Monika's Story

Chef. Innkeeper. Wife. Furrmom. Friend. Bleeding heart liberal. Animal lover. Cultural Anthropologist. Francophile. Forever Student. Feminist. Gay Rights Activist. Celine Dion Superfan.

By all accounts most people would look at me and see a successful business owner and passionate creative. Someone who has proven herself to be strong, driven, hard working and has made a good life for herself. Someone they may even admire. What most people don’t know about me is that I’m all of these things, but I’m also a statistic.

I am 1 in 3. It’s not an elite club that offers many perks. It’s not something to brag about or to be proud of. In fact, it’s something I’ve spent most of my life, at least the last 29 or so years of it, pretending I didn’t belong to because the implications of it were too frightening to me to acknowledge. But I’m here to tell you that I am 1 in 3. I’m one of the unlucky women who is a victim of childhood sexual abuse.

Not unlike most children, I wasn’t abused by a stranger. I knew my perpetrator very well. In fact, he was my step grandfather. I grew up around him. I was left alone with him. My family trusted me with him. So I had no reason to question or doubt that trust…until I did. I don’t know exactly when it started because I’ve spent a long time trying to forget, to minimize what happened, to numb myself to its effects, to pretend I’m ok and I’m one of the lucky ones who didn’t suffer as a result of what happened to me as an innocent child.

I cannot pretend any longer. Based upon my earliest memories of when it started I was somewhere around 7 or 8 years old and it lasted until I was somewhere around 11 or 12. This was not an isolated incident, nor was it a harmless touch. I was groomed, developed for it. The abuse had a progression and a systematic evolution. The only reason it ended was because a family member walked in on us one time. The incident was never discussed any further and no questions were asked. So in my child’s mind I decided I must have done something bad. I must have deserved it. I must be damaged or sick or disgusting and it’s my shame to bear in silence. I pushed the abuse so far into the recesses of my mind that I felt like I could put it into a little box, lock that box up with a key and never open it again. It was the only way I knew how to cope. I decided that if I was the bad one, the damaged one, the one who deserved it, I somehow had to make myself undeserving. I had to be better, smarter, stronger, more perfect and more loveable.

I also decided that if it was my body that caused this to happen to me, than it was my body that deserved punishment. I decided to systematically try to make that body disappear so that it wouldn’t cause me any more pain. I’d like to chalk up my anorexia to a dysfunctional dance world and a patriarchal society that worships beauty, which of course contributed to the disorder, but the reality of it was that it was the only way I knew how to control what happened to my body. So control it I did, through exercise, laxatives, diuretics and not allowing any “bad” foods to pass my lips. He robbed me of any power over my body so I took it back by controlling it, by punishing it for what it did.

Traits that perhaps made me excel in school, or be an exemplary employee, be a good dancer, be a respected business owner and even be a model wife all grew out of the abuse. I became a hyper perfectionist, a hyper over achiever, a systematic hard worker willing to push myself to the limits of my capacity, a super pleaser and someone who needed validation like others need heroine. These were my ways of soothing myself, of making myself feel ok, of making myself feel strong and capable and confident, of feeling loved.

But the reality is that these coping skills don’t make you any of those things. They are an illusion. They put into place a fragile pseudo security blanket that has no foundation. They support a sense of self that isn’t fully developed and that hinges on outside forces. A self that is incredibly susceptible to stress and to anxiety and to challenges that rock that fragile security. This is what happened with me as life threw a bunch of curve balls my way in the span of 2 years. Between medical issues, family issues and business stresses, I felt like my life was suddenly spiraling out of control.

It wasn’t until I finally decided to seek the help of a capable professional that I realized the depth of the hurt inside of me. It took the support and safety of a therapeutic relationship to realize that the abuse I locked away so carefully as a child was never as innocuous and hidden as I thought it was. It was a time bomb ticking and just waiting to explode. Once it did, there was no way to put the pieces of myself back together again in the way I had so carefully crafted up to this point. Within that Pandora’s box was immense pain, shame, guilt, fear, helplessness and anger that I had hidden along with the rest of my emotions in a valiant attempt at being the pillar of strength. I equated no emotion with maturity, with being strong, when in reality I was hiding from vulnerability and keeping my feelings repressed for fear that once I let them out they would overwhelm me and I wouldn’t be able to function anymore.

Only now am I beginning to deal with the ramifications of the abuse. Only now am I allowing myself to grieve the child self that lives inside of me and allow her to grow up feeling safe and loved and wanted and you know what? It sucks. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. You cannot comprehend the degree to which this kind of trauma affects every aspect of someone’s life. And sadly, the hardest part of dealing with this is the degree to which it makes everyone around you uncomfortable. When people discover you are a survivor of childhood sexual abuse most of them either shut down or say “it was in the past…get over it” or some permutation thereof. I get it. Believe me I do. There’s nothing comfortable about it, especially for me. I don’t want to tell people that this happened or how it has affected me, but I know that I cannot possibly heal by hiding it.

Abuse happens in the context of a relationship, a dysfunctional sick one where a perverted adult exerts their power over a non-consenting innocent child. That kind of trauma can only heal through connection. And so I keep telling my story to anyone who will listen, hoping to find my tribe of people who can and will support me through my healing journey.

If someone tells you they have been abused, please try to stay open and listen. They are trusting you with the most personal, difficult, shameful story of their life. They have chosen you. You are special. And trust for someone who has suffered from abuse is tenuous at best. As someone once said, it’s like a spider web. It takes forever to form, yet it’s incredibly fragile and can be destroyed in an instant. So as I say, if someone has put that delicate trust in you, tell them you believe them and tell them you care about them. Let them know you don’t think any less of them and that you are there to support them in any way you can. And if you say you are there to support them… mean it. Don’t shut down on them. It only reinforces the many ways in which they feel unworthy of love.

If there is anything good that can come out of something like this, it is to promote awareness of and to remove the stigma of abuse and of talking about it. Please help me to start an open conversation and dialogue about childhood sexual abuse. Teach your kids the difference between good and bad touch. Tell them that their bodies are their own and nobody else is entitled to touch them in any way that they do not approve of. And please for the love of God don’t shy away from discussing their anatomy with them. Children who do not know what makes them unique biologically are vulnerable. You don’t need to have blatant sexual discussion, and in fact I don’t advise hyper sexualizing children at a young age, but let’s not ignore obvious anatomical differences because it makes us uncomfortable.

And most of all, to parents…if you suspect that something is not right with your child, if he/she has become withdrawn, broody or any other obvious change in behavior, talk to them. You know your kids better than anyone and they have to know that they can trust you with anything, even something as frightening and shameful as abuse.