When Sexual Abuse Returns

There are some articles that are easy to write and there are some articles that are easy to read. This, however, is not one of those articles. Chances are, if you’ve clicked on this post upon reading the title, you or someone you love has endured sexual abuse in some way, at some time. This is not the kind of topic that gets a million likes or shares, because the nature of it is so personal – so mortifying in its nature.

And yet, 1 in 4 children are sexually abused before they reach adulthood. Beyond that, every child is exposed to sexual content or contact with another child that has been abused. So when there is a controversial subject that affects every single one of our children, I would be doing a great disservice to you if I chose to take a more “comfortable” approach with my writing.

So, today I choose discomfort. Today, I am also choosing self-disclosure, as much of this topic has affected me, and my family, very personally. But if we’re being honest, it has probably affected you as well. And because of you, I am willing to go to the hard places today.

Shame

            When a child is sexually abused there are numerous feelings that may be attached to that child when he or she thinks of their trauma. Fear. Anger. Guilt. Hatred. Confusion. But the greatest feeling a child who has been sexually abused takes with them for years to come is the feeling of Shame.

            Why, you might ask, would shame be the most significant emotion associated with this form of abuse, especially once the child has been told that it wasn’t their fault?

            The answer may not be something you’re comfortable hearing, but it’s something that you need to know. Whether a child was abused one time or one thousand times, what was done to them wasn’t their fault. That child may even be able to wrap their head around that concept once they’re old enough… but the effects of that abuse are on-going. Behaviors like chronic masturbation, looking at pornography, perpetration, voyeurism, flashing or indecent exposure, engaging in sexual acts at a young age, questioning their sexuality, fecal smearing, problems urinating, bedwetting, seductive play with dolls/stuffed animals/or while playing “house” or “doctor”, self-harm, eating disorders, trouble sleeping, depression….

            Do any of these behaviors have a positive connotation with them? No. Not one. Often times, when we raise a child that experiences these behaviors, we talk to them about what actions are deemed “inappropriate” or “wrong”. And yet, the abused child continues to feel the urge to do these inappropriate and wrong things. The compulsion is so strong that it cannot be helped. So, our children are then given consequences for their “defiance”. Moreover, it then becomes reinforced with the child that their current behavior is more important than their past abuse.

            They may realize that they were not responsible for their initial trauma, yes. But they do feel the full weight of Shame over the obsessions, curiosity, and impulsive actions they experience daily since they were abused. They feel the shame of being considered “inappropriate”, “wrong”, and “defiant”. They question what is wrong with them and take on the full blame of their behaviors – behaviors that would not have been there had someone not violated their little bodies in the first place.

            I have two children that my husband and I fostered and then adopted. We were given very little information about their pasts when they came to live with us, and as time has gone by, they've been able to share more and more glimpses into their old lives – depicting horrible atrocities that would break your heart into a million pieces. And often times, their behaviors are a direct response to the pasts they were dealt.

            And yet I, not having been fostered or adopted, growing up in a safe home, still found myself on the receiving end of abuse from someone outside of my family. I know the feeling of Shame very well, and I can recognize it when I look into my children’s eyes. And even still, I have given out consequences. I have yelled. I have caused further shame by letting my own reactions get the better of me.

            Do you wonder why your child will take a lie to their grave? The answer is once again, Shame. It feels better to lie and not admit to behaviors that you’re ashamed of, to forget that the past ever happened and to refuse acknowledgment that the sexual abuse has, in a sense, returned through your actions.

            And what’s worse is that our culture reinforces sexual trauma on a daily basis. There are countless commercials, television shows, movies, internet clips, radio stations, magazines, posters, bill boards, and everyday people on the streets that promote the body as a sexual image. For 1 in 4 children, those are daily triggers that violate them over and over again as they face the fact that their bodies are nothing more than objects used to gratify someone else’s desires. For 1 in 4 children, these triggers are reminders of their learned powerlessness over their bodies, over sex, and over the ability to say “No”.

            In a society where we spend more time promoting political correctness that we are willing to expose our traumatized children to cities where it’s become legal to walk around topless, to dressing rooms used for males/females/or whatever gender one identifies with, to ads in search engines popping up to display the latest reality star’s see-through outfit….  We, as a culture, have not only allowed our children, our sisters, our wives, our mothers, and our girlfriends to feel powerless, but we’ve reinforced that the shame they’ve held onto means nothing to the world as a whole.

Where Do We Go From Here

            Perhaps you’re wondering where to start… where do we go from here? If you have a child or a loved one that has experienced sexual abuse, you are dealing with a fragile creature that will do whatever it takes to protect their secrets. And yet, you may also be dealing with someone who has become promiscuous or overly open about their past. What better way to take their shame and turn it into something that is now considered their “choice”, right?

            But either way, the hearts of these individuals are being held together by a string of lies, memories, and lack of power.  And what we need to do, what we have to do, is to love them in whatever form they come to us.

            My children were diagnosed with RAD – Reactive Attachment Disorder. It’s a difficult diagnosis that often overshadows other the abuse that they had to endure prior to coming to our home. It’s often easy to treat their behaviors under the guise of their diagnosis instead of the in light of their abuse. So, these are some things that you can do:

1)      Get your child into a therapist's office as soon as you can. Find a specialist that works with traumatized/abused children, and make sure you choose a therapist that your child feels comfortable with. (For example, your child may gravitate towards a male therapist if a man abused him or her… your child may also greatly fear a male therapist due abuse from a man. Each child is different and you need to make sure your child is comfortable. Even if that means you go into sessions with your child until the fear is gone.)

2)      Work to reverse the sense of Shame. Remind your child that their abuse was not their fault and that there is a reason for the feelings and impulses they still face to this day. We don’t use abuse as an excuse to engage in these actions, but we begin to remove the feeling of shame by acknowledging the role of the abuse in these behaviors.

3)      Teach boundaries. If your child or loved one is expected to interact with the people around them, then enforcing positive boundaries is a must. Passing on “bad touch” is too often considered normal childhood behavior. But in reality, it is something that then transfers shame onto another child. And that is not something that we should accept as part of a normal childhood. Teach, Review, and Practice safe boundaries. Remind your child that they can say “No” to anything that makes them feel unsafe or uncomfortable. Be an example of modesty and take an active stand against people, places, or groups that threaten the boundaries of your children.

4)      Remove sexual stigma. If your child has learned from an early age that their body is sexual, that may be the only way that they see themselves – the only purpose they see in their lives. Remind them that their bodies were created beautifully and perfectly. That there is a function for their bodies that goes far beyond sexual acts. That their purpose is internal and not external, and that they are judged not on their appearances, but how they treat others with love and respect.

5)      Empower. And most of all, remind your child that they have power. This may be a feeling that is so foreign to them that it is terrifying. Discuss dangerous situations, prepare them for unwanted advances, safeguard them against temptations. Because the safer they feel at home and in their everyday lives, the easier it will be for them to find the strength to say “No”, to run, or to tell someone their broken secrets – the easier it will be for them to heal.

If this article has impacted you in any way, please know that you are not alone in your struggle. You are not alone in your Shame. There is restoration and hope in Truth. There is love and acceptance to be found.

Isaiah 61:1-7 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners… to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair... Instead of your shame you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace you will rejoice in your inheritance.

Picture by Chirag Rathod

It Is Well - Vlog

When life gets hard and your heart is in a vice, be assured that it is STILL well with your soul. #HOPE

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A Slice of Cheese, A Side of Hope

That moment when you get the distinct feeling that your day is going to get far worse before it gets better. Yes, you know the feeling, don’t you? I can practically feel you all collectively nodding your heads in agreement as I write this! Call it Women’s Intuition, a 6th sense, or just Murphy’s Law doing its thing… but we have all been there.

There are those random days where everything goes right – days where it seems that the Lord himself has parted seas of traffic, given all the green lights, and miraculously turned nasty children into angels. These days we can count on one hand. But days like today, they seem to happen a little more frequently. These are the days that you can find me hunkered down at my computer, praying that the roof doesn’t cave in on top of me while I eat a block of cheese.

Why are you eating a block of cheese, you might ask? Because it’s a beautiful aged Vermont white cheddar that deserves to be consumed before we leave for the holidays, and because my day has sucked, and because I exercised already, and because…. Cheese just fixes things, OK? If you have to ask, then you will never truly understand.

To start this gorgeous morning, my youngest accidentally recorded the infomercial for the 21 Day Fix program. I, in all my wisdom, took this as a sign that I was being called to exercise. I now realize that my kid is just button-happy and that my calling was really to eat aged cheddar. However, I found this out the hard way.

Lucky for me, there was a video sampler on YouTube allowing me to try one of the work outs for free. It called for light weights… I have 15 lb weights. Surely that will work, right?

Wrong. This chick had me doing explosive jumping jacks for a minute at a time (10 second breaks in between rounds), followed by high knees (to help you catch your breath, she says!), lunge kicks, and a slew of other equally ridiculous things that made me feel like punching her in the face. I quickly realized that 15 lb weights were not going to work, but the only other thing I could find were family-sized cans of soup.

Only here’s the thing. Soup cans and sweaty hands lead to terrible things. Things like throwing a soup can mid-jumping jack and having it smash through a cup of milk sitting on the counter, sending white liquid everywhere. I literally finished my high knees in a puddle of lactose before my legs refused to cooperate any longer – sadly this was not the last puddle I would find myself standing in today.

While gathering towels to clean up the milk, I hear the voice from YouTube informing me that this was a sample of the 21 Day Fix EXTREME program, NOT the regular program. And, hello, if you know me at all, you know there is nothing extreme about my physical capabilities (although my husband would argue that I can do some extreme Mom-Dancing… but I don’t think that actually qualifies).

Me and my jelly legs cleaned up the spilled milk as best as we could, all the while cursing the Campbell’s soup company and YouTube and children that play with remote controls. But no matter how much I scrubbed, I couldn’t get the sour smell to go away. How long had that milk been sitting there, anyway? I began to follow my nose from room to room, and it led me to my toddler, standing happily watching Paw Patrol in the living room. I lifted his shirt and went to pull his diaper back to see if he was, indeed, the source of the rank odor. And when I did this, I submerged my fingers into a squishy pool of warm, orange baby crap.

Trying to keep my gag reflex reactions to a minimum, I ran to the kitchen sink and began scrubbing my fingers. Sadly, my nail beds still smell like I had a manicure in a sewage treatment facility.

I went back to Wyatt, only then noticing the pooey footprints across the floor. Obviously he had sprung some sort of ridiculous rectal leak because the amount of juices that had run down his legs and apparently soaked his socks informed me that he may need to see a doctor to get rehydrated! I swiftly began to strip him before he could take another step. My rubbery legs sank to the floor as I wrestled him out of clothes, depositing smears and globs on everything as we went. I reached for the wipes and went through half the pack as my son joyously found great pleasure in playing with his poopy weenie and then clapping his hands, sending bits of diapery remains everywhere.

Everywhere.

My hair, his hair, my clothes, the carpet, the bench, and the two toys he grabbed that were sadly within reach of where I had tackled him – all now brown. It was only when I reached for a clean diaper that  I realized with great dread that whoever had changed his last diaper in the living room had not restocked the supply we keep on the end table.

This is person must be shot.

The only solution was that we were just going to have to make a run for it. I needed to get the baby upstairs and to the bathtub before he set off another bomb. However, my dogs kinda have a thing for poopy items. I don’t know, they’re messed up in the heads or something. But knowing this prevented me from making a quick run for it with Wyatt, because I just couldn’t leave the demolished diaper and crap-filled clothes on the floor in the same room as my mentally challenged canines.

Noticing that Wyatt was re-engaged with his television show, I took 5 seconds to run his poopy laundry downstairs and tossed them into the washing machine. Wyatt used those 5 seconds to pee all over the floor, naturally. In that moment it became apparent that my son and I were not moving towards the same goal for the day. Not at all, really.

I soaked up the pee as best I could and took my sticky, naked baby upstairs… stairs that now presented themselves as a tremendous obstacle due to that dang work out! I asked Wyatt very sweetly to not go to the bathroom on Mommy as we carefully took one stair at a time, but he just smiled at me and said “Peepee, Peepee!” over and over.

Finally in the shower, we both watched as the water running off of us turned a dingy shade of brown as flecks of stuff dripped off of us and moved towards the drain. And as I stood there, I thought of all the things I was supposed to have been accomplishing this morning. Things like packing, laundry, writing, making phone calls for work, and paying our bills. Things that weren’t getting done because of explosive jumping jacks and explosive baby butts.

I looked down at my sopping wet toddler. He was happily playing with his bath toys and wiping soap bubbles on my legs. I realized that for whatever reason, the plans I had for my day were not going to happen. At least not all of them. But hearing my littlest love saying the word “Bubbles” over and over again as he nodded his head up and down in excitement somehow felt better than folding laundry.

I thought of how often I go through my day with my own agenda. I make my plans and to-do lists. I focus on what I want to get done. Yet, sometimes God says, Wait a second… I know the plans that I have for you today…. Plans that will give you a hope and a future.

Being crapped on wasn’t part of my hope for the future, granted. But after going Christmas shopping on Saturday for Isaac, our love that was taken from us, and wrapping all those gifts on Sunday so that we could send them out, I think God knew that I needed to spend time in the bubbles with my little one.

The next time you find yourself crying over spilled milk, remember that there are plans for you that are meant to bring hope. You just need to push through the crap to see it. And eat a block of cheese, because it really does fix things.

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Five NON-New Year's Resolutions

I can hear the moans now. Ugh, we're not even through Christmas and this chick is talking about New Year's Resolutions already!! Ack!

Actually, I'm not... not really, anyway, so you can stop gagging.

Personally, I’m not a New Year’s Resolution kind of girl. I’ve never been one to make it past February, quite honestly. And I know I’m not the only one. That’s why every gym in America is full of newly motivated folks in the month of January but basically empty by March, and the self-help isle at Barnes and Noble has been made bare after the New Year, only to have these books be used as door stops or coffee table décor.

Yes, those first few years that I tried, I realized just how badly I sucked at keeping my resolutions, so I resolved, instead, to make daily resolutions, all year long, that were attainable – on-going – deliberate. In case you are a New Year’s Resolutioner, or even if you’re a daily work in progress like me, here are some goals you may want to consider making for yourself.

1)      For the Dieter – Please throw away your scale. Please, I beg of you. I don’t care if you’re 120 lbs soaking wet or 400 lbs completely dry… numbers are numbers and health is health. Dieting won’t change a mindset, and a healthy mindset will mean more than numbers any day of the week.

So this is what I suggest: Make a daily effort to replace one unhealthy product from your life with a healthy one. Whether it’s coffee, pop, late-night snacking, or fast food… take one out and replace it with a healthy option. Don’t lose your mind with some goal of how many pounds you want to shed or how many days a week you claim you’ll exercise. Choose to take one unhealthy thing out and replace it with an opposite. THIS is doable.

2)      For the Budgeter – Remember that life isn’t about saving EVERYTHING so that you’ve enjoyed nothing throughout the year. But there are times when our pocketbooks call for us to use a little thing called Wisdom, and this comes in the form of a budget. Make one and follow it. We all have at least ONE thing that we can live without. Something that we can cut out of our spending habits and put in a savings account or towards a looming bill.

But also do this. Allow yourself some wiggle room. There will always be something unexpected that will arise, whether it’s car trouble or just the fact that, due to goal #1, you lost some weight and need a new pair of jeans. Allow for wiggling without losing your head. THIS is attainable.

3)      For the Work-A-Holic – Seriously, you’re gonna have to chill out just a little bit. You’re making the rest of us look bad, and frankly, your heart is asking for you to bring the stress level down a bit and take a holiday! Work isn’t intended to be our all… it is intended to pay our bills. So, if your bills are paid and you’re satisfied that you’ve given it your best effort, then it’s time to take a step back and make it to your kids’ choir concert. Go catch a game with a buddy. Take your partner out for a night. Or do what I do… simply go to bed early and call it a day! THIS is sustainable.

4)      For the Spouse – There are days when that beautiful person you married suddenly grows three heads, two horns, and looks like an evil version of the one you vowed to spend forever with. You chose them, and now you’re stuck, right?

Well, kinda. You chose them, but you’re probably just stuck in a rut. The person you married is still in there, despite the new look and harried personality. So how can you commit each day to improve your marriage? Simple. Take one thing you would do for yourself that day and do it for your partner.

For example, you wanted 10 minutes to finish an article you’ve been waiting to read. But what if you offered your spouse those 10 minutes to take a shower, talk about their day, or put their feet up? What would that do you’re your marriage? Or maybe you go to the kitchen to make yourself a snack. But what if you made a snack for your spouse instead? Perhaps wrote a note telling them you love them to go with it? There are so many ways to give in life. Yet so often we take.

Marriage isn’t 50/50. It’s 100/100… and someone has to get the ball rolling. One simple act of giving each day. THIS is possible.

5)      For the Parent – Let me tell you something. I love parents. I have a heart for those that are looking after young lives, molding and shaping them into mature, independent adults. But there has been a lot of fluffy articles out there telling people these dangerous words: You are enough.

Folks, let me be real here for a moment. When we are comparing ourselves to other parents and feeling worthless, we need to hear these words. When we are doing all that we can and it still seems like our children are crazy, we need to hear these words. But here’s the thing. Some of us… some of us are not enough. Some of us need to take an honest look at our lives and see where we’re missing the parenting mark.

Trust me, because this is a goal I have set for myself every single day. There are times when I’m simply not enough and it’s a danger to tell myself otherwise! My goal isn’t to be OK and settled somehow in my mediocrity. But my daily striving is always towards becoming better. Becoming healthier. Becoming more like Love.

So, if you’re a parent, my resolution suggestion for you is to find one thing each day to work on that will better be Love to your children than the day before. Whether it’s offering grace when it should be shouting, spending the extra few minutes to teach instead of rushing past a learning moment, or simply saying those magical words ‘I love you’ one extra time that day…. We are not always enough. But we can be works in progress, can’t we? THIS is achievable.

Side Note: Speaking of the New Year, if you're in need of a 2016 Calendar, let me make one final suggestion. Welcome Home 2016 celebrates Chosen Families - those brought together through adoption, fostering, guardianship, or any other way imaginable. To get your copy today, click here.

If you or a loved one are struggling with raising a difficult child, take a look at the membership page and see if it's something that would help you. If you're unsure, contact me to ask questions on the Contact page.