Hounddog

I just finished watching the movie Hounddog; I received it over a week ago but because I’ve been working a lot lately, it took me a little while to get the time (and emotional energy) to sit down and watch it. On that note, waiting over a week to watch it was a big mistake because this movie is phenomenal.

Hounddog is about healing–From having to grow up way too early, from sexual assault and from betrayal; it shows life in its sometimes unpleasant and ugly, but also inspiring glory. Dakota Fanning plays a young girl in the American south who lives in a world where so much is expected from her and so much tries to destroy her; from a family who feels as if she is to grow up and even as a young child, expects her to be a woman of the house, to a rape. Hounddog shows you the aftermath of sexual assault, how one can become so sick because of it, but it also shows you hope and a girl who is determined to save herself with the help of a friend.

Hounddog has had a very bumpy road thus far, from Sundance where it was criticized and deemed the ‘Dakota Fanning Rape Movie’ to online reviews that I read after watching it that tear it apart. As a survivor, I loved Hounddog and the only criticism I do have is that I wish it were longer and had a more solidified ending. I loved the hope that it gives to people watching it and most of all, a particular monologue in the movie was so powerful that one moment I was laying on my couch, taking the movie in and the next was sobbing because the words that were spoken were so dead on and were so profound that it really made the entire movie. Those words were exactly what I and what so many other survivors needed to hear and it is because of everything that is said in that one, short monologue that really sums up why no survivor can let their abuser destroy or take their spirit from them.

Every survivor of sexual assault should see this movie. It will stay with you and it will give you that gentle push that so many of us often need to speak up and break the silence surrounding sexual assault. Hounddog is a movie that exudes hope and infuses survivors with a resonating voice that says ‘I understand, it isn’t your fault, now take back what is yours.’

Sinful Touches, My First Creative Writing Piece

I was going through my creative writing earlier trying to pick out pieces to read at the upcoming Healing Through Creativity art festival and found the first piece of writing that I ever wrote.

This piece used to be straight, line-break poetry but has since been cleaned up a little bit grammar-wise and turned into a prose piece simply because my prose tends to read a lot easier than my poetry because I tend to be a little too liberal when it comes to line breaks. It is entitled Sinful Touches and was written seven years ago–A year before I told anyone about any of my abuse.

I think that this served as a part of my breaking point up to breaking the silence around my abuse. I was remembering a lot of what I had suppressed and putting what I remembered vividly on paper before I actually spoke the words out loud. This piece of writing is what started it all; I can still remember sitting in class in 8th grade English class during a specific time the teacher had set aside for “journaling.”

I am glad that I grew up in a small town where I could run into that teacher a few times at places like the mall and thank her for giving me the chance to recognize writing and its healing effects.

Sinful Touches
2001

I’ve fallen. I’m crawling.

Crawling naked on this floor mostly of dirt. The “lived in” essence taken over by filth and the laziness of a woman who never could take care of herself. My clothes, along with any dignity I once possessed at the age I didn’t know what dignity was is strewn carelessly on the floor beside where my body lays lifeless.

Are you happy now? This is the power you longed for; with a slobbering tongue of a St. Bernard–Everything you touch becoming sticky, used, in need of a shower. Are you proud of yourself? Did you have your fill and feel stuffed of power that may burst from your seams if you exhaled too strongly?

I’m sorry I began to fade; go off to the distant world where you weren’t touching me and I didn’t have to cry myself to sleep wondering if this is what love is and if so, why it hurt so much. But I remained the good girl–Don’t say a word–and I never have. But my knees are bloodied from being pulled, my arms are sore and my feet are as black as coal. I wish I could have been running outside, barefoot, to have an explanation for my appearance but instead I remained a good girl and did not speak up for your actions or for my submission.

I am no longer ready for your blows; for your sinful touches that I cannot explain. I need to disappear, off to the distant world where you do not exist and I do not wake up in the morning confused and dirty. Off to the world where there are butterflies and green grass and daisies that are just right for picking. I think of flowers and of nature when you are pouring yourself on me and I simply cannot be there when your eyes are wide and staring down into mine. I cannot be there to speak up for your actions and I cannot be there when you leave.

Finding Angela Shelton is Changing Lives

I recently read Finding Angela Shelton: The True Story of One Woman’s Triumph Over Sexual Abuse. Not only has this book helped me immensely in my healing process, but it was also a factor in the motivation to not only start this website, but it played a major role in the name of this website. The last sentence written in the book is Thank you for healing–by healing yourself, you heal the world. That is so true and so, while I go about my own healing journey here, I invite all survivors, everywhere, to do the same with me. Every survivor deserves and owes it to themselves to heal–What happened to you is not your fault and as you carry the burden of abuse with you, you are giving your abuser the power and it is imperative to not give your abuser what they sought from you by their abuse.

“Bad things may have happened to you, but it’s your decision how the rest of the story goes.”
    - Angela’s brother, Steve

Finding Angela Shelton gives those of us who have heard and have been following Angela Shelton’s own journey after the release of Searching for Angela Shelton a deeper look into what went in to making the documentary; overall as well as within Angela Shelton. In addition to getting to know what she was thinking and feeling through the making of her film, she also adds a great deal about her childhood into the book that we didn’t hear about in the movie and a more detailed description about the experience of going to see her father after many years who was also her abuser. Angela Shelton also put passages from her dream journal into the book which are written in her own writing. The dream sections were my favorite part of the book because it really proves that your subconscious feels and knows things are coming before you do; most people write off their dreams and nightmares as flukes but a lot of dreams and even nightmares can give you a deeper look and a more honest understanding of what you are really feeling.

Finding Angela Shelton is now required reading for a great deal of different education programs which I think it great. By more and more people reading this book, they will get a better sense of what abuse is, how to heal, and even what to expect when confronting an abuser.

By just starting a conversation we can create dramatic social change so in the back of this book, Angela Shelton has come up with some talking points and thoughts to ponder while discussion the book in a class, group, club, or meeting. Thoughts are after the jump.

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Lights, Cameras and an…Axe?

I woke up in the middle of the night after dreaming that I went to my mother’s house. I am not sure why I was going to her house–Probably because I have been thinking about what it would be like if I were to go and see her after not seeing her in close to 10 years. Anyway, I step up onto her porch and the entire time I am walking to her door I see flashing lights and cameras and hear people screaming–Not screaming as if you were on a movie set, but screaming violently, as if there were hundreds of men and women screaming for their lives. I get to her door, knock, and when she lets me in, the door slams shut, the lights and cameras are gone and it is quiet. I can’t hear or see anything, it’s just black and then suddenly there’s my mother’s face–And only her face–lit with a spotlight. Suddenly she has an axe and chops me into pieces.

And that is why I felt that I had to get this website up today; because I still feel as if she is holding me back in some way.

The Force that Drives You to Speak

I was 15 years old before I told anyone about the abuse that I had endured as a child. I was with an ex-boyfriend and had just had a panic attack that I could not begin to explain after something as small as a touch. In just minutes I felt like my entire world had been picked up, jumbled around a bit and thrown into the distance. Everything that I had thought about my life and life in general changed; my perception of the world around me and my part in it changed and it was at that moment that I first began to get acquainted with myself.

Everyone grows up. Everyone goes through a period of adjustment as they mature and settle in to who they will be for the entirety of their lives but it is a completely different feeling when you look into the mirror and have literally no idea who you are, where you’re going, or who you were to begin with. These feelings consumed me after the first time I spoke about my abuse.

I had always carried my childhood with me but my recollection of my early years was skewed; I accepted certain events and buried the others. After my years of coming face to face with my past I learned that many survivors of childhood abuse bury their past and that is exactly how they were able to survive it and it was after that night where everything from my childhood began to come back to me because something inside of me knew I could handle it now. There was a force inside of me that told me to let that one sentence slip from my lips and it has been that force that has been pushing me since to break the silence of not just my own abuse, but to reach out to other survivors. There comes a time in many survivors’ lives where if they buried their abuse and can’t even remember it for years of their lives that it comes back and your mind makes you start piecing everything together. I believe that happens because it needs to; because you need it to and because it is a part of who you were and who you will be.

To survive from such abuse is remarkable and to have survived it at the time is equally as remarkable to me; to know that at one point when life was cruel and confusing I was strong enough to simply live. The mind does amazing things to protect us from what we cannot handle until we can and that is what I believe happened with me. The journey I have taken through healing thus far has been a series of ups, downs and in-betweens. In the past six years my life has taken many turns and I have broken the silence about my childhood. I have seen several therapists, psychiatrists and psychologists, been a part of rape and sexual assault groups and have read a great deal of books about coming to terms and healing from abuse. I have the building blocks of healing and here is where I continue the journey–Literally, right here.

While my childhood was extremely abusive, psychically, emotionally and sexually, and while I did start healing when I was 15 and first started talking about that abuse, I attended the first and only party on a college campus when I was 18–And I was raped. After that was when my entire journey kicked into overdrive. I sought out counseling at a crisis center for women and it was then where I really began transforming into my ’survivor self.’ It was then that I realized that it wasn’t just my childhood that was affected by abuse and trauma that as a child, I was told by my abusers was a “normal” part of life, but abuse and trauma also existed elsewhere and it was not normal, nor was it okay.

I started this website to give myself an open space to speak about my healing journey openly. To have a space that would not pass judgment on me and give other survivors the space that they also so desperately needed and craved in order to start or expand upon their own healing journey. This website will not be written solely by myself, but also by other survivors from around the world who want to share their stories, help other survivors and share their own personal journeys.

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