AN INTRODUCTION

This is a book about my life at certain points in time. It is a book about self-love, but it is also about trauma and overcoming trauma, both sexual and nonsexual. Although this is my unique story of trauma, trauma is common in people’s lives. Sexual abuse is a particular type of trauma that has become too commonplace. Yet people don’t understand that it can have negative and undesirable effects on the victim long after the incident. Victims of sexual abuse can try to forget the incident. They are often reluctant to talk about it because it is so personal. Part of the reluctance is also because the perpetrators are too often people they know. I write my story primarily to show that trauma, including sexual abuse like molestation, is not trivial, but it also doesn’t have to have the last word.

The process of healing from trauma is individual. How you heal or what helps and doesn’t help you heal is variable, but the important thing is to heal. I hope my opening up about my experiences with trauma gives others permission to explore their trauma, to process and heal from it and to find wholeness and freedom. I also hope that my story encourages those who have no experience with trauma to become more cognizant of the potential effects of trauma, which will hopefully allow them to be more understanding and supportive of those healing from trauma.

This book has a prose section followed by a poetry section. Each chapter of prose can stand alone. Some parts of the prose are educational, like the chapter “What is Trauma?” The chapter “Growing Pains” highlights the book’s insight that there can be growth, an unanticipated positive effect, from healing from our trauma. We want to avoid trauma, but if life thrusts it upon us, we can use it as a steppingstone to our maturity and growth. This latter chapter also introduces the collection of poems, which I use to depict my metamorphosis from a wounded being into a healed being—an advocate.

I hope that whatever your experiences in life may be, you know that you are valuable and loveable.

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I love who I am today. But this wasn’t always the case. The abuses I endured nearly turned me into a miserable soul, unable to find peace, love, and trust. My abuses failed to make me a miserable soul because I recognized that I can reconstruct myself.

I love that I am in a state of constant change, always striving for my sheer pleasure, self-realization, and growth. I have been on a quest for self-love and perpetual growth for as long as I can remember, even in my earliest memories, though I didn’t realize this until recently. It has taken me some time and some painful memories to realize that I am continually growing and maturing. Even as I feel grounded in my foundation, I also have aspirations and unlimited potential. In my efforts to pursue myself, I have discovered that my “self” is expandable, adaptable yet grounded—changing but still true to my core nature.

This knowledge of me as an expandable self, capable of unlimited growth, unlimited changes, is in line with my understanding of my Creator’s intention for me to be an unlimited being, a reflection of him. I am not one thing, and my purposes are many. I am not a statue that remains frozen in time, frozen in a purpose. I evolve.

I used to fight my inevitable evolution. I misinterpreted the challenges in my life, the seemingly endless and frequent stop signs, as omens that I was on the wrong path. I saw each emotional scar as evidence of my flaws instead of proof of my beauty, my growing wisdom, and my earned maturity that has been paid for with experience.

I have learned that my journey mirrors that of a butterfly’s life cycle. A butterfly, an exquisite flying beauty, begins as an egg, a random being. It develops into a larva, a time characterized by immense growth or change. Then it becomes a chrysalis, which is characterized by a time of apparent stillness or death but is really a period of immense inward change and protection. Finally, the fully matured, radically different-appearing butterfly emerges. It can do amazing things that its predecessors could not: it can fly and make new versions of itself. The average butterfly lives for about two to four weeks. The average woman, however, lives for about eighty years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—that’s roughly 1,000 to 2,100 lifetimes for a butterfly. Like a butterfly, I undergo metamorphosis. I will have many opportunities to reinvent myself, to mature, or to grow into a better version of myself.

I use poetry in this book to depict my metamorphosis. I chose poetry as my medium because poetry is the love affair between reality and imagination. Like me, poetry defies categorization. When you look at a poem, you don’t know if the poem is about the author, a family member of the author, a friend, a lover, etc. You will notice, and I’m going to make it clear now, that not all the poems are directly about me. Some are indirectly about me in that they represent my perspectives, my loyalty, or my empathy, which are my defining attributes.

I love that poetry allows me to tell the truth in a way that feels less threatening and is more digestible. Someone on X, formerly Twitter, once said that poetry has no secrets, to which I replied, “But sometimes it does. Do you know the exact motivations for its being? Do you know the message(s) that it deposited in your unconscious mind? Are you sure the message you received is the one it meant to send? That the indescribable way you felt was the feeling it was trying to evoke? Does it even like you like you like it? Is it not another thing you think you’ve mastered?”

This memoir embodies my memories, my thoughts, my perspectives, and my hopes. It is a conversation starter from my heart to yours.