BELIEVING IT MATTERED

****POSSIBLE MAJOR TRIGGERS****
“Sometimes women have no doubts about the actual events that took place but play down their significance. Over the years, many women showed up at Ellen’s survivor workshops afraid that their abuse wasn’t bad enough for them to be allowed to participate. They said things such as “It wasn’t incest-it was just a friend of the family” or “I was fourteen and it only happened once” or “He just showed me movies” or “It was with my sister. She was only two years older than me.”

Such statements show the gross extent to which abuse is minimized in our society.

The fact that someone else has suffered from abuse more severe than your own does not lessen your suffering. Comparisons of pain are simply not useful.

There are many ways to de-emphasize sexual abuse. A particularly offensive one is to claim that if a man didn’t force his penis into some opening of your body, you weren’t really violated. This is not true. The severity of abuse should not be defined in terms of male genitals. Violation is determined by your experience as a child-your body, your feelings, your spirit. The precise physical acts are not always the most damaging aspects of abuse. Although forcible rape is physically excruciating to a small child, many kinds of sexual abuse are not physically painful. They do not leave visible scars.

Some abuse is not even physical. Your father may have stood in the bathroom doorway, making suggestive remarks or simply leering when you entered to use the toilet. Your uncle may have walked around naked, calling attention to his penis, talking about his sexual exploits, questioning you about your body. Your tennis coach may have badgered you into telling him exactly what you did with your boyfriend. There are many ways to be violated.

There is also abuse on the psychological level. You had the feeling your mother was aware of your physical presence every minute of the day, no matter how quiet and unobtrusive you were. Your neighbor watched your changing body with an intrusive interest. Your father took you out on romantic dates and wrote you love letters.

Not is frequency of abuse what’s at issue. Betrayal takes only a minute. A father can slip his fingers into his daughter’s underpants in thirty seconds. After that the world is not the same.” (The Courage to Heal)

Besides my brother sexually abusing me, there was another boy (same age as I at the time) which I shared about in a previous post a few weeks back (where I said I told my parents about his advances, and they ‘poo-pooed’ the whole incident) who was all over me. And it was only a one time meeting. But it had an affect on me to this day!! This is when my family and I went to visit my uncle and the boy, his nephew, was visiting him. We were both at the stage of puberty. So, the second to last paragraph above referring to the neighbor watching your changing body, once again jarred this memory. Like it was yesterday, I can remember this kid making comments about my breasts and then he would pounce on me. All the while I fought him off. He followed me everywhere that night making suggestions and lewd comments. When I was a bit older and was in junior high school and the few boys that were interested in me (usually for one thing), to some degree I let them have their way with me as, (1) I thought it was normal to do this; and (2) someone was paying attention to me. All the while, feeling very uncomfortable and scared!