Oh, I’m so happy that HandsFreeMama gave me such a perfect, shining example of what I wanted to put into words today.
It’s worth clicking over there and reading it yourself, but in the likely event that you won’t, I’ll just share the heart of it:
There I was, sitting on a kitchen stool in a beach rental last week, eating my lunch and watching breaking news. A feisty voice said, “What he did to you was wrong. You did not deserve that, no matter how much you drank or how attractive you looked in that black formal dress with ivory beads.”
I’d awoken to bruises and missing beads that night,
And I blamed myself.
For twenty-seven years, I blamed myself and told not a soul.
But as I sat there eating my feelings and then berated myself for it, I saw how it’s all connected to that awful night and the awful days that followed,
Where shame hung on my body and around my waist where I forbid anyone to touch me.And I am not alone.
She sees the connection now between her buried pain and the 20 years of self-neglect that followed, and she’s making a powerful change because of it.
This is why I love the
stinky nasty smelly awful putrescent garbage
of a political drama going on right now.
THIS is why I don’t give a rip about who’s right or wrong in said political drama.
THIS!
There are waaaay way too many people walking around with unhealed, hidden wounds…
Deep, deep pain that they felt responsible for.
Deep, deep pain they ignore and numb with all kinds of addictions & distractions.
Deep, deep pain they locked up tight and never shared.
Deep, deep pain they didn’t cause but that they held on to,
blaming themselves because it’s too hard to accept that they didn’t have control,
burying it because they didn’t know how to do anything else with it.
Then someone else comes forward.
It’s triggering. It’s crazy.
Maybe she’s lying.
Maybe she’s not.
It sparks a massive battle.
It basically tills a minefield that society formerly tip-toed around.
It’s loud, but it needs to happen.
The formerly victimized shout: “of course it wasn’t your fault!”
Their compassion boomerangs back to them,
gets caught by their own pain,
and they realize…
They’re crying for themselves.
They’re irate about their own stories.
They’re trying to tell themselves:
Hey, maybe it wasn’t my fault either!
*cue tears for the way victims of abuse almost always feel responsible for it
and then carry that false-guilt forever
I’ve known others close to me (in real life) go through almost this same exact process the last few weeks, but their stories are not mine to share. I have my own story and part of what makes this exciting for me is the full-on JOY that comes when we own our stories… even the ugly parts.
You might not think there’s joy to be found there, but there is.
Great job, Rachel, for articulating this and sharing it even though I’m sure it was not easy to click “post” this time. God bless you on your journey to begin loving yourself and expelling the shame you’ve been carrying for someone else all this time. It’s not your shame. It’s not your guilt.
It’s pain you didn’t create, and it belongs more to the person that hurt you than it does to you.
Let THAT sink in for a minute…
& BRING ON THE FEELINGS!
That’s why so many people are freaking out over this no-win case going on, and Rachel’s kind of reaction – the one where she quit living in denial, where she recognized what she went through and who’s really at fault, and especially where she commits to loving herself…
That’s why I say, God bless it.
It *can* lead former victims to a place of greater understanding.
It *can* lead them to reclaim their power.
It *can* lead to the realization that they are in fact victims no longer, but survivors.
It *can* help them see how their voice makes a difference….
It might not. But it *can*… so, to me, all this drama is actually WORTH IT.
(bwahahaha, yes, I said it and meant it.)
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