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Getting Started By Telling Your Story

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Link to this post 20 Jun 11

There is a story within each and every one of us. The path to healing and recovery starts with telling someone about what happened to you. For so long survivors are taught to remain silent about what happened to them and to keep a secret. Survivors who maintain the silence allow their abuser to hold a sense of control over them. By telling their story, even just briefly, survivors begin to relieve the burden of their secrets and start their own personal healing process.

The LGLPCI Foundation was formed to help heal and support survivors. Please take a moment to tell us your story.

letgoletadmin
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Posts: 14

Link to this post 24 Jul 11

Speaking out. Telling our truth.

In this way, survivors of childhood sexual abuse move themselves forward in their healing. They also help stop the cycle of secrecy where abuse thrives. But it’s a challenge that has no map. The path we choose will reflect our personal experience and needs. It bows to our own timing. It needs to include strong support and personal safety, both physically and emotionally.

I was 41 years old when my first dissociated memory burst into my awareness - just a few seconds of images shattering my world. That was when the first layer of telling my truth challenged me. I had to comprehend this happened to me. With every fiber of my being, I didn’t want it to be true.

In the following months, there were many times I wanted to hide from my truth, even deny it. I would go back to old ways of managing my past as though this would erase what my body, heart, and soul knew. I could read obsessively, work nonstop, make sure the toilet paper roll faced the right direction, and the cereal boxes were closed correctly. And my other one… I could dive into the middle of other people's problems.

Not only are we challenged to tell our truth to ourselves, we have to find the courage to tell the truth to those who share our daily lives as friends and family. This second layer of truth is no easier than the first. It holds many unknowns. It brings our shame from out of the depths of our experience and leaves us uncertain if our relationships can survive.

I wondered if my husband could still love me in the same way. I was concerned about my friends believing me because I had always 'done so well' and 'had so much'. I had to decide if my children were ready to hear about my sexual abuse. And, after facing all these fears, I also worried about being too much of a burden for everyone. Over time, some relationships did quietly close, but others opened up to new joy and deeper intimacy and I have never regretted the changes in my life.

In the third layer of telling our truth, we face another daunting possibility; we might ask ourselves to find a way to tell our abuser(s). Each survivor has to find their unique time, place, and way to feel safe while they tell this truth. For some survivors, this happens in letters never mailed. For others, it is a moment of symbolically telling our truth to a perpetrator who has died. However we choose to tell, even if we choose to tell, there is no right or best way, except finding what serves our healing.

These three layers of telling our truth are personal, intimate, deeply challenging and empowering. And, as our healing process evolves, many survivors find they are able to consider telling their truth in their community. This truth-telling means giving up an anonymity that helps us feel 'normal'. It often requires letting go of the shame of 'betraying our family'. It demands we move out of the isolation where our abuse began.

So our challenge becomes our opportunity. We reclaim our personal power when we tell our truth. We break the pattern of our abuse, we help stop the secrecy that allows childhood sexual abuse to happen, and I believe we might save another child.

JeanneMcElvaney
Fresh User

Posts: 2

Link to this post 29 Mar

I have never written my story down… in fact, I was completely unaware that I had a story to write until last October. (2011)..

How do I start?... My father was in the Navy for 27 years so as a child, I moved around with the family from country to country. I was born in Rhode Island in January of 1961. We immediately moved from Rhode Island to Italy, where I lived for 4 years... Then we went to Japan, where I lived for a few more years, and then back to Rhode Island for me to attend school in the states.

I have very few memories of my childhood but I had always thought that it was because I wasn’t brought up feeling loved by anyone. My parents were pitifully inept at rearing children. They were isolated and disconnected from their families, so we children were raised isolated and disconnected from our family. I had no grandparents, no aunts and uncles, or other family members in my life. They existed; we just never met them or associated with them. So my two sisters and I were isolated before any abuse entered into our lives... we were perfect victims before we were actually victimized.

I didn’t get along with my parents although I couldn’t comprehend why. They were abusive physically and emotionally abusive although I wasn’t cognizant of that as a child, I just felt like I didn’t belong to these people. I still feel that way … even at 51 years of age… I left home when I was 18 and unless I had to, I stayed away from the family as much as possible. I got married at 19 and spent the next 16 years trying to stay married to a woman who was less mature than I was… or so I thought…
That marriage ended and I immediately was into a second marriage with a woman who was stronger… although her strength became a turn off over the years….This marriage which is now on the rocks has lasted 10 years…

I went to Haiti for two weeks after the earthquake in 2009 and came back ...Different… I couldn’t deal with any emotional stress… playing with children who I had to leave behind... Leaving them behind to die... was too much for me to deal with… I couldn’t bear the weight of it… At the same time, I was laid off by Citibank as the financial crisis bloomed... and the unfair burden of financial difficulties came home to rest on our doorstep… My wife had seen me become depressed and withdrawn in the past and this became more acute in the middle of 2009. I went back to Haiti in 2010 hoping that seeing the progress in the country would help reduce the post traumatic stress I was feeling… It didn’t help…. I was slowly sinking further into depression and withdrawing from everyone. Interestingly enough, while I was withdrawing from everyone, I was becoming an emotional vampire. There was an older woman in Haiti … she was about 75 years old… who gave me a hug when I was there the second time… I didn’t want to let her go... I am certain she thought I was crazy as I hung onto to her hug for way too long… I realized that I had to have someone... anyone… to sit and hold onto me…. I started to look for people who needed emotional attachments... I could spy a broken woman in a crowd and could start up a conversation in any environment. I started looking for women who could just sit down on the couch and hold onto me… no sex… just intimacy… I believe I became addicted to the need for intimacy…..

My relationship with my wife started to fail more and more. My isolation and depression supported her drinking habits and those habits became uncontrollable for her. I became intolerant to her problem. I had been going to Al Anon meetings to learn about her drinking … thinking of course that all our problems were her problems… her drinking…. When I returned from Haiti the second time, she was in full swing and I felt betrayed that she would rather spend time with her bottle of vodka in the bathroom than with me… I tried to express my dwindling love and concern to her as I really felt panicked about our relationship… she said I was being too emotional….

I gave up and moved out after the July 4th weekend. I told myself I would find someone who didn’t drink, smoke, and could fulfill my need for intimacy… I left the house and moved into the rectory at my church… which is where I still am 9 months later….

After I moved out, my wife demanded that I go see somebody. She was certain that I was depressed and that I need some psychological help. I couldn’t argue the point. She started seeing someone right away and I was dragging my feet. I found Doctor Ellis on route 70 in Cherry Hill and started seeing him once per week. I landed a new job in North Jersey in September of 2011 and felt good about working again. After about 8 or 10 weeks of seeing Doctor Ellis, he had suggested that I might have some sexual abuse in my past. I said “oh no” I would remember that … and he said no… you need to ask your sisters…. So I did…..

Here is where the door to the twilight zone opened and I fell through….

I have absolutely no recollection of any sexual abuse in the past but now both of my sisters have said that yes there was a history….

We had an older male cousin who babysat us on a regular basis. My younger sister relates six years of rape, my older sister relates stories of getting molested in the stairwells of the house but since she was older, she appears to have been spared the more aggressive aspects of Stevie’s appetites’… Stevie moved into the third floor apartment of our new house when I was about 9. I believe the abuse started before that at the older house, but cannot verify for certain. My older sister was the one who initially placed me in the scene… saying I was helping Stevie rape my younger sister. There is some uncertainty as to what role I took on but certainly I was in the middle of everything. My younger sister says I was raped and tortured, tied up, forced to watch the mutilation and burning alive of cats and dogs. She also states that she would be locked up in a closet for hours not knowing what was happening to me as I was left alone with Stevie in the bedroom. I can only imagine and since I have no recollection, that’s all I have left, is my imagination… unfortunately….

Stevie apparently died in prison in early 1980’s… there is no one to ask about the incidents that took place. My parents are typically unsupportive and as a matter of fact, my mother recently stated… “You know, outside of that little Stevie problem, Sally was a great tenant”... I am left with supposition and conjecture… but it explains why I can’t deal with aggressive people... why I isolate myself … why I have no self esteem… and why I am depressed…

I can no longer afford therapy as my doctor doesn’t take my new insurance... I am left without a house, without a wife, and without resources …alone again

marksirius
Fresh User

Posts: 2