When I started writing, I really struggled with why. Why would anyone want to hear from me? Why would I matter, my story matter? Why would anyone want to read my words?
I want to be heard. Ok, so does pretty much everyone. Why me? Why should anyone listen to some middle class American white girl?
We all have pain. We all carry burdens. We all carry our families, our histories, on our backs, in our souls. We bear the burdens of generations.
I think that stories of severe trauma are so important. Tragic events, extreme abuse, the awful things that we have to live through. Those stories are so important, to see, to try to understand, to support the survivors, to increase awareness, to try to prevent those things from happening again.
But small stories are important, too. The silent stories. The little family secrets, the events that never happened. If we didn’t acknowledge it, it didn’t happen.
But it did. The pain, the trauma, it is real. Silence makes it worse, makes it fester, makes it rot.
I have spent so much of my life believing I didn’t have a right to feel my own pain, that my life wasn’t bad enough to count as “traumatic,” therefore I didn’t have a right to claim my voice, to “qualify” for sympathy or empathy, so there was even more guilt. Here I was, thoroughly messed up, but without a good reason for why. I must really be broken, be a terrible person, “unable to function in basic human society.” If I hadn’t almost died, if I hadn’t been sexually abused, if I didn’t witness a tragedy or a crime, if I didn’t live through a war, I didn’t have the right to be traumatized, to have symptoms of PTSD (or cPTSD).
But in trying to work through all my maladaptive survival strategies, I keep coming across this idea that trauma is not due to the event or events, but rather due to the response afterward. If a child has an experience that is frightening or disturbing, but is comforted and supported and helped to understand what happened and why, the child can come through the experience without being traumatized. But if a child is instead silenced or blamed, shamed, judged, or denied, trauma occurs. My entire life was silence. My pain and fear were constantly invalidated. There was no comfort, no support, no explanation. Only denial, shame, and silence. Always silence.
Other children have sick parents. Other children have violent, angry parents. Other children have narcissistic, manipulative parents. Other children have parents who lose jobs, homes, respect. Other children get bullied. Other children feel fear, pain, humiliation, rejection, and loss. Other children get through it. But maybe those children didn’t live in silence. The silence, both literal and metaphorical, was what crushed my spirit, broke my brain, and crippled my relationships.
So I have to break the silence, for myself and for everyone else who lived in silence, who believes they are broken, but doesn’t understand why. We matter. Our pain matters. Our experiences matter. Our voices matter.
We have screamed in silence for so long.
Please hear us now.