Finding Bravery

The gurus that speak on sexual abuse would say that the first step toward healing begins in reflection and acknowledgement. However, I say the first step is finding the bravery to speak up. Even though acceptance and acknowledgement to one’s self is important as denial is a symptom of trauma due to the loss and grief process. The loss being one of independence, self-assuredness, freedom from fear. One can reflect and acknowledge what happened to them, but if they are not able to at least speak to someone about it, then, in my opinion, they are still sitting in the shame, guilt, and secrecy of the event or events.

There may be a myriad of reasons a person decides to keep their abuse to themselves. Often the mentality of the Baby Boomer / Generation X era is that we don’t air our problems publicly. We also do not acknowledge them out loud. The message thus far has always been to respect your elders, focus on what you have been provided, and resourcefully pull yourself up out of the muck and trudge on, young soldier.

There is also the fear of social scrutiny. Will the boys in high school discard me as damaged goods? Will my mother think me a harlot? Will my friends think I am being dramatic and write me off? Will the abuser deny it, and will anyone believe me? Will the abuse be downplayed, and will I be asked to just hush up, find a corner to draw in, and go about my business? Will my abuser get to live a normal life hiding others away in closets and will I be forced to keep his secret under this misogynistic society?

Women are to blame. If they weren’t so provocative. Women are to blame. They make something out of nothing. Women are to blame. They just cannot accept that men are built this way. On and on the implication that women bring abuse on to themselves arising from sexual status, behavior, just being woman.

Fast forward twenty-seven years later, married, just birthed my third child. My husband at the time was talking to other women. I found out. Before he knew about my awareness, he tried to be intimate. I rolled over and guarded my body, saying, “I don’t think I am up for anything tonight.” He rolled away from me out of frustration, and angrily said into the dark abyss surrounding us, with a sliver of moonlight seeping in from the broken blinds at the window, “I thought that’s what wives were for, to have sex with their husbands.”

I cried. For me. For my inner child. For all the women out there who actually believed that was true.

I realized I was reliving the days in the closet. I was allowing myself to continue to be objectified. He later denied saying it. I knew at that moment, I needed to acknowledge that I had been abused. If I was going to save myself from this cyclic functioning in my romantic relationships, I had to decide I wanted to heal.

I didn’t speak up in the respectful, confident manner in which I desired. Instead, it was a dreary afternoon. I was driving back to my parents’ residence, my Mom in the passenger seat. Up to this point, when I was thirty years old, my mother and I still had a rather fractured relationship full of judgment, patronizing, shaming, anger, and resentment.

We did it to each other.

On this particular day, we were talking about my oldest daughter’s request to have her name changed to match the rest of her primary family’s surname. She had been born out of wedlock, a story for a later telling. Once I had more children, I was married, and her younger half-sister and half-brother along with her step-brother all shared the same name as my then-husband and I . . .

She felt like she didn’t belong.

“I understand her father is involved and it may hurt him, but she deserves to have a voice in this,” I remember stating to my mother, indignant, at the time.

“I just think you’re being very selfish, that’s all,” she retorted.

Selfish? . . . Selfish?!? Why is this always turned around on me? How is my daughter’s request somehow a self-righteous, selfish position on my part? Our conversations typically ended this way. I wasn’t allowed an opinion on parenting, because I was inherently making every issue about me. But, I wasn’t.

“BAM!” the trigger left the chamber as soon as the word had smacked the air.

Selfish.

“You know what? Maybe if you were one of the best mothers in the world, you would have the right to judge me, but, unfortunately, you were not!” I yelled it so that the entire mid-section of the car felt quiet, thick, and suffocating after the words escaped my mouth. I couldn’t take it back. I had to explain. I didn’t want to, but now was as best a time as any.

“What on earth are you talking about?” My mother rolled her eyes, dismissing my then-perceived dramatic feelings.

“I am talking about being sexually molested by my uncle, raped later, physically abused by your ex-husband, abandoned with grandma when you went to have a baby, all the criticism growing up, all the shame. . . .” Tears were rolling down my face.

My mother looked at me, and for the first time, I thought she finally saw me. I thought somehow I had gotten through the barrier that prevented us from closeness, vulnerability, and kindness. But, she couldn’t let herself live in the vulnerability, see me as a hurt child. To do so would mean she had let me down, and after everything she had provided, done for me . . . no, I was just going to have to understand that we are not weak, and we are not victims, and we take care of ourselves.

Tears welled up in her eyes. I expected one small moment of empathy, embrace, engagement. “Well, you know, I was abused too,” she stated, and looked away, “we learn to survive on our own.”

My heart sank. There was no apology. There was no acknowledgement. No regret. No embrace.

At that time of my life, I was not at a place where I was able to see my mother as a victim too. I could not see her as someone who was joining in with bravery. I didn’t realize that this may be the first time she was finding a voice about her abuse. I didn’t see the pain and disappointment and shame she placed on herself due to these confessions.

Later, I would know, she never wanted those things for me, but out of even more grave circumstances for all of us had she not made the decisions she did, these terrible events were a misfortune that she hoped deeply would never happen, but had allowed because it was a lesser evil than the one awaiting us had we stayed in that place. Later, she would tell me she realized the abusers she returned us to in an effort to find the resources to get away were the ones that hurt her. Later, she would say that she told herself they wouldn’t dare touch her children so that she could justify taking us back while she worked hard to build a life apart from her own mother and siblings. Later, she would tell me that in order to find a way out, she took the risk that we would stay protected . . . but, we weren’t. And my admitting my abuse was the fear that powered all the misunderstandings between us, and all the blame, and all the anger.

Unfortunately, in that moment, I needed a parent who put their needs aside to really face what had been allowed to happen to me. I didn’t know, but would know later, that she wasn’t able to be this in that moment. Later, I would know, but now, it felt impossible. Even if she hadn’t intended for any of it, it was still a look in the mirror. The mirror moment in creative writing is a place of no return, but the protagonist must go through all the trials and redemptions to get them to a place of healing and overcoming. We were at the pinnacle of realization, and it was hard.

At that moment, I needed her to be the one to protect me, but she was hurt and joining in my pain. She was shocked, sad, terrified, confused . . . among many other emotions of which I couldn’t empathize with because I needed her to be whole, regulated, sound, grounded, understanding, and sympathetic.

This is what gets in the way of generational healing from abuse. What I needed and what could be were at odds with each other. I needed what my Mother couldn’t give at that moment. So, after a large angry physical battle between us, I chose to cut her off at that time of my life. We both needed to find our way through the realizations, admissions, reconciliations with self, and others. To do it together though would have been mired in blame and accusation, hurt, and anger.

That was one of the hardest years of my life, and over the next seven-year cycle I had started in this generational shift and healing journey, it wouldn’t be the last one. But, finding the bravery was the step toward choosing a path toward forgiveness and understanding. Today, we aren’t perfect, but we are forgiving, and although there were cutoffs that were necessary for temporary deep self-compassion and healing to take place, they were so necessary. Taking my mother out of my life forced me to grow up, take the initiative to heal myself and stop pointing fingers. I saw my siblings differently, my grandmother differently, my mother in a new light.

I encourage you, dear reader, if you are sitting in the silence, you will stay there in the dark. Alone.

But, if you find the bravery to speak, even if you are trudging through the emotions and the decisions to push on despite the isolation, you will find power in knowing you choose to heal. There is a sense of belonging to something greater in that decision. When you can acknowledge you are misunderstood but let go of controlling another’s perception, you find peace in the higher perspective. You confide in yourself and your struggling inner child finally finds a place of safety to emerge and say, “Enough.”

So, speak. I am with you. Spirit, God, the Universe, is with you, whatever higher power you believe in, as long as you believe. You are only alone if you continue to cast the finger and blame externally from self. Speak, and know that you are safe among those that do understand. You no longer have to suffer by convincing those that deny your reality. Even if it is your primary caregiver. Let them find their way to healing in their own time. You do not have to wait. Say, “Enough.”

Always Shining.

XO Ashley