Healing

I said this in a com­ment yesterday:
I work through things by writ­ing about them. I find that doing so with feed­back from oth­ers works best. And hell, the only way that any­thing good can come of this nas­ti­ness is for SOMEONE to learn from our mistakes.

It’s true.

Of course, there are times when I write some­thing, then don’t post it. Many, many times. Some­times the process of writ­ing it is enough. Some­times it is only shared with Sam or anoth­er per­son who is extreme­ly close to me.

And some­times, I need to put the words out into the world for all to see.

I shared far less when I sim­ply had my web­site, but I still shared things that shocked some peo­ple. It’s eas­i­er with LJ— espe­cial­ly eas­i­er to get feedback.

I think the “no secrets, put it all out there” is part of heal­ing from abuse. Abusers must have secre­cy in which to oper­ate. They thrive in it. Shine the bright light of truth and open­ness on an abuser and they scut­tle away like cock­roach­es sur­prised in the kitchen.

When I start­ed talk­ing about the abuse, it was very upset­ting to the fam­i­ly. It’s still some­thing they do not like. There’s a cul­ture of shame that blames the vic­tim, even if she was three years old. “Why you and not your sis­ter?” (Hell, I would­n’t count on it not being my sis­ter. That mon­ster hurt a LOT of chil­dren, male and female.) I’m sup­posed to be ashamed of what hap­pened, too embar­rassed to talk about it. Dear gods, I’m cer­tain­ly not sup­posed to name names!

Abusers love that. It helps them.

Heal­ing is a process. It’s a path, a spi­ral path. It comes round and round again. I can hope that some­day I’ll reach the shrine at the cen­ter, but the cen­ter isn’t the point. The point is to walk the labyrinth, to be aware and open to the expe­ri­ences along the way.