How to Reclaim Your Voice as a Sexual Assault Survivor

i wanted release more than i wanted revenge

Photo by Janelle Pol

“You either get healed or you get revenge. Getting revenge might feel good, but getting healed is so much better.” 

— Andy Mineo

After the night I was raped, I spent hours staring at the wall in the dark. Images of the night kept flashing in my mind. I teetered between sadness and anger, and as the sleepless nights wore on, the reality settled heavily on my heart: he had stolen my dignity. And I hated him for it. 

HATE MAKES A TERRIBLE HEALER

As hate toward my rapist grew, I tried to harness its power to fuel my healing process.

I regularly replayed the assault in my head and imagined ways to respond to him or give him a piece of my mind. I tried writing revenge poetry and journaled all the graphic ways I could inflict pain on him if given the chance. I wrote my own “Cell Block Tango” monologue because I truly believed he had it coming. Fighting fire with fire was an easy tactic.  All I had to do was mimic in my words and thoughts the aggression and manipulation of my aggressor in my attempt to fight back.  

But the temporary relief this mental act of revenge brought me came at a high price: I remained tethered to that night, and it prolonged the trauma. I had to relive that night over and over again to make sure I didn’t miss a detail in my plot to drag him through the dirt with my anger. For several months, the cry of my journaling was this: “No! I am holding on until I know you feel the terrible, suffocating weight of the pain you inflicted on me!” But this did not bring about the remorse I required from him to move on. He continued to live his life believing the incident was just an awkward night with a “girl who didn’t want to have sex with him.” And all my anger wasn’t changing his mind. It only made me feel powerless and victimized. 

BECOMING SOMEONE YOU NO LONGER RECOGNIZE

As the months rolled on, to my closest friends and family I became a shell of a person — weeping, numb and too tired to talk about the lack of justice. To my therapist, I looked weary, struggling to embrace the label of “survivor” instead of “victim.” To myself, I became someone I didn’t recognize, someone I never wanted to be: a perpetual victim and a violent retaliator. 

I am not a murderer, but I was becoming one in my thought life. I didn’t want to be bitter, but the lack of justice — because I was told my story was weak” — seeped out as resentment towards men who resembled my rapist in some way. I never wanted to be someone who labeled men as predators, but I saw many possible threats around me. I was becoming all these things as I kept harboring hate. 

FORGIVENESS IS OUR SECRET WEAPON

Forgiveness is our secret weapon when fighting for our healing as sexual trauma survivors.

During that first month after “the worst night of my life,”  the word forgiveness felt like a slap in my face. I dared anyone to advise me to forgive my rapist; I would add them to my list of people to hurt. I was working under the misconception that “to forgive” is to dismiss the wrong that had been done to me. That, I discovered, is not true forgiveness at all. 

Forgiveness is about release. It’s the empowering act of saying, “In spite of what you did to me, I choose to release you and forgive you, so that this doesn’t have to hang over your head or mine.”  After several months of figuratively holding onto my rapist’s collar day after day, screaming, “I won’t let go until you apologize,” I was mentally exhausted by my own anger. It no longer felt like I was holding on, but that he was still pinning me down. I finally came to a point when I wanted to be released more than I wanted revenge. What changed? I realized that by holding on with my hate, I was bringing him into my future. He didn’t simply steal one night in August; he was stealing every night thereafter.  

Forgiveness in the face of sexual trauma feels counterintuitive, but it holds within it the same power and challenge as the popular adage, “Love your enemy” (spoken by Jesus Christ). Loving the one who attacks and harms you means you are moving in the opposite, more powerful spirit, for love is more powerful than hate. As I explored this method of healing as a rape survivor, I realized several affirmations would be true of me if I forgave:

• I can choose not to be hateful to the person who was hateful to me.

• I can prove to myself that I don’t have to become like the person who entered me without consent.

• I am empowered, instead of powerless as on that night, to choose to release the person who didn’t release me. 

• If I choose to forgive instead of seek revenge, I get the upper hand in healing that I didn’t have during the rape.

“Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.”

EMPOWERED TO FIGHT FOR YOURSELF

I was not fully convinced choosing to forgive my rapist would change anything. I just knew that hate brought me no closer to feeling like a survivor than I had the day after the trauma. I was willing to try something different and felt empowered by this counterintuitive practice, especially since what “made sense to me” was actually making me feel worse.  

It was truly difficult, but I chose to release him sincerely, while fully recognizing the violation done to me. I said aloud, through tears and trembling, with God as my witness:

“I forgive you. Because if I hold onto this, you will steal more of my nights. You do not have a right to take any more nights than the one you took. And you had no right to take even that one from me. But I choose to forgive you. And I choose to bless you and not curse you, in spite of what you did to me. And I release you. Amen (let it be so).”

It took some time to see the difference, but slowly, changes did come.  His face started fading from my dreams. The memory of that night became less vivid. Now when I mention his name, it has lost much of its poisonous taste. 

THE JOURNEY OF SURVIVAL 

The journey of recovery from sexual trauma is an on-going one. It has been five years since I took that counterintuitive step to forgive the man who raped me, but the freedom I have experienced after doing so has proven to me that there is incredible power in forgiveness. Over the years, I have experienced triggers that have tempted me to harbor hate towards him, but in those moments, I choose to forgive again.  

When I forgive, I am not saying what he did does not matter; I am saying, “No, I will not be trapped by the wrong he did to me.” And I actually listen to and respect my own ‘no.’ And when I release him through forgiveness and then free him with blessing, the disrespect he had for my ‘no’ is diffused. 

With forgiveness I am free to reclaim my voice, to prove I am not like my abuser, and to take back my night.