I am

[CarbonTiger]

I am a survivor of violence & childhood sexual abuse.

I am a survivor of rape.

I am a survivor of being drugged.

I am safe,
I am loved,
I am supported.

I recognize I am hurting.
I am strong.
These words help me believe in the truth.
It was never my fault.
I was a child.
I am in fact, a child.
I am an adult now.
I feel scared and afraid.

I can control my thoughts.
I can breathe these emotions through me.
I can get help if I need it.

I am strong,
I am vulnerable,
I am ok.
I am safe,
I feel loved,
I feel supported.

I can repeat these words as needed. I will be free of this pain someday. I will win because I have power and control over my own choices.

I am safe. I am loved. I am grateful.

peace within,
CT

 

[Esterio]

I am strong,
I am vulnerable,
I am ok.
I am safe,
I feel loved,
I feel supported

Very important to know where you are on your healing journey. Thanks for sharing. I am glad those words help you to believe your truth.

 

[Me Not Me]

Thank you for your heartfelt thoughts and words of healing. They reminded me of something I recently ran across from a survivor. She does a great job of trying to explain the experience of surviving childhood sexual abuse. I found it both inspirational and hopeful.

Child sexual abuse causes very real damage—to our brains, to our personality development, to our ‘internal working models’, even to our bodies’ susceptibility to disease. Recovery is not swift. We need, in so many ways, to ‘unlearn what we have learned’. We need to learn whom to trust and why. We need to develop skills for managing our feelings. We need to treat ourselves kindly, as worthy of self-care. We need to retrain our reactions and learn to handle flashbacks and triggers. We need to learn to relate to others well. We need to learn to assert ourselves in the face of someone else’s power. These are hard tasks, but essential ones.

Healing doesn’t come through denial or avoidance. It doesn’t come through wearing a brave smile and pretending that nothing happened. Healing doesn’t come through perpetuating the lies of the abuser. Healing comes through embracing the truth.
But what is that truth? It is many things, but it includes the breathtaking triumph that we survived and we are still here. So many of us carry the shame posture of a victim, believing that we are weak and defective and worthless, but instead we should be proud. We are resilient. When we were defenceless and unsupported, mere children, we coped with intolerable pain, we coped with betrayal, we coped with deceit, and somehow we have kept on surviving. We are not pathetic—we are heroic.

If we can change our view of ourselves, if we can reframe our experiences as us surviving unbearable suffering, if we can see that we are creative and resourceful and determined and strong, then we will begin to heal. It is not what happened to us that matters so much as how we view it. We are not damaged goods. We are gold refined in a crucible. The challenge for us is to believe that this is so, and live our lives on the strength of who and what we really are, rather than the self-protective lies of our abusers. If we can do that, we can heal. And we can heal—more than anything, what I have learned about child sexual abuse is that it is not a death sentence, and it is not a life sentence. We can heal, and we can be free.

 

[mac80]

That made me so sad and happy CT. Thank you