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Release

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About this blog

My 12 Step Journey

Entries in this blog

Step I/Question X: Do you nurture yourself and reach out for support?

I do try to nurture myself.  I have my hobbies that I am starting to get back into.  I exercise and try to eat healthy.  I try to do things for myself.  Always looking for ways to better myself, which I feel is a form of nurture - to nurture those things that make me, me.   Reaching out for support would be a NO.  I attend SIA - 12 step meeting for Survivors of Incest.  I get to hear other survivors struggles and hope and I get to share...when I can bring myself to.  And I go to premarital

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question IX: Are you in touch with your feelings now?

Am I in touch with my feelings now?  Definitely not.  This is one of the biggest issues with my abuse.  As I've mentioned, I don't struggle with flashbacks, etc.  My struggle is my disassociation with myself and those closest with me. Which is because I am not in touch with my feelings.  I feel like I go through life emotionally flatlining.  I'm not in touch with my anger, which I feel is a good thing, but I am also not in touch with my happiness.  I have so much in my life to be excited about,

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question VIII: How has the abuse affected how you function sexually? (TW)

Thank goodness it doesn't affect me the way it use to!!! There use to be a lot of shame around sex/masturbation.  A lot of the sex I had was for the other person, not for myself.  Even if I wanted to be sexual as well, once we started, it was as if I removed myself from it and just went through the motions of whatever the other person wanted to do.  And even though I've had many giving partners who were looking to take care of me, not just themselves, and I wanted it/them too, once, we

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question VIII: How has the abuse affected how you function sexually? (TW)

Thank goodness it doesn't affect me the way it use to!!! There use to be a lot of shame around sex/masturbation.  A lot of the sex I had was for the other person, not for myself.  Even if I wanted to be sexual as well, once we started, it was as if I removed myself from it and just went through the motions of whatever the other person wanted to do.  And even though I've had many giving partners who were looking to take care of me, not just themselves, and I wanted it/them too, once, we

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question VII: How has the abuse affected how you feel about your body?

Step I/Question VII:  How has the abuse affected how you feel about your body? For one, the abuse made me HATE MY BODY.  I will write on this after. For two, the abuse made me HATE ME.  I hated myself so much.  I hated everything about me.  On top of all the sexual abuse, my mom was an alcoholic/drug addict who would beat and abandon my brother and I, until my dad got custody of us when I was 6.  My dad was an alcoholic/drug addict who was physically, mentally and emotionally a

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question VI: Do you isolate/how?

Step I/Question VI:  Do you isolate yourself? If yes, how? I don't normally look at it as 'I isolate myself'.  I just happen to spend a lot of time alone/with very limited people.   The only people in my circle are my three children and my fiance.  I don't talk to my family and since ending unhealthy relationships with past friends and my children's family, I haven't made any new friendships.  Now that I am engaged, I do have new people in my life, his adult children, his friends and h

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question V: Do you act out your pain...

Step I/Question V: Do you act out your pain by self-injury, overeating, drugs, etc? My family smoked pot, so I was smoking by 7th grade.  At 15 my cousin gave me my first line of speed, which ended with me in rehab by age 20.  I haven't done speed since, but I have on and off turned to weed to escape life.  My drug addition was short but did a lot of damage.  Over the course of it, I lost 3 apartments, 3 cars, been homeless, had 3 children by age 21, had two of them taken for 6 months,

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question III: Do you blame yourself/body

Q III. Do you blame the assaults on yourself? On your body? Tricky question...nothing jumps out at me as definitive.  I know when it started, I was too young to have been responsible for it.  But there are times when I have felt that when I was older, maybe things would have been different and not carried out for so many years, had I reacted differently to my abuse/abusers.  I was so submissive and groomed, that it made it easy for perpetrators.   There were times my body betrayed me a

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question II: Who and How have you attempted to protect others?

This was pretty much answered in my response to Question I:  Have you kept your sexual abuse a secret?.  I protected all my perpetrators.  My dad, my brother, my uncle, my cousin, my dad's girlfriend's two brothers and the adult/child relationship I had. I didn't tell anyone of the abuse while it was happening.  And as I previously journaled, I even kept the secret from the perpetrators themselves.  By pretending to be asleep and therefore, 'not knowing of the abuse'.  If I acknowledged the

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question I: Did you keep your abuse a secret? Part III

When I think about the secrecy surrounding my abuse, there are two more instances that come to mind. My dad was a single dad, raising my brother and I.  In the 70's/80's, it was less common for a father to be a single parent as it was for a mother.  My dad wore this as a badge of honor.  Always sure to share this fact with strangers and relish in their praises of what a wonderful thing he was doing.  I just remember standing by his side, as he would pull me in and share what a hard job it h

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question I: Did you keep your abuse a secret? Part II (TW)

Step One — Question One:  Did you keep your abuse a secret. Part II  (Trigger Warning) After processing the first half of this question, I started to see the different levels of secrecy.   Not only did I keep the abuse a secret from outsiders, but I also kept it a secret from my perpetrators.   As a teenager, my brother's sexual abuse always happened in the middle of the night while I was asleep.  I would wake up to him touching me, while touching himself and verbalizing his

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Step I/Question I: Did you keep your abuse a secret? Part I

Step One - Question One:  Did you keep your abuse a secret. Part I My immediate thought went to how long did I keep my abuse a secret, how old was I the first time I told someone, who was the first person I told...and then the darker sides of the secret started to come to light (see part II). I had my first child at age 17.  I had not told anyone of my sexual abuse prior to this.  My son's  father went to prison when I was 3 months pregnant, and after I had my son, I connected wit

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Who Abused You?

I was abused by my dad from about age 6 to 15.  ...my brother, as a young kid he would experiment on me, then sexual abuse from around age 12 to 16.  ...my dads girlfriends two brothers took pictures of me and abused me.   I can't remember how old I was, but somewhere between 4-6th grade.  ...my uncle  -  a couple of hand full of times around age 12  ...my cousin made out with me, touched me/made me touch him and almost raped me  ...when I was 14 I had an

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Where is the line??? (TW)

This is something I've gone back and forth on over the years.  Was this sexual abuse??  If not, what was it??  Any personal stories or feedback would be greatly appreciated. If you have not read my previous posts/blogs, I have an extensive history of abuse/sexual abuse leading up to the summer of age 14.  I know the previous abuse was the fuel for what happened. There was a family that lived by us when I was about 7 or 8, they were good friends with my dads girlfriend, that is how he m

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

Journey

I have been involved in a lot of self help (12 step programs/therapy), self discovery, soul seeking, but I am now beginning the journey to heal from the sexual abuse. I am attending SIA meetings and started step one. I am hoping to use the sia livejournal and the After Silence forum to journal and write out my step work. As I find it difficult to share everything I would like to share in a SIA meeting and do not have a sponsor, I felt the need to find another avenue to get this out of me and int

Freyja Lee

Freyja Lee

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