I am whole I am holy I was born from pain, raised in pain but I overcame I deserve all the love this world can offer I deserve a beautiful life And I will live it I told her of my fears showed her all the things I was afraid would scare her off believing […]
Love is not a prize Read More »
In my previous post on this topic, I covered coming out to yourself, your therapist and your support or therapy community. The final two really difficult steps are coming out to friends and lovers (level one and two) and coming out to or confronting your family. The family piece might come before the friend piece,
Coming Out as a Survivor Part 2 – Friends and Lovers Read More »
I’m trying to write a chapter on coming out as an incest or child sexual assault survivor for the book. There are a lot of reasons to come out, and a lot of reasons not to. I’m not going to say one is always better than the other. You need to decide for yourself what
What I’ve learned about coming out as an incest survivor (part 1) Read More »
My neck has been particularly seized up since I found out about the appointment with the gynecologist. Coincidence? Not likely. Since the assault that caused the tearing in my vagina also caused a neck injury, the two are definitely linked. I believe in the saying “trust in God(s) but tie your camel”, which means to
Rules of kvetching: applied to CSA survivors Read More »
I had an interesting experience having a massage today. I had a sore hip due to what my chiropractor says is a tight ‘IT band’. The massage therapist was doing various things to loosen this and I was asking her what might have caused it to get so tight. Between the two of us we figured
I ran into one of my elementary school teachers at a conference I was presenting at, and we reconnected. In a follow up email I fairly matter of factly told her I’d been abused by my father (she still works in the school system and the more people who know about him in this small
Gifts of Kindness – A Teacher Gives Survivor a Piece of Her Past Read More »
I just reread my last two posts (and found and fixed some typos). Getting to certainty is important. When I read Tarot, I get myself calm and centred, and then reach down to my roots and dwell there. This helps me be grounded in my intuition and my connection to the Goddess. If I don’t
Today is the morning of the shortest day of the year. A time when I usually clean up, simplify, tidy, pray. I’m grateful for my blessings this year: learning to persevere, my friends. I’m also grateful for something that happened recently. In the place cleared by recognizing that I’d already lost my older brother, I
I’ve been telling my friends that coming back from my week at camp I feel like I’ve had a megadose of ultra-strength feminist Mother Earth vitamins. It’s not like I”m any different, just more of myself, and I feel stronger and more resilient. How important it is to be in a space where I can
Yesterday I saw my therapist and we talked about the pap test appointment tomorrow. What’s different about this appointment is: 1) the medical professional will know I’m a survivor. 2) I’m planning to ask if I have scar tissue. 3) I’m planning to ask about all the wierd things I have going on with my
The day before the pap Read More »
I just sent this. Hi there, I’m sorry for doing this in an email, but wasn’t certain I could explain all this well over the phone. I hope you can forward this email to whomever in your organization it might concern. I’m originally from [home town] (born and raised) and am an incest survivor. My
Email to a survivors organization in my home town Read More »
It’s 5:20 am and I can’t sleep. I’m not one of those poor people who actually gets up at 5 am for work or the insane ones that get up at 5 am to do yoga or something. My bedroom is hot, the comforter is too warm, my stomach is upset and I’m running over
I seem to have run out of steam. My therapist is out of town and I accidentally missed last weeks appointment so I have no-one to debrief the yucky images that came up last time I had sex. I find myself not even really remembering them, which I don’t know how I feel about. I
Running out of steam Read More »
This morning I went for an hour long massage. I really like my massage therapist. I don’t see her that often, but she’s this nice, smart woman and we have lively conversations while she unknots me. Today she commented on my back, how profoundly solid and unmovable with tension it was. I seem to be
The last few days I’ve been lonely. Being sick with a sore throat and earache, and kind of tired, I’ve not been working much and have had lots of time to myself. I find myself logging in to my blog and looking at the posts of other survivors, looking eagerly for comments on my own
I made music last night with a guitarist I’m now working with. We worked on some covers and one original song from each of us. I brought my most successful song, a song with no survivor content, about euphemisms for the word vagina/vulva. I’ve performed it many times, and gotten a lot of approval for
So I didn’t go and make music this week. The sore throat won. However I did compile a bunch of lyrics and listen to a lot of songs that my musical colleague wants to do, and prepared a chart of an original song we’re going to work on together. I kept going. I also practiced
Unhiding continued Read More »
As part of my ongoing quest to stop Hiding I’m starting gradually to getting back into both doing things I’m passionate about and letting others witness me doing them. Tonight, I’ll be meeting to jam for the first time with a friend of a friend who plays the guitar. We’ve been discussing material and will