When the cyclone finishes with Dorothy, it leaves her disheveled and disoriented. Covered with the dust of the old house, Dorothy makes her way to the front door. She grabs the door knob and wonders what she will find on the other side. Will her family be alright? Will there be anything left of the homestead? What about the farmhands?
She slowly opens the door to discover she’s not in Kansas anymore. The cyclone has moved her from the brown, dusty sepia tones of Kansas to the strange and confusing colors of an unfamiliar place. Dorothy stands there on the threshold between two worlds; the world behind her and the world ahead of her.
Verbalizing your past sexual abuse can feel like getting caught up in a cyclone. It’s a dizzying and disorienting experience that can leave you feeling off balance and nauseous.
After you shake off the dust and regain your balance, you wonder if anything will be the same. You realize you have opened the door to to something. You now stand at the threshold between two worlds; one that is dilapidated but familiar, and one that is promising but uncomfortable.
You feel you need to choose between staying in the old run-down house or venturing out into a strange new world, but you really don’t have a choice. The genie’s out of the bottle. The story’s been told and you can’t un-tell it. You know you can’t go back to the way things were. You’ve already crossed a threshold. Now your only viable option is to move forward.
The journey is about to begin.