You’ve grown into the person who would have protected you as a child… and that is the most powerful move you’ve made. 

Survivors of childhood abuse often hear people lauding our strength, resiliency, ability to overcome, and the list goes on and on. We hear from them, “if I would have only known when you were little that this was happening to you, I would have stepped in and done something.” And while hearing that someone wishes they could have done something to help you as a child holds a some weight, words can’t change the actions that altered us forever. You cannot unring a bell, you cannot stuff the contents of a toothpaste tube back in and have it look the same ever again. You simply cannot change what happened to us. 

I often have wondered what it would have looked like and felt like if someone had intervened for me. Would she have gone to jail? Would I have been placed with a new family? Would one of my grandparent sets have taken me? Because I couldn’t fathom a situation where she went away but I got to stay at home. The reason behind those fears were rooted in something she said to me one time after a particularly difficult instance of physical abuse, it had been so bad I threatened to call the police. With unabated confidence she glared at me and the words seeped from behind her lips,  something along the lines of…”go ahead and call the police, they may even arrest me, but mark my words your father will come and bail me out and you will be sent away. Your father only has the opportunity at one wife and that is me, he can always make another child, biblically I am the most important person in his life, not you. He will always choose me.” The words washed over me, she knew my greatest fear was for my father to not love me or want me, because I was already living the nightmare of her not loving me or wanting me. So in my daydreaming about what life would look like if someone actually stepped up and protected me, I never pictured myself still at home with my family-it always looked like me living somewhere else with someone else’s family. That’s the cost of abuse right there, abusers can twist and manipulate a child’s reality so much that they cannot even see a world where they matter anymore. 

There have been countless times now as an adult that I’ve been intently watching in public and I have seen things that have given me reason to pause and consider intervening. There have been countless times I have looked at my husband while holding back tears and the urge to yell STOP while watching parents just destroy their children out in public. My husband has to remind me, sometimes jumping in means that child is going to face even worse when they get home.  And that is a helpless place to exist in, isn’t it? I’d scoop those babies up and gladly sign on the dotted line to give them a safe and warm place to live. But as I have been reminded countless times, I can’t save them all. 

But what can I do? How on earth can I enact some change? Grow into the person who would have protected me as a child. Be the mother I always needed and gift my child a childhood they do not need to heal from. Encourage parents around me to choose peace in parenting. As parents we can have hearty discipline and boundaries with our children and not abuse them. Struggling as a parent and not sure how to gently lead and guide your children? Reach out and I’ll provide you with some resources that have been helpful in my own parenting journey. 

I pray as you walk through your own parenting and healing journeys that you remember you were always worthy of being loved and protected. Issue yourself grace as you navigate those difficult days in parenting where we find ourselves triggered or experiencing flashbacks from our own wounded childhoods. You are not the sum of all the things that have happened to you, you are a living breathing vestige of survival.