I recently started graduate studies in Forensic Psychology. While it’s definitely a life style adjustment being a student again, I am loving it so far. Someone asked me the other day, how I could choose to study Forensic Psychology after what happened to me? “Isn’t it difficult?” they asked. Then today, I had this moment talking with a friend, that she commented in awe of how well I’m doing and how far I’ve come. I actually had to pause myself in utter amazement. These two events are so significantly connected in my mind because they’re markers of the distance I’ve traveled through the healing process.

I know that some people reading this blog may not believe in God, but for me, there have been times in this healing journey, when I have had no explanation for the healing that has taken place. We weren’t made for violence. We weren’t made to be used. And so, when these things infiltrate our life, I would venture to argue that there is no way for us to conceivably work through it ourselves because we weren’t made to understand it. We were made for love. The times when my growth has most surprised me, have been the times I wasn’t trying hard, focused on controlling the PTSD, faking happiness, pretending I was tough and moving on with my life. They were the times I was broken down…raw and exposed…freely admitting my brokenness and my inability to fix it and crying out to God, sometimes in anger, sometimes anguish, sometimes both, to fix what I couldn’t, to heal what I was incapable of healing and to help me understand what I was incapable of understanding.

It’s difficult to be vulnerable again after that vulnerability has been exploited in sexual violence, but I believe it’s in that vulnerability, in the ability to admit we can’t make it through this on our own, and inviting our family and friends, and most especially our Creator, into the midst of it, that the transformation truly begins and the wholeness we so desperately seek starts to reemerge.