Survivors' Voices: Giving Thanks
Last month’s Survivors’ Voices posts were quite heavy, so I thought it might be helpful to turn to something more hopeful this month. In my experiences walking with abuse survivors, I have found that in the midst of deep darkness, there are always glimmers of light, and it’s important to look for those as well.
Our topic for this month is giving thanks. I’m so inspired by the reflections from these amazing, resilient people!
The first 2 or 3 years after the abuse, I was pretty numb to feeling anything other than pain, anger, and depression. During those years I remember looking at my small children and trying to force myself to smile at them. I had no desire to celebrate Thanksgiving but I half-heartedly cooked all the traditional dishes and tried to give my kids a Thanksgiving. Eventually that gave way to the first year of finding small graces to be thankful for. Those graces of thanksgiving slowly grew and now after 10 years I can say I’m incredibly thankful for God, my life, my family, my friends, and even the extreme suffering I endured during those horrible years which has brought about its own blessings. Though my Thanksgiving this year will not be completely without pain or sad memories, it will also be truly joyful. I won’t be forcing myself to smile, and my prayer of thanksgiving will be heartfelt and genuine.
My life is entirely different because of the abuse I endured. I truly believe that the abuse and subsequent healing process has sent me down a completely different trajectory in my career, my faith, my individual relationships, my social affiliations, all of it. I am more willing to stand up in the face of injustice, I gained friends and chosen family through support spaces, I have healed parts of myself that were broken far before the abuse and that my abuser used to groom me. I don't give thanks for the abuse - I could never, I would never want to - but there are truly beautiful parts of my life that would not exist if not for the healing I have worked toward.
Finding even the smallest thing to be thankful for - even if it's the fact that we have working hot water as I'm holding a toddler who just threw up - has been absolutely instrumental in finding a way forward in the midst of pain. Finding the good things in my life, even the seemingly tiny ones, and giving thanks for them has been a huge part of healing and moving forward.
Thanksgiving is so weird. It's about gratitude, but it's also still about the genocide of Native and Indigenous people. It's exactly at that intersection of "horrible reality" and "trying to find redemption in it" where trauma survivors live. I'm not Native or Indigenous myself, but I will always feel the tension around Thanksgiving, and I think that tension is kind of the minimum respect I owe to the trauma involved. That said, gratitude itself has become a surprising part of my experience of recovery. I'll never be grateful for the trauma, but I'm grateful for the anger and sadness I learned to express in therapy, because these mean I've gained self-respect and love myself enough to know that what happened to me was unjust.
I am so grateful for finally finding inner peace, contentment, and balance (most of the time), and grateful to finally be able to use all the experiences of my life for good purpose. I am grateful for the people who truly cared, spoke kind words, and mostly for those who saw my value, believed me, and believed in me. I am grateful for the brave souls who came before me who spoke up about clergy sexual abuse, making way for people like myself who came after them. I am grateful that I can contribute to the cause, encourage others. I am grateful for the movements that are shedding light on clergy and church abuses. It may be a weird gratitude, but I am grateful that my children left the church, yet have continued to be healthy spiritual people, and raise their children with love and God, yet without religion. This has been a relief for me and an open door to encourage their natural spiritual tendencies.
Thanksgiving has been very important throughout my life, starting with my birth on Thanksgiving Day. As I grow older and see my life in a different perspective, I am thankful for most of the experiences of my life for they shaped me in myriad ways. While I would not have chosen the particular situations surrounding my abuse, I see how that time opened pathways in my heart to the pain of others. Anything that leads me to live my call to love one another - even the frightening and traumatic things - is, for me, at this point in my life, a reason for thanks. So I celebrate Thanksgiving with a healed and joyful heart. Happy Thanksgiving to all and may there be peace in your hearts.
If you have experienced any form of abuse by a Catholic leader and would like to share your own thoughts on this or future topics, I would be grateful to include your perspective. You can find information about joining the Survivors’ Voices Panel here: An Invitation for Survivors.
Thank you,
Sara