Welcome to Our Wave.
This is a space where survivors of trauma and abuse share their stories alongside supportive allies. These stories remind us that hope exists even in dark times. You are never alone in your experience. Healing is possible for everyone.
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Survivor story
Victim? Perpetrator? Human?
A few days later
More Human than I Thought.
Message to a Survivor
It gets lighter the more you unpack.
Message of Healing
I want to move away from this term healing. Recently, I have been wanting to use the word 'being' instead. There is no wound, I am not broken, but I have been stifled, derailed by trauma and abuse. So I want to focus more on just being. Not changing or in a constant state of becoming. When that urge to transform myself or 'improve myself' is no longer present, that will be the first sign that I am on the path I want for me.
I appreciate how many people read my story on here. Even providing some support. Thank you for giving me the courage to tell someone in my life I hold dear this one shame I have held on to for so long. My best friend never understood why I have been so hell bent on blaming myself in almost every bad thing/inconvenience in my life. Once I told her this, she said 'wow...you know that makes sense and is a normal thing that children who have been abused sexually themselves do right?" I nearly burst into tears as my best friend of over 25 years who has never really been interested in psychology was able to easily make that connection. It felt so validating and let out a bit of the air. It felt good to hear from someone close to me that I am not paying to tell me that I am still a good person. I am still the person who reunites lost pets with family, loves to cook, sing and dance. This person watched me grow up and never fully understood why some of my more maladaptive behaviors were coming from. I have been very open with the things done TO me but never this. I think I believed that it took credibility away from me as a victim somehow or would cast me into the light of a thousand suns, people would see through me. And they would find there would be something ugly. I know now that there is no point in trying to make certain things not what they are. If we let the ugly truth be just that, we can process, accept and really begin to be comfortable with what is staring back at us. This felt more poetic than I intended but I like it.
Original story
Message of Healing
I want to build more self compassion. I want to truly accept all parts of myself radically. I know I can't hate myself into loving myself so I will work everyday to change that.
The shame I hold is like a dull ache. I have been in therapy for the last year and finally shared the one deep and dark secret I have held. I sexual abused my brother for years... I was groomed in my home for 7 years by a female cousin who is about 9 years older than me. I had been sexually curious from a too early age and I never knew why. Now that I have faced that I was a victim who perpetuated the abuse done to them, you would think I would feel better right? Wrong... I still hold a shame that is too deep for me to even fully engage with. The things that I did to my brother were violating, I have a hard time balancing my identity as a human being and not thinking of myself as this predator, monster, disgusting. My therapist said to me that I am viewing the things I did through an adult lens of morality but to remember I was a child... but... other victims of CSA do not go on to be perpetrators. Why me?
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