How to transform the abuse that has ruled your life for so long into something positive?

I can hear your comments, for they were once my very own. How do we begin to look at the childhood abuse we endured as being positive? How on earth can you see being abused as a good thing at all?

I spent a great deal of my life blaming others, my parents who left me in the situation, the family members that abused me and so much more. Everything in my life that I failed at or didn’t even attempt because I was too scared of failing; every relationship I entangled myself in that I knew would not work out, yet threw myself headlong into; every job opportunity that I messed up; my very sense of not belonging anywhere that caused me to move residences so many times that I have lost count. I blamed the abuse for it. I carried it around like a medal of honour, using it as an excuse for my life being really messed up most of the time. Even last year, when I saw there was an opening for this very child abuse site as an editor, I did not even submit an application. Why bother when I was not going to get it anyway, who was I to think I would even be considered for this important task?

My life would be looking good; I would taste a sense of stability and self worth and one incident could bring it all tumbling down as I regressed back to my childhood abuse of finding myself powerless in the blink of an eye. I was fighting myself more than the people around me could ever hope to. I was my own worst enemy.

I did what most abused people do: I buried my own pain in helping others to get out of theirs. This way I did not have to face my own pain, I was too busy concentrating on their pain and attempting to help them heal. Until I realized I was running away from my pain and as long as I did not face each and every aspect thereof , I would forever be held captive by a sense of brokenness in my body, soul and spirit , which in turn would keep me from living a full , healthy life.

I started with a wound that was not too deep, scratched the scab off and made the first ever commitment to myself to delve so deep into this wound , into the very heart of it, the smelly, festering pus and to remove it all, so that none of it could ever come back to haunt me ever again. It is not a pleasant experience at all, but the minute I could work through it layer by layer until there was nothing left, I felt a little lighter. It left a small scar, hardly visible on my soul. The difference between a scab and a scar is that a scab can repeatedly be scratched open, whereas a scar cannot. That is why it is vital to work through every layer of a particular wound. Wounds can be forgiveness, fury, fear, anguish, guilt and shame to name a few.

As I processed through the wounds in my soul, I learnt to give it over to a Higher Power and in doing this; I finally saw that my calling was truly to help others in abusive situations, that without my own childhood abuse, I would never have been able to help anyone. For it is only in having experienced abuse yourself that you can really know what the other person is going through.

We cannot change the past. Or what happened to us. We can choose to let it mess up the rest of our lives or we can choose to empower ourselves by transforming the negatives into positives.

How to transform the abuse? Transformation of self is the answer, we cannot change others. One step at a time with a good support group that you commit to one hundred percent!