A seed refuses to die when you bury it, that is why it becomes a tree. ~Matshona Dhliwayo

Everyone has the desire to do something—but we aren’t taught how to complete the process, to expect it to be hard, and to expect to feel lost. We aren’t taught how to have the discipline to grow into our true selves. My recent aha moment is that I realized life is all about understanding and embracing the process of growing. The process, not the destination. We have a responsibility to ourselves to find out who we are, because that’s when we start to come alive. People that feel dormant have either never discovered their vitality—what they’re capable of—or they lost sight of it along the way. I had power in me all along, but until I conquered my 10 Roots of an Oak own limiting beliefs, challenged my own darkness, I never saw what I was made of. Or better yet . . . made for.

I speak from the bottom parts of life that started in the beginning seed part of mine. This is a story that may be strikingly similar to your own—this is a story of growing into an oak.

The Touching Begins

I’m not sure when he started touching me—I was around five years old. My mom’s live-in boyfriend, Greg, had been my babysitter, and he and his son, Josh, used me for their own fulfillment. I was a five-year-old blond-haired, freckle-faced object to them, although my spirit wanted to be alive. I wanted to be more. I wanted to be a kid. After all, being alive shouldn’t feel this wrong. I was too little to understand what was happening, and I didn’t know how to make it stop. Even if I had the knowledge to tell someone, I didn’t have the words. Greg also threatened, “If you tell anyone, I will hurt your mom.” My mom was everything to me. Sometimes I felt like she needed help just as much as I did. We lived in a third-floor apartment in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. It had old hardwood floors and no air conditioning, which exacerbated the smell of bug spray. Our neighborhood wasn’t safe once it got dark outside; ironically, neither was the apartment.

Sometimes I would get to spend my days playing with the slugs I’d find outside, usually by accidentally stepping on them with my dirty bare feet. But the squishy, slimy creatures were no match to the table salt that I would sprinkle on them. Some days were spent sitting under the shade of a tree on some of its roots that were peeking above ground. I could hear the rustle of the leaves blowing in the breeze. I’d find myself mesmerized by the chirping of the birds making their existence known—while mine was slowly being buried.

I could find my childhood some days by jumping rope or playing with my Barbies. On other days, I was an object, being forced to touch and be touched by Greg. Those days were louder to my soul, a slave to his needs. Then eventually at night, Josh, who was around twelve years old, started sneaking into my room to use me in the same way. Often I would pretend I was sleeping because then maybe he would leave me alone, but that didn’t stop him. I remember one night trying to make it difficult for him. My five-year-old attempt to make it stop was to try and make him think “it” was my belly button.

I soon realized that the only way I could escape being in those moment was to go somewhere else in my mind. Annie and Kate, yes. Their sweet dark-brown eyes and adorable flopped ears could handle all my hardest secrets. They were my grandma and grandpa’s dogs and also my best friends. My soul needed a good friend. Around this age, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house. At one point we lived there too, so I was around Annie and Kate a lot. As my mom’s only child at the time, I used to sit for hours talking to them. Kate, a golden retriever, was my favorite. She seemed to have more energy for me. Annie was a big dog too, with an auburn coat. She slept more, so her listening skills weren’t as good as Kate’s. I needed a good listener because I had a lot to say. They always have the best hugs—

My thoughts would be interrupted by the next unwelcome touch. This time it was not my belly button.

Many times these distracting thoughts couldn’t overpower the strength of the shattering in those moments, but they were all I knew to do. Retreating to my thoughts was the only chance I had at disappearing, to protect my mind from what was happening to my body.

One night I decided to talk to this God that I had heard about when I went to church a few times with grandpa. I asked God to not let me fall asleep. While I was staring at the Strawberry Shortcake scratch-and-sniff sticker on my dresser, I challenged myself to not fall asleep. Maybe it was the only thing about the night that I felt like I could control. Or maybe I was afraid of what I would dream when I would fall asleep. I wondered if God could really hear me or if I was truly just alone. I wasn’t sure if God was real, but I wanted Him to be because then I wouldn’t be so alone in my secret. Where was He? Why couldn’t I hear Him? Why didn’t He keep me from falling asleep? Did He love me despite my secret? I talked to Him sometimes like He was right next to me. In the lonely parts of my nights, God became a friend that I hoped I had.

Sometimes Greg would force me to watch porn. The only thing that I understood while watching it was that it made me uncomfortable. As if he was trying to normalize what he was doing by showing me that other people did stuff like that too.

When I would turn my head, he would force me to look. As if watching it wasn’t bad enough, he would also begin all the touches . . . again. I was immersed with shame. I truly wished I could disappear. I was enduring something so uncomfortable that I wished I did not exist in the moment. Something bad was happening to me because I was different than everyone else—I was bad. When I was too scared to speak up, I was bad for letting it happen. The shame put fear into someone finding out, but at the same time everything inside of me wanted someone to find out—I wanted to be saved. I was exposed to more than I was capable of understanding, starting my life off with such a shameful secret. From a five-year-old perspective, I didn’t know what innocence was, but I felt it when it left.

The shame that I carried was like a lead coat, the kind of heaviness that keeps you inside yourself. I learned at a young age that what I didn’t want didn’t matter. How I felt didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. My innate boundaries never had a chance to develop. Neither did my value. Being so young, I absorbed their sickness like it belonged to me, and then I tried to grow up into my way—from my seed, but with someone else’s disease. Taking in their toxic nutrients, telling myself that was who I was. The problem was that my seed became what I saw in them, not what I saw in me. I believed that I was powerless, and that’s how I stayed for many years.

I did the best I could as a child in the next years, which were safe ones. After about a year or so, my mom removed herself from that relationship, so my abusers were no longer around, although the memories wouldn’t leave with them. When the pain would bleed back to the surface, I would close it off. I would leave that pain by leaving that thought.

Everything that had happened to me was, in a sense, denied to myself. Once I started to shut down the hurt, I felt like I unknowingly denied the little girl who was hurting. That I left me in it to try to move forward. . . without me. As if to unintentionally say that it was a lie. If I didn’t listen to it, it didn’t happen. I believe, out of protection, when a child doesn’t know or understand how to speak up, he or she will leave themselves where they were. The only problem is, no matter how old they get, that child will always be there crying inside—until they’re met back in that pain.

Throughout the years, when the abuse would flash into my mind, I noticed that there were moments when I had detailed memories of it all. And then there were other memories, that when the experiences were too intense, my memory would just stop, as if the lights just went out in my mind.

If only there was a way to turn the lights out permanently on those overwhelming feelings of uncomfortableness and shame.

Your Seed: Protecting the Seeds

What if people knew that statistically one in four females and one in six males are victims of child sexual abuse? According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, “The prevalence is difficult to determine because it is so often unreported; experts agree that the incidence is far greater than what is reported to authorities.”2 It’s not just my “number” that didn’t get counted into those statistics. How many other lives are out there that aren’t included in those statistics? How many more seeds are taking on someone else’s disease? Unfortunately, we may never know.

One of the biggest statistics that faces our children is preventable with awareness. Awareness of sexual abuse is a huge problem. The shame causes the secrecy that causes the unawareness. We can fight the unawareness by fighting the secrecy and shame. Bear with me through this soapbox, but this one is earned.

What if we applied these numbers to childhood death? A crime where one in four girls and one in six boys are killed. What would we do about a crime like that? What kind of prevention and awareness would we strive to attain? How many times would we put ourselves in awkward conversations if it meant that we could prevent the death of just one child? What if I said that it’s highly likely that you know a child that this will happen to? Possibly a child that you love. Do I have anyone’s attention yet?

The truth is, a crime like this does exist for our children; it’s a crime that kills their souls. Sexual abuse. While this child dies inside, very few will break their silence about it because they are too afraid. The shame is silencing.

Sometimes these children don’t speak out because they’ve been threatened. Roland Summit describes, “The secrecy is both the source of fear and the promise of safety.”3 Many children don’t tell anyone because they don’t want to get someone they care about “in trouble.” The Accommodation Syndrome explains, “The child is given the power to destroy the family and the responsibility to keep it together.”4 Some are conditioned to think these are normal ways to show love within the family. Sometimes children just don’t know how to put it into words or believe they are safe to do so. Worse yet, when they find the courage to speak up, but they aren’t believed. All of this on the shoulder of a child. On a lot of children.

Why is no one taking real preventative action, like required education for children in elementary school about body safety or required training for adults that work with children? Or what about a video similar to the “shaken baby” video that I had to watch before going home with my newborn? Is it because it’s uncomfortable or too sad? Is it that in this day of information, political points, and social media platforms that we’re unaware? Do we need more people to stand up and tell their stories before we start believing that this kind of injury is happening to children we all know? I’m willing to say that most of the survivors I know—and I now know a lot—did not tell anyone while they were a child. I believe this statistic is worse than we even realize. We can’t solve the epidemic until we start treating this like an epidemic.

The effects need to be understood, prevention efforts need to be required, more conversations need to be had, stories need to be believed, and more prosecutions need to happen regardless of the perpetrator’s reputation within the community. Sexual abuse isn’t just an attack on the body but also on the mind and the spirit of the child. It attacks their seed, who they grow into. A child who feels captive inside, when they were created to live, may do anything to get out. Carrying a weight so heavy that some grow up and take their own life. It’s happening now, all around us as the suicide rates increase. Children depend on adults for love, trust, and protection. When they’ve been hurt by an adult, they feel helpless. They’re walking past their teacher or family member, waiting for someone to help them. To tell them that it’s not their fault. They’re putting on a fake smile for that picture, while inside dreading the night, coming home from school, or going to that family member’s house.

Antwone Fisher describes the loneliness from this kind of pain in his poem, “Who Will Cry for the Little Boy.” He writes that the little boy continues to cry inside of him. 5

Years later, after going through the healing process through counseling, my heart no longer cries for that little girl inside me. It cries for the children still existing in that kind of darkness. Children suffering in this way is heartbreaking and unnecessary. My heart grieves for what they’re enduring. For the blame and shame that they’re taking responsibility for that isn’t theirs to own. For the weight they’re experiencing because they don’t know how or if it’s safe to tell their secret. A weight that’s too heavy for them to lift off on their own. For the darkness that they endure, for the loneliness they feel. For the loss of an innocence that they never really got to know or understand. For the loss of their self-worth.

All Satan has to do is take away what is real inside that child’s mind and he’s taken everything real away from that child before the child even gets a chance. Think about it as a seed—injuring someone in their youngest stages of growth can completely change who they grow into. This is all Satan has to do.

I didn’t know at this young age, that the very thing that was hurting me was something God would use later in my life to comfort others who have carried the same pain. My value wasn’t in my struggle or in what was done to me—it was in my purpose for others. My seed didn’t get buried; I got planted. Planted to have empathy and a heart for hurting people. It’s those people who can meet you in your pain, that makes the pain more bearable and healing seem possible. When we can heal those injured places, we keep Satan from stunting who they become. Even more, if we can prevent this injury completely, those children wouldn’t suffer this darkness at all. If being uncomfortable with telling my story means someone else can find the courage to speak up, then I’ll keep telling my story. Speaking up can change everything, even as an adult.

What if it was a school standard for children to be taught about body safety, which is far more likely to be an issue than stranger danger? What if children were taught about safe touches and unsafe touches and that no one should be touching them where their bathing suit goes? What if they were taught that secrets about touches are never safe and that if it happens, it’s never their fault?

We need to have these uncomfortable conversations with our children because it’s not about us—it’s about protecting their souls, their seed. You can save who they grow into; you can be their hero. If you feel like it’s too uncomfortable as an adult to have these conversations with the children in your life, imagine how uncomfortable it is for these children to actually exist in it.

We need to be teaching body safety starting at a young age. I was five. They need to be taught anatomically correct names, just as you would teach them where their arm or leg is. It’s our job to make sure children know that sometimes people are sick and need to be helped. Tell them it’s okay if they haven’t told yet, it’s okay to be scared, but that it’s safe to speak now. It’s our job to protect their souls, to protect the truth about their seed. When we can protect their seed, we can protect who they grow into and then the seeds they go on to create. Every seed makes a difference to the future of what the forest becomes, including the shade it will provide.