Sobreviviente de Maciel, Alejandro Espinosa con nosotros en una visita a México.
Dear friends,
i just came across this now and hope you find it helpful
| ‘We all walk in the dark and each of us must learn how to turn on his or her own light” Earl Nightingale |
| References Healing the Wounded Heart Workbook The Heartache of Sexual Abuse and the Hope of Transformation Dan B. Allender with Traci Mullins | The Wounding of Sexual Abuse In his book “Healing the Wounded Heart Workbook” Dan B. Allender with Traci Mullins, describes sexual abuse as a horrible evil in the world. This particular evil uses “betrayal to disrupt trust, powerlessness to distort imagination, and shame and contempt to mar the pleasure of giving and receiving.” The insidiousness of abuse is that it happens in a mere instant and may last only a few seconds, but it can effect the life of a human being for decades or a lifetime if not addressed. Allender goes on to say “victims of abuse are thrown into a dark web of contradiction, confusion, and heartache.” Often the abuser sees the loneliness and fear and uses this brokenness to gain access and build a bond. “The abused man or woman suffers a deep wound and often refuses to trust again because they were “fooled” by an abuser who offered hope for love and life.” The vow to never trust again is an attempt to insulate and protest oneself from inevitable heartache, but also suffocates and kills our being. We often seek help as we realize to have good relationships, our bubble of insulation must be broken. We know this means opening ourselves up to the past pain we suffered. “We grow in trust (faith) to the degree that we do what seems counterintuitive: open our heart to remember, grieve, and ask God to engage our heartache with tenderness.” (Allender.) For the abused, we often hate hope. “Evil hates hope and wants to diminish our desire for relationship and sate us instead with sugar and trans fats, binging on ten episodes of our favorite T.V. drama, or living on fantasies of pornography, travel, and being the next lotto winner.” (Allender). We fantasize about the book we always wanted to write and never do, making lots of money but spending endless hours on computer games. Of the three, love, hope, and faith, love is the greatest struggle and reward. “Faith and hope are the servants of love. Faith gives us an identity, and hope enables us to risk the sake of something greater than ourselves. Both serve our capacity to give and receive love. And it is love that is the most hated by evil.” “Evil wields shame against humanity as a weapon of mass destruction. The experience of shame sends a shudder through the world so deep that most human beings would rather disappear, lie, or give up all that feels dear to escape the cataclysm. We usually think the antonym for love is hate, but I believe it is closer to say the opposite of love is shame, which inevitably produces hatred as a defense against nakedness and the terror of being seen.” (Allender.) “Healing from sexual abuse involves not only stripping away the denial that often surrounds it but also owning up to the reality that the past abuse has harmed you and is affecting your life today. Further, it is important to understand that if you don’t address the abuse it will shadow and darken your future.” Here are questions to ask and answer about how trauma often awakens trauma and can start the process of healing. What was (or is) happening in your life when you began to explore issues of past abuse? Was there a triggering event? When did you realize that life would never be the same again because of what you now admit about yourself and your past? How dies this awareness make you feel? In what ways have you “hinted” to others about your sexual abuse? If you have already told someone about your abuse, how did they respond? In what ways to you identify with being in exile, an “alien” who can no longer live in your home, family, marriage, friendship, church, or body as you once did? |
