Month: August 2020

Practicing Being Grateful: A Process of Recovery from Childhood Abuse

Practicing Being Grateful: A Process of Recovery from Childhood Abuse

I first learned about “being grateful” in Narcotics Anonymous 33 years ago. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, these words sounded foreign to me. I learned to suffer at a young age, which became a conditioned way of life, and it was a shadow that followed me into adulthood. In short, I had nothing to be grateful for. It took me two years to become willing to look at my resistance to being grateful because I was afraid to challenge my conditioned belief that I deserved to suffer. My unwillingness to begin being grateful … Read more

There is FEAR IN CHANGE for Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Why We Cannot Heal Alone

There is FEAR IN CHANGE for Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Why We Cannot Heal Alone

The definition of change is “become different.” It sounds simple, but it is not easy. It calls for us to step into unchartered territory without knowing what will happen. We like predictability and knowing what to expect. Before stepping into the unknown, we first have to identify how we protect ourselves. Self-protection was a life saver when suffering from childhood sexual abuse, but to grow beyond survival, we have to identify how we guard ourselves. Laying down our “protective weapons” means we are unsafe. If we lived in the war zone of abuse, we do … Read more