Bring pain and shame out of the shadows of propriety. Propriety is an illusion that is worshipped as a god. The cost is suffering and death. Sharing our lives honestly is the antidote.
After experiencing abuse at church and school growing up, my first experience with sexual assault at 16, and continuing trauma after graduating highschool, I struggled with suicide as a teenager and young adult. That was almost 28 years ago. People who haven’t lived these things often don’t realize the far-reaching impacts of society’s shaming of suffering and simultaneous exaltation of masking reality with ‘perfection’ and ‘normal’. I didn’t realize any of the root causes of my abuse or resulting mental health issues, or that I could even expect any different outcomes or feelings during those years because as far as I knew life was simply happening. I had no other reference point for what life could be like or that there were other options open to me. Many people describe experiencing the same type of ‘tunnel vision’ while experiencing trauma. Suffering, and not showing it or disclosing it, was such a constant state that I didn’t see it as something I could change or something over which I had any control.
Hindsight after many years of continued suffering, and the following years of healing, is what made those realities apparent to me. Before that time I had no ability to understand what was happening to me or what was clear in the bigger picture. Growing up in church, school and public settings that placed girls and women in a subordinate and support position to boys and men greatly influenced my false beliefs about myself, women, men and many other things. The abuse and trauma reinforced that confusion. My relationship with God, which began early in childhood, was not defined by my misunderstandings during those years because unconditional love was the connection that had always been with me and what consoled me. Rather, it was trying to make the outward contradictions of the world around me ‘make sense’ that caused my spiritual confusion, as it left me questioning what I already knew was right in my heart rather than questioning adults or peers, their behavior, or the longstanding systems. The focus being placed on how things appeared rather than how they actually were is part of what created those damaging systems and dangerous settings. It is still part of what continues to create more systemic abuse and more perpetrators from generational cycles of abuse, and also what continues to serve in the silencing of victims of many types of crimes.
Even with having a loving family who I could have trusted with the truth, I didn’t even conceive of having a voice or a choice or learn any of those lessons until after I gained a new perspective. That shift happened through unexpected events, almost dying more than once, not through an intentional process I went through willingly. Change can also come that way, it has happened many times in my life since then, but that’s not how this change came to me. I kept up the lie of ‘everything’s okay’ amid years of continued abuse, reproductive coercion, losing three precious babies, facing many life threatening situations and almost being killed in front of my young children. I was 29 when that chapter ended, 10 years after getting married, I finally escaped with my children, aged 6 and 4, permanently.
I’m so grateful for our survival, healing, and for the support we had to thrive. Many people have no one to help them once they finally reach out, and many more people do not survive at all. The 16 years since then have brought so much learning and joy for myself and my children. Their father was also able to receive help and healing and was able to remain a constant presence in their lives. No matter what people have done or experienced, and regardless of each person’s spiritual beliefs, as we are all continuous works in progress and no one belief encompasses the mystery, God’s love provides fertile soil for growth and grace filled opportunities for change. The healing years have also brought a new love and another precious baby to our family. Our lives, and the lives of so many others, intersect with the struggles and pain that people have always faced. With marginalized people suffering at much higher rates than people with privilege, and people who have financial support available.
We can clearly see the psychological and physical violence, death, and wars on all levels taking place whose common root is again, hidden and unhealed pain. Also, many people who do speak up are ignored and often marginalized and abused further, institutionally and in communities and families. We can all learn from each other’s lives and bring change for the people who are actively suffering and bearing the cost, and for all who come after us. We can help bring healing – individually, nationally and globally. Get involved with the service groups already at the forefront and let’s all help do the work.
Accepting forgiveness from God for our part and our choices and offering forgiveness to others is an ongoing process that must be lived, not simply learned. Being honest with my family about my life was also an important part of that process and they were so loving and forgiving, as well as my friends. I started sharing more widely about the details of my life for the first time about three years ago, as a result I was asked by an old friend to share publicly about it for the first time with a group of college students. This was another transformative experience, they were so open and had wonderful questions. These are some of the passages I shared with the students along with sharing my story and listening to theirs.
As we learn to use our voices…
“In the act of admitting what we are so afraid to admit—especially if admitting means admitting it in our body, where we feel it in painful waves—in that scary moment of feeling and sharing what we thought would destroy us, we unexpectedly come upon within ourselves this invincible love that sustains us unexplainably in the midst of the painful situation we are in. As we learn to trust in this paradoxical way God sustains us in our suffering, we are learning to sink the taproot of our heart in God, who protects us from nothing even as God so unexplainably sustains us in all things. As this transformative process continues, we find within and beyond ourselves resources of courage, patience, and tenderness to touch the hurting places with love, so they might dissolve in love until only love is left. This for me is a very deep, contemplative way to understand that Christ’s presence in the world is being bodied forth in and as the gift and miracle of our very presence in the world.”
-James Finley
As we learn to honor our stories…
“If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I’d never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it in our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn’t what human creation is about. It is that we have to try, to put down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.”
-Madeleine L’Engle
As we learn to heal…
“Our brokenness reveals something about who we are. Our sufferings and pains are not simply bothersome interruptions of our lives; rather, they touch us in our uniqueness and our most intimate individuality. The way I am broken tells you something unique about me. The way you are broken tells me something unique about you. That is the reason for my feeling very privileged when you freely share some of your deep pain with me, and that is why it is an expression of my trust in you when I disclose to you something of my vulnerable side. Our brokenness is always lived and experienced as highly personal, intimate and unique.”
-Henri Nouwen
As we learn to be vessels for God’s love…
“If I did not believe, if I did not make what is called an act of faith (and each act of faith increases our faith, and our capacity for faith), if I did not have faith that the works of mercy do lighten the sum total of suffering in the world, so that those who are suffering…somehow mysteriously find their pain lifted and some balm of consolation poured on their wounds, if I did not believe these things, the problem of evil would indeed be overwhelming.”
“People say, ‘What is the sense of our small effort?’ They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that.”
-Dorothy Day
As we learn to surrender…
“Listen my love, illumination is eternal.
‘Now’ is always evolving.
As there are billions of stars, there are billions of steps.
As there are billions of souls, there are billions of ways to grow.”
-Rumi
As we learn to listen…
“The simple fact is that by being attentive, by learning to listen, we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations.”
-Thomas Merton
As we learn to live, over and over again…
“Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.”
-Psalm 126:6 (NIV)
All of my children are songs of joy and my life is filled with sheaves of love. As we go forth, may we all see ourselves and others through the eyes of God, through the eyes of love. Working together to plant the seeds of our growth.