Sexual Abuse: My Story

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Image from Adobe Stock by Fran_kie

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” - Maya Angelou

The topic of sexual abuse has been brewing in my heart a while but I have not felt ready to share anything about it until now.

I’m sharing my story to illuminate the reality of the human experience.

I want to bring taboo topics out from the shadows and into the light.

Because that is what an alchemist does.

They transform something into something better.

I’m learning to turn my darkness into light each day.

As Dr King once said, “darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.”

I see now that alchemy is part of my life path.

It is one of the reasons I incarnated during time—to transmute my dark experiences into a concoction of light to gift the world through the process of my own healing.

My personal mission is to heal my wounds so that I can express the fullness of my potential. I will not allow anything to get in the way of that.

I want to see a world that embodies more peace, collaboration, and authenticity.

That starts by me taking responsibility for my own healing so I can embody those qualities. It is not in me to preach something I am not doing myself.

Authenticity is particularly important to me, especially in a time when you can so easily be fooled by words, images, and videos online.

I don’t want to get to the end of my life only to realise I was living a lie.

To me being authentic means owning who I am and all of my story (not just sharing the parts that feel pretty).

Sexual abuse is part of my story.

And I’ve come to realise it is part of the story for many other men and women too.

In a way the process of writing this helps me alchemise my experience.

So here we go…

When I was roughly 11 years old I was sexually abused by an older male in my bunk bed.

My parents were downstairs none the wiser.

I have a fragmented memory of that encounter and I can’t recall if there was more than one, but I have a feeling there was.

I remember him asking me to come into bed because he wanted to do something that would be “fun” for us both. I didn’t know what he was talking about but I trusted him, so I agreed.

Of course I did. I looked up to him. I wanted to be like him when I grew up—or so I thought at the time.

He took my trousers off.

He took his trousers off.

And pulled me closer.

My body knew something was wrong but I didn’t quite understand what it was.

I was confused.

Was this normal?

Is this what sexual interaction is supposed to be like?

I went through my early teenage years wondering if I was homosexual or bisexual.

I suspect he normalised this behaviour because it happened in his own life in some way. It doesn’t justify what he did, but it is an indication of the sickness that lives within the shadows of our society.

I translated that experience to mean the following:

• It isn’t safe to be me and to be open because I will get hurt.

• I shouldn’t trust people because they’ll hurt me.

• I am not worthy of being treated with respect.

• I did something wrong to be treated that way.

• People in positions of power aren’t good.

• It’s ok to have my boundaries crossed.

• I must do as I’m told to be liked.

• I am powerless.

A part of my voice was taken from me that day.

My younger brother (left) and me (right) around 11.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate” - Carl Jung

The encounter affected my life in many ways which I wasn’t aware of at the time:

• I was extremely insecure about my body image—I remember being ashamed to take my t-shirt off for the first time with my ex-girlfriend as a teenager.

• I became a people pleaser because I didn’t like conflict—I wanted everyone to like me. I remember being freer and wilder when I was in nursery and primary school.

• I made friends with everyone because I wanted to be popular—it made me feel loved, even if they were superficial friendships.

• I couldn’t stand up for myself in school when I was bullied—this harboured a lot of self-hate.

• I wasn’t comfortable sharing my opinion amongst friends or in the classroom—I would go along with what everyone else would say.

• I generally lacked confidence, self-esteem and feared rejection—one of the ways this played out was how difficult I found it to be romantic with girls. I hated that I was shyer than other guys at school and university.

• It affected me during sex—I have spoken to a number of men about this and it isn’t unusual for them to experience one of the following: finishing sooner than they’d like, not being able to finish at all, or having a weak erection. I avoided intimacy because I wanted to shield myself from further shame and judgment. I didn’t want to be reminded that there was something wrong with me. Society normalises these issues in the bedroom as a source of comedy in movies, tv shows, and daily conversation. It is a trauma response that needs to be healed. It is not something to be laughed at.

• I became addicted to pornography to relieve stress and anxiety. Porn isn’t a real reflection of sex. There is so much nuance involved in sex for both men and women that I am only now learning about (I’ll save that for another newsletter or podcast).

• I feel uncomfortable changing in a locker room or in front of men in general.

• I can’t use the urinal when others are there—I have to use a cubicle.

I had no idea that all these things were related to the abuse I had experienced. For so long I internalised all of these happenings as something inherently wrong with me.

For a while I turned to alcohol to mask how I felt about myself. It gave me a false sense of confidence on nights out and during sex so I could fit in and make it look as if everything was ok on the outside, even though my inner world was tumultuous. My osteopath recently described my internal world as “contained chaos”. He was spot on. I have been carrying chaos for a long, long time.

At 19 I also had issues with my gut which affected my skin really badly for many years so by the time I arrived at my mid twenties, everything about me felt like a mess.

No human wants to feel shame. We’ll do anything to mask ourselves from it—including running away from who we really are.

Thankfully I found some brilliant coaches, consultants, and curanderos to help me along my journey to reclaim myself.

I am not sharing all of this from a place of having fully healed, it is an ongoing journey.

However, I do feel so much more fucking powerful having worked on myself these last few years. The more I heal, the more I reconnect to the light that I once lost. I feel my light shining more brightly than ever.

I’m 31 now.

It’s been 20 years.

It has been an arduous process of breaking free from the chains of all the garbage that has filled my mind, body, and soul. But I’m making progress. I am more confident, connected, and expressive than I have ever been.

This image represents the energy of my journey well:

Image from Adobe Stock by XaMaps

Healing meant accepting that I needed help.

Whilst healing is a scary journey to go on because it is so confronting, I know there is no other way. The alternative is to stay exactly where I was—stagnant, holding onto guilt, shame, anxiety, anger, sadness. I won’t accept that.

I am unlearning and relearning what sex means to me.

I am taking the time to understand my body and that of my girlfriend’s to connect on a deeper energetic level. Sex is a doorway to divine communion. If you engage in it with intention and patience you can connect to God through one another. Masculine and feminine energies combine to create a blissful experience that leaves the body and soul awakened and nourished.

As a society our approach to sex is distorted by trauma.

Sexual energy is our life force—it should not be suppressed. It is what drives the human race to reproduce and creatively evolve.

The trouble is we aren’t taught how to manage our inner energies. We feel an urge and want to act on it right away. We never pause to question where the urge comes from—what is the intention behind it? What is motivating it? Is it coming from a healthy place or an unhealthy place?

I was in a medicine journey earlier this year and one of the themes was confronting the abusive masculine toxicity that has insidiously found its way into my lineage. The energy of betrayal, shame, and secrecy. I am not the only one in my lineage who has faced this. I know others who have experienced this in previous and current generations.

I will not allow darkness to influence me negatively.

I know now I have the capacity to stare darkness in the face and smile because it does not know the intensity of the light I carry. And the more I reveal it, the more it begins to melt the darkness away. Darkness cannot exist in the face of light—it will be blinded.

I believe this wasn’t done to me, but for me.

My soul chose this experience to be able to heal it—not only for me, but for my lineage and for humanity as a whole.

You may not be ready to read that or accept it as your truth. That’s fine. But it is how I choose to see it. I refuse to see myself as a victim. I am here to learn, grow, and evolve. Growth can sometimes be disguised as dirt. You need the dark to see the stars.

Science has shown that trauma from our previous generations lives in our body. The field of epigenetics tells us that we can have a negative or positive impact on our gene expression. Those imprints stay within the sperm as you replicate the energetics of your being to create another human.

I don’t want to pass this on to children that I may have one day. Nor do I want to project my pain onto the world.

My role is to break the chain of tradition, fully heal, and create a new world.

A world in which healthy love, peace, and harmony thrive.

A world in which compassion and kindness exist.

A world in which we see the divinity all around us and in one another.

Why am I sharing this?

Because shame thrives on secrecy—and I’m ready to let go of shame.

And because I want you to know you are not alone.

There is power in sharing our stories because they unite us.

Your story is not just your story. It is OUR story, because we are one.

We cannot reject any part of us if we want to be fully healed and access the divine power that each of us contains.

We must feel it to heal it.

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways” - Sigmund Freud

On any given day I toggle between compassion/forgiveness and anger/sadness.

I am learning to honour it all.

My path on this planet includes being radically vulnerable. As a specie we are so afraid of sharing how we really feel that we create false narratives in our mind to keep up an image in society. Why? It robs us of our peace and our power. Let it go. Be honest.

This experience has gifted me the ability to explore and express more of the human experience.

I want to be the change I wish to see in the world. That starts by me taking responsibility for my own healing and not blaming others. It doesn’t matter what happens in the outside world, I always get to choose how I respond and move forward. I choose to do the deep emotional healing work to free myself of the stories holding me back because I want to find out who I really am.

I shared this story with a friend a few years ago and it invited him to open up about what happened to him when he was a teenager. He felt a sense of relief that he could finally share openly without fearing judgment.

“We are like books. Most people only see our cover, the minority read only the introduction, many people believe the critics. Few will know our content” - Emile Zora

I am on this planet to create a safe environment for human beings. To witness the deepest darkest parts of them and to help them reconnect to their light.

The time for reclamation is now.

It is time to take back the parts of you that were fractured or lost in your life.

Choose healing.

Choose love.

Choose alchemy.

Turn your darkness into light and help the world shine a little brighter.

Life includes both ineffably beautiful moments and shockingly disturbing moments. To embrace this contrast is to experience the fullness of being human.

One love,

V

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