I recently had the privilege to join with a group of women who were struggling in life. Most had suicidal thoughts, crippling anxiety and depression. Just by happen stance I was able to hear most of their stories and I was astounded that every woman who shared her story with me had been raped or sexually assaulted in some way. The hard truth is most had been raped.

So what do we do with that. What happens to a woman’s brain after such a traumatic event. Well this I know. Unresolved and suppressed hurt leads to suicide, depression, anxiety, PTSD ect. I know because I too was raped and have suppressed the trauma for eighteen years. Almost every woman there had also been assaulted by someone they knew.

I am a giant dateline mystery watching type of girl. It seems its not just me but thousands of women are enjoying these types of shows. Why? Well I had to dig a little deep to find the answer but I think there is some comfort in the fact that we see this trauma played out on television and we connect with it on a deeper level. Its the trauma that keeps us going back. We don’t want to deal with our own trauma, so we watch others. This trauma is too much. It hurts. We feel if we can push it deep enough then it will never resurface to do what we are afraid it would do, and that is destroy us.

So suppression lands us back to the mental health facility with all these women who have been assaulted. Of course I am no scientist and I have done no formal experiment to test the correlation, but to my common sense it seems that there is a link between sexual assault and mental health issues.

This one time, this one event, around twenty minutes, changed my life forever.

I didn’t kick, I didn’t scream. I knew this person. They wouldn’t hurt me. What is happening to me must be my imagination. This can’t really be happening to me, and then it was over and I was discarded. I said no, I pleaded to just talk, but because I didn’t fight, I blamed myself for it all. I took it all on and shamed myself. No one could ever have shamed me as much as I have shamed myself.

Sorry, but I also have to say, what an ASS you must be to take what you want in such a quick and devastating manner and disregard that this will create lifelong trauma for someone else. The perpetrated moves on and the victim is put in an invisible jail.

Is it possible for me and other women to heal from this trauma?

Yes. I can say that I am healing. I made great strides to heal my brain when I finally admitted and acknowledged what had happened to me.

Will we ever me the same?

Absolutely not.

I type that with tears in my eyes. The trust that was broken and the savage taking of a part of my soul will never be repaired. I can however learn to live with the pain and know that this one event doesn’t define me or hold me back unless I let it.

So yes I have some responsibility in this. With every decision in life we have a choice. I didn’t know I was choosing to live in fear and anxiety from the rape. Once I finally let my brain admit what happened, then I was able to start the healing process. My brain was protecting me all these years. Your brain is designed to protect you at whatever cost. My brain said “this is too much to deal with, so lets forget it ever happened.”

That “protection” led me to depend on anxiety and depression medication. It led me to suicidal plans. I wanted to take my life and a lot of the reason was because I really felt like I had no worth and that I would never be redeemed. I always wondered why I felt so unworthy all the time. I painted my life as a failure, all because some jerk raped me and then left me on the side of the road like trash. This person left me on the side of the road life a piece of garbage and from that point on I felt worthless. As I began to heal I realized how much this event has affected me. How strange to finally be able to pin point a cause for some of the pain. The average person reading this who has not been sexually assaulted says “of course that changed you” but to those of us who have been assaulted, we do not want to admit it and that leads to mental health issues.

So what does sexual assault do to a woman? I makes her lie to herself. I don’t want to be a rape victim so I make excuses for the person. I blame myself because even that is better than admitting what really happened. You see if we admit it, then the pain is just too much. So we sweep it under the rug and the wound never heals. Sexual assault changes you. Most people will say you are stronger because of what you endured, but the reality is you had no choice. There was no other alternative. You have to be strong to survive. Be strong or die. Acknowledge the pain or continue to live in fear.

Once I began therapy to begin to heal from the rape, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my chest. The thing my brain was trying to do, protect me, was in essence the very thing that was making me sick. I had to deal with the gaping wound or it would never heal. Like they say, the first cut is the deepest, and it was. I acknowledged it and became the rape victim that I never wanted to be, then I began to heal.

So here is the point to this long message. Women love yourself and others. Teach your daughters this dateline stranger danger scenario could happen, but it is most likely going to be someone you know, someone you trust, someone you think loves you and would never hurt you.

For your teenage virgin it could be constant pressure from their boyfriend, manipulation, and fear tactics that get the girl to go along with it. Yeah to you that doesn’t sound like rape but maybe you need to open up your mind to see how a person you love can groom you to get you to do what they want. That’s rape.

We know the classic rape scenario, but tell your friends and daughters that rape doesn’t always look like that. It is assault anytime you are made to do something sexual you don’t want to do. Whether through force or manipulation, it is sexual assault.