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.

A valuable article about childhood sexual abuse

Posted on Friday, January 23, 2015 by Rebecca

How do sexual abusers gain the trust of their young victims and why do parents “let” them? How do they get by with it? Why don’t the child victims say anything? How can a mother insist she had no idea what was going on? These are questions that trouble people whenever the subject of childhood sexual abuse comes up.

I found an article online that offers a concise explanation of the “grooming” process. It is all valuable information, but I wanted to highlight this:

Mother blaming tactics

The myths around child sexual abuse often describe the reasons the offender sexually abused the child as being the mother’s fault. Some of these reasons could be that the mother was sick, worked long hours, or was frightened of the perpetrator. As a mother, you are not to blame for the sexual abuse. The sexual abuse of children is just one part of a system of trickery and abuse created to maintain secrecy, isolation and the offender’s absolute power over the child and all others in the child’s life. The offender sets up a web-like structure of traps, lies and distortions to isolate the victim and recreate the child as problematic in the eyes of siblings, the mother, friends, family and neighbours. In particular, offenders admit that their prime target is to destroy the child’s relationship of trust with the mother (Morris, 2003).

The relationship problems between mother and child that are commonly seen after the abuse is disclosed are more likely to be the result of a campaign of disinformation orchestrated by the offender. The offender’s actions create a context in which the mother and child are blind to his role in creating the difficulties in their relationship (Laing and Kamsler, 1990). In fact, one of the most common tactics by the offender is creating a division between the mother and child. The mother blaming shifts the focus from the offender to the mother, in search for someone to blame.

Research shows that the vast majority of mothers do not know that sexual abuse was occurring, and this is part of the offender’s campaign to keep the abuse secret. Offenders work hard to be seen as the idea father, uncle, grandfather, brother or a trusted family friend who is wonderful with children.

Read more here: Sex offender tactics and grooming

Redeeming the day

Posted on Tuesday, September 23, 2014 by Rebecca

Yesterday, I ended my post with these words:

There was a time when I insisted to my therapist that my rape was so terrible, so dark and ugly, that there was nothing about it that God could possibly redeem. He proved me wrong…but that’s best left for future posts.

Almost immediately, the following came to mind. It’s something I wrote in 2009, after I’d been in therapy a few months. I’ve only done a few minor tweaks for readability, leaving the rest alone. It’s kinda raw. But it’s the raw and broken things that need redeeming, not the clean and pretty ones.

*****

During my therapy session today, Donny asked about the anniversary of the rape, and I told him I knew it was in August, but didn’t know the date. For some reason, after I got home, this started really bothering me. I went online to find an August 1981 calendar, and I started plugging different events into different days and finally, by process of elimination, I figured out that August 23 had to be the date.

And then I sat there, thinking, “Damn. I figured it out. But I don’t quite know what to think about it, or how to feel.” Then I realized that I was still being raped on August 24…the day that later became my wedding date. I regretted my figuring out the date, because I felt as if my wedding anniversary was now forever ruined for me. My imagination went into overdrive. I became convinced that, instead of celebrating our upcoming 25th anniversary, I’d be hiding in bed, having flashbacks, reliving that horrible day and the next day in awful, nightmarish detail.

So I posted to my online support group and Matt responded, “Well, think of this: for many years you did not know it was an anniversary. Which proves the date is not forever ruined, because you have had many August 23rd’s since your rape. And that endows you with a whole lot of post-rape August 23rd memories to recall, which are clean of any such traumatic triggers.”

That made sense.

I decided to quite whining to God, “How could you let me pick August 24 as my wedding date? And why didn’t the church let us have our first choice? Why? Why? Why?”

Then I thought, “What a coincidence…what are the chances that I would get married on that day?” But then it dawned on me — how cool, how redemptive, how absolutely victorious is it that, on the 3rd anniversary of my rape, I was having a rehearsal dinner with most of my favorite people in the world? The ugliness of the rape was the furthest thing from my mind that night. Three years after Lou and Carl finally stopped raping me, I was asleep in bed, dreaming happy dreams of marriage. Three years after that horrible shower, I was getting ready for my wedding day. Three years after sticking a gun in my mouth, feeling broken and ruined and filthy, I was walking down the aisle in a beautiful white dress that had been lovingly sewn for me. I remember that, during the wedding, I had kept thinking, “God is good”. I felt like I was basking in His love. And I actually felt beautiful.

God is good. I had no idea how good. He really did give me beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning. And He couldn’t have told me that in a more obvious way.

This August 24th will be my 25th wedding anniversary. It will also be the 28th anniversary of when they stopped raping me…the 28th anniversary of the day that I cleaned myself up and went to my first day at a new job, trying to pretend nothing had happened, the 28th anniversary of the day that I didn’t pull the trigger, the 28th anniversary of the day that I took my first steps towards being a survivor.

The “coincidence” of those dates, of forgetting the date of my rape until figuring it out all these years later — it all seems to me like a beautiful, redemptive story that God has made out of the ugliest days of my life. I feel as if He’s just given me the best 25th wedding anniversary I could think of getting.

*****

One of the things we, as survivors, often tell ourselves and each other is that the process of healing and recovery is not a smooth and constant one. There are setbacks along the way. That is the nature of healing in general, but I think that there can also be something else going on when it comes to recovery from sexual trauma. Based on what I have read, and my discussions with people experienced in the field of psychological trauma, I have come to believe that sexual trauma is unique in the damage it does to the human soul. Because of this, I also believe that the process of recovery is a sort of spiritual turf war being waged over one’s soul.

In retrospect, this seems obvious to me. 2009 was one of the most difficult years of my life. A tragedy brought me into therapy. At the same time, my husband almost died. Our entire family walked through some very deep waters. I experienced anguishing dark nights of the soul. All of that almost destroyed me.

In the midst of all that, God brought healing and moments of redemption. I wish I had trusted Him more and failed Him less. But despite my stumbling about, the fighting and wrestling I mentioned in my last post, and moments of absolute rebellion, He was faithful. He never gave up on me, his all-too-prone-to-wander prodigal daughter. No matter what, He always loves me back home again.

Why didn’t God stop them?

Posted on Monday, September 22, 2014 by Rebecca

I was overwhelmed with the love of God. It came completely out of the blue, with no explanation, no rhyme nor reason, just the awareness and certainty of God’s love filling me on that summer evening back in 1981 as never before. What I felt was not an impersonal love, or a love for all mankind: He loved me — me — after everything I had done, and everything I hadn’t done…despite my every sin and failing…He loved ME.

This amazing sense of His love overwhelmed me in a parking lot of all places. I leaned against my friend’s orange VW squareback, looked at her across the roof of her car, and tried to articulate this incredible epiphany I was having. And then we returned from our errand to have dinner at my neighbor’s apartment.

Only the dinner was a ruse.

After pre-dinner cocktails, my friend became suddenly and mysteriously so ill and light-headed that she went to my apartment to rest. I was urged to stay because, after all, the Italian meal had been fixed in my honor. My host seemed to think it tragic that someone who had been to Italy had never even eaten pasta fagiole, and he had supposedly been slaving over a hot stove for hours on my behalf.

So I stayed.

Later, when I asked them to let me leave, when I tried to convince them to let me go, when I begged and pleaded, they refused. Eventually I wanted to die. The next afternoon, I came as close to killing myself as I think it is possible to do and remain physically unscathed.

Almost 28 years later, I sat in a therapist’s office, finally telling the entire story of my rape for the first time, instead of the highly abbreviated one sentence version, or scattered bits and pieces. Before then, I had only shared on a “need to know” basis to very few people.

One of the things I told my therapist was that it was as if God ceased to exist during that whole nightmarish, seemingly endless ordeal. One moment I was being love-bombed by Him…the next I was utterly abandoned.

That’s what immediately came to mind when I saw this on Facebook this morning:

Yes, I was 23 years old when I was raped, but when my daughter was that age, do you think I would have walked away and left her at the mercy of a serial rapist and his accomplice/trainee? Was I more merciful than God? More moral?

There is no easy way to deal with these questions. Flinging platitudes and Bible verses at my pain did nothing to ease it. I had many dark nights of the soul, some so dark they almost consumed and destroyed me. I wrestled with God, to the point that I thought Jacob in the Bible had nothing on me.

Those who are satisfied only with an intellectual approach to God, based on chapter and verse of the Bible, won’t find much, if anything, of value in what I’m about to write…well, except perhaps for the first part. But I don’t believe God has chosen to confine Himself to the pages of His book. He is far too mysterious and wild and great and marvelous for that…and far too personal and immediate and, dare I say it, loving.

Here is how I came to make peace with the questions that plagued me…

1. Donny looked eager to tell me something at the beginning of one therapy session. “I almost called you,” he said, “but I thought it would be better to tell you in person.” During his devotions, he was reading systematically through the Bible, and he encountered a verse he had never noticed before:

“Woe to him who gives drink to his neighbors, pouring it from the wineskin till they are drunk, so that he can gaze on their naked bodies!” Habakkuk 2:15 NIV

Amazingly enough, there was no accompanying verse saying, “Woe to naive and overly trusting stupid idiots who don’t have sense enough to refuse drinks from their sleazy neighbors, who shouldn’t even be drinking with men in the first place, and who sin by drinking too much — you get what you deserve.” Apparently that was my victim-blaming opinion, but not God’s, so I was left to ponder the question my therapist posed: if God hated it when a neighbor got someone drunk In order to look at their naked body, how much more must He hate what my rapists did?

But if that was true, why did God abandon me?

2. I don’t have chapter and verse for this next one. All I can say is that, after much arguing and wrestling with God, there came a time when I just knew that He was there that night. Even though it felt to me, during that terrible night, as if He had ceased to exist, He was there all along.

That was hugely comforting and an amazing breakthrough for me, but it left unanswered the question: why didn’t He stop my rapists?

3. Eventually I came to realize that God places a high value on our free will. (Yeah, I know — Calvinists, you might as well shoot me now.) He didn’t stop Adam and Eve from sinning — and their sin opened the door to all the evil, suffering, and death we must now endure. I don’t pretend to understand this. I don’t pretend to like it. But a God who would overrule free will to stop all child rape would have to do the same for all rape…and all abuse…and all violence…and all betrayal…and all selfish use of another person…and all unloving acts…and where would that stop until we were rendered robots, without free will, forced to love God and all people?

4. I have had to make peace — as much as one can make peace with such tragedy — with the terrible fact that we live in a fallen world, one filled with sin and suffering and death. Part of making peace with that is my belief that this world is not all there is. I cling to a future hope, when all will eventually be made right.

5. I have come to believe in redemption. One day, all will be redeemed. In the meantime, God keeps showing me glimpses of redemption. There was a time when I insisted to my therapist that my rape was so terrible, so dark and ugly, that there was nothing about it that God could possibly redeem. He proved me wrong…but that’s best left for future posts.

Journaling confessions

Posted on Friday, July 18, 2014 by Rebecca

Therapists are obsessed with journaling. At first, I had no intentions of being sucked into this dubious practice, but — well, that’s the topic of another post.

A friend of mine journals like this:

Yes, exactly like this since — being a true “trophy wife” rather than some bimbo or mere ordinary mortal — her entire life tends to look like a painting.

On the other hand, this was my journal this morning:

Obviously I am not a trophy wife. (Oh, and by the way, that’s my granddaughter’s “biting toy”. Not mine. In case anyone wondered. And I had just finished eating “refrigerator oatmeal” in my nifty new glass storage container. Perhaps I’ll post the recipe some day. For the oatmeal, not the storage container.)

Now, on to the confessions…

I have a love/hate thing with journaling. Come to think of it, that is hardly a confession. I think that’s pretty much universal among therapy clients who journal.

Even though some therapists say that it’s far more effective to handwrite — and not edit — journal entries, I’ve done a lot of my journaling on my laptop or iPad. Sometimes my slow handwriting gets in the way of letting my thoughts really flow. Other times, editing what I’ve written helps me process things.

Sometimes I think that maybe I’ve done a crazy lot of journaling in the past five years.

While I try to write as “uncensored” as possible in my paper journals, I almost always edit/censor when reading anything out loud to my therapist. I don’t recommend this. Besides, he caught on to my tricks early on, and usually calls me on it. “What did you leave out?” he will ask, even when I thought I was being so smooth and clever while skipping over words and sentences.

There have been things I couldn’t bring myself to read out loud. Sometimes I’ve handed my journal to Donny to read out loud. Sometimes even that was too much for me, and I insisted he read it silently.

One of the most difficult, but empowering, things I’ve ever done is read a detailed account of my rape out loud to my therapist. It took me the entire session, and I was a wreck at the end. Donny cancelled his next session so that we could get me grounded enough to walk out the door and drive home, where I collapsed in bed for the rest of the day. But it was powerful and freeing in a way that I still can’t explain or describe.

This past year, I have done way less journaling. I no longer feel the desperate need to “get it out”.

When I have journaled, I’ve tended to use my iPad or iPhone, and I have mixed feelings about it. There are some wonderful apps for keeping diaries and journals, and they offer features, like being indexable and searchable, or being available on my iPhone which is almost always with me, that paper journals don’t. But there is something about paper and pen…

Recently I’ve decided to take an entirely new approach. Although I’m completely lacking in artistic talents or abilities, I’ve found myself gathering art supplies and reading about art therapy and art journaling. Maybe I’m just trying to reconnect with my “Inner Child”…I don’t know. But I’ve found my journaling taking a radical departure from my usual “words only” approach. (I’ve already posted a few pictures of some of my latest “journaling” efforts.)

One thing that I read suggested using art or five minutes of writing — or both – to answer the question, “What is my hidden secret?” for 37 days in a row. I don’t think I’ll repeat it that many times, but I have done it twice already, last night and this morning.

Last night, I didn’t even have to think of it because an image immediately popped into my head. What was really exciting is that I knew it was something that I could actually draw. I was very tempted to just post the picture, and not what I wrote about it…but therapy is all about facing fears and no longer hiding, so…