Episode Transcript
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Hi, this is Rachel and recovery. We've got a special guest with us
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and and she's going to tell us
a little bit about herself. She's a
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survivor of sexual abuse, but she's
also going to tell us a little bit
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about who she is as a person. Hi, thank you for letting me
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share with you today. My Name
is Anne and I am married for forty
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years and I have four grown children
and five grandchildren. By profession, I'm
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a language teacher and I also have
career worked in West Africa as a missionary
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who teaches and we church plant and
mentor disciple basically just encourage the nationals.
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So we have some questions here for
and to tell us a little bit about
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her recovery steps. What have what
are things you have done for recovery of
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being sexually abused? As a young
adult I had my first counseling experience.
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It was not positive, but since
then I've continued to seek help. A
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lot of the the issues were became
available more obviously through marriage and issues that
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showed it up there. I also
had somebody asked me to write down the
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events, anything that had happened,
and what was really helpful was writing down
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who was involved, where it was, but what happened that very was really
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helpful. Is the win for me, because I realized that I had three
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very significant traumas within a month or
two, and I think that's what really
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set things off. What has been
the most helpful, I think continuing to
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be encouraged as I as I continued
to talk to people and and start finding
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people that were positive and kind of
understood the situation and the effects that it
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has some people. The culture also
is more willing to talk about things and
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accept it, and as I realized
more and more of my my friends,
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siblings, colleagues other people had also
had either sexual abuse or other traumas,
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and seeing some of the similarities of
how that exhibited in their lives, it
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was it was very encouraging to me
to continue to push on and make sure
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that I sought help, talked about
it, read more, listen to things
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so that I could understand more about
how it was affecting me and and I
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was also very encouraged that I could, I could heal and not just have
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to be a broken vessel Um.
How did your family respond? My family,
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we I never told anybody about it. I didn't believe that I would
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be believed. I didn't believe that
those who were my caretakers would be able
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to handle it themselves. My family
of origin has its own issues. Most
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families have lots of issues, and
but my sister was also involved, and
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so what we did was self protect
by deciding that we would make a plan
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and if there were this the perpetrator
or perpetrators were involved, we would just
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never be alone in that situation again, and so that's the way we deal
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with it. Since then, another
other family members, have all female,
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have had some things happen and we've
talked about it. That was very open
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with my children, even my sons, that it's it's something that can happen
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to anybody and it does affect you. So M my parents and the caretakers
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still still don't really know anything about
it. I just I didn't feel like
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it was something that would be beneficial
to me at the time. How did
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your community respond? Well, I
think it's the same kind of thing as
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with the family telling. I didn't
tell my community until I was already married
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and as things would come up I
would share that I had survived sexual abuse,
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but even that at that time,
at forty years ago people were really
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weren't talking about it the way they
are now. So I'm very I'm very
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open about it if it's the right
time and the right opportunity to share.
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So I I think that my community
is the same situation. If I've been
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in charge of teaching or if I
have met a colleague or a trainee who
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I think is exhibiting certain traits that
I have seemed to be common as we
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get to know each other more,
I'm very free to say something if it
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seems appropriate and very often it ministers
to the other person. So that's encouraged
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me to just not be quiet about
it and hide it. was there any
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revictimization? Are Victim Blaming? I
would say yes. It changed from physical
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abuse to verbal and emotional manipulation.
There was some blaming things when I began
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to realize that a lot of the
behaviors or inappropriate. They were just playing
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wrong, they were hurtful. I
would call the one of the other people
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on on their behavior and I was
blamed for it's your fault, you're weird,
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you're sexually uptight, and all these
people were people that should have been
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caretakers, trusted, trusted people in
my life. The emotional and verbal kinds
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of abuse were noticing that I was
in puberty and calling attention to it.
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Wolf calls, watching me as I
walked across the room and what I was
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wearing and just were a very,
very wrong, inappropriate behavior for somebody that
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is a in a parental kind of
situation. How did this impact your career?
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I don't think it has affected my
career, other than perhaps it's made
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me really selfconscious about things and that
I'm I have to be really perfect.
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I have to protect myself, I
have to be on guard, particularly in
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situations where there are not even just
males, I would say sexually it would
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be males, but even females who
are very assertive and who would want to
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in some way make me feel less
than. So I protect myself either from
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fleeing or definitely from being aggressive in
those situations, becoming angry, fear full,
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saying things that I probably normally would
not say. How has this impact
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at your marriage? I think the
most significant thing is that not understanding why
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you react, why you have triggers
and had to deal with those, and
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how to get help for those when
you're really in in pain and you really
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want to figure it out and can't
find somebody that you can trust. That
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was really, really hard. It
also is very hard on my husband because
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he didn't obviously understand hesitations and discomfort
with sexuality, particularly not in performance issues,
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but in the playfulness that so many
other couples of, particularly on television
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and things you see, I would
see women who just love sex and they
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would want to have sex all the
time and they always enjoyed it and the
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men would play with them, play, you know, be playful with them
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and the women would react great and
I didn't feel that way. So for
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many, many years, even through
a lot of counseling, to just try
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to understand each other and love each
other well. It took long time and
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he has grown very, very loving
and patient and understands a lot more about
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it and is very sensitive about it
to me. He's sensitive to me,
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not about it as well as I've
grown and and there's been a lot of
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breakthrough rus. So our relationship is
really evolved and it's a lot more positive,
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but it was very, very hard, particularly in the beginning. How
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has this effected your parenting as a
young mother? I had not really started
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on the counseling track or trying to
really understand what had happened. So,
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as overly protective, I just knew
that my children were not going to be
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hurt. I was not going to
permit them to be around anybody that could
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hurt them, and if I knew
that they were in danger, I would
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really come to their side. And
it took it manifested itself and very in
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years later realizing that I was doing
way too much for them in an effort
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to not allow them to have any
difficulties or hurt in their life. So
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I would speak for them, I
would solve problems for them and to their
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dead triament. So there's been a
lot of asking for forgiveness and that kind
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of thing, but that, I
would think that would be the most obvious,
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is just trying to make sure that
they were protected. How did this
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impact your finances and then then maybe
having to pay for counseling, reading,
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you know, buying books and things
like that. I really don't believe it
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has. I can't think of any
ways it would have. Well, I
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mean that's toff adds up. Well, yeah, okay, so maybe just
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because of the resources that I needed
and and those kinds of things, but
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career wise, I don't think it's
done anything. How has this impacted your
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overall long term health? I think
that obviously, when you live with stress,
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and that could come from so many
areas of life, most of us
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do live under a lot of stress, but having to be on guard most
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of the time and when you don't
feel like there's a safe community or place
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to rest and be calm, even
in your own home, or those kinds
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of things, then I know that
that's obviously got to in the long run
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lead to poor health, mental,
emotional and specifically physical. I haven't had
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any critic real critical issues like cancer
anything, but to offset that I do
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sleep. I sleep a lot and
I and that for me, that's the
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one way that I make sure that
I am am trying to help. Okay,
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how has this impacted your social life? Well, I don't know.
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I remember that people when I was
younger, even when I met you when
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you were a little taught, would
really comment on how intense I was,
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and I think that a lot it
was my own fear of myself and not
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being comfortable, not thinking that I
was good enough or that I could really
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be myself. So I was always
on guard and that that feeling of intensity
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was just having my my radar so
high. In latter years here, I'm
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much more comfortable with myself, and
that's to a great extent because of some
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of the healing that I've had.
I'm much more comfortable with WHO I am
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and comfortable with people not liking if
me, if they don't feel like me,
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so I laugh more. I'm more
comfortable with being in groups. I'm
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more comfortable with knowing what is right
and what is wrong and and we'll tell
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people. So to pick thems out
there. What advice would you want to
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give them, particularly you're not to
blame and don't stay alone. And if
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you have had things that are inappropriate, that are hard, that have hurt
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you, you need help. You
need to continue to push, and guilt
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and shame and blame is going to
shut you down and that is the goal,
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to separate you and to keep you
quiet, and you need to do
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the opposites. I encourage you to
keep pushing until you can find a safe
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community, even if it's one person, but two and three and four is
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better it. Just keep telling until
you get the help that you need and
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don't don't stay alone, because that
just leads to depression and separation. How
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is this affected your long term mental
health? I kind of feel like we
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address that with the health. I
know that I'm much more comfortable, my
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faith uphold to me and I just
feel happier now and like I can really
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be who I was meant to be. What was the grimming process? Well,
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I think that having porn order for
you round, having books around,
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making talking about crass things, dirty
jokes, sexual in Numendo, double double
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entendres, pretty much was from the
time I was tiny as so I thought
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it was pretty normal and I think
that was a form of grooming to I
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don't know that it was intentional,
but I think that in a way it
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was grooming because you think that everybody's
family is like that. You don't know
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any different, so you don't question
whether it's right or wrong or appropriate.
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I think the comments of one of
my caretakers would play a game with me,
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or he would have me kiss him
on the cheek and say, tell
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me what kind of colone I'm wearing, and it became this big joke that
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we would do together, and then
I became give me a hug, and
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at one point that was the person
that started really commenting on my my physical
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development when I was going through puberty
and would watch me as I would cross
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in front of him and he started
fondling himself in front of me over his
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clothing, but would blame me because
I was uncomfortable with it. And I
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think all of that was kind of
training me to to think that those things
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were acceptable. And it was in
my adulthood, I mean in my s,
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when I realize how how wrong those
things were as I put them in
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perspective of what. What? What
would I think now as a parent and
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somebody was doing that to my children
and I could immediately see it that it
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was completely wrong, but I couldn't
see it from my from my own perspective?
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How has this impacted your faith?
I know a lot of people have
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an issue with trust in God,
and especially as their father, heavenly father,
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and being angry or scared because God
has not protected them from it,
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but I have not. I didn't
feel that way. I have seen more
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that God has continued to pursue me
and woo me and put people in situations
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in my in my life so that
I could be healed. I've had some
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very kind and wise people who've helped
me to realize that the wrongness of what
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was happened, that it was not
my fault. It was never, never
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the intent of God to have people
hurt each other like this, and I
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think it showed me the depth of
sin that's in the world. And this
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is what affected me. Some other
people have had other things that have really
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been terrible in their life that have
traumatized them. But at all these points,
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I the Lord has really been with
me and provided for me care and
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protection, more knowledge, more ways
to be healed and people that have come
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alongside me to protect me, help
me, understand me, accept me and
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point out along the way ways that
I could continue to grow and change from
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those things that the triggers and things
that were negative behaviors. Okay, well,
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thank you so much, miss and, for coming on and telling us
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your story and sharing with us.
Well, I thinks I appreciated. I
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hope that helps somebody and thank you
for your time. All right, guys,
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thanks for listening. I hope to
hear from you guys on Facebook,
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twitter, Linkedin or Instagram, and
you can always visit us at wwwe Rachel
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on Recoverycom. Thanks for listening.
See you next time,
