“Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes” — Maggie Kuhn
This quote has been on my mind a lot lately. Maybe its the darker half of the year, and I am having an inevitable underworld moment, but I have been finding it near impossible to quiet the overwhelming urge to write about everything that happened to me as a child.
At the age of 43, I still have to reconcile daily the affects of horrific childhood abuse on my day to day life. Even with therapy, medication, and a safe environment, I feel as though I am still very much in the trenches, so to speak.
I now understand that the only way to leave the war-zone in the past, is to write about it. I am exhausted of battling my mind, and carrying this around in my body. I fear what may happen if I continue to hold on to this, and not let it go.
I have always used the written word as a way to express myself, especially when my voice was silenced when I was younger. As an adult, writing serves as a cathartic release to whatever I am carrying within me. It only makes sense, that I would write about this, the first 20 years of my life, that I have been spending last 23 recovering from.
I fear the fall out, of course. That is what has kept me from doing this for all these years. I realize that I am doing what my abusers did to me, I am silencing myself. I will upset family members, of course. All those who have tried to brush things under the rug, and act like time took care of everything. I cannot keep up with that charade, I have to speak the truth.
I don’t know how long this will take me, I only know that I have to do it. I encourage you to do the same, I believe it is healing, speaking truth to power in a way. For some of us, it is the only way forward to true freedom.
