Survivors' Voices: Shame, Part 2
Last week’s post on shame was powerful and thought-provoking, and I am honored to be able to share some additional perspectives today.
I also want to repeat my message to any abuse survivors who are wrestling with shame: I am so sorry for what you have suffered. What happened to you was not your fault, and I believe that you bear no shame for the evil choices of another. I hope that someday you will come to believe this yourself as well.
I was very naive when the abuse began. Clueless is probably a more appropriate word. So, I let him hug me, then hug me tighter, and so on and so on. I did not know the names of the body parts, but I knew it was wrong. I knew I felt trapped in what was happening, and I could not tell anyone. I learned to exist in this life of shame. I lived in fear that if anyone knew what had happened they would think less of me than I did of myself. I know I was a child, but how could I possibly let this happen? What did I do? If people knew, how could they like me, never mind love me? The dread and worry I felt with the shame blinded me to anything good or kind within me. Only with time, patience, and perhaps some desperation did I release the weight and fear of shame.
I had been working with a therapist for about 3 months when he said to me. "You came here utterly convinced that something was innately wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. I have been trying to follow this back to the source. All roads lead to this priest. He has been manipulating you for months." The priest had convinced me to let him be my spiritual director. He quickly zoomed in on the unresolved childhood trauma I lived with. And for the next year and half he convinced me that I couldn't possibly expect to be healed in this lifetime. Maybe in the next. I was just "too badly damaged." He convinced me that I was of the devil. Ultimately my therapist reported him to the diocese. The diocese covered up for him, and I was left to walk alone, to get re-grounded in who I actually am - a beloved child of God. To this day, the diocese clings to the idea that there was something wrong with me.
For me, shame is like a thick, heavy darkness that had become so intertwined into every part of me from a young age that I didn’t even know it was there. I think that is one of the hardest things about shame: when you are most held captive by it, you are the least aware of it. Even as I began healing, at first it was only in learning how to recognize the behavioral signs of shame (the desire or compulsion to look away or hide my face) that I could recognize when I was feeling it. Now it’s a little easier to recognize - I know the heaviness in the room, the tightness in my chest, the way words just won’t come, and mostly, the desperate longing to stay hidden and unknown. That is the hardest part for me - shame can’t be healed without being seen and known. It can sometimes feel like a hopeless cycle I can’t find a way out of. It seems impossible, under the weight of the shame I feel, that anyone could know certain things about me and see anything other than something to be ashamed of.
Does one really show up at an event, a Mass for survivors? Do I want to be labeled in front of everyone who attends? Do I want pity? Understanding?
In the midst of some of my hardest struggles with shame, I came across the verse, “And God is not ashamed to be called their God” (Hebrews 11:16). That verse became the light that started to break through the darkness - the truth that He knows all the things I feel so desperate to hide, the He has always seen and known them, and that still, He is not ashamed of me. He is not ashamed to be known by me. It’s a truth that is still working its way in.
For me, shame doesn’t really fit… I didn’t do anything wrong nor did I intentionally participate. Embarrassment might be the more appropriate word, for being sucked in by him and for being so vulnerable and naïve.
To be sexually assaulted in broad daylight, in sacred sanctuaries, sometimes in front of others… by an ordained-by-God human, wearing holy garments and named Father who is, according to church doctrine, sacramentally another Christ and in the person of Christ… within in a church that has trouble speaking about healthy sexuality let alone sexual abuse, and that has historically linked sexuality with evil or at least less desirable… This created a monster god inside me that continued to mock, diminish, and shame me for decades after the abuse ended. I am free now. I can speak now. I want to say to the catholic church: Enter your own shame. Work through your own discomfort, distortions, and shame especially around sexuality. Gain understanding of the negative affects of your doctrine. Know that problems are greater than abusive priests, cover-ups, and legal battles. Know that a religious institution that goes unchecked is toxic.
My memories of childhood abuse began to surface eight years ago, in my sixties. Of all the emotions I’ve had to process, shame has got to be the worst. It was not only excruciatingly painful to address it, but the humiliation I felt over the “fact” that it was all my fault, made the existence of shame very difficult to even identify. It hid in the far recesses of my psyche. After all, how could I blame anyone but myself for all those rapes, considering that I could have simply run away, fought back, or told someone? It took me years to realize that my adult logic simply could not substitute for the mind of a terrified child who instinctively froze into oblivion during the horrific assaults. It was not until I was able to connect with that little girl inside me that I was able assure her that none of it was her fault, that the bad men who hurt her were nothing but criminals, and that she was an amazing little girl that somehow found the courage and strength to survive. That was the seed that allowed us to begin letting go of the deeply ingrained shame that she and I had held inside for all those decades.
Undeterred, shame can kill.
Thank you to all the brave men and women who shared your reflections on this sensitive topic. May you be freed from shame and know that you are beautiful, just as you are.
~ Sara