FF TW  

I am glad that as a guy I can talk here about how 1/3 of my PTSD comes from combat trauma, 1/3 from childhood domestic violence trauma, and 1/3 from molestation when I was a kid. Nonetheless, I don't often know what to ask for as a guy when it comes to healing for that last 1/3 sexual assault trauma. But today I watched an episode on Netflix of Longmire about the rape of a Native American woman on the reservation in Absaroka County, Wyoming, the fictional setting of the TV series. It gave me some words for my 1/3 sexual assault trauma when the show ended with a sweat lodge ceremony that the Native American women did for the healing of the rape survivor, in this case a woman named Morning Star.

The ceremony began with singing, as I would expect in a healing ceremony of any kind. The women sat in lodge a circle around a fire on which hot stones sat. Water was poured on the stones to make the steam for the sweat.

Then the woman leading them all spoke. She said to the sexual assault survivor in their midst:

"Morning Star, a part of you was taken away. Someone took what did not belong to them. That part of you is now wandering and lost. This is why you feel like you don't belong. I'm now going to call that part of you back. 'Come back, Morning Star, come back Morning Star, come back Morning Star, come back Morning Star.'"

Then the leader told Morning Star, "Morning Star, call yourself back." Morning Star, who had not spoken yet during the ceremony, quietly said then, "come back, Morning Star." After breaking her silence in this way, she began to cry for the first time since her entire ordeal had begun, falling weeping into the arms of another woman present. As pain-filled as her weeping was, it was nonetheless a breakthrough.

TW-TRIGGER WARNING

If this is silly to others, I apologize. However, I watched it with keen attention. After I was molested twice as a kid at age 11, I was shamed and blamed when I told my mother. Then to be sure puberty would make me a man despite my molestation when I was 11, when I entered puberty in the next years my mother began to have my father beat me once a week. That was the kind of negative healing ritual I got that regularly added domestic violence trauma to the sexual assault trauma.

So that's why watching this TV depiction of a kind healing ritual got my attention. I really related to the words spoken by the leader in the ritual when she said that after the rape "part of you is now wandering and lost. This is why you feel like you don't belong." That spoke for how I felt after I lost my innocence to that violation. Then the way my family treated me, I never really belonged in my family again. So I felt like I was wandering ever after that.

FF-FEELING FRAGILE

I would have given anything if, instead of shame, blame, and beatings, my mom's approach to my healing had been to say what the leader of that TV show's ritual then said, "I'm now going to call that part of you back." That's what I really needed in order to be restored. I needed for someone to help call me back to who I had been before it all happened.

TW-TRIGGER WARNING

Those who helped me call myself back were 4 others men and women who I found had been molested by the same perpetrator as kids. I didn't know others had gone through that, too, until years later. A couple of us overcame our shame to get back together as adults after all those years to find out what happened to our perpetrator. We succeeded, and so we got to pass on the word to the rest of our little group of men and women survivors that our perpetrator had been caught for a later sex crime, convicted in court, and sent to prison. What was more, there in prison he had been murdered by another inmate.

So justice had been done in court, which I know is rare. If his murder in prison could be seen as revenge, then I suppose we had been avenged, too, I don't really know how to feel about that. The conversations among us men and women survivors willing to talk were the important part, though, for me. Until I discovered my perpetrator had attacked the others, I had felt isolated. Somehow knowing other survivors of the same perpetrator existed, male and female, even though I was sorry this terrible thing had happened to him, too, helped me greatly. My mother had shamed me and my father had beaten me, but here male and female peers who cared for me because they really knew how I felt.

FF-FEELING FRAGILE

Our conversations as men and women survivors about what had happened to us and about our perpetrator's fate were like a healing ritual. They had a healing effect on me like that ritual on that TV show I saw. Like a support group does, like this support group does. It might be silly for me to say so, and that's why I'm FF (Feeling Fragile), but watching that TV show made me thankful for the other men and women survivors of my own particular perpetrator who were willing to share.

It made me grateful that I'm invited to share about it with you all as a guy here on DS PTSD. Grateful that you men and women here are supportive to me about my healing from sexual assault when, with my mother's and father's mental issues, my mom and dad were not It made me grateful to all of the women and men who dare to share about healing from sexual assault here at DS PTSD.  I know this post is long and silly perhaps, being triggered by a TV show, but it can't be all bad if if gave me words I didn't have as a guy to prompt me to say thank you for your courage and kindness about this last sexual assault 1/3 of my PTSD recovery.