Why now?

I will call this day 17 of my recovery as an incest survivor. I have spoken of it before. I have written about it before, in the context of a “first” sexual experience. That was more than 20 years ago. No one was capable of having the conversation, except for one other individual whom I was told by my editor at The Daily Nebraskan to interview as a first “female” sheriff in Nebraska. When I asked her what the most under-reported crime was in the state, without hesitation, she replied, “incest.” I don’t recall asking her how that could possibly be. I already knew that to speak out was to be humiliated, derided and blamed.

I knew that human beings find endless creative ways to victimize the less powerful. I knew people who twisted and perverted what the Christian bible informed me was responsibility for others and stewardship over Creation, not some bleak sickness justifying the torture and torment of other living things. These were, to me, the very people Jesus warned of. Sick, perverted, sad, blackened things, flailing blindly in darkness and harming everything in their path.

I knew this of human beings when I was a child. I saw sad sickness hiding in secrecy and darkness. To not speak of this plague is to give oneself over to darkness, yet to speak of it is to risk being shunned, slandered and shamed. How can this possibly be? How can we continue to enable something that brings so much costly harm to our species?

I believe we cannot, and that is “why now.”

The body never, ever forgets. It will never forget, as Marilyn van Derbur reminds us, even one time. The flood of cortisol etches grooves into the brain, the resilience of which rival years of practice on an instrument, or almost any less harmful activity. The more it is repeated, the deeper the wound and the more tragic the effect, which quite often includes death by suicide or long-term self-destructive behavior, particularly substance abuse, including prescription drugs.

I guarantee this without hesitation—that unless we address the source of the pain running through our culture and our kind, we will never, ever move the needle on opioid addiction. No sort of implanted serotonin booster chip will bring an end to the perversions of power that leave nothing but damage in their wake.

I am angry. I am grateful. I have gone to monumental lengths to suppress the rage of a violated child. And it is quite clear to me that continuing to do so will destroy me.

I choose to live, and I hope the words I write here may help others choose to live. I write this in part because it is no easy course of action to find the treatment resources necessary for recovery. This is not just a quick confession, nor is talk therapy alone sufficient (even if you’re fortunate enough to find a competent therapist). It must be wholistic and simultaneous of mind and body, as well as a support community.

Thus, since I do not have all these things handy to me at this time, I write, and will continue to write, about finding what is necessary heal, and raging at the assumptions, behaviors and complicity that allowed the existence of an atmosphere in which even one person is shamed for violations perpetrated upon them by others.

This is a journey into light, for me and millions of others like me, taught to swallow shame like poison and feel guilty about the resulting sickness.

Light is the only antidote.