Replies to 'Childhood Sexual Abuse Support'

  I am the survivor of childhood sexual incest and abuse. This started when I was seven and went on to the age of seventeen when I finally ran away from home. The incest was done by my Father and he was also physically and mentally abusive as well. My stepmother was abusive as well. I was raped at 7 and have been scarred by belts, cups hitting me, my step mother stabbing me in the arm. I have a eight inch scar on my knee where I was cut with a broken plate. I have suffered many mental abuses that are so horrifying I can not put them into words for eyes to see. Everything from being chained to beds for days without food to being put on a dog leash with collar to sit in a sub zero storage shed for days. Humiliations and degradations were what I lived every day. A horrid way to grow up as a child. These were my past. They are not my present.

I was a rebellious and angry young woman when I left home and ran away to Ohio to my grandmother. In doing so I was subjected to two more rapes and a car wreck. I am supposed to be dead I know but I believe that there was a bigger source at work in my life. I did all the wrong things that we woman and men that have suffered abuse do. I jumped into the first "relationship" that came along and he was just as abusive as my father was. That was nine more years of hell and abuse. I then finally took the first step in recovery during this time. I started going to out patient therapy. This started as anger management after I cornered my ex husband[ husband at that time behind a potbelly stove throwing everything in the room at him. Then it went to dealing with my actual abuse. Ten years of therapy and counseling.

I came to resolution with my Father. I confronted him and was able to tell him how he hurt me and what he took from me. This really did not put a seal of happiness on my life. It took many more years before this would happen for me. The release did not come until after I had gotten to Alcoholics Anonymous. I learned that the abuser is a sick individual and that the only way to freedom for me was to find a way to let him go and forgive. This started ironically with forgiveness of myself before I could attempt to forgive him. The time came one week to the day that my Father died. I went to his house out of  gut intuitive feeling to see him. We talked for a very long time and I knew in my heart it would be the last time that I saw him alive. The thought came to me that it had to happen here or it never would. I initiated it. I simply told him that it just did not matter anymore that it had gone on long enough. What happened next was what set me free from him. I found the words started to flow and I forgave him. I heard the same words genuinely come back from him. I can not tell you that this works for everyone but I had longed to hear those words from him all my life. When my father broke down and cried like a child I was able to comfort him and there was no animosity or pain anymore.

Today I am totally free from my abuse. I live a day at a time and I love myself. I walked through so much to get to this place. I would not change any of the healing process it made me the incredibly strong and capable woman that I am today. If you are hurting and suffering from abuse please seek help. There is freedom from the darkness. It begins with you.