[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ specialty=”on” _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_sidebar area=”et_pb_widget_area_5″ _builder_version=”4.21.0″ global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_sidebar][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_4″ specialty_columns=”3″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_row_inner _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column_inner saved_specialty_column_type=”3_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text admin_label=”Le Centre d\u2019aide et de lutte…” _builder_version=”4.21.0″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
Sometimes I think I\u2019m going to die from the sadness. Not that anyone ever died from crying for two hours, but it sure feels like it.<\/p>\n
As a survivor of child sexual abuse, you have a lot to grieve for.\u00a0 You must grieve for the loss of your feelings.\u00a0 You must grieve for your abandonment.\u00a0 You must grieve for the past and grieve for the present, for the damage you now have to heal, for the time it takes, for the money it costs, for the relationships ruined, the pleasure missed.\u00a0 You grieve for the opportunities lost while you were too busy coping.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And sometimes the losses are extremely personal:<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t remember ever being a virgin.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t fair.\u00a0 Everybody else got to be one.\u00a0 It has always really hurt me.\u00a0 I still have a real anger that that was taken away.\u00a0 Nobody asked.\u00a0 It was just gone.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have that to give.\u00a0 I know that\u2019s just \u201cThe American Dream\u201d, but I heard that dream the same as any other woman did.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s important now or not, it was to me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n If you maintained the fantasy that your childhood was \u201chappy\u201d, then you have to grieve for the childhood you thought you had.\u00a0 If your abuser was a parent, or if you weren\u2019t protected or listened to, you must give up the idea that your parents had your best interests at heart.\u00a0 Part of grieving is replacing the unconditional love you held for your family as a child with a realistic assessment.\u00a0 Your childhood may have been completely awful.\u00a0 On the other hand, there may have been a lot of good times mixed in with the abuse.\u00a0 If you have any loving feelings toward your abuser, you must reconcile that love with the fact that he abused you.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0You may have to grieve over the fact that you don\u2019t have an extended family for your children, that you\u2019ll never receive an inheritance, that you don\u2019t have family roots.<\/p>\n You must also grieve for the shattered image of a world that is just, where children are cared for, where people respect each other.\u00a0 You grieve for your lost innocence, your belief that it\u2019s safe to trust.\u00a0 And sometimes, you must even grieve for a part of you that didn\u2019t make it:<\/p>\n \u201cI went down to see the children inside me. The first one I noticed just sat on the curb in my abdomen.\u00a0 She\u2019d sit there with her head in her hand, looking very sad, or she\u2019d be jumping up and down, being manic.\u00a0 Then there was one in my heart who would sit in a room behind a door.\u00a0 She\u2019d open the door and peek out and then shut the door, \u2018cause she got scared.\u00a0 Then there was the one who was dead.\u00a0 I\u2019d been waiting for her to wake up.\u00a0 And one day I was lying in bed crying, and I said, \u201cOkay, it\u2019s time for you to wake up\u201d, but she was dead.\u00a0 I sobbed and mourned that a part of me had died.\u00a0 The part of me that had really wanted to believe in the good of the family and the good of everyone just died.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n S<\/i>ome survivors grieve not just for themselves, but for the abuse that was done to the people who abused them, for the generations of victims continuing to perpetuate abuse.\u00a0 A woman who was abused by her mother explains:<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of grief, lots of tears realizing I didn\u2019t have the kind of family I thought everybody else had.\u00a0 It really hurt.\u00a0 It still hurts.\u00a0 It comes in waves.\u00a0 Those kinds of tears go real deep.\u00a0 It\u2019s a sadness for what I didn\u2019t have; it\u2019s also a sadness for my mother.\u00a0 It hurts that she\u2019s so sick.\u00a0 It hurts that she never realized her beauty, and still doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 Because she had so much self-hate, she had to abuse me.\u00a0 For a long time I was angry about that, but then there was a stage of grieving for her because she is beautiful, she is loving; it\u2019s just that her sick side is overwhelming to her.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Buried grief poisons, limiting your capacity for joy, for spontaneity, for life.\u00a0 An essential part of healing from traumatic experiences is to express and share your feelings.\u00a0 When you were young, you could not do this.\u00a0 To fully feel the agony, the terror, the fury, without any support would have been too devastating to bear.\u00a0 And so you suppressed those feelings, but you have not gotten rid of them.<\/p>\n To release these painful feelings and to move forward in your life, it is necessary, paradoxically, to go back and to relive the experiences you had as a child \u2013 to grieve, this time with the support of a caring person and with the support of your adult self.<\/p>\n What you need to heal is not fancy or esoteric.\u00a0 It is remarkably simple, though for many survivors it has been hard to find.\u00a0 All you need is the safety and support that enable you to go back to the source of your pain, to feel the feelings you had to repress, to be heard, to be comforted, and to learn to comfort yourself.<\/p>\n And in this way, a transformation takes place.\u00a0 Once you have fully felt a feeling, known it and lived in it, shared it, acted it, given it full expression, the feeling begins to transform.\u00a0 The way to move beyond the grief and pain is to experience them fully, to honour them, to express them with someone else, thus assimilating what happened to you as a child into your adult life.<\/p>\n You may feel foolish crying over events that happened so long ago.\u00a0 But grief waits for expression.\u00a0 When you do not allow yourself to honour grief, it festers.\u00a0 It can limit your vitality, make you sick, decrease your capacity for love.<\/p>\n Grief has its own rhythms.\u00a0 You can\u2019t say, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m going to grieve now.\u201d\u00a0 Rather you must allow room for those feelings when they arise.\u00a0 Grief needs space.\u00a0 You can only really grieve when you give yourself the time, security, and permission to grieve.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter I had been in therapy for several months my whole self began to respond to that environment, within which I could allow my feelings.\u00a0 There were weeks I entered the building, went up the stairs, checked in with the receptionist, all with a smile on my face and cheerfulness in my step.\u00a0 Then I\u2019d enter the office, my therapist would close the door, and before she\u2019d even get to her chair, I\u2019d be crying.\u00a0 Deep within me I held those feelings, waiting until I knew there would be time and compassion.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In order not to stifle your feelings of grief, take this period of mourning as seriously as if someone close to you had died.\u00a0 One survivor, whose abusive parents were still very much alive, spent many months dressed in black, telling everyone her parents had died.\u00a0 Another woman wrote a eulogy for her abuser, imagining herself at his grave, telling everyone exactly what she would remember him for.\u00a0 A third held a wake.\u00a0 Rituals such as these can be powerful channels for grief.<\/p>\n \u201cI wrote a divorce decree from my mother, because I kept having these dreams of wanting to cut the umbilical cord and her not letting me.\u00a0 I just couldn\u2019t figure out how to separate from her.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t talking.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t seeing each other, but I was still feeling too connected.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n You may not be inclined to ritual or ceremony.\u00a0 You may simply cry a lot.\u00a0 As one woman put it: \u201cI hadn\u2019t cried in years.\u00a0 It\u2019s only recently that that\u2019s been restored.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m happy about it.\u00a0 It\u2019s like Niagara Falls at times.\u201d<\/p>\n However you grieve, allow yourself to release the emotions you have struggled all your life to smother.\u00a0 Grieving can be a great relief.<\/p>\n Own Your Own Pain<\/strong><\/p>\n for Alana and Irma<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Own you own pain. You\u2019ve hawked it, pushed it, pimped it \u2013 Pays the price.<\/p>\n So own your own pain.\u00a0 Why not?<\/p>\n You\u2019ve eaten it for breakfast, So \u2013 take it, turn it, What you possess <\/p>\n Write about what you lost, what was taken, what was destroyed.\u00a0 Write about the extent of the damage.\u00a0 Write about the things you need to grieve for.\u00a0 This is a chance to give voice to our pain, and to write about how you feel about your loss.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column_inner][\/et_pb_row_inner][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes I think I\u2019m going to die from the sadness. Not that anyone ever died from crying for two hours, but it sure feels like it. As a survivor of child sexual abuse, you have a lot to grieve for.\u00a0 You must grieve for the loss of your feelings.\u00a0 You must grieve for your abandonment.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":6067,"menu_order":120,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7908","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nBURIED GRIEF<\/strong><\/h5>\n
\u00a0<\/h5>\n
ABOUT GRIEF<\/strong><\/h5>\n
THE ROLE OF RITUAL<\/strong><\/h5>\n
by Patricia Roth Schwartz<\/u><\/h5>\n
Why not?\u00a0 It\u2019s yours.<\/p>\n
now,
Your body, breathing, life, guts, luster,
Sweetness, softness,<\/p>\n
Sung it to sleep at night,
Rinsed it out in the basin,
Watched it rise with the bread.<\/p>\n
Let it slither,
Into blood-beat, breast-bone, cell-song, skin.<\/p>\n
Cannot possess you<\/p>\nWRITING EXERCICE:\u00a0 GRIEVING<\/strong><\/h5>\n