A common thread among those sexually attacked as children, and made to keep quiet about it, is the feeling of separateness. One does not have to be quiet about being hit by a truck. Childhood sexual abuse is a taboo subject, even now in the modern era.
Confusion, undue shame, fears, and so much more from the sexual attacks during childhood. grows as the child grows. She is given no love, support or help. Instead she is ostracized if she dare speak of it, compounding the wounds, melding them into her personality’s make-up. She becomes shame as if she is so shameful she no longer belongs. This is the destruction, not the abuse, but what comes after..or doesn’t come.
One can begin to find relief by sharing and bringing it out in the open in the hopes it is received with loving acceptance. Some never do because a child feels shame that is not the child’s, yet she retains it and it grows with her.
Even if one is lucky and courageous enough to speak about these things with the right person, or on a blog, or with a therapist, the years of keeping it in changes the little girl now grown into a woman. For me it has.
It is very difficult to find my voice, feel my feelings, or take good care of myself. I am foreign to my own being. Finding my center, my ‘home’, that place inside that others live in so easily, is a place I’ve lived apart from and have a hard time nestling into and staying.
