21 years

The man that abused me has just been sentenced to 21 years in prison.

This is such an amazing sentence the judge semed so understanding and compassionate. It really gives you faith that there is justice and you 'reep what you sow'.

 

I can feel all of my negative, bitter, angry feelings melting away.

I feel empowered

I feel cleansed

I feel complete

I feel free

I feel me

The day I have been waiting for........

Tomorrow the man that I called dad, after my biological dad passed away, is due for sentencing for sexually abusing me as a child. He is also being charge for assaulting/abusing other women and children.

I was not going to go to the sentencing but this afternoon I decided I wanted to. This has been my story, my journey. I was the first person to come forward about him and start the criminal proceedings, which subsequently escalated.

I feel empowered to walk into the court with my head held high, I am even prepared to look him in the eyes because I am now a strong adult, who has brought this man to justice. It is no longer 'innocent child vs controlling powerful man' it is now 'strong mother vs pathetic dirty old man', the tables have now turned.

'He' really could of jeopardised my future but I have fought hard to be the person I now am and have the life that I have. I am loved and I love.

Small things show big changes

My son started swimming lessons today but as it's parent toddler that involves me going in with him. 

When I've previously been with other mums in group activities or at school I have always felt over whelmed and insecure.

It's not necessary to do with my physical appearance but I just get swamped with the feeling of inferiority, but today I did not.

I felt the same as the other mums, they were just in the pool wanting their child to learn to swim....they weren't there to judge me. We were all just mums with toddlers, that is all.

This may seem simple but it really highlighted to me that my healing is working as I didn't feel and I'm not inferior to others.

The healing I received from the amazing Kath at The Happiness Foundation is changing my life :)

Healing

I really feel that I am healing and growing. Each day I'm feeling better and stronger in myself.

I saw an amazing lady yesterday who helped me to say good bye to the negative feelings within me and learn to love myself. She told me that I wouldn't  let anyone say the things to me that I say to myself so why do I allow myself to be so negative to me.

She also armed me with some techniques to help me everyday to become more happy.

I have a loving husband, the most wonderful children, my abuser is awaiting sentencing, what I need to do is stop beating myself up- the only person stopping me from being at peace now is me.

I spoke to a family member last night and told her what had happened to me, once again complete support and love was shown to me.

I still have a way to go but I feel that I'm getting there now and when I am healed and ready I will use my experience and knowledge to make a difference to other peoples lives x

Defendants Anonymity

I understand why people wrongly accused of child abuse want to change the law to have anonymity, but I don't think they should.

All of the people that are victims of abuse have had a injustice done against them, the ones that are brave enough to come forward are, in effect, on trail against their abuser. (They shouldn't be but I know I've been there)

Every single person that has been abused is innocent victims that did not asked to be abused and therefor when people are wrongly accused they are innocent victim too. It's not fair for anyone but there are victims on both sides.

Why should we have a system where it's ok for people to be a abuse victims but it's not acceptable for people to be wrongly accused.

Ok the people wrongly accused are a handful of innocent people who's lives are greatly affected but so are all of the thousands of abuse victims that live with their trauma for the rest of their lives too. 

You have to remember nobody asks to be abused!

Of course this is just my view and opinion on the subject.

Simple words

After a day of feeling fat, ugly, inferior, awkward and just not very good, my daughter says some simple words to me whilst I'm putting her to bed tonight: 

"Mummy if you are happy then I am happy" 

"Yes and I'm happy if you are" I reply

"So mummy I will be happy then as that makes you happy, and that makes me happy."

Simple, beautiful, innocent and inspiring words. A 6 year old child figuring out and articulating something that us adults search for.

I really am blessed with my young wise children and really must learn to take my focus away from comparing myself to others and just rejoice in who I am.

Guilt

Guilt is a horrible thing to carry. 

I was a victim of a repeated crime- yet I carried so much guilt because of it. 

As a child I felt guilty for having an intimate relationship with my abuser, and I felt guilty for 'cheating' with my mums partner. 

After I felt guilty for having a secret and lying to everyone.

I had the guilt of my silence making it more that likely that other children would be hurt.

Then when I spoke out about my abuse I had the guilt about hurting my family.

I feel guilty that my husband is married to an abuse victim and that we had children with an abuse victim without knowing.

I feel guilty that I am that my children will find out one day that their mother was abused. 

I feel guilt..... But the fact of the matter is that I did not ask to be abused. The only person that is guilty is 'him'.

Abuse doesn't end when it stops.... My abuse will end when I learn to free myself of guilt.

Me being me

Despite this Blog and my Twitter page being anonymous, I feel like I'm able to be so honest and truthful and more true to myself and the amazing thing is that people like me and want to listen to me.

I feel I've spent so much of my life desperate to please others and to be liked. Like many others I put on a facade to be who I think people want me to be. I would have never imagined being myself would interest anyone yet it does.

This is really helping my self confidence and maybe this blog won't always be anonymous, as actually I seem to be embraced and looked upon not as a dirty weak useless victim, but as a brave honest person. 

Speaking out

Someone posted on twitter so many adults remain silent- however if they spoke up they could make a difference. I wish everyone felt a moral duty to do so....

Wow this is a bold statement to make, and one who many people who have not been in the situation like I have could make.

When you are abused a lot of the time your voice is taken from you, I have talked a lot about self esteem and self worth, this is often stolen from you and you can be left to feel insignificant. Also in my case my abuser was my little sister’s dad, and my mother’s ex partner........ how would they feel if I told them that this man had hurt me?? Talking about your abuse is also admitting it really happened, when many people like me train themselves to bury it deep within them, to say it happened is a massive thing to do. 

Also disclosing it as an adult, I was worried about people asking why didn’t I talk sooner and being looked at as someone who has caused other children to be potentially hurt as they didn’t talk up. Not forgetting police, court, media etc and the stigma of being an abuse victim.

I was able to do what I have done because I at last had support, and of course I feel guilt that others after me have been abused, I feel sick with guilt.  But in order to talk you need someone who is willing to listen.

The Impact on my life..........

I am a 30yr old daughter, wife and mother and as a result of my abusers actions I have suffered with depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts, and I have sort medical advice/treatment for all of these. I have also suffered, due to my trauma, from bulimia and binge eating from the age of 10 years old.

My self image and self esteem has always been very low, I can’t understand why people would ever like me or want me. I have always been a much ‘closed’ person but on the other hand always wanting to please people and be liked by them.

Relationships with men have been extremely difficult for me, I believed all they wanted was just sex and didn’t care about me as a person, maybe I was even classed as easy and from this my self-worth was non-existent and therefore I made the wrong decisions and slept with older men at a young age.

I have always felt intimidated by men and feel over powered and not in control even worrying for my personal safety. Trusting men around my children, apart from school/nursery and grandparents, has been severely problematic for me. I will not leave my children with anyone else, for example I would not use a babysitter or child-minder ‘just in case’. I find it very difficult to even leave them with male family members that I know, as, in the back of my mind I’m thinking, ‘what if’, these irrational thoughts can be very distressing.  Every male I meet I tend to assess them, could they be a pedophile; for example my ex-boyfriend had a daughter who stayed with us on occasions. I used to put her to bed as my thoughts would go into overtime, I couldn’t chance her being put to bed by her daddy and him abusing her.  I had no evidence of him ever doing anything to her but to me I had to treat all men with caution and suspicion.

The quality of my daily life has been affected greatly, but I have tried to cope on a day to day basis however, it has been difficult for me. I carried a big secret around for 17 years after the abuse stopped a massive weight that has taken a strain on me mentally. Through it I have felt isolated and alone with no one to share it with and I couldn’t bear the hurt it could do to the family if they found out. I decided that I wouldn’t burden anyone and that it would be best to take my secret to my grave so I shut down, never allowing myself to re-live my past.  I put on a brave face so my family would never have to know how much I suffered and hurt through my precious child years and now as a wife and mother.

Now that I have finally spoken about what happened to me I am faced with the immense feelings of guilt and anguish. In the past I didn’t allow myself to fully accept what had happened to me; I couldn’t think beyond the hurt that my family might feel if I disclosed the abuse that I had suffered. But now that I have came out about what happened to me I am faced with the guilt of knowing that other young girls have been hurt, who may not have been if I had spoken up sooner, hence the guilt and remorse feelings I have to deal with and that play on my mind daily.

My husband has found this very difficult to deal with the situation. Despite being very supportive it has taken its toll on him and, in some ways, on our relationship.

Reflecting on my childhood I can say I was never a happy child, I had worries and concerns that a child never should never have to deal with.  A very vivid memory is at the tender age of 7 or 8 I thought I was going to have a baby as I had been told how babies were made by someone.  I can recall putting two and two together with what me and “my daddy” had been doing I was really worried that I would have a baby in my tummy and my mummy would be very angry and tell me off. I didn’t have a normal carefree innocent time as a child; I was always scared, lonely, anxious, confused and felt very maternal and protective over my little sister; I constantly worried in case anyone hurt her.

As a teenager I was very confused and self-destructive and reflecting back on my years of promiscuity and drinking too much alcohol, I found this eased the hurt and pain and numbed my feelings.

When this person was out of my life I used to wonder how I would deal with him coming back, what would I say, what would he do, could I ever face him and could ‘I carry on living’ if he was in our lives again.  These were real distressing feelings I had and still do have.

Self Esteem

I really want to work on improving my self esteem. I often talk about wanting to help other people, but I feel that I need to work on myself first and get in a place where I am able to help other people effectively and whist I am feeling inadequate how can I possibly help other people.

I have been looking into ways to do this, of course there are external people that can help and I am going to be starting some counselling sessions in the near future. But firstly I want to try ‘work’ on myself.

Myself worth seems to be so low at the moment and a lot of the low points I have are caused by comparing myself to other people. I feel that people are better than me, whether it be prettier, slimmer, happier, brighter etc. The word that really fits me at the moment is ‘inadequate’. What I need to do is accept myself for me and stop comparing myself to other people. Logically I do know that people are not better and that we are all different but I still keep getting swamped with the feeling that I am worthless.

So going forward I am going to research into ways to overcome my negative feelings and hopefully that will lead me to being happier in my own skin.

Self image

I wasn't going to do a post today but I just wanted to share how I feel about myself today.....

I feel ugly, I feel fat, I feel so unattractive, I feel trapped in a negative cycle that I don't want to be seen by people today. My sister is very beautiful, she really is and I feel so insignificant to her.

I know this is a very self indulged post and I am blessed with two healthy happy children, but I'm just feeling down about it. When I see pictures of my sister, as I'm in a bad place at the moment, it doesn't make me feel lucky to have a beautiful sister, it makes me feel hideous. I really hope I find happiness with myself so I can stop feeling like this.

Inspirational words

I told a very special lady today about what has happened in my life. Ever since I came out about the abuse I have thought about telling her as she is wise, warm and has always been someone I would aspire to be like. I want to share this because my self esteem has always been low and with me coming out about my abuse, I have worried about people perceiving me in a weak or dirty way, but this has not been the case at all! Heres a message she sent me

I always thought you were very special, and with a loving deep soul. Could always 'see' you and saw your strength, your vulnerability, and your sadness but didn't know why it was all there. You are an advanced soul. I 'see' you and despite all that you went through I always found you to be a loving, kind, deep soul. And yes you are blessed with your husband and children. And they too are blessed by you. What a loving heart you have always had. You are so much more than what happened to you. You are an amazing young beautiful woman. Beautiful inside and out. Love to you. xxx

Helping Others

I really feel that I would like to help others. I think the biggest damage I have done to myself was carrying this secret with me for so long.
I have felt so alone and confused for so many years and now I do still have a very long way to go but I do feel liberated and Im on the road to being content with myself.
I want to show other people like me that they are not alone, I understand what they are going through- infact there are so many people in this world that have simular stories to mine.
Im not sure how I will help, but my aim is to try free people who are trapped with a secret and help them