|
Page 2 of 2
A Novel:
A novel by Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory (New York: Vintage, 1994), deals head-on with sexual abuse by the main character's mother. Amazingly enough, it has been quite successful, even being recommended by Oprah Winfrey. Perhaps its setting in Haitian culture provides enough distance that people can bear to face such abuse, which is named in the book as abuse. But it is all there. At one point, a character writes in a letter to her abuser: "Because of you, I feel like a helpless cripple. I sometimes want to kill myself. All because of what you did to me, a child who could not say no, a child who could not defend herself. It would be easy to hate you, but I can't because you are part of me. You are me." The book is, at least, somewhat hopeful; the main character begins to come to terms with the long ancestral line of female pain.
My Reflections (warning, may be triggering)
I'm making up my own definitions here--I haven't found the literature on the topic very useful. I count abuse as primary sexual abuse if the abuser is seeking to have an orgasm or if it involves sadistic or shaming punishment involving the child's private parts (eg. Sybil). Secondary abuse would include enabling abuse by men (eg. knowing about the abuse and not stopping it, or not believing a child who tells), telling the child that she is a bad person, or physical abuse. This might also include carrying out caregiving in an abusive way: washing the child's private parts in a painful way or unnecessary enemas. I suspect that the majority of survivors have experienced secondary abuse by women. I don't mean to say that a clear dividing line can be drawn or that primary abuse is necessarily more harmful than what I have called secondary abuse. I just want to think broadly about what counts as abuse.
In my case, I always remembered having been sexually abused by my grandfather. Only fairly far into the healing process did I remember sexual abuse by my grandmother, who I now believe was my worst abuser.
The abuse by my grandmother was certainly what I have called primary sexual abuse--it involved full-fledged sexual acts as well as acting out of shame. The abuse by my grandmother was hard to face, because I trusted and depended on her more than on my (step) grandfather. One book that helped me understand those feelings is Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse, by Jennifer J. Freyd. Acknowledging that I was abused by my grandmother was an important step for me in my healing journey. It helped me understand my fears of trusting women. It also helped me understand my fears and hatred of myself, because I find I cannot escape a sense of identification with her.
And then, a year after I started to get memories involving my grandmother, I got a memory of sexual abuse by my mother. That has been my greatest fear: that when I remembered more and worse, that I might remember abuse by my mother. I even told myself that probably wasn't there because if it was I wouldn't have been functional enough to build myself the life I have.
Though the abuse I remember by my mother is much less severe than the abuse by my grandmother, I find it very hard to live with. To remember it is to be the abandoned child; the child who can turn to no one for comfort or protection. I've written more about the confusion of feelings I struggle with on a page entitled My mother and me.
next: Book Reviews Table of Contents
|
