Speaking Up & Out

I am the gift. Even if it took me a while to see it. 

Though I am not a fan of cable news, I was recently floored by the intensity of MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, a fellow survivor of sexual assault, in her open letter to yet another asinine politician who thinks he has the right to tell women what to do with their bodies. 

More women & men, in & out of the media, need to stand up to these bullies. 

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I am all for religion as a guiding principle in life, but when you want to force your religious beliefs onto someone else - as Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock would like to do - especially someone who has already been violated, you are not good enough to lead anyone anywhere at anytime, ever. 

I can imagine the joy I will feel & how amazing it will be when I one day have a baby with an awesome partner. But already knowing how it feels to be sexually violated, I cannot believe that some men, and even some women, think they have the right to dictate when I should conceive, and that the father could potentially be anyone who forces himself on me. 

Please vote wisely, citizens. 

Playing the Hand You Were Dealt

If you've been devouring the news about the Sandusky trial like me, you may have noticed the warnings before some of the articles. Trigger warnings, they're called, to alert those of us who are sensitive and apt to relive trauma.

I take a deep breath with every disclaimer but I continue on, refusing to bury my head in the sand. Denial is the last way to make child sexual abuse (CSA) disappear.

My day job is pseudo-librarian in a hospital library. I dig through medical journals for research all day long. Recently I've reviewed some of the info on pedophilia, trying to understand why it happens, if it's biological or psychological. I haven't found any answers.

 

I keep getting distracted by the fact that CSA keeps being allowed to happen. Or as Tom Klein, the lawyer for Sandusky Victim #5, said in a recent report by my friend Emily Reddy, enabled. Children aren't protected or taught to be prepared. The best of parents have had their heads in the sand.

I worked at the public library for a year and one librarian mentioned that s/he stealthily placed a book for kids, on the topic of molestation, in the parenting section. I liked the thought of a parent serendipitously finding it there.

Meanwhile I both seek out & accidentally stumble across CSA stories in hopes of healing my wounded inner 7-year-old.
 

I don't care much for watching sports but after hearing about Mets knuckleball pitcher R.A. Dickey's abuse as a child, I found myself desperate to read his memoir. Although once I had the book in hand I couldn't face it. 

But yesterday, on the plane to Nashville, the town where R.A. was born and raised, I decided to venture in. Nothing like crying convulsively at 30,000 feet in the window seat, trying not to disturb my neighbor. Still, the man's honesty was uplifting.

And I calmed down. The clouds soothed me and I know I'm lucky to be where I am, in every aspect of my life. (I remind myself that) I'm a grown up now with the power to make smart choices and utilize resources when I need them. People care about me, and I love myself, which hasn't always been the case.

Inspirational bathroom reading at the Piranha Bar in Nashville

While I'd been avoiding Dickey's book, a few weeks ago I started reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.  Now there's a family more messed up than most. But Jeannette and her siblings took care of each other and were prepared for anything, even child predators, who the kids chased down the street with a machete.
 

Even early on they knew better than to be victims. We should all be so lucky to grow up with such wisdom.

The rest of us, however, have to keep our heads up & in the game, even if it means throwing one awkward knuckleball at a time.

Community

Do you know what it takes to recover from childhood sexual trauma? I don’t, because I’m not there yet. 

Last month, just shy of two years into my weekly therapy sessions, I asked my counselor how much longer it would take until I got better. When she informed me that healing is a lifelong process, my heart split open. I felt like I’d been handed a life sentence.

Of all the causes I’m willing to take a stand for, and there are a lot, I don’t want this to be one of them. I want to be out there saving dolphins from discarded fishing nets or teaching overweight kids how to eat healthfully.

Child sexual abuse is too ugly, or as media folk say, the polar opposite of a sexy issue. It’s horrid, and I didn’t ask for it. But it’s one of the heavier cards I’ve been dealt.

How children are treated and what they learn early on forms their thinking and sets their standards for life. For example, take learning a second language. It’s more than a skill or additional avenue for communicating. Studies show that “bilingualism exerts systematic effects on cognitive performance” in children and even protects “bilingual older adults against the decline of those processes in older age.” The brain develops differently in the heads of bilingual children.

I've seen this for myself. By the time I was 10, I had spent at least half my life in Germany. I wasn’t taught a lot of German in my American schools, but the German vocabulary I have now remains from those elementary days, not the four subsequent years of high school German class, of which I retained nada (or nichts, but now I’m just showing off).

I can count as quickly in Deutsch as I can in English. Meanwhile, I’ve been studying French for the past few years and still can’t count past 30. German, or at least German numbers and colors, are tattooed inside my brain forever.

And so are feelings of insecurity, guilt and abandonment. If I can’t remove from my being the bit of German I learned over 25 years ago, how will I ever recover from not being protected as a child? It stares at me in the mirror like my ears, nose and teeth. I see it in every child and adult I meet, wondering if he or she endured this too.

I lost something before I was old enough to know I ever had it – a whole self. On days when terrible things headline the news, I’m not sure I’ll ever have it back.

I write about this because I hadn’t told anyone about what had happened to me when I was little. It took me decades to find my voice. Some kids are braver than I was then, and they speak up. Or the crimes are discovered as they’re occurring.

Either way it’s the responsibility of adults to prevent it, or if not, take charge and hold the offenders accountable. The Penn State mess is inexcusable, unforgivable. It turns the character & community building of sports into a farce.

Some days I forget there's anything to be thankful for. But little things, like this column by Eric Wilbur of the Boston Globe, remind me there's a lot of people on my team. I'm thankful for that.

One in Six

I remember sixth grade like it happened yesterday, instead of 1988. We were the oldest kids at Garfield East Elementary, and one of the privileges of our seniority was getting to switch classes for the first time (even though it was only for three periods).

It was a baby step to prep us for junior high, or maybe just something that entertained our three 6th grade teachers.

Mrs. J. was my teacher and she had also been my teacher the previous year. There were three of us girls who were special enough (or randomly selected) to be in her classroom two years straight.

The three of us weren't particularly close, but we were all nice and non-trouble makers. One was super mature for her age, a lovely piano player and the class (or school) brain. 


The other, whom I'll call Kelly, now reminds me of a young Whoopi Goldberg when I look back: dark complexion, wild hair, and the funniest kid in class.

Me, I was quiet and pronounced kilometer like a European. I was fresh off the boat, er, Lufthansa from Germany. My classmates didn't know the meaning of "Nazi" but that's what they liked to call me on the playground.

That wasn't nearly the meanest they could be. They saved that for Kelly, who seemed like she could take it, being a budding young comedienne and all. What they tormented her about was unspeakable to me then, and unfathomable to me now. 

Even though I remember feeling grown up in the 6th grade, now I look back on a class full of babies. 

Kelly was raped by a high schooler, or older, I think the summer before 5th grade. She once told me every single detail when no one else was around. 

RAINN, the Rape, Incest and Abuse National Network reports that one out of six women has been sexually assaulted in their lives. 

She was happy at the end of our 6th grade year because she was moving south. She cried when she told me about the new life she'd start where no know would know what she did, even though she had been violently forced to do it. 

I was a very naive kid but I knew it wasn't her fault. I knew there was no way for it to have been her fault, yet she earned herself the reputation of slutty girl before anyone had a clue what that word meant. My abuse, which happened a couple of years prior to meeting Kelly, also was not my fault. But it hadn't been as "bad" as Kelly's abuse, and I'd often cry for her instead of me. Perhaps the guilty beginning to my long history of "altruism"? 

Back then, I didn't speak up for either one of us. But in the past three weeks that I've had to prepare for this International Women's Day radio special, to air tomorrow from 10 - 10:30 a.m. EST on 88.5 WMNF in Tampa or online at wmnf.org, I've held myself, Kelly, and the new survivors I've recently met and interviewed very dear. 

I hemmed and hawed and tried to write different scripts that had no room for me, wasting time writing around my own story. But today as I tied up the loose ends, I found I fit right in. 

Although I'm often guilty of wanting to befriend the people, groups, and organizations I write & report about, I have to say that the one group I have never wanted to be a part of was this survivor's group.

Not because I don't want to be strong and get on with my life, but because I've wanted to stay with my head in the sand and get on with my life. But once you've discovered you've got sand in your eyes and mouth, you kind of have to take responsibility for yourself from that point. 

I realize now that it was a little crazy of me to try reporting on a topic I'm still very emotional about. Last week I cried through almost every interview, but I regained myself in editing (that's usually the place I generally lose it, in the privacy of a small, dark room). 

Now that it's almost done, I do feel like I did this for myself. And for the survivors I met, the ones I haven't, and tonight Kelly especially comes to mind. 

Yes Means Yes!

On Tuesday I'm interviewing Jaclyn Friedman, editor of Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape. The interview will be part of a 30 minute radio documentary I'm producing for 88.5 WMNF's annual observance of International Women's Day on March 8th. (If you didn't know that most of the world celebrates women on this day, you should, and now you do!)

My doc is tentatively titled I Am Someone, and it addresses the global pandemic of violence against women, woven together with stories from survivors (myself included).

According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), 1 in 6 American women and 1 in 33 American men have been raped or sexually assaulted.

The recent assault on journalist Lara Logan in Egypt has caused many other female journalists to "come out" about their own attacks on the job, kept secret because they didn't want to seem weaker than their male counterparts and denied work opportunities. And I can't think of the last time a high profile male admitted his abuse before Senator Scott Brown revealed his childhood trauma Sunday night on 60 Minutes.

As terrible as these stories are to hear, it's better than the "good old days" when people refused to talk about such disturbing things. Though out of sight, out of mind, the abuse existed.  

These crimes are seldom talked about openly because the victims are often shamed into silence. Each victim reacts differently, but there are definite patterns caused by the trauma. If victims stay silent, they don't get the chance to become survivors. And the people who hurt them have the opportunity to harm someone else.

Girls, Girls, Girls Were Made to Love

When I was two or three I told my mom that my babysitter tickled me. She asked me where and didn't like the areas I pointed out. 


Years later my mother told me how she had tried to press charges against the teen, who happened to be an Army officer's son. But either that family or ours was moved from Ft. Knox to another Army base to avoid further trouble. 

I don't have any recollection of those events, but I do remember living on base in Würzburg, Germany when I was 7.  Another babysitter, another officer's son, touched me and talked to me in ways I recognized from movies. 

My mom didn't know about this one, and I still haven't told her. I have often put the feelings of other people before my own, and I just have not been able to break the news to her. How do you tell a parent that the care they gave you was not good enough? 


That babysitter (and a few other people and incidences since then) held a lot of power over me. It wasn't until I started therapy a little over a year ago that I began learning to trust my friends and family, my husband, and myself. 


I've sought therapy throughout my twenties but wasn't really ready to face my fears, and I always quit after a few sessions. Therapists also have power and I hadn't been ready to trust them either (some with good reason; some were nuttier than I was). 


When I found myself flailing throughout my first year of marriage, my first long-term relationship, I knew it was time to woman up. I called the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay, and they referred me to Apple Trauma Services, one of the nonprofits under their organizational umbrella. 


Because of my low income status and lack of insurance, they offered me a sliding scale weekly fee that I could afford. I wouldn't have been able to get the help I desperately needed without that. 

The counselor I began seeing was still earning her MA, in fact I think she may have been doing her internship at the Crisis Center. But I was comfortable with her right away, and beyond ready to be fixed. I was ready to let go of my anger and fear and Boehner-like crying every time I observed some terrible injustice in the world. Crying, after all, saves no one. 

Once a week we visualized and role played and exercised my self esteem. But mostly she just listened to a sad girl who had often felt overlooked as a child and had trouble reconciling the fact that she was now a grown woman who had complete control of her life and self. 

After 13 months of therapy, today I go in for my last session. (Though I'm a Woody Allen fan, I have no interest in making therapy a part of my life for decades on end.) I am celebrating the obstacles I've overcome. 

I feel extremely lucky that my therapist decided to follow her heart and pursue her MA and found me in her office one day. She's helped me unlock the scared child I'd been holding onto so that I could become the person I wanted to be. 

And I'll close by adding that to be an effective do-gooder, it's imperative that you help yourself first. It took me a long time to learn this lesson. I'm happy to have had access to the mental health tools needed to help me help myself.