22f78a9
|
"Remember that you own what happened to you. If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point to you, while a chilling voice thundered, "We *told* you not to tell." But that was then. Just put down on paper everything you can remember now about your parents and siblings and relatives and neighbors, and we will deal with libel later on."
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|
memories
writing
advice
getting-started
memoir
remembering
childhood
incest
memory
|
Anne Lamott |
f1f36fb
|
She couldn't get any farther away inside from her skin. She couldn't get away.
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|
rape
skin
girl
teen
incest
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Cynthia Voigt |
81b9cc8
|
She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls' hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.
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|
rape
freedom
writing
pen
girl
teen
incest
|
Cynthia Voigt |
8c10915
|
And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for you haven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself.
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|
love
admired
unadmired
unloved
loving
thankfulness
incest
|
V.C. Andrews |
aac8a24
|
I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw. The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn't be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike. I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn't feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror's reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. 'Who are you?' I'd ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn't me. I'd watch my lips moving and say it again, 'Who are you?
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emotion
identity
change
amnesia
dissociated-state
emotionals
identity-alternation
identity-switch
lookalike
personality-switch
trigger
triggered
impostor
identity-confusion
dissociative
split-personality
identity-crisis
unreal
survivor
unreality
dream-like
dissociation
dreaming
child
mirror
memory-loss
incest
sexual-abuse
dissociative-identity-disorder
multiple-personality-disorder
trauma
mental-health
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Alice Jamieson |
ec52b84
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When we are ready to let go of our old controls, we admit that we were powerless over the incest or abuse...We have often thought, 'If only I could have stopped it,' but we could not have stopped it. We let go of the 'if only' now and sit still with our stark powerlessness...In our surrender to powerlessness, we touch ourselves with the gift of truth.
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abuse-survivors
letting-go
truth
survivor-of-abuse
survivors-of-abuse
child-sexual-abuse-survivor
if-only
child-abuse
survivor
healing
abuse-recovery
powerlessness
powerless
child-sexual-abuse
incest
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Maureen Brady |
ead270a
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"Our need to be "greater than" or "less than" has been a defense against toxic shame. A shameful act was committed upon us. The perpetrator walked away, leaving us with the shame. We absorbed the notion that we are somehow defective. To cover for this we constructed a false self, a masked self. And it is this self that is the overachiever or the dunce, the tramp or the puritan, the powermonger or the pathetic loser."
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|
ashamed
coverup
defective
defective-humans
false-self
feeling-bad
hidden-feelings
hidden-pain
hidden-self
overachiever
power-trip
toxic-shame
child-sexual-abuse-survivor
recovery-from-abuse
dunce
loser
healing-insights
survivor
puritan
healing
true-self
shame
child-sexual-abuse
incest
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Maureen Brady |
41757b3
|
"All right, Chris, you've given me a breather. I'm prepared for anything. And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for you haven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself." I kissed him quickly on the lips, and told him to go on, to hit me with his knockout blow. "Really, Chris, I know you must have something perfectly awful to tell me-so out with it. Keep holding me as you tell me, and I can stand anything you have to say."
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kissing
kiss
love
awful
breather
stand
stand-anything
unadmired
unloved
loving
thanks
prepared
telling-the-truth
kisses
incest
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V.C. Andrews |
382a54d
|
I had heard the wind from the mountains calling me last night, telling me it was my time to go, and I woke up, knowing what to do.
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loss
hearbreak
heartache
incest
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V.C. Andrews |
bc01c37
|
"To take a specific example, a researcher in the Journal of Traumatic Stress interviewed 129 women with documented histories of child sexual abuse that occurred between the ages of 10 months and 12 years. Of those, 38 percent had forgotten the abuse. Of the remaining women who remembered, 16 percent reported that they had for a period of time forgotten but subsequently recovered their memories. [46] Thus, during that time a "false negative" recorded for those women. These are the sort of distinctions for which Elaine Showalter in Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media fails to account."
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child-sexual-abuse
elaine-showalter
epidemics
false-memories
false-negatives
feminists
hysterics
incest
incestuous
misleading
pseudo-science
pseudoscience
recovered-memory
repressed-memories
repressed-memory
sexual-abuse
traumatic-stress
women-survivors
hysterical
trauma
survivors
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Janet Walker |
9782f27
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Once I was in the cold dim room, without furniture or carpet or rugs, only a dollhouse that wasn't as wonderful as the original, I opened the tall and narrow closet door and began my ascent up the steep and narrow stairs. On my way to the attic. On my way to where I'd find my Christopher, again...
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|
loss
heartbreak
heartache
incest
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V.C. Andrews |
ae23b74
|
When shame is met with compassion and not received as confirmation of our guilt, we can begin to see how slant a lens it has had us looking through. That awareness lets us step back far enough to see that if we can let it go, we will see ourselves as clean where we once thought we were dirty. We will remember our innocence. We will see how our shame supported a system in which the perpetrators were protected and we bore the brunt of their offense -- first in its actuality, then again in carrying their shame for it. If the method we chose to try to beat out shame was perfectionism, we can relax now, shake the burden off our shoulders, and give ourselves a chance to loosen up and make some errors. Hallelujah! Our freedom will not come from tireless effort and getting it all exactly right.
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freedom
abusers
perpetrators
abuser
burdens-of-the-past
imperfect
peptrator
perfectly-imperfect
false-guilt
recovery-from-abuse
healing-from-abuse
innocence-lost
offense
child-rape
healing-insights
perfectionism
healing
innocence
shame
recovery
guilt
child-sexual-abuse
incest
sexual-abuse
survivors
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Maureen Brady |
fcbbbbd
|
"It was after a Frontline television documentary screened in the US in 1995 that the Freyds' public profile as aggrieved parents provoked another rupture within the Freyd family, when William Freyd made public his own discomfort. 'Peter Freyd is my brother, Pamela Freyd is both my stepsister and sister-in-law,' he explained. Peter and Pamela had grown up together as step-siblings. 'There is no doubt in my mind that there was severe abuse in the home of Peter and Pam, while they were raising their daughters,' he wrote. He challenged Peter Freyd's claims that he had been misunderstood, that he merely had a 'ribald' sense of humour. 'Those of us who had to endure it, remember it as abusive at best and viciously sadistic at worst.' He added that, in his view, 'The False memory Syndrome Foundation is designed to deny a reality that Peter and Pam have spent most of their lives trying to escape.' He felt that there is no such thing as a false memory syndrome.' Criticising the media for its uncritical embrace of the Freyds' campaign, he cautioned:
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lies
story
influence
reality
truth
bias
biased
child-abuse
child-rape
enabling-abuse
fabrication
false-memory
fmsf
freyd
jennifer-freyd
objective
paedophile
pamela-freyd
peter-freyd
protecting-pedophiles
sadistic
sex-abuse
underwager
flawed
pedophile
denial
deny
siblings
media
surprise
child-sexual-abuse
incest
false-memory-syndrome-foundation
psychology
|
Judith Jones Beatrix Campbell |
9563645
|
The bridge out of shame is outrage. Suddenly the obvious becomes stunningly clear--we have been carrying shame for the crime of the offender...In a clear flash we may see ourselves standing in a fierce stance, grounded by our knowledge, ready to throw off any wrongdoer. Our outrage can be a fueling energy, capable of making us as steely as we need to be.
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|
rape
rage
recovery-from-abuse
healing-from-abuse
outrage
child-rape
healing-insights
healing
shame
crime
recovery
child-sexual-abuse
incest
|
Maureen Brady |
8d58310
|
Only I had dry eyes, a dry heart.
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|
loss
love
heartache
incest
|
V.C. Andrews |
493ab40
|
Anything with blood in it can probably go bad. Like meat. And it's the blood that makes me worry. It carries things you don't even know you got.
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|
genetics
disease
incest
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Tim Winton |
491c703
|
We can ill afford to wait until we have worked through all our memories & feelings about incest before learning to rest & play. While it may seem to be a natural impulse to get to the bottom of things & purge ourselves fully, we need to regularly examine the full picture of our lives for balance along the way...Learning to rest & play is an essential part of our healing.
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|
child-sexual-abuse-survivors
recovery-from-abuse
healing-insights
healing-abuse
healing-the-emotional-self
healing
incest
survivors
|
Maureen Brady |
282b299
|
The sun was hot and bright. A day for fishing, for swimming, for playing tennis and having fun, and they put my Christopher in the ground.
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loss
heartbreak
love
incest
|
V.C. Andrews |
e1600d2
|
Few young men know the Oedipal torment of growing up with an insanely hot, perpetually single mom.
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|
ernest-cline
wtf
incest
|
Ernest Cline |