Healing From Child Sexual Abuse. (approx. 5-6 min. read)

It’s been ages since I wrote a blog that I have published; I’ve written lots of them, but for some reason, I’m having trouble believing any of them are read-worthy. I’m not sure why I feel that way…it could be because someone criticized my writing and I took it to heart, but the true reason is that a counselor I trusted, had me open up a can of worms and then pretty much dumped me. And I know that sounds harsh, but that’s how it felt and still feels to me. 

It all started back in April of 2019 when I found a local women’s center and started doing sexual abuse therapy for the first time. I went to see the counselor; we’ll call her Nancy, once every two weeks. I felt I needed the time so that I could absorb and work on what we talked about in between our sessions, and it started off pretty well. The first few months I mostly talked about my parents and what our day-to-day life was like. I didn’t go into the sexual abuse, I stuck to how my mother threatened me to never tell anyone about what was going on in our house. Or how she would beat me on a day-to-day basis. I felt the rest of my abuse would eventually come out, but I’d never shared what truly happened to me while I was growing up. 

After a few sessions, Nancy gave me a book called, “Beginning to Heal,” by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. It’s a revised edition of “The Courage to Heal,” and she told me that if anything struck a chord, I was supposed to allow myself to feel it. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to do that, so I asked Nancy. She suggested that I stand in front of a mirror, look into my eyes, and tell myself that I was just a child, and I needed to say it until I started to believe it. 

When I got to the last chapter in the book, I started to cry, because the last story was similar to mine and the truth of it hit me really hard. I tried to ignore the advice of my counselor and choke it back because it was late at night and I didn’t want to wake my husband, but I finally got up and went into the washroom so I could do what Nancy told me to do. 

At first, it felt dumb and awkward, but I just kept staring at myself and saying, “You were just a child, you didn’t deserve what you got.” Then, after a few minutes, I found myself standing there with tears streaming down my face and finally starting to forgive my inner child for what I had always thought was somehow my fault. 

After I finished reading “Beginning to Heal,” Nancy said they were clearing out their library and asked me if I wanted to read the original; “The Courage to Heal.” She said it might help me to deal better with my sexual abuse but warned me that I needed to be doing the work alongside a counselor or therapist because it was going to get really intense. I started reading it, but not long after, Nancy had some family issues she needed to deal with and said she’d call me in a month or so. I continued reading the book while I waited, but she never called me back. I waited a month and a half and sent her a text and she said she was still dealing with a family crisis, but when we finally spoke on the phone, she said something about my life being so rough because I didn’t believe in God. 

This really upset me because as I’ve mentioned, my parents met in Church and my mother was still a Churchgoer when I was in my teens, and I didn’t trust the Church. I’d spent years (and years) begging God to protect me. I needed someone, anyone, to stop my abusers from using my body as a sexual vessel, as well as a punching bag. Not only that, I would plead him to release me from a locker that became my prison day after day, but no one answered – ever, and my abuse continued. So, Nancy’s comment felt like a betrayal, especially after I’d shared some of my deepest, darkest secrets with her. My knee-jerk reaction was to tell her I didn’t need her help anymore, which backfired, because all she said was, “That’s great! All the best!” Needless to say, I went down the proverbial rabbit hole and there was no one there to throw me the rope I needed so desperately to climb back out. 

Fast forward to today, which is close to a year since that comment, and I’ve finally found a resource that I know will help me out of the rabbit hole I ended up in and that is “The Gatehouse,” in Toronto, Ontario. They offer so many different programs for sexual abuse survivors and the first phase is a 15-week peer support program which I’m currently 5 weeks into. The first week I met the survivors that make up my group, I sat silently crying for most of it, and I say survivors because the facilitators are also survivors. I cried not because I was sad, but because I was overjoyed to be in the same space as other survivors! As I’ve mentioned since I started writing about living with PTSD, I believe that being with other survivors is essential in our healing journey. We don’t have to explain how we’re feeling, or why we’re reluctant to do anything that might trigger us. We never have to make excuses to each other about why we can’t go somewhere or be near a certain someone because we get it. We accept and understand each other for who we are, and that’s something very few people have ever given us. 

Since the first week, our group has discussed: the initial steps, from isolation to belonging, triggers (dissociation, flashbacks to groundings, anger and emotion regulation, and addictions and their relationship to abuse. So far, it’s brought up lots of memories; some of them pretty intense, and next week we’re going to start working on our inner child, but I’m totally okay with everything. Because I finally feel like I have a place where I can sit with the sisters I never had, sharing how difficult it has been for all of us to live our authentic lives…because others didn’t respect our space. I believe that together, survivors can help each other to heal from the tumultuous ride we were dealt as children and really begin living as adults. So, when you can, find a group for other survivors. That’s when you’ll really start to heal. 

Stay safe and stay strong. Thanks for following.

Links and References:

https://thegatehouse.org/