I’ve been doing this work, in this space, for six months – which is not anything like a long time. But I’ve been pretty immersed, informing and educating myself, reading late into the night, training with RAINN to serve as a volunteer on their online chat line, reading some more, studying, researching. I’ve learned about the short- and long-term impact of trauma on brain development and physiological processes and pathways; I’ve developed a vocabulary to express the validation and support I’m driven to provide; I’ve read and shared and exchanged countless words with other survivors as we write our way through trying to make sense of our experiences, to move forward, to heal.
I still don’t know The Word for This.
I wrote that sentence earlier this week, when posting a stat about childhood sexual abuse. And despite the progress as I’ve made, the painful real-life impacts I’ve been working through, the triggers I’ve identified and named out loud… I still question myself. I still compare my experiences to those who absolutely, categorically, have dealt with far worse. I still wonder whether I belong here, in this community.
I reread my story and its sequel, and look for clues.
Did it happen as often as it seems? (Memories flash to so many different points in the first 25 years of my life that I’m clearer on this part, but I still question the sense that it pervaded my entire childhood; perhaps the in-betweens were as destructive as the events themselves?)
Was I complicit? (As a child I looked forward to grandparent visits; I accepted the toys and dolls along with the reminders of how they’d stood in line, left work early, shelled out to buy me things they couldn’t easily afford, though I still don’t know whose desire they were feeding; I played along, oh how I played along. Even as a young adult, educated and trained as an attorney, an advocate whose tools were words and voice, I let myself be guilt-tripped into accepting it. And only one person, just one outside observer, in all those years, told me it wasn’t OK.)
Was it assault, abuse, or neither, or both? (A grandfather’s hands do not belong on a granddaughter’s ass, fingertips close to other places, too close. A grandfather should not speak to a granddaughter using words intended to express direct sexual desire and arousal. A grandfather should not force his granddaughter into an embrace and dry-hump her. A family should not expect her to tolerate this, to hold herself accountable for his ignorance and lack of self-control.)
These are the same questions I asked when I began, the questions I knew others must be asking. I share this not because I’m discouraged, or because I want you to be. Quite the opposite.
I share it because in spite of the fact that these central questions remain, I am different today from what I was six months ago, when Dr. Ford testified and the world watched, when I couldn’t keep quiet any longer, when I launched this platform with the blind hope that I would be heard, that I would be able to help others be heard as well.
I am different from what I was several years ago, when I finally wrote the words that became the Rosetta stone for my childhood, and began to voice the idea that something was deeply wrong with these experiences.
I am different from the young woman, the teen girl, the child in white tights and black patent leather Mary Janes, who believed the only answer that made sense was that she was fundamentally defective, that she deserved what she got, that she wasn’t good enough for “no.”
That person is me, but I am different. And this… this is healing. This is progress. This is recovery. There’s no end point, no singular path, no finite structure, no finish line.
Think about what’s different – any one thing that’s different for you now.
If you’ve created a single post using the hashtag #metoo because something happened to you too, you’re healing.
If you’ve followed a single survivor account because it helps in some way, you’re healing.
If you’ve watched others in this space and wished you could do what they’re doing, it means you recognize there is hope, and you are healing.
If yesterday was better than today, if today is awful and you don’t know how you’re going to get through it, if it feels like you’ve moved backwards, it means you know forwards exists, and you are healing.
If you are here, you are healing.
I’m here, and I’m healing. Stay with me.
Much love,
Jess