Quite Frankly, How DOES One Recover from Sexual Abuse?

For me, identification of it has been the first hurdle and that hurdle took more than two decades to nail down. Even yet, I feel that full identification is standing on the other side of a wall that I can neither peer over or come to the same side of it. IT happened when I was small enough to escape the concrete memories of it, yet to have experience of something so wrong to childhood was also the root of a growing tree in my own life. Such tree has born countless poison fruits and I have spent many years unknowingly eating them.

Plainly said, evil is evil and there are many expressions of it. My personal experience is what I speak of and that is childhood sexual abuse that continued on in more subtle forms into my adulthood. It was not until I was married and could point out him to my new husband, who, eager to protect and advocate, helped me manage to close the door. Neither my new husband nor myself was aware of what a broken sexual being he carried across the threshold and years into marriage, we finally understand the reality of that poisoned tree still bearing poison fruit.

Identification is painful but it can give power. If I recognize that my arm is broken and can bring it to the attention of capable caregivers, it can be restored. The heart and broken being of one having sustained the wounds of sexual abuse is a much more complicated thing, and caregivers who can attend to such wounds may be harder to find. Yet there are caregivers capable and I find myself in reverent thanks to have found such a caregiver. As that may be, there is still the work of the patient. I am that patient and I have come to the point in this journey where I identify my illness and I want to be well. If only that wellness came overnight!

Yes, there is the work of the patient. Sometimes my work is to sleep, as the labor of healing requires a great deal of recovering. Lately that work has been building up my reserves of joy, doing the silly yet important little things that make me happy. I have lately spent great hours reading stories written for children, if for no other reason than they make me happy. I have been unwinding myself, at least for a season, from endeavors that require my strength and energy. I suspect I will soon need that energy if I am to continue to heal. Plainly, I have detached myself from my career, a job I do think I was never intended for and chose because I had been eating those poisonous fruits. You see, I am desperately in need of the energy required to heal. While it may be possible to rip an entire tree out of the ground, maybe even roots and all, repair the ground and replant, I simply do not have the endurance for such a dramatic process. So the process has been a slow one, but I am hopeful.

Now, the reader ought to know that I do believer there is a Great Caregiver who is delighted to be orchestrating this journey towards healing. I am strongly suspicious that this Caregiver has a tree of good fruit to plant in place of the decrepit one I have known. I am nearly convinced, even if it is only the convincing of hope, that if the poison is as bad as it is, it is only because the true and intended good fruit is so powerfully good. I eagerly await the fruit that is both good and true.