Tuesday, December 31, 2013

What's next as adult survivors of child abuse?


So I made this blog for several reasons. I have been doing some healing from past child abuse, and thinking about how we go on to try and live normal healthy lives, hoping to never be like our abusers.

Sometimes I still feel the rejection from my parents, especially since, even as an adult I tried to have relationship with them. I didn't realize the abuse was still going on, through their manipulation and insults. I was still trying to be the "good child". What I thought was healthiness was really my old coping skills kicking in to protect me from their outbursts.

 My parents eventually  didn't want to speak to me any more. Even though their rejection hurt, that's when I experienced some real freedom.

So I wondered if there were more of us out there, who struggle between the hurt, and health of a relationship with parents that once abused us (and maybe still do). BTW- Facebook has been a doozy, every time someone posts a picture about "appreciate your mom or dad", I feel pain. Every time someone writes, your parents won't be with you for long, I feel pain.  I can't fix the relationship. The separation has to be there for now for my own health.

Sometimes we chose the separation, sometimes we don't. But however it comes I think it helps us to see more clearly. We want to please our family, so it's only when that option isn't available that we can really see things for the way they are.

It's hard to see the estrangement as a consequence of their choices, but it really is. Without even a small change of heart on their part, it's hard to get healthy while still in a relationship with them.
 
Here is a hug for each and every person who needs one **********BIG HUG***********
 
We might have been bruised, scared, and broken as kids, but there is a life, and light  out of that pain. There is healing for the part of us that we'd rather shut away because we think no one can relate. Here's to living a life of beauty pulled from all those ashes.