Healing From Rape

Rape. The word in and of itself seems to be an assault. Since 2017 and the #MeToo movement, we have become more accustomed to hearing this word. We now know we are not alone. Millions of people have endured the same violation. In fact, one in five women have experienced a rape or attempted rape in the US. The question we then ask is, How do we heal from it?

My Innocence Stolen

My story began at age 14. I was an oddity then: a happy, popular, involved 4.0 student. Despite divorced parents and some other hiccups and hardships, I remember still possessing that childlike joy and innocence at 14. But one night in September, that all changed. I did not realize I was about to join the third of all American women who are raped or experience an attempted rape between the ages of 11 and 17.

My rape is like so many others’. My perpetrator was someone I knew very well. Over 50% of rapes are committed by intimate partners and more than 40% by acquaintances. Very rarely is it a stranger. For me, my rapist was someone I trusted. Someone I would say I even loved. But in the blink of an eye, it all changed.

I recall looking in the mirror the evening I was raped. I didn’t recognize myself. I stared into my hollow eyes as I lightly touched the areas where bruises began to appear. I wiped away the blood. It was an unusually chilly September night, but I remember feeling both numb and on fire.

In the days that followed, I began spiraling into self-destruction. I had given up in some of my courses at school, sat in the bathroom to skip others, and completely abandoned any care about my physical appearance. I wasn’t OK, but I was masterful at hiding it. My mom thought I was just entering the typical teenage angst years that my sisters had gone through before me. As a counselor looking back now, I know I had all the symptoms of rape trauma syndrome; I just did not know it at the time.

Just a few short months after my rape, my assaults continued. I do not know what it was about me that drew my stepbrother’s attention that night. But somehow, while sitting on the couch watching a movie, he assaulted me for the first time. It is important to note that while I was 14, he was in his 30s. This would be the first of many similar acts in the years that would follow. His older brother wanted in on the fun, so it did not take long for me to have two men in their 30s vying for my physical attention.

Separating Truth From Lies

In the bathroom of my childhood home was a cross-stitch of the Serenity Prayer. I really took notice of it during my senior year of high school. It says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I could not change what happened — with my rape or my assaults — but I could change how I looked at them. Working on this became a daily discipline as I finished high school and began college. I would look in the mirror and tell myself affirmations: It was not your fault; You repeatedly said no, in both word and action. You did not consent. You did not deserve this. It is not a punishment. This does not define you or your value. You are still worthy of love. While I would tell myself these mantras, I only truly believed them about my rape, not the countless assaults my stepbrothers subjected me to.

It would take several years for me to recognize the extent of the damage from my assaults. Because my rape was so much more violent, I believed that single incident to be the most traumatic. In reality, all of it was equally traumatic and left me in a messy web of feeling as if I had no value.

Coming to a place of acceptance of what happened does not mean you accept all the lies you told yourself along the way. I had to work through accepting what happened, but not accepting the fault. It was much easier to recognize that my rape was not my fault. But when it came to my assaults, it took years to peel back the layers of shame and disgust I felt from those encounters.

Healing From Sexual Assault Trauma

For eight years, I kept my rape and sexual abuse mostly to myself. Only a few people knew what my stepbrothers did to me, and no one knew the full story of my rape. I lived in denial of how wrong everything was, even to myself. While I allowed some minor details to slip out to some people I trusted, no one got the whole story. That is mistake No. 1 that I made. I would eventually learn that the first step to healing comes from acknowledging what happened — to yourself and those you trust.

I finally succumbed to therapy about a year after I had opened up more about my rape. My boyfriend had surprised me and shaved off his beard. When I first saw him, all I could see was my rapist. It was a very deep trigger. I struggled to look at my boyfriend — to kiss him, to be comforted by him, to even be in his presence. I knew my rape was still controlling so many aspects of my life. That is when I decided to get help.

I felt like an imposter the first time I went in and sat on my counselor’s office couch. At the time, I was in school getting my master’s in clinical and mental health counseling to become a therapist. I did not think I should be getting help. I thought only people with extreme situations sought out treatment. I was wrong.

Little did I know how much getting professional help would guide me. It also helped me realize the depth of healing that my heart, mind, body, and spirit needed. Many things began making more sense after the first time I processed what happened with my stepbrothers. I simply needed someone to listen, believe me, and help me see the patterns and behaviors I had created to protect myself. I was finally starting to heal.

The Beauty of Therapy

One of the greatest perks of getting a professional perspective was that my counselor was completely objective. There was zero judgment from her: none of the ridiculous pesky questions about what I was wearing or if I had anything to drink during my rape. She helped me realize how wrong it was for me to have sexual relations beginning at 14 years old when my stepbrothers were in their 30s. She helped me recognize that I was just a child, genuinely pure and blameless in it all. She held a proverbial flashlight, simply holding it out in front as we walked along a long and treacherous path.

Sometimes, my counselor would put aside the flashlight and pick up a shovel to dig. As she helped draw awareness to things I had not realized, she helped me see some of my patterns. My beautiful, strong patterns of resilience and survival. But with that, I also saw my not-so-lovely patterns of avoidance, self-sabotage, and pride. Those were the days that I would leave therapy exhausted. I felt raw. It was difficult to be truly known and seen. But it was also beautiful. Although someone knew my deepest secrets and sources of pain, they still believed in me and my potential.

Looking back, I realized I was giving up an inch of my life to gain back miles. I quit at one point; it got to be too emotionally exhausting. But I had learned enough during my first five months of therapy to realize when my toxic coping skills were returning. So once again, I needed the person with both the shovel and the flashlight. I needed a second round of professional help.

My second round of therapy lasted for a little over a year. From my professional perspective, I have realized that trauma is like an onion: it has layers. The outside — the most exposed layer — was the unhealthy patterns and thought processes I had developed as a result of my rape and abuse. I was able to work through those areas in therapy, enough to eventually get to the second layer of trauma, which, once again, took some more time to fully heal and process. It would then happen again. I would process through the next level of trauma, only to discover it has deeper roots. In some ways, that sounds horrible. But it is actually the most liberating experience.

Experiencing Hope and Healing

I have to recognize the beauty in the ashes of my trauma. For years, I did not recognize how little feeling I had about things; my trauma had made me more calloused to human emotions than I realized. I was numb, an empty vessel in so many ways. But after therapy, I began to empathize with others sincerely. I now have an immense attitude of gratitude when it comes to acknowledging my emotions; I am thankful I am capable of relationships and feeling once again. I am more resilient than ever, knowing that when I face hardship, I am strong enough to overcome it. I learned about post-traumatic growth in an academic setting, but thanks to phenomenal guidance and therapy, I was able to experience it from a personal perspective.

I do not think of my rape every day. I do not think of my stepbrothers every day either. I’m grateful that certain things no longer trigger me like they used to: a firm knock at the door, features that resemble the man who raped me, the smell of tobacco, the hint of a particular cologne. If I could go back and tell my younger self that, at 35, I would love my life and not think daily about the rape and abuse I endured at the hands of my stepbrothers, I do not think I would have believed it. But it is true. Healing from rape and healing from sexual assault is possible.

There is hope. There is such jubilant, reconciling, freeing hope to be had. Healing is not impossible. You are worth every investment — whether it’s time, cost, or emotional effort. At Willow House at The Meadows, expert therapists are trained to guide you on your own journey of healing. They are fully equipped with proverbial flashlights and shovels to assist you along the path to healing. You don’t have to go through this alone. And what happened to you doesn’t have to control the rest of your life. You can experience healing from rape and healing from rape trauma. Let Willow House help you, once and for all, come back home to your true self. Take the first step today.