127: Why Talking About Sexual Assault is Hard & Tools to Help You Begin

Apr 9

In this episode, I answer a question from a listener who struggles to speak aloud their experience of sexual assault. I think this is a very common experience for survivors of sexual violence, and I give a few reasons why I believe it is hard for survivors to speak about their experiences of sexual trauma. I share from my own experiences as a rape survivor and offer insights on the healing journey. I also share tools on how you can begin to share your story in ways that may feel safe for you. My intention is to guide you on your journey healing from sexual violence and also reassure you that this was never your fault and you are not alone.

LISTEN ON APPLE

LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

LISTEN ON OTHER CHANNEL

For More Resources for Healing from Sexual Trauma 🩵

Healing Sexual Trauma Hub

Recommended Episodes 🎙️

Check out these Blog Posts ✨

Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction: 0:05
Listener Question: 1:58
Outro: 29:25

Have you followed and left a review for New View Advice?

Let me know what you think of the podcast! Podcast followers and ratings help bring new listeners to the show, as well as help me to continue creating content. So if you enjoyed the show, I’d love to ask you to follow and leave a rating on your podcasting platform by:

Head to New View Advice on Apple or Spotify
Click Follow on your podcasting platform
Scroll down (or when promoted) click the 5 star rating!

This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice with Amanda Deroscher. Hello, beautiful soul. Welcome to New View Advice. My name is Amanda Deroscher. And if you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. I don't believe I have all the answers you seek. I believe you have all the answers. You just may need a new view and a little help along the way.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:19]:
Thanks so much for joining me for today's episode. Today, I am answering a listener question about how do we begin to articulate and speak about sexual assault and sexual trauma. This is a great question. Thank you so much for this question because it is so true. It is hard to speak about this trauma specifically. I think all trauma is difficult to articulate, but specifically, the sexual trauma, it is hard to put into words. And I think there are reasons for this that I wanna dive into in today's episode. But today, my intention is to help you to feel less alone because you are not alone in not knowing how to articulate or struggling to articulate.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:53]:
This is a, I think, a part of the experience of this trauma. I don't know many survivors. I can't really think of one that has not struggled to articulate their story and what they've been through and who has not had to take time to learn how to put language to the experience. I also hope to offer you some tools so you can begin to find ways to help you bring language and the ability to speak about your story, I do wanna offer some tools that maybe can help you navigate that. And as always, I want to encourage you to be kind and patient with yourself as you navigate this journey. Before we jump into today's episode, I do wanna mention that if you haven't already, I invite you to check out my website, newviewadvice.com. On newviewadvice.com, there's podcast episodes, poems. I have a series called Reflections where I share stories from my healing journey.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:37]:
I'm also actively posting on the blog this month. And when this episode's released, I just posted a post called why I can't stop talking about rape, which I'll post in the show notes at nuvioadvice.com/120seven. And with that, let's jump on into today's listener question. Hey, Amanda. I've been recently listening to your podcast, and I've found it helpful. I'm also in awe of how you speak about your past sexual assaults and wanna know your secrets. I can't seem to bring this issue up in therapy. It's like I can't say the words aloud.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:11]:
I wrote some things down for her, but just haven't been able to, or willing, question mark, to either read it or have her read it. How do you do it? Is it like ripping off a band aid? Just blurt it out? Right now, we're exploring my trauma history. That'll take a while, lol. And she's been asking questions as I asked if that was an option. I do better answering questions than just sharing. Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer me. Thank you so much for asking this question because I think this is a really important question Because what you are articulating here is an experience that so many survivors of sexual violence have, which is trouble speaking about what they've been through. And I wanted to talk a bit about reasons why I think it's hard to articulate.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:56]:
But before I dive into the reasons, I did just wanna say thank you for listening to my content, to the podcast. Thank you for noticing how much effort I have put into learning how to articulate what I've been through because, no, it has not always been easy. I actually read your question to my therapist because I worked with her a couple years ago on a horse farm, and now we work virtually together. And we took a couple years off in between. But I read her your question because when I first met her, I could not articulate what happened to me in my teen years. So it was incredibly difficult. I could barely speak the words. And I want to honor that part of the experience that it took me a long time to articulate it.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:39]:
Why do I think it's hard to articulate sexual trauma? One reason I think it's hard to articulate this is that I don't think there is a language for it. Yes. You can say you were raped. Yes. You can say you were sexually assaulted. Yes. You can say you experienced sexual violence. But I have found time and time again that when I try to really articulate my experience, I struggle to find the language for it.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:02]:
And it's only really been through self reflection, journaling, writing, and support groups where I meet other survivors where I am able to begin putting a language to the experience of sexual violence. Because what happens with sexual violence is that, yes, we experience a moment in time, that traumatic moment when it the assault happened. But for so many of us, there is a ripple effect, and it continues to impact our life for years, if not decades later. I was, as you likely know, since you mentioned listening to the podcast, I was actually assaulted in my youth as a child. I was raped in my teen years. I was gang raped. And, actually, I'm just gonna call out here that for a long time, I could not use the word gang raped. I would always say I was raped by a group of boys I went to school with.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:44]:
For some reason, I was really afraid or resistant to using the word gang raped, but I was gang raped. I'm pretty sure the definition is being raped by three or more people. That was my experience. There were four. And that took me a long time to use. I actually wasn't able to use the term gang rape until I met another gang rape survivor. This person disclosed their story to me because they knew I was really struggling, and it was so healing for me to be like, oh my god. Okay.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:11]:
And why I think there's not a language for sexual violence specifically is because, as you know, as a survivor, every experience is so different and unique, but we're all put under these categories of, like, sexual assault, rape, sexual violence. And these are, like, overhead categories, but they don't quite sum up the individual experience. And so finding the words to communicate your story takes time. And I don't think that there is a language because I think that so many survivors are, I believe, forced to heal in isolation. I don't think it's a choice. I used to think I chose that because I felt so much shame around what I survived. I'm like, no. No.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:47]:
No. That wasn't a choice. That was, like, forced upon me by society, by people in my life, whatever. It doesn't really matter by who, but that was not a choice. And so this is an invitation for you to be kind with yourself as you're trying to find the words for this. And so I don't really think there's a language. It's one of the reasons I do what I do. And as I mentioned in the intro, I wrote a blog post that I'll link in the show notes called why I can't stop talking about rape, and it talks about this.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:14]:
That because I have not seen people talk about it the way I talk about it is why I can't stop talking about it. It's because there is so much to say about this topic that I can't find people have said. There may be books and things like that, but for a crime, that's what it is. A reminder for most of us who did not get justice through a criminal justice system, this is a crime. Sexual assault, sexual violence, and rape is a crime. I remind myself that a lot. But there's not a lot of language about the experience and about the healing journey from it. I think there's stuff that people say in, like, the aftermath, like, right after it happens, but so many of us are relooking at this months, years, decades later.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:55]:
I know in my case, it was decades later. When I first had to process my repressed memories when they resurfaced, it was the child sexual assault I was looking at. I was about 25 when that came up, and I was sexually assaulted as a child around five six. So that was twenty years later that I'm trying to find language for this, and I struggled to articulate that process. I also find with repressed memories, there is a lacking in language for that as well. So I think that's a reason it can be really hard to say out loud. The second reason I think this trauma specifically is hard to say out loud is because when you say it out loud, it makes it true. It makes it real.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:32]:
It almost solidifies it. And though you know what happened to you, and though I knew what happened to me before I could articulate it, saying it out loud was like this, holy shit. Now this is something I have to deal with in a whole new way. It was like admitting there was this problem and there was this elephant in the room. So I view my sexual trauma when it was in my head, but I didn't wanna talk about it as, like, this big elephant right next to me. I'm like, no. This elephant's totally different. It's just an elephant that's here.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:02]:
We don't have to deal with that elephant today. But I found in my life, saying it out loud begins the process of looking at it, healing it, and being with it. Because I say it's like an elephant in the room because it's big. It is. Everybody's story is different, but it's a big elephant. It causes so many problems in our life. It has this ripple effect as I mentioned. And you being unable to speak about it is to me one of the problems, one of the ripple effects that we all go through.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:29]:
So it's not like a problem, like, you have a problem. It's like a problem with this trauma specifically. Because if you can't speak your story and you can't speak your experience, then that experience still has power over you. And one of the ways we begin to empower ourselves after sexual trauma is being able to speak our truth and speak what happened to us in safe environments. And this leads me into the third reason I think it's hard to speak about is that so many of us did try to speak about it, maybe in the aftermath, maybe years later, at points in time and we're blamed, we're not believed, we're told not to speak about it. I have heard that one over and over again, especially for assaults that happened in family structures. That was not my experience, but I know many people who tried to tell a family member, and the family member was like, oh, we don't talk about that. Don't say anything.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:16]:
That gets ingrained. Because when you are going through this trauma, especially specifically in the aftermath, I look back and I think I just absorbed what other people said because I was so disoriented, so discombobulated, so ungrounded, so traumatized. And so I just believed what everybody said, and I just took on all this shame and this guilt and this blame. But I think that when we are blamed, shamed, told to stay silent, that lives within us. We reach out for help, and when we don't receive help in the aftermath, it can be years till we reach out for help again. Because I think when we experience sexual violence, it's so traumatizing. It's so abrupt on the nervous system. I really don't still have the language to describe what it is like to be raped.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:03]:
I write about it daily because I too struggle with articulating how much of an impact this experience has had on me and my life. And I'm on the other side of PTSD, which feels really, really good for myself, to be honest. Because I look back and I can't believe what I had to live with for so long and that there was no language to describe it. Like, I think saying PTSD doesn't quite sum up what it's like to live in the space of being raped every day. I don't know how to articulate what it's like to go out in the world, and the littlest thing can take you back to being gang raped over and over and over and over and over again. I don't know how to explain to people what that is like. I don't know how to explain to people what it's like to instantly be taken back to being pinned down and to being strangled and to be overcome by emotions and images of the past in such a debilitating way that I would struggle to get out of bed in the morning. Or I struggled with thoughts of suicide for a very long time, and that's why I continue to talk about it.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:18]:
Because I agree with you. This is very hard to articulate. I still talk about it in therapy weekly. I go to therapy honestly just to continue to unpack this for me. I've healed so much yet still don't have the language. I really don't know if the language is quite there yet for this. So I think it's still so important to talk about. So I also wanna say here that I think it's incredibly brave and courageous for you to wanna speak about this and to talk about it in therapy.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:44]:
I really think that speaking about what you've been through is such an important part of the healing process. You do not need to rush this step. This step does not happen overnight. What I found with my own experience is that when I began articulating it, I could only articulate one thing at a time. I think I break down the layers in, like, episode 46 where I talk about the fall from hell, honestly, where I relived every day when I went through my teen years. But what I found through that period was that I could only be with one part of the experience at a time. Because particularly with my teen assault, I experienced many traumas within one trauma. So I can use the term I was gang raped, but there were many traumatic moments within that.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:27]:
So being pinned down was very traumatic for me. Being strangled was very traumatic for me. Also, I was pushed from behind and I fell, and then I was pinned down and that was traumatic. And then I laughed when I was pushed down because I didn't believe what was happening to me was real because how would you respond to people you know violently attacking you out of nowhere? It's crazy. It's crazy experience to literally articulate. I'm like, my mind's going back there, and I'm like, yeah. That was weird. That was crazy.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:56]:
It's literally crazy. And what that leads me to is I think it's hard to articulate because as I mentioned, it makes it real in a sense. Why is this? Because I think that for some of us, this might not be a universal experience. I honor that. This is my experience. Is that it is so crazy to live through this type of violence. It makes zero logical sense for somebody like us, like a victim of this. It makes no logical sense that I believe it's a defense mechanism to doubt ourselves and to not speak about it and to bury it.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:26]:
Like, these are all defense mechanisms because it's so hard to look at for many reasons because it's a violent act, because it's so painful, because it's something we live through. I also think it's hard to look at and hard to articulate because when you begin looking at this trauma and articulating this trauma, your view of the world changes. And as I peeled back the layers and I allowed each layer of the trauma to come forward, my view of the world changed over and over again. Because accepting that I live in a world that has this kind of violence by people who are not in prison and will never be in prison, accepting that I lived in a world where I repressed so much of this trauma, accepting that I lived in a world that didn't wanna speak about this, didn't have the tools to help me, that honestly, I believe silence survivors in so many ways. So your struggle to say this out loud is a real experience that many survivors go through, as I mentioned, for different reasons, and it can be individual for each person. I'm gonna say too that this isn't universal. This is my experience. This is what I've found from speaking with other survivors, but you could have another reason why it's difficult for you to speak about, and I'd love to hear those.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:39]:
I'd love to create more of a conversation around this. So please send me an email if you wanna continue this conversation. So I wanted to just mention that it's really courageous because I do think your brain breaks and you have to begin seeing the world with a new perspective. That's what healing does. Healing is a prayer for change. And when we choose to heal from sexual trauma, our life will change. And that can be really scary, and I think it's a reason we can struggle to articulate it and why it's really courageous to begin the journey of healing, which I also want to encourage you on your journey of healing. Be patient with yourself.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:10]:
Be kind with yourself. You do not have to force yourself to do anything you're not ready for. But I do promise there is another side to this trauma. And it doesn't mean one day you're healed and you're like on a mountain looking down like, oh my god, I feel so great. But you get your power back. You get your voice back. You get to see your own strength and resilience. I know that answer can be, like, annoying for people.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:34]:
I met somebody recently who did not like the word resilient. They didn't think they ever had to be resilient. But the truth is, humans are resilient. This is such a hard trauma to live through, but we go through so many hardships in human life, and we see how resilient we are. Living through the pandemic showed us how resilient we are. Like, there are so many different hardships, and this is one that is incredibly difficult. But I have found that there are gifts through the journey, And those gifts in my life have been I have found my voice. I've found my power.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:06]:
I am so sure of myself at this point. I trust myself, and it's been through a journey of living with debilitating self doubt, which this trauma left me with so much self doubt, so much self hatred, so much self blame. By looking at every single belief and every single moment where I took on self doubt, self blame, and self hatred, I have freed myself of what I view as a prison I used to live in. Like, this trauma put me in a box, and now I live outside the box. And I love life outside the box. Does it mean that I live in a world of rainbows and butterflies? No. I still speak about rape every day because it's still a really big problem, and I still have stuff come up. As I mentioned in last week's episode, even for me, I had a layer come up when I was in Dallas recently.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:49]:
I had another sexual assault memory come up that I'm struggling to articulate right now. It was a suppressed memory versus a repressed memory. And I didn't quite understand the difference till this experience, but it's another thing I struggle to articulate. Like, a repressed memory is an unconscious memory you forget. A suppressed memory is a conscious memory that you're aware of that you choose not to look at is how I heard it described. Oh, that doesn't quite sum this up. Repressed versus suppressed. I found with repressed, it was a shock when it came up.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:19]:
It was like, holy moly. I don't remember that at all. Is that true? And it is. With the suppressed memory, I guess I consciously shoved it down. It was just that I had a memory I would look away from over and over again. Like, it would pop in my mind and I'd shut the blinds on it or I would slam the door on it because I knew there was more to it than I was ready to look at yet. Don't know how conscious that process was, if that makes sense. So with this, I had a memory of being around 21, 20 two, and I went back to my hometown.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:51]:
I swear my hometown is a breeding ground for rapists. Terrifies me to this day. And I woke up fully naked, never happened. And I had showered, never once had happened. I used to drink regularly. I've been sober for years. But when I drank, I never once showered, ever. Like, know it for a fact.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:11]:
And I never took all my clothes off and woke up in a friend's bed ever. And the truth is when this memory came up in Dallas, I just knew. I just knew what happened to me, not the full details. Some of those have come up since. How did those come up? For me, it's meditations, dreams, just knowings. You know, I'm not looking to take anybody to court about it, so I don't care if anybody believes me. I'm at a point in my journey where my body knows the truth of what happened to me. And that is really, really hard to live in a world where where the proof I have lives inside me.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:42]:
So I'm just at a point where I speak about this, but I know I'm not gonna get justice for what happened to me. But it's been incredibly hard and heartbreaking to navigate. And as I mentioned, I still really have the language for the difference between a repressed and a suppressed memory. It's like something I just know now. But I share that here because, one, it's always freeing for me to share. One of the reasons I started the podcast is sharing my truth helps me to heal. So that's why I like to put language to it. That's why I do think it's important for us to speak our stories because I find with survivors who only lean on somatic techniques or don't put language to it that they are a little stuck still.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:18]:
And people who only speak about it and don't connect back to the body are also a little stuck still. And there's nothing wrong with being stuck, and that's not a judgment. It's more an observation because I don't think there's really a road map for healing from this. And all I've found is that both are important. It is important for us to get our voices back, to articulate what happened, to make sense of it within ourselves. How do you make sense of something nonsensical? How do you make sense of something that doesn't make sense? That is an individual journey. So now I wanna get into tools that can help you to articulate this. Is it just ripping off a band aid? Part of me wants to say yes.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:52]:
It is. It is incredibly hard, but it is incredibly freeing when you find a safe space to disclose. I wanna say that too. Because as I mentioned, I think a lot of us did try at one point or tried as in like, I found when I was first sexually assaulted, I just started saying a horrible thing happened to me. That was how I began to broach it, is I could only say a horrible thing happened to me, or I would say something happened to me. That was the only way I knew how to articulate it at the time. But what I found in my life, one of the most helpful things I recommend is writing about it. So you mentioned you did write about it.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:25]:
You wrote it down, and you're struggling to give it to your therapist. But for somebody out there who maybe it's just living in your head, writing it down, that is why I still write about this. This is why I started my reflection series. This is why I blog about this. Writing about it is so helpful because I believe writing helps us to think clearly. It helps us to figure out our thoughts. I believe every time I sit down to write, it's an act of creativity and helps me to shift my view of the world or to learn something new about my inner world. It's why journaling is helpful, but it's also why writing is helpful is because we learn something when we write.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:00]:
We are able to articulate our thoughts in a new way. And if we struggle to articulate them with our voice, it can be really helpful to write them down first. So I really, really stress that if you're struggling to articulate this to write it down. The second thing I recommend is, as I said, you can go as slow as you want with this. So like how I mentioned, I used to say a horrible thing happened to me. You could start with something like that, and you said your therapist asks you questions, your therapist will begin probably to ask you more about the horrible thing that happened. But you can start more vague and get more specific as you begin speaking about it. It doesn't have to happen overnight where you can just articulate it like a story.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:46]:
Finding a safe place is very, very important when articulating your story. So finding a safe person, a safe family member, or a professional, but making sure you have somebody who can be there for you and isn't going to rush you through the process is important. Another tool for articulating this is getting in the body. So I mentioned healing this trauma. It takes somatic techniques and the speaking the story. If you have not ventured into the land of somatic techniques, I find that really helps. So when I was working with my therapist this summer and working through the strangulation element of my trauma, I actually couldn't speak about being strangled for a really long time. I had so much self doubt around it.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:25]:
Like, I knew it happened, but every time I said it, I felt like I was crazy when I spoke it. So we started doing somatic exercises, and we started to do growling, and we made different animalistic noises rather than me speaking about what happened. But I was just using my voice in these therapeutic ways. And that helped me to move something, honestly, energetically where I was able to begin speaking about it. The more you can get in the body, the more I find it helps with the story aspect, speaking your story into the world. It's important to speak about this because you deserve not to live with this in your head all by yourself. I think this trauma specifically is too big for one person to carry. And when we can't speak our story, we are the only one carrying that.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:10]:
And I don't think that's how this should be. That is not ours to carry all by ourself. Unfortunately, one of the unfair parts of this that's just true is that we do have to carry part of it because it's a lived experience we've been through. But it is not ours to carry alone. Nobody deserves to carry their trauma all by themselves. I believe that healing happens faster in community. It happens quicker when we are seen and held by others. And so articulating this and being seen with compassion in the horrors we've survived heals us.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:41]:
I have found time and time again that when I speak what happened to me, it's like a burden is lifted. And it can be really scary because like I said, it changes your view of the world. It rewrites you in some ways. But it rewrites you into the truth of who you are, and to me, that's a real gift to come back to the truth of who you are. Because there's nothing wrong with you. You have always been enough. You have always been worthy. This experience doesn't mean anything about you.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:05]:
You were lovable before. You're lovable after. You were enough before. You are enough after. But this trauma often creates beliefs when it's in ourself, and we can be very, very hard on ourselves after experiencing this. And I think that's another reason it can be hard to talk about because of a fear that if we speak it into existence, somebody's gonna confirm some of those very scary beliefs we've taken on about ourself. I know that was true for me. I also think that if you're struggling to articulate it, finding a form of creativity to help you speak your story, so it could be drawing a picture, it could be doing a painting, it could be writing a fantastical story, so one with monsters and demons, and you could be a damsel in distress.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:50]:
But finding different ways to articulate it might be helpful. I always find writing poems to be a helpful way for me to articulate things first. A lot of my poems help me to see my inner world more clearly, but they're more distant in a way from what I experienced. Like, I have a poem called you raped a witch. It's one of my favorites, by the way. But that one is kinda, like, adds a magical element to this experience, and then I can kinda read that back and see the emotions that were coming up and be like, oh, that's how I'm feeling. Oh, yeah. Like, that's true.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:22]:
That's true. So finding a different way other than words can be helpful too. But for you, it sounds like you've written it down. It sounds like you're ready to share with your therapist, and I invite you to do that. I invite you to if you're really struggling to give this therapist a piece of paper, I think that's great. I love that you naturally knew that if you couldn't speak it, that you could write it down and share it with your therapist. I also love that you have asked her to ask you questions because you struggle with sharing. That makes me think of that there's client led therapy, and then there's directive therapy where the therapist really leads the sessions, and there's client led therapy where the therapist lets the client take it where they want that week.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:02]:
It sounds like you like that more directive approach, so I love that you were able to create that for yourself. I mentioned that here because anybody else out there who's maybe struggling with the relationship with their therapist, I have an article on my website, which which I'll link in the show notes as well, that breaks down different ways to find a therapist that works for you and questions you can ask and approaches you can take to help you find the therapist that's best for you. But I'd want to end this episode by saying that you're a beautiful soul, and your journey healing from this is going to be individual. It is different for every survivor. Every survivor's story is different. I used the word survivor because for a long time, I didn't understand what that word meant. I didn't really get what it meant to be a survivor. But when I stopped living with PTSD and I stopped living in this trauma, I could see I did survive something.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:51]:
Yes. That moment was horrific and violent, but it is the aftermath that I think can be harder to survive. The fear that comes up from speaking is the fear that happens in the world, the mistrust of the world, the fear, the terror, the panic, those are things we don't deserve to live with. We never should have had to live with. We never should have to live with. And those are the things that I look back and I'm like, oh my gosh. I survived this because I don't suffer from those things anymore, but I suffered for a very long time because of the choices someone else made. And I say that again because for anybody who maybe carries some self blame, I just really don't want you to because I don't think you deserve to, and I know it wasn't your fault.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:35]:
I blamed myself for what happened to me for a very long time in different ways. The self blame was even just if I hadn't done x. Still a way of blaming. There was nothing I could've done to stop the violent act of others. And I just invite you to be kind with yourself. I I hope something in this answer was helpful. If you have more questions, please let me know. I can continue to think on tools to help you to articulate, and I will plan to create a blog post this month about that.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:00]:
And if you have a follow-up question, please let me know. And, again, I am sorry that you experienced this. Nobody deserves to be sexually violated. Nobody deserves to experience sexual violence. No one deserves the experience or the aftermath. It is a horrific, horrific experience in so many ways. And I know what the journey is like, but I also do wanna end this episode on a bit of a hopeful note where I just want to stress that I really do believe there are gifts within this trauma. Healing from anything has gifts in it.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:32]:
And those gifts are, like I've mentioned, getting your power back, getting your strength, finding your voice, no longer doubting yourself. And through this journey of healing time and time again, I have just regained pieces of myself that I didn't even know were missing, and that has been such a gift. Do I think I deserved what happened to me? No. Do I wish it happened to me? No. It did happen to me, though. That's why we choose to heal because this is something that did happen. We can't go back in time. Just like somebody who experiences a car crash or somebody whose parent dies or somebody who fails a test.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:05]:
You can't go back in time and change what happened. We just have to keep moving forward with what we have. So I just wanna cheer you on, and I'm so grateful you asked this question because I obviously had a lot more to say about this than I expected. So thank you so much for this question. I'm sending you so much love. Thanks again for joining me for this episode of NewView Advice. I am so grateful to have these conversations each week. And as always, I am so passionate about talking about healing from sexual violence because on my own journey, I just did not find enough resources and enough people talking about healing from this.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:44]:
So I'm just grateful to have these conversations and to be on this journey with you. That's really how I view it. I'm walking alongside you on the path of healing. I do not think I am healed. I am on the journey of life with you. So So thank you so much. If you haven't already, I invite you to check out my website, newviewadvice.com. As I mentioned in this episode, I have new blog posts on there.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:02]:
I'm really leaning into writing this month. I also have more podcast episodes, resources for healing from sexual trauma. I have a sexual trauma hub with book recommendations, resources, and more, and I also have my reflection series where I share stories of healing from sexual violence. So thank you so much for joining me for this episode. I hope I was able to offer you a new view. Sending you all my love. See you next time.