A Story of Sexual Abuse

Stephanie , a middle-aged woman, had come to the workshop with a friend who had encouraged her to break out of her shell. “I’m sure you’ll learn something new that will help you heal,” her friend said, as they were driving down the coast to Esalen. As the workshop began, Stephanie was contracted and very sad, and revealed—when everybody shared a little about their particular story—that she was the victim of a long-ago traumatic experience of sexual abuse at the hands of her father. As a result, she hadn’t spoken to her father in years. She was overweight, having used food for self-protection, and lived with a lot of fear and paranoia, which had affected her sleeping patterns and everything else in her life. She had difficulty getting close to men, not trusting them, above all not trusting herself. She seemed to trust her husband, however, the only man she felt safe with. A few days into the workshop, Stephanie plucked up the courage to ask me a question. “How can you say that what my father did to me is not real? I think of him touching me when I was a child, and my whole being recoils. It was horrible!” “The event was definitely real when it happened, and that needs to be honored,” I said gently, “but telling yourself the story over and over again, reliving the memories, keeps the painful experience alive. When you see that you are not your story, nor your memories, but rather the beautiful, aware person who is here right now, everything will begin to change for you.” She took in what I said, nodding silently. Over the next few days, her energy shifted noticeably. She became much more present. She relaxed and smiled more, and confessed to the group that she was finally getting tired of the “victim” story she had believed all these years. She was even feeling more forgiving toward her father, realizing that she needed to forgive him for her own inner peace. At the end of the workshop, we gave each other a warm hug. “Thank you,” she said. “Something has changed in me. A burden has been lifted, and I feel lighter, freer… I am going to call my father when I get home. I realize now that he was acting out of his own troubled history when he molested me, and I want him to know that.”