Glad you are reaching out here for help. You are doing the right thing by taking it slow with your daughters. It is wonderful that you are immediately reaching out for professional help and support. Until your appointment next week, BREATHE. You cannot help your daughters without helping yourself first. You are in the initial stage of trauma and it is a horrible place to be. I have been there. All of us on this site have been there. I am 3 1/2 months out from disclosure and I can promise you it does get easier.

We have all worried that we would break and lose it - especially on the perpetrator. When I had those moments I kept repeating to myself, "my son needs me, my son needs me, my son needs me." Take it one moment at a time until you can get to therapy and reach out here or to your family as often as you need to to get through until then.

Praying for you and your daughters to have reconciliation. Therapy will be a must there.

I'm so sorry you and your girls are going thru this, but glad you sought some support here. I just did a search in your area for women's services, in case you want to try and get some help in person, (in case you haven't reached out to any of these) and I came up with these:

http://www.nc-van.org/directory/cumberland/CAREFamilyDomesticViolenceProgram.html

http://www.childadvocacycenter.com/

http://www.abusehelpcenterfayetteville.com/

I'm hoping that if you feel the need, you can feel comfortable enough to talk with someone at one of these places. They may be able to refer you to free counseling, or other services appropriate for your needs, and those of your girls, if at some point you would need to make some decisions for them. I hope these are of some help, my heart goes out to you, keeping you in my thoughts and prayers.

Well the fact you are here shows you not only care about what happened but you want to help them. I know this may seem like little solace most of us here have our children in our homes under our diligent and watchful eye and this still happened to our children. We worked hard to protect our children not knowing the ones we should have been protecting them from were often among our own family members those who were suppose to be safe.

I'm glad that you now will have the chance to be apart of your daughters lives and healing. Very smart of you to get therapy for yourself now and to be doing everything you can to support yourself and any mental health or medical issues. This type of thing takes a huge toll in every way the more you can help yourself the better able you will be able to help your daughters. Do what you can to combat the thoughts have you heard of DBT therapy? Focusing on techniques to help with what your mind is going through is very helpful in the day to day getting through it.

Here's my thought on the mental health aspect, I don't have bipolar but do have ptsd possibly c-ptsd from all the trauma I've had in my life and also being a survivor of sexual abuse, I also have had one episode of very deep depression that was horrible I know that I don't have as much expendable mental energy to be focused in the wrong places. I know that if I don't work to combat that I will be very susceptible to fall into any of the old mental health issues. I can't afford to not be at least attempting to redirect my thoughts. It isn't always possible some nights especially to begin with it was impossible to stop my imagination but during the day I would do what I could to refocus put on something inspirational, a good message that encouraged me, listening to uplifting music. Counseling was definitely helpful especially to help me with the guilt I felt for not protecting them better that was the worst part. Accepting what happened and just working out the steps of recovery for you and your children and finding the blessings or positives that come out of it as hard as it is to believe. One positive for us is that our parenting has been strengthened and our relationships with our children. My husband and I both have a hard time with discipline and positive parenting as we had very poor examples from our parents. Basically not alot of tools in the toolbox. We figured we were floating through doing better than our parents but not by huge leaps now however we are both getting training in parenting and discipline and strengthening the parent bond. So that is our takeaway something I guess.

Something that reminds us of something unpleasant --- or horrific, like child sexual abuse -- is called a trigger. It starts a chain reaction of emotions that seems beyond our control, like a panic attack. Just as our children can be reminded of the abuser and the abuse, we parents can be triggered by all kinds of things associated with our children's having been abused.

After my young adult daughter disclosed her childhood sexual abuse to me two years ago, for months I could barely stand to look at children of about the age my daughter was at the time of abuse. In fact, seeing children younger than that age upset me because it reminded me of how carefree our lives were then. Seeing older children made me wonder if they had been abused. Since I imagined most of them probably had NOT been abused, it made me jealous of their parents for how "good" life had been to them (of course, I had no way of knowing that this was true or not).

When my daughter is having a difficult day, I am triggered again by what used to be happy memories of her childhood -- now they all seem fraudulent, because she was secretly suffering, or about to suffer, and I knew nothing.

Certain music can trigger me, as can thoughts that that Nazi is still out there, a free man, possibly continuing to sexually assault children.

Deep breathing can help us refocus, as can reassurances from ourselves that we truly did the best that we could as parents, knowing only what we knew, or assumed to be true. I'm glad you already have an established relationship with a therapist who already understands all the underlying issues you face, because you really need someone who knows how to help you effectively now that you have this added crisis to face.

As SABINUT said, reach out anytime.

Thank you all for your support and guidance. I am so sorry that you all have experienced this horrible thing with your babies, every day I wish that it wasn't real but unfortunately it is. Bandmom, I will check out the links you posted and thank you for that. I'm not sure what dbt is but I'll check into it as well. When seeing children I have always smiled at them and said hello, some of them smile back and even wave back but there are are some that don't and since this came to reality I can't help but think that maybe they aren't smiling because something has happened to them and it worries me. I know that I cannot do this by myself and I will have days when I just don't want to go in but I know that I must for my girls. This is such a shock and sometimes I just don't know how to feel and some days that are good, I feel guilty for it. I've been kind of numb since I found out, but trying to get just a couple things accomplished each day instead of trying to do everything everyday is helping. Looking at the small victories like getting letters to my girls sent out and making an appt to speak to a therapist as big wins is also helping. I just feel lost and I probably will for a while but I know somehow I will get through each day and it is one day closer to my girls.

I'm sure that your decision to leave the girls with their father weighs heavily on you, especially now, but you deserve no guilt. That falls squarely on him. You could have stayed with him, and he STILL could have done this without your knowledge. Narcissistic, evil manipulators will find a way. It is true of all of us here -- we didn't know until it was too late.

That you have entered the picture and are doing what you can to reestablish contact means that you have come along at just the right time for them.

Hi sorry to hear your news
This is not your situation exactly, but it is help that I think will benefit you.
My older two children are adopted.
I did a ton of reading on the attachment and bonding process essentially in a different but similar context.
You cannot expect it to be sudden true love from your children toward you. If it seems this way, it should actually be concerning.
I think reading literature on attachment and bonding even in the context of adoption may benefit you with knowing the dos and donts of this process. I say this because I'm not sure how much literature will be available to you for your exact situation, but for this similar yet different situation, there is a ton of help / resources out there.
And yes! Congrats on Prob what should be step #1 getting yourself as mentally and physically fit as possible. Best wishes to you and your family!