Reply #65: just being able to write [View All]

[marions ghost]

your story tells me you are so much stronger now, and can be an inspiration to others. PTSD from this kind of trauma is very real, but people who have never experienced it find it very hard to understand. They don't understand the fear of every shadow, the jump at every little visual reminder. Even memories can trigger panic. In my experience at universities I have known of many rapes, including several in which the college student victim was raped and killed. So I have a feel for what you have gone through, though yours involves the betrayal of family, which is especially hard at an early age.

This is a fantasy, but I wish there was a place where victims of this kind of abuse could go, away from the world, sort of a retreat...where they could experience being completely safe for awhile --there are spiritual retreat places that serve this purpose, but I'm talking more just a women's haven. A place of renewal for those who have been traumatized (for any reason). Wouldn't be a place for talking about the past, just a place to be yourself --free of that particular kind of fear of predation. The experience of being in a place where you feel completely safe from any form of human aggression is so rare, it's almost a religious experience in itself (I had this experience only once). There is a wonderful renewal that comes from this. This is a place that is different than even one's own home, which may feel safe but you still don't have the freedom to be out in nature and it's more like a prison. There is something about feeling safe in a place away from home that is healing.