Your silence will not protect you.
 – Audre Lorde
Every time I write about my experiences with C-PTSD, trauma, and abuse on my personal Facebook page, someone sends me a private message. Often it says something like, “Me too. Thanks for speaking up, it helped me feel like I’m not alone.” And that’s really gratifying – I love knowing that I’ve helped someone.
But then I look at their Facebook page and then I’ll see that we have a few friends in common, and they’ve got some 400+ friends who don’t know me. And I always wonder: How many of those folks would benefit from hearing their friend speak up about abuse? How many private messages would they get?
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A few weeks ago, I had a conversation about being a parent after experiencing traumatic abuse. During the conversation, I mentioned that I distinctly remembered the first time that I wanted to hit my kid. I didn’t hit, but I wanted to. It’s possible that every time I’ve wanted to hit either one is branded on my soul. When I said this aloud, there was a sharp intake of breath, and a pause. Then a very quiet voice saying, “Thank you. Thank you for being honest about that.”
I guess lots of parents would be horrified to discover they wanted to hit their child, especially if that child is an infant. And yet, it means something different to those of us who were beaten – it is a failure of self-annihilating proportions. It is the fear that we will never escape the cycle of violence and we are doomed to repeat it. It is the terror that we don’t deserve to be parents, we are too damaged, and now our damage is going to hurt those we love best. And what if our kids then hit their kids, because they learned it from us?
If I hadn’t said something, the person I was speaking to wouldn’t have spoken about this, even though they were experiencing it. Would they have wondered if they were a terrible parent? Would they have wondered if they were doomed? Would they have wondered if they were the only one to want to hit their kid?
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Silence is the sound of isolation.
Silence is the sound of fear.
Silence is the sound of shame.
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The first time I told someone I was being abused, I told my 6th grade teacher. I told her on a Friday, and she started crying because she didn’t want to send me home for the weekend. I told her it was OK, I had gone home every other weekend before that one. She cried harder.
She called the Office of Children and Family Services, which started a rather involved process. Because my father was seeking custody of his 2 daughters (almost unheard of at the time) and there were allegations of abuse, the judge in the case insisted on psychological evaluations. I saw a forensic psychiatrist from the state and a private one my father’s lawyer hired. Both interviewed me for over an hour.
The psychiatrist hired by my dad’s lawyer spoke of how I was “adultified,” and how that was common in households with abuse. In essence, he said I’d had to take on some of the roles of an adult because the adults in my home weren’t doing their jobs. He said he found my descriptions of life in my home credible and it was clear I had been abused.
The state psychiatrist offered very different testimony. He stated that I was an accomplished liar who would do anything to manipulate others to get my way. He claimed that my sister was a victim of my manipulations and that allowing my father, who was clearly controlled by me, to have custody would doom my sister. He recommended that I receive extensive psychiatric treatment, though it was likely “too late” to do anything about me.
My mother’s family is quite large – she’s the 13th, and youngest, child. After she told her siblings what the state forensic psychiatrist testified, most of her siblings called and asked to speak to me. Each one yelled at me for lying about my mother and each declared me dead to them.
None of them have spoken to me since.
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In my Marriage and the Family sociology class, my professor discussed the paperwork he filled out for an adoption agency. We talked about the information they demanded, the high costs of adopting through a private agency, and other things. He pointed out that there was a section on childhood. “If you were abused, you can forget about adopting,” he said. “They will automatically disqualify you. Every agency we’ve spoken to has said that.”
My heart broke on fault lines that were already there. At the time, I thought adoption would be the only way I could create a family. And I wasn’t surprised that they wouldn’t trust someone like me, if I was honest about how I was raised.
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Silence is also the sound of protection.
Silence is also the sound of safety.
Silence is also the sound of choosing control over my story and life.
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Clearly, I err on the side of speaking. I have a blog, I speak in public… Some would say I speak too much.
And I know it isn’t always safe.
But neither is silence.
Overall, the times I’ve been silent have hurt me more and more deeply than the times I’ve spoken up.
It took me a while to learn when I was safe to speak. Like a lot of abused kids, my radar for safe people didn’t work so well. I had to learn what made someone safe, what was appropriate to share when, how to share in a way that was both vulnerable and powerful.
I’m so glad I took the time to learn. It’s quite possibly the best thing I’ve ever earned. Because breaking my silence has been central to breaking the fears that keep me hiding. Because breaking my silence has helped others. Because breaking my silence was critical to healing, and becoming a parent.
How about you? Will you speak? And will you choose to be silent from a place of power?
Join me at Quiet Storms on FB: www.facebook.com/QuietStormsCOÂ and tell me your experiences of choosing silence and choosing to speak.
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More soon!
dawn