This is the Reason Writing Your Story Helps you Thrive

Writing Your Story Helps You Thrive

I tell people right away I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse (either face to face, or through my writing), but I didn’t use to. I held that shame and fear of judgment in tightly for years, a filmy veil of anxiety separating me from everyone else. I didn’t feel I could get close to friends or even lovers, always holding back this ugly secret. If anyone saw the real me, the tainted, used me, they wouldn’t want to pursue any kind of relationship; either that or they’d use it against me somehow.

A common mindset after trauma – to be in victim mode and not even realize it. Total nonsense, of course, because I’m awesome. Ha! This is what shame tells you, one of many horrific stories we learn to believe.

Therapy and meds helped me a lot to overcome those lies, but the damage is incredibly deep; it never truly leaves us. I moved from victim to survivor, but it took a lot of work, and if I’m totally honest with you right now, I still argue with myself sometimes — I minimize, telling myself it could have been worse, which is just so incredibly fucked up. How much worse would it have to be? I was only eleven when a man stole away my childhood…and then he came back for more.

Eventually, I found the courage to write and share my story, despite the voices in my head telling me to shut the hell up, nobody cares to read about yet another victim, that talking about something that happened thirty-plus years ago would be seen by total strangers as a pathetic bid for attention (when truly, who cares? It’s my story, dammit, and I matter). And there are plenty of those people — mostly men, let’s be honest here, who haven’t experienced what’s it’s like to be the victim of a sexual crime and therefore cannot relate — so they minimize and dismiss survivors frequently, or explain to us how we ‘should’ feel.

This isn’t misandry on my part — men direct these comments to me (and so many other survivors, regardless of gender) on social media, emails, and blog comments almost daily telling us to ‘just get over it’ or ‘stop being a victim.’ These careless comments rarely come from women, though that’s not always the case, as many male survivors will tell you — they are often told by women to ‘suck it up’ or ‘be a man’ by women.

I believe these derogatory comments are the result of ignorance, and an overall lack of compassion more than anything.

(In fact, just the other day, a man told me on my public Facebook wall that ‘woman thrive in victim mode, while men just get on with it.’ Ignorance, clearly, as 1in6.org shows the rate of suicide in male sexual abuse survivors is much higher than in women. Ignorance craves an audience, sadly, and yet his comments reaffirm why I write these articles, share my story, and continue to encourage the #SexAbuseChat community (join us, every Tuesday, 6pm pst on Twitter) to tell their stories, too.)

{For a review on this pervasive form of ‘mansplaining,’ read this fascinating article by Rebecca Solnit.}

I moved beyond surviving into thriving. Writing, no publishing, my story, became such a huge part of my recovery…I truly had no idea the impact it would have on so many others, and myself.

“Write something you’d never show your mother or father” ~ Lorrie Moore

Sharing Your Story 

You are not required to share your story publicly to heal. I repeat: you are not required to share your story publicly to heal. This is the path I took and I believe it’s because I’m a writer, and always have been (since age ten), therefore this is a path that helped me.

There’s a ton of pressure on survivors via our social online culture, that sharing our stories is a requirement for healing, but it’s not. Only you can decide if you want to share, the circumstances surrounding the sharing, and who will be privy to the specifics. Many survivors contact me that they feel incomplete in their healing because they’re not ready to go public with their experiences — but who says we have to? If writing or journaling your experiences is helpful, then do it, and then throw it in a drawer, or speak with your therapist about it.

A huge part of recovery is feeling in control of our own narrative.

Making Friends With Shame

That’s where I changed my paradigm and fooled that wretched little voice: I made friends with Shame. She’s been with me longer than almost anyone, and she has a lot to say, too. So, I let her speak, and Broken Pieces was born. I released it in 2013 and it was #1 on Amazon’s Women’s Poetry list, #2 on Women Authors, and Top 20 on all of Memoirs for over a year and a half, which blew me away.

Broken Pieces has won many awards but more importantly, gave rise to a huge community of survivors, and that means more to me than anything else. #SexAbuseChat (every Tuesday at 6pm pst/9pm est) on Twitter with survivors Cee Streetlights and Judith Staff, and a 100+ person strong private survivor support group I moderate on Facebook, are all the result of that first book.

Broken Places followed in 2015, with more amazing reviews, awards, and top rankings. I’m writing the final Broken book now, Broken People, for a 2017 release. Apparently, Shame still has more to say.

Beyond Surviving: Thriving

I’m still as busy as ever with writing, business, publishing, my advocacy work for other survivors, and most importantly, being a mom. Beyond surviving, I’m now thriving though with occasional triggers, I stumble my way back.

My kids vaguely know something bad happened when I was younger – my son is now eleven; ironically, the same age I was when I was abused, a fact not lost on me for a moment. He’s very protective of his mama, and I love that about him. I’m raising him to be respectful of all women, including his seventeen-year-old sister with whom he bickers constantly over the Xbox and Squeakers, our girl cat. He has a lot of females in the house to learn from.

The lessons are there, though, and that’s what matters; I tell them both often, “you get what you give, and you give what you get.” Give mad, get mad; give compassion, get compassion. Him: Give money, get money? Me: Welcome to capitalism (and book marketing).

Most importantly, I’m always looking for opportunities; when things don’t go my way, I figure out what I could have done differently or what I learned from the situation….a hard lesson for kids to learn, but an important one for all of us. Some adults never get there, survivor or not.

I survived, and now I thrive, because I give what I get.

 

Do you want to submit your own survival story and be featured? Take a look at Speak Our Stories, a joint initiative of my #SexAbuseChat and #SayftyCom. More here: SpeakOurStories http://ow.ly/13m0303aiDn 

Would you like to be part of my Broken Pieces Pay It Forward Initiative? Purchase a copy for yourself, fill out an easy form on my site, and I’ll gift a copy from you on my dime to a friend in need!

Purchase Broken Pieces and Broken Places on Amazon and all other online retailers.

Learn more about all of Rachel’s books here. Connect with Rachel for social media services on BadRedheadMedia.com.

Join Rachel for #MondayBlogs every Monday, #SexAbuseChat every Tuesday, and #BookMarketingChat every Wednesday. Learn all about it by clicking on events here!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

photo courtesy of unsplash