Child Abuse Survivor

When Marj mentioned on Twitter today that this month marks the four year anniversary of the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse, it got me thinking about the importance of anniversaries. As a survivor, or anyone who is concerned about healing or improving in any way, anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, etc. are a good opportunity to take stock and see how things are going.

On the other hand, I’ve also had to resist the urge to try and figure out if I was “healed” already or not, which tends to be counterproductive. It’s not about being “done” with healing, it’s about being able to see improvement from the previous anniversary. Simply put, there’s no time frame or deadline on healing. It’s all about continuing to do the work and being more healed than you were last year, or last month. If you can get to an important date in your life, and see improvement in yourself since the last important date, then you’re doing something right. Keep doing it, and let the end result take care of itself.

I’ve written before, and I’ve seen study and study that talks about the power of touch. I’ve also mentioned that, as a sexual abuse survivor, sometimes we have a lot of trouble really connecting with people in the same way because of the various issues we have with being touched, and the struggle to see a simple show of friendly affection as opposed to a sexually aggressive move. We can’t always tell the difference.

I’ve been reminded of that these past couple of weeks because my wife has been traveling as part of her job. Of all the things I miss when she’s gone, (and there are plenty!) it’s the lack of touching (giving and receiving) that I feel the most acutely. You see, as much as I love the things we do together, from talking, to going places, to laughing, etc. I can sort of replace those things with my friends. Not that it’s the same, but I can get enough conversation, laughs, social events, etc. to get by while my wife is gone just by scheduling time to go to lunch with coworkers, or have dinner with friends, or go to Byrne’s Pub like I mentioned last week so that I don’t wind up spending all the time she’s away wrapped up in my own head. (Not always the safest place for me to spend extended time!)

The one thing I can’t replace is the touching aspect. Oh, I can get a hug from a female friend or two, but that’s not much to get by on at the end of the day. There’s no one to simply hold my hand when I’m stressed, or to rub my arm when I’m feeling unsettled, etc. As a married man, that type of touching seems to really be the realm of my wife, and no one else. According to the studies I’ve seen, it’s exactly that type of touch that is the most powerful. It forms a human connection that seems to provide peace and security. It’s no wonder then, that I struggle with that when my wife is away. I’m prone to get out of sorts, and unfocused. I’ve found ways to combat that, but it’s a struggle, because normally when I feel that way, there’s someone there to reassure me with a touch.

One of the more interesting quotes I have been reminded of recently is that the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. As I think about my healing, I realize that much of my healing occurred after I moved from hating the people who hurt me as a child, to indifference about them. I spent much time and energy trying to prove something to them, or be more than they led me to believe I was, but I really could never do that. Not until I simply didn’t care any more about them.

That indifference freed me to work only on my behalf, for my own purposes and goals, towards my own happiness. I don;t really spend much time thinking about those people, in fact, even when they are mentioned to me, I simply don’t care at all. I’ve got my own life to live.

How about you, does reaching that point of indifference change the way you go about healing?

I had planned to write this week about how little moments of joy can be such a huge help in our healing as survivors. I had planned to explain further why I chose my Irish heritage, and the ability to enjoy life even in the midst of horrible suffering as the theme for this month’s Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse.

I had planned all of that, right up until this weekend.

This weekend, we went out of town to gather with family near and far, for my grandmother’s 90th birthday celebration. As you might imagine, my grandmother was asked her advice for living a long life, and something she said put this whole idea into a far greater perspective than I could ever hope to offer. Among telling us about how she always drinks tea, eats soup, and enjoys a little chocolate every day, my grandmother also added one more thing. “And, have a good time”.

I had to smile as I thought of all the things my grandmother has had to live through in her lifetime. The Depression, wars, illnesses,  the loss of a child and a husband, but also the many weddings, births, and other celebrations that have been part of our family through the years. She’s seen more and lived through more than I will ever know, and through all of it, she manages to still find time to enjoy life. Even at 90, she can still throw out one-liners with the rest of the family, always capable of giving everyone a good laugh. (If you know that side of my family, you know that getting a word in edgewise amidst the jokes and other commentary is no small feat, at any age! I can only assume we all get that from her!)

So, as I think back to my plans to write about how important it is to have something joyful to look forward to as part of our healing, no matter how small it may be, I can’t think of a better way to explain it than to share with you the wisdom of my grandmother. Overcoming an abusive childhood is difficult, healing is hard, hard work, full of pain and anguish. If, in the midst of all of that, you can still find a way to have a good time, you are on your way to a great life, no matter how unrealistic that may seem at the moment. Keep at it, and keep enjoying what you can!

This is not going to be one of my nicer posts, and some of you may get your feelings hurt, but it’s something that I see quite frequently in the survivor, and child advocate, communities that I have a real problem with.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that phrases like these are a way to draw attention to the very significant problem that child abuse, specifically sexual abuse, is. I’m sure that most of the people who make this claim are well-intentioned, seeking only to describe just how devastating it can be for a child to be sexually assaulted, but I would also like these folks to think a little bit more about what they say.

What’s the claim that I’m talking about? There are some slightly different connotations, but the gist of it is that child sexual abuse is a crime worse than even murder because of the damage it does to a child that lasts long into adulthood, possibly even affecting the next generation.

Here’s my problem with it. Murder is murder. If you kill someone, they are not going to recover from that. They will never experience joy, give of themselves, raise a child, or experience any of the millions of other positive things that life can bring. They are dead, their life is over. That’s all she wrote!

When we spend a lot of time talking about how child sexual abuse is even worse, what message are we sending survivors?  That they are damaged beyond all hope of repair, or that what happened to them would be less damaging if they had been murdered instead of surviving? That their lives are going to be so full of pain and despair that they would, in fact, be better off dead? That the world, including the very community that offers support to them, will always think of them as damaged, as “worse off than murder victims”? What kind of hope does that offer survivors?

As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse myself, I refuse to send that message to any survivor. Every single one of you have the strength, the courage and the ability to overcome what happened, and should never give up hope. The sexual abuse of children is a horrific crime, and can do a great deal of damage to the childhood of it’s victims, but so long as we survive, and continue to breath, there is hope that our futures will be brighter than our pasts. Isn’t that the message we really want survivors to hear?

I saw this quote from Robert Frost the other day and I thought that it was one of the one-liners that really explains exactly how the healing and recovery process continues, even when it doesn’t appear to be.

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

I couldn’t have seen it better myself. No matter how much today may seem to be a struggle, life will continue and tomorrow will be another day. It may be easy to get caught on the rollercoaster of struggling and healing, and struggling again, but if you can keep the big picture in mind during all of that, you’ll realize that while all of that is going on in your days, life just keeps going, and will continue to keep going, no matter what your day is like.

There’s so much hope in that, knowing that life will continue to go on, with all the changes, joys, sadness, and everything else that goes along with it. I hope you can see that as well.

One of the things I frequently hear from survivors when they are struggling in an area of their healing is “I’ve been at this for ‘x’ years, shouldn’t I be past this?”, or other similar sentiments. Or, sometimes they will talk about how things with their healing were going along nicely, and for the last month, or more, it just seems to have hit a wall and everything is a struggle and they are feeling overwhelmed.

At these times, I find it important to point out that healing journeys are rarely ever a straight line. Not only are all of our paths to healing different from one another, but they tend to work in fits and starts, more than in a straight line of progress.

When I think about my own healing, I can clearly see the times where there was a great amount of progress in very little time, and also those times where progress seemed to be always out of reach, and even the times where there was regression instead of progress. We’re complicated creatures, and dealing with childhood abuse is a long process. For every sudden realization that changes our perspective almost overnight, there are just as many day in and day out struggles to simply cope with the information we are processing. I spent a few years in and out of therapy, on and off medication, working and seeing progress, then suddenly giving up, only to wind up back in the same place until the one session where a concept suddenly clicked for me, and healing seemed to come almost overnight.

Granted it wasn’t really overnight, it took many long months after that to start to build an adult life for myself, and it took years of work and struggle to even reach that point, but the progress I was making sped up dramatically after the day I finally saw myself as a capable, responsible adult instead of a victim. That progress wouldn’t have come, and couldn’t possibly have been that quick, without all the other struggle that came before it. That slow time, and all of those times where I didn’t think I was ever going to get anywhere, were part of my process. The very same process that changed my outlook and my life within a short year or so. I couldn’t have had one without the other, and all of you fellow survivors, are on a similar journey. You’ll have times of great progress in a short amount of time, and times of great struggle that can last for a very long time. That’s pretty typical, actually.

It’s not a race, and the pace will change as your life, and your health dictates. The important thing is that you follow the advice of Winston Churchill. “When you’re going through hell, keep going!”

Keep working, no matter how slow the progress is, it’s better than giving up.

I was thinking earlier this week about why many victims of child abuse, or domestic violence, continue to believe they deserved what happened to them. One of the themes I very often see is actually immaturity. The reason I say that is, immature people see themselves as the center of everything that happens, mature people understand their true place in the universe, and understand that other people make their own decisions, and are responsible for their own decisions.

Think of it this way, many little children blame themselves for parents divorcing, or other things that go wrong within the family, mistakenly believing that if they had just been better, things wouldn’t have happened this way. When they grow up, they realize that what their parent’s decided to do had nothing to do with them at all, they make their own decisions. Too many survivors continue with this belief, well past the physical age of maturity. They continue to believe that all the bad things that other people do are somehow a result of them not being good enough to stop it, or some sort of punishment for their own sins.

That couldn’t be more wrong headed. It’s time for all of us to grow up a little here and recognize that life is bigger than any one of us, and that people are only responsible for their own individual decisions. When another human being makes a decision to act, that’s exactly what it is, their own decision. Just because another person chooses to do harmful, destructive things, doesn’t mean you have the power to change it, or that you caused that decision. It is their decision, and their responsibility. Do the mature thing, and understand that not everything is a statement about you.

We all know that, as survivors and just about anyone else, the holidays can be fraught with all sorts of bad memories, awkward time spent with family, depression, and mourning for the family we never had. I’ve seen a number of folks listing tips for surviving the holidays, and I absolutely encourage all of you to do whatever you need to do to take care of yourselves during this time, and always.

In light of that, I thought I’d share something that has helped me. I can sum up the attitude in a sentence I spoke to my wife last night regarding something outside the scope of this, but somewhat relevant too.

“You take care of the people who take care of you.”

What that means to me, is that I spend a lot of time during December trying to fine small gifts, tokens, or other things I can do that will brighten the days for the people I most care about. Instead of dreading all of the things there are to dread about the holidays, or spending my time hoping for things that I’ll probably end up being disappointed about, I try very hard to concern myself with showing appreciation to the people who deserve it. I make sure and spend time with my wife, and allow her to enjoy all the things about the holidays that she always has enjoyed. I spend time going  through the holiday cards my wife designs for us each year and figure out which one each of the people on my list would appreciate the most. I make time to have lunch with friends I need to catch up with. I buy small gifts for friends, not so much for the gift itself, but to show them that they’re important to me, and that in the midst of holiday craziness I thought about them for a few minutes.

Usually, by the time I’ve done all these things, like now as we close in on Christmas day, I’ve been so rewarded by the smiles, hugs, and appreciation of the people who are really important to me, that the rest is easy. I know where my support is, I know who’s important to me, and whatever comes from the next week or two is nothing compared to the strength I have within myself, and gather from the awesome people in my life, even those of you who I only know online.

I saw this advice about what to say to someone who’s currently unemployed on the Manager Tools blog this week, and it reminded me very much of how I felt after I had a fugue episode and was in therapy and on medication.

Paul went on to say that since he left his job, it’s the only thing many people talk about with him. He wants to have a conversation about football, wine or cigars, and it seems that no-one can get past the fact he has lost his job. So if you do know someone who is in a similar position, feel free to discuss last nights X-Factor, the basketball scores or your vacation. He’s still human and still wants to connect with you.

People had a hard time just being around me, feeling like they were supposed to say something, when all I really wanted was for them to talk to me the same way they did before this happened. If I needed to talk about what was going on, how therapy was going, what the issues were, etc., there were people I could do that with. I didn’t need, or want, everyone to do that. I just wanted someone I could watch a game with, or shoot a few hoops with and get away from the therapy work. I was already spending lots of time and energy on that. I needed my friends to simple be there and continue to be my friends like they were before.

Unfortunately, very few people could do that.