On treating survivors with respect | Trauma Tuesday

Posted on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 by Rebecca

A message for those who have sexual trauma survivors in their lives

Our boundaries were horribly violated by whoever it was that raped, molested, or sexually abused us. The last thing we need is for people to erode or violate our boundaries further — especially people who claim to care for us. A true ally will respect us, build us up, and encourage us to stand strong.

We don’t need fairytale knights in shining armor to swoop in and rescue us. We need real, genuine allies in our struggle, people who will have our backs and respect us for who we truly are — rather than treating us as damaged goods, or viewing us as weak and helpless damsels in distress.

Note: I fully recognize that not all rape survivors are women. However, since I am writing from that perspective, and since it is awkward to keep writing “he/she”, I will use mostly female pronouns and terms to refer to survivors.

I came across this in an article I read recently, called “5 Reasons Shaming Survivors into Reporting Rape is Counter-Productive“:

Rape is an awful experience in which a person’s bodily autonomy is ignored and violated. It’s an act in which someone isn’t allowed to control what happens to their body.

For this reason, it’s vital that a survivor has control over their own healing process.

We need to accept the fact that the survivor themself is best equipped to make decisions about their own healing and how to deal with their own trauma…

While this article dealt with the issue of survivors being pressured or shamed into reporting their rapes to the police, it makes valid points about a broader issue: non-survivors presuming that they are in a better position to determine what would be the best course of action for a survivor. Often this is well-meaning protectiveness, with a wannabe ally honestly believing that his/her “rational”, non-traumatized thinking should be given far more credence than the survivor’s wishes, needs, and desire for safety. Sometimes the non-survivor is not a true ally at all, and has another agenda which — in his or her mind — trumps the well-being of the survivor.

I’ve lost count of the survivor stories I’ve heard and read in which the survivor was silenced out of someone else’s concern for the family, misguided loyalty to the perpetrators, or the desire to avoid a “scandal”. On the flip side of that are survivors whose stories were told and spread about against their will, for a variety of different reasons. Survivors I know have been accused of being “selfish” for wanting to control their own healing process, selfish for wanting desperately to regain a sense of agency and autonomy, selfish for desiring privacy, even selfish for wanting to manage their PTSD. Non-survivors simply do not understand how re-traumatizing it is when they show disregard for a survivor’s consent, and when they do not honor and help us strengthen our boundaries but seek to dismantle, ignore, or even ride roughshod over them.

I’m not talking about necessary crisis intervention or medical attention for a desperately injured woman who is crying, “Please leave me alone and let me die.” I’m talking about the sense of superiority some individuals feel merely because they have, thus far, not been raped — and they believe this somehow gives them a better perspective on how to negotiate the aftermath of sexual trauma. Worse, some seem to believe their status as non-survivors entitles them to ignore and even violate a survivor’s boundaries.

My words might sound harsh and overly condemning. That’s not my intent. I freely admit that I’m being blunt, and not mincing words, because I’ve discovered that the gentle, subtle and nuanced approach doesn’t tend to work well with those who have a tendency to push or cross boundaries. (A kinder, gentler resource for men — husbands, partners, and fathers — can be found here.) Some well-meaning people might honestly think they are trying to “help”, and that this justifies their attempts to control the survivor. It’s for her own good, they tell themselves. The reality, however, is that ignoring or violating the autonomy of a sexual trauma survivor is never in his or her best interests, except perhaps in a few extreme, life or death type situations.

Let’s look at a few of the far more common situations where non-survivors often add to the trauma of survivors by refusing to accept that the survivor herself is best equipped to make decisions about her own healing:

Telling others about the sexual trauma without the survivor’s consent. I understand that “secondary survivors” may feel a need for advice or a listening ear; however, this should be negotiated with the survivor. You do not own her, nor do you own her story. You should not get to decide who to tell or not tell. You do not get to decide or dictate her feelings in the matter. It doesn’t matter if you think you have all sorts of compelling reasons to tell her family, your family, your best buddies — or whoever it is that you feel the urge to tell — if you respect the survivor at all, you will honor her decision whether you agree with it or not. If you do not respect the survivor enough to allow her to determine who gets told and when, you are not her ally, nor are you a safe person for her. Period.
Pressing for details the survivor does not wish to tell you. It seems incredibly obvious to me that someone who genuinely cares for a survivor would respect their boundaries, yet I’m shocked at how many people don’t. Your curiosity does not justify intrusion.
Trying to pressure the survivor into a specific course of action. No, you don’t know better than she does. She knows what she can or can’t handle better than you do. (Read the article I referenced above.)
Insisting on being treated as an “ally”. Rape and sexual trauma violates — in a most terrible way — a person’s autonomy and moral agency. Having had sexual acts forced on her does not make it suddenly appropriate for a survivor to have other acts — including those you find “trivial” — and relationships forced upon her, no matter how much you may want to “be there” for her. True allies don’t pressure or insist. Instead, without a hint of coercion, they allow the survivor to approve the nature and extent of the relationship.

This includes spouses and significant others. You shouldn’t demand to be her “support person”, or to occupy a role she doesn’t want you to have. Unfortunately, I know of husbands, unable to accept this, who have gotten jealous of therapists and support group members who “knew more about the rape” than they did, and who felt they should be the survivor’s main confidante and source of emotional support. They only ended up proving themselves to be less safe and trustworthy, not more.

Attempting to choose a survivor’s allies for her. The husband of a survivor kept nagging his wife to “talk” to the wife of one of his buddies. “She got over her rape, and I bet she could really help you.” He dismissed as irrelevant that his wife barely knew this woman and had no desire to discuss with her the most traumatic, horrible experience of her life. That should be reason enough for a truly caring person to back off, but it took a lot of persuasion to finally convince this guy.
Trying to persuade or “guilt” a survivor into sharing more with her spouse or significant other than she is comfortable doing. Each person is different. Each marriage is different. Each survivor’s comfort level is different in terms of how much to tell other people in her life. Her comfort level should be honored, even if you think you would make entirely different decisions in her place.

Telling anyone about sexual trauma is difficult. Telling a male is usually even more so. Telling a spouse or significant other can be exponentially more difficult and frightening. Non-survivors tend not to grasp the enormity of this. If you care about a survivor, lay off the pressure and guilt tactics. The survivor’s boundaries should be encouraged and respected, not questioned and criticized.

Note of caution regarding marriage or “pastoral” counseling: It should go without saying that counselors should not attempt to guilt a survivor for “keeping secrets” about the rape from her husband, should not urge her to hand him her journals, should not recommend her husband have full access to her therapy records, and should not try to convince her that she “owes” her husband a detailed account of her rape. It should go without saying, but there are some counselors who simply do not understand the dynamics of sexual trauma, nor do they encourage appropriately healthy boundaries in either individuals or relationships. One would hope that a professional therapist would know better, but often lay or pastoral counselors may not have received training adequate to our needs. Sometimes their understanding of what constitutes a “healthy” marriage or spirituality does not take the realities of sexual trauma into account and would in fact be very unhealthy for a survivor.

Telling a survivor how to feel or react — thus invalidating her own experience. You don’t get to decide how she feels, nor do you get to map out her healing journey for her. Again, this is intrusive and can be a major setback for her. She may not act like you think a rape survivor should. Get over it. Her healing is not about reinforcing your stereotypes or making you feel comfortable.
Holding up other survivors’ reactions and healing journey as more appropriate or “better”. This is closely related to the previous point. Please give survivors the respect and dignity they deserve by accepting their individuality and autonomy. Not all of us have the same sexual trauma experience or the same recovery process.
Pressuring a survivor to trust someone she is not ready to trust. For many survivors, rape was a violation of trust. We need to be allowed to learn to trust again on our terms. We need to feel safe before we consider allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to another person. It can’t be rushed. Trust can’t be forced. It would be cruel, inhumane, and damaging not to allow a survivor to set her own pace.

The best way to earn our trust? Be trustworthy. And trust us— it’s a two-way street.

When weakness turns to strength

Posted on Wednesday, February 25, 2015 by Rebecca

Sometimes you are weak. Pain — be it emotional, physical, or spiritual — can be debilitating. Suffering can take an enormous toll on us.

There can be weakness for a season.

However, that sort of weakness, the type that is due to injury or trauma, does not make you a weak person. It just makes you a human person who is suffering for a season.

I’ve never had chemo, but I imagine therapy can be somewhat like it. You feel like throwing up a lot. You hope it kills the trauma before it kills you. You hope you survive it and the trauma. You hope it brings healing so that what you are enduring is worth it in the end.

It gets worse before it gets better.

I was blessed with a “tribe” who helped me through my painful healing process, and I sent them this message today:

It gets better. People kept telling me that over 5 years ago, when the pain of my past finally came crashing down on me full force. During the worst part of my healing, all I could see and feel was pain — overwhelming pain — and it was only the grace of God that brought me through those darkest hours.

You, my tribe, you were that grace lived out. When I was angry at God, when I felt utterly abandoned by Him, you all (even our wonderful resident atheist Jew) stood in His place for me and kept me going. You loved and accepted me. You called me on my bullshit. You gave me hope. You were light in the darkness.

It gets better. You were right.

I’m boarding a plane in the morning — and where I’m headed and what I’m doing there would have been impossible for me not that long ago. Love didn’t just save me — it gave me strength and it gave me wings.

Thank you. The words are so inadequate.

I explain where I’m going on my other blog.

There is such a thing as human frailty and need | Survivor Saturday

Posted on Saturday, February 21, 2015 by Rebecca

For awhile, I was on a roll, planning and pre-writing a bunch of blog posts about how some of the things people criticize as a sign of weakness are really nothing of the sort. Perhaps I will still write those posts. But today I can’t help remembering that there is such a thing as human frailty. We get sick. We struggle. We fall down. We fail. Sometimes life has a way of beating us up and leaving us feeling broken and bleeding. Sometimes we literally are broken and bleeding.

Sometimes we need help.

My first child was born by c-section. He was, to put it mildly, not a good sleeper. For the first three months of his life, I never slept more than an hour and a half at a stretch, and rarely more than an hour. I was so sleep-deprived that I could barely function, and it was overwhelming just to take care of the baby, do laundry, and put dinner on the table every night. Not only was I exhausted, but I had what no one recognized until later as quite a serious case of postpartum depression. (At the time, I had no idea you could be head over heels with joyful love over your baby and depressed at the same time…until the fog lifted.) In addition, something had gone wrong during the spinal, and I had alarming bouts of pain and strange electrical shock like sensations going up and down my spine for over a year. My abdominal muscles had been so damaged that the surgeon had afterwards gone into near hysterics, insisting, “I didn’t cut your stomach muscles! I didn’t cut them! You need to know that I didn’t sever any muscles!” Since my spinal hadn’t even worn off yet at the time he repeatedly made his frantic claim, it seemed a bizarre and out of the blue thing for him to get so upset and almost hyperventilate over. In fact, it took months for me to discover that my abdominal weakness and pain was not normal. On top of all that, and while minor compared to everything else, my external scar was uncomfortable and never healed properly.

Physically and emotionally, I felt like a wreck. But life had left me with a dangerous motto of “Show no weakness!” During those early weeks, I entertained and even cooked for a steady stream of guests, supervised a major data entry project for my husband’s business, traveled out of town with the baby for a weekend while sick with two separate infections, did all the housework except for the mopping and vacuuming which the doctor had strictly forbidden, kept up with all the laundry including cloth diapers, and — after the first week or so — cooked all the dinners. It was insane. As a result, my healing and recovery from surgery took longer than it should have, and my immune system took a beating, which only made things worse for me.

My unwillingness to allow others to see my weakness was, in itself, a form of weakness.

We were not designed to carry every burden all by ourselves, nor to soldier on all alone until we drop. We were designed to live and function in community. We were designed to give and receive help — and it is not weakness to recognize we need help, and to seek out someone willing and able to help us.

It took a wonderful and wise group of mothers to convince me that I did no one any favors, least of all my baby, by pretending to be The Heroic Supermom Who Stands Alone Against All Odds. It took a near collapse on my part that left me sobbing in the arms of a woman I’d just met moments before to admit that things were too much for me. That didn’t make me weak — it meant the burden was overwhelmingly heavy. No wonder I struggled.

Years later, I watched two very strong men carry our heavy oak bookcases up our stairs. Neither of them attempted to carry a bookcase all by himself. No one thought them weak because they couldn’t carry their load unaided. Some things are more than one person can carry, and we all knew the oak bookcases were heavy. Later, when a terrible illness debilitated one of the men, no one would have expected him to carry anything in his weakened state.

My husband had never had major abdominal surgery. I was not much of a complainer, which left him thinking it must not be a big deal. Because I shielded him from much of the reality of life with a sleepless newborn — he woke almost every morning fully rested and slept in late on Saturdays — and because his life before and after baby was kept as unchanged as possible, he had no idea of the enormity of my burden. He hadn’t even tried to lift it to feel how heavy it was, because I had given him no reason or encouragement to do so. Consequently, we both began seeing me as weak, and as a failure for not being able to function as if my life had not been profoundly and wonderfully altered. After all, hadn’t I once foolishly pronounced, in my ignorance, that I would never allow a cute little baby to throw our lives into chaotic disarray?

I was not so foolish with subsequent babies, but I did not apply the lessons learned to the rest of my life. For years, I struggled alone and unaided under the load of sexual trauma. It was an invisible burden to everyone else. Finally two major family crises got piled on top of all that, and I could no longer carry my burdens. I almost collapsed under the weight.

Those who had never seen my burdens, never felt them, never tried to help carry them, those who had no idea of the extent of my wounds — because I operated under the principle of “show no weakness” — those who didn’t know better saw only my sudden inability to no longer function as if all were well in my life, as if I weren’t being crushed under a load far too heavy for anyone to carry. No wonder I was perceived as weak and fragile.

My therapist treats children as well as adults, and sometimes he will pass on the wisdom they share with him. One described therapy as the process of crawling out from under a giant backpack that was filled with rocks, opening the backpack in order to sort out what shouldn’t be in there, and remaking the backpack so that it was human-sized and appropriate to carry. Needing help carrying an oversized backpack full of rocks doesn’t make you weak — it just means you’re human, and the load is too heavy.

I was thankful to find my “tribe”, which consists of some of the strongest people I know. We have gone from wounded birds afraid to show weakness to eagles locking our wings and flying above the storms. That doesn’t mean we are a superhuman bunch (although we joke that one of us is) and it doesn’t mean that we haven’t stumbled, floundered, fallen, or been crushed. The thing is — we know the weight of those invisible burdens. We know the pain of the struggle. When someone is collapsing under the enormity of it all, we don’t say, “Look how weak she is. What’s wrong with her?” We say, “That burden is too heavy. Let me help. Here, lean on me.”

The same God who designed us to live and heal in community, to bear one another’s burdens, also sent His Son to lift those burdens we were never meant to carry.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (‭Matthew‬ ‭11‬:‭28-30‬ ESV)

Having and expressing human emotions is not weakness | Survivor Saturday

Posted on Saturday, February 14, 2015 by Rebecca

We aren’t being “emotionally fragile” when we feel human emotions in response to trauma.

Survivors are often labeled, by ourselves or others, as being “weak” or “fragile”. I previously wrote about that here. Since then, I’ve been giving some more thought to the whole idea of emotions…feeling them…accepting them…expressing them….

Some of us are, by nature, more “feeling” type people, and may be more expressive and communicative as well. Some may see this as a weakness, but why not argue that it is a strength? We need to affirm qualities like, She is so connected to her emotions, or She is so expressive and full of life, or even, Wow, she’s so emotionally gifted! Aren’t emotions part of our very human nature? Where did we get the idea that it’s wrong to feel some of them, or that they need to be suppressed and ignored?

Some families, more than others, stifle this part of their humanity. They might have unwritten “family rules” about emotions, such as:

Only men and boys are allowed to get angry.
Only girls are allowed to cry.
Women and girls need to act “happy” and “nice”.
Certain emotions are unacceptable.
Only positive emotions are allowed.
You are not supposed to talk about feelings.
It’s important to act stoic all the time.
Emotions should not be expressed — not even happy ones — except in a subdued, quiet manner.
Emotions are dangerous. Don’t listen to them.
Emotions are scary. Try not to feel them.
Emotional people are inferior. Don’t be like them.
Emotions are divided into good ones or bad ones, and the bad ones are sinful. Don’t feel them.
Getting in touch with your emotions is for California hippy types or wimps. Don’t be like them.
It’s OK to blame others for your emotions.
It’s the role of women and girls to make sure men and boys are happy.
Mothers are responsible for all the emotions in the home.
You should be happy — or it will make everyone around you unhappy.

Any of those sound familiar?

Some of us were told, growing up, that we were wrong to feel a certain way — or even that we were wrong about how we were feeling: “No, you can’t possibly be angry at your father! You are really happy for him.” We may have been told we were overly sensitive, or that we needed to tone ourselves down. We may have learned to suppress our own emotions, lest we anger or upset our parents. It’s a wonder more children don’t grow up wondering if they are the only ones in their families with any emotions at all!

People raised in emotionally inhibited (that’s nicer than saying “emotionally stunted”) families tend to take this discomfort with emotions out into the world with them. After all, if our parents were kind, decent, loving people, it’s rare that we scrutinize our upbringing for flaws, or spend time and energy analyzing the nuances of our family culture. Unless we have a good reason to change our minds, we tend to think the way emotions were handled in our home is pretty much the right way, even if it was fairly stifling.

Let’s imagine that two such people marry, and that the wife is a trauma survivor. If she has been raised to believe she must “keep your chin up no matter what”, she will find the vast chaotic swirl of trauma-induced emotions to be a sign that there is something wrong with her — rather than that her emotions are a natural response to the fact that something wrong was done to her. Painful emotions are painful no matter what, but the less emotionally savvy we are, the more tempted we are to numb or escape them. Like us, our hypothetical wife will most likely tend to follow her family’s lead in numbing, escaping, and/or suppressing.

Her husband will be quite content with an emotionally numb wife, if that is familiar to him because of what he grew up with. In fact, if she isn’t “good enough” at suppressing all her “negative” emotions, he will no doubt encourage her to keep her emotional range within his comfort level. If she fails, he will see this as her being weak, overly emotional, hysterical, etc.

The irony is that when his wife begins a deeper process of healing, when her emotions become unbound, when she becomes more fully alive, when she faces the truth of what was done to her and allows herself to feel all her emotions in response to such evil — when she is finally strong enough to do that — that is when her husband, instead of applauding her courage, is most apt to tell her that she is weak and fragile.

It is all too easy to accept that assessment. We think, yet again, that there is something seriously wrong with us. I remember crying in my therapist’s office, “Why does this hurt so much more now than it did back then?”

“Because,” he said gently, “back then, just in order to survive, you had to try to pretend it away. There was no safe place for you to feel, to grieve, to get angry at the cruel injustice of it all. You had to hold it all together. It was too scary to face the truth.”

It’s still too scary! I wanted to scream. In fact, I probably did…or, more likely, whispered it in a frightened gasp. Therapy session after therapy session, I bemoaned “ever opening up this can of worms”. Why not just keep on holding it together? Even if it wasn’t better for me, wouldn’t it be better for everyone else if I just went on pretending I was mostly fine? My therapist, God bless him, kept giving me assuring, encouraging, hopeful words — even when I accused him of lying or just mouthing therapeutic bullshit. But he was right. My sister-survivors and brother-survivors — my tribe — kept telling me the journey of healing was worth it, that I was not being selfish, that it was the right thing to do…and I grew to believe them more and more as I watched them walk it out.

Healing is messy. If we are human, experiencing trauma, betrayal, violence, humiliation, hatred, and dehumanizing acts will wound us deeply. We aren’t just recovering from those events, but from the years in their aftermath when we did not adequately heal. It takes courage and strength to face all that head-on…to stare down our worst memories…to allow the most extensive surgery to be performed on our most painfully wounded parts.

Emotionally healthy people actually feel and express their emotions. We may be a bit messy while learning to do so. We have been through a cataclysmic event; naturally there be some cataclysmic emotions…and, if we have held in many or most of them for years, they will seem overwhelming, like a dam bursting. It takes a lot of strength and courage not to avoid or numb that.

It takes even more strength to go against a lifetime of conditioning, to become more alive instead of less, and to pursue healing when it is so painful. But when the people who are supposed to care for us the most keep tearing us down rather than building us up, discouraging us rather than encouraging us — when they offer us words of weakness and failure rather than strength and hope — then it takes even more strength and determination on our part.

“Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness.”
— Amos Bronson Alcott

So…my words of advice to any potential allies out there, anyone who wants to walk alongside a sexual trauma survivor on her healing journey: Don’t tear her down. Don’t demean her. Don’t add to her negative self-talk. If all you see is weakness and fragility, you don’t know her well enough to be her ally. If you have no words of encouragement and hope, if you cannot see her strength and worth clearly enough to remind her of it, keep your mouth shut — except to encourage her to find real allies.

And this is for those of us who are survivors, no matter what it might be that we have survived:

“Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt in You Learn By Living

“Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it with use.”
— Ruth Gordon

“The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. If you can live through that you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face.

You are able to say to yourself, `I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’

The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it. If you fail anywhere along the line, it will take away your confidence. You must make yourself succeed every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt in You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Note to my fellow and sister survivors: Although I am somewhat of a loner by nature, I believe very strongly in the value of finding a “tribe”. We heal best in community. If your current “community” — be it family, friends, or church — is not truly encouraging and supportive, in a healthy way, of your healing, this doesn’t mean you have to dump them. It just means you have to look elsewhere for your “healing community”. Don’t give up.

I’d love to hear from you about your healing journey. If you found a tribe, how and where did you find them? If you grew up in an emotionally open and expressive family, how did that help you in the healing process? If not, how are you overcoming that?

We are not fragile or weak | Trauma Tuesday

Posted on Tuesday, February 10, 2015 by Rebecca

If you are like me, you may have been labeled fragile and weak. You may have even applied those labels to yourself.

It is time to face the truth.

Definition of fragile, when used to describe a person:

• not strong or sturdy; delicate and vulnerable.
synonyms: weak, delicate, frail, debilitated.

Definitions of weak:

• lacking the power to perform physically demanding tasks; lacking physical strength and energy: “she was recovering from the flu and was very weak”
synonyms: frail, feeble, delicate, fragile.
• liable to break or give way under pressure; easily damaged: “the salamander’s tail may be broken off at a weak spot near the base”
• lacking the force of character to hold to one’s own decisions, beliefs, or principles; irresolute.
synonyms: spineless, craven, cowardly, pusillanimous, timid
antonyms: strong, resolute

If we were fragile, we would have crumbled. We would have been crushed and destroyed. If we were weak — no trauma survivor would want to write this article nor read it. We would still be trying to escape into denial, and hide from the truth of what happened to us. We would lack the strength and courage to deal with it.

As trauma survivors, it is sometimes difficult to see beyond our own sense of brokenness. Cultural messages, as well as our family and friends, are often not much help. The enormity of rape and sexual abuse is often downplayed, treated as “no big deal”, or as “regrettable sex”, and we are impatiently urged to “get over it”, to “move on”. One husband said to his wife, “The fact that you were raped before we met was never a big deal to me, so I don’t understand why you can’t let it go and just forget about it.” Parents asked their daughter, “We got over what happened to you; why can’t you?”

While some minimize what was done to us, others try to define us by it. They expect us to be utterly and completely shattered, unable to ever recover, broken beyond compare. One husband blamed almost everything on his wife’s rape: if she was tired, if she wasn’t always eager for sex, if her hormones affected her mood, if she was sad, he assumed it was because she was damaged by rape — he redefined normal, human behaviors and feelings as pathology in her case, and as evidence of how “weak” and “fragile” she was. Sometimes people will label us as irrevocably broken simply because we react in any way to trauma, or do not remain unaffected by tragedy and suffering.

Many non-survivors who consider themselves strong, and us weak, are merely untested. Because of this, they recognize neither true strength nor true weakness.

Often we label ourselves as weak, convinced that a strong, resolute person would not have given way to the pressures of our rapists and abusers, and would have resisted effectively. It took therapy to help me sort out the differences between trust, vulnerability, and weakness of character and will. It also took the work of therapy to make me realize that, while I may have been weak in some ways at the age of 23, I had also shown strength and determination — and I had certainly become stronger since then.

Sometimes PTSD can make us seem, act, and even feel timid. In addition, I was — until very recently — a fearful person in general. I used to joke that I was world’s biggest chicken, and that I was scared of everything. I saw this as a major weakness until someone pointed out, “It takes a lot of strength and a lot of guts to face down your fears and proceed despite them.” Not everyone sees it like that. While some people thought — not knowing of my many fears — that I was sometimes brave to the point of near foolhardiness, another person often considered me overly timid and fragile — because he knew of my fearfulness. Apparently to him, strength would have meant an absence of fear.

It is, for many of us, a long and difficult — often painful and harrowing — journey from victim to survivor. We have to face the worst demons of our past head-on. The healing process has been likened to the most awful sort of surgery, to scraping out horribly infected wounds, to pulling thorns and daggers out of our flesh, to slaying dragons, and to a host of other painful and frightening ordeals. Courage did not drive me forward; desperation did. Perhaps that makes me weak and fragile in the eyes of some. They have not walked where I have walked, where we have walked. They have no idea.

Living a relatively sheltered life, never being the victim of a violent crime, never being abused and betrayed, never having to do battle with evil — these things do not make you strong. All it means is that you have been spared the harsher cruelties of life so far. You are untested.

But when you have known suffering and cruelty, when you fight against the demons of your past, when you rise above the evil perpetuated against you, when you refuse to let your abusers go on winning, when you do not allow trauma to define you, when you pursue the difficult task of healing — wherever you are in your healing journey — that makes you strong. And when you can finally stand and declare, “I AM AN OVERCOMER!” — that really makes you strong.

We can’t help the blindness of others. But it is important that we open our eyes to who we truly are. We are survivors. We are the ones who cling to hope. We are the ones who bend, but never truly break. We are the ones who put back together the pieces of our lives that are broken, and emerge even better than before. We are not fragile, or we could not endure. We are not weak, or we could not do the hard work of healing. We are survivors. We are overcomers. We are strong.