In Recognition of Incest Survivors (IRIS)
Stay connected
  • Home
  • About
  • The Bill of Rights
    • One: we have the right to be safe.
    • Two: we have the right to be heard.
    • Three: we have the right to be believed.
    • Four: we have the right to be angry.
    • Five: we have the right to grieve.
    • Six: we have the right to heal.
    • Seven: we have the right to set appropriate boundaries.
    • Eight: we have the right to choose if or how to confront the perpetrator.
    • Nine: we have the right to a joyful, fulfilling sex life with someone we trust.
    • Ten: we have the right to a loving, supportive family.
  • Resources
  • Voices
    • Survivors' Voices
    • Friends' and Family Members' Voices
    • Another Mother's Voice
    • Media Voices
    • GLBTQQ Voices
    • Feedback
  • News & Events
  • Contact Us
  • Support Us

Survivors' Voices

Our stories have power in them.  When we tell our stories, we set them free to lend their healing power to those who still suffer.

Click here to submit your story

Click on the title below to read survivor stories - or click on the button above to submit your own.


Once in a while a voice is heard that needs to rise to the top.  This is that voice for us, today:
https://www.facebook.com/RedTapeResidue

Picture

This woman is my hero, and she speaks for me. She speaks for all of us. Listen.
http://time.com/3957881/eve-ensler-on-bill-cosby-let-the-mythical-daddy-die/


Kris tells her story:  ~ I belonged to my parents. I was wrong, because they were right. They narrated life. They taught me to be unkind to their next victim, my sister. Out of fear that I would tell the truth, I was diagnosed with mental illness, and my life was in their hands. And they were very generous, in increasing measure, to trap me. I dealt them a blow earning an MSW. At just the time I may have gotten away, I fell into their hands through a deadly battle with anorexia. I lived. They layered on guilt and presented me to others as unstable and ungrateful. I was the difficult family member. It is Truth that drives me now. I do not conform. My Lord is King. Jesus reigns, and He knows. I will not be bullied again. I deserve to be an aunt and stand tall. They are forced to look into my eyes, knowing I know them. My mother asked my forgiveness, and she is free. My father is a prisoner of his own pride, but he doesn't bother me. It is his own choice. He is disconnected, separated, while everyone else is laughing and relating. A shame, when forgiveness is there. I don't hate my sister anymore. We are friends and sisters in Christ. ~

Thank you, Kris, for sharing.  One of the weapons used against the victim child is the adults' ability to discredit the child among others who might otherwise help.  It is one of the reasons that child abuse is so rampant and yet undetected, and one of the reasons that survivors enter adulthood sometimes not quite sure about their own reality.  I am so glad you found help, healing, and hope.  Keep that Truth before you, and let's all stick together! 
With love and hope, Another Mother


New Memoir Explores Healing Through Faith

Picture

Please read our interview with the author, here:  
Life Soup


Unique Memoir Format Breaks New Ground for Healing

Survivor Geri Henderson, Ph.D. and her former therapist, Seanne Emerton, LMFT, LIMPH, LPC have formed a unique collaboration to write their book, Healing from Incest: Intimate Conversations with My Therapist.  The book is in an unusual collaborative format, where Ms. Emerton gives her analysis of the narrative memoir written by Dr. Henderson.  Each writer has her own, distinct voice, and in places they even disagree, which serves to lend credibility to the text and invokes admiration for the trust and respect that obviously was inherent in their relationship and continues to this day.  Dr. Henderson's story is painful to read, yet uplifting and absorbing.  One can only be fascinated by the instant access to the clinical discussion of  the story as Ms. Emerton deconstructs the process of healing the developmental, psychological, and emotional wounds engendered by the horrific abuse suffered by Dr. Henderson.

This book will be helpful to survivors, especially those who still are considering seeking therapy. Healing from Incest demystifies the therapeutic process and even, through discussions about other therapists involved in the heroine's care who made some pretty heinous mistakes, might help some survivors learn how to find a therapist whose attitudes toward sexual abuse are helpful and informed, rather than harmful.  We especially see this book as a potential help to therapists, social workers, and people in charge of our justice system; they desperately, all of them. need to learn how to treat survivors with respect and with an awareness of the seriousness of the offense.

Healing from Incest can be found at all the usual book outlets online, or can be ordered from most brick-and-mortar bookstores.  The publisher is MSI Press, LLC, and the release date was June 1, 2015.
Picture

The Car Analogy of Survivorship
(you have driven blindly forward until you are in the ditch - now what?)


The Minister's Daughter

My father was a minister.  The shame was doubled because it wasn't just him shaming me.  It was God, too!  Years of ongoing abuse.  Every time I tried to tell anyone my Dad was hurting me, I was met with comments about how great my parents were, and how lucky I was.  My mother abused us also, not sexually, but physically.  She also mocked us.  One of the cruellest persons verbally.  They got their wish!!  A fruitful "ministry"of their many musical talents, and much admiration for all the "help" they were to others.  Us kids?  We had no one.  Being so musically gifted, I sang with them as a teen.  I remember coming down off the stage, hearing  clapping,which would thrill most teenagers,and wanting to die.  I had no memory of what my father was doing to me.  But periodically I had flashes of running into a big truck, running away, killing myself.  OUR lives(we 3 kids) fell apart later.  It has been a long journey.  I am 58 years old now.  The life of a beautiful, talented young girl was taken, stolen from her.  I have worked hard to get well.  But I grieve and cry for the young girls who carry that empty haunted look in their eyes.They are hurting.  I know.

I am so sorry, dear Friend.  Thank you for working so hard to get and be well despite this terrible history.  When the criminal who abused us also is the embodiment of the very authority of God in our lives, then we feel that even the love of God cannot help us to escape or regain our right lives and our human rights.  We lose our parent, we lose our childhood, we lose our sense of safety, and we lose our concept of a mighty and protecting God.  What a lot of loss for a little girl to handle all by herself.  When the perpetrator is a pillar of the community we lose our internal permission to use our voices or even to claim our own reality.  It is mind-bending, and the fact that you now can speak of it and understand what the damage was, is a testament to your courage and tenacity.  I salute you.  You have been liberated from the lie and the trance of childhood sexual abuse.  My wish for you is that your two siblings are still able to be close to you, and that you all can continue to help each other to heal, by validating the reality of those horrible times and by holding out hope for now.  This page of our website might be helpful to you: http://www.healingincest.org/six-you-have-the-right-to-heal.html
It is hard to see the young people who we know are hurting.  Reach out to them when you can.  We all have to work to break the silence.

Thank you for writing - I will hold your story in my heart.

with love and hope,
Another Mother

Picture

You go, girls.  You go:

http://www.upworthy.com/to-the-men-who-mistreated-these-women-and-their-mothers-you-just-got-burned-mg2-9b?c=upw1

Melissa Harris-Perry Speaks as a Survivor
(and takes Senatorial candidate Richard Mourdock to school at the same time)

34 Years

The caged bird sang for me long before I ever met that sacred sister, Dr. Maya Angelou. 
It spoke to me - I could play that song by ear.  I heard its voice and, yet, it took me 34 years to fully understand that my body is a crime scene.

My very body.  The temple in which I stand.

Is a crime scene.

The yellow tape is faded and flaps in the wind, now. 
The detectives never came and, eventually, the rain washed away the chalk outline of the awkward, lonely 13 year-old girl who just wanted to be special to someone.

Just wanted to be noticed by someone.

And now many years have passed. 
Babies came on through from time to time, and they bear their own set of marks from struggling out of this body's ragged depths, its ambivalent hospitality.

I look like just any old anybody now - just another old lady on the street.  But on rainy nights I can still feel that cold, wet asphalt under my cheek, and hear that damned bird.

Singing.


- Another Mother, 2015


My Journey of Survival

Fragile, uncertain, isolated. The smell of fear.
Hiding under desks, tables and in closets.
Avoiding fun and open places; too risky.

Being found, unwilling witnesses and dark basements.
Shadows, dark and musty smells, trapped.
A single chair, small ropes; lack of circulation.

Needles and soft rubber tourniquets. 
Blood, razors, knives, and threats.
Spiders crawling down my arms and hair.

Screwdriver handles, fingers, hands.
First pain, then numbness. Lack of all emotion.
Threats, promises, emotional blackmail.

Fear of mirrors and reflections through dark windows.
Whispering while hanging upside down from the deck.
Waiting for arms to reach through the darkness.

Resigned to die.  Hoping it will be quick.
Somehow finding inner strength to fight back.
Confrontation, determination, obstinate.

The guilty show their anger, despair and depression.
Suicide is their easy way out.  My family is in mourning.  
I’ve lost my childhood, but I am no longer his victim.

Years of sleepless nights.  Tossing, turning.
Avoiding knife thrusts as I dream.
PTSD follows me, but I pretend it isn’t there.

Acceptance, forgiveness, letting go.
Standing tall, controlling my destiny.
I have many scars, but I’m free. 

Thirty years before I can look at his photo.
He can’t hurt me anymore.
Evil has a name; it is still not spoken.

Submitted by:  Anonymous

Thank you, Dear One, for your courage to share -  and for surviving to share it. 
You are not alone. 
You are loved.
-Another Mother


Upward Trajectory
(on good days you can see the trend)

Picture

Back to Voices
Home
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.