This week’s post is in response to Simona’s request for Essays on Resilience.
In her recent request, she says her ideal author for this essay response is “…a woman at peace with her past, enjoying her present, alive in her heart space” and I am grateful to say this describes me well. I am extremely grateful for my joyful life now and that means I must also appreciate the hell I walked through to get me here today.
Following Simona’s instructions for submission, here is my Story of Disruption and What I Gleaned from the Experience: Trigger Warning: Sexual Violence
The essay below takes excerpts from my book Fragile Thoughts: A Healing Memoir.
July 22, 2002
There’s no need to share the details of that day because sadly, it’s likely that you, Dear Reader, have also experienced some version of that trauma at some point in your life. We might have different circumstances but we likely share some similarities in the situation that shaped us. That’s why the Me Too movement is so powerful; it helps take the hidden shame of the situation out of the shadows, reminds us we aren’t alone in our experiences and places the blame where it belongs - on the perpetrator.
Too many women know what it’s like to be taken advantage of, our feelings and bodily autonomy disregarded, our choices dismissed, leaving us disempowered. That summer over 20 years ago wasn’t my first time being sexually assaulted, but it was the first time I was raped.
There was a distinct separation between the me before the rape and the me after the rape. Before Me was beginning to shine and find my footing as a young woman in the world. After Me retreated into myself, just going through the motions of living, feeling used, abused, and broken.
A poem I wrote at the time reflected that sorrow:
Used, Abused, and Broken - 9/17/03
I need to fly free and far from this pain
Forget all the nightmares and dismiss my shame
I need to escape this embracing fire
Forget his awful face, he’s a coward and a liar
No matter how hard I try, I can’t release this madness in my head
I want that dirty, nasty rapist to be dead.
It’s been way too long and I’m still not sane
Why can’t I get that night out of my brain?
Even though I am a survivor, I’m still a victim—I’m still a statistic
Even though I want to love, I’m still untouchable—I’m still afraid
Even though I try every day, I’m still shaking—I’m still in pain
Even though I pray for it to end, it won’t—the damage has been laid
In just two minutes, my trust and compassion vanished
My innocence lost, my security taken
My entire world changed in just two minutes
My mind stopped working, my heart was broken.
I need relief
I need some sleep
I’ve been used and abused and now I’m broken.
I don’t feel broken anymore. It took me many years and a variety of healing modalities with the most valuable tool being writing.
I also utilized therapy and medication, and over the years, found traditional yoga practices and vulnerable storytelling to be powerful healing techniques. Together, these tools helped me transcend my trauma.
My therapist at the time diagnosed me with PTSD after I shared about my recurrent nightmares, the persistent insomnia and the hallucinations it caused, and my over-reactive hyperarousal when awake leading to panic attacks. She suggested a short-term medication to help me get my sleep pattern back on track. Within a few months, I found some pockets of sleep and was able to stop taking the medication.
Write To Heal
My instinctual technique to process the pain was journaling, the hobby I’d developed as a kid with a speech impediment. It was my go-to response to stress and a strategy I had used my whole life. In just a few weeks, I had entire journals full of questions asking how, why, and what-ifs about that day. I wrote letters to a God I didn’t believe in and letters to rapists, demanding repentance. The pages cradled emotions even my therapist didn’t hear. I kept my most fragile thoughts behind my lips, yet they easily spit out onto the page when it was just me and my pen.
I wrote out timelines, including as much detail as I could muster. I blamed myself for not remembering all the specifics. Over the years, I learned that traumatic memories are formed as fragments and are not a time-bound story from start to finish. Traumatized brains remember things like colors, smells, sounds, flashes of eyes, and the temperature, but they don’t remember the whole experience and typically not in sequential order. Our brains can’t fathom what’s happening, so the brain breaks the experience into chunks we can handle.
Learning that my memories were fractured because that’s what the brain does when it is traumatized was powerful. It meant it wasn’t my fault I couldn’t recall every moment. Writing helped me remember more, allowed me to put things back in order, and over time, helped me forgive myself for all the missing pieces.
When I told my therapist I journaled, she encouraged me to write about not just my experiences as they happened but alternative stories of what I wish happened instead. Those fictional fairy tales with happy endings proved to be powerful. They helped me understand that my actions and inactions were survival techniques.
Fight, flight, or freeze: these are the subconscious reactions the brain makes for us when we feel threatened. I wish I fought; I wish I ran, but my subconscious brain chose to play dead as the best strategy for survival. So I wrote alternatives and came up with surrogate stories that included running and fighting. Through those stories of strong women, I realized there was strength in my reaction too. That was brave - not moving, not creating more chaos, and staying in my head to survive. My central nervous system reaction was to freeze as a survival strategy, and it worked, I survived.
Through writing replacement stories, I realized fighting or fleeing might have made things worse. Freeze was the best I could do at the time. Again, writing helped me discover grace for myself and my response to the trauma.
Writing allows us to put our experiences into perspective as it creates a separation between us and our experiences. Without intention, but with each turning of a new page, I discovered more and deeper levels of peace. This has been the motivation behind my book Fragile Thoughts: A Healing Memoir which shares how I deal with drama and cope with trauma through writing.
Writing helps us make meaning out of the experience, and that is a powerful practice. I’ve learned we can overcome almost anything if there’s a purpose behind it.
So many positive things grew from this tragedy. I am grateful I struggled through not being able to speak as a child with a speech impediment so I could find my love of writing because later, when faced with this tremendous challenge, I had the tools to overcome it.
If I hadn’t been raped while drunk, I might not have quit drinking. Years later, while sober at a house party, I met my future husband, and we bonded about being the only few not drinking while people were doing shots around us. If I hadn’t been raped while drunk, perhaps I wouldn’t call him my husband today.
After being assaulted, I joined advocacy groups and discovered my passion for helping others. I served on the YWCA Sexual Assault Hotline and organized speak-out events for survivors. I wouldn’t be so passionate about my career without these experiences. And I certainly wouldn’t have written my book which is a tool for others on their healing journey.
I can now see the string that goes from my speech impediment as a kid to my love of writing, to that night in 2002, to finding healing, and my beautiful life today. And honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Journal Prompts:
What is your subconscious trauma response? Is it fight, flight, or freeze? How do you feel about that? Do you have any experiences or situations where you blame yourself for your subconscious trauma response? If so, write about that experience from the third-person perspective to build empathy for yourself.
Try writing out your story but with an alternative happy ending or change the parts you wish you could change. Create a fictional version of events and read the story you created. Journal about how that felt.
Do you think you have a growth mindset? Are you able to look back on challenges and find the lesson or beauty in them? What are you grateful for now that you only have because of something difficult you experienced? List as many examples as you can.