This is a piece I wrote for a book of stories by survivors of sexual abuse. It has previously been published on the web here: http://web.mac.com/larryvaughan/Site/Blog/Entries/2007/9/29_Circles.html
Circles
There are circles within circles within circles in the healing journey. The first circle is listening, finding some way to give voice to what is hidden inside. I painted pictures of myself with wounds on my body, trying to make visible how wounded I felt inside. I found a therapist who would see but not try to fix me, who would trust that the things inside would come out when they were ready. I made hearts out of cloth and then a box with decorated drawers, finding different ways to express the parts of me I had previously refused to acknowledge. Th
e drawer in the upper left corner of the box was lined in yellow silk and contained seven smooth white stones; that drawer represented God. I’m more a scientist than an artist but it felt like the way to heal was to work through my weak side, my artistic and intuitive side, rather than through rational analysis.
The next circle for me was remembering. I remembered the easier memories first. I always remembered my step-grandfather groping me, though I didn’t understand it was serious. In my family you went on no matter what happened, and I went on pretty successfully in the academic world, where I felt safe. It was only after I had my own children and my son had bladder surgery that I started listening to the pain inside me and found a therapist who would see and went deeper. Then I remembered my grandmother (my mother’s mother) using me sexually, teaching me how to satisfy her, particularly when I was 4 or 5 but continuing almost to adolescence. She liked to hurt me. I worked with that a long time, learning to bear the pain of the memories, before I remembered my mother touching and using me sexually, from very early until she remarried when I was five.
I’ve been able to heal and function at the same time, by going slowly and trusting what is inside me. My therapist didn’t push. I tried not to look ahead, but to let the memories come when the time was right. One time I started telling my therapist how I didn’t want to heal, it was too hard to learn to live in a different world. He said “I will stay with you wherever you are.”
The second circle for me was learning to love. I spent a long time getting to know what I had cut off inside me. I kept being a responsible adult in my job and with my kids, but I made time also for the needy child inside me. I went to the zoo, without my husband and kids, trying to listen to what the child in me wanted. I bought myself stuffed animals, and slept with one. I said I didn’t want to leave any part of me behind, rejected, alone and in pain. When I could love the wounded parts of me, then they didn’t have to be so separate. My therapist said it was ok to be needy; that when those needs had been met enough then I would want to grow up.
There was for me a whole circle of grief. My father had died in an automobile accident when I was not quite three, and no one gave me a chance to feel my grief. I needed a role model of how to feel grief, how to listen to those feelings instead of pushing them aside. I re-experienced how abandoned I felt as a child and how I felt he must have abandoned me because I was bad. To understand more concretely that it had not been my fault, I wrote away for a copy of my father’s death certificate and found out that the driver of the car that hit him went to jail.
The fourth circle for me was learning to stand up for myself. Two things helped me particularly with that. One was being diagnosed with diabetes, because the approach I decided to take was to test my blood sugar often and find out what combination of food and exercise worked for me. I liked a phrase I ran into on the internet: “My body, my science experiment.” Managing my blood sugar led me also to become an athlete for the first time in my life (I do triathlons now) and to discovering that I could enjoy sports even if I wasn’t good at them. I developed a way of managing my diabetes using diet and exercise that my doctor found surprising but that worked well for me. The other key experience came when my wonderful therapist retired well before I was ready to move on. After a careful search I found another therapist and worked with him for two years before I finally decided he was not right for me. I realized I knew what worked for me, and he wouldn’t go there with me. Now I have found another wonderful therapist who is willing to go further with me than I ever thought possible. I trust my own process and he walks with me as I follow the path that God opens before my feet.
I have entered a fifth circle of coming to face the darkness that I buried inside me. I have lived my life and raised my children differently, and yet somewhere inside I feel I am like my abusers. It is hard to bear that those patterns are inside me, even if I don’t act on them. I still struggle with how to accept that part of me. Yet I think there is much positive energy there if I can accept it. For example, sometimes I am afraid to be strong, because I associate being strong with abusers.
It is a long journey, but an exciting one. I have found already so much more healing than I ever thought possible. Joy is possible. We are not alone.
