Resilience – Restoring

Content Warning: childhood sexual abuse, rape, incest, drugging. 

I am the survivor of childhood sexual abuse, starting roughly around the age of 1.5 and going to sometime before my 5th birthday. I discovered physical proof backing up my memories a few days ago. That shook me in ways I didn’t anticipate. I have learned to honor and respect the things my younger selves have finally felt safe to give me. But to have physical proof makes things a lot more concrete than just trusting your own mind memories and body memories.

It’s sometimes odd how fate decides to bring things about. I have multiple fellow survivors as close friends now. We are all in varying places in our journeys, we are all on different planes of the kind of healing required of these wounds. But do you know what brings us together even more than anything else? The fact that we hold space for each other’s stories and can validate that none of us are crazy for what we feel or remember.

I have shifted back and forth between an utterly overwhelming deep sadness at feeling my littlest self’s smallness and her massive disassociation at such a young age and anger that knows no bounds at the fucking bastard who did this to me. I can also trace back the spirit beings who continued to surround me every single step of the way. I see how they protected me from my soul being so shattered and splintered that I no long could hold on to myself. Just barely though.

I suppose there’s a question of why I am not cynical against those beings for not keeping my dad from sexually abusing me. I am not even sure how to react to that. While I firmly believe everything that has happened in my life has had a purpose, I don’t believe any deity should have come in and put a stop to the abuse. I had to go through that to become who I am today. But not because of what was done to me, but because of how my soul has fought continually to remove the filth put on me and restore it’s wholeness.

I am who I am today because I kept pushing on, I kept saying I’m not done yet. I am pushing to keep healing and fighting against the waves that constantly threaten to drown me. I’m fighting to heal and end this cycle because of those around me who do not have their voice. I am fighting to reclaim my power and my voice so I can speak up for them.

I have been sitting with the memories that have come back this week. I won’t be publicly sharing them as they are too graphic and too dark. They are the things I will share with fellow survivors to let them know they are not alone in their own darkness. I will be using my powers as a witch to make sure that I am removing and returning all of the negative energy and soul sucking yuck threefold.

I am not angry at my father for what he did to me. I am angry that my youngest self was treated so horrifically by my mother. My father? He is already reaping the consequences of what he did to me and my other siblings. So is my mother. I am more sad at the amount of disassociating I had to do to merely survive.

I’m working hard to rebuild and reclaim. Even though I know it is not possible to regain the childhood I never got to have, it is possible for me to make sure my own children get the fullest childhood to the best of my ability.

She’d say “You are so much stronger than you even think you are
Let your heart, let your heart lead the way”
That’s what she’d say

She’d Say – Andy Grammar feat. Lady Black Mambazo