It wasn’t until I turned 30 that I truly began to seek help to begin the process of healing; since ending an abusive relationship left me a broken woman, I realized that I just could no longer function as a human being who was miserable, unhappy, had a low self-esteem, had no self-respect and simply hated my life. My desire to live was quickly fading and suicide was becoming the best option available.
The more I thought about the abuse that I endured for so many years, the angrier I became and began to actively explore the reason(s) why I ended up in an abusive relationship so that I would not end up in the same type of relationship again.
As I continued the soul-searching journey with an open heart and mind, tons of prayers and therapy, the patterns of behaviors started to become clear. The filters and blinders were finally coming off. I quickly learned that looking at the self in a constructive and critical manner was definitely not an easy task but one that was inevitable if I seriously wanted to get to the roots that bound me and held me hostage.
Seeking God and constant daily prayers were my only hope at this time!
Visions of sexual abuse began to pop in my head on a daily basis. The more I thought about it, the more I remembered. It was as if a little compartment that had been tucked away in my brain had suddenly been unlocked. I could remember being sexually molested as far back as 3 years old by many different men. There was one of the major incidents where the predators were two brothers who abused me sexually from the age of 5 until I was 8 and half years old. This was such a horrific time in my life and these two brothers would tell me that if I told anyone, my mother would be killed. They threatened that if they had to kill my mom then I would be arrested because it was my fault for being a “bad little girl”.
Can you imagine how impressionable a 5 year old little girl can be? The thought of my mother being killed was really scary and the threat definitely bought my silence.
At the age of 9, my mother decided to move to the United States and finally the abuse ended…or so I thought.
By the time I was 10 my mother had already gone through 2 major failed relationships and as if that wasn’t enough, she decided to move her latest conquest into our home to become our newest “stepfather”. From the very first time that I saw him, I did not like him, he gave me the creeps and I did not like the way he looked at me. The interesting thing is that once you’ve been abused/molested it’s as if one develops a sixth sense and can spot abusers/perpetrators a mile away. I expressed to my mom that I did not like him and I did not want him to live with us. She dismissed my feelings and accused me of being jealous and moved him in.
I was now almost 13 years old and my body had begun to spread out, hips got larger and my breasts were definitely showing….and he was still living with us. It wasn’t very long before he began to fondle me and try to come in my room late at night while everyone was sleeping. Every time he went to the bathroom, in the middle of the night, he would try to open my door. I was always the last one to leave the home in the mornings because my mom had to be at work early and my brother was already in high school. Every morning before I went to school, he would wait for me by the front door and demand a hug and every morning I refused. He would still grab me and hug me from behind, not a fatherly normal embrace facing one another like a father should…No, it was a hug that a man would give his significant other, full of lust and fondling.
Can you imagine living a life full of fear, thinking that at any moment this man could take my virginity away? The most prized possession that I owned was going to be forcefully taken away from me by my father figure and no one was willing to do anything to protect me?
Yes, I told my mother the very first day that he gave me the dirtiest and filthiest hug and she dismissed it. I also told her about his trying to come into my room late at night, she dismissed it. Year after year, I lived in constant state of fear and horror. It felt as if I was trapped in a jungle behind enemy lines running on a full throttle always on survival mode never knowing if I was going to survive the night from being raped by this so called father figure. Can you imagine living like this throughout your entire middle school and high school years? It was crazy! There were many sleepless nights always being vigilante and jumping at the slightest sound thinking that I would not wake up being pure again.
Time passed…the abuse continued…and I am fast-forwarding to the age of 23, I was already divorced, single mom with a dead-beat ex-husband, small child and had just begun dating an abusive man. One day, my mom suffered a motor vehicle accident and was confined to a bed with limited mobility. I went to visit to check up on her. While visiting, I decided to do a load of laundry in the basement. As I was putting the clothes in the washer, someone came up from behind me, grabbed me, fondled my private parts and while choking me forcefully tried to throw me on the floor. This felt too familiar and somehow I was able to elbow him and turn around and push him so hard that he fell to the floor. I began to scream and yell as I realized that it was my step-father again! I was 23 years old!! Why in the world was this man trying to rape me? In the midst of my screaming he kept telling me to be quiet and continued to ask me over and over, “Why don’t you look at me when you come to the house?” “Why do you ignore me?”
I am not sure how my mother was able to come down the stairs but she unexpectedly showed up limping in the basement and asked what was going on. At this point, I was in a state of shock and could not speak a word and my body was just trembling violently….it was a horrible feeling. I could hear him telling my mother that he came down to get some tools and he saw that I was having an anxiety attack and he was trying to help me. Anxiety attack? Really?
My mother finally calmed me down and I was able to explain what had just transpired. The End Result? She asked me to never go back to her house again and if I wanted to see her it would be by appointment only and outside of the home. Wow! My mother chose a sexual predator over her own flesh and blood.
Now what? Several months went by and I could not get over the hurt, the pain, the rejection, the dismissal of my own mother, the sexual molestation and the abuse….so the only solution was to commit suicide. There was nothing left to live for. I had a beautiful little son but I did not believe that I was worthy enough to be his mother. My son did not deserve to have a mother like me who was used and abused since birth. My baby would be better off without me; I refused to live in shame. Suicide was the only way out.
Obviously, the suicide attempt was unsuccessful but the shame, stigma and pain that I faced day to day worsened. I hardly saw my mother and the resentment was growing stronger every minute. Questions crept in my mind and began to torture my soul.
How could my mom overlook the abuse? Why didn’t she protect me? Did my mom think that I was not good enough or worthy enough to be her daughter? Why would she say that I was lying and made it all up, throughout the years, because I was jealous of her relationship with her husband? How could she dismiss me so quickly and force me to make appointments with her if I wanted to see her? Many, many questions continually kept ripping me apart inside. Why? Why? Why?
As I left her house a destroyed young woman without any support, compassion and motherless; I turned and looked at my mom and said: “God is watching and he saw what you just did; instead of serving the Lord you made your husband your god because your life revolves around his and you can’t function nor live without your fake god. But one day, when you least expect it, God will take him away from you without any warning, just like that, He will yank him from your life. What will you do then? I will be watching from a distance.”
Little did I know that my stepfather would die unexpectedly of a massive heart attack 2 years later. Just like that! Poof! He came home to pick my mother up to go to the beach and within 30 minutes he was dead! Unbelievable!
In spite of everything that I endured, I was still able to put all my crazy feelings aside and helped my mother prepare funeral arrangements here in the states and even traveled with her to Puerto Rico to bury him over there.
I cried and cried throughout the funeral and seeing all the family so heartbroken mourning his death was difficult but the only difference was that my tears were not of sadness, they were tears of relief. This may sound cruel and perhaps insensitive but I felt a sense of relief; finally, I could breathe again. The man who tortured my soul, took away my sense of familial safety, stripped me of my pride and took away my dignity was finally gone and I no longer had to see and face him. Free at last! Free at last!
My relationship with my mom was not the same for many years after his death. There were many shouting matches and arguments in which I would demand an apology from her. I wanted and begged her to tell me that she was sorry for not protecting me all those years, for failing me as a mother and abandoning me when I needed her the most. She denied it and denied it and denied it, there was never an admission of anything on her part, no sense of remorse or regret and I never saw any signs of guilt. Seeing my mother behave like this was consuming everything I had in me. She turned my entire family against me. Everyone chose to dismiss my pain and said I was lying and that this man was not capable of doing such a thing. My family mocked me for years, would say that I was crazy and emotionally unstable and that I made it all up. It was clear that this was an uphill battle and one that I would never be able to win.
I was ostracized and left all alone with no one left to comfort me, listen to me, help me to heal and understand my pain.
I lived as a bitter, angry, sad, miserable and broken woman for many years; constantly looking for my mother’s approval in everything that I did. I tried to win her over and get her to accept me by doing things the way she wanted me to do them. Somehow subconsciously I must have thought that if I could please her then she would finally accept and believe me. Year after year I tried to get her to apologize and tell me that she believed me about the abuse. Apology was never given.
There was no other choice and trying to do this healing work on my own was not working. After many years of living a life as a victim the only solution was to turn to God.
I began to see a therapist to work through my issues and at the same time began to pray daily and ask the Lord to teach me how to forgive my mother. I asked Him to show me how to let go of the bitterness, suffering and victim-like attitude that I always had. Day after day, I asked the Lord:
“God, please teach me how to love myself without the shame of having been sexually abused for so many years by so many different men. Teach me how to forgive my mom and all those people who have trespassed against me. Help me understand why my mother was not able to protect me, why she dismissed me and why she will not accept responsibility for her failing me. Show me how to forgive her but still be able to love her as my mom.”
~What is forgiveness?~
According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, to Forgive means to do the following:
a: to give up resentment of or claim to requital for <forgive an insult>
b: to cease to feel resentment against (an offender) : pardon <forgive one's enemies>
~What does the Bible tell us about forgiveness?~
According to the Bible this is how we are supposed to exercise forgiveness and this is what it needs to look like:
Matthew 6:14-15
14 “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Matthew 18:21-22
21 “Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times? 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.”
As I continued to read these scriptures over and over I could not believe that Jesus wanted me to forgive all those people who abused me seventy times seven. Yeah okay! Sure Jesus! Whatever!
Was it really possible to forgive some one that many times? I did not think so because in my mind it meant that if I forgave them for hurting me then I was justifying their behavior. It was easier to hold on to the anger then it was to forgive and let go.
Prayers continued for many years and one day on September 11, 2001 the world came to a stop. I watched as the World Trade Center was being attacked and people began jumping off hopelessly from the twin towers out of desperation and/or survival. As I watched the news and saw people lose hope and believed that their only option was to jump to their death I realized that had I been in that situation I would have tried to hold on to hope. I would not have jumped to my death and I would have tried to go down the stairs or try everything possible to make it out alive.
Prayers continued for many years and one day on September 11, 2001 the world came to a stop. I watched as the World Trade Center was being attacked and people began jumping off hopelessly from the twin towers out of desperation and/or survival. As I watched the news and saw people lose hope and believed that their only option was to jump to their death I realized that had I been in that situation I would have tried to hold on to hope. I would not have jumped to my death and I would have tried to go down the stairs or try everything possible to make it out alive.
This 911 incident was life transforming for me to see so many people die in a matter of minutes. It all finally clicked in my mind and I saw everything play in my head like a movie reel. It was a crazy experience.
The Lord was able to show me that life was short and life was not guaranteed. God allowed me to see that it could be that simple as to go to work one morning and never return home to your loved ones. Life was worth living and it was imperative that I forgave the loved ones who hurt me because I may never get an opportunity to see and love my mother the same way I used to love her when I was a little girl.
It happened just like that! All the resentment, bitterness, anger and hatred that I felt for my mother, was replaced with forgiveness and love. Our God Almighty softened my heart, took my blinders and filters off and showed me how to live a better life full of love and compassion.
The heavy burden was lifted off my shoulders. I could finally breathe once again. The world seemed different and brighter.
My relationship with my mother improved drastically and I can say with great certainty that I have forgiven her wholeheartedly even though she still has not admitted to any wrongdoing nor accepted responsibility for failing me as a mother. She has yet to apologize. I love my mother dearly and was able to understand that she did the best that she could with the skills that were passed on to her by her mother which were not the best.
I still hold on to hope that the Lord will put it in her heart to simply say that she is sorry. Hearing those words would mean the world to me but if I never get to hear them, I know that God will continue to have my back and not forsake me.
Forgiveness is great and it is a powerful tool that if put into practice can be perfected in time. There is no better feeling in the world then to be able to truly forgive someone. Truly forgiving someone means that although you may never forget the incidents that transpired and the hurt that it caused but that when the memories come flooding back, you can remember and be able to talk about them without pain or resentment towards the person who sinned against you.
SIDE NOTE: This is just a brief excerpt of my life story. Many gory details and years of abuse were left out and will be included in my book.
Many family members and perhaps lifelong friends will be upset that I am publishing this blog because they were either part of the denial or never knew that I was experiencing this abuse when they were present in my life.
I apologize in advance if I am offending any of you and at the same time, please understand that this is MY STORY and part of my continued healing process. The Lord put it in my heart to begin sharing my testimony because I am supposed to help others heal through sharing what I’ve survived! Thank you in advance for your understanding and compassion.
My next blog will be about SELF-FORGIVENESS!
God Bless you!!
