I WANT US ALL TO BE FREE

Hi, please recognize that I say the following without any malice or disrespect because I know you mean well by sending this message. However, I’m really not interested in the narrative that people get to “choose” whether or not they’re “still a victim,” especially when that narrative is shared in an unsolicited way that the survivor hasn’t asked for.

Yes, I am still a victim, and I’m not ashamed of that. 

I will always be a victim of rape. That will never change. Why? Because I can never go back in time and avoid my ex partner raping me. I don’t get to “choose” anything else other than being a victim. Do I get to choose how I move forward and onward from this? Yes. But I am a victim, and I can’t “choose” not to be.

What you don’t necessarily see is the work that goes into healing behind the scenes. I try every day to heal and I have actively put work into healing for six years. I’ve tried several medications, I’ve been and am in multiple support groups, I’ve been in weekly therapy for six years, I run a journal for fellow survivors, I have attended outpatient treatment, etc. Just because someone is clearly struggling immensely with trauma does not mean that they are not actively attempting to heal.

My “entire identity” does not “revolve” around this experience, and with all due respect you shouldn’t make a claim like this on behalf of someone you don’t know personally. This is my personal blog, where I will post about something that impacted me in an extraordinarily damaging way. But my blog does not tell anyone else who I truly am. Anyone who reads this blog only gets a brief glimpse into “me.”

Again, I’m not trying to be rude and I know you have positive intent. But in general, the notion that survivors of violence just have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop wallowing in their experiences or make certain choices about how they identify isn’t helpful, and personally I think it’s quite demeaning.

I understand that some survivors may take a similar approach as you and that is totally within their right, and your perspective is totally valid. I understand that some survivors very much build the idea of “from victim to survivor” into their healing journeys, and I get and respect and commend that. But in general you should refrain from telling survivors things they “must” or must not do, especially when you don’t know them personally.

I know you didn’t mean any harm, but sexual violence and abuse are matters of power and control, and victims have the right to make their own choices for their own control without being instructed by others.

With all due respect, I didn’t perceive the question to be any of those things at all. I thought it was phrased very gently using “i’m not sure” and asking Meggie to introspect with the question “are you a victim”. This is different to an attack on her character, feelings and experiences. I took the “you must actively choose” as a hypothetical statement of assumption by which they meant “generally speaking, trauma survivors must actively choose...” which I feel comes from a place of lack of understanding which is what led them to ask the question in the first place. I also have a feeling this person has followed and read Meggie’s work for a long time.

Now, i’ve endured a fair share of trauma and adversity in MY young life as I never had a ‘normal’ upbringing. Throughout my early life and teenhood, I was emotionally abused and a good amount of that came from family members. Years and years later, while I have grown UP, I can definitely say I still haven’t grown OUT of it. I have tried and gone through a lot of the same healing methods as Meggie mentioned and am on the recovery side of things.

I don’t like to jump on Tumblr posts and reply, especially not with a huge long one either but felt really compelled to give my two cents on the original question, Meggie’s response and your take, considering my own experiences of trauma. I don’t think the question was disrespectful or rude. I don’t think there was any victim blaming involved. And the reason I think this is because lately, I have been introspecting into why - after so many years of going through recovery and healing and FINALLY feeling like i’ve found some peace - I still wake up and have good and bad days.

On the good days i’m proud of the person I have become and my development to become a Psychologist, supporting young people who have gone through trauma and adversities. On the bad days, I wonder why I still am not able to let go of the remnants of my trauma - is it because the degree of what I went through was so terrible that full healing is not possible? In layman’s terms, am I ‘broken beyond fixing’? Or is it because I used the pain of what I went through to achieve everything I was told I’d never be able to achieve, to prove them wrong? Do I subconsciously feel the need to hold on because it’s actually my motivation to escape and become someone who can contribute to making sure the new generations of young people don’t go through the same experiences as I did, and help those who did to heal better than I have?

The irony is that I have been following Meggie and reading her work for a long, long time. I actually came on today to ask her whether she feels differently about her trauma now and her attitude when people question whether being a victim or ‘holding on to traumatic memories’ is a choice or not. Funnily enough, I didn’t need to! I think Meggie’s response is eloquently and beautifully written which comes as no surprise to me, but obviously, I know that mental health is a world of complexities and our experiences are all so different. My answer to the question is completely different to hers, mostly because I don’t know (if you couldn’t tell from this long reply)! And that’s perfectly fine.

So I’d like to end with the point of my reply - the person who submitted the question could very easily have been me, and if I were to have read your reply, I would have felt attacked and unsettled, for lack of better descriptors. On a certain level, clearly, I still do, otherwise I wouldn’t have written all this out. I’d like to say: please be a bit kinder to people, and please don’t assume. Please don’t brand them “victim-blaming”, “rude” or “disrespectful”. If it were me, I genuinely would not have had ANY of those intentions, and I really (hope) don’t think the submitter did. Meggie said exactly the right things in her reply, in a very assertive, respectful and educative manner; and I believe to help ourselves and others understand the impacts of trauma (and mental health in general) we need to adopt this approach.