Dear friends-
This is gonna be hard.
Long ago I was involved in a Christian community that I now realize was a cult. I wholeheartedly joined because I would learn to meditate and I was looking for a spiritual community in my small town. Morning services, the company of other young people that I became friends with, a series of 'initiations' I was eager to achieve. There were men and women priests (how modern!) and that attracted me too. I was married with young children. One male priest in particular took an active interest in me...some visiting with him in his apartment, hugging (where I could feel his erection through his robes) and eventually what I would now call a sexual assault. At the time I was infatuated with him. He was funny, kind and deeply spiritual, or so I thought. After all this time and a strong nudge from my chaplaincy training, I see that what I experienced was abuse by a spiritual leader who took my trust and my aspiration and thwarted it. I have held a very deep sense of guilt and shame from this story. I was noticing my flinching whenever the training I am in now would take a turn into christianity. But bigger than that are the life choices I have made; avoiding male teachers, male bosses, choosing to work with empowering women in their labors and births. I could go on. One friend, when I told her this, asked if that was why I chose to be with women intimately. NO. These things are separate. My gender identity and my preference are inherent, not a result of trauma. Please!
Anyway. Sitting here typing this, I am shaking. I have never felt such anxiety before. Losing my little cat was so painful and that is fading. This place where I am right now feels so deep in my bones, my heart. The experience is visceral, in the body. Tomorrow I speak with my spiritual advisor. On Tuesday my old therapist. I'm thinking some anti-anxiety meds might help. That poor young woman I was, trying to make sense of what happened, in silence and confusion. Telling no one. It's the secrecy and the shame. And the legions of people, mostly women, who have gone through this too.
Today I hold in my very wounded heart all that have had their lives, their sense of self-worth, their faith stolen from them. I know how it feels.
For me, telling the story over and over, owning that it wasn't my fault and excavating the shame and guilt so embedded in my heart, mind and body, is the work before me. As they say in chaplaincy, it's a Dharma gate. One to walk through like a hero, a warrior. Like me.
2 comments:
Yes. He absolutely abused you. And no, you had no fault in it whatsoever.
I am so sorry that happened to you. It should not have. Perhaps because of what happened to me, I am so leery of any and all religions because generally, there are men in power (even if there are women, too) who can and will use that power in a sexual way over others. I absolutely do not trust anyone who says that they know the answers to things that no one can know the answers to with certainty.
Even if sex never comes into it in any form.
You are right to go back to your therapist. You have to come to some sort of peace with it. I know what anxiety is and it is impossible to live with for any length of time when it is at its worst.
I am holding your hand, Beth. You're going to be okay. It's going to be a process, though. You are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone.
I love you.
Oh, Beth. I am so sorry that you are going through this, even as I hear and read in your words that it's a necessary transition, that something has broken open. I have full faith from the bit I know of you, that you will get through this. You are love incarnate.
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