If someone breaks your leg, you must get treatment and let it heal
Regardless of what the monster does who broke your leg.
Paperdolls & Cowboy Boots is for survivors. To help survivors know that they can heal. Karen Fisher strongly suggested, encouraged, and really wanted me to gather all my writings, journals, poems, etc., and combine them into a book. Karen said that my writings showed the healing process from beginning to end. She said that she would write a few sections, so that the reader, particularly other survivors, understood what was happening with me.
Well, it didn’t play out that way. Karen got cancer, and was unable to do her section. She suggested I contact my friends’s mother, Carol Scott, to see if she would write the therapeutic commentary. Well, Carol decided to do it, and also tell the story of what happened to her family, particularly her grandchildren, when one of my brother’s close friends married into their family. Thus the first edition of Paperdolls: Healing from Sexual Abuse in Mormon Neighborhoods was published.
For over 3 decades, I held onto the premise that victims of sexual assault, particularly childhood sexual abuse, can heal regardless of what their perpetrator does.
Frequently, I’ve heard survivors lament that they can’t heal unless their perpetrator is put in jail or at least faces the consequences for their actions. My response has always been, heal for you. You can heal regardless of what your pepetrator does. When I encountered someone stuck in the prison of longing for justice and jail time for their perpetrator, I brought out my “Broken Leg” analogy.
The Broken Leg Analogy
Imagine you are a little child again and someone intentionally broke your leg.
There’s a lot to unpack here. First of all, someone intentionally broke your leg. And, it hurt. Now, usually1 most parents or guardians will take their child to a doctor to treat the broken leg. It’s painful, but with treatment the bones can heal.
Like the broken bone analogy, you can heal from the horrific damage of childhood sexual abuse. It’s not as easy to see as a broken bone, and it’s much more complex, but you can heal. Regardless of happens to the slimey perp who intentionally “broke your leg.”
Heal for you. They can’t control you anymore.
Until a couple of weeks ago, I held a strong belief that survivors can and should heal regardless of what their perpetrator does. My stance was almost, “the hell with ‘em.” They can’t control you anymore.
I distinctly remember getting into a rather robust conversation with David Hardy about the LDS Church’s (AKA Mormon) actions, or lack there of, possibly even covering up2 the sexual abuse of children. Our conversation didn’t alter my basic premise that my main focus is to help survivors have hope. Hope that they can heal, and build meaningful and authentic lives.
I asked David, “How does shedding light on what the Church does or doesn’t do help survivors?”
David said, “April, you’re making me question my motivation.”3
At the end of our robust conversation, David and I found a relatively recent example of what he’s doing: Nazi Hunters.4
Many who hunted the Nazi’s were not in concentration camps themselves.
I have a dear friend whose parents survived Auschwitz. My friend’s parents never hunted Nazi’s nor did they spend an inordinate amount of time longing for the war criminals to be captured and face retribution. My friend’s parents didn’t even follow the Nuremberg trials. They came to the United States, got healthy, and lived gloriously wonderful lives: They thrived with love, joy, and freedom.
David Hardy and I decided he was more like the Nazi Hunters, wanting to bring justice to the criminals. And, I am simply a voice for survivors to encourage them to live.
That was my modus operandi until I wrote, Being Able to Let Others Make Amends. As I wrote last week, I did the best, and now I know better.5
From now on, I will not resist others efforts to bring down perpetrators or those lying and enabling perpetrators. I will support those bringing down the perps and their enablers—in my own authentic way.
My amended mantra is:
“Yes, one can heal and rebuild from the ravages of childhood sexual abuse
BUT
That doesn’t justify a pedophile’s actions or lessen the responsibly of those covering up, enabling, or aiding and abetting these criminals.”
To My Beloved Survivors:
My main message to my beloved survivors is that it’s not your fault. You can heal. It’s not fair. But, you can heal. Life is worth living. Your life is important.
To those fighting the criminals and pedophiles:
I support you. Your work can help facilitate change so that one day, no more children will be sexually abused.
This is the second installment of a three part series. Up next, How to Navigate a Snake Pit.
I wish I could say all parents and/or guardians take their children to the doctor for treatment, sadly some do not. For those children, it’s painful for a very long time. Even as adults, they can get treatment. Sometimes it involves getting the bone “rebroken” (ex. osteotomy) so it can set properly. Which is how it felt to address CSA as a adult. It’s painful, but it can be done.
If they do cover up CSA, it’s abhorrent.
In my opinion, it’s healthy to reflect and think about what is motivating one from time to time.
Nazi hunting was the investigation and pursuit of former Nazi officials and SS after the end of World War II. This involves tracking down and gathering information on such individuals, typically for use at trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Holocaust. Nazi hunters were active around the world for decades after the fall of the Third Reich, when many key Nazi figures escaped military trial by fleeing to South America and elsewhere