Volume 2
A month ago I shared my most personal, vulnerable moment with the world…I told the story of how I experienced sexual violence at age 12. That was not easy to do. But I ended Volume 1 stating that I will continue to tell my story…So I SHALL!
As I stated in Volume 1, I never told anyone what happened to me until many years later. I was RAPED at age 12! The first person I told when I was 19 years old. That was when I got
into my first serious, long-term relationship.
I never told anyone else or spoke about it in depth again until I was 37 years old. 25 years had passed. 25 years of me carrying an unbearable pain. 25 years of that experience having a negative impact on my life. 25 years of not processing it, not seeking help, and feeling like somehow it was my fault. 25 years of carrying guilt and shame that I should have never had to carry.
You may wonder how someone could go through something traumatic and not tell anyone…You may wonder how boys, girls, women or men could experience something as brutal as being raped, molested, physically abused and not tell anyone or cry out for help...But I want you to understand that unless you are the person who has experienced something like this, you will NEVER know how you would respond to it.
This kind of trauma freezes you in time internally at the age that it happened to you. It causes you to pause. It causes you to not move forward in the way that a normal person at that age should. It has an effect on your development. You are just going through the motions of life, but you are literally paralyzed.
So, although I was moving, talking and living out my life, I actually never left that moment of paralysis. When I was moving through life from that frozen place, I could only go as deep as the 12 year old I was when I experienced that deep trauma. As I was that frozen 12 year old, the relationships I developed, the way that I related to a romantic partner, the way that I mother, the way that I looked at my self-esteem, the way that I looked at my goals, the way that I lead, all started and literally ended in that moment of trauma.
I had to finally move myself from that frozen place by carving away at it like one would carve an ice sculpture. I had to chip away the frozen pieces to reveal the swan within. I had to reveal my trauma, the thing that stayed frozen for so long, so that I could first and foremost move from the inside again. When I started moving from the inside, I was able to start sharing and leading from the outside…That is how I became A GIRL INTERRUPTED NO MORE…
When I started moving from the inside, I was able to start sharing and leading from the outside...
That is how I will help others do the same thing for themselves…
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