​I Was Conceived By Rape
 
Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
My mother hated herself. Hate, in fact, is too weak of a description—despise is more accurate. As an old woman she would stand before a mirror and scream, “I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!” at her elderly reflection.
 
Sexual brutalization will do that to a girl…to a woman, to an old lady, still. Demoralize her. Infect her with incalculable fear and self-loathing. Being impregnated by rape is the long arm of such brutalization—its iron fist the permanent enforcer of impenetrable darkness. The girl, the woman, the old lady condemned to life in prison for a crime she did not commit.
 
With all my broken heart I wish my mother—my beautiful, fragile, traumatized mother—had access to health care all those decades ago: to an abortion, to therapy…to compassion. I wish she had known the embrace of kindness, the comfort of benevolence that could have guided her onto the path of personal freedom. A freedom my mother relentlessly sought, but never, ever achieved.
 
I wish that when my mother stared at herself in the mirror that she saw what I saw….beauty. I wish all those years ago from inside the shadows of her tormented teenaged womb, that I could have called to her, whispered my profound love for her, and gone on my way, releasing her to follow the path to her magnificence. I wish I could have passed my deep devotion on to her—a paralyzed little bird that deserved to fly. I wish I’d had the power to set her free. 

​An Excerpt from Remarks on Human Rights at the United Nations - Dec. 10, 1997
by
Hillary Rodham Clinton
In February of 1946, the United Nations established the Commission on Human Rights.
Forty-nine winters ago the world acknowledged the new common standard for human dignity, a code for the peoples and governments of the world to live by. The place was Paris. The delegates who came together to craft the language hailed from countries as diverse as Lebanon, Chile, France, China, and Ukraine. And the dream was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first international agreement on the rights of humankind.
Some of humanity's greatest lessons emerge only after the deepest tragedies. This Declaration took shape in a world ravaged by the horrors of militarism and fascism. In the wake of the most violent revelations of the depths to which human beings can dehumanize one another, the world as a whole was ready at last to agree upon these standards for human rights.
….a passage from that document: "Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind. The advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief, and freedom from fear and want have been proclaimed as the highest aspirations of the common people. Therefore, the General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations."
The document goes on to state what should be obvious, but too often is not: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights….. That act did not, however, take place in a vacuum. It was a response to evil. Those who study the Holocaust know that Nazis were able to pursue their crimes precisely because they were able progressively to constrict the circle of those defined as humans. From the moment they came to power, they proceeded step by step to dehumanize, through laws and propaganda, the mentally ill, the infirm, gypsies, homosexuals, Jews -- they whom they identified as lives unworthy of life.
This cold, dark region of the human soul, where people withdraw first understanding, then empathy, and finally even the designation of personhood from another human being, is not, of course, unique to Nazi Germany. This new device, this ability to dehumanize, has been witnessed in all times and places. And it is precisely this device that the Declaration attempted to help us resist.
Thankfully, in the half-century since the birth of the Declaration, we have as a global people managed progressively to expand the circle of full human dignity. Because of this document, individuals and nations alike have a standard by which to measure fundamental rights. Many of the countries that have emerged in the last 50 years have drawn inspiration from the Declaration in their own constitutions. Courts of law look to the Declaration. It has laid the groundwork for the world's war crimes tribunals. And it has prompted governments to set up their own commissions to safeguard basic liberties.
It would appear that The United States Supreme Court has lost sight of the ideals established after the horrors World War II. They have just set the United States back 50 years.  They should be ashamed!

Believe Her
 
…she is worthy of your trust
 
 
When I was an infant my mother slashed her wrists with a razorblade in a grim attempt to end her life. I was there. It was mayhem. I have no visual memory of this dismal event, but for over sixty years I carried the energetic mass of this trauma inside my own body as an imbedded horror story I could feel but could not touch—an occupied crypt with no name.
 
As a child I obsessed over the pale, ropey scars on my mother’s wrist asking her again and again how they came to be. Her scripted explanation was a lie that gnawed at my bones. Each telling of it pouring acid into my blood. Because I knew better…I knew something…but I didn’t know what.
 
Sexual assault of a child often follows the same path. Her body is present during the attack but her mind incapable of visually registering images or recording any verbal memory of the event(s), leaving her with no means to comprehend the incident(s); no validation. And ultimately, immense religious and cultural pressure to condemn and ignore any troubling and frightening feelings that might arise from her unnamed, haunting darkness. So it is left to her body to chronicle and silently bear the impact of the anonymous trauma—trauma that will eventually create significant emotional, and even physical, harm to her.
 
All along, she knows something. She doesn’t know what. But her body knows.
 
While writing Forget About Heaven, I decided to listen to my infant body’s account of mommy, blood and mayhem. I decided to trust her to tell the truth. She did. I heard her. I believed her. Finally I had my answer. What I knew since that bloody day was all true. My body--she—had the answer the whole time. I had the answer from the very beginning. All I had to do was listen. I had my validation. The storm passed.
 
It is essential that we regard our bodies as our authorities of truth even, and most definitely, when our brains—or outsiders—seek to discredit what we sense is true. Our brains are for logic and intellect. Outsiders have agendas we cannot even begin to contemplate.
 
Your body, your spirit, contains your reality and will guide you, if you allow her, into understanding and ultimately emotional freedom…onto the energetic path of physical, mental and spiritual health.
 
Believe her. Believe what your body is trying to tell you. She is worthy of your trust.
 
 
Namaste, khf
​

Wrapping your hands around the ghost.
 
khf
  
My mother did not survive systematic sexual abuse. I did not survive systematic sexual abuse. Though our bodies presented as externally intact, functioning, we were—as all victims of sexual brutality are—forever altered in secret, energetic ways. And in places too dark, too unacceptable to articulate in this superficial, impatient society. So, we are termed “survivors.” A description as one dimensional as a cartoon cutout. And as lifeless as an abuse victim with that ten-mile stare enduring yet another flashback. A flashback triggered decades after the active abuse.
 
To be clear, systematic sexual abuse and its catastrophic consequences decapitated my life. Severed my sense of beauty. My joy in my plump, emerging feminine body. Severed my freedom to move gracefully like a delighted ballerina through familiar surroundings that had become treacherous.
 
The I—the girl I once knew before the abuse—was not the girl who survived. The girl that survived was someone different, unrecognizable…a ghost. Furtive. Broken. Scared. A folded girl. A girl, whose body was permanently altered. A girl whose body was stinging with shame so raw it felt like acid boiling beneath my skin.
 
When a victim of sexual brutality clutches onto survivorship as a path to wholeness, they automatically and energetically limit their evolution and restrict possibilities of deeply understanding the living impact of the imposed trauma.
 
Sexual abuse trauma changes a person forever. The person that was, will never return. The ghost that survives, that emerges after the war, must begin anew. Find ways to breathe. Eventually, if they are to thrive, victims of abuse must accept the reality that trauma must be perpetually managed. We have to learn to wrap our hands around the ghost. Wrangle it. Corral it. Shift away from it. Curse it. Learn from it. Pull out its truth. Build inner light. Develop strength. Enough strength to endure the flashbacks when they rush to us involuntarily.
 
It does not help me to congratulate myself that I am a survivor of sexual abuse. Because that’s not true. I didn’t survive. My body survived. But that’s not enough. I had to become my own superior force. That was a lot of work. And it still is.
 
Namaste.     

​If forgiveness actually worked,
It Would Be Obvious
 
By khf
 
Recently a victim of childhood sexual abuse revealed to me that she had “forgiven” the sexual brutalizer who also happened to be a close relative. And here is where the forgiveness protocol reveals itself as a universal lie.
 
She had taken ill, her body, mind and spirit weakened by fever and chills. In those moments of diminishment and vulnerability, the brutalizer’s shadow crawled in bed beside her dragging with him vivid, tormenting flashbacks of the violence he inflicted upon her all those years ago. Once again she was the helpless child—the brutalizer that she had “forgiven,” once more all powerful. The forgiveness doctrine exposed as no more than propaganda scribbled like graffiti across a derelict billboard. Meaningless words that offered no protection against the onslaught of her waking nightmares when she was in dire need.
 
Understanding trauma is to understand how energy works. Energy flows forward toward the horizon. That is always its purpose—to flow, to seek harmony.  Of course, energy can be blocked. Obstructed. Forced backward. Misused. But in its natural, uncorrupted state, energy flows freely into balance.
 
Energetic properties—undisputable spiritual characteristics of nature—eternally bind the principle of forgiveness to the resonance of truth. And that truth must be present, be absolute and self-evident within the individual. Forgiveness is resolution of harm, an evolution of consciousness. Forgiveness of abuse cannot be granted—that power does not lie with the victim of abuse or anyone else. The abuser must align with their own truth. Forgiveness, if it is to be, travels energetically from the victimizer to the victim. Not the other way around.
 
Forgiveness always requires action from the victimizer. It is the spiritual responsibility of the victimizer to acknowledge and accept liability for the abuse they perpetrated. The victimizer must embody deep contrition and demonstrate profound understanding of the consequences suffered by their victim. The victimizer must establish necessary behavior congruent with sincerity and compassion. And also must develop the courage and self-control to bear the entire burden of their abusive actions without further imposing their needs and will on their victim by begging for forgiveness. The likelihood of this occurring is slim to none.
 
No victim of violence is set free through the enforcement of the forgiveness myth. Force has no spiritual value, no evolutionary purpose. And yet, it is imposed on victims of violence as the path to freedom. If forgiveness actually worked, it would be obvious.
 
When you think of the person who so brutally violated you—when you say their name, when you hear their name—do you experience the wave and glow of peace surging throughout your body? All the way through to your mind and spirit? Does the radiance of freedom inspire your day?
 
I listened to her speaking about “forgiving” him of the violence against her little girl body. I listened as she recited the doctrine--the script—of forgiveness. I heard the tone of her voice, its volume. I listened to the words she chose to tell her story. I felt the abuser’s presence inside her middle aged body. It was painful. I wanted to cry.
 
When we, as victims of violence, dispense with the fantasy of forgiveness as the path to freedom, a brand new life opens up for us. A life brimming with possibilities. Personal empowerment. Creativity. And opportunities for profound understanding that draws our hearts toward the healing power of self love. We create our own freedom.