As you read the stories in the following chapters, remember that you are here now because you are strong and capable and a survivor. Your family may not have been there to help you, but you did what it took to get through the experience of your abuse, and now you are ready to heal. You are ready to find and face your truth. You are ready to become visible.
CHAPTER 5
FINDING YOUR TRUTH
Facing the Emotional Aftershocks and the Beginning of Healing
All at once the ghosts come back…
Slip-sliding at a pace unlike any other…
—a twenty-two-year-old incest survivor
Kathleen Hanna, of the punk feminist band Le Tigre, is open about being a sex-abuse survivor. She cautions girls to be careful about whom they disclose their abuse to. Hanna acknowledges that one thing a lot of abuse survivors have in common is that they were not taught how to have good boundaries, and it’s easy to wind up telling someone who isn’t really all that safe. I think she’s right. You want to be cautious about whom you tell. However, she also describes girls telling as the links in the chain that will make the world a better place for everyone. I agree here, too.
The more girls speak out and tell their stories, the more healing there will be and the harder it will be for the culture to keep sexual abuse so invisible.
We are in the beginnings now of a social media blitz with girls and women telling their stories of sexual abuse publicly. But if you decide to speak out on social media, there may come the backlash and the pushback. When you tell a trusted friend or relative in confidence, you get to choose when you talk about it again. And maybe you get a hug and some very thoughtful eye contact. Maybe you open up and end up chatting for hours; maybe you go out for ice cream. These are very tangible responses to hold onto. The point is you choose who and how to tell. With social media, you don’t get to choose when you want to talk or deal with it, and you also don’t necessarily get to choose who reads your story. You could be bombarded with tweets, Instagram, Facebook comments about your experience. Remember, take care of yourself during this time, protect yourself.
Disclosing your story on social media also means you can set social media boundaries. This is part of your healing. You can say, “I am healing and growing, and I do not want to discuss my experience any more on social media.” “Part of being a survivor who is strong is setting boundaries, I do not want any more discussion of my sex abuse.” “I am dealing with this privately now, please respect that.” “Part of my healing is asking for privacy now and respecting that I will let you know when I want comments.” You are not obligated to discuss anything further. Let your public disclosure be a healing experience, not a source of pressure to respond when you are not comfortable.
We are here to guide you through finding the strength to share your sexual-abuse story with a trusted person. We are also here for after you have talked about your sexual abuse. The basic premise of this book is that the best way to heal from sexual abuse is to talk about it, and that the best time to talk is now, while you are still young. Adolescence through your midtwenties can be the time when you are most able to change and grow. This is a time of tremendous transformation, and you can heal the scars of your abuse the more you talk about it—now. Sexual abuse leaves wounds, but wounds heal, and if you can get to them while you’re young, they won’t have time to grow deep roots and cause you lifelong suffering.
If you wait until you are in your late thirties, forties, or fifties, the years you are developing your career and building a family, problems stemming from childhood sexual abuse will almost always have grown those deep roots and be harder to deal with. Sexual abuse can rob women of their self-worth and self-esteem, and such untended wounds put women at greater risk of date rape and abusive marriages. That’s one of the reasons it’s so important to speak out now and start healing.
FINDING OUTLETS FOR YOUR FEELINGS
When I run the track at school, I am in a zone—a zone where there is no abuse and no rape.
—a seventeen-year-old rape survivor
Often, before we can talk about the traumas that have happened to us, we have to find outlets for our feelings. Whether you realize it or not, you probably already have a number of such outlets. Maybe those long runs at the track are helping you get out your anger. Maybe singing those blues songs have been giving you a channel to release some deep pain. Maybe sketching strong women with full bodies in drawing studio has been making your body feel healed. Perhaps working with clay and banging it on the table to get out the air bubbles, you are releasing some deep-seated anger. It could be that Zumba or Soul Cycle class or boxing lesson that leaves you exhausted that is working through some lost energy. That’s part of the genius of the body and mind. We are often self-healing without even realizing it.
Girls find many different ways of expressing their feelings about their sexual abuse. Some girls find writing to be the best way to get it out. I know an eighteen-year-old who filled three journals with drawings and writings about her incest. She said that every time she wrote or drew some of her feelings, she felt herself letting go of pieces of the pain. In our Resource Center, we have listed some zines, blogs, and websites where young incest survivors share their artwork and writing.
Whatever helps you get the feelings out—kickboxing, drawing, jogging, dancing, writing poetry—do it. I’ve heard girls describe how running gives them a visceral feeling of letting go of some of the tension in their rigid bodies. They are literally letting go of the inner shame and pain with every stride. Girls who dance several times a week talk about dancing the pain out of their bodies and souls.
Digging Deep
Drumming is my mantra. I bang out all my anger.
—a nineteen-year-old rape survivor
All of the above assumes, of course, that you have access to your feelings. Sometimes, especially if you are still living at home, it can be too dangerous to let yourself feel. You may still be living with your incestuous father or still go to school with the boys who gang-raped you or attend the church where the priest abused you. Often, when girls are living under the same roof as their abuser, they need to suppress their pain. It’s a survival mechanism you may need until you move out. But once you are ready to acknowledge that you were sexually violated, the healing can begin.
Triggers
It feels like I try to calm the anger that erupts inside like a volcano, as my mind blows like a hurricane.
—a nineteen-year-old incest survivor
Some girls find that memories of their abuse experience come back with certain smells or sounds, when they hear a certain song, or when they are touched in a certain way. These are called “triggers.” One of my clients was molested in the bathtub and was triggered to a memory of the molestation anytime she tried to take a bath. Another client could not stand having her lover whisper to her during intimacy. Her brother used to whisper and cover her mouth when he abused her.
All kinds of experiences can act as triggers—whether you like it or not or expect it or not. It can happen when you’re watching a movie or reading a book and you find yourself identifying with a character who was abused. Or it might happen when you hear a story on social media, or when another girl starts telling you what happened to her and you suddenly realize, “Yes, that happened to me, too. What my brother/uncle/father/family friend did to me was rape. It was incest; it was sexual violation!” “That was not a date gone bad, that was date rape!”
Other girls talk about seasonal triggers. One of my clients recounted how her father would molest her under the changing leaves of a tree in her backyard. When the leaves would change and the brisk wind would brush against her face, she used to remember and feel ill. Another client remembers being gang-raped in the heat of summer. There are certain smells that come up in humidity that would bring her right back to the scene in her mind.
Triggers are not controllable. But, by recognizing what they are and when and why they occur, you can consciously re-map you
r emotions. The girl who felt ill in the fall decided to take long hikes through the woods and mountains with dear friends. It took a while, but she reclaimed the fall and now it is her favorite season. My client who was molested in the bath, for instance, made the choice to take back the experience of bathing. She bought herself bath oils and candles and plays soft, sweet music so she can relax into the soothing waters. It didn’t work all at once, of course, but now she really enjoys a hot bath and no longer associates it with her abuse. The girl who was gang-raped in the summer has taken to jogging and has learned to embrace the heat. These girls refused to let their abusers have power.
The fact is, your abuser tried to map your life for you. But he does not own you, and you have the freedom and the power to overcome and transcend these kinds of associations. You deserve to be happy, to be free of any feelings of shame or guilt or fear. You have the right to a completely satisfying sexual life. You are a righteous young woman. If you can get in touch with these feelings and consciously change the awful associations, you can re-map your life.
The feelings may not come all at once. That’s perfectly normal. If you feel detached from your feelings as you begin to tell your story, so be it. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to connect with these feelings. You will do so when you are ready. Sometimes connecting your heart and your mind would bring more pain than you could bear.
Eventually, feelings will begin to surface—usually some combination of fear, shame, and guilt. Let’s look at these feelings squarely and see if we can begin to break their grip on you.
Fear
No one knows how far I’ve been pushed, and how I hate the skeleton my flesh is walking around with. I carry my fear like a rock in my heart.
—a twenty-year-old rape survivor
Not surprisingly, fear is the most common response to sexual abuse—fear of what’s happening, fear that someone will find out, fear of not knowing when your abuser will attack again, fear that the abuse will never end, fear that you’ll be harmed if you tell, fear that you’re damaged for life. You may even be afraid that abuse is your destiny. Incest, stranger rape, date rape, acquaintance rape, abuse by clergy/coach/mentor—any kind of sexual abuse carries the weight of fear along with it.
Abusers are usually really good at instilling fear. Maybe your cousin told you you’re only worth being molested. Maybe your dad put such fear into you that you’re afraid if you disclose the abuse, everyone in the family will suffer. Maybe he told you that your mother knows and has asked not to talk about it, or that your mother will blame you, or that it will break up the family.
Abusers set just such traps. The truth is, your abuser does not care if he hurts you. If he cared, he wouldn’t abuse you. All he cares about is his fulfillment, his control, his needs. In the case of incest, you may feel love from him at times, and there may be moments when he is actually loving toward you, but his love is self-serving and the trap he lays is often so tightly sealed that you feel there is no way out.
The first step toward overcoming the fear is to recognize that your abuser is responsible not only for the abuse but for the fear that accompanies it. He put it there, not you. Talking about your fear with a therapist or a friend can help you see that the fear was instilled in you and give you some distance from it.
When the abuse is over and your abuser is out of your life, keep reassuring yourself that he hurt you and he is gone, and that no one else will ever hurt you again in that way. You can try making a list of everything that gives you strength in the world. And remember that it’s still all right to be afraid sometimes. Very often I find myself telling girls that it’s fine to check under the bed before they go to sleep; it is fine to sleep with a stuffed animal or their pet; it is fine to check the locks on the door. If that’s what you need to do to convince yourself that no one can get in, that no one can hurt you, do it. It’s perfectly natural to feel fear. Talk about it, define it, label it, and you will work through it.
Guilt
God didn’t love me. It didn’t matter if I prayed before I climbed into my little bed with the Power Rangers sticker or not. I had already spent enough time thinking it was my fault, that if I’d done something, just been cleverer, I could have stopped him.
—a nineteen-year-old incest survivor
Another emotion surrounding sexual abuse is guilt. If you are a survivor of incest, you might feel guilty for not having told anyone, and yet you cannot imagine having told. You might wonder why you didn’t stop it. You might feel guilty about it. If you were date-raped while drunk or stoned, you might feel totally responsible for what happened.
In fact, the guilt can be pretty overwhelming, especially if you got any pleasure from the experience. Some girls’ bodies can’t help but respond to physical stimulation. That’s just the way they’re wired, and it’s perfectly normal. But then they’ll feel racked with guilt and wonder, How could I have enjoyed this? What kind of horrible person am I? Try to remember that you did not enjoy the abuse, your body responded.
Other girls feel something, but it’s not pleasure; it’s sheer pain and terror. And still others will go numb, removing themselves from their bodies so they don’t have to feel anything at all. I even know gynecologists who have reported seeing girls with bruised vaginas who had no memory of forced sex and no pain.
It’s like having an ice cube put down your back. At first you feel the cold, but if more ice cubes are put down your back, you might become immune to the cold—after a while you might not feel it at all—but you still know the ice cubes are cold. Many incest survivors talk about being physically numb. Even some girls who have contracted herpes or STDs that cause physical discomfort say they are practically numb in the genital area.
Just remember: Whether you feel pleasure or pain or nothing at all, you didn’t do this to yourself. It was done to you, usually in a thoroughly calculated way, and there is absolutely nothing to be guilty or ashamed of. Sexual abuse is never a survivor’s fault. Never. Even in cases of date rape, if you lost your voice, couldn’t say “no,” but resisted, the blame rests with your abuser, not with you.
Shame
The shame covers me sometimes. I sit in the cold and refuse to close the window. I’ll go out without a decent coat in the middle of winter. I’ll sit somewhere shivering and not even consider just getting a sweater. I feel like I deserve this cold, this discomfort.
—a twenty-two-year-old incest survivor
All survivors of incest at some point also feel shame. Other types of abuse cause girls to feel shame as well, but shame is embodied in the very nature of incest. Shame differs from guilt in subtle ways. Shame is not only connected with the act itself; it’s the secretiveness of it all that causes shame. After all, if it weren’t something to be ashamed of, it wouldn’t be such a big secret, right?
Shame usually brings on a kind of quiet numbing; it can seem to reach to the core of who you are, and you might even begin to believe that it defines you. You’re sure that people can tell that your father or stepfather or brother is molesting you. You carry around that shame and eventually begin to believe that the shame exists because of you, because you’re keeping this awful secret. You might try not to think about it, but it starts coming out in your dreams. You might walk around thinking that people would judge you, shun you, blame you if they knew.
Although incest is not the only sexual abuse that carries shame, the shame of incest is one of the most difficult emotions to overcome. Time and again it holds back girls from telling. But believe me about this: once you tell a trusted friend, relative, counselor, or therapist, the shame does begin to lift.
If you are a survivor of incest, please understand that your father didn’t start molesting you because of anything you said or did. He did it because he is a sick person with a totally warped idea of right and wrong. He tried to pull you into his demented reality. He undoubtedly planned how to get into a sexual situation with you. It was not your fault. You had no choice. This goes for all oth
er types of sexual abuse, too.
As you begin to face your abuse, you may feel despondent, or angry and depressed, afraid of intimacy, but you don’t need to feel bad or ashamed. Your father/brother/uncle/acquaintance is the one who is sick and set a trap for you. When you begin to shed some of the shame, you begin to shed some of your sense of responsibility, and vice versa, and that’s vital for healing.
There is shame in all abuse. But the shame belongs to the act, not to you. It’s so important to remember that someone committed an act of violence against you and you could not stop it. It can be difficult to see this in relation to yourself. But think about other girls who are molested. Isn’t it easy to see that it wasn’t their fault? Wouldn’t you tell them not to be ashamed? Do the same for yourself.
OTHER AFTERSHOCKS: SEX AFTER ABUSE
My lover says, “It’s awfully crowded in here.” That’s because I carry my father with me.
—a twenty-year-old incest survivor
Many sexually abused girls go on to have very complicated feelings about sex. Some girls report being promiscuous because this is their drive, to keep having meaningless sex because that’s all they feel they are good for. They feel worthless, and so they go off with guy after guy and let themselves be used for sex and feel virtually nothing. But in fact these girls are trying to gain power through these sexual liaisons. They are trying to overcome the feeling of powerlessness instilled by the sex abuse and “prove” that they can choose whom they have sex with.
Invisible Girls Page 7