When I was going through these experiences I remember telling myself very clearly that if I could simply live through them I would be okay. The fact that I remember feeling that way is the closest I can get to knowing how completely terrified I must have been. I was facing emotional death. Also, I understand now, after my own therapy, that my father s assaults against me occurred against a backdrop of much earlier physical abuse by my mother. No one would have described her as a child abuser she had been raised in a home that condoned hitting as discipline.
Many homes still do.
She never hit us as we got older, just when she was overwhelmed and isolated with four very small children. Still I have vivid memories of her breaking a wooden spoon on my brother and me taking many hard smacks as a toddler for no reason I could decipher enough to instill a deep fear of harm from someone I depended upon. So though my father s abuse occurred years later I thought if I did not die I would be okay because living through it was all that mattered. I must have assumed that my father, who had never hit me and in fact was the source of warmth and understanding in my early years compared to my mother, could not be harming me as much as my mother had. Also, I had no way to value what I already has lost in his abuse my sexual integrity and human dignity.