Childhood Trauma:
How Resilience Is Built By Caroline Bellenger ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES FOR ME WHEN DESCRIBING MY EXPERIENCE OF CHILDHOOD SEXUAL ABUSE IS TO DESCRIBE WHO I AM NOW.
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lthough I spent over 20 years blaming myself for what happened, I can absolutely understand now that I was a Victim of these circumstances. After years of personal growth, I no longer consider myself a victim of anything. The term Survivor is what society mostly uses to describe those who experience child sexual abuse. And for most of my life, this is the terminology I used. However, I never felt comfortable with it. The general meaning of survivor is someone who has overcome difficulties or
death and then carried on with life. I did not just carry on with life when I healed from childhood sexual abuse trauma, I built resilience and I thrived. One of my first steps when healing from childhood trauma was to recognise fully what impact that experience had on me from the lens of a child. It was on becoming an adult that I understood that as a child with limited life skills, knowledge, or authority I was in no way responsible for the circumstances and trauma I endured. In fact, from the perspective of an adult, I could acknowledge the resilience and courage it took for me as a child to navigate my way through this 8-year period. Like most victims, I faced this in silence and alone. It would take another 20 years of addiction and depression before I ultimately healed from this childhood trauma. Much of my resilience was built throughout this time. You see many people consider you build resilience during the easy times when you get support, practice self-love, and put in place strategies to deal with unwanted trauma. The truth is for me, my most profound resilience has come from facing my greatest challenges and surviving them. And when I say survive, I mean literally crawling from my deepest darkest places of despair. I share this because I want women out there to understand that while life after childhood trauma
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