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At the last therapy session, after describing my life as comparable to the book and movie “Running with Scissors” my therapist asked me how I coped through it all. I have always had an answer for everything but for once I was stumped.

I told her, “I’ll have to think about that and get back to you…I’m really not sure.” So I thought, and thought and thought and analysed, researched for the magic ingredient that made all the chaos of my life (childhood trauma, rape, forced marriage, forced abortion, spousal abuse, losing a home to foreclosure, financial devastation, a spouse who checked out mentally from our life) palatable.

The question came again in this form: What do I possess within that helped me cope with so many devastatingly stressful situations… situations which would make “average people” curl up into a ball and never emerge into life again.

I discovered I have a strength, a solidness about my being that allows me to seek the lesson in the “chaos” with a goal: Learning and Growing…all for the purpose of making another life better through my lessons. I found that my focus had been fixed on that alone and it did one major thing for me…it didn’t allow me to delve into self pity or depression. Opening those two doors (pity and depression) would only allow the door to widen. I won’t (can’t) let that happen. I have too much to do…too many people to help.

My therapist described me as an “over functioner” — I thought some more about what she meant by that. I questioned whether it was a negative… and arrived at the conclusion that this “over functioner” has managed to stay positive by being that way – moved through the issues of life and come out of them unscathed and with a new relentless determination to rise in spite of the punches life has thrown my way.

So here I stand today: Daughter, Friend, Rape Survivor, Abuse Survivor, Mother, Grandmother, Philanthropist… and new mother (in my late years) and a student of Kick Boxing!

There’s absolutely nothing I can’t handle.

~SM

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If you or someone you know needs help visit this website for links.
www.aswaterspassingby.org/sexualabuse.html