10 May 2006
	Help for Adult Victims Of Child Abuse. A non-profit making organisation based in the UK dedicated to provide help, support and information to any adult who is suffering from past childhood abuse.

Beyond Surviving
By Nancy Ruth Davis

Perspective may not be everything but it certainly plays a major role in moving from one position to another. While leading the Empowerment Group at the Whitman Walker Clinic for people living with AIDS, my partner and I encouraged group members to regain control of their lives in every way possible. One way was to shed the victim label. Rather than defining themselves as PWAs (People with AIDS) they chose PLAs (People Living with AIDS). Making those small changes in wording went a long way toward making much larger changes in perspective, discarding a self-image as powerless and deteriorating and accepting one as courageous and alive.

For those who experienced sexual, physical, emotional, or psychological abuse as children, the old victim responses, habits, and patterns of thought often define and shackle every moment. During the healing process, making the shift in perspective from victim to survivor is vital. This shift may be long coming and hard won but without it, healing the wounds and recovering from the damage done is not possible.

Years before the nearly blank pages of my childhood, adolescence, and teens were filled with horrifying head and body memories of violation and incest, a creative therapist taught me a wonderful exercise in perspective. During one session I had referred to an obstacle in my life as being like a log in the road. The therapist asked me to visualize the log,
walk up to it, climb up on it, survey the world from it, climb down the other side, walk around it, and so forth. That exercise taught me about changing perspective in a way that has been priceless over the years.

After the repressed memories broke loose (yes, it is an actual phenomenon, not something to be brushed aside as fantasy or "false memory syndrome" by the Pamela Freyds of this world), the exercises in shifting perspective were invaluable to me as I began healing. As I worked with my subsequent therapist and read everything I could find on incest, I began to realize that the following statement applied to me as well as to the legion of other survivors of child sexual abuse who have gone before me:

Although tremendously difficult, the treatment of women with histories of incest is enormously rewarding. They are highly resourceful, tested as children in ways that few of us will ever be tested as adults. The many strengths that have served them in the past they bring to you, the therapist. Their strengths are gifts to recognize, applaud and take comfort in. They are women who have survived already; they are no longer dependent, no longer helpless and no longer silent. This often comes as a surprise to them. For the therapist, what could be more exciting than to facilitate such a discovery?

Indeed, my shift in perspective from the newly recalled horror as object of childhood violation to the hopefulness as a woman who had survived was enormous -- far greater even than standing on the gigantic log I had visualized and climbed over years earlier. Although the going has often been slow and sometimes painful beyond description, I have allowed myself to honor my very real strengths, many of which I had already begun to identify over the years. The healing and changes in perspective continue, and I continue to honor myself as a survivor. I honor my decreasing moments of helplessness. I rejoice in breaking the silence.

But I am going for more: I am going for the gold. From my perspective, beyond surviving is healing, followed by thriving. While healing is the process of overcoming physical or emotional pain, injuries, or illnesses, thriving is successfully pursuing the joy of life. For me, being healed is therefore not stasis -- a passive end state. Healing is active, and it has flow, juice, and vigor. It leads to the level of thriving in which I prosper and flourish. There I vigorously develop and enhance my potential, talents, and ability to celebrate life with no holds barred.

I want to be able to say, "I am healed. I am thriving." I want to be able to read all the pages of my life, clear-eyed and with full knowledge of everything written there, and to feel free. I absolutely claim my anger at perpetrators and events. I claim deep compassion and love for the little girl, always. But I will be free of those shackles that would bind me to any remnants of disenfranchisement. What could be more exciting than to be on this evolutionary path of self-empowerment and self-discovery?

Nancy Ruth Davis is a metaphysical counselor with the
Program for Creative Self-Development in Northern Virginia.

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