Transformational Recovery
A few years ago a bush fire ripped through areas of my hometown of Canberra. It was a big deal, hundreds of houses destroyed, lives lost, whole suburbs in shock. The entire city was reeling. How could such a thing happen? And more – how do we, as a community deal with such a catastrophic event?
Recovery was on everyone’s lips.
People rallied together. Homes were made available for those who had lost everything. People from all over the city offered clothing, food, shelter – whatever they had. Government services were made available at the centres where people had been offered temporary shelter, so victims did not have to trawl through the offices of housing or Centrelink waiting in endless lines to get help. Counselling was offered similarly. All in one place. It was a concerted effort to respond to a significant need. And the focus was on the survivors and making things as manageable as possible for them.
Respect was shown. Courtesy. And above all, kindness.
I have often thought about how the biggest challenge for the survivor of childhood abuse is the isolation.
We grow up under the shadow of the secret we must hold to ensure everyone else is safe.
We find ways to cope, ways to survive.
Eventually we are away from the danger, but for most of us it doesn’t end there.
We still don’t tell.
We are still alone.
Somehow, hurt and wounded as we are, we have to figure it all out by ourselves. While trying to appear okay.
Recovery from the trauma of child sexual abuse requires the kind of concerted effort that was shown in the Canberra bush fires. But it is the victims that must orchestrate it.
I think of this recovery as being extreme. Transformational.
Where there has been an extreme trauma – and sexual abuse of a child is extreme – there needs to be an understanding that it is not something that is going to be easily recovered from. It is not going to simply be okay. Time is a great healer but it’s not enough on its own.
At the time of the Canberra bush fire tragedy, I was a cat breeder. The Burmese kittens I reared and sold were sought after and the source of much delight to my family as well as the families they eventually went to.
A full year after the fires I had a family come to look at a litter of kittens.
I could see straight away that something was troubling the mother. Over a cup of tea, while her older children remained playing with the kittens, she shared her loss.
The bush fire had destroyed her home and taken the life of the much loved family pets, a pair of mature and gorgeous Burmese girls. She came because she thought enough time had passed. That she was ready. Seeing my kittens, and their mother was her undoing. She was not ready at all.
She asked me how long it would take. I had no answer for that, but I was able to encourage her that grief was normal. Healthy. Not something to be ashamed of.
I had learned that much.
The truth is, grief is an individual experience. Not one that necessarily follows any prescribed time frame, though it is clear there are particular phases. What victims and survivors of childhood sexual abuse need to understand is that grief is the first place to visit on the journey of recovery, and for some of us it will be a long stop-over.
I remember being afraid to cry. That if I once started I might not be able to stop, so I just couldn't risk starting. A very kind recovery friend told me once that I hadn’t yet begun, at 45 years of age, to grieve. I was affronted – feeling that I had spent my life grieving – but it turned out that he was right. I had simply pulled my wound-dressing tightly over my pain and then tried to pretend it was gone.
Like my cat lady I had to give myself permission to grieve – how ever long that took and know that whatever I needed to do was okay for me. Now, I am no advocate of wallowing in self-pity, and that’s not what I am talking about here, but if grief has been absent from your healing journey, it hasn’t properly begun, simple as that.
To begin to recover, first give yourself permission to come undone. Do whatever that takes.
For me it was a painful process of recording, in detail, each event of abuse I endured – all 17 years of it. It took me more than a year of writing, just one thing each day, before I had written about everything. After a year of writing down the details, and allowing myself to feel sad, to feel the loss, to cry for each specific event, I was in a very different place emotionally.
The dressing was gone, the wound exposed, real health possible for the first time.
♥ ~ Sue
© 2017 Susan Parry-Jones
Recovery was on everyone’s lips.
People rallied together. Homes were made available for those who had lost everything. People from all over the city offered clothing, food, shelter – whatever they had. Government services were made available at the centres where people had been offered temporary shelter, so victims did not have to trawl through the offices of housing or Centrelink waiting in endless lines to get help. Counselling was offered similarly. All in one place. It was a concerted effort to respond to a significant need. And the focus was on the survivors and making things as manageable as possible for them.
Respect was shown. Courtesy. And above all, kindness.
I have often thought about how the biggest challenge for the survivor of childhood abuse is the isolation.
We grow up under the shadow of the secret we must hold to ensure everyone else is safe.
We find ways to cope, ways to survive.
Eventually we are away from the danger, but for most of us it doesn’t end there.
We still don’t tell.
We are still alone.
Somehow, hurt and wounded as we are, we have to figure it all out by ourselves. While trying to appear okay.
Recovery from the trauma of child sexual abuse requires the kind of concerted effort that was shown in the Canberra bush fires. But it is the victims that must orchestrate it.
I think of this recovery as being extreme. Transformational.
Where there has been an extreme trauma – and sexual abuse of a child is extreme – there needs to be an understanding that it is not something that is going to be easily recovered from. It is not going to simply be okay. Time is a great healer but it’s not enough on its own.
At the time of the Canberra bush fire tragedy, I was a cat breeder. The Burmese kittens I reared and sold were sought after and the source of much delight to my family as well as the families they eventually went to.
A full year after the fires I had a family come to look at a litter of kittens.
I could see straight away that something was troubling the mother. Over a cup of tea, while her older children remained playing with the kittens, she shared her loss.
The bush fire had destroyed her home and taken the life of the much loved family pets, a pair of mature and gorgeous Burmese girls. She came because she thought enough time had passed. That she was ready. Seeing my kittens, and their mother was her undoing. She was not ready at all.
She asked me how long it would take. I had no answer for that, but I was able to encourage her that grief was normal. Healthy. Not something to be ashamed of.
I had learned that much.
The truth is, grief is an individual experience. Not one that necessarily follows any prescribed time frame, though it is clear there are particular phases. What victims and survivors of childhood sexual abuse need to understand is that grief is the first place to visit on the journey of recovery, and for some of us it will be a long stop-over.
I remember being afraid to cry. That if I once started I might not be able to stop, so I just couldn't risk starting. A very kind recovery friend told me once that I hadn’t yet begun, at 45 years of age, to grieve. I was affronted – feeling that I had spent my life grieving – but it turned out that he was right. I had simply pulled my wound-dressing tightly over my pain and then tried to pretend it was gone.
Like my cat lady I had to give myself permission to grieve – how ever long that took and know that whatever I needed to do was okay for me. Now, I am no advocate of wallowing in self-pity, and that’s not what I am talking about here, but if grief has been absent from your healing journey, it hasn’t properly begun, simple as that.
To begin to recover, first give yourself permission to come undone. Do whatever that takes.
For me it was a painful process of recording, in detail, each event of abuse I endured – all 17 years of it. It took me more than a year of writing, just one thing each day, before I had written about everything. After a year of writing down the details, and allowing myself to feel sad, to feel the loss, to cry for each specific event, I was in a very different place emotionally.
The dressing was gone, the wound exposed, real health possible for the first time.
♥ ~ Sue
© 2017 Susan Parry-Jones
Because we believe that every victim who survives can recover.