Moving Through Trauma and Becoming Truly Free

The following is adapted from This Twisted Path by Monroe Miller.

To this day, I can still get triggered by hairy arms.

I was a very young boy growing up in the Amish community when I was sexually molested by an older man. I remember the pain and trying to bite. From that moment on, in my mind, everybody was out to hurt me. My first defense was to bite. My counselors have told me I’ve blocked almost everything else out from that period of time, but I am still triggered. Sometimes I will panic. Sometimes I can still remember the taste, the smell. It’s been so long ago, but it’s never left me.

Even though I blocked most of it out, I know it controlled how I thought and how I reacted to people and places over the years, though I wasn’t even aware of it at the time. For a long time, I didn’t trust men. You will notice in this book that the people I trusted or have been close to are almost all women.

Because of my abuse, I built walls around myself that became almost impenetrable. I couldn’t feel the love and companionship that others could. This, in turn, made me feel like an outcast. Alone. It is just a vicious circle. As I grew, I turned to drugs to block it all out. It was my only way of dealing with the pain. My recovery truly started when I was in drug rehab and I realized that I wasn’t the only one that this happened to. I honestly don’t know of anyone that I went to rehab with who hadn’t been sexually molested. That’s a horrible, sad truth. So, if you’re reading this and you understand even a little of what I’m writing about…know you are not alone. I promise.

My story is not all about sexual molestation. It is about my path, however twisted. I am writing it to tell you my story. And yes, my story does start with the abuse. I won’t go into too much detail, but it was where it all began. But there’s more in this book — my story of growing up in the Amish community, of marrying the love of my life, of becoming addicted to opioids, of rehab. It’s also a story of community, of moving through trauma, and of faith.

To tell you the truth, deciding whether or not to write my story was the hardest decision I have ever made. To tell the whole world your secrets and your fears? To share with them your hopes and dreams? To know that everyone you meet will look at you differently? It’s scary. My wife and I had long discussions about whether to move forward. We prayed about it for a long time. We decided that the simple fact that I’m alive to tell my story, while there are thousands of cemeteries around the world where mothers grieve at headstones of children who were taken from them by the beast that is addiction, is reason enough.

Looking back, I can see I was afraid of facing my fears, of facing what was hurting me. I felt getting help was admitting there was something wrong with me, but the first step to recovery is to admit that something is wrong. It’s been a long road, but I am at peace now. It’s sad that I lived with that all those years, but at long last I’m free. Truly free. It’s so exhilarating, sometimes I just look to the sky and smile. The world around me seems brighter and more colorful. All my problems seem smaller and easier to deal with. I imagine that’s how a butterfly feels in the spring.

To think of all the lonely, hurting children out there still is just heartbreaking to me. This world can be such a dark, lonely place without someone you can trust with your terrible secret. My beautiful, patient wife gets all the credit for starting me on the road to recovery. She was the one to first recognize the signs and really push me to get help. She is such an unbelievably strong person.

Together, we agreed that if I could help even one person by writing this book, it would all be worth it.

Maybe that one person will be you, or someone you know. Even if not, my hope is that from my story, we can treat each other with a little more grace. We never know what other people have been through or are going through.

Even if you haven’t gone through addiction or abuse, we all have challenges. My ask, again, is that we all treat each other with a little more grace. You never know what someone has been through.

If you have gone through even a piece of what I went through, please don’t give up hope. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you can’t turn to God like I did, turn to whatever you believe in that gives you hope and comfort. If you’re thinking about toying with drugs, just don’t. I’m not trying to preach to you. I know I’m not a perfect man, and that is an understatement. I have seen things and done things that are beyond awful. But if sharing those things and my story helps even one person, it is worth it.

To learn more about Monroe Miller’s journey to finding happiness, This Twisted Path is available on Amazon.

Monroe Miller lives in an Amish community in East Central Ohio. When he’s not working, he enjoys being outdoors and spending time with his beloved wife, Esther.