How to Find Your Voice After Surviving Incest
Photo by Giu Vicente on Unsplash
When I was between 6 and 10 years old, my brother (4 years older) molested me. He progressed from watching me undress to touching my vagina to sodomy. He used bribes of increasing appeal to ensure my cooperation and silence. The pain of his last assault and letting me drive our dad’s Studebaker (his best offer) marked the end of the abuse.
From then on, I avoided being alone with him, either staying near our sister (2 years older than I), or having neighbor girls around at home. I repressed the abuse for 14 years, joining our parents and community in cheering my brother’s athletic and academic achievements. I yelled for his teams until I was hoarse but remained silent about the incest.
After 3 years working in children’s protective services, I pursued a graduate degree in psychology. Counseling was a requirement in one of my classes, and despite my determination to share only “surface” issues with the therapist, I disclosed the incest abuse during my first session. She was supportive, assured me that I wasn’t at fault, and asked me to repeat, “So this is how we choose our careers.”
Emotionally and sexually abused by her father from infancy to age 18, Pennie Saum says sexual abuse silences our voices. She first tried to speak about her abuse in a church youth group during 7th grade, saying her dad had a “different way of showing her love.” The male group leader either didn’t understand Pennie’s abuse or minimized it. A few years later, as Pennie recorded herself singing, she whispered, “My father is molesting me.” But no one ever found the tape.
After Pennie’s mother died and her brother spoke about being molested by their father, Pennie gave herself permission to speak up. She unleashed her voice in a police station with her father present; she described how he stripped away her childhood one moment at a time and demanded an apology. Instead, her white-haired father said he’d been forgiven and that she, too, should ask for forgiveness. Pennie told him he didn’t destroy her and eventually asked the presiding judge to have no mercy on him, as he’d had no mercy on her. Her father was sentenced to 17 ½ years in prison and to pay $5-million in damages.
Pennie labored for years with her congresswomen to get the Child Abuse Accountability Act passed into federal law (2017). A major element of the act provides counseling for survivors of abuse. She published her memoir, Brave and Unbroken: The True Story of Survival after Incest and Loss in 2018. A friend who thought Pennie was overzealous about this issue asked if she wanted people talking about sexual abuse over oranges in the produce aisle. Pennie said “Yes, I want to shatter the shame and to blow the silence out of the water.” 1
When Veronica Young was 12, her father started molesting her. After she summoned the courage to tell her mother, both parents sat her down and said she hadn’t done anything wrong. But her mother withdrew and began taking medication and shock treatments for depression and anxiety. Her father’s inappropriate touching escalated to twice a week and he claimed her mother’s problems were a result of Veronica’s “big mouth.” Two weeks later her dad raped her in the family camper.
Veronica created a story that she couldn’t open her mouth, or she’d ruin someone else’s life like she’d ruined her mother’s. She believed she was wrong and bad but found her niche in high school and college theater. She lived safely using the words of scripted characters. When Veronica’s father found her birth control pills when she went home from college, he became enraged, said she “should be saving herself for her husband,” and raped her. She told her brother, and chaos involving a gun broke out in their home. Veronica apologized, changed majors then worked successfully for years in the health field.
Much later during a marketing retreat, participants created individual stories; Veronica wrote about her incest experience. The facilitator read her piece, said he was sorry that had happened, but nobody wanted to hear about it. Veronica again felt she was bad, irrelevant, and that what she had to say was wrong. With her voice silenced again, she didn’t write for 15 years.
But when Veronica engaged in therapy “to fix her shame,” and listened to a two-hour recording of a session, she was convinced that she was courageous to be raw and honest about her life. She reconnected with the creative, loving person she’d lost to her father. She decided that in naming her stories, moving past them, and reconnecting with what made her unique, she became free to voice her opinion, create from the heart, and share her ideas. She returned to acting and singing and stepped into her voice and power. 2
Psychiatrist Bessell Van der Kolk writes, “If you’ve been hurt, you need to acknowledge and name what happened to you. . .As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself. Hiding your core feelings takes an enormous amount of energy, it saps your motivation to pursue worthwhile goals, and it leaves you feeling bored and shut down. Meanwhile, stress hormones keep flooding your body, leading to headaches, muscle aches, problems with your bowels or sexual functions—and irrational behaviors that may embarrass you and hurt the people around you.” 3
Incest survivors often worry about being blamed for the abuse or prolonging it by not disclosing it sooner. Many are afraid of bringing shame or turmoil to their families. But keeping silent about incest has numerous risks. (Please consider reading The Effects of Childhood Incest on Adult Life.) Revictimization, the tendency of survivors to be drawn into relationships with people who are likely to abuse or exploit us, is also alarmingly common. (To learn more, consider reading Identifying and Understanding Revictimization Patterns.)
Authors Ellen Bass and Laura Davis wrote that sexual abuse survivors speaking out is transformative in the following ways:
You move through the shame and secrecy that keeps you isolated.
You move through denial and acknowledge the truth of your abuse.
You make it possible to get understanding and help.
You get more in touch with your feelings.
You get a chance to see your experience (and yourself) through the compassionate eyes of a supporter.
You make space in relationships for the kind of intimacy that comes from honesty.
You establish yourself as a person in the present who is dealing with the abuse in her past.
You join a courageous community of women who are no longer willing to suffer in silence.
You help end child sexual abuse by breaking the silence in which it thrives.
You become a model for other survivors.
You (eventually) feel proud and strong. 4
In the 45 years since initially speaking up about incest, I’ve participated in an incest survivor’s group, been in counseling with two trauma-informed therapists, and gone to a 4-day Saprea retreat with other survivors. The latter group of nine women has a private Facebook group and Zoom meetings to maintain our support of one another. Since our 2022 retreat, one woman has become a Restorative Yoga instructor, another a certified personal trainer and bodybuilder, one has earned a yellow belt in Taekwondo. Another has earned a practitioner certificate in Somatic Breathwork and two of us have published books. (Links to Peeling Away the Façade: The Long Shadow of Child Abuse and Breathe, Roar, and Explore at the Zoo)
In finding the courage to speak about our abuse, to reclaim our personal power, and to release our shame, we’ve progressed from being victims to survivors. From survivors to confident, thriving women. May this be true in your recovery journey!
“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” (Jamie Routley, written on a graphite on paper sketch of his two daughters in London, England)
1 Saum, P. (2022). Embrace the possible: unleashing your voice after child sexual abuse. TEDxBoston.
2 Young, V. C. (2023). How our stories of childhood sexual abuse affect us. TEDxMountRoubidoux.
3 B. Vand der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Penguin House, 2014).
4 E. Bass & L. Davis, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (New York: Harper Collins, 2008).
