This journey from here to there has been.

Well... it has been.

There is a way through this swampland of sexual abuse.

Let me try to squish three years into a thin thread.

#churchtoo
#metoo
#CSA
#ClergyAbuse
#Trauma
#recovery

#Trauma is overwhelming.

First you don't know what the hell happened.

Hell happened.

You are horrified about not only the WHAT, but the WHOM.

Once you sort that — you are convinced it's your fault.

It's not.

You were looking for hope — hell found you instead.

Grooming makes the victim feel complicit.

All persuasive predators groom.

Therefore most victims feel complicit in their own abuse.

They are not.

You wanted to be fed. You were eaten instead.

And now you are deeply ashamed of ever being hungry in the first place.

You screw up the courage to speak — silence is suicide.

Everything your offender said would happen does.

It all falls apart.

You do too.

#churchtoo
#metoo
#abuseoffaith
#AbuseOfPower

You are believed by the good.

You are vilified by the evil.

You pick up the shards of selfhood in slow motion.

Everyday you live on exhausted hyperdrive.

Life as you knew it died.

#churchtoo
#metoo
#AbuseofPower
#AbuseofFaith

You reassemble yourself after abuse.

Nothing works the way it should.

You learn to walk again.

You learn to think.

You learn to protect.

You learn to live.

It is slow.

It is hard.

It hurts.

#churchtoo
#metoo
#Trauma
#recovery

Brutality blew your balance to bits.

Victimization violated your vestibular apparatus.

The savagery makes your head spin — your heart too.

You work so stinking hard to find and keep some human stability.

This is difficult because the ground beneath your feet keeps shifting.

You think you will never stop loosing ground — but you do.

You think you will never move forward — it happens.

It's slower than you want — much.

You are fragile still and vulnerable.

You hate vulnerable.

You learn to love the vulnerable, the needy, the outcast, the oppressed, the exiled, the marginalised, the hopeless — in you and in others.

You become acquainted with the politic of power: who has it, who doesn't, and who likes it that way.

#churchtoo
#metoo
#AbuseOfPower

You hold stead the light from a place of safety and stability.

You remain on the search and rescue squad.

You know the map and the territory.

You stick close to the compass.

The path is no less perilous — but you are better able to self protect.

Onwards.

#recovery