When we are children, we don’t know any better and we trust that the adults around us have our best interests at heart. But what happens when they don’t, and they are not capable of protecting us due to their own childhood trauma? If a parent is living an unconscious life, how would they ever be able to be there for their child’s pain. Typically, what happens is that it the child’s trauma remains a secret and every other assault that happens to that child, adolescent throughout their lifetime compounds the original trauma and remains a secret in the underground psyche.  One day this child becomes an adult man or woman who continues to be victimized by the system and the story goes on.

Children learn to be silent and keep the silence in a dysfunctional closed family system. In a closed system parents keep their children from associating with other children to keep the secret and to prevent the child from making comparisons with other family systems. The silence in the life of a child can remain throughout adulthood. Silence may be broken if the adult experiences an existential crisis in life.  An existential crisis can affect anyone at any age but typically this occurs when faced with a difficult situation, such as deep despair, significant trauma or major loss.

Recently the internet has been bombarded with stories about perpetrators of sexual abuse against young children and adults. Sexual abuse is usually perpetrated by an adult against a child, but it can also occur in homes between siblings, cousins, friends and babysitters. Furthermore, the news is rampant with stories of men in power, such as directors, actors, musicians, clergy, coaches, physicians, politicians, CEO’s etc., making untoward sexual advances towards women. This was precisely what the Me-Too movement was in 2017. Women were coming forward and telling their stories. However, even though their stories were told the underground abuse of women is still happening in 2021. I do want to address that there are men who are also sexually abused and raped some as children, and some as adults. Men are starting to come forward more and more to let their therapists know that they have been sexually molested. Boys in our culture are not encouraged to speak out against abuse and are taught to tuff it out. It is not unusual for me to hear a story of these abuses happening in our military where commanding officers are raping men and women. This is a serious problem in our country and one that needs to be addressed. I did look up the statistics on this and I believe they are grossly under reported therefore I decided not to put them in this blog.

I personally have been working in this area since the late 80’s. I was so committed to assisting others to heal from childhood sexual abuse and rape that I created a healing center in the early 90’s in the suburbs of Chicago. Every story I heard was more tragic than the one I heard before. These women were in so much pain they had a hard time living in their bodies. All of them were depressed, anxious and had an addiction. Most of them were suicidal and abusing their bodies on a regular basis through cutting, burning and eating disorders. The journey to healing childhood sexual abuse is a long and arduous one and definitely requires courage, dedication, love and self-compassion as well as a therapist that is willing to walk this journey with you and witness your pain.

I once knew a woman who was molested early in life around age 3-5 years old. At the time this happened she could not express her feelings because she did not have the ability to understand what was happening. All she knew was that it did not feel good.  At this early age she did not have the cognitive ability to understand what was happening nor the knowledge to put it into words. Her home was not a safe and it certainly was not acceptable to express herself. This early event in her life set her up for all future abuses. It is a cleaver manipulation that the perpetrator plays with the child’s mind. It is therefore not unusual for survivors of sexual abuse to be abused more than once. Once you are indoctrinated into the victim role it serves as a platform in most relationships with men. There was always some man in a higher position from grade school through graduate school lying in wait to seduce her with his eyes, words or actions. She did start learning to speak out as a woman, but it didn’t matter whoever the man was he always won. Therefore, she learned to be silent for most of her life. She did wonder if one day she may be able to break the silence by writing a book however that has not happened. Only those closest to her know her secrets.  There was a time in the 90’s when she shared this information with her publicist and she was told, “If you tell your story your career will be over.” This seemed like a very good reason at the time for her to continue to keep the silence. She remains silent till this day. Although she has succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. She considers her path a journey that is never ending and she works daily on self-acceptance, compassion, forgiveness and self-love. She has managed to transform the darkest times of her life into valuable life lessons that have given her the resilience to move forward.

The reason I chose to tell the above story is twofold. First, I want to give others permission to share their stories without shame or judgement. Secondly, it is important to tell your story and begin to heal so that you can have the life you were meant to live. There will always be someone in your life that will have something to say because that is what people do, they make judgments. However, just because they have something to say that doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to be heard and validated. If someone invalidates your experience know that it is not about you even though it may feel this way, it is really about them. No one has the right to invalidate your experience. Remember most people live unconscious lives, it’s all about “me”. The world would be a better place if people could actually recognize the world is about us all.  

“Let no one do harm to anyone. Let no one put the life of anyone in danger. Let no one, out of anger or ill will wish anyone any harm..” Tich Nhat Hanh