Abusee

Because of changes at work, I have been working a lot of hours. Now, the blog is back. Thanks for waiting.

Today, I received an email with “child abusee” in the subject line. This did not set well with me. I felt upset. As I read the email, it was about an opportunity to join an organization.
I do not see myself as an “abusee” anymore. I have fought my way to be empowered, to move out of a victim state into someone who has recovered. To be categorized as a person who was overpowered by an adult that I am still in that position is sad. On a side note, I am guessing that person may not have meant it that way.
As I am listening to Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song,” I identify with that song. I have been working for and through my recovery. I do want to shout from the treetops that I am a whole person who has overcome a lot of adversity. When we survivors of child sexual abuse have been in a victimized place in our formative years, I cannot believe we would want to stay in that place, a place of little to no options. A place of someone else deciding what is “best” for us. Negating what we want and need.
Last week, I was talking with my social media person about a similar vein. She commented about people who make a profit off of someone else’s misery. So true. Bless the therapists, counselors, support groups, friends and others who lift up and help support moving on with a life worth living.
It takes a lot of courage and some flexibility to be able to move forward, to move away slowly from defining our lives based on abuse to allowing ourselves to become something much more. Even though the abuse shaped my life, it no longer holds me prisoner. I discovered that as long as I was in that previous state, I would be bumping up against those walls, and in a way, it was a continuation of my parents still controlling my life. My decisions would be based on my limited life experiences, not on what my possibilities and options are now.
There are two books that helped me the most in turning my life in another direction. “Co-Dependent No More” by Melody Beattie and “Excuse me, your life is waiting” by Lynn Grabhorn. The first showed me how I wasn’t crazy (or that crazy at the time). The second one refocused my life on what I CAN do, not what I cannot do. It is so much easier to look at what we cannot do. Every day, no matter how depressed and despondent I was, I would try to do something that moved my life forward, even if it was just doing the dishes and making the bed. It gave me purpose and to know that I wasn’t falling so far down in a black hole I could not get out, let alone see daylight. Each gave me opportunities to move out from living in a victim state.
When I teach my classes, it is about being in charge of our lives, to make choices that allow us to decide what is best.
On October 22 and 23, I am teaching two classes: Blaming, shaming, guilt, judging and making excuses: Spiritual Roadblocks and Who are we: Labels that define us, at the Women’s Spirituality Conference in Mankato MN. Please check it out.