Getting Back On Track

Wow. What a roller-coaster the past two months have been. Just before Thanksgiving my baby brother died leaving behind four children and a lot of unanswered questions. Then the holidays hit which always remind me of losing my father between Christmas and New Years when I was a toddler. To top it off I got hit with a handful of particularly nasty flashbacks involving my stepfather sodomizing me with a giant candy cane and then making me eat it. Fa la la la la la la la la...

All of that hit hard. Really fucking hard. I feel like I have been having one long drawn out disassociative episode for the past couple of months. I got lost in my pain and couldn't see past it. I couldn't see the people who loved me reaching out. I couldn't see the pain of the fellow survivors in my life. A part of me wants to beat myself up over how much I withdrew into myself, but the part of me that has been healing since I first disclosed my status as a childhood sexual abuse survivor last March is telling me that I needed the chance to retreat and to grieve. It wasn't out of selfishness that I withdrew, it was out of self preservation and care. I will never stop grieving for my baby brother, my father, or my stolen innocence; but the time has come to stand back up and get back on my journey to heal and to support my fellow survivors in their healing. The time has come to get back on track.

I know this blog has been pretty quiet, but my mind has not. There are flashbacks I need to process. There are resources I need to share. There are conversations I want to start. There are questions I need to ask. To those of you who have stuck with me during the silence I thank you. Stay tuned to this blog for a renewed sense of purpose and, I hope, writings that spark conversations that need to happen.