I watched a few documentaries this weekend about breaking the silence and a family confronting the abuser; a family friend.
In both, you see how small the actual event of abuse is, compared to the life effects after. How the family is without clear tools in the years in which the abuse happened and then the different responses to their abuser.
Below is a family dealing with the "after" the event...and wrestling with the relationships that follow.
Awful Normal by cine1_freemovie
The other you can rent on Amazon for $2.00. Called ""Stories of Silence"... Recovering from Boyhood Sexual Abuse." by Director Ethan Delevan
I am not sure there will ever be a clear cut road free of the abuses effects on your life or what is helpful in recovering, but we are learning more and more how devastating it is to living a life with emotional integrity.
If you take away anything, it is to see the life struggle without a healthy inner peace and sense of self...when you have to leave the truth behind out of fear or the lack of being believed or the failure for the family to distance themselves from the abuser.
To see and bear witness to the uncomfortable life of carry the truth, alone.
What I see is the dramatic change that happens when the stories are told. When the individual faces their abuse and how they appear lighter and stronger.
We are, as one man said, "At the tip of the iceberg".
It isn't that we want to continue to spout the ugliness and the criminal aspects of abuse...and its images...for they are horrible enough. But to show the lives...whole lives that are ruined. The struggle that ensues from the moment after abuse. Until the silence breaks, and we can open the event to the air of truth, it blocks living as a whole emotional being.
I am encouraged as more and more speak up and the way it changes their lives.
It changes them back...slowly towards who they were before abuse. You will never erase the abuse, but you can get back the aspects of yourself that was taken.
Breaking the silence frees the child and allows her to grow.
