Alive

Be still my heart
right from the start
the love I had, left pain
Tears, fear hurt and shame
Which held me there
I was chained and puzzled
Why
Emotionally I couldn’t fly
Now I’m freed with knowing
I’m empowered now and not alone
Alive once again.

Susan Shaw

I have been trying to get to how I feel about the support I have received from work, what it feels like is support I didn’t expect from people that know very little about what I went through as a child. The girls have been asking how I made out with going to do the child abuse survivor monument project workshop. I have told them it was really empowering for me. I was having a lot of feeling when I was working on my project but could not find the words to get it all out. I found it a little overwhelming in a short period of time. I really wanted to have a part in doing the project and that is what I did, now I need to get to some of the feeling I was having, while I was there. I felt Toronto was a big scary place for me to go to. It didn’t take long to realize that Toronto is a friendly place to visit and I could do this again if ever I had to again. I have never known what support really was and now that I see people can and are supportive it really helps me to do what I need to do to heal. I have had so much positive responses when I have been out looking for donations for the Christmas baskets that I am wanting to get more involved as it seems to empower me more. The more I put myself out on a limb the more I get back. I have always felt I would get rejection and that is not what I am seeing from people, just my family is giving me rejection and I will always get that from them.

I didn’t realize that I had support at work. I have only known what it is like to feel rejection from family and that will always be that way, when it comes to my family. I have never felt that work is a place where you could have feelings of any kind because the job was about working and only working. For me to tell co-workers that I was going to counseling was a big deal to me because I was making myself vulnerable with saying something personal about myself. To ask for help to go to Toronto was very hard because I thought I would get rejection, like I always have from my family. To my surprise, a co-worker offered to put up a sign that read, I was a survivor of child sexual abuse and I needed their help financially so that I could go and take part in doing the workshops. I expected to get rejection and as always shut down any feelings I had so that I would not get hurt again. I couldn’t believe it when they gave me 280.00 to help pay for my trip to Toronto. I felt like they were reaching out to me by showing me that they supported what I needed to do to help myself. It feels like they are helping me to become more empowered. Now that I know they are supportive I have been asking about other things I need help with.

Sincerely,

Susan Shaw