifically chose this name because of it's meaning to me. I was born Natalie Marie Rose Whitson and later married into Natalie Guedes, but I chose my middle name to go by as Natalie is associated with too much bullying, familial trauma and hurt. I was na,ed after Natalie Wood and though I love her, for me, I had to get away with that first name. Before Rose I chose Scarlit, which is from the two words Scar Lit, and this comes from song that I wrote when I was feeling my darkest and weakest amid my painful battle against the medical systems' horrible accusations and subsequent neglect of my care which, in the end, had me depleted to a point of being only 88 ibs, with an ash grey and yellow complexion, and even with dying teeth. Back then I badly needed to get up and remember myself and my truth so I could heal from that because I couldn't survive being there much longer. It began with that song which then propelled a music album of the same theme. That album is called Not Under the Machine, and it was inspired by my fight to overcome a systemic attempt to throw me under the bus when I was seeking rightful validation as a neurodivergent woman and trauma survivor with a rare and complex medical condition. I was withered down from being so gas lit, devalued and neglected, although the last fight and light left in me is what won that battle regardless. I knew that if I didn't I could lose my life, and I didn't want to die. It was not my time to die.

I then put all my souls' love, harmony and creativity into the celebratory music album that I created in the wake of healing from that. I presented it with the stage name Dreamer Queen, which was both meant to describe how I was owning dream that'd began in childhood but was seemingly lost amid multiple barriers which prevented me from opportunity as well as the 'Dreamer' (rather than 'Dream') being a snide description of how it had been a difficult to obtain, idealistic kind of dream - and that I was a 'Dreamer' for having it - after all. I am proud of how the debut Dreamer Queen album turned out. I've felt invigorated and further inspired to hear others' positive feedback about the music on that album; they felt as though it was not only catchy melodically but was relatable and inspiring. I hope the songs on Not Under the Machine reach more people and part of my mission is to keep sharing and promoting it, while also looking to make new Dreamer Queen music, as well as writing and speaking on topics related to social, health and mental health matters that I've been through and learned about on my journey. 

Some of the opening lyrics to the song Scar Lit were "and I feel gold, in all my tears and bruises and bones - 'cause I'm scar lit." What I have to say hailed from my personal sufferings will be valuable to others and to a greater cause. It is worthy, my story is worthy, and I have to - though with humility too - remember that I am worthy. I am scar lit, and I rose from the ashes that I am now hoping to and intending to craft from after having been burned. My fractured crystal soul needs to refract rainbows like writings on the wall ahead on this last path to home. I may have won several key battles in my journey but I haven't yet won the war. However, I've become a warrior and I feel like this path to home is how I win the war that life has put before me - so that I can come to my place of peace. Like I said in my song Self Medication, I have to find my 'way to glory (because) I have a story.

When I come to this place of peace, I believe that I will know and at that point it may no longer be worth it to keep battling the pain and challenging multiple ailments of EDS. Then, I can let go.

Hopefully, my story remain and live long past the time that I do, and it'll continue to reach others who will either learn from it or feel inspired and compelled to share their own valuable stories, experiences and reflections. This is the kind of chain reaction that needs to happen regarding the matters I intend to speak about - neurodiversity, ableism related issues like invisible disability discrimination and ignorance, familial abuse. poverty and socioeconomic hardship, unequal opportunity and trauma awareness - so that much needed change in these areas can happen with the hope that this will help contribute to building a better, more loving, more constructive, more compassionate society and social climate than the one we are currently faced with. 

So hi, I'm Scarlit-Rose Ashcraft - though most often nicknamed Rosie - and I'm finding the courage to rise above pain and fear to be who I am with the name I self-chose to be and to be freed with... and may the fractures in rainbows emit from a scar lit me.  

Please read the next blog for the beginning of my path, of sharing with you.