I have control issues, so there was no way, when I found out I was pregnant three years ago, that I was going to make it through nine months of pregnancy without knowing the sex of our child. I had always wanted boys. Sports-playing, dirt-loving, easy-to-protect boys. We didn’t wait to find out at a sonogram appointment, because these days you don’t have to, and because I also have issues with patience. If you’re as privileged as I understand I am, your health insurance allows you to learn the gender of your baby via a routine blood test very early on. So, when the nurse called with the results, I had a friend take the call. She wrote the results down on paper and sealed it in an envelope, safe from my control-freak eyes. My husband and I met up for lunch to unveil the news together. There we were, in a booth fit for eight or so normal-size humans. I think we both needed the mental and physical space for this life-changing and exciting, but fearful moment. Every time we’d discussed it, there was no question - we both wanted a boy. Him because he simply couldn’t imagine he’d ever be able to figure out how to talk to a little girl. Me, because over the course of my thirty-three years, I’d become jaded, cynical and felt broken. Besides, boys have it easier, don’t they? Fewer lanes to stay in. More opportunities. Safer.
I assumed The Universe knew I wasn’t ready to mother a girl. I didn’t believe I was able. I felt too fractured. I assumed that piece of paper inside that envelope would reflect these feelings and confirm them. The Universe would surely get on board and choose a son for me. In the moments that followed, The Universe told me exactly what it knew. The Universe set before me a challenge. Now, if there is one thing I give myself credit for in this life, it’s taking a challenge and saying, “Okay,” and then getting started on a plan of action. On this day, The Universe told me I was going to be a mother to a daughter. I cried. Sobbed with fear for her. She was going to be the daughter of a survivor. What would that mean for her? For me? Then I said, “Okay.” I called my mom and told her to get her shopping bags ready because, “It’s a girl.” Then the happy tears came. Then I got to work.
I decided my first course of action in the moments that followed was going to be to trust The Universe. (If you haven’t figured out yet, “The Universe” is how I refer to God, or whatever being or power has blessed me with so many amazing things in my life, especially my daughter, husband, and the strength it takes to be her mother and his wife every day). If The Universe chose me to mother this girl, there must be a reason. I would receive that trust and decide that perhaps I was not the most ill-equipped woman to mother her because of what I’d gone through, but instead the most well-equipped woman to mother her because of what I’d survived - and what, unknowingly, I’d survive a few more times after that day.
I believe everyone has baggage. The stuff from childhood that forms us into the quasi-functional adults we attempt to be on a daily basis. For some of us, that baggage is trauma. And for way too many of us, that trauma is sexual trauma. Until now, I’ve allowed the shame and guilt felt by myself and others to keep my survivorhood under pretty tight wraps. But my purpose here in this blog is to provide a peer to other women who are parenting through trauma survival, and I can’t do that without my truth.
My Truth: I survived childhood sexual trauma, from Kindergarten until around middle school. Just being able to write that combination of words is a victory for me and most likely unbearable for my parents, who still wrestle with this truth. Memories of this trauma have always “been there” for me. However, they didn’t truly surface in a real way until very shortly after I became engaged to my now-husband. I could go on about the statistics of compounding trauma and the effects it has on your cortisol levels and your physical health over time, but this entry isn’t a scientific one, it’s a tale of a journey. The abuse was and still is, traumatizing and the reason I am here talking to you about it now, is because the trauma effects how I parent, for better or for worse, depending on the day. The effects of surviving that trauma fall on a spectrum…for me that spectrum is somewhere between broken and brave, depending on the day. I try to lead with the brave moments but the broken ones break through more than I want them to. On those days I remember the words of a great friend who is also both broken and brave, “Your broken parts won’t be so jagged over time.”
It is with that message of hope that I write these words to you. They are not meant to be a guide, or even necessarily advice or a recommendation. Parenting through all of this is extremely humbling. On the most broken of broken days I long for the companionship of another women who feels like I do. I fear my brokenness will break my daughter. I fear I will miss the subtle signs of abuse that others overlooked in me. I am retraumatized by simple and seemingly beautiful things like bathing my precious daughter. I have so many fears I process, all while being the primary “bread winner” in our family, being a wife, being a daughter, an activist, a writer and a mother. All of this leaves me steeped in what I call my three “A’s.” I am in a constant cycle of feeling angry, feeling alone and feeling adamant. I am pissed off that this happened to me and even more pissed off that I am still dealing with the affects. I feel alone in the brokenness and how I can barely keep my head above the water of it all. I feel adamant and determined that I will beat it and my family will be better and safer for our going through it. And it is that determination that drives me to put it all here for you. The posts that follow will be a mix of things I’ve adopted that help me cope everyday, light bulb moments in my healing and hard-to-read accounts of triggering moments. I’m going to write the words I wish I could have read early in my journey, in hopes that other women aren’t feeling broken on their own anymore.
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