I have considered not writing this because I don’t want to oversimplify this subject. I have written from my experience, and I know others who have hell stories because of their family’s predators–yes, sometimes more than one–and their family protecting those predators. I want to respect their stories and their healing journeys which are more complex than mine. However, I also know what I am going to share from my healing journey will help anyone in their journey. The specifics may look different for each person, but the core is the same for everyone.

The short answer to healing is you have to tell your story.

The real question, I think, is how you tell your story and to whom you tell your story.

For me, I wrote about it. I have boxes of journals. I journal about everything, so for me that was a natural place to start. It wasn’t like one day I just decided I was going to write about it and make things better. I wrote about it because I was tired of feeling ashamed. I was tired of feeling weak because I didn’t tell. I was tired of feeling like my uncle (and later the coach) had control. I was angry. I was angry that they could do and say those things and get away with it, and I was angry at myself for not standing up for myself. I was tired of all the feelings associated with being the victim of a predator. I didn’t know how I was going to feel differently, but I was done feeling like that.

So I wrote about it.

The first time was very vague and only some of the facts. Things my uncle said and where I was when he said them, the night he tried to make things physical. And I wrote about that several times, like I was trying to make it real in the “outside my head” world. I was digging deep into my mental attic to retrieve boxes that had been stuffed away for years, and it takes a while to unpack all of them. Plus, if you’ve ever dealt with trauma or loss of any kind, you understand that one of the things you have to address is how impossible it is that this happened, especially to you. You tell the story over and over because it is too impossible to be real, and honestly, the idea that a man would have sexual thoughts about a young woman 20 years younger than him, little less a relative is so unfathomable. Who does that? Unfortunately, a lot men. Over time I wrote the facts several times, and each time, I unpacked more.

Then I put names in it, and I wrote that several times. Now I had the narrative of what happened. It wasn’t just “a” man. It was an uncle, which adds a total new layer of perversion, and it that is important because…

Then I wrote about how I felt. I wrote about how my skin crawled when I was near him. I wrote about how I dreaded seeing him. I described how after family gatherings I would feel grimy.

Then I wrote about how all of it felt emotionally and mentally. But I didn’t just write about what he did and how I felt about that. I allowed myself to write about the people, including the women–or especially the women–who heard him and didn’t stop him and how I felt about them. I wrote about how angry I was at them, and I allowed myself to use the word “hate”, that I hated them for not saying anything and for letting him do that. I wrote about how no one protected me, and isn’t that what a family is supposed to do? I wrote about how I didn’t trust them.

I let myself be disloyal and verbally throw people under the bus. That sounds so unimportant, except it is a key part of healing. When I allowed myself to be disloyal, to blame people for not doing their jobs of protecting me, I was establishing a separate identity. I was seeing myself as important. In fact, this is the point where a person begins to see themselves as more valuable than the family. This is where that first crack of separation starts when a person can see themselves with different values and where the concept that the predator isn’t the only enemy, that the enemy is also people who let it happen, and this is where separation begins. Now, I didn’t know that then. I only knew that I was angry that people protected my uncle but didn’t care about me and if I ever had kids, they would not be treated that way.

I wrote what I believe it said about my uncle, the other family members, and me. I believed he was a sick pervert. I thought my family failed and sold me out. Now I understand the culture of family predators, and I understand the women in my family had likely grown up with men doing that same thing so it was their normal. They possibly didn’t have power to stand against it when they were younger because they were afraid of physical abuse or being thrown out of the house. Women didn’t have the same power to stand up for themselves we do now, but I still don’t understand none of them even saying, “Don’t talk to her like that.” I just don’t get it. Even understanding all I do, I still don’t get it.

I also wrote about what I felt like the situation said about me, and that has changed a lot.

When I first started writing about it, I thought it said I was unimportant. I thought I had to put up with men saying sexual objectification statements. I thought I didn’t have a right or power to stop it. I thought I was the problem because of my jeans, which he seemed fixated on, or my body, which was changing as young girls’ bodies do. Then I thought I had failed for not standing up for myself, and I felt ashamed that I hadn’t told him to quit or screamed or punched him in the gonads. I still thought I as the problem. Then I finally realized I was a little girl who should have been protected, and none of what happened was my fault.

I journaled about everything for a long time, and then one day I told a friend. Again, I started vague because how do you tell a normal person that your family is jacked up and your uncle has a thing for you? You know you don’t want them thing you are some sick, in-breeding group. I knew it was sick and perverse even if no one else in my family did. Which, by the way, they did know it was sick and perverse, which is why they said not to talk about it. They didn’t want others to know how sick and perverse the family was.

Over time, I told a few more friends. Now I have one friend who knows everything, but I shared with him the same way I started sharing it with myself, a little at a time. I say I shared it with myself because it can take time to let yourself be honest about things said or done, the people who did or said them, and the people who didn’t stop them. All of us want a great family. In Psalms it says what a man desires is unfailing love. We all want loving families. We all want the Norman Rockwell prints. We all want to be important and valued. And to give that to ourselves in a situation or relationship where it doesn’t exist, we stuff things that contradict it down deep. We believe the family rewrites on what happened. We dismiss someone’s actions because they are family and it doesn’t count. Or, as I mentioned in the first part of this series, people shove memories deep down. We put those babies in boxes with locks and shove them to the back of our mental attic. I needed to write about things so I could pull things out of the attic and unbox them in a safe place. I needed to let the memories come up, and I needed to let myself feel how it felt then before someone tried to rewrite it as “not that bad” or tell me “it doesn’t mean anything.” I needed to feel the way it felt when I still knew it was wrong and disgusting and inappropriate. That is why I wrote everything multiple times. Every time I wrote it I allowed more boxes to open and more memories to come out. I kept writing until I had the whole story.

I told my friend about it the same way. A little at a time, adding more information each time until he had the whole story.

I allowed myself to use the word “victim” to describe myself as a child, and that was hard because that feels powerless and weak. However, eventually, I have come to recognize myself for what I really am: a warrior who fought for myself. I did tell my aunt about my uncle’s physical advances, and I did stand up to him, and I did it loudly so everyone at the family gathering heard me. I did stop talking to him, and I did stop going to family gatherings where he would be. By the way, he stopped attending family functions. He always had a reason, work or not feeling well. I don’t know if I had anything to do with that, but I like to think I did. So, I stopped seeing myself as weak and powerless, and I saw myself for what I was: a child in a situation I couldn’t control where no one did their jobs who grew into a strong young woman who stopped things and refused to be quiet about the predator culture in the family.

For me, I used a journal and pen and then talked to a friend about it. In fact, I have a few friends who know my story, not to the depth Bobby does but enough. That worked for me. But another friend of mine did almost all his work in a therapist’s office. The first time he told was to his therapist, and it stayed there until one day his therapist said to be healed, he needed to tell someone else his story. He called me. Another friend of mine worked through her stuff in her pastor’s office. Another friend healed in his men’s group at church. Still another friend used medication, in-patient, and therapy. The one thing we all have in common is we talked about it. You can’t heal without pulling all that stuff out of the attic, unboxing it, and sorting through it.

I feel like I need to tell you at first I felt like that scared, shamed little girl who felt so much anxiety and fear, and sometimes I would have to stop when a new memory with its feelings came up, but every time I pushed into those feelings, they backed up. Every time I challenged myself and pushed harder, I was braver further the next time until eventually, I no longer perceived the events through the eyes or emotions of a little girl but through the eyes and emotions of an adult woman who wasn’t afraid or powerless, who didn’t feel shame or fear but felt confident and strong. It took time, though.

Healing is a journey, and it is hard. It can take time to be brave enough to tell your story, but in telling your story, you give yourself power to change your story. So be brave.

Jerri is a writer who fights for herself and others by telling her story, giving others a place to find situations that resemble their stories, and living the beauty of what happens when the story changes.