3:1

SEXUAL MOLESTATION

The act of subjecting a child to partake in sexual acts.

This subject is so raw. Raw to me, raw to you, raw to the world.

It is hardly ever spoken of and it leaves people feeling isolated and all alone. Many forms of abuse are spoken about but sexual abuse is often hidden and covered up for the protection of people. The reason for this being it is often closely linked to the family, extended family or friends of the family.

Today is my 31st birthday and this day (as well as Christmas) has always been a day of disarray for me.

Births, deaths, truths. Reflections of life, of time. Marking points of survival. Ways to measure growth or evolution of ones Self. We sum up birthdays pretty sweetly into this day of celebration, and it is an absolute celebration of ones life, but I feel like birthdays hold so much more to us. To me, October 7th, is an epicentre of change.

Today I want to share something about myself. As a gift to me I want to share something I have held inside of me as long as I can remember and for you, I want to share the gift of my voice. Although this information is hard to for assimilate I want you to know that if you were sexually mistreated, that you are not alone. That so many more people suffer from this and it is hardly ever spoken about. To my friends that have walked this path alongside me, I love you. You have shown me that I am not alone and you have given me the courage to talk about it. To you, I want to say that you are not alone. I am not only my voice but I am your voice and your truths have carried me so far in my own journey of healing. Sometimes people I speak with say that there is nothing they could ever do to repay me but what they don’t realize is that they have already helped me so much more than they could ever, ever know. You have recognized in me the little girl that never understood life and the girl that then grew up without understanding what respect for her body meant. That never understood the concept of virginity and touch. It is because of you that I started to feel slithers of normalcy creep back into my being. It is because of you, my dear friends, that I found peace.

I was sexually abused for around 8 years as a child. I was very young when it started and I know the question of who it was is going to be buzzing around in peoples heads but I am not ready to share that part of me, so I ask you to please respect that. And to try to respect the people in my family because it really hurts me that there will be assumptions made about certain peoples that would never inflict abuse on me. I ask that you don’t approach my family with questions as that wouldn’t be appropriate at this time. Please try to realize how complicated this is for me and in turn, for us.

I may never reveal who that person was and it has taken me a lifetime to come to peace with it. A lifetime of trying to understand why, a lifetime of putting myself in their position to try and understand the core of their own disarray. It is complicated and messy to love someone that hurt you so profoundly. That changed the way you think about every single day. That subjected the brain to abuse over and over again in such a way that it developed into thinking that this was normal behaviour. It is hard to think about your childhood and have it blocked by a person. Their presence in your mind, overriding all the other things. It is a big and long journey to peel back the layers and find your true Self again. It takes care and attention, love, patience and unwavering kindness to Self. I am getting there you guys…. but it’s not going to happen today or tomorrow. Or next year or the year after that.

It is me. It is my journey, my path to walk, my story to share. What I can tell you is that I have experienced extraordinary peace that has grown from inside of me throughout my life and profoundly over the last 3 years. Through self care and self love. Through gentleness and taking the time to understand who I AM to Me.

What I found is that there is this oneness that exists beneath the core of everything. This seed that is the same in you and me. In the trees, the ocean, a rock, a flower. What I found is that everything is fleeting. Everything. Apart from this one thing that is existing beneath it all. It’s always there and it feels peaceful and light. It feels like freedom, like boundless love and joy; bliss. Everything comes and goes, our thoughts, our actions, our bodies, time, hot & cold sensations, emotions, concepts, the seasons, people in our lives. Even the breath comes forth from this place, alternating between inhale to exhale, coming and going like waves breaking upon the shore. It is only at that point between the breath. The pause, that the truth is revealed. That one understands God as everything and everything as God. That is if we could describe such an indescribable force as simply God - just like that - in one word. Perhaps simply A or Om is better.

So this trauma, while is has ripped me open and made me heal from the inside out it has also taught me so much about love and kindness and compassion. It has shown me so much about gratitude but mostly it has kept calling me to listen to Me. To my heart, to my soul. To what I really want from life. To what my HEART really wants from life. I have been through so many phases of life, of using material things to satisfy the feelings of nothingness. Drinking away my memory from reality. Drug addiction as distraction. Spiritual Worship and exploration as a means of trying to understand reality. Using food to find comfort or unhealthy relationships to find nourishment. What I am left with is this understanding that all I truly want from life is to feel loving peace within my body and then offer forth love and support to others in which ever way that manifests.

I can’t move past this reality of what my perception of life has become, I have pushed it away many times and tried to exist in the world as simply human, but I cannot. I am not just human, I am also soul and self. I am 100% Human and 100% Soul and 100% Self, just like everyone else. So I am learning to exist as a soul in a human body with a mind and personality that has an Ego. (Wow Suzy, Yeah I am also SUPER full on… incase you didn’t know that and have a very abstracted way of thinking about life....my husband deserves a shout out right about here. I love YOU, Jesse Weimer)

Somewhere in all of this there is balance that makes this reality viable and my thirty first year of life will be one where I try to allow this "knowing" to settle into my body and heart. To allow the peace that has been trying to get in to permeate my being. Its so hard to understand an emotion that is indescribable through human context. I would try to use words like serene, joy, peace, exaltation, fullness and love all entangled in one but nothing comes close to this feeling that is beyond all things. It is so deep that it travels beyond me and I feel beyond myself. Thats why I believe more to life exists because I have felt into something that is beyond human comprehension, beyond my comprehension. It has to be experienced and I simply could not have experienced it without my history and in turn, my exploration of who I really am and what I truly want from life. By self enquiry, asking very basic questions about the reality of life and trying to understand who I am in the world.

I have found huge comfort reading accounts of people in history that have had similar experiences to myself. I find normalcy in reading ancient texts such as the Upanishads and the Gita where I feel OK and as if everything is as it were supposed to be. My spiritual journey is a whole other part of me and something I am learning to live with. I have felt mentally insane at times after growing up with zero spiritual teachings. I didn't seek out religion, it hit me like a freight train and my reality changed in less than a second. I don't know how I lived through it, I honestly don't. While my feelings are becoming more and more comfortable in my being, sudden spiritual liberation is something I wouldn't wish upon anyone. There are reasons the scriptures warn about having proper guidance during exploration. Experiencing things all by yourself is so incredibly scary and distressing. It takes everything to trust in your experiences; ones that you can't even comprehend. There are times when I wanted to dissolve into the darkness and never return, other times when I wanted to melt into the feeling of exaltation I describe and never come back. But I learnt that it is only via the human experience that all of these things can be known. The known and the knower, the one that experiences all things manifested. Our body is the gift of consciousness and the question remains whether God could even exist without our capacity to experience.

I was so fortunate (again for my husband, children and parents and their unwavering support) for the level and depth of love that assisted my experiences that I knew I had to keep trusting that my heart was, infact, leading me in the right direction. It has been so hard and as I grow more comfortable with this part of me (it has been three years since my first experience now) I hope to find the words to share more about this part of me. Despite what I have lived through in my childhood, I will say that the path to understanding myself on a spiritual level has been by far the hardest terrain I have ever traversed.

I have tried to live as just human, and I have tried to live as just spirit. (Suzy Ballon, Jesse Rock) and all I can say is that you can’t just exist in spirit or body form you have to exist in both. This is the paradox of the human experience, if you so choose to accept it.

Thank-you for listening to my words. For my own healing and journey it is really important but connecting with people and feeling a common grounds, I believe, is more important to the healing of our People and the true reason why I am doing this. I do feel at peace and I don’t like the idea of hurting my family any more than they already have endured. I really dislike that thought but this act of sharing, it outweighs all of that. It outweighs breaking my Mothers heart which is the biggest, hardest and scariest thing I have ever done. No fear ever to exist comes close to that. But that is what I am doing by typing these words and to my sweet dear Mother and Father, I am so sorry to hurt you both. To force this upon you and make you keep facing this reality over and over again. It breaks my heart, it hurts as I type this. I know you don’t blame me for sharing this and that you are proud of me for being brave but I still know, in my heart of hearts, that this is so much for you both. Please know from the depths of my heart that I don't blame you, and if you can't get over self blame then know that I forgive you. Please understand the reason for me doing this is that I don’t want to die knowing I could have helped people find more peace within themselves during their precious time on Earth. I want to die knowing I did everything I could to help people feel more human and more at peace with the person that they are. I want to live my life in a way that is impactful to the evolution of mankind and I can only try and share that in the most relatable and respectful way I know how.