8. We Are Survivors
Updated: Oct 18, 2023
**Trigger warning: In this post, I mention what we have survived. I do not write any explicit details.**
A Word With Multiple Meanings
If you suffered sexual abuse or sexual assault, you are a survivor. What does it mean to be a survivor? Being a survivor means you are stronger than the opposition you've confronted. You made it through grueling pain, overcame obstacles, and defeated an enemy that tried to overpower you. You are re-staking a claim on life. Survivors are champions, finding ways out of hell, sometimes against all odds.
I use the word survivor with reverence, in no way attempting to diminish survivors of medical diseases. I've often heard the word survivor used for people who have overcome a physical illness such as cancer, and while the two categories are quite different from each other in many ways, they also share some roots. The possibility of death can elicit a drive to live, a will to make it through, and a determination to not give up. I think the word survivor applies to both those who have healed from life-threatening illnesses and those who are healing after sexual trauma, which can be life-threatening in other ways.
Life, Relationship, & Expression
Sexual violence is violence against our very life force. Our life force has several components to it. The first is the power of our existence, the fact that we are alive. The second is the power of our connection, the ability to bond with others physically and emotionally. The third is the power of what we bring into the world, what we do with our time. Our lives, our relationships, and our expression are parts of who we are. To threaten any of these endangers aspects of our lives and livelihood.
Our default experience is life, and we automatically alert to threats to our lives. Our bodies want to maintain being alive and try to warn us if anything might be dangerous to our survival. Sexual violence is often registered by our bodies as threatening our abilities to continue living. This is where the fight, flight, or freeze response enters the picture. Oh yes, that adrenaline rush that is most often talked about leading people to either be able to fight to protect themselves or to flee from whatever is posing a threat also includes this other physiological response which can happen, and that is to freeze. During the adrenaline rush resulting from an attack, some people attempt to defend themselves, while others attempt to get away, and still others can't move due to an almost paralysis. The fight, flight, or freeze response is exhausting, no matter which of the three a body does, because all three result from the body's panicked state of registering threat to survival.
Sex, when freely chosen and within safe contexts, can be about pleasure, connection, and expression of love between consenting adults. It is a facet of romantic relationships, an expression of care, a path of expressing intimacy, an experience of enjoyment, and an opportunity for delight. When that potential is weaponized against anyone, it can not only do tremendous physical damage, but it can also cause severe emotional damage. Sexual violence attempts to steal something otherwise positive and associate it with force against our autonomies, our wills, and/or our ability to defend ourselves.
Sexuality is also larger than sex itself, and extends well past physical interactions. Our sexuality is not just who we are attracted to. It is also how we communicate who we are, our sense of passion, and even our vitality. It is part of what we bring into the world through our creations. It enables us to manifest expressions of emotion, energy, and creativity through sex, as well as through other creative pursuits, wishes, hopes, dreams, and plans. Brutality against our sexual bodies is both an expression of injustice against our literal voices, decisions, and free will, but also violence against our energetic voices, hopes, and passions.
Injury
Acts of trauma toward anyone's sexual being are acts of violence against our life force. They can injure our ability to feel fully alive, our ability to connect with others romantically, or our ability to express ourselves in the world. The intrusion of sexual trauma can disrupt our lives in so many ways. Sexual trauma terrorizes us, and that type of injury can result in a variety of outcomes that would not have otherwise existed.
When we live through traumatic events, it changes our sense of what could be possible by introducing horrors into our lives that we may not have ever dreamed could happen to us. Our realities include devastation, and that destruction alters our perception of the world around us, how we relate to humanity, and how we live each day of our lives. It can disrupt our sense of safety and our notions of ability to survive. It can affect our discernment of danger. For some, this can result in PTSD. Even those who never develop clinical PTSD may have concepts of security and threat forever changed by tribulation.
It can affect our future interactions due to damage to our association with, interest in pursuing, and ability to enjoy sexual activities. It can disrupt what should otherwise be a pleasurable realm of connection and expression between consenting partners. It can injure our capacities to have or enjoy sex in the future. It can damage the extent to which trust is possible, and our abilities to feel safe within romantic contexts. It can result in fearing sexual interaction from feeling we don't have a say in it, avoiding it because it was hurtful, becoming indifferent to our participation in it because of our associations that it happened whether or not we wanted it to, no longer experiencing pleasure from it because our bodies have energetically numbed to anything associated with it, or overly-pursuing it to reclaim self-determination.
Undergoing the violation of sexual trauma can result in damage to our future conditions that separate us from being able to fully experience or enjoy our lives. Survivors can feel separated from our bodies, emotions, interests, goals, and drives. When under extreme stress, it is quite common for people to experience challenges thinking, learning, and problem solving. Imagine how this manifests for survivors, not just in our classrooms and workplaces, but in our personal lives and pastimes. It can disrupt the ability of survivors to connect to desires, express wishes, and manifest futures. It can affect our ability to thrive.
Those of us who have suffered sexual trauma have survived attacks on many aspects of our lives. Some survivors have quite literally escaped death. Some survivors have short or long term physical injuries. Some survivors have permanent damage to their reproductive systems that prevent them from ever being able to have children. Some survivors have had to carry the biological child of the person who abused them. Some survivors have sexual consequences that affect their abilities to enjoy sexual experiences within safe and consensual contexts. Some survivors have sustained psychological, emotional, and energetic injuries. Some survivors have persisted past the type of torment, pain, and suffering that can drive a person to insanity. All of us who have survived these attacks are incredibly strong in so many ways.
We Are Survivors
The word survivor accurately describes those of us who have had our lives altered by sexual trauma. We may not have battled a medical disease and won, but we battled attacks upon our life force and are still here, surviving after those attacks that had the potential to destroy our safety, livelihood, and lives. I write the word survivor in full honor of all those who have been confronted with something that could have broken us, and in full recognition of all the immense work it can take to find our way back to life after it.
If you are reading this and you have endured sexual trauma, please know that you are absolutely a survivor in every sense of the word. You are still alive and breathing, your heart is beating, and you could not be destroyed. I hope that you continue to experience healing in all areas of your life. To anyone who has survived sexual trauma, I advocate for you. Regardless of what your trauma involved, I believe you with all my heart, mind, and soul. We are all survivors. We have an opportunity to walk with each other on our healing journeys, believe each other, believe in each other, care about each other, send each other healing energy, wish empowerment for each other, and know that we deserve to heal, live in peace, and thrive. We are brave, strong, resilient, and powerful.
Our world is a large community of survivors. For those who have reached that magical place of thriving, I ask that you keep the lanterns lit for those still making their way through what can seem like a never-ending amount of time until the dawn. Even when it seems like the sun will never shine upon us again, eventually, it does. I am beginning to step into the sunlight and it renews my belief in healing, both for myself, and for everyone who has survived sexual trauma.
Visual Inspiration
Teal for Survivors
To Continue Reading
Please see my next post about the possibility of developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in response to sexual trauma.
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