Only One

It can be difficult sharing your story of abuse with others. I held onto my secret for over 20 years. The sad thing about holding onto secrets is that it makes you feel like you can't be you. I hate secrets. I had so many and I felt this scraping on my soul for having harbored them. I know that we all have our secrets, it's just part of living I guess. The erosion of ourselves comes when we feel as if we need to cling so tightly to them.

I speak about my abuse publicly, in front of different kinds of people. Many of them are survivors who are still clinging to the secret, trying to find a path to freedom. Many survivors are compelled to finally let someone know that they were abused. This is usually a highly emotional event, sort of like a human volcano erupting. It's been years and sometimes decades that we have been holding this back, this cataclysmic dark negative aura around us.

Even as I have told my story to loved ones and they have accepted it wholeheartedly. Even as I have felt the love and support from many of you out there. Even as, there is still this vestige of shame that is slow to dissipate.

We have been feeling shameful for our thoughts and actions for such a long time, especially those survivors of child abuse. But in our journeys back to the truth, to the free expression of the truth, we shake a little more shame off. Until one day we will reach a point where we fully realize we were not to blame, we didn't ask for this.

I can honestly remember most of the moments where I shook a little more shame off. No matter how far I have gone in my healing I still feel the tingle when I hear your stories because I can relate to these destructive events that happened to you. I can relate to your hope for freedom from the web of abuse you are in. I can be inspired by your path to freedom.

I started reading a book this morning and all those feelings stirred up inside of me again. The disgust, the fear, the deep shame to be who I was. But I wasn't alone. This was the authors story and I felt a little less shame after each turning of the page. I felt all those things that he did, and once again I knew I wasn't the only one.

You are not the only one.

Knowing this brings us out of our lonely, hopeless worlds. So I continued reading the book and felt a sense of relief. Like a gray cloud clearing within me. That all the thoughts in the heads of other survivors were my own. That all the feelings, emotions, and actions that other survivors have taken were my own. I felt relief that I wasn't the only one.