Brave Enough To Be Bliss

These comments could have provided encouragement for me to refer back to as I continued my healing, but all I took away from these comments back then was that I felt criticized when I read a couple of them. I knew logically I should be angry with him and not feel the shame myself, but I did. Now as I read each and every beautiful comment, I can fully appreciate the heartfelt caring and love that was being offered. The problem was never the comments, the problem was that I was reading them from the perspective of an unhealed person. I had remembered the fact the incident occurred, but I had only scratched the surface of remembering exactly what happened and there was just SO much healing left to do. And this is a prime example of how relationships have the potential to be negatively impacted by communication. It’s not always because of what is said, it can also be how words are received and interpreted. Sender and receiver are always coming at the words from a different lens based on how they see themselves, each other, and the world. Apparently, I wasn’t ready yet to hear from others that it was his fault or sense their anger because I hadn’t yet gotten to those places myself. It would be nearly a dec ade before there was anger within me because anger just wasn’t an emotion I allowed myself to feel. “When you internalized the guilt and shame to make sense of your abuse as a child, you learned to blame yourself for everything that goes wrong, or that hurts you or others. That is a difficult survival skill to unlearn.” @survivingchildhoodtrauma Additionally, being so caught up in my own feelings and shutting down after reading those comments, I completely missed the fact that a high school classmate had the courage to let me know we have a shared experience. We have been communicating from time to time since that post, but I was oblivious to what she had shared and until now had not acknowledged how sorry I was she had been hurt too.

Looking back through a folder of text screenshots and emails I had saved from Kylee, I found this one and cried when I read it because it is so touching. And then I continued crying because I realized, even from my own daughter, I didn’t fully believe thes e words or those in other emails I ran across from her. I was carrying so much shame because I knew I had hurt her, that meant I was a terrible, horrible, very bad, no-good mother. And I knew she deserved so much better than me. No matter how many positive things I had done, no matter how many times she told me I was a good mom…I just couldn’t believe her words because I didn’t believe them about myself. When I read things like this now it makes me so sad for myself, knowing all the goodness I missed out on from other people who clearly did love me. There was just nothing that could penetrate the self-hatred. It was like a steel covering I wore to keep any compliment, kind word, or loving gesture from getting inside me. I am so very glad I saved some of her messages so I can read them today, and finally receive them, believe them, and cherish them. When I first shared the fact I had been raped with a dear friend, she said, “Are you sure you’re remembering correctly?” Ouch. I knew she wouldn’t have intentionally said anything hurtful, but to a rape survivor, there’s nothing worse than not being believed. I was already blaming myself, questioning why

I hadn’t screamed, questioning why I had even gone to that house because if I had stayed home, it wouldn’t have happened. But because rape wasn’t something we talked about, she hadn’t been taught what to sa y and even if she had, it’s possible she could have responded in the same way because the reality is when we care for people, we don’t want to believe they could have endured such pain, so we want it not to be true. We want to believe there’s some mistake. Because if it’s true, and if it could happen to someone we know, what’s to say it couldn’t happen to us or someone else we love?

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