Believing The Story Your Body Carries

PINIT

I’ve been quiet again. Trying to process my feelings surrounding things I wish I didn’t know anything about: sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual shame. {Wow. I just laid it out there right off the bat. Sometimes I surprise myself.} Wishing these things weren’t part of my story. Wanting to feel more healed and sure of what to say before writing anything publicly. But…writing is a part of the healing, and sharing some of my story for the healing of others is part of my calling. So here I am. And here you are. We aren’t alone.

If you’re an abuse survivor or someone who loves an abuse survivor, I hope this will speak to you. Our stories are sacred. The internet is not. But sometimes we need to see in these public spaces that the ones who could otherwise appear to have perfectly beautiful lives also have broken stories. I have a beautiful life filled with broken stories, some redeemed and some in process. I’ve come to accept that I am beautiful. But I’m also learning to embrace my brokenness. And I want to invite each of you to do the same…to embrace both your beauty and your brokenness.

If you’re looking for a tell-all, this isn’t it. For me, the details are sacred, meant for sacred spaces. Some of my stories don’t yet feel safe to speak to anyone other than a counselor I’ve learned to trust over the years. There are things my parents don’t know, my friends don’t know, my daughters don’t know. And…as many trauma survivors can relate to, there are things I don’t know because I can’t remember them cognitively. But my body knows. My spirit knows. And the safer I become in my own body and spirit {thank you Jesus; thank you Trauma Sensitive Yoga}, the safer it becomes for me to remember my own stories.

Current events have brought sexual abuse, sexual assault and sexual harassment to the forefront. Hashtag movements such as #metoo and #ibelieveher have given sexual abuse survivors a much needed voice. Breaking the silence and speaking our stories is essential to healing, so I’m a fan of that part. I know from both personal experience and research that silence perpetuates fear and shame, blocking our healing. We’re only as free as we speak…even if just to ourselves and our God. So by all means, speak your stories!

That being said, I have a tender plea: if you’ve shared your story of abuse for the very first time on the internet, please, for the love and care of yourself, find a good counselor or support group and share it with them. We are harmed in relationship and healed in relationship. The internet is not where we heal. Screens can’t provide the kind of relational healing we need no matter how vulnerable we are with our words here.

To a survivor, these current events and hashtag movements aren’t just things happening out there to other people. They aren’t political issues or conservative vs. liberal conversations. And for the love of women everywhere, these are not just feminist issues. These are human issues. And if talking about these things makes me a feminist, then so be it. I will champion femininity all day long! We are GLORIOUSLY made in the image of God. The crown of all creation!

For survivors, current events and all the surrounding media attention are reminders of our own stories, most of which we’ve kept in silence out of fear and shame. As the hashtag movements go viral and story after story rises to the surface, survivors are remembering and reliving their trauma. Many of us are re-experiencing the sensations of trauma in our bodies and brains, decades after the abuse or assault occurred.

And then there are those who can’t remember, but they feel all the sensations. The hashtags burn like wildfire, and so do the trauma sensations buried deep in our bodies. We read other people’s stories and start feeling twitchy, restless, anxious, uneasy. We’re either shutting down or on fire inside and have no idea why. Because we can’t remember. All we know is we’re crawling back under the covers, eating more chips or chocolate, maybe pouring another drink. We’re edgy and hyper-vigilant inside but trying like hell to put on a good front for our family and friends. We’re attempting to control our internal chaos through external perfectionism, performance and people pleasing. {Cleaning obsessively may look better than indulging in excessive amounts of food and drink, but for most of us, it all stems from the same root. It’s your heart that needs attention and care; not the clutter or decor in your house.}

One of the most triggering elements to me personally in recent weeks has been the discrediting of a woman’s abuse story because she can’t remember all the details. I heard this more times than I can count. Even in church of all places! (I’ve never been so triggered by a sermon in my entire life!) Y’all! I can’t remember all the details! This is not uncommon for abuse survivors. In fact, it’s quite common. And for anyone to say a woman can’t be believed if she doesn’t remember the where, when and how of her abuse is not only insensitive, but ignorant of how trauma affects the brain.

I can tell you this: I’d be terrified to testify about my abuse. I don’t think I could do it. I don’t know how she did it. I can’t even tell some of the people who love me the most because I’m afraid they’ll want details I can’t give them to “prove” or validate that it actually happened. When you can’t remember the year it happened or the age you were, that’s a huge indicator that abuse happened, not an indicator that it didn’t.

The way I began to remember my abuse was through my body. I referenced some of these things in my last post. Six years ago, inexplicable hives gave way to flashes and sensations from my past, triggered by some things happening in my present. Too much to explain here. But this is the key: listening to my body, honoring and trusting what it has to say, has taught me a lot about my story. Not the details of abuse, which I don’t really need to know in order to heal, but the essence and reality of abuse and trauma that my body carries. We can only heal what we can sense, speak or see in our stories. So I’m thankful to my body for not only carrying, but revealing the reality of abuse in my story. And thankful to my brain for doing what it was designed to do to help me survive and get through life: let the body hold it until the rest of me was ready to process and heal.

To abuse survivors: I believe the story your body carries. Even if your brain can’t remember.

[If you want to learn more about how the body remembers, read Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score. I affectionally call it “the trauma bible.” I’ve learned a ton and refer to it often. I even keep an extra copy on hand to share with others. Turns out scientific research validates the significance of what our body remembers even when our brain doesn’t. So to anyone out there who doesn’t believe a woman who can’t remember the basic facts, read the book!]

Over the last few weeks, amidst all the talk of sexual abuse and can she or can’t she be believed, I’ve ripped every fingernail off multiple times. Just like I did as a child. The shame and fear that abuse creates always finds a voice, even a silent one like nail picking. As I look down at my fingernails today, feeling some shame that a 43-year old woman would pick her nails like an anxious child with no voice, I remember that I have a voice today. I don’t need my over-picked fingernails to be the silent scream of my inner anxiety. I can say to you, “I’m an abuse survivor who feels anxious inside of my body today.” And I can choose things like writing, beauty hunting, prayer and Trauma Sensitive Yoga to lower that anxiety and actually heal the trauma.

As current events have triggered my trauma, I’ve been taking full advantage of the benefits of Trauma Sensitive Yoga. I’ve also had the privilege of leading individual sessions for other abuse survivors. Y’all, it works. Not magically in one session, but over time. I don’t need to know how it works. I just know that it does. Just as I don’t need to know how inner healing prayer works. I just know that Jesus comes to integrate young, traumatized, shattered places in us with our adult selves so that we can live whole, healed, abundant lives. Part of my calling, as I shared here, is to offer healing to women right here on my farm. {I promise these references will soon turn into reality. Each week, I’m taking baby steps to create a yoga/retreat space here on the farm. And will share it with you as soon as I open the door.}

All these current events and the daily hard of living in a broken world can leave our hearts feeling a little prickly. Overlay all of this on top of abuse and those prickles can feel like sharp thorns that affect our ability to love and be loved. Be kind to yourself. Take care of yourself. Give yourself grace. And more grace. Sometimes we do all the right things to heal, yet still feel prickly, thorny and even on fire because the triggers are just so active. That’s ok. Keep giving yourself new grace. New mercies every single morning.

As much as I want it to happen miraculously overnight, recovery is a process. There’s the breaking, the painful exposing, the healing, the rising, the falling, and the rising again. My story still feels pretty shattered. I’m rising and falling and rising again as I contend with abuse and divorce. The two are intertwined. When two abuse survivors fall in love and get married at a young age, with no healing and no idea how unhealed trauma affects them on a daily basis, marriage is a whole different kind of hard. Can a marriage survive all that trauma baggage? Absolutely! I believe a marriage can be an extraordinary place of exposure and healing. I believe God can redeem and restore broken people and broken marriages. I believed that for all 20 years of my marriage. I believed it even after I signed divorce papers, until recent news and revelation gave me reason to lay that down. So yes, I believe in the restoration of your broken marriage. But I also believe that where a marriage falls into abusive patterns and is not a safe place for healing, God will rescue and redeem you, even if the marriage falls apart. Because ultimately, you matter to Him more than anything in this world! YOU, my brave and beautiful friend, are the crown jewel of His creation. And He will stop at nothing to rescue you and and redeem every broken part of your beautiful story!

 

 

P.S. I had no idea where this post was going when I sat down to write. I just knew I needed to write. So thank you for reading. I’m sure there will be a bit of a vulnerability hangover that follows, as expected when we speak truth about abuse, but knowing even one of you benefited from reading these words makes it worth the public sharing. Also, there are things I’d like to say to my own daughters and other young women about sexual assault and sexual shame. Another day! For today, I just want all of you to know: you are not alone and healing is available. No one and no story is too broken for the healing hand of God.

P.P.S. I almost forgot! A blog post I wanted to share with you from a trauma survivor and PhD who articulates powerful truths about healing: It Really Happened and We Need To Heal From It. I’m a huge fan of her writing and recently bought her book to add to my collection.