Validation brought me healing; Affirmation brought me change.
/By Penny Lane
Systematic, repeated childhood trauma isolates us. It did me. We, the victims, feel alone, unprotected, “other.” We feel different from everyone else. We feel left out- because we are. We hide these family secrets of dysfunction, abuse, and trauma deep inside, and from others, because we think it must be our fault, or we are told we have to by our abusers. Our hiding and secrets lead to shame; shame leads to low self-esteem, feelings of worthlessness, lack of hope, sometimes even thoughts of suicide. Everyone else to our eyes and limited worldview seems “normal “but us.
When the abuse keeps continuing, we start believing the lies. We must be the ones wrong. On top of the pain of what we are enduring, we feel damaged. Broken. Unfixable. We feel powerless, angry, confused, and stupid. We hope against hope that if we are just good enough, or “do it right this time,” we can stop making them angry, and stop the abuse. But it does not stop, does it?
I finally realized only we can make it stop. Time to run away. Once. Twice. Third time’s a charm. I was thirty years gone from my last abuser when I took stock. It had taken that long to be able to draft the full story of that abuse. And since I wrote my memoir, I can tell you categorically that I could not begin to start healing until I did three things: Got far away from my abuser, so I knew they could not come after me; was validated by someone who objectively and nonjudgmentally listened, heard and believed the story of my abuse; and third, I built a community who showed me who I really was by affirming what they saw even when I did not see it myself.
None of this was simple, instant, or easy, but easy does not a new life make. I was thirty-one years old when I finally left and was so entrenched in the narrative my abusers had told me- that I was worthless, a liar, and dumb- that I saw no hope of every being loved or “normal.” I was so broken that I was beyond considering my own happiness. I left so my then-husband could be happy. I left my church, my friends, my home, my town, and moved across the country. Safety came first. I had to get away.
I did not know at the time that because of my childhood trauma, my mind had not developed normally. I was still childlike-fragile, weak, and scared. I caved easily. I believed the stories I had been told. I quit believing in the God I once worshipped. I had to rebuild every part of my life from the bottom up. I settled into serving everyone else before I did anything for me- I thought that’s what I was supposed to do - until I was told to stop. Being on my own for the first time was better than being in the prison of abuse and its isolation, but I was very lonely, which pushed me to open up and find friends, and very gradually, to confide in some of them. This, coupled with my first time in therapy, was when the actual healing- not just absence of abuse and trauma, started. It has been continuing ever since, and it’s never been easy.
Mavash, my student-therapist at the sliding scale medical center I was directed to, was the first to tell me that instead of being a liar-as I had been told- that I was wronged. That my abuse was terrible, unconscionably wrong, and should never have happened to me. And, most importantly, I understood her to mean: “it was not my fault.” All I could do was sob.
That started the process of healing, which involved a lot more tearing down before I could start rebuilding. I found that the narrative I had been told was entrenched in my brain - that I was dumb, worthless, and would never amount to anything. It took people- the new community I was building- to see myself differently. Eventually, I saw that my neglect, abuse, and the resulting trauma was never about me- that I had always been okay- that it was about their issues of neglect, anger, regret, or control. That, and my new, emerging self-image was a huge building block in the new me.
When I first started sharing the tiniest parts of my sorry, I braced myself for rejection since that is all I had ever got. But that is not what came. Peter said, “You are NOT stupid, Penny.” Pam said, “you are NOT ugly, and many of us have been abused.” Amy: “you’re not a failure because of your divorce, you get a do-over.” Helen: “You are plenty smart, Penny, you should go after that job.” It was hard to see myself clearly because it seemed everyone I was around was happy-go-lucky, without a care in the world, with great jobs, ivy league degrees, or in law school, while I supported myself on various part-time waitressing gigs since that was all I knew. But I pressed on, one day and one good cry after another, and the validation soon came, in good grades, in compliments, and thriving at community college, and a new entry level position over those who already had degrees. I started dating, and to my surprise, was sought after. Slowly, slowly my inside voice began to reflect what I heard from the outside and I healed some more.
My newly created community nurtured me with friendship and love, and shielded me as I ventured bravely out into my new world where I was everyone’s equal. They protected me when I still chose bad partners or corrected me when I fell into negative stereotypes about myself. They were never as surprised as I was when I aced a hard class, graduated in the top percentile, passed professional exams, or got good jobs. I was always the last to know who I really was, but they never stopped holding up the mirror.
Penny Lane is a writer, wife, mother, a woman with an insatiable passion for life. She has a BS in business and management from the University of Phoenix and an MA in industrial/organizational psychology from Golden Gate University. In her spare time, she helps underserved youth learn to read, apply to college, and find jobs once they graduate, and in food pantries and other non-profits near her home in Mill Valley, California.
Her memoir, Redeemed, A Memoir of A Stolen Childhood, is a rise-from-the-ashes hero’s story of overcoming abuse, trauma, and unbearable odds; of being waylaid by both family and religion’s promise of love, and harnessing the resilience to find the way home, is coming out in June 2024. Find out more about her at www.pennylanewriter.com