The Inner Knowing
Content advisory: childhood sexual abuse
I don’t remember being sexually abused as a child, but I know that it happened.
When I first started putting the pieces together, it was both gradual and like I was hit by a bus at the same time. First there was Christmas dinner. I was standing in line to get a second helping of turkey when I felt a hand squeeze my backside. An awkward comment was made about how I needed to eat more to fatten up, and my blood turned to ice. In the past, I would have dismissed this violation, but this time something was different. Something was horribly wrong.
As I sat back down at the dining room table, a wave of terror set into my body. The room was spinning, but I plastered a smile to my face and nodded at the conversation taking place. I felt like I was in danger, yet I couldn’t make sense of it. Everything was carrying on as usual, but I felt like I had just witnessed a scene from a horror movie.
In the weeks and months that followed, more clues began to surface. I started having nightmares about being cornered, grabbed, touched, abused. I would wake up in a state of panic, convinced I was being assaulted. Sometimes I could even smell my abuser’s breath. I started sleeping in the fetal position with my childhood teddy bear, and recoiled whenever my partner tried to comfort me. I wanted to sink into my bed and disappear.
One night, I got sick of the anxiety. It had been days since I’d slept properly, and I wanted to do something to calm myself down. I lit a candle and some incense, put on some soft music and sat down on my meditation cushion. I used my Reiki practice to bring myself into a deep meditation, where I connected with my inner child. Little Byrne appeared with my childhood dog beside her. Seeing this image immediately comforted me. My dog had protected me as a child, and he was here to support me again. Tears filled my eyes as I felt his unconditional love envelop me. I let myself sink deeper into the meditation, and eventually, Little Byrne began to talk. She explained that I had been abused when I was very small and that I didn’t remember, but she did. She told me she held onto the memory to keep me safe, but it was time for me to know the truth.
Even though that information was difficult to process, I felt held and secure in my meditation. I slept deeply that night. The next day, I was in therapy and finally said the words out loud: “I think I was molested as a child.” As soon as the words left my mouth, they didn’t feel real. I immediately detached from my statement and decided I must be making the whole thing up. I dismissed my meditation as my imagination playing tricks on me and left it at that.
An hour after my therapy session ended, I was in the kitchen baking cookies when I got the urge to listen to a favourite song from my teenage years, Falling Away From Me by Korn. As the chorus began, I was mixing some batter when out of nowhere, I slammed the glass bowl into the counter and broke down in tears. I began to feel it all. In that moment, I knew it was real.
This is how I came to accept my childhood trauma, and finally begin to heal deep and repressed wounds that had been ignored for three decades. There is still a very big part of me that wants answers. That part of me wants details, wants to recover more information than a few confusing images, so that I can make better sense of what happened. Maybe then, more people will believe me and I will feel less alone.
I love that part of me. I talk to it a lot. At the same time, I accept that what I know to be true is enough. It has taken me a while to get here, but I see that little child who was abused, and I believe her. I don’t need a date, time, or location. I don’t need exact details of what I was wearing that day or what I had for breakfast the first time it happened. I have to trust my inner child, the fragmented memories she’s given me, and the deep inner knowing that I was abused.
Something that has helped me get here is talking to people who feel safe and can validate my experiences. It especially helps to talk to other survivors. Sometimes hearing another survivor’s story that mirrors your own in some small way can help you to believe yourself. At least, that’s what happened in my case. I didn’t need to provide specific details for these compassionate souls to believe me – my inner knowing was enough.