The Ultimate Exposure...

It is hard to move from protecting a secret with your life for pretty much your whole life, to going to a place where you write it all down, publish it and release it into the world...

I feel so vulnerable...

Exposed.

Terrified.

I can’t recall how many times I have wanted to call the book back.  Pull it back into my shell, and hold onto it forever.  But I can’t, I mean, it is out there now, people are buying it and reading it and my long held secret is revealed.

And I have been struggling.

The fact that the whole Jane Doe/Cornell situation broke at the exact time my book was released cannot be an accident.  I certainly didn’t engineer it.  I had no idea.  Just one of those many life coincidences that I will never understand.

The internet is fomenting with rage about sexual assault and violence. Of women being so fucking tired of being told that it is our job to keep ourselves safe and have men continue to behave badly.  WE are all so fucking tired.  And sexual assault is everywhere.  I do not know one woman who has not had some fucked up shit go down.  And it is and was always men who are delivering the fucked up shit.

The moment I hit publish on KDP’s website, I felt ill.  I felt sick, followed by a huge desire to call it back to me.  To pull it back into myself and hold it forever.  But there is a huge difference of being seen and being judged.  And I let this whole thing go because I wanted to be seen. I wanted to put my story out there so that other women had a lifeline.  There was something out there that perhaps someone else could relate to.  I released it because I needed to release it but I also did so because I wanted and needed to have my experience help others.  That is what recovery has taught me.  The worst things that have ever happened to me, are useful because they are the experiences that make me uniquely qualified to help another with a similar problem or issue.

So I want to be seen but I also know that allowing yourself to be seen begets judgment.  And I guess I am less afraid of the judgment than I am staying quiet any longer.  If I have a story that someone else can relate to, then I guess I feel like I have a duty to share it if it will help someone else.

And in that regard, the book has already been super successful!  I have received messages from four women who have read my book already and feel seen and supported.  One  woman had tears in her eyes as she told me her own story of sexual abuse and assault.  I listened, and then when she was done, I asked if I could hug her, and then we just stood there holding each other for a long time.  Healing something with touch that words cannot reach. Touch something that has been so bastardized in our experience...

There is such a gift in being seen.  In having your life and heartbreak matter.  For your trajectory in this life being heard and valued and unveiled.  It isn’t easy and I will not lie, I walk around feeling incredibly vulnerable all the time now.  Worried about how others will now perceive me and what they are saying behind my back.  

I imagine:

“My God, she held onto it for so long, she should have just kept it to herself!”

“Wow, quite a story but of fuck’s sake, why do we need to know about it?”

“She just wants attention!”

“What a weirdo that she put it all out there like that!”

The list that lands in my head is endless.  Fucking relentless and endless.

I feel vulnerable and exposed but I also feel like I am coming into my own in a way that I can’t quite explain yet.  Like I have removed this HUGE barrier between me and others that the holding back of the story created.  The barrier that separated me from everyone else is now gone, I am no longer walking the earth with this shameful secret that stands between me and every other living being.  Now we are all in this together. Especially the women. 

But it has also changed my feelings about men.  I see them differently.  And I am absolutely blown away at how I have ended up with so many great fucking men in my life.  I am so blessed to know so many NOT ALL MEN.  Men that speak up.  Men that do the right thing for the right reason.  Now, if I can just date one of those men, life would be pretty fucking perfect!  But I also know that the abuse has done a great deal of my sexual and dating choosing and that is going to be a lifelong struggle for me.  My picker is fucked up and I don’t know how much I can alter that.  Having my life story makes healthy relating and relationships something that still feels out of reach.

But I know that healing is happening because the thing that stood between me and every single man I have dated is now out there.  It isn’t taboo anymore.  I have unearthed the long buried truth and, even as it scares the living shit out of me, it is now out there and that has freed me up in some way that I cannot yet describe...

It has only been a week and four women have reached out to say they have been helped by my book.  FOUR!  That is fucking amazing.  Four women who now feel like healing and sharing their own trauma is possible whereas before reading my book they were taking it to the grave.  And that has opened up a trajectory and path in their lives that didn’t previously exist, and I get to be a small part of their healing now.  And that was the whole point of writing this book. The whole fucking point.

My childhood almost killed me.  Repeatedly.  The things I did to myself because of what THEY did almost killed me.  I walked the earth a shell of a person. I carried with me shame and guilt and rage so intense that it held me a part and away from everyone else on the planet.

Releasing this book and allowing my pain, suffering, anguish, rage and healing to now be exposed has allowed me to just sink into what it feels like to be human I think.  I feel more like a member of the species.  I feel scared and weirded out still but I also feel like I am now just a person among people...whereas before I was walking alone, cloaked in secrets too shameful to utter.

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”  Gloria Steinem

And I have been so pissed off.  And I am not sure I will ever stop being pissed off at what it is like to be female in this world.  But I now feel like I have done my part to share some of the light, to make more light available for other women to come out of the shadows and own their truth, to share their story and live their lives.

We are not what happens to us.  But if we don’t heal, what happened to us becomes all we are.  If we don’t heal, we will use.  And fuck me if that isn’t about the truest thing I have ever said!

Again, still...