Survivor Rising

There are many ways to survive life after rape.

Sometimes survival is a bowl of popcorn.
Sometimes it is Being In control.
Sometimes it’s three hours of “thrift” shopping at the local Value Village.
Sometimes it’s exercise.
Sometimes it’s meditation.
Sometimes its hiding under the bed while you let some assumed persona of how you think you’re expected to be run the show.
Sometimes it is literally hiding under the bed.
Sometimes, survival is a journal entry, a poem, a short story or piece of art, a song, a choreography… And sometimes it is sharing that creation.

This blog is my survival.

I was raped when I was a child by my father. Before I’d turned 3 I was introduced to a nightmare that would weave it’s way through my life. Lines of thread that would intersect with ever other thread, becoming part of the pattern. This experience has done a lot to shape the way I am in the world. Much like any other experience it shaped how I would (or would not) express myself. It shaped what I would need to feel safe, what would make me feel not safe and the ways I would respond to everything that followed.

It is hard to avoid using language like “stained.” As I follow this metaphor for my life as a piece of fabric, either the image that comes is of a spreading, red wine stain on a white linen sheet or bright red, snarled threads interwoven with the clean white lines.

While it is important to me to keep in mind that I am Me, have always been Me and nothing can change who I am, that knowledge is bound with this counter point; my experience will channel the ways that I express Me. I am not soiled; the idea of who I think I am, is.

This blog is to record where I have been, the trail I have left and how I’ve gotten here. Where is here? That will be answered too and, I guess, over time, we will see where this journey will go.