“I’m a survivor – a living example of what people can go through and survive.” – Elizabeth Taylor
Facts
I am 5’4 1/2″. My name is Carrie. My father was a truck driver. My mother was a stay-at-home mom/insurance broker. I am a 5th generation (or so) American. I am of European descent. These are facts about me.
I am also a sexual abuse survivor. This is also a fact. Although I would like it not to be true, I cannot deny that it is.
Facts are truths in and of themselves. Facts are things that do not change no matter how much we may want them to change.
What are your facts? What do you know about yourself? I’m not asking about your beliefs or your thoughts. What are the truths that will not change no matter what you do or think or say?
Does the fact that I’m a sexual abuse survivor make me any less of a person? Does it diminish my worth or determine the my future? Of course not.
Whatever your facts are, whether they are good or bad shouldn’t diminish your yours either.
The Past
Don’t be ashamed of your past. Embrace your struggles and use them to propel you forward. What secrets do you keep from others? Why do you keep them? Do you fear judgment or disdain? Do you fear you will not be accepted?
If people judge you then they are not people you want in your life. If people do not accept you and your past then they are not people you need in your life.
If you fear you will not be accepted then you are placing judgments on other people that perhaps they do not deserve. Most people will empathize and understand. They may not know what to say or how to react, but that’s okay. Just because they don’t know what to say doesn’t mean they are judging you.
First, forgive yourself for your past. Whatever happened was outside of your control. If you are ashamed of the it, then you are ashamed of yourself. Rise above it. Embrace your past because it is part of you and it isn’t going anywhere. There is no amount of pretending or avoidance that will make the past disappear.
The Present
Where do you stand in relation to your past? Does it run your life still? Do the negative messages in your head keep you from being happy? Do the beliefs you brought forward from childhood dictate how you act now?
What is your story? Who are you now? Does the past dictate the preset? Are you a victim or a survivor? If you think of yourself as the former ask yourself why. Wouldn’t you prefer to be the latter?
Being a survivor is something you are whether you want to be one or not. You did survive. You are here. This is a fact.
Remember, the old saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? Unfortunately, a lot of people let their past kill them, but they don’t do it in an obvious fashion. They do it slowly and subtly. Many people do not live in the present, but in a state of constant fear and anxiety consumed by what happened to them. They live in the past.
The difference between a victim and a survivor is what you choose to do with what happened to you. If you choose to wallow in self pity then you remain a victim. If you choose to blame others for your life circumstances you remain a victim.
Rise above this. Every day when you wake up look in the mirror and say to yourself, “I am a survivor. I can do this. My past does not dictate my future”.
The Future
Maybe your past holds the key to your future. Maybe you were raped and you need to stop hiding and start talking. Maybe you were emotionally or sexually abused and it is time to free yourself from the shackles of guilt.
There is no future if you continue to live in the past or hide from it. The past exists, whether you want to acknowledge it and face it or not. Fear of the unknown is scary, but living in fear is ten million times worse.
Every day you wake up is another day to reinvent yourself. I’m not saying its easy to let go. But, it is possible. There are resources. Try www.fastereft.com. Release the negative energy that you are holding onto.
Recently I was processing through something using EFT and I came to realize that a belief I had about myself was really only a negative block held in my physical body as a residual from my past. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t true. It was something I had been holding onto. But, I could choose to let it go. I could choose to be free from this negative belief that kept me in fear.
Only you can change your future. You cannot change your past. Live in the present and create a life that speaks to you instead of a life that dictates and limits you. Use your past. Use your strength.
Always remember, you survived.
Thank you Carrie, and my love and respect to you for offering as you do and for choosing to heal you and choosing to be a survivor too. Thank you for hearing me 🙂
I wrote my ‘mother’ a text today asking for her to use open-ended words. To ask how I am rather than ‘I hope you’re happy’ because I need the space to say how I feel not solely what she wants to hear. When I don’t feel happy, and I’m ok with allowing myself any feeling, I choose to share that if someone asks. I refuse to hide behind the smile I was forced to wear in my childhood to hide all the lies and abuse. I smile now if I choose, similarly I cry, laugh, swear, and every other feeling too. I am free to express me. I have a right to honour my choice of feelings, thoughts, emotions, actions, reactions. I’m not perfect, I may and do get things wrong, and I allow others to be who they need to be. I choose to forgive me if I choose to feel the need to, I also choose not to judge but to allow me to simply be. I feel exhausted. So much self-analysis when maybe I ought to have just blamed the perpetrators, except my ‘mother’ taught me to turn the other cheek, to be a nice girl, to consider how the school bullies who were bullying g me felt, she said ‘they must come from a terrible home to do something like that’ as if mine was so (f**king) perfect. And she needed it to be perfect, to take away any glare of attention on her, for she doesn’t love herself, accept herself, and I believe she was abused too by her uncle and other visitors to the children’s home she hasn’t yet admitted she grew up in. Too painful, I understand, and she won’t let me in, nor any counsellor. I accept she has the right to be as she chooses to be. I just can’t be part of any more emotional dishonesty. I need clarity. I need space to hold my experiences, to heal, to move forward to healthier, happier, brighter days and nights with love at the core, real love, genuine love. My ‘father’ wanted me to ‘be good’ and told me ‘you’re a child you do not think’ when I intervened in a fight between him and my ‘mother’ and I said ‘I think ….’ So I don’t question why psycho analysis has appealed. My spiritual beliefs said children come from the source of all love, have been bathed in that glory up until birth, and that love is within all of us, in our soul. I chose to believe children have as much to teach their parents as vice versa. Yet my parents needed to be in charge, not have a child be seen or heard. No wonder I wanted to be famous, yet not for fame’s sake. I wanted to be a role model showing that through love and dedication not fear and cruelty, good could be achieved. I still honour that.
I texted my ‘mother’ today and I accept she cannot accept me or be as I desire a mother be. I choose to accept her choice to be as she chooses to be, even though she adopts what I consider a victim role and says she’s even ‘too old to change’ the words she uses. She claims to love me, she always said I wanted more and for her that appears to be a problem. I believe the universe is abundant and I choose to receive more – more of the right sort of love, unconditional, mutually-respectful. So I respect her choice and until I can learn not to be triggered I choose to exit from a relationship with her. I allo w room for me to be a good mother, the sort my children to be need me to be and I choose to be, for I choose to invite those people in every area of my life who can resonate with me through genuine emotional congruency, who truly choose to support me as I choose to be. I choose the easy path of peace and harmony. I’m done with fighting. I choose loving. Loving me and loving those who truly accept and therefore love me X a brand new shiny herstory ….. Yippee! X
Good for you! Just keep moving forward and forgive those who cannot see what we see.
Dear Carrie,
Thank you xxxx
I feel I need say nothing more, for you are whole within your journey and so do not need to hear my pain. That is perhaps the role of a therapist, yet occasional offerings of brief 6 or 9 sessions of counselling offered through my GP either only touch the surface or open deep chasms as I realise I’ve no genuine support – yes, there is a person who will listen (for I now realise I have few social skills in relating/socialising – I attract those who only respond to me getting in touch, and often dismiss my needs, allowing the lessons of abandonment and fear of success, of rejection and never feeling good enough to present, of hating ‘experts’ and thus self-sabotaging for fear of getting a judgement of others wrong, as I have been wrongly judged; oh all this wasted energy endeavouring to be the ‘perfect’ person I was brought up to be – what if instead I’m really just plain nasty? If all aspects of my shadow self is all I really am? Oh, of course I can be nice, I’ve been an over-pleaser for years, of others’ needs, I’m an expert in tuning in to what others want, in sacrificing my needs to ensure their’s, and are they grateful? No! They simply expect this from me. Silly me. Of course. Why not? Silly, that, along with stupid and ridiculous were my so-called mother’s words for me and anything I wanted to do that didn’t meet with her approval. F**king bitch! Oh, how can I possibly write that? Makes me a not nice girl (I’m 50!), don’t tell tales, don’t lie – I wasn’t, just nobody believed me. I believe me. I’m parenting me the best way I can. I need help. I go within because I keep choosing to read the spiritual perspective that suggests the answers are within. What if I have none? What if I am actually thick, dense, stupid, not clever like my ‘brother’ (who got all my mother’s best attention) for she only had enough love for him, I was the nuisance, in the way, too much trouble, too much effort, not wanted, a burden. I know now why I grew up feeling I didn’t fit, yet she’d been such an able manipulator, so clever at fooling me, an innocent child. Not any longer. I want to tell the world, my so-called mother., the woman supposed to look after me, abused me. And I don’t care any longer how she feels. I don’t care if she’s humiliated and hurt by this, how does she think I felt? And feel now? F**king bitch. Oh yes, and swearing wasn’t allowed, neither were friends to visit the house, except once a year for a birthday celebration when she dressed me as a mini version of her, from off-cuts of the dress she’d make for herself each year. I don’t even believe she’s my birth mother. Mediums tell me the man who was presented whilst on earth as my ‘uncle’, my ‘mother’s ‘brother’ (I now suspect all four children were from the children’s home my maternal grandmother ran – fits with mother saying they were all so different) is really my birth father and say he’s very sorry he never had the opportunity to raise me or be involved in my life, that my ‘mother’ is mentally ill – which fits with the very different versions of family matters she presents, and for all the horrible ways she presented her brother and sisters, so even at 50 I’m too scared to phone them and hear their versions, as I was excluded from my extended family all my life, except for an annual summer and maybe Christmas visit – on her terms, and such that the one aunt and grandmother I was allowed to see occasionally rarely managed to stay the full visit, always left early. I’m not surprised as I look back now, my ‘mother’ has been a supreme manipulator, liar, ill. I’ve spent my life accommodating her needs, tantrums, nastiness couched in an outer sweetness, yet the nasty manipulator shines through, someone who can’t share, has to have their own way. Am I like this? Yes, in ways, and I’m choosing to act differently. In that way I can thank and bless her for being my mother, for showing me how not to be; I finally am learning to allow me to be me, not what and who she needed me to be. Thank your Carrie. If you feel you can help me, I’d love to be in touch with you. Thank you.
I’ve been medically retired from paid work since age 28 and an accident at work, which followed right side paralysis nine years’ earlier by a drunk driver hitting the car I was in, then 10 years after the work accident, as yet again I was to achieve something I’d worked hard for, a van went into my stationary car at a roundabout and added neck damage to previous low spine and nerve damage. So my body is telling me I can’t support me. I can, I choose to, I want to. I can have my needs met. I can meet them and I can choose healthy people to assist me.
My ‘mother’ when I was a vulnerable, easily-influenced, trusting child, claimed my astrological chart (she part-trained as an astrologer, and in the same vein of not completing, not achieving, maybe not inwardly having sufficient self-esteem and self-love, she didn’t qualify) showed me to ‘use people, dream up slights and hurts, be prone to flights of fancy and angry outbursts’ and I must guard against such and I must ‘use my exercise bike to counter my anger’. As if a professional astrologer would even know I had an exercise bike, yet, after decades of believing her negativity, I realise I’ve been too scared of being ‘brain washed’ to attempt healing offerings like Natalie Ledwell’s MindMovies, brain entrainment to bring to the surface old faulty cognition, values and beliefs, to dispel (yes! de-spell, undo the spells of my ‘mother”s fear-based harsh rules of how life is hard, sex must only ever be with someone special, men must do what I say, relationships must be worked at, only men are allowed to succeed, rich people are nasty, life is a out sacrifice, doing one’s duty, never speaking of private matters in public, never asking for help for that is a sign of weakness, rather than what I choose now which is allowing ease and flow, letting go of that which does not serve my best self, choosing love as being good, healing, beautiful, life being good and to be explored and embraced, not feared. I choose love. I choose life. I choose to allow those who are loving and who love life to love me and to assist me in loving and exploring all life’s riches. I am grateful and thankful to God and the universe for all my experiences, even the un-good, for they allow me to choose much better, and now I only allow the good into my life. I allow and ask God and the universe to take away all that does not serve my happiness; I thank God and the universe for accepting and responding to my needs and requests for therein I add to my sense and experience of already knowing in my soul I am loved and happy).
At my worst at times I’m feeling suicidal as yet again I seem to return to the depths of depression, fuelled by previous abuse. I know what I need is genuine support, to feel genuine love, to feel genuinely loved, wanted, desired, cherished. I do this for me from my soul as best I can, however, I am realising (understanding with real eyes?) that what has been offered to me previously as ‘love’ was in fact control, manipulation, pain, all fear-based negativity, no doubt generations of such misrepresentation of genuine love. I panic sometimes and question if my soul is dirty, too badly affected by all the pain and trauma of abuse, or did angels and other soul walk-in’s enter to ease the horror? For my memories are not clear, just the emotions, yet when I journal sometimes I write as though I’m someone I don’t recognise, a cold calm I have no other experience of descends and I write the chilling accounts of childhood rape. I learned to disconnect from my feelings. Counselling has helped me learn to stop dismissing my feelings, to learn to feel, yet now I feel so rotten to the core and there’s no more free counselling available. I’ve allowed myself to continually be abused, in unhealthy relationships, I’ve had enough. I value EFT also, yet I think I self-sabbotage – I default to telling myself I’m ok, just as I did as a child. I’m not ok, I know there’s more to the abundant life that others keep presenting, that they have no need to deal with all this crap. I allow myself the best healing. I allow myself to receive only good. Dear God, I allow you and your angels to take away all the crap, to allow my purity, the pure love I choose to believe is in my soul, maybe tucked away where no-one can sully her, except I’ve kept on trusting, allowed myself to be vulnerable, yet I’ve surely attracted others like me, hurting, emotionally unintelligent, unaware of their/our lack of emotional intelligence and congruency, and now I desire better. Maybe I need someone so much healthier than I, so I can share and learn and live a better life? For I think I self-sabbotage. I learned to accept sh*t, that I was sh*t because of others’ actions towards me, and I was taught a spiritual perspective that said ,u soul chose this for her growth. I choose to think and believe differently now. I’ve no interest in healing my family, they can choose to do that for themselves if they feel they need to. I am responsible only for me. I choose to be healthy on every level and I ask and receive and allow God and her Angels to immediately provide the assistance I seek. I can’t and I choose not to wait any longer. I believe in an abundant universe and I need this healing abundance now. Not tomorrow, not next week, now! So I thank God, my angels and inspirers, my guides and everyone of goodness and light, I seek my truth, I live in my light, I choose to shine. Thank you Carrie for listening, for sharing, God’s brightest blessings and love to you. And may God represent anything or anyone you choose.
Last week I told someone I was no longer affected by depression (diagnosed with clinical depression over 30 years ago) and seems the minute I say I am something, life presents to test and disprove such. So, yes, at the start of writing this I felt suicidal, worthless, dirty, unloved, unlovable, now I feel calmer, still physically sore in my lower back, and I choose to get dressed, get out, be grateful for so much I do have, and I will return here later and see if there’s a reply, or to my email address supplied. Bright blessings of love and peace to all, may you truly shine X love Sophie xx
I’m so sorry for what you went through. You DO deserve love.