Just read this post on Anchoress’ss Blog
And my initial reaction to reading yet another, “yeah it happened to me too”, is to ask myself….”were we ALL molested by family members when we were little?”.
When I made my claims a couple years ago, it was easy for my family to assume I was going psychotic again. As my “psychosis” has persisted these past five years, and for those most closely related by blood, for them, I only seem to be in raging psychosis when I talk about being sexually assaulted, it has been an interesting experience to attempt to find the answer to my question, “why?”.
Don’t know all the answers, but I do know that cutting ties with my parents and siblings was the only way to find real peace. It took me five years to realize this. I could not imagine living without them, and so it was impossible for me to even contemplate a life where we were out of contact.
Yet as these months have clicked by since the day my Bishop encouraged me to cut ties for self preservation, I have come to a few conclusions.
We don’t need to concern ourselves so much with the “why’s” of sexual assault. I don’t have to get inside of the brains of my abusers to know that they were/are a bunch of screwed up men messing with my body.
I don’t need to worry so much about getting justice. While that would be nice, I’m holding out for eternal justice for those unrepentant souls who think they can lie their way into heaven.
I don’t have to remember every sordid thing that was done to me, relive it, and rehash it over and over again. That being said, the body demands reconciliation. If experiences in life are too traumatic, the brain has a nifty way of tucking them away, out of site, until the person afflicted and tormented is grown up enough to face the truth.
The gentle nudges, or screaming symptoms that let us know something is off will continue to knock on the door of our conciousness until we open it and acknowledge, yeah, something evil happened to me.
For me the various physical and emotional symptoms that persisted and increased in scope and size until I had a complete nervous breakdown after the birth of my first child, were my body and minds attempts to let me know that something was very, very off in my being.
So much of my life was unexplainable. Why was I a suicidal basket case when I was fifteen? Why did depression haunt me like a nightmare that I could never awaken from? Why did I find it impossible to leave my children with anyone? Why did I suffer from skin rashes, asthma, allergies, and other toxic conditions, when I ate such a healthy diet?
And why did I panic for months ahead of time at the thought of getting together with my extended family?
Nothing made any sense, until my brother died a tragic death, and my body and mind decided it was time to face the past, remember the abuse, and start to truly purge and heal from it.
Have I completed that work?
It has been over five years since my brother died. My mind and my body have taken me to some very dark places these past few years. Places I did not remember, or even know existed in the recesses of my mind and memory.
Am I healed?
Am I well?
Certain chronic rashes around my face are gone. I have had a persistent rash around my mouth since I was a baby. My face is whole. I suppose it means that I am healed. The memory of being orally assaulted as a baby no longer intrudes upon my dreams, or haunts me during the day. It is mostly forgotten, a bad stinking memory that has vanished. Even now when I say the words “I was sexually assaulted when I was a baby”, it feels like a dream.
I’m still an overweight blob of a woman, and for the past eight months I have found it impossible to even think about aerobics. My lungs were too congested. Yet I walk the dog several times a day, and last week I did my first aerobics class (NIA in Boulder with Kendra) since the Malkin event at CU campus last march.

Jenny Sick in spring of 2006
I have been very, very sick these past few months with a variety of toxic symptoms, perhaps sicker than I have ever been in my life. It would show up for a day or a week or two, and then retreat while I rebuilt my reserves. Yes, I feel that I am making progress, and the anger I have struggled with in thinking about those who have attempted to silence me and shut me up has dispersed as well. Not that it is gone, when I was doing Nia last week (non impact aerobics) one of the steps we do is a karate type kick and I kept imagining kicking my abusers in the face.
I know I could not have lived with myself if I had caved to the pressure from my family to live the lie and pretend nothing had happened. I was so suicidal as it was, that to allow them to dictate the terms under which I would live the rest of my days on the earth would have meant certain death, if not intentional violent death at my own hands, then certainly slow death as I shriveled up into a big fat ball of nothing.
No, that was not the life for me. I’m content. I guess that is the best way to put it. Sad about the way things are, but reconciled to my fate.
And, I am slowly but surely healing. A tiny bit stronger each day. I believe the worst of the toxicity has moved out of my body. And I have hope of being whole someday. Not just fake whole; hollywood type “in shape”, as they puke and cut and slice and drug their way to the perfect body.
No, whole in the sense that I am rock solid truth to my core.
No deceptions, no double mindedness, no doublethink, or little bits of “too difficult to face right now” toxicity tucked in my brain or my colon or my heart or my liver. Just pure and simple truth flowing gently and easily through my soul.
I’ve observed that truth in the faces of a few people in my life. A librarian in Yellow Springs Ohio, a sanctified friend at church who has lived through the fire and come out refined and true on the other side, and my own child Benjamin, who is just one big glowing ball of love and is simply flowing with unhindered spirit.
It is a joy for us to have him in our home and watch him grow day by day, protecting him from evil, and keeping him safe and secure. My prayer is that as the healing continues to flow in my body, we will be blessed with a few more sons and daughters to cherish and love in our little family.
In literature, the embodiment of this clear headed person is the Catherine Marshall Character in Christy , Miss Alice Henderson.
Miss Alice was a pragmatic Quaker, who had been raped and impregnated by a close family friend as a young girl. She embodies the type of life I would like to live as I close down my time on earth. At 38, I believe I’m close to the half way point of my life, and so I would like to dedicate this second half of my sojourn to those women and men who have chosen to conciously live a life of dedicated Christianity, even after, especially after, being assaulted by those they trusted.
And that is not just the sexually assaulted people of our time. I include in that inner circle those men and women who have been assaulted by childbirth. To those mothers who are laying comotose on their living room couches, writhing in pain and agony from the injustice of having their bodies cut up and their babies ripped from their wombs, drugged senseless, and in that foggy state, wondering why they don’t enjoy being a mother. Who, when they go to the medical profession for help are handed chemicals that throw them even deeper into depression, and mania, and then who go on to lose everything precious to them.
I met dozens of these women in the various mental hospitals I was in during my early twenties. Most confided in me that their mental issues began when the baby was born, and beloved husbands and children were long gone, as the family was ripped to pieces by a cruel system that had little concern for the welfare of the families who came to them for help.
I suppose what compels me to keep writing and sharing my own healing from the various assaults is the complete faith I have in the Healing Power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am attempting to develop a perfect brightness of hope, that allows me to write realistically, not getting lost in pollyanna “ish” delusions or pretending that trends are better than they really are.
Some days, the reality of all those aborted babies in our world, the day in and day out slaughter of the unborn, the level of surgery and druggy haze that live babies are being born under, the drugging of the families of the earth, and the depression and dysfunction that results overwhelms my mind.
Other days I feel more hopeful, but I have decided that things are going to get much worse in our society in regards to birth before they get better. I believe the next generation or two of young mothers will get so addicted to the drugs and surgery, that for the most part, they will not even consider giving birth naturally or at home. Some will pull out, and family by family healing will take place, but I believe the majority will allow themselves to be seduced by the promise of no pain, and the fear of what may happen if they are disobedient to the powers that be.
The question is….”Will the legal system play more fully in all of this legalized assault?” Will we get to the point in our world where mothers have police show up to escort them to the hospital to give birth surgically? Will families who choose not to partake be supported in making health care choices that differ from the popular and the norm?
I suppose time will tell.
Isaiah encouraged us to free ourselves. As a prophet, he saw our day….loose thyself from the bands of thy neck o Captive Daughter of Zion
Every woman who finds herself ensnared in that captivity has a choice to break free.
I have chosen to break free, and while that choice has brought some terrifying experiences into my life, it has also given me the freedom and the will to carry on, and rather than hide and feel ashamed of my freedom, I feel to share it with anyone who chances by, and that is why I set up this Blog and my web site.
Sisters!
Choose freedom, choose to live!
Choose to break out of the bands around your neck!
I have done it, and it is the most empowering, beautiful thing in my life.
Jenny Hatch