Child Abuse Story of Healing and Recovery From Anonymous2

by Anonymous
(Canada)

My Journey to Healing: 
My path of Life is going where I always dreamed it would go. For years I was so withdrawn and had walls so high around me. Now they are slowly coming down and I am becoming the lady I truly wanted to be all my life.

It began when I was 14 years old. My mind flooding with memories as to what happened to me as a child of only 5 years old. Being sexually abused by an uncle whom I never got along with for some reason and resented being around him. He would threatened at first about telling if he took my money as a child, then later on, before I recalled anything that happened, I just didn't like him.

After the first memories came to me, I tried to talk to my grandmother, whom I lived with for years after my mother sent us to live with her for awhile. Why we had to live with them, I didn't ask until years later, but I recall many night awakening to my mother's parties in the small apartment we lived in.

One night, after knowing what happened to me and trying to talk to my grandmother, she didn't want to hear about those kinds of things. In our family, bad things were just not talked about at all. They were swept under the carpet and never to be heard of again. Well, being as stubborn as I was, I told my friends, who listened when nobody in my family would. So as this went on in our family, I turned to drinking at 14 years old.

One night, my uncle came home intoxicated. I awoke to him trying to get under my covers. I reached under my pillow to grab the knife that I placed there because I'd had this awful feeling that something was going to happen...and it almost did. Once I had that knife in my hand, I just swung it like crazy and yelled for him to get out. I was so scared that I got dressed and left the house to go to my friend's. I started drinking again. Drinking to forget what almost happened again.

The very next day, my grandmother found me and brought me home. She let me sleep it off, but came in to ask why I did what I did. I began to tell her what I remembered months before when I tried to talk to her and she wouldn't listen. Then how he tried it again just the night before. She didn't believe me at all. What did she do?? She went to buy me a one-way ticket to live with my mother, who had already moved north from where we were at the time.

When I went to live with her and told her the reason why I was there, she had taken in what I told her and again, resumed her drinking. And so began another life with living with my mother again. We did live with her for a short time in Grade 9, but even then, as she worked two jobs to make ends meet, she would have her parties.

I too, resumed my drinking with my friends who were more my cousins. I partied to forget. Looking back on it now, I see that I was going to live the same lifestyle my family did, drink to forget.

So this went on for a year and a half. The abuse was finally taken seriously when CAS heard what I was doing and wanted to take my statement. So after running around town for months until I hit 16 and they could not send me to a detention centre, I was finally caught after turning 16 years old. Even then, when they got the statement and it went to court, he got away with it all. It was only after it all went to court that the other children he got to, which were 4 other children that hung around together, came to tell me they too were abused by him. Yet they did not come out to tell the truth until after the court date.

I held so much hatred towards this man who was my uncle, but I considered him dead to me.

Yet I was deeply frustrated with my family for not believing me at all.

Being 16 and wild in my own ways, I rebelled, partied and did what I did. I still went to school and got good grades and all. Then I got pregnant which was the best thing that could have happened to me. Pregnant at the age of 16 and had him when I was 17 years old. Best as is knowing then that my mother had finally been a part of my life, a part by being sober most of the first year of his life. Sure she partied from time to time, but she was there for my child. She did great as the grandma that spoiled the grandchild. Yet she was still not there for me when I really needed her the most, for me to be heard and understood.

Life was like this for the longest time with her. I understand where she came from in being a single mom, raising two children on her own, for I became the same person with that lifestyle when I became a single mom of two children. Only I knew that I would not send my children away to live with some other family member while I partied it up. I didn't let my social life get the best of me. I wanted my children to have a better life. I wanted them to have what I didn't. Having my first son's father choose his booze over his own blood made me rethink what I wanted for my kids, so I left him. He had the choice of booze or his son, and he chose the first. So I moved on and later had my second son two years later. After being physically, mentally and emotionally abused in that relationship after the birth of his son, I left him too, on assault charges and moved back home where I knew I would be safe...safe for my children and myself, especially after knowing he was going to come after me for his son and be sorry for what I did. My mom was there again, but still she drank with her friends. But she was around for my children.

I don't hold her responsible for any shortcomings in my life. I know I made my bed and I am laying it in now with my head held high. I'm proud that I was a young mom. If it were not for my kids, I would probably be down a different road living a negative lifestyle based all on anger, resentment and hatred towards family members who were never there for me as a child.

So how did my journey come to be? Life has its ups and downs, and yes, as discouraging as it can be at times, there are certain "people that come into one's life and quickly go...some stay awhile and leave footprints in our hearts and we're never the same after that." And with knowing that, after reading it somewhere, it stayed with me.

There was this one lady who really helped me for the short time that she was in my life. Even with all the counselling I have been through, it was her that really helped me to understand that I experienced so much grief in my life, and that I now had to come to terms with that grief, each individually through the Grief Recovery Program—a 12-week program. Attending this program has allowed me to complete a history loss graph of all the losses in my life. It was during the first day that I learned there are more then 40 different losses one goes through in life. That got my attention.

The Grief Recovery Program has helped me so much these past few weeks that I would recommend it to others to take. The time and process is well worth it all, and even though there are rough patches in the process, it call becomes clear in the end.

I now see myself becoming the lady I always wanted to be. Even though I am still dealing with many other issues with my family and what I have gone through, I am on my way to a better life. Even though I was abused, I see myself more as a survivor who went beyond what one would expect.

I have two handsome teenage boys who made me want to be a better person. I now have a fiance who loves me for me and knows all what I have been through. After two diplomas and working on a third, I supervise two childcare programs and have a better relationship with my children than I did as a child, all the while, for the past 15 years, doing it sober. Sure I have a girl's night out with my friends, but never do I go home and have the kind of parties that my mom had in front of my kids. I hated that as a child, and don't wish that upon my children. Moreso, I have a partner who prefers to spend quality family time at home with the kids (kids that are not his, either, for that matter) and do it sober.

And I can proudly say that I will be getting married in a year to my fiance who knows all this and still loves me for me and who I've become.

Life throws many things in ones' direction, but if you take it on with good friends, support and those special people who stay awhile and leave those footprints in your heart, support you in all you do, want to do and become, it's all worthwhile in the end.

Everything is going to be alright!

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