To Sexual Assault Survivors They Are Not "Just Words"

Last year, after twenty years of silence, I came forward as a survivor of sexual assault. It was one of the hardest things that I have ever done. You can read my original post here.

Last week, I was paralyzed by the comments made by the Republican candidate for president. He was bragging about sexually assaulting women.

I waited for his followers to be horrified.

And, then waited some more.

And then realized,in horror, that they were defending this man and coming forward in droves stating that this was "just words" and "just locker room talk" and that, they too, have said such things and heard such things and as Scott Baio said-- we should just "grow up".

Why was I surprised? After all 1/3 women in this country have been sexually assaulted and 1/6 men have, as well.( I think these numbers are actually low- nearly every women that I know has been assaulted) The abusers, so infrequently prosecuted, must be out there somewhere- everywhere. Here the abusers and their protectors now were, out in the light. I suddenly felt more unsafe that I have in years, scared moment-to-moment for my daughters, for all of us.

Still, frozen in my grief which now felt fresh again with the painful things being said everywhere about sexual assault, I chose not to write about it.

When Kelly Oxford wrote a tweet calling for people to join in with their sexual assault stories, I cried as I read the MILLIONS of tweets. I realized for the first time that I am not only a rape survivor but that I had a list, a fucking LIST, of times that my body had been violated and that I had been told to keep quiet about it. Still, I was too frozen to write here, even after I joined in the chorus on Kelly's Twitter wall.

However yesterday, a member of my own family posted a meme stating that the words spoken by the Republican candidate for presidency were "just words". This person, knowing that I nearly took my life in my pain and grief after being raped, decided that it was okay to post such a thing knowing that I would read it. It felt as small as an ant, easily crushed under the weight of the words on the meme and every like that was posted underneath it.

Today, I speak. 

When I was a girl, maybe 7 or 8, a friend's father would always hug me uncomfortably close and lay his hands on my chest or bottom, sometimes even underneath my dress. We had just watched a Berenstein Bears video about inappropriate touching and I knew to tell an adult. I did. Three adults in fact. All of them said that I was just being "dramatic" and that Mr. --- was a nice man and I must have misunderstood. I kept being sent over to play with his children. That man would later be convicted of molesting dozens of children.

When I was 16, I was involved in a serious car accident. I was strapped to a spinal board, immobilized  with an oxygen mask over my face so that no one could hear what I was saying. In the back of the ambulance was my dad and a volunteer medic. My dad sat at the end of the ambulance, calling family members over the rush of the road noise and the beeping of the equipment. The volunteer sat on a bench next to me, his knees pressed against me. He first tentatively pressed his hands against my breasts as we rode over bumps and I thought that it was unintentional. Then, he became more brave, eventually slipping his hands under my shirt and fondling me while watching my dad to be sure he wasn't caught. I kept asking what he was doing and tried to wiggle away, but was strapped down and he pretended not to hear me. He stopped when my dad put his phone away. When I arrived to the hospital I shared my experience with the ER nurse, who told me that I must have misunderstood. I later heard her talking in the hallway with other nurses saying that several patients had similar complaints about this man. The nurses seemed very upset but I am unsure if any action was ever taken against him. I was learning that I did not have a voice against men who touched me. I learned that I was "dramatic" and prone to "misunderstanding".

When I was 17, I was brutally raped. In the aftermath, doctors, nurses and police officers would ask me questions over and over again like "what were you wearing?", "why were you drinking", "were you a virgin" and "did I try to turn him on". I chose not to press charges, an action that will haunt me for the rest of my days. A police officer assured me that a young women who had been drinking would be torn to shreds in court and that he would never be convicted. I learned that a young women drinking while underage was considered more of an offense to many than being a rapist was. I hid the  experience of that rape for twenty years, the shame of it becoming heavier with each passing year.

These occurrences, particularly the rape, have colored everything in my life since. I became a nurse and a writer to help others crawl out of the blackness that I lived in for years. I cannot separate myself from the sexual assault survivor inside of me.  Every cell of my being has been permeated with those violent acts. This is who I am now, who we-- the millions of sexual assault survivors-- are now. We get to have a voice, too. 

Every time that you minimize the braggart's words when he is so proud of his sexual assaults as "just words", you are telling us that our experiences-- our assaults and rapes-- do not matter.

Every time that you tell us, the survivors, to "stop being so dramatic" in our horror of the words being said, you are telling us that our feelings and horror and revictimization do not matter.

Every time that you tell us to "grow up", you are telling us that being offended by sexual assault and the bragging of it is childish and we should be seen and not heard as good children are told. We are told that we cannot be vocal as women, as survivors...that we should simply shut up in order to make you more comfortable.

Every time that we are told that we should dismiss this as "locker room talk", we are frightened. Are men everywhere bragging about sexual assault casually as they dress for a workout? We already know firsthand that the perpetrators are out there, but now our world seems terrifyingly full of them.

Every time that you deflect others' attention away from these words with your "but, but, but... so and so did THIS and that is so much worse", you are reminding us of why victims do not come forward and why the attackers are not persecuted and jailed often; because we live in a society where rape, even violent rape,  is viewed as a minor crime and is just "boys being boys".

I am a single sexual assault survivor who is standing here before you and begging you to take a second look at your words before you repost a meme or make a status about how bragging about sexual assault is "just words" or tell a survivor that she is being "dramatic" or to "grow up" because we are rightfully emotional. I am a lone sexual assault survivor who is standing up for the many that are too afraid to stand publicly, knowing that we are still a society who will shame and demean us. I am one sexual assault survivor that knows that there is an endless sea of others standing, loudly or quietly, beside me. 

Words matter. They always have and always will. Choose wisely. Someone out there is feeling every word in the most painful and personal way. As you think about the people on your friends list, remember always that many of them are survivors of brutality that you may not even be able to imagine. Reach down inside and have some compassion and understanding for us, too. You've so easily been able to find compassion for a man who is proud of being a sexual abuser... I hope that you have some compassion left for the survivors, too. 

If you are a sexual abuse survivor and are struggling, please reach out. RAINN provides online chats and phone support 24 hours per day. You are not alone, Loves. You matter and you are needed here. You can find RAINN here. 

Unraveling Our Shame Stories: What We Teach Young Girls About Sex

I know that I am not alone in the fact that shame about sex is interwoven into my childhood memories. Many of us, particularly women, were taught to feel great shame around our sexuality.

I grew up in a Catholic household. Sex was a taboo subject and was not something that we spoke about. It seemed to be a great secret and, as a curious child, anything that was kept a secret was even more interesting to me than something that we would talk about freely.

I remember as a 5th grader finding a book in the public library that had a sex scene within it. It made me more curious than ever. There was just enough detail to make me more curious but left me with more questions than answers. As sex wasn't talked about in my home, my only prospect for answers seemed to be my friends. So, I brought the book to school and, while outside at recess, opened the book(a V.C. Andrews book, if memory serves me) to the carefully marked section with the sex scene and we huddled together carefully at the edge of the playground and read it together. One of my friends tried to gently explain to me what she knew of sex(which was very little) and we all sat around rather quizzically, feeling frustrated that we didn't know the answers to this topic even though we all felt, with our budding breasts and sudden interest in boys, that we were quiet grown-up, indeed.

Unfortunately, our huddle got the attention of the teacher, who broke us up and confiscated the book. I was pulled into the principal's office by my arm while being berated the entire way and called a pervert by the sour-faced teacher. I was horrified. I was a straight A student and had been reading adult books for years. My fervent reading had always been praised by teachers-- I had taught myself to read at age 3 and by the middle of grade school, testing showed that I was reading at a college level. The librarian would order in adult books especially for me. It was a source of joy and pride for me. These adult books would occasionally mention sex in a casual way. I had always been rewarded for my curiosity and reading and now, that same curiosity made me a pervert. I didn't want to be a pervert. When my father picked me up and told me that I was an embarrassment to the family, I was so ashamed that I couldn't eat for days. I was full of shame and confusion. I was further confused when I saw the confiscated book on my mother's nightstand with a bookmark in it. Was my Mom a pervert, too or was it just me?

The next year at church, while I was volunteering, I overheard the priest talking to a young high school couple. I recognized them--they were quite popular and well-liked at church and at school. I gleaned from the bits that I overheard that they had admitted to having sex. I was shocked. My only "sex talk" had been the firm advice to "never have sex before marriage". I worried that they would go to Hell and felt my heart racing in my chest. The priest was berating only the girl as the boy sat by quietly, with his head down. I could hear him pounding on his bible as he said words such as "whore" and "beg for forgiveness" while the sounds of her weeping leaked out into the hallway. When they left, the girl walked out of the church with her parents who all were walking as though covered in shame, heads down as they walked the silent hallway. The boy, still in the office with the priest, was now getting peppered with questions about the football team. When he left, the priest clapped him on the back and wished him a good game. The boy left with his shoulders held high, quite the opposite of what I had just seen with his girlfriend. I was left with a sick realization in my stomach that if one had sex, it was the woman's fault and was shameful to the woman alone. I wondered if girls were inherently evil.

I remember a lesson that the priest once gave my Sunday school class. It was about the prostitute that was being stoned when Jesus intervened. Someone raised their hand to ask what a prostitute was. The priest replied simply that it was a woman that had sex with men. I remember us all looking around in confusion. We had recently watched the film at school that was played for all students when  puberty reared it's ugly head(a 1960's reel with video of swimming sperm that so terrified me that I couldn't eat the popcorn that the teacher had so kindly given us as though we were watching something delightful at the theater) and we had realized that our parents must have had sex(after marriage only, of course) to conceive us. I wondered then if sex was always a sin and if women were the only gender that it was a sin for. I was grateful that in the story, that the woman had not been stoned. I wondered what the punishment would be for me in modern day times. I was too frightened to ask.

In high school, I spent a year at a Catholic school. I sat through a dress code orientation led by a nun whose entire body was covered head-to-toe. As she explained that we should wear skirts that "swept the floor" and that "no part of your bosom should ever show", I felt scared. I felt as though she was looking straight at me for much of the presentation and I wanted to hide under a rock. As a naturally very busty and curvy person, I showed some cleavage in nearly every shirt that I wore short of a turtleneck. I imagined my curves disappearing and turning into a tall, lithe woman that could easily cover her curves and her sexuality. The nun completed the presentation by reminding us that "boys will be boys" and it was our job as good Catholic girls to "not encourage them". I had no idea what she meant. When we went to the pep rallies(which were mandatory) and to the football games(football was this school's second God) and cheered for the boys, weren't we encouraging them? Which encouragement was right and which was wrong? Again, I was far too terrified to ask these questions, so I instead gazed at the altar of Mary, the virgin mother.

When I was seventeen, I was raped. Everything that I had learned about sexuality had taught me that I had asked for this and I, not the man who raped me, should repent. I was dripping in shame so heavy that I could no longer put one foot in front of the other. I was certain that I was evil and was deserving of this Hell on Earth and the Hell that surely awaited me in the afterlife. When the symptoms of PTSD began to emerge, I believed that I was going crazy(this was far before PTSD was known to the public). I believed that the vivid flashbacks that I was having of the rape were a punishment from God. I could not bear it. I decided that it was best to take my own life and tried desperately to kill myself. I did not succeed. I lived on and so did the shame.

When I became engaged in my early twenties, I couldn't wait to plan all of the details of the wedding.  When I went dress shopping, the saleswoman at one store asked me if I was a virgin. I was horrified and froze there, standing next to my mother and sister. In response to my silence, the elderly woman pursed her lips and gestured to the rack of gowns that were not bright white, but instead were more buttery, yellow shades of white. She referred to that rack as the "dirty white" gowns and nodded her head with fervency as she told me that only virgins could wear "pure white" on their wedding day. I allowed her to help me as I tried on the "dirty white" gowns, feeling quite dirty myself. At a different shop I later found the perfect gown, which happened to be bright white. As I pulled it on the morning of my wedding, I wondered if just the wearing of it was a sin and if I would be standing in front of my family and friends as an impostor of purity, when underneath I was so dirty.

When I became a mother, I remember watching other mothers with a fervency to fit in. I noticed that most of the stay at home moms were very conservative and wore twin sets and khaki pants many days. I rushed out and bought two piece sweater sets in bland colors and khaki pants that hid every one of my curves. It seemed that hiding my sexuality was the key to being a good mother. The key seemed to be to look like people that would never, ever have sex(which belied the fact that, as mothers, of course we had experienced sex).

It was when the first of my two daughters were born that truly began to unravel my shame around sex. I knew as soon as I held my beautiful daughter in my arms that I would teach her of her beauty and how deserving she is of love and acceptance, not shame for who she inherently is, not shame for the gender of which she was born. I will not embed within my daughters shame of who they are. It is intensely toxic. I will teach them about what a beautiful thing sexuality can be. I will teach them that no action, no outfit could ever entice someone to rape them- that rape is never the fault of the victim. I will teach my son the same lessons and teach him to honor women. I am pushing the pause button on the shame tape that's played itself out since the beginning of time.

I am nearing the end of my thirties. My shame around sex and my sexuality continue to unravel. Old memories sometimes pop up in my mind and, with the clarity of age, I am putting together more pieces of how this shame was built and how it has colored my life. In hundreds of tiny ways, I was taught that my body is shameful, that sex is shameful and that women are dirty. It is one of the most toxic beliefs that one can hold.

I am pushing back the shame in the most powerful way that I can imagine-- by raising daughters that are proud of their bodies, that will learn about sex in a kind and gentle way(with NO shame) and will, hopefully, not carry the weight of this burden. I am releasing the burden of this shame and I feel so much Goddamned lighter without it. It was never my true story, it was simply the fictional story that others felt to smother me with.

Someday, I will be free of this shame. I hope that my girls will fly high without every having to carry it. For, shame is not their birthright-- freedom is.

You Have to Feel it to Heal it.

Warning: heavy language and honesty ahead. 

I came forward publicly as a sexual abuse survivor earlier this year. It was a secret that I had carried with me for twenty years.

Twenty years of silence. Twenty years of trying to forget. Twenty years of trying to imagine it away. Twenty years of pushing down the rising shame.

There was no healing in that time. None. The funny thing about secrets is that they become heavier each year until the silence is so fucking heavy that you cannot breathe underneath the weight of it.

Silence doesn't bring healing. Pushing away the feelings and the shame doesn't bring healing.

Why? You can't heal it if you don't feel it.

Fuck. That truth burns, doesn't it?

I don't want to feel that shit. The reason that I was silent and numbed myself for so many years is because those feelings hurt like a bitch. Those feelings burned so badly that I nearly took my own life in the aftermath of the rape. Who in the hell wants to feel that? Not me.

But numb doesn't heal. It may temporarily protect you but there is no healing underneath the cold, plastic, silent numbness.

So, I've been feeling all the damn feelings. Writing letters to my 17 year old self, allowing myself to remember all the painful details, reaching out to other survivors.

It's been really fucking painful. And, truly healing. One day at a time, Loves.

So, if you are healing from a wound in your life-- whatever that may be, I honor you.

Feel that shit. Heal that shit.

You'll get through this. You will. I will.

We will come out stronger on the other side.

Hope and Garbage

In the middle of an inner city neighborhood, on a tiny corner of green space wedged between two dilapidated houses stands a clumsy frame of the word 'hope'.  Instead of the bright beacon of light we normally associate with the word, this hope is full of garbage-- crumbled, used waste. 

I had to stop. You see, I saw myself in this artful pile of trash-- so much so that I parked on the side of the road and wept as I looked out at the structure. I felt long-buried feelings of worthlessness bubbling up to the surface. 

My entire life I've struggled with self-worth. Even as a child, I struggled to simply feel worthy for life, itself, let alone any good things. I have treated myself like garbage, as if I was simply the detritus left in the wake of someone better. I have often wondered why everyone around me seemed to have it all together when I was suffering so inside my head. It has always seemed that I am missing a piece that everyone else is born with as I seem to fit in nowhere. 

I drove past this the same day that an article I wrote in which I finally come forward as a rape survivor after twenty long years of silence went live to the world.  I have long wondered if I deserved what happened to me that night-- if I am worthless, deserving of terrible, awful things. I have spent my life gathering evidence to support my belief of unworthy.  Shame will take you deep in the darkness in unspeakable ways and much of my life has been spent inside the velvet obscurity of depression. 

Today I dredged deep into the filth inside myself and I pulled it out into the light where the shame will die(shame cannot live in the light). I am taking out the trash and using that pain to give others hope. 

Bringing up the shame is excruciating. 

Bringing up the shame is beautiful. 

It is excruciatingly beautiful.

I am on a roller coaster of emotion, the ups and downs coming with no warning.However,  I firmly believe that this roller coaster will end with my feet solidly planted in the light, with no garbage in sight.

I am thankful for my time living in the dumpster of despair. It has reminded me how lovely the light is and that we cannot appreciate love without the juxtaposition of hate. At the end of even the darkest journey lies hope, as hope always lies in wait in the most unexpected of places.
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A Letter to My Rapist

Dear You,

As I write this I cannot help but see both you and that scared teenage girl whom I was on that day. I can see you as clearly in my mind as if it were yesterday, not 20 years in the past. After all, some things are burned so deeply into our memories that we cannot forget them even if we tried. That girl, however, one day away from her 17th birthday— she is farther away in my memory, blurry somehow. That day fissured my life into two sections—my life literally breaking into two halves, the before and the after. These days, the before section seems muddy, unclear, as if the rape caused a cloud so thick that I will never be able to see through it again.

The events of that night set my life on a trajectory that I never could have planned. First deep into the darkest of depression and a series of suicide attempts, one of which was nearly successful. Then, from the deepest place of darkness where I used the pain as a springboard to catapult myself into a better life—better than I ever could have imagined, in fact. I know, looking back, that I would not have my life today without having been a victim of rape at such a tender and painful age.

I have long ago forgiven you, not for your own good but for my own sanity. What I did not realize is that I would, in some fucked up way, be thankful for the horror of rape, which took me into hell and then back into life again—fevered in the desire to somehow make others feel less pain.

I can go back to that night so easily. In fact, the music of The Doors—a band that I had once loved whose music happened to be playing in the background that night—can bring me right back into those moments of terror so easily that I have run from stores, hands over my ears, when the music comes on overhead. I struggled with panic attacks and vivid flashbacks of that night for years, what I now know was PTSD but what I believed at the time was pure insanity.

What I am trying to do now is to think less and less about that night and more about how I allowed, sometimes consciously and sometimes not, the rape and the aftermath of it to make me into a better person. I know that the person that I might have become and the person that I am today could have been very far apart. My priorities and my life’s purpose could have been so much shallower.

But, it did happen and here I am 20 years later. The ways in which the person I am today is different from the innocent, teenage girl that I was are so many that we couldn’t count them all.

Mostly, I suppose that I want you to know that you didn’t break me. I know now that someone like you, hateful and selfish, could never break someone like me. I used the pain and the fear and the shame to make myself into a better person than I ever hoped that I could be, in so many ways. You did not give me this strength, but I am grateful to you for showing me that it existed.

When I fall into sadness for that time in my life, I allow myself to think of all of the ways that I am better for having had that horrific experience. To think of the parts of me that I am thankful for, the parts of me that did not exist before that night.

I am stronger than I ever knew. I didn’t know this truth at first. I fell face-forward into a clinical depression that no meds would touch. In the weeks and months after the rape, I found myself blurring the pain with large amounts of alcohol and any drugs that were offered to me. The respite from the pain was always so very brief. I began cutting myself over the insides of my arms and legs to achieve the short relief from the internal pain that the external pain would cause. Again, the break from the pain was so slight and seemed just a blink in time against the raging pain. I attempted suicide seven times, feeling even more of a failure with each failed attempt. There are no words to tell you how low this point in my life was. I was standing at death’s door begging her to let me in. However, I kept moving one foot in front of the other, day after day until I realized that it didn’t hurt so badly anymore. I crawled my way out of that hole by my bloodied fingernails and have made a life for myself that my teenage self could never have imagined. You could not possibly know how strong I had to be to do so.

I found my purpose. In the days following my rape, all of the professionals around me seemed more concerned with my own actions that may have made me a victim instead of the actions of my rapist. There was no compassion for me. None. The nurse that was more concerned with my clothing choices that night and the therapist that chastised me for under-age drinking led me deeper inside my own shame and convinced me to not press charges. As an adult, I made a conscious choice to become a nurse that would be kind, welcoming, non-judgmental and would advocate for my patients no matter what. Being a nurse has been one of the greatest joys of my life and I do not for a moment believe that I would’ve made that career choice if I had not had this experience.

I have become a more compassionate person. In the lack of compassion that I found around me in the wake of my own hell storm, I found inside myself a well of compassion for others. I believe that we all deserve second chances, kindness and non-judgment. I know now that compassion can literally save a life and I intend to live out the rest of my days showering compassion on others.

I am a better mother. I am a far more kind and patient mother than I would have been had I not walked that dark path all of those years ago. My soul feels many years older than my body. I hope that I will always be an open and welcoming place for my children to come, even on the worst days of their lives. I have become a mother not only to my own three children, but a surrogate mother in the world to whoever needs one.

I am a more forgiving person. If I can forgive you, I believe that I can forgive anyone. There are not many worse things than what you chose to do that night. I choose to forgive you, each and every day that the memories come washing back up. I forgive you as I live in fear that the same thing could happen to one of my children. I forgive you even as the PTSD comes creeping back into my life every so often. I forgive you even as I am still full of fiery anger at the man who stole the last days of my childhood.

I refuse to turn my head to injustice. I refuse to turn my eyes away from injustice of any kind. Too many eyes turned themselves from me when I needed them the most. Your brutality stripped me bare and brought out the Mama Tiger that lies within me. I can no longer be held down from railing against maltreatment of any human beings. I have a heart for the downtrodden.

Shame and I are on a first name basis. This one doesn’t seem to positive, does it? However, we can’t talk about rape without talking about shame. There are so many people that shame victims of sexual assault. The greatest shame, for me, came from within myself. I am still, 20 years later, dealing with the shame. From the dozens of showers that I compulsively took in the first days after the rape to the spiral of thoughts I feel when someone new learns that I am a rape survivor—shame has permeated my journey. In fact, it has taken me years of thinking of writing this letter to actually do so because shame has always talked me out of it. It is exhausting. I am bringing my shame, the shame that I have no reason as a victim to feel, into the light. For the thing about shame is that it can only exist in the darkness. So, I am bringing it all out into the world, as painful as it is. I have hidden my rape for so many years due to shame. I am ready to be free of this dark secret, ready to make peace with the dark beast. So far, befriending shame and being brutally honest in my writing about it has helped me reach others who are struggling. This journey is just beginning. I will use my years of shame to help others into the light. This may not yet be a strength of mine but it WILL be. I’m thanking you for the work that I haven’t even yet done.

I’m writing this to you and wondering if you will ever read it. I’m not sure if I want your eyes to see it and for you to feel my pain or if I hope upon all hope that you will never see these words. I hope that I never see your face again. I hope that you have never hurt anyone else the way that you hurt me. I am thankful for what I have become but cannot lie and tell you that I am thankful for your actions.

May this letter be another fissure in my life. A great fissure severing the person that I have been for twenty years, a woman who tried to do good in the world but lived in the dark shadows of shame at night, and the woman I will be tomorrow, free of the heavy blanket of shame that has weighted me down in immeasurable ways.

With this letter, I claim myself again and I step into the light, with the full knowledge that I never deserved to carry this burden. You tried to burn me but I was stronger in fire than I ever had been before. Thank you for showing me my strength. You are no longer needed here.

In writing this letter, I realized that deep down in my soul this wasn’t a thank you letter to you at all. It was probably naive of me to think that it ever could have been. This letter to you that I’ve pondered for years is really a love letter to that little, scared girl that climbed her way out of the darkest place imaginable and has carried this burden alone for 20 years. She and I are of course the same person, but in my mind I see her as a separate being—after all, the woman I am today could not be more different from that young girl. I thank her. And tonight I sit here, tears streaming down my face, hoping to send a message back into time to that young, wounded girl. She was wronged in the most horrible of ways and she rose again from her own ashes to find her way again as phoenix. Without that girl, the woman that I am today would be nothing. I am so thankful for her strength.

If you are struggling in the aftermath of a sexual assault, I want you to know that there is so much beauty and light on the other side of this. Keep fighting. Seek help if you need it. You are stronger than you yet know. I’m so sorry that this has happened to you.

Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-656-HOPE for the National Sexual Assault Hotline.