Survivor Voices

A report has been published today in which abuse survivors tell of their experiences.

People I know are contacting me, grateful this is being done at last.

Here are some more.

The details of the experience of abuse is horrific, but when we really listen to what we are told we see incredible creativity and resilience.

Survivors need to be heard and recognised. I think that because this hasn’t happened enough there is a massive focus on that and people can begin to identify with that identity. Having not been recognised, being recognised is powerful and a relief.

But it is also important to know that it isn’t necessary to stay in this place, that is still a hurting place, even when it hurts less than before. Healing is not forgetting, but it is not identifying with the ‘wound’.

I don’t believe in ‘self improvement’. I believe that tells us we are broken, imperfect and suggests that there are people in a state of ‘OKness’. So it suggests the place we are in is not OK.

I have to be able to believe that I as a person am OK even when I am in a place that is very definitely not. This is not an easy distinction.

At the same time I do believe in us continually growing.

None of us are confident all the time, no one is 100% healed and whole. All of us are simply becoming, growing, transforming.

In Swahili there is a word/concept Ubuntu, literally it means something like ‘humanness’ when I was in Africa it was explained as ‘I am because you are’.

This recognition of our need to be perceived by another person is vitally important to us all, and survivors in particular.

It’s the first step of healing.