You have been, right? #metoo

It’s made me realize that more than anything else this Thanksgiving , I’m thankful to the men who have been kind to me. Who respected me. Who said, when shadows from the past came upon us, “Marianne, I am not that guy.” With so many sexual shadows in our society being uncovered these days – an uncovering being done because it must be done – it feels important to remember as well the men who are not that guy.

It is not just the traumatic events of our lives but also the events that surround them and come after them, that determine how they influence our lives going forward. I have been through some rotten events in my life and assault was one of them. But the tears I cry now when I think of those things are not for the pain that was inflicted upon me, but rather gratitude to those who helped me live through it…survive, and so much more. Some were women, and some were men.

It was in the middle of the night in 1967, when I was seventeen years old, that a young man took two doors in our house off their hinges, made his way to my bedroom, and sprang like a cat from a crawled position at my bedroom door to land right on top of me as I lay in my bed on the other side of the room. I had heard the door slowly open; I remember lifting my head up and saying, “Mommy?”

No, it was not Mommy.

What occurred afterward is not something I want to write about. But I understand the trauma many women are describing today. I understand the tears and I understand the fear. I also understand that through the grace of God each one of them can and will have a wonderful life ahead of her. “God Himself will wipe away all tears” is one of the most powerful sentences in the Bible, or anywhere.

I did not grow up at a time where you were taught to just stuff your painful feelings, no. I was encouraged to feel them and work through them. But I was also taught that such a painful situation was just one thing that would happen in my life — that it would affect me but not define me. I look at that situation as having increased my capacity to understand and feel compassion for others. And for that I am grateful.

In 1993, I published a book called ILLUMINATA. I remembered over the last few days that I wrote in that book about Sexual Violation. I include it here:

Sexual Violation

There is a category of sex that is very dark. I mean rape, incest, molestation, abuse of any number of varieties, centered around sex, then lodged like a knife in people’s souls. It is now more pervasive, more of an issue in American society, than anyone would have imagined or predicted twenty years ago. Millions of people are thought to carry the burden, the vicious psychic wounding of someone somewhere having violated them sexually. Sexual abuse survivors are haunted by horrible memories, in bed and out. Their efforts to forgive can feel like the need to lift a boulder with one little finger, their access to one of the most beautiful human energies having been sullied and damaged and grossly misused.

They are here among us and their tears run deep. Sexual abuse is an obscene betrayal. It is such a sign of the insanity of our times that anyone would touch a child, yet many people do; that anyone would rape, yet some people do; that anyone would have to suffer such a terrible transgression, yet many people have and do.

Dear God,
Please help me to heal in the area of sex.
I feel so wounded, so damaged, betrayed by those
I thought were here to love me and protect me.
No words can say the pain I feel, when I remember the abuse I suffered.
I surrender to You my memories and my anger toward this person.
Please lift from me the burden of my resentment.
Please release me from this terrible pain.
Amen

Dear God,
I release to You this terrible wound.
I surrender to You my pain, my anger, my fear of disease, my feeling that I will never again
Have a healthy experience of sex.
Only a miracle can lift this burden from my heart.
Please send Your angels to help me and heal me.
Help me feel my body is pure and not tainted.
Help me to forgive my offender,
That peace might flood my heart.
Give me new life.
Thank you.
Amen

(Exorcism of the sexually abused to be said by a healer)

In the name of God and all His angels,
I cast out the demon left in you by this evil.
I say unto you, the force of darkness, be gone from this beloved child.
Through the power of God within us, I order you gone,
Nevermore to return or to cast your wicked energies in the direction
Of this precious child of God.
In the name of God, I command you gone.
Dear God, please bind this prayer to earth.
Thank you very much.
Amen.

— from ILLUMINATA

That was my offering then and it is my offering now. To those who have suffered, I send my good will. To those of you who have helped us heal, I send my thanks.