Brave Enough To Be Bliss

What happened to you? I believe you. It wasn’t your fault. I am so very sorry you were hurt. And there are people who can help you and your life and relationships can get better.

“ We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers .” Carl Sagan

Over the past 10 years since my Facebook post acknowledging the rape and desire for suicide, there have been many people who have shared their stories with me. I am so proud of each and every one of them for having the courage and am so honored they trusted me enough to share their stories. Just a few of their stories will follow and it is my sincere hope that when you finish reading, if you haven’t personally experienced sexual abuse or assault you will be better able to support survivors, and if you have, that you will never feel you are alone in your experience, thoughts, or feelings. “Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” Henri J.M. Nouwen A friend disclosed her child had been sexually abused by her husband, the child’s father. Years ago when the child told her, she divorced her husband. As we talked on the phone, she went on to explain she was now dealing with a financial struggle as a result of making poor financial decisions with her adult child because she felt guilty the child had ever been hurt. I admired her for being vulnerable and sharing her story. I sent her an email the next day because oftentimes after disclosing something so personal, it’s common to begin questioning if it was a good idea, so I wanted to offer some reassurance. I also shared some of what I had learned through other parents since she was still trying to “make up” for it in some way and it was leading them both down a detrimental path. While the current financial issue needed resolution, the behaviors leading to it really needed to be addressed so th ere wouldn’t be an ongoing financial struggle. In another situation, a woman told me she had been sexually abused as a child by a neighbor. I knew she had siblings, so I asked if they had also been abused. She said no, but then hesitated and said she didn’t think so . It occurred to me that if a family member doesn’t ask all the children if they have been hurt, it c ould possibly send a message that their abuse isn’t something that should be spoken of . Or the child could fear it would add more pain to an already painful situation. If the family ideally loves the children more than anyone else and no family member even asks the question, it could be perceived by the children that no one could even imagine such a thing happening. The children could think perhaps it's too ugly, shameful, and unfathomable for anyone else to believe, understand or bear, and therefore the children would “know” to keep the secret forever , trying to maintain the love and acceptance of the family. This would be an unintended emotional silencing that could keep survivors trapped for a lifetime. It is possible children may still not be forthcoming about the abuse, but it’s always better to have at least asked the question, making it safer and therefore more possible for the child to disclose at some point in the future. In these two examples above, the abuser was a father and a neighbor. Our brains want to tell us only “bad people” would do such things and of course most of us don’t want to think we associate with any “bad people.” The list is endless, but a few of the abuser relationships I personally know of have been (multiple examples of each one): fathers, grandfathers, uncles, teachers, coaches, clergy, family friends, cousins, neighbors, babysitters, brothers, summer camp counselors/leaders. I do not share this to scare anyone, but rather to make the point that we have no way of knowing who is capable of hurting another human being in this way. If perpetrators were all walking around with a sign on, of course we wouldn’t leave our children with them. But they don’t, so we do the very best we can to protect our children. But there is no way to guarantee they will never be hurt unless we lock them up in a room and no one ever has access to them, and that would be traumatic for the child in a whole other way. When we accept that life…is…hard, however, we can accept that painful things sometime happen as much as we try not to let them and don’t want them to. That allows us to spend more time and energy on educating ourselves, each other and our children, creating a safer environment for disclosure and conversation should any abuse occur.

221