Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

CHAPTER 24: SANCTUARY

“Two or three things I know for sure and one of them is that telling the
story all the way through is an act of love.”1

~ Dorothy Allison

A journalist invited Incest AWARE to speak in front of the New York City courthouse where Ghalaine Maxwell stood on the stand. We invited members of our previously virtual network to gather at this event and meet each other in-person for the very first time. Survivors and supporters came from ages 13 to 60 to connect, create, and continue our pursuit of justice. For ourselves. For each other. We made pins, and printed flyers, and designed posters, and prepped our chosen speaker. Then, we witnessed each other.

Peggy — my old friend from SF who reintroduced me to the ocean with our newfound wetsuit skins — had moved to NYC recently and invited me to stay the night in her apartment. She, temporarily disabled from a serious foot injury, practiced mobility with her brace-bound foot resting on top of a knee scooter.

“Let’s go out to dinner!” Peggy recommended excitedly.

We slowly made our way down the elevator of her high-rise to the street. As Peggy lifted both her knees onto the scooter, my hands rested on her shoulders. Then I pushed her through the city, while she navigated toward our desired dinner spot. Peggy carefully avoided potholes and sidewalk inconsistencies, while I admired the buildings so much taller than trees in the city that never sleeps. We found the restaurant, and Peggy hobbled to her seat.

“You know, I’ve wanted to move to NYC for years,” I began.
“Annie, I mean Jo.,” she corrected quickly. “You should! What’s stopping you?”
“Fear mostly. What if it’s too much for me? What if I can’t manage my disability here?”
“If you want it, you will make it work. Your resilience has always triumphed over your fears.”

That’s all I needed to hear. I returned to Seattle, found an apartment in NYC through a friend, gave away my things to the gift economy, packed up my remaining earthly possessions in three bags, and prepared to move to the city of my dreams. Eventually, I made my way onto the plane and found my seat. A few hours later, the NYC skyline welcome me, while the plane grounded.

At the baggage claim, I retrieved the bags filled with my meager belongings. The first, I placed on my back and the second, on my shoulder, while the third rolled behind me. The signs guided me to the AirTrain. I boarded the E, then the D, which brought me to the Bronx safely. I hauled my suitcases and embodied baggage step-by-step up the subway stairs and onto the sidewalk, until I found the steadiness of the flat ground. Rain poured from the sky. My luggage dragged behind me, as I pulled my hoody over my head and walked block by block to the home I had found in New York City.

Suddenly filled with feeling, I burst into tears and looked up as the salt water of my eyes met the water of the sky. My hands outstretched then came back to hold my own body. My feet were grounded with no mountains in sight to climb. My being alive. A baptism into the expansion of being. Finally, I arrived. I knocked on the door of the new home I chose. The homeowners answered the doorbell and warmly introduced themselves.

“Hi, I’m Jo.” I shook their hands.

This one bedroom, top-floor apartment that shares an entrance and stairway with a safe family of activists and their two children, has always had beautiful bones: golden-hued wooden floors, rounded archways between rooms, a long, linear kitchen, more closet space than any New Yorker could ever hope for, windows that when open give the house a cool cross breeze, and a beautiful little window nook just for me.

The home also has a few signs of old age, more familiar to New York standards of living: molding pastel pink bathroom tiles, scuffed and punctured walls, trim sprinkled with holes and wear, busted shades, and dust buried so deeply into the corners and baseboards that even a professional cleaning wouldn’t clear it.

The apartment came with a few hand-me-downs: some dilapidated Ikea items including console and dining tables, as well as a bookshelf. An old floral wingback chair, ripped apart by the former tenant’s cat so badly that the nails stuck through, and a dirty and worn ottoman greeted me daily. A mattress that peeled like sunburned skin all over the bedroom laid on the golden floor. Old pots, pans, plates, and other kitchenware, as well as a few nicer items like a new turquoise daybed, a storage bench, a bedside table, and a full-length mirror scattered throughout the place. This was my home now, and I felt proud.

When I told my generous landlords that I used to be in the design industry, they agreed to let me make the apartment my own. So, I bought cans of paint from a nearby hardware store: in Sedona Clay and Dragonfly, White Dove and Flax, Sail Cloth and Spring Mint, and a sample of a sweet light pink for my front door.

I prepared to spend time with my chosen home by showering it with love: painting the walls and fixing the holes, cleaning the mold and replacing the blinds, refurbishing the furniture. My landlord agreed to help, so I didn’t carry the burden of the work alone. I arose in the morning, prepped the first can of paint, stirred it with a wooden stick, poured the cool beige-gray into a tray, then gently pushed a large rolling brush into it. Wet and full of color, my roller healed the former wounds of the walls.

I repeated this process over and over again, until the home I now called my own was resurfaced with colors I chose, in a community I trust, over a family that shares my values. Peggy’s parents had gifted me a number of hand-me-down blankets, tables, and beautifully framed pictures: all symbols of well-worn and safe love from someone else’s family. I threw the blankets over the ripped up wingback chair and warn ottoman, pushed the daybed into the window nook, and bought some new pillows.

More furniture arrived, including a bed frame that lifted the peeling mattress off the floor, a duvet cover to hide the stained comforter, a rug to throw across the living room floor, and a shower curtain to conceal the newly glazed tub. While I worked, my landlord grouted the shower, patched the screens, replaced the blinds, and filled the holes in the walls and window trims. Soon, the place appeared to have a new face. I just couldn’t get enough of this place, where I was finally learning to feel safe.

Ruth, Oliver, and H videocatted with me to see the before and after home renovation. They celebrated the new aesthetic then announced their plans to visit.

“I’ll see you soon!” I said before our goodbye.
“Not soon enough!” Ruth replied.

Within a safe home environment, my brain began to settle and my symptoms felt more manageable. I returned to a psychiatrist to discuss medication one more time.

“What is your medical history?” She asked.

I shared my stories of surgeries, seizures, and serial sexual violence by family members.

“That’s too much,” she grieved with me. “Do you have access to your medical records from childhood? I’d like to review your epilepsy treatment.” I told her about the Valium, then explained how I knew no further details.

“Years ago, I had reached out to various hospitals and pediatric centers that treated me, but due to HIPPA regulations they had only kept my records on file for seven years. My parents might have them still, but due to circumstances I chose not to reach out.”
“That sounds smart, Jo,” she replied. “Well, we’ll work with what we have. What medications have you tried before?” I sent her the list of psychotropics, doses, and durations that I had experimented with over the last 20 or so years. “How did your body respond to these medications?” I told her of the extreme swings between suicidality and fatigue or such high anxiety that I wanted to jump out of my own skin.

“We need to ease you in,” she said. “Let’s start with some herbs that will calm you down, then after a month we’ll introduce a low dose of Fluoxetine and gradually increase it until we find the right amount.”
My body screamed, “Yes!” with a strong twitch before the word left my mouth. “I would love my life to feel easier.”

The herbs hit my body hard, keeping me in bed for hours a day, but I could manage it. The same happened with the introduction of Fluoxetine, but the psychiatrist continued to reassure me.

“It’s okay, Jo,” she said gently, “This is a temporary adjustment.”

Slowly, so very slowly, my body began to feel like a place I could return to, to belong to, to exist in with more ease. A sanctuary. The nights still haunt me with insomnia and paranoia, but most days feel relaxing, restful, and sweet.

With the Spring came flowers blooming between the buildings in NYC. My new friend Jade walked with me to the local cemetery. We headed down the street towards the sprawling park, narrowly avoiding the dog shit, the trash, the glass, and the omnipresent rats of New York City. As we entered through the high iron gates, the scenery before us transformed into a sanctuary of death and life coexisting with each other, an emblem of existence itself.

Headstones the size of houses sat before us with names etched into them describing the bones of the person once birthed, then lived, then returned to the earth. Between these stone monuments, trees stretched into the sky and rooted deep out of sight, water pooled into ponds where ducks and turtles and fish co-exist, flowers blossomed in all colors and directions, and squirrels chased each other.

While walking, I shared the story of the evolution of my name. From the name given by my family, Anne Marie, to my chosen name, Josephine Anne Lauren. I mentioned that I chose Lauren because of how beautiful it sounded, but also due to its etymology: the name came from the Laurel leaf which early Christians wove into resurrection wreaths. Greco-Romans did the same to celebrate victory.

“You know, Jo.,” Jade began. “There’s a Greek myth you may be interested in hearing that very much relates to the meaning of your name, as well as your history.”
“Oh, please do share!” I answered excitedly.

I was aware of how often incest abuse is centered in many creation myths across cultures. From the rape of mothers, to sisters, to others, intrafamilial sexual violence has been normalized in stories both fiction and non-fiction throughout history. But I had yet to hear a myth that led to liberation. Jade told me the story:

“Cupid, the god of love, cursed the god Apollo with such infatuation for Daphne, a nymph and daughter of the river god, that he courted her. She refused due to two arrows that struck her heart from Cupid and caused her to despise romance. Then, Apollo chased Daphne to rape her. To keep herself safe, she ran to the river and prayed that her father protect her from Apollo’s aggressive pursuit. In response, the river god transformed his daughter into a laurel tree.”2

I gasped, while Jade explained, “So, the laurel tree is a symbol that represents victory over sexual assault and is also used for healing in survivor communities.”

I too ran away from a history of rape and prayed to spirits to save me, then arrived to the waters where I grew roots through friendship, generosity, and authenticity. I grounded, and parts of me became a nursing tree while the other parts transubstantiated into the Laurel I chose to be. Unlike Daphne, unlike Lilith and Eve, unlike so many other incest abuse survivors before me, I now hold the power to pen my own story.

So I have done my best to reflect on the consequences of the instances of incest in my own life, as well as shine a light on those whose resiliency enabled me to share a history that is so much bigger than me. This bible of my body canonizes just some of incest history as I have known it in my bones, so that no other soul must carry the weight of unnecessary serial sexual violence from within their own homes.

Now, this story is complete in me, actively living on the outside of my body, taking on its own being, transforming others in a way that I can’t yet see, saying:

I collect the books of other incest survivors and researchers who have created knowledge with our histories to curate a library living and breathing in my chosen home in NYC. We are working on archiving these resources digitally for ease of accessibility. Daily, I witness the end of epistemic injustice that contributed to my own incest story.

Every other month, my computer screen fills with faces that support me and each other. The Incest AWARE Alliance includes individuals and organizations seeking to fill The Incest Gap by improving methods of prevention, intervention, recovery, and justice to ensure children are safe in their homes, survivors and families are supported in their healing journeys, and people who are at-risk to harm are unable to offend and reoffend. I admire the faces on the screen as the litany of loss in my body becomes a litany of love.

We recently launched an adult survivor support group through the Healing & CPTSD Hub. Together, we claim ourselves present in a history that has tried to erase us. We witness the wobbly ways we all exist after being touched by incest. We hold the gravity of the consequences of the abuse on our identity, our economy, our bodies, our families, our communities, our society. And we celebrate who we have all chosen to be on the other side of our journeys: liberators, protectors, teachers, connectors, creators, and organizers. A community of laurel trees. Yes, we are wired to wobble, but we are also wired to be wonders, and we all do both so beautifully.

Today, I call myself an AILA — or Anti-Incest Liberation Agent — because it means “from a strong place” in Gaelic and that is what we are building: an unshakable foundation for the Incest AWAREness Movement (IAM). I’m proud of who we are and what we have accomplished so far, and still we have such a long way to go. And in the space between I feel both grief and opportunity. This is the next step in the United States: a communal commitment to Institutional Courage3 to protect the next generation. A theology of liberation for children. A salvation of safety, so we can make incest history not just for us, but for everybody.

After such a long and debilitating process to heal my life from the inside out after incest abuse, I wanted so much to be celebrated. Like loved ones waiting at the end of an Iron Man, or Olympians being applauded at the closing games, or kids running through a v-shaped tunnel made by supportive parents after a soccer game. This pilgrimage of emergency recovery came to an end, and my efforts had been mostly completed internally; while my external life still reflected the simplicity of materiality rebuilt over and over again until I found the right fit, as well as the debt of the process. I felt I hadn’t really achieved anything but what so many start with: a safe home, a safe sense of family, a safe relationship with my body.

Then a friend and fellow activist connected me to The Aplomb Project. This organization, led by Danielle Festa, offers free painted portraits to survivors of sexual trauma, as well as a weekend gala to reveal the paintings and community events to get to know each other. We met over Zoom. Danielle’s olive skin and teal eyes, light brown long hair and beautiful smile, appeared on screen before me, and I immediately felt safe in her virtual company. She invited me into the trauma-informed and intentional process of painting a survivor portrait.

I met up with Danielle and a few members of her family by the waterside in Hoboken, NJ, so that the backdrop of the portrait would show the New York City skyline and the bridge that I was choosing to become between my formally hidden history and a future of safe memory. We took photos and combined a few to make a picture of me leaning joyfully, smiling at the past, staring in awe of the beauty of the new World Trade Center, resurrected after violence.

The gala approached and I began to feel the familiar unworthiness that constantly accompanied me. I talked myself through it slowly, accepting it would never be absent, but it also no longer had the power to keep me from the present:

I am safe to be celebrated.
I am worthy of being celebrated.
I am loved and am being celebrated.
My desires are safe with me.

Ruth and H FaceTimed me that morning to wish me a good day. A few members of the Incest AWARE Alliance chose to accompany me to the gala, including Shirkydra, my strong liberator. She became a member of the next cohort to be painted by Danielle and planned to have her photoshoot during my portrait reveal weekend.

We rested before the events began, then I dressed my body in a cream, cropped-top suit jacket and long pants, heels, and large fake pearl earrings. I wanted to match how I appeared in the picture taken for the portrait painting. My friends and I showed up together at the gallery and met the other survivors being celebrated that night. We bonded and discussed the meaningfulness of our labor to transform our harmful histories into power and purpose, while being witnessed by community.

Danielle’s extended international family, who flew in for the celebration, couldn’t wait to meet me and immediately introduced themselves as if I were a celebrity. The event began and Danielle called me forward. Together we stood next to my portrait covered in shiny, black fabric — her on the left, me on the right. I shook standing centered in this large group of people.

“Are you ready to be revealed, Josephine?” Danielle asked, smiling.
“I am,” I consented, my knees nearly buckling beneath me.

Gently, she pulled the fabric back to show the portrait of me leaning against the iron railing at the edge of the Hudson, gazing at the World Trade Center. Stripes of lighter colors flooded the frame on the way that I faced, while behind me the darker hues shadowed the painting.

For when I finally turned to face the future of the New York City skyline, I would illuminate the bridge and the buildings before me. To the left of the painting, a television screen shared the story formerly buried in my body:

“Now, Jo reflects on the past, while the future awaits them joyfully. In the present, their eyes gaze upon everything that helped them to arrive in NYC. Sometimes they wonder:

‘Who would I have been without the surgeries, the seizures, and the serial sexual abuse of my youth? Then after disclosure, the family abandonment and the institutional betrayal by every system that was supposed to support me? I can’t answer these questions.’

So instead, they rewrite them:

‘Who would I be if not for my deep faith in a safer future for me and my community, for the families who re-parented me patiently, for the friends who taught me how to love deeply, for the opportunities that empowered me to share my story freely?’

As I turn to face the future, I see the bridge that leads to a safer way of being for the next generation of children. And when I look behind me now, I hope I remember to celebrate who I am, who we are, and how far we’ve come. The safety we sought, the health we healed, the liberty we fought for, the friends we believed in, and the courage we claimed to create a space that aspires to be safe.”

I am now the woman on the wall and will forever be. Danielle then revealed the title of the painting to me:

“Welcome Home.”

The Beginning

A Prologue

One day, I took a friend with me to the sea. We walked, me in my two-piece bikini and a silicon cap and goggles strapped to the top of my head, and she in a wetsuit that covered her skin from toe to neck. We approached the ocean ready for a swim. The swelling waves rose high into the air on that beautifully sunny day, then crashed hard on itself creating tumbling white wash that ebbed and flowed to the shoreline.

“Are you sure you want to go?” A concerned stranger looked at us both. “The waves are too big for a swim. It’s dangerous.” But, as we confidently knew how to navigate the sea, we replied, “We’re going to be okay.”

Then suddenly, our feet felt the sting of cold salt water on our skin. First our ankles, then our knees, then our hips, then our breasts. Lastly our necks and heads. We both submerged completely underwater, then pushed up from the sand and sprung out of the swell like dancing dolphins. Due to her second skin, my friend was more buoyant than me.

The first wave rose far above our heads, then crashed to cause the chaos of whitewash. I, wetsuit free, held my breath then dove deeply down to hug the sand where I always found safety and watched as the currents passed above my head. Then I pushed off the earth, broke the surface of the surf, and began to fill my lungs with air once again. But before I could catch the fullness of the next breath, another breaker crashed right in front of me. Quickly, I gasped as much air as I could, then dove back under the chaos, found the sand, and pressed up once again. But the next wave came far too soon and force me back under water.

“This is how strong swimmers drown,” I thought. “Not due to lack of skill, but instead having to navigate environments that are unswimmable.”

I filled my lungs with another breath far too shallow for the length of time and exertion required to return safely to the other side. I was running out of oxygen. I awkwardly dove beneath the crashing crest before me, pulled the water from front to back propelling me forward, and returned to the comfort of the soft sand within the reach of my hands. For just a moment, all was dark, but I was safe. Still, fear flooded my body and focused my mind on my strengths, while my lungs ached in reminder of their need for more breath.

Get past the break, Josephine.

I pushed harder off the sand to launch me further East and swam mightily to see the next breaker before it fell before me.

“Waves, I need you to calm down.”

I called to them in a final request, hoping the set would cease, so I could catch my much-needed next breath. Finally, I made it past the wave break and began to take in huge gulps of air to recover from the near suffocation of having spent too much time under whitewash.

Where’s my companion? I wondered, hoping she had made it out as far as me.

I began studying the surface of the sea for her wetsuit bobbing up and down like a buoy. Then, I saw her. Tumbling over and over again: her feet over her head, her head over her feet. It seemed from my distance that due to her wetsuit, she could not dive deep enough to find the safety of the sand, so instead met the chaotic tumbling of the whitewash again and again. So I returned to the break to help her.

As the next set rose above my head before I had enough time to truly catch my breath, I watched her tumble her way back to the shoreline where she stood up on the sand safe. I turned to face the peaking wake, dove under it one last time to hold the sand, pushed off to surface, and again swam beyond the break.

How do I get back to shore safely now?

My gaze searched where the waves crashed a little lower and a bit later, as my friend’s body, tiny in the distance, walked on the sand, following my direction. She trusted me to find my way back, and the sea to eventually let me.

So, just like the 12-year-old who was taught all those years ago before jumping off a pier, I swam diagonally across the currents cutting through the surf. Behind the waves, I could count the sets and the seconds between the really big ones that had left me without breath. After minutes of memorizing the patterns of the swells, I sprinted during the calm moments before the next currents of chaos crashed. Eventually, the sea calmed for me, the water shallowed, and the sand rose closer to my feet. I could stand, so I set myself free. My friend awaited me, with all those who were watching, ready to hear my story.

And so, I speak.

For the liberation of children.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

Chapter 23: Constancy

“It was my life — like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred.
So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.
How wild it was, to let it be.”1

~ Cheryl Strayed

I returned to Ruth’s new home in the Redwood Grove on the day of her 21 week pregnancy scan. The plan was that I would have lunch prepared, so we could all celebrate the good news, see the ultrasound photos, and eat to our belly’s delight. She walked in the door, her shirt tear-stained, eyes swollen, those sweet high cheekbones hot pink.

“What happened?” I said instantly worried as my happiest friend had never presented so sadly.
“We have bad news,” she replied as she continued to cry. She went on to share her story.

The ultrasound photos showed the fetus with the sweetest pointed nose. Both hands wrapped around its large sac full of organs like a big hug. Caring for it. Nurturing it. Clinging to the balloon outside its body, that was also the insides of its body, for dear life. The baby had an omphalocele. Ruth’s biggest dream would be lost, this baby who who literally wore their heart on their sleeve.

“What are our options?” Ruth asked the doctor.
“You can continue with the pregnancy, take the risk of survival, and go through with the surgeries it would require to sew the sack of organs back into the belly of the baby. Or, you can terminate for medical reasons (TFMR).”

Due to the cost of medical care and her home’s remote location from a local hospital, Ruth knew that her family could not afford the expenses that would be required if this fetus survived birth. So, she chose to abort the pregnancy. She had the medically necessary abortion procedure legal in California, a D&C, to extract her beloved baby, then began the long healing period her body needed to resume regular menstrual cycles. Ruth then waited anxiously as she tried to conceive again with the risk of another fetus having fatal medical issues.

“What do you need?” I asked her as my womb ached now not just for me, but for her as well. The harm I had been holding in my pelvis from family abandonment, and isolation, and the inability to live a normal life after serial rape, now compounded and melded with my best friend’s pain. I had always hoped that somehow the wisdom I had learned from my years of trauma and recovery could somehow be passed down. But I admit to having felt pretty powerless in my ability to support her.

Incest abuse was such a specific wound, a developmental trauma so different from her adult experience. She had so much support and so many resources. I wanted to help her desperately in the same way she had been so supportive to me, but I felt flooded with anxiety about how to do so. However, I knew I couldn’t let my fear of saying the wrong thing, of doing the wrong thing, of not being present because I was afraid, get in the way.

So I committed to just showing up. Just listening attentively. Just asking questions. Just witnessing the experience in its complexity. Just learning with her about how to hold the horror, and the harm, and the hope of an entirely different type of hurt, all at the same time. To offer advice only when it seemed right or when she asked. To say sorry when I said the wrong thing. Just like she had done for me in her own attempts to understand the severity of survival after my upbringing after incest abuse.

TFMR survivors are often isolated from social support due to the nuanced nature of the issue in a very polarized political debate around abortion. Incest survivors are often isolated from social support due to the taboo nature of the issue. Suddenly, the solidarity I felt between serial rape survivors throughout history became felt in my friendship with Ruth. Together, we explored the path of her own healing journey.

“I feel like I lost my happy, my naivety. I’m grieving not just the death of the baby, but a part of me.” She said.

I responded. “Get it out, Ruth. Grieve hard, demand support, advocate for yourself in front of family, friends, physicians. Everyone. Be raw, and real, and vulnerable and don’t worry what people think.” So she did.

“It’s hard and it’s helpful. It’s nice to know I’m not alone, but it’s difficult to have this trauma in common. So many pregnant persons don’t have access to safe abortions due to harmful legislation,” she said.

I validated, “Find community, Ruth. Search online groups and chat forums and connect with peers who get it.” So she did.

“It’s empowering to help those going through what I went through and maddening that this is even still an issue,” she said.

I affirmed, “Give your pain a purpose, Ruth. Do you want to get involved in pro-abortion rights to direct your emotional energy toward access for others?” So we did together because TFMR and incest survivors both suffer more under anti-abortion legislation.

A year or so later, I returned to the Redwood Grove where Ruth and Oliver were awaiting me at their home with H in hand. Their rainbow baby. I approached and gave them a huge hello, while she passed the tiny baby to me who was only six weeks old. For the next few weeks, we were free to go for walks and take naps. When awake, H loved movement even more than their nomadic friend, so I shook them with my foot while they rested in a bouncer. My own nascent identity developed in me, extending from my nursing tree, as H learned to see, smile, and feel their own body. We felt settled together. At ease. As if the discomfort of this developmental stage in both of us belonged to the time we had together. Everyday, I returned to the baby and returned to myself.

This new time was such an intimate space to be invited into their family’s life. Raw and real, Ruth spent most of her time with her breasts out, sleep deprived and hungry. I supported her by pushing potato chips in her mouth one by one as she fed the baby, making her breakfast and lunch, and washing clothes and dishes. I folded her husband’s underwear and showered with her newborn to ensure both were clean. If I questioned whether or not this family trusted me before, any doubt was lost on me now. Only family gets welcomed into spaces like these, and for six weeks, it was just the four of us.

Then one day we introduced H to the sea. The baby rested in my arms, bundled in a blanket, as we walked down the stone steps, then across the soft sand. My feet found the shoreline. I dipped down and touched the water. Then, very gently blessed H’s hands. One, two, three times. A baptism to belonging to the water and the land. After six weeks, I watched baby H go from googly eyed to focused, from serious to giggly, from disconnected to embodied. In just six weeks, I watched myself become clear about who I wanted to be.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

Chapter 22: Solidarity

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”1

~ Anais Nin

A women’s recovery conference was coming to Los Angeles, so I reached out to the organizers and asked for the opportunity to volunteer and attend for free. They agreed and sent me a complimentary ticket. I flew down to LA and by the evening, dressed in a ball gown that I had last worn at my high school winter former, I found myself in a ballroom with over 600 women all recovering from something. This is what recovery could look like within community. Beautiful. Not the isolation I had grown so accustomed to, but a celebration. A model of what could be for incest abuse survivors like me.

Panelists throughout the weekend discussed healing from codependency, sex addiction, drugs, alcohol, physical abuse, eating challenges, domestic violence, the list went on. Here, healing was normalized. But, just like after #MeToo, I kept waiting with bated breath to hear stories of incest abuse spoken on stage. There were breakout sessions for most types of recovery. However, there were no groups for sexual abuse survivors.

Many panelists spoke about sexual abuse as a part of their histories, but it was either an afterthought, or they were just beginning to process it, or they hinted at a history of abuse but weren’t actually allowed to share due to family protections or signed contractual restrictions designed to silence them. Even within a recovery community of 600 women, sexual violence remained a secretive and secondary subject. Incest abuse was not addressed along with other systemic social justice issues. I raged as I returned home from the recovery event in LA and learned more about the history of incest survivors’ disclosures and social silencing throughout history.

In 1880, Bertha Pappenheim, known under the pseudonym Anna O., had been a client of Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer in Germany. She coined the phrase, “talk therapy,” after working with the physicians to contribute to a study that connected her experience of Hysteria with child sexual abuse. The psychoanalysts published what they came to call “Seduction Theory” in a study that suggested that Hysteria was caused by child sexual abuse. They hoped to be celebrated.

Instead a backlash ensued that risked their reputation, as many of the aristocrats wanted the abuse of their own children to remain secret so that they could keep getting away with it. In response, Freud called the survivors liars and presented, “The Oedipal Complex,” claiming that children had sexual attractions to their parents instead of the other way around. This history, coined by Florence Rush, came to be called the “Freudian Cover-Up.”2

A century later, a surge of anti-incest medical research arose in the 1970s-1990’s thanks to the second wave of Feminism, whose focus on preventing rape and treating survivors often centered those who suffered from child sexual abuse. Feminists centered incest abuse as a social problem caused by the violence of patriarchal hegemony in society, institutions, and the family. In many ways, this broad paradigm formed a strong foundation for the anti-child sexual abuse movement at the time, but it restricted the focus on cis-gendered men as perpetrators and people who were harmed on cis-gendered women.

This marginalized a number of populations within the movement, especially boys and men who had been incested, mothers and women who had been incestors, people of color (especially those who identify as multiracial), the LGBTQIA+ population, people who had disabilities, as well as cases of child-on-child sexual abuse (COCSA), and in particular those experiencing Sibling Sexual Abuse/Trauma (SSA/T).

In short order, physicians medicalized the issue of incest, shifting the focus to “The Incest Family,” the causes of abuse by people who harm as illness, and the consequences against survivors as psychological. The medical approach to incest centered family dysfunction and individual survivor responsibility for recovery, while divorcing the issue from societal influence or context. Too often, research arrived at biased conclusions that called out incest abuse in historically marginalized populations — especially communities of color, rural areas, impoverished families, and single mothers and parents — while ignoring the prevalence of abuse in white, wealthy communities. Additionally, pro-incest efforts run by propaganda sought to justify sexual violence within the family in a number of ways. Herman explains:

“As recently as 1975, a basic American psychiatry textbook estimated that the frequency of all forms of incest as one case per million.”3 The same text book goes on to endorse incest abuse saying, “Such incestuous activity diminishes the subject’s chance of psychosis and allows for a better adjustment to the external world.”4

In medical literature in the United States written as recently as the 1980s, researchers still suggested a curiosity around consent, wondering if children were interested in sex with adults, as well as blaming the child victims for the abuse.5 The medical neglect of incest abuse survivors has contributed to our silencing, our lack of safe interventions, as well as our inability to heal and receive justice.

But the resilience of survivors shined, as I reclaimed anti-incest history. A litany of survivor stories came to me. Stories of Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, who both shared their survivor stories through novels and memoir such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Bluest Eye. And Dorothy Alison, who’s Bastard Out of Carolina dissected incest abuse with her stepfather. And the producers of the movie Something About Amelia, which explored a story of father-daugher incest.

The litany continued with the activism of the second wave feminists, who opened over 1000 rape crisis centers, including V (formally Eve Ensler), who’s now published a number of books about her experience as a father-daughter incest survivor. To the work of Ellen Bass and Laura Davis in A Courage to Heal; Christine A. Courtois, who penned, Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy. And the research and writings of Judith Herman, who all advocated for incest survivors during the False Memory Syndrome Foundation’s backlash in the early 1990’s.

The False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) was founded by the parents of Dr. Jennifer Freyd who she accused of sexual abuse and worked tirelessly to convince society and clinicians that the return of repressed memories and Dissociative Amnesia due to child sexual abuse weren’t real.6 When many survivors disclosed to family, friends, therapists, and clinicians, they experienced the retraumatization of disbelief at best, blame at worst, or too often both. This became known as “The Memory Wars” waged between the accusers and accused. Unfortunately, too many individuals and institutions sided with the FMSF.

Today, incest survivors rarely disclose much less scale their stories publicly because we have so much to lose. As Herman explains:

“Those who attempt to describe the atrocities that they have witnessed also risk their own credibility. To speak publicly about one’s knowledge of atrocities is to invite the stigma that attaches to victims. Denial, repression and dissociation operate on a social, as well as an individual level.”7

I had already lost my family, my social capital, my career, my material life, my health, my wealth, my sanity. In this next transition of my life, I could choose to write and speak publicly about my story. I could try and get paid to make this issue more mainstream. But parts of me resisted the work.

We’ve tried so hard to protect our story and now you’re going to share it with the world?!
Safety has been our first priority for so long and now you’re going to let yourself be vulnerable to systems of perpetration that want to silence you?
What if the family sues you? Do you have the resources for that?
But we must. This is who we are.

It was time to begin. I was done making excuses for violence, and I realized that liberation must become a collective conversation. I knew I couldn’t do this alone. A survivor-run organization called The Center for Story & Witness posted an opportunity to apply for a gender-based writing workshop in LA. I submitted my application without expecting to get in; As countless survivors of complex incest situations can attest to, social stigma often leads to rejection and marginalization, even within survivor-focused programs. When an email from the organization landed into my inbox, I drew my mouse over the bolded type and clicked the subject to open it.

“You’re in! ”the message read, and included a number of details like room, board, and schedule.

I took all of my inner conflicts with me as I disembarked from the plane that landed just East of my undergraduate college on the bluff by the sea. The first morning, I arose in a hotel room down the street from the event venue. A number of long, rectangular tables in the shape of a large U sat centered in the meeting space. A few other gender-based violence survivors had arrived before me and found their name tag by their seat. I saw my new name written in beautiful script, walked to my chair, sat down, and settled in. Together, we began chatting as we waited for the other attendees to come in and for the workshop to begin.

Throughout the weekend, we read the works of other social justice activists. We wrote our own pieces to express the realities of our stories, and they were witnessed when we read our writing aloud in the presence of those gathered. In the U-shaped community, in this sacred space, I claimed my calling as an activist, as a writer, and as a survivor. Not because I felt some higher power required it of me, but because of the love, support, and confidence of a community that celebrated me, and I them. Whether or not I was ready, all parts of me were willing. I began publishing my story digitally.

A fellow survivor activist reached out to me. She wanted to meet. So we found a time and place just down the street to share a meal. I sat at the bar awaiting her arrival. Then I saw her. A tall, beautiful woman walked toward me.

“Hi, I’m Shirkydra Roberts,” she said confidently with an outstretched hand.
“Hi, I’m Jo.,” I replied as I timidly offered my own.

We ordered food and drinks then got to talking. While we sipped sparkling water and chewed our salads. We spoke of our shared dreams to create community for incest abuse survivors, as well as the obstacles we both encountered: some similar, others different. We spoke of external barriers like lack of funding and the burden of co-managing income earning and social justice projects, as well as systemic social issues like racism and ableism. We discussed internal obstacles like fear of safety and anxiety. We found communion and allyship in each other and started planning events together.

While my work often combatted the social denial that incest abuse happens in affluent white families, Shirkydra labored to protect herself and her community from racist and classist assumptions of intrafamilial dysfunction and violence. She carried an additional weight of naming that she was still a survivor of incest abuse by people who shared her racial, ethnic, cultural, and class identities.

Jennifer M. Gómez, Ph.D. coined the phrase, “Cultural Betrayal Trauma Theory,” to explain the intercommunal protection from violent oppression that historically marginalized people are forced to focus on, often decentering the safety of individuals within the community itself. Too often in these communities, the existential threat of white supremacy means community cohesion must take priority over protecting those hurt within the community, by the community.8

And yet, the history of incest abuse in the United States connects directly to the rape of enslaved Black people by white enslavers. White slave owners routinely sexually abused the enslaved, or forced reproduction between enslaved people to produce more enslaved children — all who were considered property. Yet the strength of the Black community has driven their liberation movement.

Theirs is the genetic memory of kidnapped Africans jumping from slave ships to a watery grave because it was the last free choice they could make. Of the Maroons, formerly enslaved and self-emancipated, who formed small, self-sufficient agricultural communities. From the abolition of slavery to the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter Movements, Black resistance and resilience has influenced and guided all other social liberation movements in the United States.

Shirkydra wore both the strength and burden of her liberation on her chest. She presented so confidently that she could speak publicly off-the-cuff. My passion for the work drove me forward, but my insecurities and anxieties held me back.

“Jo.,” Shirkydra began. “You can’t wait for your feelings of fear to leave you, just bring them to the stage. Your anxieties, your doubts, your dreams: carry them all with you and just shake while you speak. Don’t you worry, love,” she continued. “I’ll always be there to support you.”

Another survivor had searched “incest abuse articles” on Google and found a few of my recent publications where I shared my story. I wanted my writing to help get the issue of incest abuse elevated into public discourse; she wanted to work to improve prevention efforts. Together, we desired to build a community of anti-incest activists. Incest AWARE was the name she chose for the organization and began to create an alliance of survivors and people who supported us.

We weren’t starting a movement from scratch, but instead giving it a name and continuing the flame carried from generation to generation. The resilience of survivors and allies sustains and drives the movement. From books like Melba Wilson’s Crossing the Boundary: Black Women Survive Incest, to Oprah Winfrey’s disclosure as a survivor of intrafamilial sexual abuse. From the Ojibway community of Hollow Water on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, CA — who produced a documentary with the help of Bonnie Dickie — about how they responded to an epidemic of incest abuse through community-based (as opposed to state-based) transformative solutions,9 to Miss America by Day: Lessons Learned from Ultimate Betrayals and Unconditional Love, penned by incest survivor Marilyn Van Derbur.

From Viola Davis who acknowledged she was a survivor of Sibling Sexual Abuse and Trauma in her memoir, to Lidia Yukavitch’s disclosure of father/daughter incest in her book, The Chronology of Water. From Dr. Gloria González-López, who published, Family Secrets: Stories of Incest and Sexual Violence in Mexico, in 2015, to Amanda Mustard, who produced the documentary, Great Photo, Lovely Life, in 2023, to reveal the child sexual abuse and incest committed by her grandfather on a number of victims.

From Lynn Crook who wrote a book about her successful court case against the father who incested her — only to have the case publicized, twisted, and weaponized by False Memory advocates. From the Independent Commission on Incest and Child Sexual Abuse in France.10 From the End Incest movement in India, and the pleathora of research on Intrafamilial Child Sexual Abuse (ICSA), especially Sibling Sexual Abuse and Trauma.

From every survivor who has come forward publicly, to me, we are still sharing our stories.

I invited a number of activists in the Incest AWARE Alliance to come spend a weekend in Seattle. The activists arrived: one a writer, one a community organizer, one a mindfulness teacher, one a comedian, and me. I picked them up from the airport and immediately felt that same sense of sacredness I used to feel when walking into a new church, or floating in the ocean.

Together we discussed incest abuse without a beat, without a hesitation, without a reservation, without the need for education or explanation. How we’ve recovered from it, what we’ve learned about life through the process, and the work we do as activists. The whole weekend reflected the world as it could be, as it should be for survivors like me, like us: a place of compassion and competency where everyone listened actively and responded proactively.

At the end of the weekend, one of the retreatants planned a yarn activity to close the retreat where we each held the piece of string and answered the question, “What did we learn on retreat this weekend that we want to take with us?” The string rolled to the next person, until we all shared, connecting us by wisdom and yarn, hands and hope.

When the yarn came to me, I spoke of this certain solidarity of incest abuse survivors and the necessity to expand it exponentially. Then the facilitator asked a final question: “I’d like everyone to say one thing they love about Jo. in gratitude for organizing this weekend.” Each person spoke so highly of me during this commencement from a life of emergency recovery. My community centered me, without me even asking. I returned home with a new energy in my bones.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

PART V: HOME

“Perhaps the most revolutionary act for a woman will be a self-willed journey
— and to be welcomed when she comes home.”1

~ Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

Chapter 21: Identity

“When afraid, become a new story.”2

~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Winter came. I needed hibernation and hoped the cool Seattle weather and lingering darkness would calm me down, encourage more sleep. I arose in the morning wanting to go for a walk and grab a coffee. Snow sprinkled from the sky, as I stopped by a nearby cafe, grabbed a cup filled with my favorite morning ritual, then strolled toward St. Edwards: a state park near my home.

Surprisingly, I saw a grotto standing on the ground before me. A replica of the one in Lourdes, but without the statue of Mary. The land and building, once a seminary for Catholic priests, had been repurposed into a public park for play. This place felt sacred, intentional. Like I was standing on holy ground. The empty grotto offered an invitation. The structure of it remained, just like my body, but otherwise it had been cleared out. It was time build a new world within the shell of the old.

I still struggled to regulate the symptoms. The jagged edges and coarse surfaces of my past still rubbed me the wrong way on a day-to-day basis, as I continued to activate and tighten. As I still fought, fled, fuzed, froze, and fawned from the inside out when I confronted social inequities, ignorance, and complacency. And yet, I too had been emptied of so much story. I was in a tomb now, a grotto for healing. My body belonged to a safer base, but my system still needed time to process all that it had been through. Gratitude and grief now shared equal space in my body.

Meaning-making has become an important part of the healing process for individuals and communities who experience trauma and oppression. Due to my Opus Dei-influenced upbringing, I chose to avoid common statements heard in sexual abuse survivor communities that glorified suffering.

“I’m grateful for the abuse. I wouldn’t be who I am if I hadn’t been abused.”
“The abuse happened to me, so that I could help others.”
“I’m only empathetic because I was abused.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”

Survivors have the right to create meaning out of trauma however they like, but my body heaved at narratives that centered abuse as the regrettable but essential impetus for progress. No part of me could ever glorify the violence, nor accept that some loving deity or source willed me to be a victim of such horror in order to use me as a pawn for the greater good. These narratives felt like nothing short of enabling cycles of violence. To me, it smells like the patriarchy. It feels like it too. My senses are now far too attuned to this type of harm.

Then I remembered the message of Father Matthew when he helped me to make sense of the moment I watched the young woman die in the car accident. I imagined what he might say to me in this moment:

“Anne, your story didn’t happen for a reason. God wept with you when you were being abused. But your pain doesn’t have to go to waste. It can be repurposed in any way that you choose.”

Raquel, a new friend I had met on a hiking app, invited me to accompany her to the Hall of Moses in Olympic National Park. The long green moss clung and swung from the tree branches like kids from their parents’ knees. Holding the tension of need and play, the very life of the moss held tight to the tree trunks in a glorious example of interdependency. The tall beings stretched high into the sky. The sun beat down in the space between, leaving an opening just for me.

I walked into the vacancy, spread out my arms with my palms open wide to receive, set my gaze to the sun, and let the heat and light flood my skin with warmth. I could feel the presence of love here, like in Lourdes, like with Father Matthew in the garden, like with Charlotte and Ruth, like with Gertrude.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” I whispered as Raquel arrived at this sacred scene.
“They’re growing from nurse logs,” she responded. “Look at their roots.”

I had been gazing so far up, I had neglected to witness the ground. I looked down to see what she saw. The dignified trees were growing from a fallen being. Dead trunks, uprooted from the earth, now rested on the ground, full of nutrients. Enough for new forms of life to grow out of them, to be sustained by them. The younger tree grew tall and strong from the body of what came before.

Incest abuse feels so much like a type of death. Survival feels so much like living a half-life. As hard as I tried to extricate my story from my body, nurse logs provided a model of complete integration. The death in me and the life in me could coexist simultaneously. Life could receive the nutrient-dense lessons of death: the holding of so much trauma, the hiding it away, and then the endless endeavor to heal. My body could gracefully carry the past, the present, and the future concurrently. This story in my body could be a nursing tree.

March 2020 arrived with Covid-19. That all-too-familiar panic pressed inside my body when I imagined what life would be like unemployed, wearing a mask across my face, isolated for days, months, years. Even more so, I felt flooded with fear, as I considered all of the people, especially children, who would now need to cohabitate with people harming them in communal pods: adult and child relatives and family friends. The escapes of school and extracurricular activities and work and friends’ houses and social services would no longer be available to them.

As the days passed by, answers arrived. My employer kept the cafe open for take-out-orders only. Together, she and I worked to collect donations for charity, as well as offer a respite for masked community members to stop in and grab a drink, engage in a quick chat with others as long as they stood on the stickers stuck onto the floor to separate them by six feet, then continued on their way. The masks felt more comforting than anything, as I could live outside with most of my face covered. My body felt so much more at home in quieter and crowdless spaces where others asked for consent before standing near me and only after sharing where they had been and with whom.

With so much space between society and me, the bodies of others and my body, I began to experience myself differently. I felt surprised to thrive in an introverted space where I didn’t need to socialize much. The makeup I masked with everyday stayed within the bathroom drawers. My long, wavy hair was no longer worth the effort to maintain. The lack of daily touch and hugs from others felt liberating.

As the pandemic protections expanded, a surprising social solidarity grew, as more people seemed to finally understand what so many of us already knew: the pain of chronic mental health conditions and the traumatization of years of oppression and isolation. I felt a little less alone. Checks from the government landed in my mailbox without exchange for labor, while subsidies for my healthcare premium made the management of my brain, body, and being much cheaper. Most importantly, while the entire world had been pushed into a state of emergency, for the first time in my adult life, I felt a new sense of safety and stability.

My brain was just beginning to find a stabler baseline. With the increase of remote work opportunities, I finally landed a full-time writing contract. I could live wherever I wanted. With winter approaching, I feared that the long, dark, and wet Seattle season would interrupt my healing process. So I began to dream.

The part of me raised in Newport Beach envisioned what it might be like to return to Southern California: to spend time in the sun and by the sea in a city built for safe outdoor living during all seasons. My body resisted the idea of moving back to Orange County because much of my family still resided in the area, my parents in that same house on Bunya St. But San Diego sounded nice and a number of old friends who I had reconnected with from high school still lived there. I called one up to ask if he might have connections for housing for six months or so. By the next day, I had a beautiful place to stay in a studio in Encinitas.

As I settled into my new home by my old ocean love, I heard that my parents sold the home on Bunya St. Suddenly, my past felt somehow complete. As if without that house, I could also release the stories, the identities, and the complexities of all who once lived there. I took the proverbial step out from behind from my parents’ knees and tossed out the mask of who I had to be in their company. I studied Queer Theory, changed my pronouns to she/they, and began to emulate the freedom of fluidity in all of my identities. I practiced being in harmony privately and publicly with the queer and courageous nature of my being. I cut my hair into a pixie and threw my makeup into the trash, refused to hide my disability, and began to identify as non-binary.

I embraced my brain with chronic mental conditions and came to call myself disabled and neurodivergent, while I leaned more deeply into a lifestyle of interdependency with supportive community. For six months, I stayed in San Diego just for fun, spending time again with the sun and the sea and reclaiming my love for where I grew up on my own terms. I began to finally feel like me, to recognize myself in the mirror. The presence of Josephine grew within me and I met her in my own reflection. I returned to Seattle, stopping by Ruth’s on the way, and set a court date.

The day finally came for me to choose my own name. I entered the courtroom and let my fingers drag along the wooden pew, conditioned by decades of touch from thousands of human beings. It absorbed me as I absorbed it. This was the closest I would get to a sense of justice from this unjust system. It wasn’t good enough. I deserved better than just leaving my past behind, letting it die with the dropping of my father’s name and become a nursing log inside my memory. I sat down.

Others scurried nervously in and settled around me. Together, we waited until our cases were called. I looked out the window to my right and saw building tiles in the shape of waves, the ocean always present, always reminding me there were reasons worth staying, worth surviving, worth living. Birds flew by to help me remember the cost of liberation and the lightness of flight.

“Josephine Anne Lauren,” the judge called me by my new name. I stood up. I had written the reason for this change on the form. “My father was abusive and I no longer want to identify with his surname.” I half hoped she would ask if I had reported him, if I had received the justice I deserved from the criminal legal system, but she didn’t inquire further. The judge congratulated me on my new name and I left the building.

Finally, I felt ready to live as an integrated being publicly and privately. I am now Josephine Anne Lauren legally, which means, “The Expansion of Favored Victory.”

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

“What is an apology? It is a humbling. It is an admission of wrongdoings and a surrender. It is an act of intimacy and connection which requires great self-knowledge and insight.
I will most certainly come up short.”1

~ V (formerly Eve Ensler)

Ruth’s sister worked as a clinician at a Planned Parenthood. So on the way between her sister’s farm and the apartment awaiting me in Seattle, we stopped by to say hi. I continued to be sexually active and wanted an easier way to stay safe. Birth control pills had impacted my mental health too drastically and the next step was to try an intrauterine device (IUD). I spoke to Ruth all about the reservations whirling through my mind:

“Well, it can’t hurt to try!” Ruth encouraged me. “Besides, I can sit by your side and hold your hand.”

I entered the sterilized room with the long, pleather-clad chair that leaned back, the paper that scrunched loudly when I sat on it, and the various tools the doctor would use laid out before me. A physician’s assistant knocked then opened the door and immediately handed me what seemed to be a business card. I looked at her confused, while she said:

“Are you safe in your living environment?”

Tears welled up in my eyes, as I gazed at the resource before me that provided examples of what lack of safety at home might be: verbal, physical, sexual, and emotional assaults, as well as gaslighting and grooming. No medical physician had ever approached me with this question. I reflected on how far I had come since my upbringing on Bunya St.

“This card tells a lot of the history of the home I once knew, but yes, the home I know now is safe.” I said.
“I’m sorry to hear of your history and am glad you’re safe now.”

Ruth entered the room, and I smiled as I remembered the generosity of the safe place to land that she and her family provided for me. Ruth’s sister, the clinician, followed quickly behind her and explained to me every step of the procedure. Then I laid down as the thin, white paper crinkled beneath my back. I placed one hand over my eyes, while the other one found warmth in the hands of Ruth. The physician pushed the cold duck lips up inside of me and spread open my vaginal canal. I squeezed Ruth’s hand and winced, as the doctor positioned the IUD into my vaginal canal, through my cervix, and into my uterus. My pelvis felt fuller than usual, my belly nauseous, and my lower abdomen strangely crampy, but much to my surprise, my mind was fine.

With a medical team concerned about my safety—a trusted doctor who I knew would care for my body gently, and Ruth’s support sitting next to me—I felt safe to receive this next form of medicine. And with it, I renounced the church’s archaic prohibition against birth control. With it, I turned away from my family who claimed I couldn’t claim agency over my own body. With it, I stepped forward with one more form of protection into the next chapter of my life.

Ruth dropped me off at my new place in Seattle. The apartment sat over a detached double garage next to the landlord’s log cabin on a few acres of land. Although more remote than I liked after my active city life, the trees soothed me, the land held me, and the water awaited me in walking distance. Ruth hugged me goodbye, and I settled into my new home.

Soon after, I walked to the door of my new nanny family and met Kathy, her husband Jim, and Abby and Bradley, their two kids. Their home was decorated simply and warmly with soft neutrals and a big cozy sofa. Abby was the age I was when I began to be abused: two. While Bradley was the age I was when I first had surgery and seizures: six months. The kids and I would spend nearly 30 hours a week together walking to the park to play, snacking, napping, watching TV in between.

Often, Abby sat on the ground and wailed. She threw her feet all around, slamming her bedroom door as hard as she could. My immediate reaction was to walk away. Leave her be. Let her tantrum by herself. Feeling angry, I wanted to scold her for her fit, isolate her until the tantrums stopped, then invite her back in to spend time with Bradley and me when she calmed down. This time though I broke that pattern.

I got down on the ground and just sat there calmly with Bradley in my arms. Abby looked at me so confused. Really, I had no idea what to actually do, except to stay, to be stubbornly and supportively present. She wailed and wailed and wailed and wailed. Then, eventually Abby settled and approached me. She crawled into the other side of my lap and put her thumb in her mouth, while the salt water still dripped from her cheeks.

“I’m ready to play now.”
“Okay.”

Whatever was happening in her body, the cycle had stopped. Spending so much time with these two little ones helped me better understand my own vulnerability as a child: how innocent, how terrified I really was. Big feelings in little children for small things like not getting what they want or being hungry can rattle them, make their hearts race in their chest, cause their bodies to shake and tremble. They are completely dependent on the adults in their company to comfort them back to regulation. Quickly, I came to comprehend how hard a childhood is for those who have chronic illness or are being abused or both, without safe solutions or adults to provide a regulated baseline for them.

As an adult, I just wanted to move on from my past so that I could live my best life, but my inner screamer needed the exact opposite: for me to acknowledge the immensity and intensity of her experience. To sit with her and stay. To be present as her brain grew so fast, as her body carried so much, as her being expanded to hold her entire world all at once. But I couldn’t truly witness her; I couldn’t place her in the context of my life; I couldn’t rationalize with her. Her trauma was pre-verbal. There were no words. All I could do was receive her screams. They were loud and distracting and difficult and unbearable. I felt constantly out of control, that my life was at stake, that I was dying, that I was a problem, and that it would never change. Everything felt fixed and fatal all at once. All of the time.

So, just like Abby was teaching me, I began to just sit with this part of myself and listen to her wail. Without trying to fix her, or convince her, or calm her down. I allowed myself to be present with her until she was finally ready to tell me in any way she could what both of us needed to hear: how much it hurt. All of it. That no matter how much I didn’t want to be a victim, I was in fact a victim of so many horrific things. That no matter how hard I tried to fix it, that my experience could never be fixed. Instead, I needed to learn to hold these complex, gridlocked parts of myself with love. I wanted her history erased in me. She wanted for me to integrate our story, to remain in our body. Together, we needed to learn to regulate and play.

“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “For everything.”

Eventually, I moved on from caregiving to serving at restaurants to ease the emotional intensity of my day-to-day life. Before I left, I gifted Abby a map, so she could always follow me wherever I went. And to Bradley, I handed off Bear-Bear, so that he could have a constant of comfort. Besides the long-term hand-me-downs caused by the consequences of incest, I now was free from anything that my family gave me.

I noticed that a major airline was establishing a new route from Seattle to London. A round trip flight cost half the price. I bought a ticket and jumped on board. The airplane landed and I rushed to the connecting train station. Curious and cautious, I hopped on a train, trusting that it would lead me exactly where I wanted to go: Hamburg, Germany. I was here to check a box off my bucket list: go to Europe and visit Gertrude, my childhood au pair. My guardian.

After Gertrude left our family, her wild ways continued as she moved to Hawaii to follow a lover and work at a German bakery. Eventually, she returned home to a small farm near Hamburg, got married, and started a family of her very own. Now over 30 years later, she and I held each other once more on the train platform in Hamburg. We both became teary eyed, then walked through the cool air into the city.

Hand-in-hand, we wandered into an old, underground bar. I ordered sparkling water, and Gertrude got a beer. Immediately, she helped me understand more about the child I was. So shy and observant, I barely spoke until I was three and spent most of my time hiding behind my parent’s knees. This way of being still felt so present in my body, as if I were still hiding within me, waiting to be safe, waiting to be seen.

Then, we shared the stories of our lives since we had last seen each other nearly 20 years before. Her life lived alongside her husband and her sons in her farm community in Germany. My liberation journey, health and financial challenges, and commitment to sharing my incest abuse story. I had disclosed this to her a few years before over the phone. In person now, we finally had the intimate opportunity to talk about what happened.

“I’m so sorry that I didn’t protect you, Annie,” she began.

Gertrude apologized for not knowing about the abuse and doing nothing. What my father should have done, what my mother should have done, what my brothers should have done. Here she was, taking responsibility where my own family left a vacancy in my story.

She continued, “I’m so proud of who you’ve become and the life you’ve created for yourself. You should be too.”
“I’m trying,” I said bashfully.

I returned home reflecting on the power of apology that had now been modeled to me. Memories of my own harmful actions flipped through my mind like an old Rolodex. The people I had left behind without explanation, the silent treatment, the build up and burst out of frustration followed by the quick severing of relationships. The depression that overcommitted then under-delivered; the liberation that sought to free me first regardless of who I hurt; the self-centered nature of recovery. The entitlement to being cared for by others without reciprocity; the inability to respect very clearly communicated boundaries. Yes, I was hurt. Yes, I was healing. And yes, I was responsible for my actions along the journey.

So, I scrolled through my contact lists, reached out to many who I had wronged, and asked for consent to communicate an apology. If granted, I expressed the five steps: I recognized that I caused harm, I took responsibility for the way I caused harm, I expressed remorse for the harm I caused, I offered and asked for ideas of restitution, and I committed to not repeat the harm in the future. Instead, I promised to honor my constraints and commit to what I could follow through on, communicate early and often in conflict to invite deeper connection, ask for help from community to manage my disability, and practice a way of being that both honored my needs and the needs of others.

Some forgave me and we rebuilt our relationship. Others accepted my actions as symptoms of liberation from an impossible situation, and still others remained distant or silent. I am still making peace with my decisions, grieving the loves I lost, and creating new and deeper connections built with better tools and intention. And so, my healing continues.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

“I allowed myself to quit striving for some destination and owned my story with grace [...], to grieve the childhood I had lost, [...] understanding there may never be a finish line.”1

~ Jane Epstein

My company celebrated me for being the youngest leader on the team. Mentored by seasoned professionals in the industry, I felt confident I would succeed in my newly-created role at the company. But nearing the six month mark, things began to change rapidly. Twenty years behind those hired in the same role, I was too young and too inexperienced to succeed. The age-old expectation to “leave your personal problems at home,” didn’t work for me as my brain, body, and being went with me wherever I went. Too many identities lived within me all at once, and I didn’t seem to have the ability to compartmentalize them.

“Take your brain out and leave it on the couch, Annie!” I heard my father say in the back of my mind through my bosses expectations to leave my mental health conditions at home.

Many days, I spent time in the bathroom silently screaming in a single stall, trying to regulate after feeling activated by power dynamics imposed by my male superiors, the silence required of me to succeed, the reality I was dependent on this salary to survive.2 So much of the male-centered hierarchy of professional life felt like the institution of my abusive family. I always feared I’d be fired just because I had a bad mental health day, week, year. The system would abandon me if I couldn’t keep up, and I couldn’t keep up.

I pulled off someone’s version of a perfect life on the outside with my beautifully designed apartment by the sea, friends who loved me unconditionally like Peggy, safe lovers to explore my sexuality, and healing modalities that helped me to find a stabler baseline with my body. But my life’s infrastructure all remained dependent on this job I couldn’t manage in an environment run by men conditioned in the same patterns of power over/power under dynamics as my father, who expected the same silent submission from me as my mother.

Many incest survivors struggle to find financial safety outside of economic dependency on welfare systems or past and present family members.3 Some survivors discover self and social validation in activities outside of the house and family, and so become perfectionist and over-performing high-achievers who are vulnerable to chronic stress and burnout. Yes, the incest ended, but the lack of social, medical, and financial support keeps many of us trapped in a state of survival for life. The impacts of incest abuse extend beyond victims, as child sexual abuse costs US taxpayers billions of dollars each year in medical, welfare, legal fees, and productivity losses.4

With no plan, I quit my job. My brain began to shut down again, and the depression returned. I found my way back to bed and prayed for another miracle. I had two months of savings and paid out vacation days to figure out what to do next. Although I applied for more positions in the design industry, my body—like it did when I left teaching—knew that I couldn’t go back, even if I didn’t yet know how to move forward.

A friend invited me to her wedding, so I squeezed my body and my bags through the airplane aisle to find my seat on the way to Nashville, TN. Then, I saw her. The woman sitting next to me on this journey. Stick straight, brown bangs fell flat across her forehead. Her cheekbones were small and high. Her skin glowed. Her jovial spirit emanated from the inside out. She seemed to be nearly the same age as me.

“Hi, I’m Ruth!” She shared far too enthusiastically.
“Hi, I’m Anne,” I replied, not meeting the gleeful twinkle in her eye.
“You look really familiar,” she continued.
“I guess I just have one of those faces,” I replied, disappointed that this conversation wasn’t over.
“No…are you going to Martha’s wedding by any chance?”
“I am.”
“Me too! We met at her Bachelorette party.”
“Oh, right!” I replied performatively, trying hard to match her energy, then got trapped in a chat.

Surprisingly, the conversation quickly shifted from annoyance to fun. Her cheerfulness felt contagious and spread into me like the disease I deeply needed: play. We landed, attended the various wedding activities, then filled the space between with recreation. Soon we called each other best friends, but Ruth became so much more than that. She—a maker of children’s toys and her husband in tech—was full of resources and economic confidence, so being in her orbit also opened professional opportunities to me. While I was shaking with my sudden departure from salaried life and expected paychecks without other opportunities, her community of makers always needed help. So she taught me how to start my own business then plugged me in to client opportunities.

I started picking up side gigs to pay the bills: nannying for Ruth’s friends, manufacturing for her company, renting breast pumps at a children’s hospital she had been connected to through a mom’s group. In between, I drove for a rideshare company to keep food in my fridge and gas in the tank. Friends lent me money when I needed it to help me stay afloat financially. Suddenly, I felt like I was connected to an economy of reciprocity built on generosity. This economic interdependency made my disability so much easier to hold.

Entrepreneurship, although less stable, afforded me the time and space I needed to manage my chronic health conditions, to take breaks, to work around my brain’s best hours. But I couldn’t sustain the cost of my current lifestyle picking up side gigs. My lease ended in January and once again I needed housing.

“Come live with us!” Ruth generously invited me to stay with her family. Her husband, Oliver, agreed. I gave away or sold most of my things, drove to Ruth’s on the San Francisco Peninsula, blew up an air mattress, and called her home office by day my new bedroom by night. Every morning, I woke up and rode Ruth’s bike to the train to Downtown San Jose where I worked for a pop-up accessories shop. I sat in the often empty retail space daydreaming about what was next for me. A memory continued to return to me, not of trauma, but of former dreams, of nascent possibilities.

Around eight years old, I scurried into my mother’s bedroom after having an epiphany. “Mom!” I squealed enthusiastically, “I’m going to be a writer when I grow up!” She sat in bed, gazed at me with a strange perplexity and a brief nod of the head saying, “That’s great, Annie.”

Hardly enthusiastic, definitely not believable. Dismissive, as she had been with so many of my dreams. I dragged my feet through the walk of shame back to my bedroom and dreamed alone of my future success.

After work, I biked and trained back to Ruth’s where we ate, and dined, and watched movies. The first time I saw Josephine March — played by Wynona Ryder in the second cinematic rendition of Little Women — strut across the screen in her mustached-wearing-constumed confidence, I felt seen. Her search for position in an industry and society designed by and for men and her cravings for the comforts of class enjoyed by so many others surrounding her. Her tom-boyish character in a gender-based social system that demanded she dance, and marry, and procreate, when she wanted to walk, and weave stories, and write.

Josephine’s fictional example inspired me to cease conforming or confining myself to one of the paradigms or archetypes taught to me all those years ago by society, the Catholic church, and Disney. Instead, I could be a little bit of everything. Like Josephine, I could be free with my frustration, and my creativity, and my devotion, and my dreams. My imaginative schemes and pendulating mood swings. My love for home and the unknown. I named my inner screamer Josephine, which means, “The expansion of being,” after this fictional character who so inspired me.

I arose one morning and caught up on my social media apps before jumping out of bed and onto the bike to head to the pop-up shop. With a few taps and swipes, Facebook launched on my phone and I saw #MeToo splattered across the feed repeatedly.

What’s #MeToo? I thought to myself, as I quickly Googled it.

The results said, “#MeToo is a public acknowledgement that someone has been sexually abused.” The metoo. Movement was founded by Tarana Burke in 2006.5 I dropped my phone in shock, scooped it back up, and swiped through my screen to study exactly who had posted it. Then I joined the movement publicly by pasting “#MeToo” on my own feed. I followed the media’s portrayal of the movement for weeks and listened as sexual violence in the workplace and churches, extracurricular activities and by strangers, were represented in newspapers and on TV.

What about incest?

For months, I waited with bated breath until sexual abuse in the home was mentioned on global platforms. But it never was. In a rage, I biked to the train, and sat in the shop seething. When I could, I returned to the water to release the energy trapped in my body all these years, submerged under the supportive sea, and screamed at the top of my lungs. My inner screamer, formally silent, suddenly found her voice and finally felt ready to share her story. The breaking of communal silence around the global crisis of sexual violence helped her to feel that she might be heard.

I could no longer keep her in hiding, a secret once as deeply buried as my memories. I had to write. I had to share. I had to put my inner screamer’s new found willing voice on paper. I wanted the microphone. I wanted to stand up on stage. I wanted to lead a group to help women heal from incest abuse. It was my time to be like my father’s father, Pops: to become the storyteller. To place my body and our story in the center of a room on a stool and shout from the rooftops:

INCEST IS REAL!

I found a local writer to ask him for an informational interview, so I could learn not just how to write about incest, but also how to make money doing it. In advance of our meeting, he asked to review a piece of my writing, so I penned and then sent him my first blog post. We sat down for a coffee. He advised me:

“Get a job, Anne, and build your writing platform on the side. It won’t be easy, but I’m confident from what I’ve read that you will succeed.”

Inspired by the future and burdened by the present responsibility of it all, I returned to Ruth’s and continued organizing the next steps of my life. A few weeks passed until the next vision became clear in my mind. A friend’s friend offered me a room for less than half the cost I had been paying in San Francisco. It was located at the Northeastern-most tip of Lake Washington near Seattle. Nate, my hiking brother from LMU — who I was afraid to sleep next to in a tent all those years before — lived in the area and loved it. So, I thought it’d be worth a try.

“Friend, I decided I’m moving to Seattle!” I announced to Ruth, while still breathing heavily right off the bike ride home from the pop-up shop job.
“Really?!” Ruth replied enthusiastically. “If you don’t mind a bit of a detour on the way up, I’ll drive you!”

Her sister lived in Western Washington and Ruth had been meaning to visit. So, I had a place to live and a ride to Seattle. Following the path of least resistance and leaning into the generosity of this new friend, off to WA we went.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

“I touch my own skin, and it tells me that before there was any harm, there was miracle.”1

~ adrienne maree brown

I applied for a leadership position at a local corporate design dealership and got the job. With a large increase in salary, I was able to move to my dream neighborhood in the Marina District, found the perfect apartment with hardwood floors and a bay window, and arose everyday to make an impact as a leader at my new company. I bought all the nice clothes and the pretty furniture, I grew my hair out long and swam regularly with friends in the sea. My sun-kissed skin glowed. This was my chance to finally succeed at normalcy: to fit in, to keep up with the expectations of my peers, and the economic class I was raised in. To be happy, finally.

A new friend Peggy asked to come visit me by the shoreline and insisted we rent wetsuits, so we could swim with the surfers and play in the waves. I hated the idea. Squeezing my sensitive skin, my weighted body, into a constrained space made me shake. It would certainly serve as protection from the cold, but also potentially hold me in a trapped tension I might not be able to tolerate. But Peggy’s enthusiasm always tempted me beyond the limitations I perceived of my body and its fears that flooded me.

“Let’s just try it!” She announced confidently, fearlessly. We showed up to the surf shop, dropped our credit cards, and I quickly took my rubber suit into the changing room.

Okay, one step at a time.
First one foot, then the other.
One ankle, then the other.
One thigh, then the other.

Over my hips.
Over my torso.
Left arm pulled through.
Right arm pulled through.
Now the shoulders.

The suit was on. I scanned my body and realized the discomfort felt manageable.

“Peggy, I need help with the zipper.”

She entered the dressing room, turned me around, grabbed the long lanyard, squeezed the suit even tighter, and zipped me up. I shuffled less like a human and more like a penguin in my new, thicker skin that would make me buoyant. Quickly, my feet found the sand once again. The familiar met me in all this strange newness. This version of me. This land. This trauma processing. This career path. This community. Safety. Peggy standing beside me. The sea lapping, waiting. I entered my old love.

My feet flushed with cold, while my ankles stayed warm. Then my legs. Then my pelvis. Then my waist. Then my breasts. Then my neck. All warm. My arms came down. My hands knew the chill. Then my face.

“Ahhhhhh!” I screamed under water. The contraction of my face muscles ached. The trauma held in these parts released so suddenly. The sound of my screams softened within the water. Here I could yell out loud. I surfaced silently then subsumed under the sea once again. Another scream. The rage releasing. The trapped feelings. The reelings and rhythms of years of hidden violations becoming known. My face, witnessed by the water. The water, a safe place to let go.

“Are you okay?” Peggy asked, as I was spending a little too much time under there.
“Yes,” I lied, while we shifted the spirit of the day to play.
“Peggy, watch this,” I called as I threw my hands in the direction of the sun, leapt into the air, and prepped my belly to flop hard on the surface of the sea.
“Annie, nooooo!” Peggy screamed, but it was too late.

I landed hard on a sand dune that I couldn’t see. The breath knocked out of my belly. I choked and held my body, laughing hysterically, trying to catch my breath. Peggy giggling with me and at me simultaneously. Together, we swam further, deeper, under the waves, finding our bodies out past the wake. Chasing the water, surfing the whitewash, flirting with the surfers, reuniting with the sea, all with a friend. For the first time in a long time, my body felt joy again.

We returned to Peggy’s for dinner after shedding ourselves of our newfound skins, determined to buy wetsuits and return to the water more frequently now. Peggy’s home was full of hand-me-down furniture: chests, beds, dishes, and art gifted from family. Mismatched and imperfect, her home didn’t compare to mine aesthetically. My apartment was full of brand name, perfectly coordinated furniture in monochromatic ocean tones with ivory and sand tan hues. But hers reflected the love of her family, the generosity of a community that gifted her the overflow of their abundance. Misshapen and misplaced and full of memory, her home glowed with a different kind of beauty, and left me longing for all I had lost.

“So, update me,” Peggy said while beginning dinner prep. “Are you dating anyone?”

I hesitated. I yearned for a romantic partner, but by this time I was so far behind my peers when it came to sexual development. While my friends spent their college years and early twenties dating, marrying, building families and careers, I mostly navigated the chaos of recovered memories and the process of healing. I was 27 now and still had not had consensual intercourse.

I felt flood when trying to learn and navigate all of these skills as an adult, while also managing the activations of emotional and physical intimacy and the difficulties of attachment to someone new. I had no idea how to approach the disconnect between experienced lovers and my amateur body healing from serial incest abuse.

“I joined online dating apps and have been matching with some people,” I responded shyly then quickly changed the subject.

As I drove home, I reflected on what might be the safest access point to sexual exploration at this time in my life considering my constraints. Maybe self-pleasure was a simpler place to start. So I decided that the following weekend, I’d take myself on a date to a sex shop.

I held my breath in my chest as my feet found the front door. Fake penises, edible undies, and luxurious toys of all shapes and sizes passed before my eyes igniting a thousand curiosities. I knew I needed to ease in and had no idea where to begin. The store clerk witnessed my intimidated look and hurried over to check on me.

“Hi! How can I help you today?”
“Hi,” I addressed her trembling. My voice cracked with deep and shameful shyness.
“I’d like to explore your vibrator options,” I sputtered reluctantly.
“Great! We have a variety of toys!” She replied with an alarming amount of enthusiasm.

She led me over to a glass case filled with phallic shaped wands in pastel pinks and purples. Some small, some medium sized, others massive. It was all very intimidating.

“Do you know what size you’re looking for?” She continued.
“Soooo,” the shaking became more severe. “I’ve never had one before, so I’m not sure. Can I share something personal with you?”
“Of course,” she looked at me with care.
“I’m an incest abuse survivor and am actively working on healing. I’d like a vibrator that will help me experience pleasure without being too activating or painful.”
“Ah,” she responded. “Well, I’m so sorry that happened to you. We do have a few solutions.”

She met me with confidence and competence, then showed me a wand that elongated and shortened, widened and shrank, so that someone could explore the comfort of different sizes and adjust accordingly. Then, we discussed the external vibrators made for clitoral stimulation without the need to penetrate. That felt like the right place to begin, so I bought one, went home and began exploring my body all by myself.

It felt stimulating, empowering, healing to know that my body was made for pleasure, my pleasure specifically. That I could manage my sexuality by myself, while experiencing the trauma reactions and pain at my own pace, without the complex emotions of relational intimacy and the need to communicate such stigmatizing subjects with someone I didn’t yet trust.

One morning at work, a guy walked into the office with the tightest dress pants I had ever seen. He was around my age, just a bit taller than me, fit, with olive skin, and light brown hair. My colleagues saw me light up when he walked into the room, so encouraged me to help him.

“Hi, I’m Anne,” I began bashfully. “How are you doing today?”
“Hi, I’m Dave.”

The sales process went as usual, while the flirting was unusual. We spent hours together discussing leather options, touring his large apartment, and considering the placement of this iconic piece. I tried to maintain professionality, while my heart beat incessantly in his company. Finally, he chose his perfect piece of furniture and we said goodbye. Inspired by this rush of stimulating energy activated by my client, I jumped onto the dating app and started swiping. Fears filled my mind of how I might answer normal first date questions honestly without oversharing:

“Where did you grow up?”
“Where does your family live?”
“Are you going home for the holidays?”

I practiced various answers that filtered my history with different levels of honesty depending on how much I intuited the listener could receive.

“I grew up in Southern CA, but consider San Francisco home.”
“I have an unconventional family system all over the US!”
“I’m spending the holidays with friends this year.”

Additionally, I knew that sexual violence on dating sites was common.2 So, I navigated this process slowly and cautiously to ensure I stayed safe. Then, I saw him. Dave. My client. He was single. Quickly, I swiped right — we were a match! Immediately, a message popped into my inbox.

“Hey! I can’t believe you’re on here! It blows my mind that you’re single.”
“Aw, thanks! Likewise.” I replied bashfully.
“I’ve been dying to ask you out, but haven’t really known how since we’re always at your work. I’d like to come in this week and ask you on a date the proper way, if you’re open to that?”

Don’t sound desperate. “Sure! I’d love to get to know you better.” My pulse pounded now in more than one place in my body.

We went to dinner a few times and the sexual attraction grew. It became clear that we didn’t share the same lifestyles and a long term fit wouldn’t work, but a casual sexual fling might be of interest to us both. I questioned the values of my upbringing. I had tossed that Abstinence ‘Till Marriage (ATM) card years ago. Dave was physically safe, I didn’t question that, but we didn’t have an emotional connection. He knew of my history and held it well, an unfortunately surprising experience. He also knew I had never had consensual sex and had no interest in pushing me. He understood the desire to have my first time be with someone special. My body felt deeply ready, but my heart wanted more. My desires divided me. Dave came over and closed the door behind him.

“Can I kiss you?” He asked gently.
“Yes!” I expressed urgently.

He pushed me against the back of the door with just the right amount of force, pressed his hips into my torso, and gently let his lips find mine. My body flooded with feeling. Our hands began exploring each other as the kissing grew more intense, deeper. We went to the bedroom.

“These pillows are ridiculous.” He judged, as he threw them onto the floor and out of our way. “Do you want to keep going, or do you want to leave?” I teased, as I pulled him back onto me.

We laid on the bed, my head softening into the mattress. Clothes came off. Bodies turned on. Skin on skin. His body absorbing my body. My body receiving his body. Eventually, we were laying there naked once again. Me wondering about my limits, he respecting whatever I chose.

“I want to have sex,” I expressed.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay!”
“Do you have a condom?”
“No.”
“Fuck.”

The weight of his body collapsed onto mine, disappointed. Of course we weren’t prepared. “I guess we need to go get some!” His tone switched excitedly. We quickly redressed, jumped in the car, drove to the store, bought condoms, headed home, and started all over again.

“Are you okay?” He asked cautiously.
“Yes,” I responded curiously.

Successfully inside me now, he surrendered his weight on top of me. I held him there, feeling the pressure inside and out. He kissed me, while his hips slowly gyrated forward and backward. Pleasure, pressure, no pain. This was what sex was supposed to be. Tears slowly started dripping down my face.

“Am I hurting you?” Dave stopped and looked at me with so much concern it moved me deeply.
“No, I love this,” I confirmed my consent.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

“The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection,
and care, but not cure.”1

~ Judith Herman, MD

As my second school year concluded, my principal and I were both to decide whether we shared mutual interest in continuing my employment contract for a third year. She knew I had been wrestling with my identity as a Catholic and a Feminist, as she had done so in her own spiritual journey.

“Anne, you have to choose. Are you Catholic?” She inquired.

I knew that if I told her the truth I risked losing the economic security I had worked so hard to achieve, as well as left myself vulnerable to the need to return to the support of my family.

“I need three days to answer that question,” I replied to give myself more time.

I laid in bed after work and pondered what my future could be like instead of this: the constant fighting of my values inside of me, the performativity of teaching, and the exhaustion after work. My mind meddled with fabrics and furniture, color and creativity. Art. The process of designing my first apartment, choosing pieces as I could afford them, decorating with different materials and mediums inspired me. Maybe I could pursue a career in the design industry.

I tried to talk myself into leaving the security of my present job: I left my family, I left the church, I could change my career too. Paychecks from the school would continue to meet my basic needs for the next three months of summer leave. Moving away was not an option, as my only support system was still here. My health was still too unstable to have roommates. The dishes still sat high in a pile in the sink, while dust bunnies settled into corner.

I had little time to find a new career path without further education that would provide a high enough salary to afford living alone in the SF Bay Area, one of the most expensive US cities. It was obviously unrealistic, but pressure pushed in my pelvis asking for financial dependency on the Catholic Church. So this became my next dream: to get a job in the interior design industry. I knew that I needed a miracle. I returned to my principal’s office shaking.

“I’m not Catholic, but I’m scared,” I declared. “This is all I’ve ever known. It’s so hard to leave.”

My principal looked at me so firmly that her brow wrinkled between her eyes, “Anne, it will be hard to leave, but it will be even harder to stay.”
“I agree,” I had already learned this after leaving my family.

During my three months of paid summer leave from teaching, I networked extensively and landed a job in retail at a high end furniture store with a low base salary and high commission potential. However, it would take a few more months for my commission checks to begin depositing into my bank account, as well as until my health insurance started at the new company. My COBRA carry over insurance cost so much that I couldn’t afford to pay for housing.

So, I called Charlotte, the mother I nannied for back in Berkeley, and asked if I could live in her home for a few months. She didn’t have an extra bedroom, so I knew this was asking a lot. I would likely sleep on the floor in the playroom, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“Anne, you’re always welcome to stay as long as you need,” Charlotte replied.

The sand, I could feel it. I had someone else’s family to fall back on. Not yet safe nor free, but no longer alone. I left the professional support system provided by the Catholic Church, moved into Charlotte’s sacred home, and got right to work. Within the first few months of high end furniture sales, I was one of the top representatives in my tier. Selling furniture felt natural to me. The commission checks began flowing in, so within a month or two I moved off of Charlotte’s playroom floor and into a new apartment. I chose a small spot near the ocean in Pacifica.

The fog laid heavy on the crescent of land that formed a hillside with scattered neighborhoods against the lapping sea. The sand glimmered in a deep charcoal gray, while green trees cascaded the mountain. The ocean continued to call to me, while my drive home from work passed by a curtain of eucalyptus trees. The scent of their oil settled my stressed nervous system at the end of every day.

But fatigue still burdened my body and limited the luxuries of my new life. I went to work, then returned home, then surrendered into bed like a large trust fall. Sometimes I had the mental and physical energy to cook for myself, most days not. Eating meals out was expensive, but easier for depression management. It cut out so many steps: no need to grocery shop, food prep, cook, or clean dishes. Nothing stacked up in the sink reminding me of how debilitating my depression could be. No shame.

Being in the design industry while I was literally redesigning my life from the inside out felt purposeful to me, intentional, meaningful. Like somehow, I was being gifted all the tools I needed to create a life worth living. A life where I finally felt okay. The Design Thinking process mirrored the pastoral ministry model so closely, except for one major difference. In the Catholic process, pastoral planning leaned heavily on church tradition to resolve contemporary problems. But the past proved incapable of resolving the complexities of the present and much of church teaching still reflected patriarchal, sexist oppression.

In Design Thinking, practitioners used both the patterns of the past and tested innovative ideas of the present to ensure the most accurate and accessible results in the future. The goal wasn’t to make the perfect product the first time, but instead to build a number of prototypes as quickly as possible, learn through the process, then continue to recreate until the design team discovered the desired results. Fail early, fail fast, and learn as much as you can, then keep creating.2 I approached my new life with this same amount of creative fervor and experimentation, ending each day at the sea in perpetual grief.

In my free time, I still spent most of my time at home, so I focused my creative efforts on its design. This place needed to be perfect. My internal and external worlds still felt so out of control. This place though, I could maintain and decorate just the way I wanted. So I found light blue hues and neutral tans to contribute to my calm, to bring the safety of the ocean inside of my home. Soft linens and cotton fabrics soothed my unsettled soul. Reclaimed wooden tables invited old trees to share a space with me. Between my own purchases and furniture winnings from selling so much, I carefully curated this refuge of revival for my suffering parts. Even my inner screamer felt satiated there at times.

Eventually, I landed a promotion in San Francisco at a small corporate furniture manufacturer out of New York, as their SF-based sales representative. One of the leaders at the company took me under his wing and asked me to attend leadership meetings with him to pen notes and help him strategize for the SF Market and a few larger accounts. Being invited to the leadership table certainly had its privileges, but it centered me once again under the power dynamics of the C-Suite made up of mostly heterosexual men.

Frequently, they communicated to me their expectations that I wear more makeup, higher heels. Pretty privilege works in corporate America and they wanted me to lean in. They placed my body in positions to sell products with men who were known in the industry to be sexually unsafe. I was called and offered warnings, but not given the option to not participate.

“Bloom where you’re planted!” My father’s voice repeated in my head, as I both fought and practiced assimilation to this environment built by men like him.

Quarterly, the company flew me to Manhattan and let me stay the weekend to explore. So I did. I walked the Highline, and went to a Broadway show, and ate at the cutest corner cafe. Then, my feet found themselves waiting at the two wounds in the ground where the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers once stood. My eyes watched as water plummeted down the holes in the earth and my fingers found the names of those murdered on that day: September 11th, 2001. I entered the museum as my ears heard the names read of every person dead. I could touch photos of their faces on an interactive screen and learn all about their histories.

The new World Trade Center had been constructed across the street. I waited in line, stepped onto the elevator and watched the walls made of television screens tell me the story of Manhattan’s history. I arrived at the top of the building, stepped onto the platform, and saw my new everything. New Jersey to my right and Manhattan to my left. The Statue of Liberty, holding her own small flame, standing tall below, and the sky extending endlessly above. My knees went weak in inspiration, so I fell onto a bench to take it all in. I observed the expansiveness outside of me and felt the potential of spaciousness open within. I took a selfie and sent it to a friend.

“You look so at home,” she said.

I wanted so much to be like Eve and take a bite of this Big Apple, liberating me from the imagination of perfectionism and sexism, and embracing the messy beauty of a life shared in density and diversity. But my body wasn’t ready. Still too overwhelmed in a city as big as this, with all the buildings, flashing lights, sounds, smells. I nearly passed out on the subway with so many people. As I prepared to leave, I grieved for the necessary separation between this city and me, hoping one day it would be appeased. While now holding the welcoming dreams of this future aspiration, asking for space to exist alongside the traumatic memories of the past and the challenges of the present still burdening my body.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

PART IV: HEAL

“…How do you get through? Sometimes you don’t survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt. It’s not about that solution. It is about being as fearless as one can, and behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances.”1

~ Tony Morrison

Chapter 16: Recovery

“Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom.
But the personality formed in the environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative.
She approaches the task of early adulthood ― establishing independence and intimacy ― burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition and in memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships. She is still a prisoner of her childhood;
attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.”2

~ Judith Herman, MD

~ ~ ~

One weekend, my colleagues and I traveled to a center nestled within the mountains to lead a retreat for the high school students. The lodging rested on land that held a labyrinth in the middle of a field. Labyrinths began during the Middle Ages for religious pilgrims who were too economically impoverished to travel. Pilgrimages provided a way for wealthy believers to be freed from their sins. Labyrinths, on the other hand, allowed those without means to create a circle of stones, begin a prayer, travel to the center, then find their way out again. This process represented a pilgrimage in place, their sins forgiven through their sacred steps.

Before the students arrived, I approached the coil etched into the earth. I stepped through the circular stone creation confident I could find my way through and back out. The labyrinth created a mini-pilgrimage that had a fixed beginning and ending. But processing my family’s treatment of me and healing from sexual and emotional incest abuse didn’t feel as certain as the length of a labyrinth, freeing myself from someone else’s sins. It felt more like an actual maze. A number of ways, tricks, wrong turns, expensive missteps, a directionless game with a clear start and an unclear end. I didn’t know where the center would be, nor how I would find my way out again, but I had to begin. So, my healing journey became a pilgrimage in place.

In my free time after work or on the weekends, I googled “incest abuse” or other common phrases to find support for my recovery journey. Search results mostly showed pornography and chat room threads that encouraged incest. When I researched the offerings of rape crisis centers, I was surprised to find that organizations had no incest-related content or programs on their website either. Instead, the rape support network used a crisis intervention strategy that offered direct services to adults who had been raped recently: awareness education, short-term counseling, healthcare navigation, rape test kits, and legal consultations.3 The first step is to help survivors connect to who they were before the assault, to process the assault, and then to help them recover a new sense of identity, health, and safety after the assault.

However, studies suggest that in cases of intrafamilial child sexual abuse (ICSA), the sexual violence starts younger, is more severe and often serial, as well as continues for longer periods of time than abuse in other contexts.4 Domestic Violence Shelters offer transitional housing and social services for women and kids experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV), while Sex Trafficking Centers do the same for survivors of human trafficking. Children’s Advocacy Centers (CAC) provide similar programs for kids under the age of 18 and their families through group homes, foster, and kinship care.

However, no basic needs nor long-term services were provided to adult victims seeking to liberate themselves from family. The foundation of rape recovery models had so far assumed that survivors had support from family or could support themselves. At least when I was living at home, my basic needs — food, shelter, clothes, and recreational activities — had been provided for me.

Where is the safe place to land for sexual abuse survivors by family members? When our bodies fail us, when our families abandon us, when institutions betray us, where can we go?

I started at another physician’s office. “Do you have or have you had any of the following conditions?” The form required my medical history. So, I filled it in.

Acne - Check
Anxiety - Check
Fatigue - Check
Insomnia - Check
Suicidality- Check
Back pain - Check
Pelvic pain - Check
Depression- Check
Night terrors - Check
Digestive stress - Check
Food sensitivities - Check
Emotional dysregulation - Check
Self-harm - Check

“Anything else you’d like to add?” I wrote in the notes below: survivor of surgeries, seizures, and serial sexual abuse by family members. According to studies, all of my symptoms were common for incest abuse survivors. Incest has negative neurological, psychological, and physiological impacts. A nervous system that has been flooded with stress hormones throughout child development due to abuse can struggle to find a regulated baseline and lead to both over or under activity, as well as skin and heart issues, depression and anxiety, digestive stress and chronic pain, increased rates of suicidality. Incest can be fatal. If not immediately, then slowly taking years off of a victim’s life.5

“Emergency contact?” My heart fell into the pit of my stomach. I didn’t have one. Loneliness still rested heavily within me. Of course, this was normal after leaving my entire family to seek safety, but I hadn’t thought about how foundational family would be in navigating so many day-to-day life activities. Family-related questions were asked so frequently, even security screenings on websites asked about family histories.

So I called Charlotte — the mother of my nanny family back in Berkeley — to see if she’d replace my mother as the person to call for my emergency contact. Thankfully, she agreed. But when I took the list of my symptoms to doctors — some covered by health insurance, but many not — I continued to be met with less than helpful solutions.

In an in-patient model, various experts in clinical areas work together to help the patient’s brain, body, and being, and then find a manageable baseline. Conversely, the out-patient model puts the responsibility of continued and connected care on survivors. It’s up to them to advocate for the treatment that they need and keep their numerous doctors informed of their process. For many incest survivors, this feels like a full-time job. In my case, the network of appointments, test results, and records got lost between the various medical systems, constantly keeping me waiting for more information, or on phone calls trying to make sense of the process.

One physician told me dismissively, “You’re too young to feel this way.” Another doctor told me to just keep talking about the trauma.

But who was I supposed to talk to?

Although the issue of incest has always been taboo, the word itself was used regularly in medical, social, and educational settings before the 1990’s in the United States. Often patient intake forms, non-profits, and programs asked about or specialized in the care of victims of incest. The largest anti-rape organization today, RAINN — the rape, abuse, incest, national network — was founded in the early ‘90s.

However, due to backlash, the issue of incest became so stigmatized that funders restricted resources and social, medical, and academic settings ceased to focus on the issue.6 The word itself was nearly erased from daily usage, including by the lips of even those experiencing it. The anti-sexual violence movement shifted focus away from the home and focused on abuse by strangers, trusted people in a victim’s life outside of family, and the prevalence of sexual violence within the cultural dynamics of institutions. Without recent prevalence data, funding, and language, many victims and upstanders don’t know how to prevent, identify, or intervene in cases of incest. The lack of training in medical, social services, and educational contexts leaves professionals without the tools to help victims and survivors within their care.

Desperate to find options, I continued to seek solutions, most of which I had to pay for out- of-pocket. Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs were the first alternative healing modalities I explored after earning a more stable paycheck. I laid there with needles poked all over my skin, while emotions traveled through my body like I had never felt before. An ocean of grief poured out of me with the words:

Annie, you’re so hard on yourself. I could hear a voice of empathy settle into my mind. Be gentle. You’ve been through so much. Love yourself through this process.

It was as if the needles in my skin poked holes in the wall of the emotional dam I had built in my body to survive. The problem was that I didn’t know how to hold, how to heal, nor how to love myself. How to gently let out all that emotional water. After the session, my acupuncturist removed the needles and sat me down.

“Your gut and your brain are intimately connected,” she explained. “So considering all your body has been throught, it makes sense that both are under a significant amount of stress.”

She loaded me up with herbs poured into pills to take throughout the day to heal my gut from its weight. To release the shit — literally and figuratively. The toxins of trauma trapped in my body. Daily, I popped these pills before meals, with meals, after meals, at the next meal. Embarrassed, it was a constant reminder that I was sick. I knew no other 24 year olds required to take this many supplements. I was different and hated myself for it.

My acupuncturist recommended me to my next physician, Dr. Jeanette, an EMDR therapist (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), to help me navigate the twists and turns in this internally unsafe environment, while simultaneously adjusting to adult life without family. I walked up to Dr. Jeanette’s front door. She opened it and welcomed me in. I loved her the moment I saw her. She was tall and slender with beautiful blond hair. A former swimmer in her sixties, she wore straight legged jeans, a pressed Ralph Lauren collared shirt, and Ed Hardy kicks.

I crossed the threshold of her front door and sat in the blue leather chair, then pulled a blanket onto my body for comfort, mostly to hide my anxiety as I prepared myself to shed my skin and share my vulnerabilities with yet another physician. A massive Great Dane therapy dog laid to my right, while Dr. Jeaneatte sat before me in an old wooden rocker with her clinical folders on her lap.

“What is the safest place within your memory?” Dr. Jeanette asked kindly.
The answer arose immediately, “The ocean.”
“Whenever you’re afraid, imagine yourself there.”

Dr. Jeanette taught me that imagining a peaceful place where one feels safe tricks the brain into believing it’s actually safe, so the body can learn to regulate. Quickly my mind began to spend the most amount of time with the ocean, and my body to remember what it was like to be back at the beach where I first felt loved.

Growth felt steady, but too slow. The urgency of healing still rushed through my brain, body, and being like water after a dam removal. It was overwhelming. Through self-study, I began to learn more about the science behind my symptoms. The brains of incest survivors often show damage in the CD45 RA-to-RO ratio compared to those raised in safe family systems. CD45 cells serve as the memory of the immune system. There are a few types of CD45 cells including RA and RO cells. RA cells activate by previous exposure to threat, while RO cells are prepared to manage new threats that the body has not yet met. The ratio between them shows the balance or imbalance between the brain’s ability to perceive present threat and prepare for future trauma. In the brains of incest abuse survivors, the proportion of RA cells largely overcomes the RO cells, meaning we are prepared to defend ourselves from threats even during neutral circumstances and often won’t react when when new threats do occur.7 As Herman explains:

“After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.”8

A feeling of safety, the creation of a stable internal baseline, must be practiced by survivors daily. The challenge is that the brain also interprets anything unfamiliar as unsafe. Often, the body’s stress response — after years of captivity with no ability to fight the person perpetrating them — begins instead to attack itself. It’s as if the nervous systems of incest survivors are caught in a constant state of tumbling, without knowing that the sand exists beneath us to find relief, as if we never actually learned what safety is, what safety feels like, what safety should be.

After years of developmental trauma, the familiar that felt safe was managing the chaos of incest, while the work to liberate and the peace to be well felt so foreign. So, while I was teaching my brain to feel safe, I was also fighting for it to let go of the home it had known, as well as find and feel comfortable in the unknown, or at least tolerate it. After a few weeks and lots of tests, Dr. Jeanette finally diagnosed me with:

Anxiety Disorder
Major Depressive Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

She reminded me that the incest abuse was not my fault, but that healing was my responsibility. That my brain could change through a process called neuroplasticity, and that many of my symptoms could cease. If I invested in the work to heal, then I would get well. She also recommended I see another therapist simultaneously. Dr. Jeaneatte wanted our focus to stay in processing the past, but I still needed support to manage the debilitating difficulties of my life in the present.

So I found another therapist, whose name also happened to be Anne. She worked at a preschool, so toys and a sandbox covered her therapy office. Together, we played with characters and symbols, myths and metaphors. Through play, Anne could access my inner screamer. Non-verbal, this part of me needed different tools to communicate, so instead of words we used colors and coordinated dolls, sounds and symbols, helping my inner screamer to shape sense around her own experience with the tools only she had access to. Anne, knowing how expensive treatment was for survivors, charged me only $5 per session.

Still the work rarely felt worth it and suicidality still tempted me. Day after day, I knew what I was recovering from, but with all of the disillusionment of the reality of adult life, I couldn’t help but wonder:

What was I recovering for?

Morning came and I arose and drove to the high school to work like I normally did: sleepless, tired, and uncertain about how I would make it through the day. There were two cars far in front of me: an SUV and a crossover. Suddenly, a sedan ran the stop sign on the street perpendicular to ours and crashed head on into the SUV. The crossover then rammed the SUV from behind, spun into oncoming traffic, and finally stopped at the curb across the street.

As the sole witness of the accident, I pulled over immediately. First I called my school to tell them I’d be late, while running to the white car. Through the window, I saw a young woman: her lower body still sat on the driver’s side, while her upper body laid straight across the passenger’s seat. It was clear to me that she had died on impact. I checked the passenger door to see if I could open it. It was locked.

There’s nothing you can do for her.

While I called 911, a young girl in a plaid uniform skirt that showed she was a student from my school exited the crossover across the street. I ran to her. She recognized me, threw her arms around my shoulders, and called me by my father’s last name in a tone that said, “Thank you for being here.”

As the ambulance and police arrived, I approached the girl in the SUV, who also happened to be wearing a uniform skirt from my school. She froze in shock and said nothing. The dispatcher called me over. With fumbled words, I tried to explain what happened:

“The white car just flew out of nowhere and hit the black car.” The student in the CRV had a different story so naturally, I became uncertain about mine. But that image melded into my mind: the visual of a sedan running a stop sign and ramming into the SUV. The image of a young woman sprawled across the passenger seat.

Eventually, I learned that the woman in the white car had, in fact, died on impact. She was 24 years old, the same age as me. Instantly, it was as if a switch flipped in my body. My desire to fight for my life reignited. That flame that continued my prayer in Lourdes lit once more. I went to work shaking. My principal gave me the rest of the day off. Immediately, I called Father Matthew. We couldn’t sit in the garden of the Peace House in El Salvador, but we could still meet face-to-face virtually.

“I watched a woman my age die,” I cried.
“I’m so sorry, Anne. Are you okay?” He asked compassionately.
“I can’t make sense of this experience,” I explained. “I was thinking about ending my life and watching her die changed my mind. I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, and I don’t want to glorify her death to make sense of this new life within me. I don’t know what to believe.”
“Anne,” Father Matthew began. “I also believe this didn’t happen for a reason, but her death didn’t need to go to waste. It sounds as if you were there to receive her life’s energy.”

I sought more healing modalities like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). However, I quickly suspected that the practices the therapist taught me were actually just encouraging me to pretend I was okay: to try and be anxious “later in the day,” to practice normative social behaviors even if they felt unnatural to me, exhausting to me, or even harmful for me.

“You have to do the work!” The therapist demanded.
“The work isn’t working,” I replied.

As my healing process plateaued and symptoms continued, I found research that proved the efficacy of clinical PTSD treatments had also stagnated and were only known to be suitably effective for two-thirds of participants who have access to care.9 Although some primary therapeutic practices were helpful for adult-onset trauma, those same tools were significantly less helpful for childhood-onset trauma.10 For survivors of various sex crimes, many methods of psychological trauma treatment (e.g. CBT, EMDR, etc.) were effective for only 50% of those who have PTSD.11 As a child-onset, serial sex crime survivor, I was one of the 50% of patients who had access to care and treatment-resistant symptoms.

The diagnosis I came to find that best suited me was called Complex-PTSD.12 In 1992, Judith Herman proposed it as a distinct diagnosis for people who have experienced serial violence over long periods of time. Although similar to PTSD, it had different symptoms and needed updated solutions. But the condition has yet to be added to the DSM-5, officially limiting believability, research, and training on the subject. Besides, many survivors challenge the language of “post-traumatic stress.” For those of us who suffer continuously due to social injustice and neglect, the trauma never actually ends, but changes. Everyday, we’re constantly managing the consequences of complex trauma. So I stopped trying so hard to fix myself and shifted my focus to finding myself, discovering some sort of life that actually felt worth living.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

“The legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state, but not to protect women or children from the superior power of men. It therefore provides strong guarantees for the rights of the accused, but essentially no guarantees for the rights of the victim. If one set out by design to devise a system for provoking intrusive post-traumatic symptoms, one could not do better than a court of law.”1

~Judith Herman, MD

My body and voice shook in unison as I called the local police station to report the instances of incest. Quickly, I was told I had to drive 400 miles South to Newport Beach to report where the crime took place. So I did, even though I couldn’t afford the trip financially or energetically. Even though I had been raped all over the United States because I could be harmed whenever I was with my father and we traveled often. I drove all the way back to Newport, opened the door, and walked up to the female administrators at the police department.

“I’d like to report a crime: sexual violence by my father, grandfather, and an uncle during childhood,” I disclosed to them.
Without a beat or note of sympathy the woman behind the desk replied with a look of utter disgust, “You can’t even do that. Aren’t there statute of limitation laws or something?”

Tears welled up in my eyes as the pressure of rage pushed against my chest. Words came out: the story of my phone call, the officer’s instructions, the drive I couldn’t afford, the time, the feeling of being trapped in a car for a seven hour ride.

“I came all this way,” I finished.
“Okay, we’ll provide an officer for you to report,” she replied after a long eye roll.
“I’d prefer a female,” I requested.
“Well, for that you’ll have to wait.”

I sat deflated in one of the nearby chairs then waited for the next available female officer for a chance to be heard, for the support denied by my family and by my community; to be honored by law enforcement. Then, I saw her. A fit female dressed in black from head to toe in a uniform, her chest covered by a bullet proof vest.

We walked together to an empty room, sat down, then she asked a number of questions, created a case number, and that was that. At the end, she told me that I didn’t have to drive the 400 miles after all. I could’ve reported in-person to my local precinct and they could’ve transferred the report to Newport. My heart sank. All that effort for nothing. I never heard from her again. Eventually, I found the courage to call back and follow up about my case. The woman on the other end of the line spoke with the same annoyance as the ones I met at the station.

“There are no notes in your case file,” she said with an eye roll I could hear over the phone. “You just have to trust that the officers did their job.”

Blind trust: to police, to family, to community, to church, to God. But none of them had earned nor deserved it. Dr. Freyd explains that, “Institutional betrayal refers to wrongdoings perpetrated by an institution upon individuals dependent on that institution, including failure to prevent or respond supportively to wrongdoings by individuals (e.g. sexual assault) committed within the context of the institution.”2

First I had to manage betrayal trauma by forgetting my own stories, then I had to manage family betrayal, and now institutional betrayal. How much more betrayal could I carry?

I returned home and considered my options. I didn’t have the economic, emotional, or psychological stamina to challenge my father in civil court. The statute of limitation laws around different types of sexual violence turned out to be too confusing for even my friends with law degrees to help me interpret.

Did I survive rape?
Did I survive incest?
Did I survive child sexual abuse?
Could I condemn my father for all three?

Even if I did understand and sue him, lawyers may choose not to take my case without the likelihood of a substantial cash payout. Also, the chance of a judge and jury supporting a survivor of child sexual abuse with little to no direct evidence is harrowingly low, especially those of us who claim to have recovered memories of the abuse as adults. Evidentiary requirements needed to prove cases of child sexual abuse leave even sympathetic judges and juries with little likelihood of convicting an abuser.

Sadly, I learned that my experience of institutional betrayal with the criminal punishment system was more common than I had understood. However, due to low disclosure rates by victimized children, delayed disclosure by adult survivors, and lack of reporting by victims and families after disclosure, incest abuse is understood to be one of the most underreported crimes. Research shows that safe and quick interventions to end instances of child sexual abuse have been proven to be one of the most effective steps to the survivor’s recovery.3 However, most often after disclosures of incest abuse by victims, family members retraumatize them by doing nothing, denying it happened, minimizing the harm done, or blaming the victim for the abuse.4

Who would report someone they loved? Someone they lived with? Someone they were economically dependent on?

My case, like so many others, was not one worth consideration by the State. One survivor’s disclosure is often not enough. Instead, when a number of victims come forward accusing the same person of harm, a case may be taken. Any case that could be won, were the ones worth committing to. My and so many other incest survivors’ stories didn’t fall into any of these categories. So I was left without justice or support, while my father remained free to reoffend.

Of 1000 reported rapes of all kinds, only 25 people who harm will be incarcerated.5 And rarely is anyone sentenced for life due to sexual molestation or rape. The average time a person convicted of rape spends in prison is 8.5 years. Then most are released without any treatment or assurance that they are safe.6

Sexual recidivism rates for people who harm are estimated at 10-15%.7 However, these numbers require getting a conviction in the first place, meaning the victim must have disclosed and reported, and the system must have believed the survivor’s story. As this process is so infrequent, actual recidivism numbers are likely much higher. Lack of safe and transformative systems of accountability and treatment contribute to intergenerational incest abuse.

Some children must seek their own liberation and are left vulnerable in the foster care and other support systems. Most Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is produced in the home, then published across the internet, making a victim’s trauma evergreen, streamable content for consumption. Often, victims leave the home young with a romantic partner who is still abusive, just less so than the family system. Some victims run away from their homes and land into any job they can. Many are abused during consentual sex work or they’re kidnapped and placed in sex trafficking rings. There is a high likelihood of being retraumatized as an adult after being incested as a child. This is called “The Incest Pipeline.”8

I couldn’t hold the responsibility of the cost and commitment of healing as a victim of serial sex crimes alone. I, like 96% of other victims of crime, hadn’t been aware of victim compensation programs that could be applied for with just a police report.9

It became so clear to me that the systems that failed to protect me from abuse, that failed to intervene, that failed to provide adequate resources for recovery, that failed to offer any sense of justice, also failed my father. His history of abusive behavior began long before my body. His siblings often shared what a terror he was, how much power he had over them in their family system, how he passed down the beatings he received from his father onto the younger and even more vulnerable members of his family. No one intervened. No one stopped him even then. No one taught him how to become a safer person.

What would intervention to end his abusive behavior have looked like when he was a child? When he was an adult?

Many theories suggest a number of reasons why people sexually perpetrate children. Some chose to act on pedophilia: a sole sexual desire for minors. Some premeditate the abuse and ritualistically plan and groom a child and their community to gain and sustain access. Some choose to perpetrate opportunistically, or just because they can, due to imbalances in power dynamics. Some perpetrate situationally because of the excuses of trauma, sexual neglect, or stress.10

There is no list of characteristics that accurately describes people who choose to sexually harm children or why. However some patterns have been discovered in studies: a sense of excitement and sexual satisfaction; coping with low self-esteem, stress, or unmet emotional needs for intimacy or affection; a sense of entitlement motivated by values of domination taught by white supremacy, the patriarchy, and adultism; lack of sexual education or boundaries; and/or social isolation.11

In many states, children who sexually harm other children are added to sex offender lists (some for life). This restricts reporting and treatment, even though treatment has proven to be effective to end recidivism by youth.12 Additionally, there are few places where adults who are attracted to children or are at-risk to harm can go to receive support so that they do not perpetrate in the first place. Vilification of this population isolates them from acknowledging and accessing help, so once they do perpetrate, they receive no assistance in ending the sexually harmful behaviors.

By failing to prevent abuse, intervene safely, and transform people who are at-risk to harm or have already harmed, the system built to protect children from sexual abuse in the home is actively contributing to repeat and increased victimization.

I returned to my little cottage and laid in bed to rest, when my phone began to vibrate nearby. I looked at the screen and saw a name I both awaited and feared, Kaylee, my childhood friend from church who used to swing on the park rails with me after gobbling down a few donuts.

“Hi Anna Banana,” she began. “I know we haven’t talked in awhile.”
“Hello, it’s nice to hear from you.”
“I had a memory,” she continued, “of your father.”
“Okay.” Here it goes. The moment I had been dreading and awaiting: that I likely wasn’t his only victim. My body tightened.
“One year when we were at Yosemite, your father made me and a few of the other girls all get in a line.”
“Okay,” my body continued to compress with that all-too-familiar pressure.
“He then asked us to play a game with him where he would grope all of our legs and then rate them from prickly to smooth.”
“Okay.”
“He fondled our legs over and over again. Then rated them. I didn’t win because mine were prickly. I felt so ashamed. I wanted to please him.”
“Kaylee, I’m so sorry.” My heart broke open.
“I know I wasn’t as supportive as I could’ve been when you disclosed years ago. I didn’t understand the depth of the problem of incest abuse, nor how to handle it. But I’ve been working with a therapist, who’s helping me to see his behavior as predatory and increasing my confidence in your story. I wish I would’ve supported you sooner and want you to know I support you now.”
“I appreciate your apology,” I began. “Although the lack of support from our community in general was painful, there was no rulebook about how to deal with these issues. I didn’t have one either.”

We caught up a little more about her life and mine and then hung up. I felt flooded. Sad that, as anticipated, I wasn’t the only child my father harmed sexually, validated with her strength to bring her story to me, honored with her apology, confident that I would have more support if I ever had to engage the criminal or civil legal systems. I now had corroboration in someone else’s story. It wasn’t justice, but certainly validation.

I needed to go to the sea, as only it was big enough to hold these massive feelings. It always held the stress of my home memories. My feet found their way back to the sand and my heart to the part of the water between the stacked rocks that shaped into two jetties. The chaos of the waves’ whitewash splashed against them fiercely. I approached those barnacle-studded stones, then removed my shoes.

The waves crashed around the jetty and soaked me, but I wasn’t scared because I wasn’t trapped: at any time I could turn back to the safety of the sand. The salt water dried and tightened my skin. The wind wrestled my hair. And an internal peace replaced the external chaos created between whitewash and rock. I left the constancy of the chaos and the jetty behind, as my feet settled deeply into the safety of the sand.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

“We cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care. An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught that we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as we were also taught to believe that we were loved. For most folks it is just too threatening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer enable us to see love as present in our families. Too many of us need to cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad.”1

~ bell hooks

~ ~ ~

Losing everyone in my family all at once was too much, so I decided to soften my boundaries. As the distance between my mother, father, and me grew, my brothers began to reach out, especially the youngest, Patrick. I was like a second mother to him and he, like my only son. He began to fight for me, to invite me back into relationship.

“I miss you, Annie,” he said.

I chose to reconnect with him once I felt strong enough to hold all of his complexities — his doubts, his disbelief, his questions — under two conditions: one, he must respect my boundaries that he can’t share my address or my phone number with anyone, and two, that he needed to accept my choice that I would never return to the family. We talked on the phone every once in a while and then eventually met up here and there. I attempted to connect with other family members as well: aunts, uncles, cousins. The same rules applied.

When I heard the news that Pops was dying soon, my brothers and I met up with him in a restaurant near his home in Escondido, CA. My brothers had told me that the contents of the handwritten letter I mailed to my mother with my incest abuse disclosure had not been shared with my grandfather. I felt clear that I couldn’t tell him what happened now, not right before he died. Pops rolled in, now dependent on a wheelchair and oxygen, me towering over the mountain of this man who I used to climb up on the grass of the golf course just outside his house.

“Oh, Annie,” he said to me in a voice that surrendered gratitude. “Hi, Pops,” I bent over and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. We held each other for a good long time and cried. We caught up about more trivial things: what life had been like for the both of us, the friends I found, the career I chased. Nearing the end of the meal he requested:

“Annie, will you sing at my funeral?” He always loved it when I sang to him.
“Grandpa,” I said honestly, “You know I can’t attend, but I will find a way to sing for you.”
“Okay,” he grabbed my hand in pain-filled understanding.

Pops passed not long after. For his funeral, I recorded myself singing one of his favorite songs, “Panis Angelicus,” (The Bread of Angels), and sent it to Patrick to play on the day of the celebration. He did.

Easter approached, so Patrick and I planned a weekend away together in Whistler, Canada, where my father had a ski condo we used to spend holidays at as children. I wanted to reclaim this space as an adult without my dad, so we found a weekend to go and met up there. As the holiday approached, I felt Patrick’s anger rising on the other side of the phone line. His questions met me with a crisp tightness, his answers caught in his throat. I could hear how much emotion he kept buried in his body.

More and more, it was becoming clear that my family was requesting that he play the intermediary between them and me. I wasn’t just answering his questions, I was answering their questions. He was their representative, which wasn’t fair to him nor me. But in this case, it was his job to set boundaries and I knew he wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t. So my body once again became the receiver of my family’s energy passed down now through the portal of this little brother, now 6’3” tall and built like a tree. I knew he would never hurt me physically, but my body began to tremble thinking about spending time with him.

We enjoyed the first few days exploring the mountains, skiing, and revisiting all of our favorite restaurants. Then we returned home. Patrick sat on one sofa, while I sat on the lounge chairs across from him. His arms folded tightly across his chest.

“You know, I thought about bringing mom with me this weekend?”
Oh, no, here we go. I thought as my body tightened.
“Why would you do that, Patrick? You know my boundaries. I don’t want to see her.”
“Why not, Annie?!” His voice began to rise. “What did she ever do to you?! You need to just forgive Dad and come home or else — ”
“Or else what?” I interrupted.
“You don’t understand how much Mom’s suffering! You have hurt her so much, you have hurt us all so much.”
“Mom knows my boundaries too,” I stated stoically. “I will consider coming home when she leaves Dad.”
“How can you expect her to break up the family?!” His voice crescendoed.
“She’s not breaking up the family, Patrick. Dad did that when he decided to sexually abuse his only daughter.”

I began to lose myself in his blame. My empathy had limits. At 23, he was an adult now and so accountable for his actions. I stood up, my voice escalating to a pitch I had never heard before, as I shook.

“I left so that I could be safe!” I began. “Patrick, don’t you understand that love is safety and our family can’t even offer me that?! Why would I want to come back when you’re all just a bunch of bullies who justify the rape of children?! Your anger and shame should be directed at Dad not me!”
“How can you be so heartless?!” He raged back.
“Oh, fuck you!” I replied.
“You’re so selfish!” He rebutted.
“No!” I couldn’t take it anymore. My knees went weak with his projections, “I’m leaving. I don’t have to listen to this.” My body began to collapse.
“No, I’ll go.” He walked past me, “You’re staying here, you don’t need to leave.”

I watched him walk out the door and followed behind, then froze. Suddenly, it felt like time stopped, like everything was moving in slow motion. He walked away from me. As the distance between us grew, the reality that I would likely never see him again expanded within me at each step. The shadow of grief followed.

“I…” I began to stutter. “I love you.”

It turned out many of my family members and their friends who I had been in contact with were all strategizing to get me to return to my family. Another brother began to reach out:.

“The Catholic Church teaches forgiveness. It’s the foundation of the church. Jesus forgave those who crucified him, forgave those who turned him in, forgave those who beat him and hurt him far more than you have ever been hurt. He still forgave no matter what. More of us, including myself, need to forgive more. If you ever come back, it would be very very hard for me to forgive you for what you have done to our mother. [...]

Is my brother both demanding that I forgive my father for raping me serially, while also acknowledging how hard it would be for him to forgive me for setting a safety boundary?

The Rite of Reconciliation sacrament is supposed to heal the distance between God and the sinner, and the sinner and the one they harmed. The church is the intermediary, and a priest, the one whose words and hands complete the process. But all too frequently, the rite is abused to absolve people of issues so they believe they are free from culpability, without any apology, accountability, or assurance that the harm would end toward the person or community who suffer from the consequences of their sins — in my case, crimes.

In many states, clergy aren’t mandated reporters, so people who sexually harm children can disclose within those small wooden boxes in the corners of churches and be forgiven. Or victims are sent to priests to disclose instead of counselors because clergy are not legally required to report. Even the Pope Benedict after retirement weaponized forgiveness when he demanded that survivors of clergy child sexual abuse forgive him for his role in mishandling specific cases when he was an archbishop, while simultaneously denying any wrongdoing or responsibility.2

The stories of the prevalent child sexual abuse crisis by clergy still flooded media outlets. When the Boston Globe published the investigative piece in 2002, I had received group emails from family about the “the holy crusade” of defending the church in this time of crisis. One of the Dames of Malta, who I met in Lourdes, had been funding an organization in Haiti run by a perpetrating priest. She, like the Catholic hierarchy, tried to cover it up instead of centering the protection of children. The monsignor who had encouraged me to accept my own interpretation of Jesus on the same trip had pleaded guilty to buying a video and sex-toy shop to launder methamphetamine money and has served years in prison. And so sexual abuse continues through spiritual bypassing. My brother wrote:

“Incest in a family is a very real thing, Anne, and you are right, it’s not right. It’s horrible! I was also touched as a child by someone in our family. You will never know who it was, and I will never tell you. I decided to not let it define me. I decided to look past it and to live a life different from those who live in hate and want to see death and blood on the streets. [... Another family member] also had someone touch her as well, and she could have raised hell, but also chose a life different than that. You sadly are embracing a life full of hate and anger and now small lies to justify all of it. It’s terribly sad and a complete waste of a life.”

Is my brother validating the frequent sexual harm against children in my family system, justifying it, then blaming me for the pain of incest abuse in my family?

In my family’s mind, I was the perpetrator and they were the ones perpetrated against: the victims of family estrangement by their only beloved daughter. Coined by Dr. Freyd, a frequently used tactic by those who abuse and the bystanders who choose to support them is referred to as: (D)eny, (A)ttack, (R)everse (V)ictim and (O)ffender. DARVO. I committed from this point on to only surrounding myself with upstanders: or those who choose to side with survivors and do the work to ensure the safety of others. My brother went on:

“You know what love is, Anne? Love is having a Wall Street prick for a husband [my father] and still staying together. Love is having a husband who lies and steals and still stays together. Love is having a husband that very well could have hurt his children in multiple ways and still stays together. Love is coming within inches of divorce because the son [my brother referring to himself] pushed it so hard and still stays together. Love is the ability in seeing that there is still good in a person. True love is making sure you stand by that person no matter what and you fucking figure it out. [...] None of us will ever be our father. We have half our mother in us so we know how to love deeper and stronger and with respect and honor.”

Sadly, it seems as if my brother internalized my mother’s understanding of love. To stay always.

My mother’s situation pained me most because she too had been victimized. My father, though still abusive, was safer than her father and her mother. With my dad by her side, she had achieved so many of her dreams: class comfort, a car full of kids, saintly status in her spiritual community. I don’t blame her for not leaving because I understand the complexity of giving all that up to support me. But I do hold her accountable to the ways her choices contributed to the abusive environment I was raised in as a child; the one she continuously called me back to as an adult. I do set boundaries to ensure my experience of love evolves to hold the truth of safety. My brother admitted:

“[... Dad] was a lying, miserable cheat. He destroyed our family business, he destroyed our family inheritance, he destroyed relationships, he destroyed my name in the business finance sector [...]. He destroyed a lot of things and he did it for years. [...] It was horrible and all of us hated him. […] I coulda killed him easily right there on the spot. I wanted to so bad! I went to therapy for years and nothing helped my hate. [...] I wanted him dead, I wanted him in a car accident, I wanted him stripped down naked and beaten in the middle of town.”

How does my brother both acknowledge what my father has done and excuse him simultaneously?

The responses of my mother, my father, my brothers, and my community all reflected what Dr. Freyd refers to as “Betrayal Blindness.” This can include repressed memories by victims, but she also finds that “perpetrators and witnesses may display betrayal blindness in order to preserve relationships, institutions, and social systems upon which they depend.”3 In my case, my family privileged their relationship with my father and their financial provider, the institution of family, and the social belonging that accompanies the silencing of the victim. My brother wrote:

“I woke up one day and asked myself if this is how I wanted to live my life? I asked myself if this is how I wanted my relationship to be with my father? I asked myself, is this the story I am going to tell to my kids? The hate was eating me inside and I could feel it. I started hating everything. I had turned into him and hate was to blame. It was so hard but I made the decision in one instant that I wasn’t going to live like that. [...] If that’s a life you want to live, go for it. You have a lonely path ahead of you.”

I accepted his choice to stay, could he not respect my choice to walk away?

Devotion to the family system often keeps people from understanding how safe and intimate chosen community can be for those of us who choose to leave. Some sociologists agree that the nuclear family, isolated from deeper community ties, always reflected hierarchy and property. The root of family derives from the Latin word, “Famulus,” which means “Domestic Slave.”4

Practiced in the United States, the patriarchal family has allowed men to own their wives and children. The government forced Native communities into nuclear families intentionally to break the tribal bonds that kept the populations strong. Today, the institution of the nuclear family puts so much pressure on one or a number of caregivers to earn economically, while also raising children. This failing social system carries so many symptoms of chronic stress, which is one of the many risks that increase rates of incest. For some the family is a safe haven, for others it’s a trap. My brother admitted:

“Anne, I moved on a while ago. With all due respect, and I mean this in no way to hurt you, but just as a point of reality, there isn’t much to miss about you. Talking to you is awful and negative [...], you are telling lies about our family publicly and to other women who have also been hurt, and you have unforgivable hate deeply rooted in your soul. Over the years people asking about Anne at family events has diminished. You cross my mind here and there and it does make me very sad. [...] I would take you back in a heartbeat now or in the future, but I hope that you can see, you have made moving on from you pretty easy. If that was your goal, then you hit it right on the mark.”

My head is spinning with the mixed messages, my heart is hurting.

“The only person that hasn’t moved on is our mother. She’ll never move on. She continues to cry herself to sleep at night because her own daughter blames her for something she didn’t even do. A mother’s love for her child is the strongest love this world knows. It’s a healing type of love, the type of love you so desperately need right now. You will be judged some day for your actions towards your mother and your choice of abandonment, Anne, and [Dad] will be judged someday for his actions towards you and to others as well.”

Am I supposed to center my mother’s needs above my own safety?

“I do love you and I would love with all my heart to see you back in the family you were born into, but hate, which you absolutely do have, consumes you. When you are unwilling to forgive and mend, hate and anger is normally the reason. God asks us to forgive and in that process maybe we have to live in a state that is abusive.”

The cycle of violence has completed. The tension, the explosion, and the honeymoon phases all present in this one conversation. I see it so clearly. He has no idea.

It was all there. The justifications of ideology, incest, and illness used by white supremacist patriarchs to transubstantiate family, religion, and love into cycles of violence. I felt deeply sorry for my brothers. For the father who continues to abuse, and the mother who keeps them bound to her constraints and calls her commitment love, calls her dependency forgiveness, calls her covert incest mutual support, calls her source of inspiration God. Uses the name of Jesus to condone violence against children, her own children. The glorification of suffering. The theology of sacrifice, salvation through mortification.

In an instant, I received validation in writing from my brother’s testimony: my family believed that love, defined by God the Father, meant to live in an abusive environment eternally. Now, my job was to end it. To finally break the cycles of violence against my body that began between the circular constancy of Bunya St. I was ready to end this generational acceptance of incest abusers and the spiritual allowance offered by God the Father to child rape apologists. I divorced myself from my family completely. It was finished, finally.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

“It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.”1

~ Judith Herman, MD

Dressed in outlet-version, brand-named attire from head to toe, I strode down the school hallways weekday mornings trying my best to keep up with the style of my cool colleagues while pretending to be put together. But just hours before, night terrors wrestled me during sleep, insomnia shook me awake, and anxiety that my father might come after me haunted the daylight in between. I was telling more trusted people — friends of the past and present — what the men in my family did to me. Their threats to harm me if I ever disclosed arose from the bottom of my repressed memories.

First, Grandpa Jay tried to convince me. “This is what grandfathers do to their granddaughters.” My submission was my survival.

Then, my father threatened me. “If you tell anyone, I’ll throw you out into the streets, or worse I’ll kill mommy.” My silence was my survival.

Then I forgot about the instances of incest all together. My repression was my survival.

Now between my perpetrators and I rested miles of highway and coastline, farms and city skyscrapers, but my family still felt far too close, especially my parents. I saw their faces whenever I looked at myself in the mirror. I heard students call me by their last name, always reminding me I was their only daughter. I cringed knowing how intimately I shared the genealogy, the biology, and the identity of those who harmed me. The boundaries between them and me could not so easily be erected on the outside nor the inside of my body.

One morning, I arrived to campus and parked, then walked through the corridors lined with classroom doors and lockers, passed the small rose garden, and dragged myself into the Campus Ministry office, where my desk awaited me. The colleague I shared the room with sat in her seat and wished me a good morning, while I placed my book bag on the desk, pulled out the chair, and logged into my computer. An unread email bolded the text on the screen: Flowers For You. It read something like:

“Dear Anne, Flowers have been delivered to the administration building. Please, pick them up at your convenience.”

My body squirmed with worry. Who knew I even worked here?

I hurried back to the front of the building where the administrator sat. A beautiful bouquet awaited me with a card in a plastic holder stuck to the soil.

“Congratulations on getting your first job! Love, Mom.”
“I wish my mom would send me flowers,” the administrator said with a jealous tone.
My cheeks heated. “Do you mind if we speak privately for a second?”
“The only private place is the paper closet,” she laughed dismissively.
“Then let’s go to the paper closet,” I replied. She rolled her eyes surprised.

Together, we strode toward the door that opened into a narrow room with small shelves stacked with different types and colors of printing paper.

“I’m in the process of separating myself from my family. If they ever show up here, please send them away. They would never hurt a student or a staff member, but I’m not interested in seeing them.”
“Okay,” she responded with a strange look on her face. Not long after, the principal called me in to discuss the issue further.
“I heard you’re having some challenges with your family,” she started. “Is there anything I should know about?”

Do I or don’t I disclose to this authority figure? I needed support, I hoped I could trust her with my story.

“I recently remembered repressed instances of incest abuse. I haven’t told my family yet, just asked for no contact, but my mother showed up at my graduation uninvited, then sent flowers to the school today. I don’t even know how she knows I work here.”
“We added your name and biography to the Campus Ministry and Religious Studies pages of the website.”
“Oh, that must be it. Well I just don’t want to see them if they come.”
“Understood,” she said. “Do you anticipate this problem will impact your work here?”
“I certainly hope not,” I replied honestly.
“Okay,” I walked back to my office uncomfortably.

Clearly, I needed to set a stronger boundary with my family. It was time to tell my mother what happened to me. So I began writing a letter by hand. If I printed something, my father could just scan the content and change it. The dam of my body now bled water onto the page. I finished my disclosure and signed my name at the bottom, “Annie Marie.” I worried if my dad got his hands on the letter first that it would never be read by my mother, so I mailed my disclosure to the mother of my childhood friend Kaylee so that she could hand it to my mother personally.

Kaylee and I met as children at church. Often after the service, we ran to the donut stand, then, with sprinkled covered faces, we headed over to the bars at the nearby playground. Together, we swung like monkeys. But my favorite memories with Kaylee were our frequent camping trips during the summers to Yosemite National Park.

Although our lives took very different directions as adults, we stayed in touch with occasional checkins. Recently, I had called her to disclose my resurfaced memories. She, like everyone else I had told, didn’t quite know what to do. Neither did I.

“Can you let your mom know that a letter will be coming to her for my mother explaining everything?”
“Of course,” she responded sadly. Soon after, we lost touch.

A few weeks went by, then my mother wrote back. “Anne, I believe that your father raped you, but you should forgive him.”

I didn’t know what to expect in her response, but certainly not this: both an acknowledgement of what happened and the immediate demand to forgive. Quickly, it became so clear to me that for generations weaponized forgiveness had been used to pass the cycle of incest abuse from adult to child or child to child in my family system.

Shouldn’t the pressure be on the perpetrators to atone, not the survivors to forgive?

I sat with the hurt of my mother’s words. Her refusal to act after my disclosure matched her support of past people who had harmed. Back in grade school, there was a girl in one of my classes whose father beat her mother. Whenever conflict arose between the girl and me, her mother called my mother threatening to slit her wrists if I didn’t do something about it. So my mother sat me down:

“Annie, you must solve this issue with your friend or else her mother is going to kill herself! She is being beaten by her husband, you can’t even begin to understand how horrible that is.”

But how? I wondered in the fifth grade. And why can’t her mother get help from someone else, an adult? The police maybe?

“Oh, and you must keep this information a secret,” my mother finished.

I remembered the girl in my grade school class who was raped in the bathroom, and the women who were molested by my mother’s chiropractor.

“Oh, that girl’s just looking for attention!” My mother proclaimed confidently in response to the girl’s disclosure.

Then the woman who raised me took to the stand in the courtroom to testify to the strong character of her chiropractor, defending him instead of the survivors. She received kisses on the lips from her OB/GYN every time she birthed another baby without consent, concern, or complaint.

If my mother chose to do nothing all these years later, I can’t imagine what she would’ve done or not done if I had disclosed as a child.

My brothers’ responses were more typical. Apparently, my father found the same color pen that I used in my hand-written disclosure letter and put quotation marks around the word rape, contributing to the suspicions of my siblings.

One said, “Your story just doesn’t add up.”
Another asked, “Do you mean that dad emotionally raped you?”
The last said, “Why do you always have to be such a victim?”

I refused to engage with my father, but that didn’t keep him from communicating with me. He sent me an email denying everything, arguing that I couldn’t have been as successful as I was if he had abused me. He accused me of committing a grave injustice against the family for separating myself from them without reason. But I knew both to be untrue. The responsibility of injustice rested on his shoulders, while the burden of it crushed mine.

Perfectionism and high-achievement are often overlooked coping mechanisms of those raised in violent homes, so victims receive the support, validation, and attachment they need from extrafamilial community members.2 Because society celebrates perfectionistic and high-achieving behaviors, these victims often fall through the cracks of care, lacking the necessary identification, intervention, liberation, and recovery supports.

Without an apology, or accountability, or assurance that the next generation would be safe from the people who harmed me, I continued to distance myself from everybody, while my family’s story came to be that I went “crazy.” I wrote one last time to my mother to tell her of my reasons for separation. She responded:

“You cannot understand the challenge it takes to accept your decision. […] You may have chosen to rob me of the past […] years and the future years of us having a relationship, but you can never take away the 25 years of support, nurturing, care, commitment and loving memories we shared together. Together is the correct word here.

We mutually supported, nurtured, cared and were committed to one another. I was a very good, faithful and committed mother through your illnesses, surgeries, grade school, Girl Scouts, Theatrical Performances, Choirs, High School, Soccer, Softball, Water Polo, College, Relationships, Study Abroad, Depression Diagnosis, and Grad School. […]”

Throughout my childhood, I could never quite name the complexity of my relationship with my mother. Our closeness felt so deeply necessary for both of us. She became my best friend, but the partnership burdened me. The weight of it felt oppressive in ways I could not contain nor explain. Finally I found a phrase that named the harm of this type of relationship between parent and child: covert incest abuse.

A type of adultification. A form of parentification. Emotional incest abuse. An adult in the family or support system depending on a child to meet a family members’ needs for emotional intimacy and security. Often called a "“Surrogate Spouse,” the adult overshares feelings, engages in too much intimate touch even if not in places considered private, infantilizes the child so the adult feels needed. The adult enmeshes their own identity with the child’s, trapping the developing human into a web of emotional and ontological codependency.3 As my own mother described it: mutual support.

Is a relationship between mother and daughter ever supposed to be mutual? How old was I when this mutuality began?

Once the memories returned of my father’s contact sexual abuse, I immediately identified the behavior as harmful. But my mother’s non-contact abuse felt so much more confusing.

After all, what’s wrong with being loved too much?

I tried to reconnect to the parents of a few of my childhood friends, who attempted to support me in the best ways that they knew how. Many supported my choice to separate from my father. Most members of the community had experienced his lack of boundaries, his verbal abuse, his bullying, his hypersexualized behavior. But my distance from my mother caused them to question me:

“How could you separate yourself from a saint?” They asked me. “How could you deny a mother your love when she’s so unconditionally loving?”

They didn’t want the actual answer. I quickly found that if I wanted to continue to be in relationship with them, I had to follow one very important unspoken rule:

“Don’t tell us why you are choosing to estrange yourself from your family.”

That same Catholic congregation who left the food at the doorstep when I seized as a baby responded with silence to my disclosure of incest abuse. Chronic illness was an issue worthy of collective support, but incest felt far too taboo. This time, I was left alone to make meals by myself when my entire system — brain, body, and being — was refusing to function due to this history. My mother’s note continued:

“It is very easy to run away; its hard work to stay and make things work. Our family has worked; and continues to work at loving each other. There is no such thing as a perfect family or perfect love. There are real families and real love. […]

My heart has been deeply hurt by you. I have been humiliated by stories told to neighbors and friends and I have been humbled by the lack of being able to make any progress in restoring our once incredibly loving relationship.

You are loved by me, your mother, more than any one on this earth whether you care to except it or not. I will never stop loving you and living in hope that your heart will be moved in the direction of this truth. I love you.”

Still I couldn’t help but wonder:

What kind of motherly love justified emotional and sexual incest abuse, then passed it on to the next generation of children?

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

“In this climate of profoundly disrupted relationships the child faces a formidable developmental task. She must find a way to form primary attachments to caretakers who are either dangerous or, from her perspective, negligent. She must find a way to develop a sense of basic trust and safety with caretakers who are untrustworthy and unsafe. She must develop a sense of self in relation to others who are helpless, uncaring or cruel. She must develop a capacity for bodily self-regulation in an environment in which her body is at the disposal of others’ needs, as well as a capacity for self-soothing in an environment without solace. She must develop the capacity for initiative in an environment which demands that she bring her will into complete conformity with that of her abuser. And ultimately, she must develop a capacity for intimacy out of an environment where all intimate relationships are corrupt, and an identity out of an environment which defines her as a whore and a slave.”1

~ Judith Herman, MD

In my studies, I learned that before Eve another woman came to be created equally from the earth with Adam. Her name was Lillith, which means, “Intelligence.”2 Adam said, “Lie beneath me!” and she replied, “You lie beneath me!” Adam raped her when she refused his demand of superiority, so Lillith called to God by name, a thing no human was supposed to do. Then she grew wings, transubstantiated herself into an owl, fled the Garden of Eden, and was last seen hovering over the sea.

Following her departure, the men who penned Lillith’s story turned her into a monster. A demon. A rapist. A manipulator of misbehaved children. Time and time again, Lillith is said to have inspired subversion in previously subservient women and to be the cause of still-born births in the wombs of pregnant persons. Or she was simply forgotten, her story erased. Arguably, this has been one of the most successful smear campaigns of a woman who chose to set herself free throughout mythological history.

Then came Eve, but even her creation story could be interpreted so very differently than it has traditionally been told. Feminist theologian Phyllis Tribble reads the myth of Eve and Adam as poetry. In Genesis 23, Yahweh, “I am,” created “`adham” — a Hebrew noun that means “earth creature” — from the ground. Then the same God took a part of the clay that made “`adham” to mold Eve — which means “to breathe life into.” The author of Genesis 2 introduces gender for the first time at the end of the story after Yahweh makes two earth creatures out of one. Only then does Yahweh refer to woman, or “`ishshah” in Hebrew, and man, or “`ish.”4

Some say that Lillith returned to the Garden of Eden in the form of a snake. Sneakily, she slithered back through the gates she had once flown away from, between the greens that sprouted out from the ground, and up the Tree of Knowledge: the only one that Eve was told she could not eat from lest she die. When Eve arrived, the serpent whispered into her ear:

“‘You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate [...].”5

Eve too, due to Lillith’s return, learned the truth and set herself free. The liberated became the liberator. Eve went East to live between the rivers. In response, the men who penned Eve’s story blamed her for banishing humanity from patriarchal paradise, and for the inequitable powers of the patriarchy, and for the difficulty by which the earth would provide sustenance, and for the pain that birthing persons would know during procreation. God said that from the earth humans came and to the earth they must return. Death.

So Lillith liberated herself, then Eve. Now, it seemed that they were both inviting me to set myself free.

But how would I free myself from family? The foundation of my identity, economy, and social standing? The most sacred circle in humanity according to my family’s Catholic ideology?

I needed time, I needed space to process the complexities of my memories, this new incested identity, these chaotic currents of feelings that crashed against all parts of me. The only person I still spoke to regularly at this point was my mother, so I called her. My body shook as it anticipated her answering the phone — one ring, two rings, three rings.

“Hi, my beautiful daughter,” she greeted me.
“Hi,” tears began to well up in my eyes.
“How are you?” She continued.
“I’m just doing okay,” I replied.
“What’s the matter? I’ve been worried.”
“I just need some space. A lot’s going on right now, and I’d like time to figure it out. Do you mind not reaching out for a few weeks?”
“Well, I want to be there for you. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“No, I’m not ready. But I’ll tell you when I am. Until then, can you please respect my boundaries?”
“Of course,” she confirmed.

I found a new therapist who lived closer by. Instantly, she validated my memories and began to teach me about the, “The Incest Family.” Incest abuse happens in families of all racial, ethnic, cultural, and class demographics. However, research suggests that incest families differentiate from non-incest families in a few ways:

“The incest family’s dysfunctional patterns that seemed to support and maintain the incestuous behavior were a rigid family belief system, a dysfunctional parental coalition, parental neglect and emotional unavailability, and the inability to nurture autonomy in family members.”6

According to the little research available, approximately one in five children will be sexually abused.7 Of reported cases, over 30% of those were perpetrated by a family member.8 Child-on-child abuse (COCSA), especially Sibling Sexual Trauma and Abuse (SSTA) is estimated to occur just as frequently, if not more so, than adult-on-child abuse.9 I wasn’t alone in this pain, which made me feel both relieved and uneasy.

Within just a few days of asking for space from my family, the flooding of contact came. From my mother, my brothers, my grandparents, my mother’s friend, my mothers friend’s child. The calls, emails, and social media messages kept pinging my voicemails, inboxes, and desktop notifications. My family reminded me what I owed them and how separation was a sin.

“God wants the family to stay together at all costs!” They said.

Eventually, their messages became less questioning and more threatening. So, I changed my number. I blocked my family’s emails. I left all social platforms. I needed my once comfortable public life to become very private, very fast. It was all so confusing, but I had to keep on living.

My graduate school asked me to lead a trip to El Salvador with a number of the professors. So with new people, I retraced my footsteps back to the land called “The Savior.” I took the redeye, landed at the airport, breathed in the tropical air, gazed at the fullness of the clouds, and once again felt the sun on my freckled face. Still seeking to find that same sense of salvation that had brought me here a few years before.

On our way to the UCA, we stopped by the gravesite of the four churchwomen from the US who had been raped then murdered during the Civil War: Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan.10 This place became a memorial mound where faithful Catholics and activists visited to grieve these women’s fatalities.

I went to the grass to sit by the gravesites of these four women and quickly realized that survival is not a privilege granted to all those who experience sexual abuse. The churchwomen were raped and murdered; I was raped and lived. A half-life was better than no life at all. For the first time, I understood that although the suffering of survival felt so heavy, it was still an opportunity. I left the land feeling just a little bit lighter.

I returned back to Berkeley knowing now that I needed to figure out how to better hold and manage the costs of survival. The trust fund had been spent. The amount in my bank account dwindled because my 10 hours a week student employment at my graduate school couldn’t cover the expenses of rent, groceries, and therapy. I had no idea where I would find the energy to manage one more thing between the memories, the grief, the school assignments, the work study hours, and my need for more and more sleep.

But survival needs continued to override the fatigue. So I pulled myself out of bed, created a profile on an online babysitting app, and prayed I would be connected to a safe family quickly. Eventually, I received a message from Charlotte.

“Hi Anne,” her email began. “We have three children under the age of 10 and one on the way. We live just up the street from your school and are looking for childcare. Would you be interested in interviewing?” I wrote back feeling a bit desperate, “Yes! I would love to meet you.”

I showed up at Charlotte’s large wooden door a few days later and knocked. She answered in a flowy, pink shirt with tassels hanging from the neck. Luna, the youngest, came running down the aisle in a bright turquoise tutu with a blue striped shirt. Winter followed in a sleek, green, cotton dress with playing cards in her hand. Sienna, the oldest, was with the neighbors.

“Welcome,” Charlotte invited me in.

I stepped through the doorway and felt a strange sense of belonging. I slipped off my shoes per their request and felt my feet touch the oiled wooden floors, absorbing the grace of this family. Floor to ceiling bookshelves caught my eye, while handmade fairylands rested in the corner waiting to be explored. Joshua, Charlotte’s husband, sat in the living room in an outfit of all pastels — dress pants, a collared shirt, and a vest. We talked. Or, at least we tried. The girls had stronger voices.

Instantly, I fell in love. Apparently, it was mutual. I was hired the next day and became the newest extension of their family. As we got to know each other, eventually I disclosed to them my history of incest abuse and present recovery process. Quickly, they shared with me that the issue of incest abuse was a far too familiar reality in the generational pasts of their family too. They had chosen to break the cycle and now modeled how to do so. Charlotte showed me a way to be an empowered woman and caregiver, while Joshua was particularly sensitive to my mental health needs.

“I’m having a hard day,” I said. “The memories are really overwhelming and I can’t process everything. But it’s okay, I can manage.” I concluded to ensure he wouldn’t worry.
“It’s not okay, Anne,” he gently responded. “You don’t have to do that here. You don’t have to pretend to be okay when you’re not.”

I felt unworthy of this amount of love and care. The pieces of me that kept myself safe by being independent and isolated wished for me to stop engaging in this loving system of support. I belonged and I didn’t. I was hired to be a caregiver, when I needed someone to care for me. I was their friend and their employee, when what I really needed was my own safe family. I was trying to survive my day-to-day life, while also comprehending why my father would abuse his own daughter. It was exhausting.

My master’s program neared its end. I had interviewed at a nearby high school to be a religious studies teacher and campus minister. I feared receiving the opportunity just as much as being rejected from it. If the school said no, I had no idea where else I would go. I didn’t feel confident in any other subjects for a career change and needed a high paying salaried role to afford to live in the SF Bay Area near my small support system, while building a life from scratch, and paying for my healing process out-of-pocket. If the school said yes, then I would have to wrestle with my Catholic identity on the classroom floor, teaching young girls how to hold the tension of being a Catholic and a Feminist simultaneously.

A few days later, a friend and I went to the pool to swim and release my nervous system of all the excess energy. I pulled myself through the water as my brain, body, and being looped between the fears of the past, present, and future simultaneously. I lifted myself out of the water, walked to the women’s locker room, removed my suit, and showered off. My friend followed. We were both naked now. My phone rang from an unknown number. I answered, my heart pounding in my chest.

“Hi, Anne! Do you have a minute to talk?” It was the hiring manager from the high school. Technically, this wasn’t a great time in the hollow and echoing chamber of a public women’s locker room, while I was naked and vulnerable.
“Yes, this is a great time!” I lied, smiling big to make my voice sound more enthusiastic.
“We loved your interview and your teaching presentation. The students gave you excellent feedback.” I was waiting for the...but…
“So, we’d love to offer you the job!”

Immediately, I started jumping up and down, my breasts out, bouncing all around. My friend gave me an inquisitive stare, eyebrows raised, and a curious thumbs up. I lifted the thumb on my left hand back to communicate the yes part of me longed for. I hung up the phone and put it down, then melted into the floor sobbing. My friend wrapped her naked body around my body in a congratulatory embrace. I showered off the chlorine and the fear of the future for one moment and felt relief.

I could support myself now. I could stay away from home. I could be financially independent from my father. I had a job. I would no longer be codependent on my abusers.

Graduation day represented the ending of one life and the beginning of the next. A ritualistic walk down a new aisle where I would be safe and celebrated. I dressed in the required black gown and square cap with a maroon shawl wrapped around my shoulders. Then, a friend came running up to me frantically, “Anne, your mother is here.”

My school community knew what I was going through and did their best to hold the complexity of the uncovering of repressed memories of incest that required complete space from family.

“What?!” My heart sank immediately, as my body tried to decide if I should fight, freeze, flee, or fawn as a response.

How did she even find out about the event?
She wouldn’t have come alone.
Is my father here too?
What should I do?

My body trembled, as I walked down the aisle surrounded by the faculty and families of other students. My eyes scanned for her in the audience, but I couldn’t find her. After the celebration, I walked away ready to go to dinner to celebrate with a friend. Then, I saw her approaching me. I froze. I didn’t see my father.

“What are you doing here?” I asked gently as she put her arms around me.
“I wanted to see you,” she responded sadly.
“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say, I was so conditioned to protect her from pain.

She handed me an envelope. I put it in my pocket and walked away. After dinner, I opened the card and a check for $500 fell to the floor. Even though I needed the money desperatley, I ripped it up understanding well enough by now that my family never gave anything for free.

During the summer months, I worked for Charlotte’s family to make just enough money to cover rent and groceries. I kept driving Green Bean down south to explore places to live near my new employer. Any official rental property wanted a good credit check, a large security deposit, and the first month’s rent, none of which I could provide. I cried in my car on the drive back to Berkeley, as time quickly sped by with no ideas to where I might reside.

Annie, it’s going to be okay.

I heard that same voice from within placate me. When I returned home, I redirected my search to Craigslist, which I had avoided due to fear of being hurt when showing up alone as a woman to someone’s home. Then I saw it. Pictures of a beautiful little cottage with wainscoting and sand tan walls, a tiny kitchen, golden-hued wooden floors, and windows that overlooked the landlord’s garden — a slice of paradise just for me to recover. The cottage was 20 minutes driving distance from my new school.

The price listed was beyond my budget, but it was beautiful and felt safe both which inspired me to reach out to the landlady and say hello. We met. While shaking, I explained to her my situation, the space from family, the lack of credit, the need to create a payment plan until I could afford the first month’s rent and the security deposit, as well as meet my basic needs. Surprisingly, she agreed.

“You’re meant to be here,” she said to me lovingly. “I can feel it.”

For the last time, I stuffed my Santa Fe with everything I owned to move to my first chosen home outside of school. Once I paid my landlord the security deposit and got caught up with rent, I went car shopping. I bought my first car, then I left Green Bean, still my father’s property, on a side of the street near my old school in Berkeley for my parents to pick up and drive back to Bunya St.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

PART III: HOLD

“Behind the story I tell is the one I don’t.
Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear.
Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes,
food, meaning, and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love,
behind this moment is silence, years of silence.”

~ Dorothy Allison

Chapter 11: Memory

“The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social contract are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried.”

~ Judith Herman, MD1

Thanksgiving arrived, so I returned home for the holiday. Per usual, all of my extended family members in the area and any friends without family held hands in a large circle in our front yard between the off-white house and the red brick wall on Bunya St.

“Everyone list three things they’re grateful for!” my father demanded.

One-by-one, we all said our set of affirmations. I named the routine litany: my family, my friends, the ocean; then ate plates full of potatoes and turkey. During the weekend that followed, my father, mother, brothers, and I drove down to Joan and Pop’s house on the golf course. As the day progressed, I felt so left out, so different, so othered from my own family, that I needed to take a break from them. Our values had divided so distinctively that I couldn’t quite find a way to relate to them, or for them to relate to me. Often, I felt both offended and lonely by their conversations and their company.

I walked out and sat on the curb, so I could manage the reactivity of my inner screamer with external silence. Suddenly, Pops came and stood by my side. He had noticed my absence. Then, with far too much effort, he sat his big, brittle bones beside me on the low sidewalk.

“What’s wrong, Annie?” he asked.
“I just can’t relate to our family. I feel so alone. Ever since I got back from El Salvador, I can’t seem to access any joy, pleasure, or gratitude.”

“You know,” he began one of his war stories, “when I flew back to the US after the war ended, I didn’t go home for weeks. I didn’t call my mother. I just rode trains around the country and sat with myself. As an engineer, I never saw direct combat. Instead, the military gave me a community and a sense of meaning that I had never experienced before, and I have yet to experience since.”

“I’m so sorry, grandpa,” I grieved. “Thank you for telling me. It’s helpful to know that you understand.”

While we shared this brief moment of intimacy, a conflict had erupted inside the house. Something had happened between my father and one of his sisters. She ran to the bathroom crying and he followed her. As I was told, she turned around and grabbed my father’s genitals and pinched them hard. In response, he reached for her breasts and twisted the nipples. Now, she was crying in the bathroom, while he was defending his actions.

“Why would you do that?” I asked him.
“She started it,” he replied. “Sometimes that’s just how siblings treat each other.”

While I drove back to Berkeley to return to school, I considered why my father could so easily justify the sexual molestation of family, and blame his sister for all of the wrongdoing. I remembered the few instances where my brothers had tried to touch me inappropriately when we were growing up. Immediately, I had disclosed the moments to my mother and she sat them down and asked them to respect my body. It never happened again.

I settled back into my life away from family. My graduate program offered complimentary spiritual direction to students. So I returned to this practice, which I found so comforting in El Salvador with Father Matthew, to guide me through the intense transformation of my worldview. Instead of sitting in the garden of the Peace House, I walked a few blocks down the street to see Sister Joan in her office. She had the same name as my paternal grandmother, but taught me about a much more gracious God.

Joan began to connect me with a source of divinity face-to-face without a male intermediary, without the Sacraments of the sexist church and the so-far-fixed family dynamic I was slowly separating myself from. Sister Joan was an expert in the practice of Ignatian Contemplation developed by the Jesuit founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola. Joan showed me how to use my practiced imagination to safely connect with this source of love that felt so deeply necessary.

Instead of getting lost in perfection in my head — the Garden of Eden that would never be real — I could redirect the power of my creative mind to focus on the voice of love in my own life. Scripture stories could be used as a composition of place, a starting space. I imagined myself on Noah’s ark.

God could meet me there and share some advice. I entered into the stories of Jesus too. The breaking of the bread. The time sitting around bonfires with friends. The walking on the water. The resurrection. I imagined being satiated. Being warmed by endless healing flames. Being accompanied side-by-side along the tops of impossible tides. I would no longer climb the mountain that was my paternal grandfather, nor cling to the whitewash that was my father.

Christmas came, so I returned to Bunya St. for the holiday. The warm winter weather in Newport provided the perfect opportunity for my family to visit the beach and take a walk. My mother and I strode across the warm sand holding hands with the salt water lapping against our feet.

“So,” she began. “I’ve started having flashbacks of my childhood.”
“Oh?” I questioned curiously. “Flashbacks of what exactly?”
“That I was sexually abused by my father, Jay.”
“Really?” I replied. “I’m so sorry. Do you want to say more about that?”

“It was so much: oral, rape, sodomy, molestation of my breasts, his hand forcing my hand to his penis.” She recalled these memories with a smile on her face, which perplexed me. “I didn’t know if the memories were true, so I asked a few others in our family, and they said they had also been abused.”

“Do you want to say anything to Grandpa Jay?”
“No, I’m not ready.”
“That’s understandable,” I replied. “Do you think he abused any kids in my generation?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she questioned, in a tone that suggested she couldn’t quite go there.
“Do you think other family members may have abused children? What about dad? He’s always been so obsessed with sex.”
“Well, he was never around,” she said, which I noted wasn’t a no.

I returned to school and researched more about recovered memories of child sexual abuse. From the work of Dr. Jennifer Freyd, a researcher and survivor, I learned that developmental traumas, especially when the perpetrator is a provider, can cause Betrayal Trauma. A child’s brain can’t hold the complex reality that the hand that feeds them is also the one that harms them, so victimized children compartmentalize their experiences. Some survivors glorify the abuse, some minimize it, some normalize it, others internalize it. They may only recall the good memories from childhood, while repressing the instances of incest abuse.2

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), describes dissociative amnesia as a condition that “causes people to be unable to recall important personal information, usually due to trauma or stress.” The brain buries it, while the body is often the first vessel to speak through illness or by some other means until the memories can be retrieved. Sometimes though, they are not. The average age of disclosure for child sexual abuse survivors is in their fifties.3 My mother had just entered this decade of her life.

My studies began to focus more on the prevalence of sexual violence throughout history. Specifically, my class read Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us, by Rebecca Ann Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock.4 Parker shared about her adult-experience recalling instances of child sexual abuse by a neighbor. In her body too, she felt this deep embodied pressure, pain, and rage that she couldn’t release or escape in healthy ways.

And there was so much more. My professor revealed stories to me about the serial rape of so many girls and women that had often been erased. Like the “The Comfort Women”: 200,000 girls, mostly from Korea and between the ages of 12 and 16, that Japanese soldiers kidnapped during the Second World War and took to “comfort stations,” where they enslaved and raped these children.

But alongside this horrible reincarnation of memory, we also recovered the language survivors adopted to explain their pain, as well as the resiliency they found in solidarity. The Comfort Women adopted the word, han,5 the describe the pain left over from the serial sexual violence of their bodies. Suh Nam-dong, a professor of Minjung theology6 explains han as a “feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of the overwhelming odds against one, a feeling of acute pain in one’s guts and bowels, making the whole body writhe and squirm, and an obstinate urge to take revenge and to right the wrong — all these combined.”7

Reading the stories of these survivors’ pasts felt both deeply uncomfortable as well as strangely familiar. My mother’s words made more sense in reflection to these stories. It was as if the wounds of all of their wombs somehow whispered into mine still clinging to the confusion of silence inviting me too to speak. While I lacked a verbal language to express my emotional experience, my inner screamer was learning a verbiage that seemed to be resonating.

Easter approached quickly. Although my family expected me to return home for the holiday, I wanted to avoid Bunya St. My awareness of the dysfunctional patterns of my family increased, while my ability to normalize them decreased. Besides, the resurrection of Jesus certainly didn’t feel worthy of celebration, as I felt so trapped in a state of suffering constantly. I sought support from Joan.

“You know you don’t have to go home for the holidays, Anne?” She challenged me.
“What? They’re my family. I have to spend the holidays with them.”
“No,” she responded. “You’re an adult and need to do what’s best for you and your health. You’re always more stressed when you spend time with them than when you return. Why don’t you just stay at school?”

I arose on Easter morning curious about how I would feel on my first holiday without family. I chose to spend the day by myself, as I wasn’t ready to be welcomed into someone else’s house. Instead, I got dressed and went for a long walk. Surprisingly, I felt deeply at peace. An entire day without the obligations of family, without the messy expectations of perfection, without the constant anxiety of keeping up, without the secrets. I wasn’t lonely without my family; it was lovely.

A few months passed, so my mother chose to visit me in Berkeley. I wanted to introduce the beauty of the land to her, especially the trees. So my classmates, my mother, and I all went on a hike in Muir Woods. We made our way up the mountain, together observing the Redwoods standing so tall above our heads. I approached one, placed my hands around its trunk, and felt the fullness of its body. Then suddenly, I felt a hand opening the top of my elastic waistband and reaching down my pants. I turned swiftly to see my mother standing behind me.

“Mom, what are you doing?!” I asked, horrified.
“I just wanted to pat your po-po,” she replied. I pulled her aside.
“That’s private. You don’t get to touch me like that. Also, we’re in public with my friends. That’s deeply inappropriate and embarrassing.”
“I created that body,” she teased.
“That doesn’t give you the right to touch my body if I don’t want you to,” I replied.
“Well, touch is important to me,” she defended. “You know I wasn’t touched appropriately as a child.”

At dinner that night, I tried to continue to set boundaries with her, or at least explain the growing differences in my values and that my future may not be as she expected it. But she grew more defensive, switching the subject of conversation to her:

“Do you know how much it hurt me that you didn’t come home for Easter? The only reason I came here is because you don’t want to be with us at home!”

In that moment, I knew the conversation was over. She returned to Newport Beach, while I went back to Berkeley.

Content Invitation: The stories below contain simple descriptions of instances of child sexual abuse. Please, take care of yourself as you need in order to read the rest of this chapter and refer to the support resources post for help. If you would prefer, you can also skip the italicized sections below to pass by this more graphic content.

Days later, I laid in bed still processing this interaction with my mother. My head rested on my white pillow sprinkled with small pink flowers and green leaves. Tears fell down my cheeks, as I suddenly started to receive the memories.

All of the sudden so much of my suffering since I left home for college made perfect sense: The smell of beer on breath. The weight of bodies on my body. The stretching, the burning, the horror, the hurt. The monster under the bed was real. The demon in my body was them. My brain spun in my head, I wanted to exit my own skin.

All of the sudden my childhood history returned to me: I spent my first six years tumbling under the weight of men, not water, while also clinging to them to survive. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t find my way up, or my way down, or my way through. There was no way out. It seemed to have started when I was two. Others had abused me too. I had been imprisoned in my own home, exploited and raped by the people who were supposed to support me. The war was behind closed doors, the wounds buried so far beneath the skin, the chaos trapped in my body for only me to see.

Then, I saw her. Me, on my knees, my mouth open in a silent scream, hands bound so I couldn’t leave. I was only three. I remembered the wailing woman on the wall in the chapel in El Salvador. The children kidnapped and raped in Korea. The author of the ashes. My inner screamer. My mother. I now knew what I had felt in their company: the solidarity of this very specific source of suffering. A history of serial rape against my body finally telling me its story:

That word came to me with such ease. “Incest,” as if the use of it were a calling to me. But this new identity, this sudden knowledge, this hidden history, didn’t fit who I understood myself to be. An ontological shift — a change in my being with the forcing of the first penis, the perpetual penetrations and molestations. Transubstantiations that should’ve never happened due to someone else’s sins.

The flowers of my comforter held me now in this temporary garden of my bedroom that offered space for me to finally receive the revelation of this secret solidarity with other serial sexual abuse survivors throughout history. Most of my resurfacing stories were recovered memories: I had forgotten them and then reclaimed them as a part of my history. Some of the stories surfacing had been continuous memories: I always knew that they happened, but had yet to process them. Other instances remained non-narrative memories that still stuck to the bones in my body, but lacked a clear story.

In these instances, I had walked away. But I could not run away from home. I could not set boundaries in the place I was raised with no locked doors by the father who groped my mother, and the mother who devoted herself to my father, and the community who celebrated my mother’s commitment to him as a sign of sanctity, and the church that blamed my body for all of it. Now just like Jonah in The Giver, I was given back at least some of my memories and it changed everything.

I knew I needed help, but didn’t know where to go, nor how to get there. I could barely support myself, but couldn’t go home. Immediately, I grabbed my cell phone, scrolled the contacts list until my first therapist’s name, “Barbara,” appeared and clicked “Call.” My back sat up against the hard wall now.

“Barbara, I’m remembering memories of incest abuse. I don’t know what to do. How do I know if they’re true?” I cried.
“Annie,” she began gently. “I’ve been seeing your mother in therapy these last few weeks. It’s clear to me that your family has a lot of secrets. In families with a lot of secrets, sexual abuse is common. I wouldn’t doubt if they’re real. Find your truth, for it will set you free.”

Finally, I reclaimed the silenced parts of me hiding in my own body. My challenging transition away from home to go to college. The nightterrors of being raped. My avoidance of parties. The slow shutdown of my system. The han in my pelvis. The state of my half-life. The need for isolation. My deep sensitivity to sexism. Finally, I had the answer I had been seeking since my body started shaking when I first drove away from the only home I have ever known at 18.

It was my father’s hands, my grandfather’s hands, and my uncle’s hands that caused the disruption in the cycle that was my life. But incest was not an issue that could so easily be untangled as a knot in a necklace. No bath, holy or not, could heal this. No prayer practice. No comfort object. No medication. No gratitude exercises. No wonder nothing had worked for me.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

My fingers passed the rosary through my hands, as my lips offered incantations to Archangel Raphael, the patron saint of healers, guides, and protectors; marriage, joy, and travel. Word to word, bead to bead, I devoted nine days of prayer to the angel in hopes that he would intercede, so that I could meet someone, anyone, who could save me from this suffering.

Eventually, I returned to El Salvador on the same redeye flight that I had taken the first time down, but without the shoulder of a potential love to lean on. The Casa program offered alums the opportunity to volunteer for the year as a Community Coordinator (CC) to live in a house and accompany the students through their semester. I applied and within months received a call from the program directors inviting me back to that beautiful country where I had felt so surprisingly at home.

The man who ran the program picked me up at the airport, gave me a cell phone, and dropped me off at Casa Ita, the smallest of the three houses that students resided in. I settled in and made my new room more cozy by sticking inspirational quotes, images, and pictures of loved ones awaiting me back home on my walls. I stood on my bed, the mattress surrendering under the weight of my feet, as I stuck the paper to the orange painted wall with double sided tape. On it, a poem written by Antonio Machado1, read:

The next day, I arose and walked just a few blocks to arrive at the home of the founders of the program for a welcoming of this year’s staff. Some of the faces around the table looked familiar: I knew the Salvadorans from my time as a student, as well as one of the CC’s who had studied abroad with me. The other CC I hadn’t yet met, nor a priest who had been hired to support the staff and students. Father Matthew would teach Philosophy, as well as offer spiritual direction to the community.

A few weeks into the semester, Matthew and I gathered in the garden for our first spiritual direction session just outside of the “Casa de Paz” (Peace House). We sat across from each other, he the listener and me the speaker, as we began to explore the wounds and wisdom motivating my life with a cautious curiosity. Matthew sought to listen to my silent inner screamer. But she hadn’t yet learned to speak, so she communicated with compulsive thinking, constant worry, and picking and scratching. Still Matthew’s patience pursued me, his intelligence invited me, and his spirituality taught me to be differently. We began to practice an unfamiliar form of safety.

“What’s your relationship with your father like?” He began.
“Sometimes I enjoy his company, but mostly I feel afraid of him. I try to avoid him most of the time,” I replied.
“Why?” He questioned.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“What’s your relationship with your mother like?” He continued.
“I love her,” I responded. “She’s my best friend and always there when I need her, but I don’t ever want to be like her.”
“Why not?” He continued curiously.
“Because she has no sense of identity apart from my father and that’s not a future I want for myself.”

In weekly spiritual direction sessions throughout the semester, Father Matthew listened attentively to my family’s values passed down to me. He called out the lies I had been taught by Disney, by the Catholic Church, by my family, by society: that I needed a male savior or a husband to survive. Colette Dowling has coined this, “The Cinderella Complex.”2 Or the idea that women have been socially trained to be dependent on men to meet their spiritual, physical, emotional, and economic needs.

“Prayer or a man will not save you from this suffering,” Matthew insisted.
“Then who will?” I asked desperately.
“I think you need to return to the US and go to therapy,” he suggested.

Heartbroken, I flew to LA just a week into the second semester, where my parents picked me up. Once again, I landed back in my childhood bedroom with only prayers, Bear-Bear, and the statue of Mary. I simplified my bedroom by deconstructing the wooden four post bed, carrying it down to the garage piece by piece, then climbing back up the stairs and placing the mattress on the floor.

I posted the same poem by Antonio Machado that I had pasted to the plaster orange walls in El Salvador. I hung a picture of Mary of Nazareth on one wall. Mary’s face shone brightly, with a metallic gold halo resting around her head that matched the gorgeous frame that held her in place. Her promise for healing still settled me, even if I felt enraged that it still felt so out of reach.

I began to see Barbara once a week, technically a therapist, but mostly the grandmother I wish I would’ve had. She listened to the stories of my family and began to teach me the pedagogies of psychology. She offered behavioral changes, not rote prayers, to practice. Namely, the importance of boundaries. While I took care of everyone else, Barbara was more concerned about who was taking care of me. I began to practice distancing myself from unnecessary interactions with my family and dealing with the guilt of not meeting everyone else’s needs all of the time.

My brothers and I attended a group therapy session all together with Barbara. The four of us sat there in a circle on sofas and chairs. I was trying to get us to be on the same page, so that we could possibly influence our family to change. They all named the same issues, admitting their awareness of them: our father’s power, our mother’s powerlessness, the rest of us caught in between. They acknowledged my father’s obsession with sex, but they felt the situation was fixed and were just supposed to deal with it. Just like my mother did. After all, we were family. I didn’t agree. And the constant work to try and change them when I had so little energy exhausted me.

I needed more support to manage the confusing currents flowing through my body in this context of family fighting my new personal beliefs. When a famous Palm Reader visited Newport Beach, I knew I just had to see him, so I could seek more answers to my failing and flailing system. Maybe he could help me understand my inner screamer, the pressure in my pelvis. So, with my mother and all of her friends, I walked to my next door neighbors house and waited for my session to begin. I sat before him while he held my palm gently.

“You had a terrible childhood,” he said. “One where you didn’t have any control.”
“Yes!” I agreed, “I was very sick with seizures and surgeries.” Finally, I felt validated. He looked at me as if he knew something I didn’t.
“You have a demon inside of you,” he continued. “Once you kill it, you will come to live a long and beautiful life.”

I began urgently. I chose to pursue a Masters in Theological Studies for nothing more than to get me away from family. With the Catholic degree, I could eventually work in parishes and hospitals, at high schools and community colleges, or I could pursue a PhD and become a professor. With a full-tuition scholarship, the ability to earn with a work study job, as well as take out student loans, graduate school meant I could finally break my financial codependency on my father and family.

So, just after my 23rd birthday, I moved away once again from my childhood home on Bunya St. I hopped in the car, turned on the engine, then created miles of distance between my father and me, my mother and me, my brothers and me. Between my grandparents too: Pops and Joan, Jay and Magdalene. The hot, flat, agricultural land between Southern and Northern CA began to lift into hills covered with green trees and a cool breeze. It was Fall now, and the leaves had begun to fall.

My school sat on the top of a hill in Berkeley, CA. Just outside campus was an apartment building the school rented out to students. The penthouse, a six-bedroom, one bath apartment, had been reserved for community student-living, like Casa Romero in El Salvador. I parked my car after the long car ride, walked all my things up the few flights of stairs to the top floor, chose the smallest room in the house because it felt cozy, and unpacked.

My body continued to tremble as it stretched away from the unfamiliar and experienced the new. Just like when I left for LMU, I unrealistically expected myself to get better as soon as I moved out of the house. Instead, I became sicker: deeper sleeps, demonizing dreams, an inability to participate in usual social routines, constipation, harrowing fatigue, constant picking and scratching at my skin.

Suddenly, my usual coping strategies proved to be inaccessible. The sea, with its endless horizon, was far away from me. The salt water in the bay lapped the shoreline gently at the bottom of the hill, but felt far too cold to swim in. I got in the bath, sometimes repeatedly each day because it provided me access to the water, which helped me to relax.

A razor rested on the edge of the tub. While I sat on the floor of the bath in the fetal position allowing the water to pour over my heavy head, hurting heart, and burdened body, I stared at the sharp blade longingly, feeling confidently that one deep slit across a wrist would get the job done quickly. Death felt like the only liberation from this suffering.

Annie, it’s going to be okay.

Suddenly, an ease settled onto my shoulders then into my soul, as I heard a voice speak softly and clearly in my mind. I remembered that same tone, that same message, when I tried to run away from home the first time as a little girl. Now, I lived over 400 miles away and had finally left my childhood home, but still felt it so deeply present within my bones.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

A memory returned to me of a time in Lourdes, France when I sat across from the monsignor who accompanied the Knights of Malta to the place of pilgrimage to help those in need of healing. I wrestled with the differing expectations of the Jesus of my parents and the Jesus of the Jesuits. Following one or the other would take my life in a very different direction and I couldn’t figure out which one was right. The priest replied.

“Who is Jesus to you?”

This new life of tropical heat and walks to the university, of attempting to dialogue socially in broken Spanish and to teach English to children in La Chacra, of arising to a classmate singing “Oh Danny Boy” in a beautiful baritone voice in the shower every morning, and the community holding hands to celebrate our time together in song before every meal, felt quite ideal. I loved it and hoped my parents would too when they booked their tickets to El Salvador for a week-long visit.

When my parents arrived early in the morning on that same red eye flight and after the bus ride, they said hello to William who awaited them at the iron front gate of Casa Romero, pulled the garage door back, and entered. I met them in the entrance room with the landline from which I had called them once a week to check in. My father did as he always does: he squeezed me into his body softly the first time, then more aggressively the second, so that my breasts squished into his chest over and over again. While my mother offered a gentle hug and hello. Then together, we found our way to the courtyard where I introduced them to my new friends.

My parents returned to their recommended hotel to rest, then we met the next day to visit my praxis site. James, my mother, my father, and I all hurried into the dilapidated taxi and drove to the edge of the city to be with the community and their river of laundry and trash, stories and schools, parishes and pupuserias. My parents played with the students delightedly during recess then watched me proudly, as I tried to teach the kids basic concepts of English through song. We all stood, placed our hands on our heads, then shoulders, then toes on repeat, as we tried to sing together:

“Head, shoulders, knees, and toes, knees and toes.
Head, shoulders, knees, and toes, knees and toes.”
Then our hands moved to other parts of our bodies, as we belted:
“Eyes, and ears, and mouth, and nose!
Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes!”

The kids practiced speaking English with my parents, while pulling on their loose shirts saying awkwardly, “Hi! How are you?!” This was just about as far as the conversation could go with the students’ level of language skills, my parents’ comprehension of Spanish, and my limited capacities as a translator. But as fluent English speakers, James and I easily met the necessary requirements to be language teachers, so we volunteered to instruct with no prior experience.

We ate lunch with the priest, then headed up to sit with the elders and their embroidery. I could see that my father began to grow antsy. He had endless energy and sitting with people who spoke slowly in a foreign language, and sewed even more so, irritated him. My mother presented as always, nearly perfectly, making it difficult for me to ascertain her true feelings. The day ended and we returned by taxi to Casa Romero.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to a resort!” My father retorted. “I’m here to be on vacation.”

We spent the rest of the week hopping from resort to resort on the beach trying to find a place that suited my father’s needs. While his frustration grew, so did his critiques. He treated the Salvadoran staff like trash, so my mother tried to correct him.

“Don’t you dare correct me in public!” He demeaned her.
“I wish someone would just be nice to me!” My mother screamed and ran away. I froze and then followed her.
“Annie, are you exercising?” My father interrupted, “Your ass is getting fat!”
Both offended and confused, I turned to reply, “Why are you looking?”

Finally, the week concluded and my parents returned me to Casa Romero then took a taxi to the airport. I went back to my room and rested, depleted and concerned. My new way of being did not resonate with those who raised me. That night before bed, I opened my closet door to see the full length mirror hanging there. I saw my skin, turned around, looked at my rear end, and felt ashamed.

The next morning, I arose to the day, got dressed, scurried out of my bedroom, and walked into the courtyard of Casa Romero. There a beautiful older woman sat under the avocado tree with one thick braid in her silver hair, the tail pulled and pinned up and underneath. She appeared to be so reverent in her own body, and immediately I knew that I wanted to get to know her. So I introduced myself and quickly learned that she was the mother one of the students in my community and came to visit from the United States for a few days. She appeared to be the epitome of grace.

“Will you teach me how to braid my hair like that?”
“Of course!” She replied lovingly.

So I sat on the step, while she pulled up a chair behind me. In her right hand, she grabbed a brush and carefully combed my hair of its knots, then gently pulled the top into three separate strands, and began to weave over and under and over again until the braid shaped atop my head. Then, she rubber banded the end and used a large bobby pin to secure the tail under the long strand.

“Done! Now, go look in the mirror,” she asked.

So I did, and for a moment I saw myself differently. I felt beautiful. I returned to sitting at her feet, while she pulled the bobby pin and the rubber band free, unweaving the braided hair so that it fell once again atop my shoulders.

“Now, you try.”

She asked to hold my hands and guided them, as I divided my hair into three strands and began that same dance over and under and over and under again until I arrived at the end, which I secured with the rubber band. I pushed my index and middle fingers underneath the now braided hair that met my neck and found space there for the tail to be tucked within. Then, I stuck the remaining length of braid underneath and pinned it to stay.

“Well done!” She celebrated. “Now, go see yourself.”

So I returned to face my own face in the mirror and saw once again — albeit a bit of a messier version — that same beauty I had seen in me for the very first time.

Eventually, the waking, the teaching, the singing, the eating, the stories before bed by Adam, and the dreaming of war and rape through the evening, led to the conclusion of my time in El Salvador. Four months passed by far too fast. As my semester abroad ended, Adam and I discussed what we were going to do about our relationship. He lived in Milwaukee, I lived in LA. Besides, tensions had arisen between us throughout our days about his devotion to traditional Catholic practices and my growing rebellion, his rituals and my rage. So we chose to close our romantic time together and stay friends. But my heart broke open once again.

My classmates, who had become the most intimate of companions, released our hands after singing our last prayer of “Vamos Todos.” For the final time, we ate those delicious boiled beans, fried plantains, and soft tortillas with a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lime. We said goodbye to the community members at our praxis sites who we had the honor to accompany and be accompanied by. Then the bus arrived. William, whose endless energy who had protected us through the night, waved us goodbye.

At that moment, the imagined future that had felt so full was instantly pulled out from underneath my feet. The country called “The Savior,” the liberated Jesus I met there, the community of care and equity, the new friends, and the Prince Charming I hoped to marry, suddenly all left me. And in the space that remained came the debilitating anxiety and fatigue. Without a future to be full of, I felt completely alone with this struggle that raged within me, the inner screamer that I could now feel was so alive within my body.

I landed alone back in Los Angeles with my bags in hand and saw my family awaiting me: my father, my mother, and a few brothers. Together, we drove to Bunya St. following the direction of the sea. My father parked the car in the garage and I leapt out, grabbed my bags, passed the front yard, hurried to the green door, up the stairs, and landed right back in my childhood bed and wept. Instantly, my small, Catholic, seemingly perfect world in Newport Beach became deeply shaken by the voices of the historically marginalized people who I met in El Salvador.

I thought of James, my praxis partner, and all he tried to teach me about white supremacy and privilege, as I finally saw it all so clearly in this wealthy, white city by the sea. The next time I spoke over the phone with James, I apologized for the cost of my ignorance and the labor it required of him to educate me. I felt both the gifts and the guilt of my privilege as a white woman from a wealthy community. At least verbally, I began to stand on the side of those historically oppressed and opposed the privileges that rich people granted themselves at the expense of everyone else.

“You’re a communist bitch!” My father attacked me.
“You’re no fun anymore!” Friends said in response to my progressive politics.
“You were brainwashed in El Salvador!” My mother screamed at my new ideologies.

Their messages were clear: I did not belong if I did not align with their beliefs and attune to their lifestyles. There was only one way to serve my community, my family and their God: to blindly obey or leave.

I felt relieved to return to LMU, as the summer ended, . In my final semester of collegiate life, I dragged my body from the house I lived in with a few friends off campus, down to the bluff, and into the school for classes, exhausted after a merely 15 minute walk. This former Division I athlete who played in NCAA championships could now, only three years later, barely get out of bed.

The university offered basic yoga as an elective and I signed up in an attempt to practice embodying my body. I wanted to love all of me and this felt like an attempt at doing just that. The integration of ancient Eastern medicines and the Catholic tradition moved me as my classmates and I waved through the cycles of “The Salutation of the Sun.” I offered my practice in prayer to the Son Jesus, while I gazed to the ceiling arching my spine, then pushed my pelvis up into the air and my hands back for Downward Facing Dog. But being with my body like this initiated a new type of stress, one I had yet to experience.

While I moved through the many positions, I saw flashes of penises in my mind. I couldn’t see who the phalluses belonged to, just that they were always attempting to penetrate me in the vulnerable positions that the yoga asanas made of my body. Simultaneously, I began to feel an intense pressure in my pelvis. A weightedness. A heaviness. It felt as if I neglected to pull out a tampon, like something was stuck up inside my vaginal canal that shouldn’t be.

The academic year concluded, so most of my family flew out for my graduation. From all around the United States, aunts, uncles, and cousins boarded planes to watch me walk across the stage to claim my Bachelors in Theology. Afterward, I envisioned a simple dinner celebration in my family’s beautiful backyard with a long, linear table on the lawn. We’d order pupusas from a Salvadoran restaurant, so that I could share a little bit of the joy of stretching cheese and black beans stuffed into grilled masa dough with my extended family. Breaking a different kind of bread. Inviting them into remembering. We could watch the Disneyland fireworks after dinner.

Naturally, my father had other plans. Instead, my simple dinner was turned into a formal meal on the patio of a fancy Italian restaurant where we all sat facing him in a square, leaving a large space in the center where he stood and shared stories of my upbringing — the great toast that would make the evening. He planned to replace Pops, the patriarch leaning against a stool. The storyteller. Timothy Jr., the oldest son, now centered himself, casting the light toward him, passing down his tall tales to his children at an event that was supposed to celebrate me.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

My daydreams began to weave images of what it might be like to study abroad for a semester in the country called, “The Savior.” I could envision myself falling in love with a fellow classmate from the United States, growing intellectually in class, and intimately connecting with local communities through service opportunities. I could imagine myself feeling better, establishing a life, and actually living in this country I had just learned to locate on the map.
I could imagine myself healthy, happy, and whole.

Where’s my seat?

I squeezed my body and carry-on bags through the airplane aisle until I found my assigned row. Adam awaited me, he being another student who chose to study abroad in El Salvador his second semester of Junior year. His plane stopped through LA on the way from Wisconsin to the Central American country that hugged the Pacific Ocean.

“Hi, I’m Anne.” I extended my hand.
“Hi, I’m Adam. It’s nice to meet you.”

The red eye flight between LA and San Salvador took to the skies late at night. At first, Adam and I discussed our trepidations and anticipations for the next four months. Together, with 22 other college students from the United States, we committed to spending a semester in El Salvador and learning its history, listening to the stories of its people, and singing their litanies for healing and hope.

Adam’s shoulder sat at the perfect pillow height for my head, so as I grew tired I asked if I could rest on him. He said yes and the time progressed more quickly. When the plane landed early the next day, Adam gently shook me awake. We hustled off the plane, walked to the baggage claim, scooped up our luggage, passed through customs and received “El Salvador” stamps on our passports, then found the bus filled with other students.

On our way, I peered out the windows and couldn’t help but marvel at the beautiful fullness of the clouds, the sun streaking through the bright sky, the mountains flowing like waves as the views passed by. While our eyes took in the sites, the students and I introduced ourselves and shared our mutual excitement of this next stage of life. Suddenly, the scene shifted from the countryside to a city composed of simple square cement buildings with tin roofs. On the streets, people peddled sweets, while others tried to wash the windows of vehicles to acquire a few extra cents.

The bus dropped us all off at the entrance of Casa Romero, a former convent. A man named William awaited us there. William means, “Protector,” and he was to be ours. He stood outside the black iron gate of the house all night to keep us safe. William swung open the large garage door and welcomed us in. Immediately, the scents of boiling beans, roasting rice, and frying plantains overwhelmed my senses with delight. We made our way through the house and into the courtyard. Between two tall avocado trees rested a hammock woven in dyed materials of red and purple, blue and green. A few iron bistro tables dotted the margins of the common area, so that all of the students who had just arrived could form a circle in between.

The US family who ran the program invited us to gather and hold hands. Adam stood by my side and reached for the hand on my right. Then the kids of the family guided us in a Spanish song1 that we would all come to sing together as a prayer before every meal:

After dinner, tired from jet lag and full of food and excitement, we headed to our assigned houses all located near the same street. I remained in Casa Romero and found the small room that would be mine for the next few months. A twin bed sat to my right covered in two colorful blankets, a narrow closet stood upright near the back, and a desk and chair rested against the front wall with a window over both that stayed open to the elements. The day ended with my usual recitation of nightly prayers, while the gratitude exercise felt nothing but authentic in this new way of life in a place called, “The Savior.”

The next morning I arose ready to explore. My head lifted from the pillow, my body jumped off the mattress, and I threw on a pair of long shorts and a t-shirt. My feet felt for the flip-flops that I had slipped under the bed the night before. I opened the door, walked to the iron gate, slid it open, greeted William, then headed to the University of Central America (UCA).

Churches, stores, and pupuserias surrounded me in this city, as I strode to the bottom of the steep hill where the university awaited me. People shuffled through the sidewalks, as cars drove a bit more wildly than I was accustomed to down the two lane streets. I made my way carefully to the front gates of the UCA that were also guarded by a vigilante.

As I walked onto campus, I felt immediately as if I were in Eden. The university’s buildings sprinkled throughout the grounds with openings for windows without screens so the air could flow through the buildings naturally and cool the students from the tropical heat. Resplendent flora with white and pink flowers arose from the land to transform the very urban environment into a gardened sanctuary.

My soul felt satiated like this place was the paradise I had been longing for, guarded by humans instead of angels, who let some people in. Signs that said, “Capilla,” directed my steps toward the chapel to the right until it stood erect before me with an A-framed roof made of reddish-brown clay tiles. My hand reached toward the glass front doors.

Not unlike the parish at the bottom of the hill of my childhood home, or the Sacred Heart Chapel that I sat in alone so many nights at LMU, this church too had a number of wooden pews, organized in rows, with an aisle through the center that led to the altar, above which a cross rested on the back white wall. But otherwise, this place of worship looked different.

The shape of the building opened more like a half circle than the traditional rectangle. The altar, shaped simply of wood, sat in the center, while the cross hung without Jesus’s body. The wood bore colorful paintings that told of the history of the Salvadoran community sketched by the famous artist, Fernando Llort.2 To the right and the left of the cross on the walls hung more symbols of the stories of the country’s people, as well as two angels: the guardians of the chapel.

I turned around to view the rest of the building before me and immediately lost my breath. On the back brick wall rose what should have been the 14 Stations of the Cross. But instead of the traditional images that told the tale of Jesus’s condemnation to death, his walk up the mountain, and his last breath, these pictures depicted the torture of 14 Salvadorans during the Civil War.

Fought between 1979-1992, the war arose from the struggle to end the manufactured starvation waged on the poor by the Salvadoran Government and 14 families, known as “Las Catorce”, who owned most of the country’s wealth.3 A local artist Roberto Huezoof found tortured civilians and sketched them in black charcoal on white paper to memorialize the horrors perpetrated against the bodies of so many Salvadoran people by a U.S.-backed government in a flawed effort to fight communism.4 During the Civil War, Salvadoran soldiers murdered 75,000 civilians, many often raped and tortured beforehand.5 Then I saw her.

One woman on her knees, topless with her breasts exposed, her hands tied with barbed wires at the wrist, her mouth open in a desperate and silent scream. I heard her, I felt her deeply resonant in my body. As if somewhere, somehow she belonged to me, and I belonged to her.

What is her story? I wondered, as a deep recognition shook beneath my skin.

It was as if a part of me awakened and began to tremble: my own inner silent screamer. This intense energy that kept me in bed in a deep depression, or pressured me to pick and scratch at my skin, or made me shake with anxiety while simply managing day to day activities, or isolated me from college parties. It was as if the charcoal drawing of this nameless woman wailing on the wall introduced me to a mirrored image nailed to my interior. But this secret solidarity between the silent screamer and me felt perplexing, as I could not see any similarities between her story and mine.

I walked back to Casa Romero feeling the secondary weight of these wounds and a new wonder about my first encounter with my inner silent screamer. My feet shuffled beneath me seemingly without my agency, tracking my own footsteps back past the glass doors of the chapel, through the flowers, to the iron gates with the guard. I slipped through them then slowly made my way back up the hill, where I found Adam awaiting me. As soon as I saw him, my inner screamer settled.

It only took a few weeks for the shoulder I rested my head on during the flight to become the chest I leaned against throughout the day and kissed sweetly before bed each night. Adam and I began dating quickly. It all felt too good to be true. He, whose name matched the first man created in Eden, held my hand to join me for what felt like the Eve of my life: a new beginning in this strange paradise, with a community devoted to collective healing, with peers who sang together in prayer before shared meals, where the love of this man held my hand and told me boring stories before bed to help me rest. This temporary lift from the depressiveness gave me hope and helped me cope.

Quickly, all of us students fell into our weekly routines. Together every Tuesday and Thursday, my praxis partner, James, and I traveled from Casa Romero to La Chacra: a cement city on the outskirts of San Salvador. As soon as we arrived, we could see the tiny houses built side-by-side made of four walls and wavy tin roofs, small pools and pipes that pulled water through the community, and laundry basins that disposed right into the river with the rest of the trash. The town stank like a neglected garbage can, especially on hot days, and I came to quickly love that place.

James and I taught English in the Kindergarten and the primary schools. Then we joined a priest for lunch and followed him around town to listen to parishioners’ stories of suffering and resilience. Presently, the country managed gang violence that began back in the US. When many asylum seekers returned to El Salvador after the Civil War, they brought the same gangs so prominent in LA back to the streets of San Salvador, introducing a new kind of decentralized violence. Much of what the priest could offer the community was accompaniment: to be with them in their suffering. And so James and I were learning how to accompany those with very different stories than our own.

Some of our most intimate moments in this community were late in the afternoon with the elders who gathered at the church to learn embroidery that they could sell for a little extra money. They sat around a long white, plastic pull out table and chatted through their mostly toothless smiles. I tried to comprehend the power of what they were saying with my broken Spanish, but mostly we all enjoyed just gathering. This proved to be a different way of being than I felt accustomed to. Without the constant need to achieve or consume, I could simply receive the presence and beauty of their company. Create. Be. I felt relieved by this simplicity, but reality was much more complex than I perceived it to be.

Between the taxi rides, the teaching, the meals, and the sitting with the elders, James and I would talk, often argue. He shared his story with me as a first generation Vietnamese immigrant born and raised in the United States: how he overcame so much to land in the place where we both stood now; how he labored to help me comprehend the power I had in my social privilege as a white woman from a wealthy family. Of course, I didn’t understand.

How could I be this depressed and still be privileged?

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to take responsibility and do what I could to make the world a more just place for everybody. Instead, even though this pedagogy taught me that I had more power than others in society, I felt void of it. Entirely empty and powerless.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, my peers and I all attended classes at the UCA. In them, I learned more about the history of white supremacy — spread globally through imperialism and colonialism — as well as the various exploitative economic structures that created systems to care for those on top of the social hierarchy, while taking advantage or directly oppressing those born below.

The power of privilege that US citizens had in El Salvador — especially those who were or presented as white — could be seen in the US dollars we used to pay for everything and the American flags flown all over the country. Most importantly, North Americans were rarely the victims of physical violence in El Salvador, which then was the most dangerous peace-time country in the world. While I was frequently catcalled on the streets by boys and men who saw me as a beautiful woman from the US, James was named either ignorantly or derogatorily, “Chino.”

I returned to Casa Romero after class that day feeling sick to my stomach. I went to the bathroom and looked at my white face in the mirror. A skin I had always struggled to believe in its beauty. With its high and wide forehead, its paleness, its freckles, its developing fine lines, its acne, I always saw myself as a problem. As if my face had no right nor reason to exist, a body forever sick.

The idealism of my days continued to be met with a mysterious duplicity at night. The rape dreams that haunted me back at Loyola Marymount University began to include stories of state-based wars that ravaged communities. I frequently woke up in a sweat or entirely frozen, shaking myself to remind my brain that what happened in the last few hours was only a terrifying dream…at least for me. My inner screamer, now ever present, wanted to live outside my body.

One morning, the other students and I arrived just outside the gate of Casa Romero to board the bus that headed toward the heart of the capital. The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Savior in downtown San Salvador awaited us. The front reflected those same symbols on the back wall of the UCA chapel, art by the famous artist Fernando Llort, that gave homage to the peace accords signed in 1992 to end the Civil War. The dove, the corn, the Campesinos, all pieced together in a mosaic that told the story of the Salvadoran people. The inside though, reflected the faith of the Conquistadors.

Roman Catholicism arrived to El Salvador in the 16th century through the violence of the Spanish, robbing the land from Native communities. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, rural uprisings were met with brutal resistance leading to “La Matanza” (The Slaughter) in 1932, when 10,000-40,000 Native people were murdered, imprisoned, or exiled. All of this compounded to cause the Salvadoran Civil War.6

In the church, I approached a portrait of the face of a familiar man: Saint Msgr. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, a Spanish priest and the founder of Opus Dei. I immediately recognized the saint’s face from the holy cards sprinkled across Grandma Joan’s house. Opus Dei is a Latin phrase that means, “The Work of God.” It is the only Catholic Personal Prelature, an institution including clergy and lay members that carry out specific pastoral activities.7

Opus Dei is controversial in the church, often being accused of recruiting the wealthy, preferring right-wing politics, and acting on a cult-like agenda. Escrivá’s own writings in his publication, The Way, focused on subjugation and suffering as the means to salvation:

“Obedience, the sure way. Blind obedience to your superior, the way of sanctity. Obedience in your apostolate the only way, for in a work of God, the spirit must be to obey or to leave.”8

Opus Dei asks the faithful to wear shirts made from coarse animal hair to irritate the skin, or a cilice — a light metal chain with prongs — around the thigh, or to whip themselves until they cry. Less extreme tasks include taking cold showers, sleeping without a pillow, or fasting before receiving the Eucharist to remember the importance of hungering for God. The goal was to achieve holiness by aligning oneself to the suffering of Christ — to carry the crosses of one’s life without complaint.9 A glorification of suffering as a means of sanctity.

Joan and Pops were Opus Dei, as well as a few aunts and uncles. It was at an Opus Dei Girl’s camp that I signed that Abstinence ‘Til Marriage (ATM) card I stored in the wallet in my back pocket. Grandma Joan dressed modestly in moo-moo like outfits and demanded her granddaughters do the same. She tried to use shame to encourage us to cover our bodies bearing bikinis on the pool deck, or our shoulders with the spaghetti straps that sat directly next to our bra lines.

“You are responsible for the sexual sins of men when you dress like that!” She scolded us repeatedly.

Growing up, I heard my father echo this same profession of beliefs in statements like, “I can’t believe a woman would tempt me like that, wearing a shirt that draped so far below her cleavage.” By women he often meant girls under the age of 18, including my friends who came over to visit. Whenever I tried to discuss challenges I confronted, he would say, “Take your cross and carry it like Jesus!”

Escrivá’s face in the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador filled me with rage.

What’s he doing here on the top floor of the Cathedral? Where’s the body of Archbishop Oscar Romero?

Oscar Romero was murdered in 1980 by the Salvadoran Government for defending the rights of the poor at the start of the Civil War.10 Romero and Escrivá had been friends, both deeply committed to a life of sacrifice, but for different reasons. The Archbishop’s body laid in the basement downstairs. Justice in the homilies of Romero sought to break the cycle of violence and injustice by dismantling exploitative systems. It disempowered the oppressor and empowered the oppressed. His faith desired to initiate a new cycle of safety where the dignity of all people was upheld in equity. Romero preached:

“A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — ​what gospel is that?”11

In religion class at the UCA, I learned there was a term for Romero’s interpretation of the gospel: Liberation Theology. The Jesuits of El Salvador had written a new theology with others like Gustavo Gutiérrez, who believed deeply in God’s “preferential option for the poor.”12

In this framework, Jesus was murdered unjustly for being a political subversive, not intentionally by God the Father to save us from our sins. Humanity needed not to bear our burdens like Jesus carried his cross, but instead be relieved from our crosses caused by individual and systemic injustices. God desired to protect us from unnecessary suffering through justice and accompany us in the process of liberation. But this version of the story was not present on the top floor of the cathedral.

El Salvador’s Catholicism was as split as mine. Divided down the lines of white, European paradigms and the preferential option for the poor. One side devoted to Opus Dei, that sought to give charity to those in need in El Salvador since 1958,13 without any social or structural change; and the other to Oscar Romero, a martyr for the freedom from oppression through justice to peace. The former held the upstairs, living in plain sight at the level of my eyes, while the latter remained buried in the basement beneath. Both pedagogies now took up space in my body alongside my inner screamer who craved unity. This internal trinity created a new pressure that sought to be relieved. They could not co-exist within me. Soon, I knew that I would have to choose.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

The sea lapped against the shoreline just a few miles away from my university. I still had my Hyundai Santa Fe, which my youngest brother aptly named “Green Bean.” When I felt tired, or sad, or mad, I forced myself to walk to the parking lot, get in the car, turn on the engine, and drive down the bluff to the shoreline. I stopped, stepped out of the vehicle, pulled my shoes off, then felt the sun-soaked sand quickly heat the bottom of my feet. The edge of the water awaited me, as it always did, and instantly I felt soothed by the endless blue horizon.

The summer passed both too slowly and too fast, as I laid most days depressed in my childhood bed and stared at that white statue of Mother Mary that still stood constantly on my windowsill. I had one thing to look forward to: an upcoming trip to Lourdes, France, where Mary once appeared to a 14-year-old named Bernadette. Pilgrims of a variety of faith traditions who revere Mary visit the city every year to pray in the basilica, to view the grotto, to walk the life-sized stations of the cross, and to bathe in the waters known for healing miracles.

Hospices have been built right across the river to care for the travelers who may need medical support during their holy journeys. The community depends on volunteers to run the baths, to accompany the sick from the hospices to the various activities, and to lead the pilgrims pacing in candlelight processions and singing songs every evening.

My father had recently become a Knight of Malta after receiving an invitation from the Catholic organization known for recruiting the conservative and wealthy. Every summer, the Order of Malta traveled to Lourdes to volunteer with the sick, as well as planned a pilgrimage for high school and college students to attend. My father and mother went, then sent me on the next youth pilgrimage.

As soon as I arrived, my feet guided me as if they were not mine. Every morning, I arose, quickly ate some bread and butter, jam and ham, then headed out to be with those in need. Sometimes, I folded blankets for the buggies that carried those who needed assistance with mobility around. Other times, I led the congregation in song during the candlelight vigil at night. Then finally the planning team asked me to work in the baths, the most trusted and coveted position for volunteer pilgrims.

Early in the morning, I walked along the basilica and through the grotto where Mary had appeared to Bernadette. My hands dragged across the once rough rock like so many pilgrims had done before me, eventually polishing the stones into a sleek and smooth marble. I passed the candles that continued prayers in small iron cages next to the river that flowed through the holy city. When I arrived at the sacred site, pilgrims had yet to form the line so long that they may need to wait all day to be bathed. The leadership team unlocked the door for me and the one who spoke English provided instructions.

Dressed in the youth Knights of Malta uniform with long khaki shorts to my knees and a white, loose crewneck T-shirt with the logo of the organization on the front and back, my attire matched what their team expected. They handed me a navy blue apron to pull around my body then introduced me to the rest of the volunteers: five other women from around the world, none of whom spoke the same language as me. We gathered in the baths, divided between women and men, where we practiced what exactly to do with the pilgrims.

Two of us assisted the believer in undressing with the help of a white sheet to ensure modesty. Once naked, we wrapped the cloth around the pilgrim and walked her to the entrance of the bath, where the four other volunteers awaited her. In the bathing area sat a long stone opening filled with ice cold water. A small white statue of Our Lady of Lourdes rested at the far end.

The pilgrim entered the tub and slowly shuffled forward to the Mary awaiting her, offered a prayer, then the volunteers dipped her back until the white sheet and her bare skin soaked in holy water. Then the same process continued just backwards: the pilgrim returned to the entrance of the bath, and with help of the volunteers, dried and dressed. She departed from the sacred place that she had waited all day to bathe in, ideally having received some sort of miracle from Mary. I couldn’t help but wonder:

If the power of prayer, or a simple dip in a bath, could heal people in an instant, why did Jesus and Mary stay so silent in response to my pleas for healing?

The pilgrims entered the bathing chamber one by one. All day, the other volunteers and I supported the believers by disrobing, dipping, then dressing them. Eventually, my team invited me to hold the weight of the women as they leaned back into the water. I witnessed in honor, as the pilgrims of so many faith traditions wept, feeling close to Mary for this moment in the bath. Moved by their belief in the power of healing, I wondered what might happen to my young body slowly struggling to function when I took a dip in those holy waters.

At the end of the day, my time finally came to find out. Each volunteer who wanted to bathe followed the same steps as the pilgrims. I got undressed with the help of the women who I had volunteered with, wrapped the white linens around my flat chest and narrow hips, then entered into the back of the bath. My feet felt the fluid first: ice cold, but light; less like water and more like barely there frozen air. I swept my body wrapped in the sheet through the cold fluid until I arrived where the statue of Mary awaited me.

I touched her gently, while tears began to flow from my eyes. Suddenly, I felt in my body the potential for the power of healing. I knew I was not better right away like so many miracle stories of Lourdes. Instead, healing felt possible, and I was clear that it was my job to pursue it.

While I changed back into my modest uniform, I felt both disillusioned and determined: disappointed that I had not received the healing-in-a-moment experience I had hoped for. However, my spirit knew a new energy that drove me to keep seeking other ways of healing. With a light pep in my step, I walked past the long candles in the iron cages that had stamped on the backs, “This flame continues my prayer.” I approached the burning wicks, found one that had yet to be lit, struck a match, and watched the flame ignite. The wax began to slowly drip, keeping my prayer for healing alive.

Sophomore year of college began, so I returned to LMU to be with my roommate in an apartment atop that beautiful bluff that overlooked the sea. In the space between classes, papers, and reading, I was now free to do just about anything having canceled my commitment to passing balls and chasing walls in the confinements of an olympic-sized pool. So I explored all the activities the campus had to offer to second year students like me: a community service club, campus ministry, a sorority.

My schedule filled quickly and I felt busy, but in a different way than before. With less time exercising and without the daily soak in the sun and water, I began to feel sluggish and tired. My hair and pleasant personality both turned darker, as my moods continued to oscillate in ways I still could not explain. My relationship with my roommate became strained, as I couldn’t take care of my responsibilities in our shared apartment on campus. Clothing covered the floor of our small room, the trash filled up and over the top of the bin, gnats flew around the kitchen sink from the pile of dirty dishes. She asked me time and time again to respect her wishes by simply cleaning up, but I couldn’t find the energy.

Instead, I spent time journaling. In my mind, I began to travel back and forth in time throughout my story to try to uncover any painful memories that might have been the cause of what I came to understand to be psychosomatic symptoms: or body strains from the brain that can often be due to emotional and psychological pain. But I couldn’t think of anything particularly traumatizing. The only obvious moments of trauma from my childhood were the times I couldn’t remember before the age of five: the surgeries and the seizures. But physicians I met with expressed no concern that a temporary childhood illness could cause such debilitating depression and anxiety as an adult.

On the outside, my life in college was progressing as it should be. But my body was telling me a very different story. Finally, I reconsidered the recommendation of the doctor, my father’s cousin. I turned to therapy and medication. The sick and the crazy had consumed me, and I wanted to return to some sort of recognizable normalcy. First, I tried therapy, but the college counselors lacked both the expertise to treat the severity of my symptoms and the space in their schedules to fit me in. Treatment outside of school was not covered by insurance. Then I pursued psychiatric medications, which I hoped would just fix me without having to talk about the chaotic currents flowing within my brain and body. So I went to a new doctor who performed some tests.

“You’re too young to be feeling like this,” he said.
Am I being punished?
“There’s nothing structurally wrong with you,” he continued.
So, you’re saying it’s all in my head?
“Are you dating?” He inquired.
“No!” I responded angrily now, wondering what dating had to do with healing.
“Why not? You’re beautiful, it may make you feel better.”

I certainly hoped to meet someone in college and had tried dating a few guys in my class, but none of the relationships lasted. Managing the severity of my symptoms alongside my studies and increasing activities didn’t leave much free time for fun. I redirected the physician.

“Dating isn’t my priority at the moment. Do you have any other ideas to help me feel better?”

He then went on to tell me that he too managed anxiety, and that the best medicine for him had been distraction: to stay busy during the day and to practice a gratitude exercise before bed. I had already tried busyness as a solution, but the symptoms on my insides took over me, as did the terrors of being raped at night. Now, it felt necessary to try anything that might make me feel better, so I could once more become the bubbly, happy, high achiever who I was so accustomed to being, who I was expected to be. So I suggested:

“How about medication?”

The physician wrote me two prescriptions: the first for Zoloft, and the second, a gratitude exercise. I was to write down five things I felt grateful for before bed each night. I returned back to school, popped the pill in my mouth, and pulled out my journal to write down my list of five gifts. But anger answered within my soul and body, as gratitude felt so unusual to me with the weight of this heavy suffering.

My system felt agitated by this exercise meant to be medicine, and the pills made me so tired I didn’t want to get out of bed. Instead, I felt trapped between a new trinity of journaling, praying, and incessant visits to the sea to relieve the messages spinning in my head, trying desperately to feel better, to get better, to do better, to be better. But my days passed with no relief.

By the end of Sophomore year, I walked to my student mail box and pulled out a letter addressed to me from the university. Surprised, I ripped the seal with my index finger, pulled out the folded white paper, and read the invitation to an awards ceremony at the Sacred Heart Chapel.

I arrived to the church the day of the celebration dressed in a white, flowing skirt past my knees, and a coral wrap around top, with high heeled flip-flops. The emcee began to read the agenda for the ceremony. One person from each class was to be honored for their academic excellence, commitment to social justice, and care for the community. The emcee called the Freshman honorary to the stage. Then, when it was time to name the Sophomore, he spoke: “Anne Marie,” then the surname of my father, and his father, and his father before that.

In shock, I stood and walked down the aisle to the altar. The wooden pews that sat in long, linear rows passed next to me, while I approached the Christ hanging from the cross. I watched as my peers cheered me on, then I saw them. In the very front row, where they always sat as if the pew had been reserved for them, waited my family. My grandparents — Pops and Joan, Jay and Magdalene — my father, mother, and my younger brothers, all gathered to celebrate me. The school had called and invited them to attend.

At the end of the celebration when the sun began to dim, I kissed my family goodbye, then walked hastily back to my apartment before it grew too dark. I unzipped my skirt and let it fall to the floor. Then I untied the coral pink sweater, pulled on pajamas, picked and washed my skin, brushed my teeth, then rested my head in bed wondering:

How could I be this honored and still feel this horrible?

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

Chapter 6: Anxiety

I could feel his arms around me, the pressure of his body pushing against my body. He, tall and broad and strong, and me, small and narrow and weak. Voiceless, I had no power. It was as if even my fists, fighting for space from him, just a bit of distance, melted when they met his skin. I wanted it to end, but I couldn’t stop it. And he wouldn’t stop.

Then I woke up.

Life at LMU began swimmingly, literally. On the outside anyway. Most mornings, I arose with the sun then gobbled down microwavable oatmeal to ingest just enough carbohydrates to get my body through practice without throwing up. I walked to the pool, jumped in and swam, passed balls and scrimmaged. As I grew weary of this work, I recalled my commitment to my father six months or so before by my bedside. He had pulled up a chair near those four darkly stained wooden posts and the floral comforter in my childhood bedroom and leaned in to listen.

“I would like college to be a fresh start,” I expressed. “To get to know the activities that the university offers instead of committing so much time and energy to water polo. So, I’d like to quit,” I finished.

“What will I do if I don’t have your games to go to?” He replied immediately. “If I don’t get to meet the other parents, how will I make friends? Besides, you owe the coach one year after he invited you to play on the team.” He concluded, “This isn’t just about you, Annie.”

So I just kept going: waking up, eating oatmeal, dragging myself across campus, diving into swim, attending classes, returning to the gym to lift, then finally heading back to bed to rest. The perks and privileges of being a student athlete benefited me, as the administrators invited us to choose our classes before others to ensure our schedules remained free around practice and game times. I could cut class if necessary to travel with my team to compete far away, or be released early to play against an opposing school in our campus pool.

But more importantly than both of these things, I was cool. Popular. My peers recognized me as a unique beauty with strong shoulders, sun kissed cheeks, and auburn hair that wisped into bangs at my brow and waved gently by my breasts. Every Sunday, I attended mass at the Sacred Heart Chapel and bonded with other Catholics on campus. My teachers, too, celebrated me in the classroom. My eagerness to earn good grades and my curiosity to learn inspired them to call on me with questions. Suddenly, I felt smart effortlessly.

Surprisingly, this new-found popularity brought a level of attention my direction that I wasn’t quite accustomed to. Guys eyed me on the street, others asked me out in class or cornered me at social events. College parties filled me with stress in a way that I could not express nor tolerate: the smell of beer on breath, smoke filling the air, sexuality seeping through the room like heat. While everyone else seemed to be having fun flirting and drinking and being free, I felt an outside-of-my-body sensation. As if I needed to be alert, needed to hover over my own head, so I could observe absolutely everything.

My deepening depression and anxiety manifested in near constant picking and scratching at my skin. My body started lightly shaking from the inside out during the day, while my dreams filled with violent scenes when I slept at night. Terrors haunted me repeatedly of a man trying to rape me. I attempted to push him away, but never had the power to do so. Nearly every morning, I woke up debilitated. As if my brain were ready to arise, but my body stayed stuck and still from the memory of the night. When my mind finally became aware I was awake, I shook my body in place until it joined me in its arisen state.

I would rather be murdered than raped. I thought.

More and more, the symptoms that I could mostly keep a secret began to sweep into my public life. This sense that something was taking over my body terrified me. Tears poured down my cheeks in the middle of class. I locked myself in closets or behind bathroom doors to hide my spontaneous meltdowns. As soon as the sunset, I ran across campus in fear I might be snatched and raped. Practice and classes, meals and masses kept me distracted, but these conditions that I had less and less control over felt overwhelming.

What is wrong with me?

My father’s cousin worked at a medical center nearby. So I went to him to discuss the sudden severity of my mental decline. He sat across from me and shared more hidden histories of the health of our family.

“You know, Annie,” he began mournfully. “Many of my uncles died from substance use issues, and one by suicide. Most of our family members use psychiatric medications to manage symptoms like anxiety, depression, and paranoia. You may consider asking the family about it.”

I absorbed this information with a heavy curiosity. My father had mentioned the deaths of his uncles when I was younger, so I had stayed away from alcohol and drugs, but also had never been encouraged to seek therapy or consider medication. But now that I was in college and miles away from home, these issues became unmanageable and hindered my success as a student, my social life, and my self-perception.

“Why don’t you consider counseling and medication to treat your symptoms?” The doctor asked.
“No, of course not!” I replied defensively.

Therapy is for crazy people, and I am NOT crazy. I thought. Medication is for sick people, and I am NOT sick. What would my neighbors think of me back in Newport Beach where I was expected to present so perfectly? How would I tell them that while my college years thus far had been such a success in some ways, in others I felt as if I were losing myself, my mind, my body?

The only thing that seemed to settle my anxiety was returning to the Sacred Heart Chapel. The student mass held late Sunday evenings reminded me most of home. While my living situation, teachers, and campus slowly became more and more familiar, the smells of incense inside the church, the rows of oiled wooden pews, and the Christ hanging from the cross above the altar soothed me with their consistency. I recognized the ritual and the melodies to the music. I knew when to stand up, to sit down, to kneel. I said just what I needed to say when I needed to say it.

A priest on campus gave me a key to the various chapels, so that I could pray during all hours of the day. Regardless which church I chose, I found myself alone late into the evening entering those big wooden doors, blessing my body with water, then laying on the floor near the altar so I could stare directly at the man hanging from the cross.

“What is wrong with me?” I asked him desperately.

With my health becoming more debilitating, my childhood craving for salvation returned urgently. I needed to learn more about this Christ who could save me, so I committed to pursuing a degree in Theology, “The study of God.” My life felt so much bigger than me, and I needed to know exactly what God the Father wanted for me. Surely, God didn’t save me from seizures all those years ago, so I could become so sick again at the nascency of my adult life.

The end of my freshman year came near, and I received an invitation to play water polo at NCAA championships at the University of Michigan. I called my parents to share the good news: I was only one of a few other freshmen who would travel with the team. My father answered.

“You never call. You never write. After all I’ve done for you! I’ve kept a roof over your head and food on your table. You don’t have to work through college because of the trust fund I gave you.”

I froze, as I wondered why he met me with this instant critique. I was everything he expected me to be: an A student, a Division I collegiate athlete, a natural beauty, a devoted Catholic. Quickly, I reminded him that relationships are two-sided. He never called, he never wrote to me either. I tried to communicate with him how disconnected I had always felt from him.

“Well, you know,” he defended. “You don’t make millions by getting to know your children.”
I changed the subject, “So I was invited to travel with the team for NCAA championships.”
“Oh,” his tone changed to excitement, “Should we fly out, Annie?” I was surprised he gave me a choice.
“No, I probably won’t play and there’s always next year.”

Without my parents and with my team, I flew to Michigan. Before the game began, the referees lined up my teammates in order of number, then introduced us. Pride filled me when I heard my name, “Anne Marie,” sound like a refrain against the indoor pool walls and rafters, as I represented a university I came to know as home. I did, indeed, sit the bench most games of the tournament. Until the very last game, when my coach called me:

“Annie, get in!”

Surprised to be granted this opportunity as a Freshman, I dove into the pool, felt the water drench my skin, and lined up in the middle with my teammates. The referee blew the whistle, and we swam. Starting on offense, we shaped ourselves into two lines of three close to the cage. Someone threw the ball to me, and I quickly shot it right past the goalie and into the net. The crowd went wild in celebration. I knew in this instant that I was ready to end my water polo career.

When I returned to the bluff by the sea at Loyola Marymount University, I headed into my coach’s office to tell him I would be on deck for the very last time. He tried to convince me to stay, promising me significantly more game time in the upcoming season. But I was ready to choose a future beyond the dreams of my father. So I walked away from my daily visits to the pool deck, the microwaved morning oatmeal, the weight lifting, and the home and away games. For the first time, I was free to pursue my own destiny. Free to sever the obligations of the endless striving just to keep my head above water.

Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources.

Often on the weekends, my family and I visited my dad’s parents, Pops and Joan, at their home in Escondido that sat on the edge of a country club. As the sun began to set over the now-closed golf course that doubled as my grandparents’ backyard, my cousins, siblings, and I played on the green. When the nighttime sprinklers turned on, we ran through them wildly in our clothes and bathing suits. Usually, Pops just watched. Then, one day he stood up, suddenly appearing into the mist like the peak of a mountain, placed his hands on my hips, picked me up, and flipped me in the air, then gently set me back down on the ground.

“Again, Pops, again!” I cried, craving more of his attention.

Many of the members of my extended family lived within an hour or so driving distance from Newport Beach: some to the South, others to the East, the North, and the Northeast. Often both sides of my family gathered together at my house on Bunya St. because it was big enough to accommodate everybody with its open backyard. Together, we could all watch the fireworks from Disneyland glitter the sky nearly every summer night. Otherwise, we spent time at our families’ houses as well, mostly with Jay and Magdalene — my mother’s parents, in Huntington Beach — or Pops and Joan, who lived just North of San Diego.

Jay’s father and mother raised him at the base of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia in a one room house with their 11 other children. His father was a coal miner in the same place that Mother Mary Jones came around the mountain to inspire the miners to unionize so together they could improve their lives. During the Second World War, the military drafted Jay into the military, where he served as an Air Traffic Controller. He met my grandmother, Magdalene, who was raised in Spokane, WA. They married and had four children including my mother, Elaine.

Together the military family lived around the world: from Japan, to the Philippines, to Germany. Once Grandpa Jay retired from the Air Force, he moved to Huntington Beach into a one-story, four bedroom house and worked as a mailman to provide for his family. Quickly, he became a respected member of his community, as he walked around town in his blue collared shirt, navy shorts, and high socks to deliver letters and packages to his neighbors.

“What’s cookin’ good lookin’?” Jay greeted me as soon as I walked into his house.
“Chicken, you wanna neck?” I replied, knowing the response he expected.
“You knows, I sent money back to my family in West Virginia, Annie?” He began. “And with it, they were able to build a house. They calls it, ‘The house that Jay built.’ Ain’t that neat?”

Grandpa Jay drove miles to find the cheapest gas station in the city and walked around while shaking the change in his pockets incessantly. A ham radio rested in his garage. So whenever we visited, he took me there, closed the door, sat me on his lap, and flipped the switch. Then together we explored the channels and listened. When we spent the night at Jay’s house, we ate microwavable TV dinners. Then the next morning Grandma Magdalene prepared us pancakes fried in Crisco oil, and grapefruits that she cut in half then microwaved with just a bit of brown sugar. When Jay came to our house, he brought with him recorded television shows on VHS, so we could watch cable channels like Nickelodeon that we didn’t have at home.

My father’s father, Pops or Timothy Sr., was born in Omaha, NB, to a wealthy family. Apparently, at some point his family lost everything, but the reason why was never explained to me. The military also drafted Pops during World War II, but as a Civil Engineer. When he returned back to civilian life, he met Joan. They married and had five children, whom they raised near Denver, CO. Eventually, they moved to Escondido, CA into a one-story, three bedroom house on the golf course, which my family and me frequented.

At night after dinner was done, Pops — who was pale, bald, six feet four inches tall, and looked an awful lot like Colonel Sanders from KFC — leaned against a stool, while we — his children and grandchildren — all sat at his feet. He shared stories. One of his favorites was when the military assigned him to guard the water tower. He sat atop the structure with a gun over his shoulder. Two large lights pointed to the field, so that if the enemy were to come, he could see them. Instead, he pointed the lights toward him, believing wholeheartedly that if his enemy cast their eyes in his direction they would run. Every time he entered a room he proclaimed:

“Shout from the rooftops, ring the bells from the steeple, because I’m back again you lucky people!”

But as big and boisterous as Pops could be, he also often sat back with a certain stillness and observed his family closely and curiously. When my body began to change its shape in my tweens, my other female cousins and I sat in a circle and talked about our developing bodies and boys. They shared stories of their boyfriends, of their first kisses, and of the hands that stroked their bras and breasts, while I listened in longingly and lonely, craving that same male affection. Pops noticed me. He called me over to his huge lap, asked me to sit, and drew me into his barrel of a chest.

“Annie,” he began. “I know you’re lonely now, but just wait until it’s time to get married. The boys will be waiting in a line out the door for you.”

As I grew older, my mother began to share with me the inconsistencies of my family‘s histories. Her mother, Magdalene, beat her incessantly. The wedding ring on my grandmother’s left hand caused boils to erupt on my mother’s skin. My grandfather Jay remained passive when he was around. Otherwise, he shared his insatiable sexual desires in constant conversation around children. He groped female-appearing mannequins in window fronts out in public. Grandma Magdalene’s step-father was hard of hearing. At dinner at a restaurant, he would loudly comment on women’s bodies.

“That one’s got a fat ass!” He screamed while pointing. We’d all laugh.

When my mother began breast feeding her baby covered under a blanket, one man in the family said, “I know what he’s doing under there.” While another relative complained of my cousin’s little girl, under the age of three, running around the pool deck naked.

“She should be clothed!” He screamed.
“Why? She’s just a child.” I asked.
“A vagina’s a vagina, Annie.”

My father used to hide in the closet of his bedroom to avoid the beatings by his father, Pops. While his mother, Joan, believed my father could do no wrong and defended him tirelessly. Once, he killed the neighbor’s cat because he was annoyed. When accused, Joan screamed:

“My Timothy would never do that!”

Secrets began to surface about early marriages to get out of abusive homes, then divorces. Stories of drugs and alcohol abuse, of accidental pregnancies and shotgun weddings, of affairs and abortions, of estranged half-relatives conceived when my family members were teens. By the time I was 15, I could talk to anyone about the sexual frustrations of Joan with Pops, and Jay with Magdalene. The scheduled sex of relatives’ routines. The later divorces due to infidelities. Apparently, the couples in my family didn’t follow the rules of the church as closely as their accounts originally suggested. Instead, my family, like all families, was flawed…just secretly.

My parents met and married in their late twenties and started having babies almost immediately. First there was Timmy, who had enough energy to attract and distract all of the adults in his company. He grew to be tall and handsome, athletic and angry. I arrived just 18 months later with my surgery and seizures and something to prove. I wanted (and still do) to be a little bit of everything. Josiah came 18 months after me a bit blue with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. He grew up to be brilliantly creative and slap-your-knee kind of funny. My parents thought they were done, until another baby surprised us all five years later. My mother and I, outnumbered by penises, wished for a girl. So when Patrick arrived and added to our testosterone-filled house, I sweetly said:

“But he sure is a cute baby brother, mommy.”

My siblings and I all helped raise him, but he bonded to me uniquely as a second mother. Up until I moved out of the house at 18, he slept in my bed with me nearly every night. Afraid I would leave, he held my face with his hands and placed his mouth so close to mine that I could feel the warmth of his breath on my skin. It made him feel safe and me, suffocated. So together we would lay like that until he fell asleep, then I would ever-so-slowly distance myself so I could breathe.

As soon as I was old enough and allowed to do so, I walked to the garage, jumped on my bike, and peddled away from home. The wind whipped through my hair as I flew down Bunya St., then rounded Bamboo and Bixia, then Eastbluff. I sped along the Back Bay all the way to Jamboree until I arrived at the sea. A friend of mine lived in a cliff-side house overlooking the crescent shoreline of Corona Del Mar. We’d meet in the alley behind his house. My bike stayed in the garage, while he and I walked to the shoreline.

The waves gently tickled our feet, while our footprints pressed into the wet sand and we talked about everything. When the beach ended, we kicked off our flip flops, set them by the cement steps, then climbed the jagged, black, stacked rocks that stretched into the water forming a boundary between the harbor and the beach. The waves crashed against the jetty, white wash splashing into the air, forcing us to choose our path carefully so we didn’t get drenched.

My friend reached for my hand and pulled me closer to his body, as our skin felt the slippery and scratchy surfaces of the moss and barnacle-studded boulders. We jumped stone to stone until we got to the end of the jetty, where we found two flat rocks that formed a seat. We sat down, cuddled into each other’s arms and rested. Eventually, our lips met. We kissed mostly privately for a long time, only stopping when a boat passed us by. And so, I fell in love for the first time by the seaside.

At dinner, I announced to my family the good news: “I have a boyfriend.” They knew him as the friend who came to the front door with flowers, who wrote a love poem about me and read it in English class, who walked with me platonically on the beach for almost two years before I was ready to be his girlfriend.

“I would rather you date one of those jerk jocks on the water polo team,” my father said. “I don’t understand these good guys, Annie. All guys are supposed to be like me.”

My father tried to keep us from dating by saying I couldn’t have a boyfriend until I was 16, but when I turned 16, he changed the rule again. Either way, my boyfriend and I stayed together against my father’s wishes. Of course, we weren’t allowed to spend time one-on-one, so instead we snuck into empty parks, or jumped into the back of his car, or pretended to meet up to do homework with a group of friends, and instead explored each other’s bodies.

“We can do everything, but…” I said. He knew I was saving my virginity until marriage.

I envisioned our future together. The day we would celebrate our shared sacrament: Marriage. He in the pressed tuxedo and me in the white ball gown. The moment God the Father, through the priest’s hands, would bless us as beloveds witnessed by all those who loved us. We would celebrate our nuptials by the sea, I would take his last name, and when evening finally came after a great party, I would hand him a small box with my ATM (Abstinence ‘Till Marriage) card and give him my virginity. Soon after, babies would join our family, and we would buy a perfect home in our already perfect neighborhoods down the street from our families. But a few years later, everything suddenly changed.

“Why are you crying?” My brother, Patrick, asked sweetly while laying next to me before bed.
“My boyfriend and I broke up,” I replied with a mouthful of salty tears.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Annie,” he hugged me close then fell asleep.

Most mornings, I couldn’t get out of bed, but I had no choice. So I dragged myself from my room to the shower, from my car to the classroom, from my school to the pool, on repeat over and over again. Now the captain of the swim and water polo teams, as well as a lead in a school play, while also completing course work and applying for colleges, I struggled to manage my many responsibilities. Most days, I left the house without makeup, my hair pulled back with a tight headband revealing my high and freckled forehead, dressed in my wrinkled uniform looking like crap.

“It’s like you don’t even want to be pretty,” my mother began to scold me. “You should be using your beauty to attract people to Christ, Annie.”

Ashamed and alone, I biked to the seaside and walked along the shoreline, begging the ocean to hold the weight of my grief. Without my first and I hoped-would-be-my-last love, my identity and all my dreams crumbled at my feet. Within the vacancy of my heart, I turned to God the Father in prayer, while my father celebrated that his only daughter was once again free from the hands of a young man. Frankly, he didn’t like me getting too close to girls either, as he felt threatened by any form of intimacy.

“This is no big deal, Annie. There are plenty of other fish in the sea,” he attempted to console me. “Besides you’re only seventeen, you don’t even know what love is. I didn’t know anything about real love until I was at least forty.”

“What is real love, dad?” I questioned cautiously.
“To love is to sacrifice, Annie,” he replied. “To suffer.”

High school graduation approached. A year before, my older brother Timmy celebrated his own commencement. He sat in a dining chair with a big tall back and looked like a King while friends and family complimented him, condoned him, coddled him. All year, I looked forward to hearing my community’s reflections of me. Then, when my time finally came to graduate a year later, I sat there in that same big chair, ready to receive the love of my community. Instead, they roasted me. Shame crept into my body, as I tried to disappear, then the party continued. A male nanny from childhood approached me.

“Well aren’t you just the ugly duckling who’s become the beautiful swan?” He stood a touch too close for my comfort. And then another dad from the neighborhood addressed me. “What does your name tag say, Annie?” As he ran his hand over the sticker that stuck to the outside of my breast, right to left.

I couldn’t help but wonder, Are these men hitting on me?

I prepared to attend Loyola Marymount University as an undecided major and a team member of the Division I water polo team. While most of my friends expressed fear when leaving the place we all grew up, I felt surprisingly at ease as I left the only home I had ever known at 18.