Finding Bravery: A Journey Through Healing from Sexual Abuse

The First Step Toward Healing

The gurus who speak on sexual abuse often say that the first step toward healing begins with reflection and acknowledgment. However, I believe the first step is finding the bravery to speak up. Acceptance and acknowledgment are vital, as denial is a symptom of trauma linked to loss and grief. This loss can manifest as a lack of independence, self-assuredness, and freedom from fear. One can reflect and acknowledge what happened, but if they cannot speak to someone about it, they may remain trapped in the shame, guilt, and secrecy surrounding their experiences.

Understanding the Silence

There are many reasons a person might choose to keep their abuse to themselves. Often, the mentality of the Baby Boomer and Generation X eras has been to avoid airing our problems publicly. We were taught not to acknowledge our struggles out loud. The message has always been to respect our elders, focus on what we've been given, and resourcefully pull ourselves out of the muck and trudge on, young soldier.

Fear of social scrutiny also plays a significant role. Will peers label me as damaged goods? Will my mother think I am promiscuous? Will friends dismiss my feelings as dramatic? Will my abuser deny the truth, and will anyone believe me? Will the abuse be downplayed, leaving me to find a corner to draw in and go about my business? In this misogynistic society, will my abuser continue to live a normal life while I am forced to keep their secret?

The Burden of Blame

Women often bear the brunt of blame. If only they weren't so provocative. If only they could accept that men are built this way. The implication that women bring abuse upon themselves due to their sexual status or behavior is a narrative that has persisted for far too long.

Fast forward twenty-seven years. I was married and had just given birth to my third child. My husband was talking to other women, and I found out. Before he realized I was aware, he tried to be intimate. I rolled over, guarding my body, and said, “I don’t think I am up for anything tonight.” He rolled away in frustration and angrily said into the dark, “I thought that’s what wives were for, to have sex with their husbands.”

I cried. For myself. For my inner child. For all the women who believed that was true. I realized I was reliving my past. I was allowing myself to be objectified once more. He later denied saying it, but I knew at that moment that I needed to acknowledge the abuse I had endured. If I wanted to break free from this cycle in my romantic relationships, I had to choose healing.

The Fractured Relationship

I didn’t speak up in the respectful, confident manner I desired. Instead, it was a dreary afternoon, and I was driving back to my parents’ house with my mom in the passenger seat. Up to that point, at thirty years old, my mother and I had a fractured relationship filled with judgment, patronizing remarks, shaming, anger, and resentment.

We did it to each other.

For most of my adult life, I felt inadequate. This negative belief was buried deep in a psyche shaped by severe childhood abuse. Although my mother met my basic needs, I often felt like I was too much or incapable.

Spirit was likely with me as a young girl, manifested through the countless drawings I replicated on the dining room floor. Laying on my stomach, propped up on my elbows, I practiced duplicating coloring book pages and handed them to my mother, one by one. “Great job!” she would say, always smiling. Yet, I soon felt abandoned, especially by Spirit.

Unbeknownst to my mother, before our peaceful, rural life, I had spent many afternoons hidden away in closets, entertaining my uncle and his teenage friends with my three-year-old naked body. My mother’s praise was crucial for me to find value outside my appearance and the message I had imprinted on my young mind: that I was only good for providing voyeuristic pleasure to boys.

Having experienced sexual abuse herself, my mother was hard on me. Determined to prevent her daughters from repeating toxic patterns, she tried to control our behavior. Naturally, I felt misunderstood, holding a secret I wouldn’t divulge until a rainy afternoon twenty-seven years later. At age twelve, I was raped. My uncle had come to live with us, supposedly to “straighten out,” according to what I overheard my grandmother say. One hot summer evening, he penetrated my body while I lay asleep, naively believing that part of my life was behind me. Upon waking, I felt intense pleasure, followed by fear, guilt, dizziness, and shock. After he finished, I felt an overwhelming pressure to use the bathroom.

Silence. He lay there, frozen, as if the act hadn’t happened. It dawned on me that no one would answer the racing questions in my mind. A few minutes later, I stood staring into the toilet bowl, a white substance covering what I had just deposited. Why had I felt pleasure during this act? Some part of me knew what had happened, and I internalized the guilt that arose from feeling this way around something so wrong. It wasn’t until years later, when I realized what that substance was, that the full weight of the event hit me like a tornado, pulling me into the void of victimhood. He never acknowledged the event and continued his abuse and denial.

What followed was confusion, anger, depression, disappointment, pain, sadness, fear, and betrayal. I carried it with me. At fourteen, I threw myself into relationships with boys to feel something other than hurt and frustration. My mother punished my behavior, and I rebelled in every way a teenage girl with self-esteem issues seeks worth. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand. She wouldn’t understand. That’s what I told myself.

The Turning Point

My healing journey truly began when I decided to share my story. With full-blown anger, I burst forth with tears and resentment, muddling through my truth.

On that particular day, we were discussing my oldest daughter’s request to change her name to match the rest of her family. She had been born out of wedlock—a story for another time. Once I had more children and was married, her younger half-siblings and step-siblings shared the same name as my then-husband and me. She felt like she didn’t belong.

“I understand her father is involved and it may hurt him, but she deserves to have a voice in this,” I stated to my mother, indignant.

“I just think you’re being very selfish, that’s all,” she retorted.

Selfish? Why is this always turned around on me? How is my daughter’s request somehow a self-righteous position on my part? Our conversations typically ended this way. I wasn’t allowed an opinion on parenting because I was inherently making every issue about me.

But I wasn’t.

“BAM!” The word “selfish” hung in the air, triggering a storm within me.

“You know what? Maybe if you were one of the best mothers in the world, you would have the right to judge me, but, unfortunately, you were not!” I yelled, filling the car with a heavy silence after my words escaped.

“What on earth are you talking about?” My mother rolled her eyes, dismissing my feelings.

“I am talking about being sexually molested by my uncle, raped later, physically abused by your ex-husband, abandoned with grandma when you went to have a baby, all the criticism growing up, all the shame…” Tears streamed down my face.

For the first time, I thought my mother finally saw me. I believed I had broken through the barrier that prevented our closeness. But she couldn’t allow herself to be vulnerable, to see me as a hurt child. To do so would mean acknowledging her shortcomings. Tears welled in her eyes, and I expected a moment of empathy, an embrace, engagement.

“Well, you know, I was abused too,” she stated, looking away. “We learn to survive on our own.”

My heart sank. There was no apology, no acknowledgment, no regret, no embrace. At that time, I couldn’t see her as a victim too. I didn’t realize this might be her first time finding her voice about her abuse. I couldn’t empathize with her pain and disappointment.

Later, I would understand that she never wanted those things for me. She had made decisions to protect us, believing they were the best options available. She would later tell me that the abusers she returned us to were the ones who hurt her. She had hoped we would be safe, but we weren’t. My admission of abuse was the fear that fueled our misunderstandings, blame, and anger.

Unfortunately, in that moment, I needed a parent who could put their needs aside and face what had happened to me. I didn’t know then that she wasn’t capable of being that for me. I needed her to be whole, regulated, grounded, understanding, and sympathetic.

The Aftermath of Confession

This is what obstructs generational healing from abuse. What I needed and what was possible were at odds. I needed what my mother couldn’t give at that moment. After a large, angry confrontation, I chose to cut her off. We both needed to navigate our realizations, admissions, and reconciliations with ourselves and others. Doing it together would have been mired in blame, accusation, hurt, and anger.

That year was one of the hardest of my life. Over the next seven years, I embarked on a journey of generational healing, and it wouldn’t be the last. Finding bravery was the first step toward choosing a path of forgiveness and understanding.

Shock. Tears. Comparison. Self-Pity. Resentment. Anger. Cutoffs. Emotional Manipulation. Forgiveness. Healing. Regression. Renewal. This was the trajectory of our relationship post-confession, in no particular order, with some experiences happening more than once.

The Path to Healing

There is so much more to share. My journey is not linear. I have found my way back to a loving and respectful relationship with my mother and myself, but not without challenges. Just as I encourage others to look at conflict and shift their perception, I had to see my mother and myself in our entire narrative. When I recognized the inadvertent nature of her controlling behavior and her intentions to save us from torment, things began to shift.

This process is what I wish to share with you. The only way to explain the path to an enlightened and forgiving state is to start at the beginning and trudge through the mud. As Brené Brown says, “Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

So, if you dare, come along with me as I navigate the treacherous waters of a lost girl fighting to survive; a mother struggling to understand; a conflicted family filled with chronic anxiety, cutoffs, emotional manipulation, and victimhood; and a mother and daughter who began a generational shift toward healing despite the odds against them. My hope is that my story of finding connection, empathy, forgiveness, and a way into the spiritual light within us all will bring you hope, inspiration, and insights into shifts you can make in your own life to forge a path toward peace, love, and acceptance.

Today, my mother and I are not perfect, but we are forgiving. Although there were necessary cutoffs for deep self-compassion and healing, they were essential. Removing my mother from my life forced me to grow up, take the initiative to heal myself, and stop pointing fingers. I began to see my siblings, grandmother, and mother in a new light.

The Power of Speaking Up

I encourage you, dear reader, if you are sitting in silence, you will remain in the dark. Alone. But if you find the bravery to speak, even while trudging through emotions and decisions, you will discover power in knowing you choose to heal. There is a sense of belonging to something greater in that decision. When you acknowledge your misunderstandings but let go of controlling others’ perceptions, you find peace in a higher perspective. You confide in yourself, and your struggling inner child finally finds a safe place to emerge and say, “Enough.”

So, speak. I am with you. Spirit, God, the Universe—whatever higher power you believe in—is with you, as long as you believe. You are only alone if you continue to cast blame externally. Speak, and know you are safe among those who understand. You no longer have to suffer by convincing those who deny your reality, even if it is your primary caregiver. Let them find their way to healing in their own time. You do not have to wait. Say, “Enough.”

Book a Free Strategy Session here, and use that voice for something good.

Always Shining.

XO Ashley