Thank you all for your comments. Anyone reading this and would like to comment, please do!

Dear pomplemous:

When I was a child victim my mother did blame me, a lot. Most often children are blamed for being victimized, most common. It was not a comfortable place to be. Not at all. My view of blaming: all in… moderation. I am still dealing with injuries done to me in my formative years and always will to some extent and so I am always a victim. And (not OR) I am taking my life into my own hands as much as realistically possible. Both in moderation, both at the same time.

Dear Moon:

You view yourself as a survivor, not a victim and indeed it reads to me that you have done very well in your healing process, moving from helpless, powerless to feeling and exercising as much self empowerment as possible. The term “survivor” though, aren’t we all surviving until we die? I have a thing for words. I like “thriving” instead of surviving. Nature takes care of surviving, that is its primary concern (we evolved as the human animals that we are to survive at any cost. We did not evolve to be happy), YOU took the reins and are thriving. It is uplifting to me, thank you!

Dear jack:

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it fall, does it make a sound?

If you didn’t feel loved by your mother then did she love you?

If I send someone an email but the person does not receive the email due to technical problems, well, do you see my point: problems in transmission.

If love is blocked in transmission, well- if it didn’t reach you, then

you were not loved.

Ah… ‘but my mother loved me’- not if it didn’t reach me and get absorbed in me and filled me with that comforting warmth and that all-is-okay feeling.

If I was alone as a child, alone with “bad” feelings, that indeed felt badly, day in and day out, a lot in each day and night, well, then I was not loved.

Can you have a low self esteem and love yourself? No, is my answer. You have to be okay in your own mind to love yourself. What kind of message would it be for a father, let’s say, to say to his son: I don’t like you. I don’t like who you are but I love you.” wait, how often this is stated! When you say it to yourself, well…

When your parents neglected their duties as your parents, your guides, your teachers, and above all, the ones to LOVE you, and instead delegated that responsibility to those who did not bring you into the world and were minors themselves, then they failed as parents. It was their job, not your older brothers’ for crying out loud.

What you described, your meekness in relation to your older brothers, your discomfort with mechanical things etc. is a result of the animal dynamics like in dogs, when one dog submits to the others, rolling on its back with belly exposed. They were older, stronger and no parents to referee. Understandable reaction, natural in those circumstances. How could it have been otherwise. If you were the older and they were the younger, then they would be the ones rolling on their backs.

Then there is the Learned Helplessness thing- getting used to that position of submission: what is the point of trying thing.

anita

Dear jeena:
Do tell more, please. What is a survivor mean to you?
anita

Dear Moon:

I am finding my way, in the very process, always a process and in it I can see that there will always be the consequences of the abuse that I suffered and that are there now and in the future.

Dear pomplemous:

Hiding behind past abuse so to not take charge: yes, indeed. I know the phenomenon very well. At times, though, I have moments of self empathy where I say to myself: oh, I see, I am limited because of this or that. Fact is, I am limited and I only have so many years to .. un-limit myself. There is a moderation aspect to the extreme negative (not taking charge, hiding behind victimhood) and the extreme positive (I can do anything, be anything, no longer affected by past abuse, “as good as new.”

anita

Dear Reader:

I decided to bring up the first thread I started. It was four months after I became a member, more than 6.5 years ago. Re-reading it for the first time since September 2015, I still agree with what I wrote in my third post: “Once a child victim, that is a victim in one’s formative years, an ongoing victim, long enough to be significantly damaged… The consequences do not go away, not magically by reaching 18 or 21… or 121…. One cannot make himself or herself ‘as good as new’- that is re-make oneself as if no abuse has happened. It is impossible to erase or undo past abuse. It is possible to grow from it, like an injured tree branch, bent, growing in a new direction…  It would be an unrealistic expectation for any child victim to foresee a time in the future where it would be like ‘nothing happened'”. I also agree with what the following members wrote:

Jock wrote: “I want to think optimistically about this issue. We can’t just accept that nothing can improve“.

Another member (account deleted) wrote: “It (abuse) happened and its real, but I am not doomed to live the rest of my fleeting life in fear and hopelessness. I am not defined as a person by a diagnosis or some analytical framework. I am not a victim. I can’t change what happened, but I can work on making every day more bearable and happier… I call myself a survivor now, rather than accept myself as a victim… I can’t change what happened, but I can choose to move forward… Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional“.

jeena wrote: “I am a survivor, not a victim… I can be knocked down, but I am not built to stay down… Being a fighter is in you whether you are a victim or not. Being a victim is pointless. Being a survivor makes you stronger“.

Today, May 10, 2022, I add- we need to accept that we were victims when we were victimized as children, to thoroughly understand that we were innocent, blameless, and that the much older/ adult victimizer was the guilty party. We have to accept that we were truly powerlessness at the time, that there was nothing we could have done to prevent what was done to us. And then, now, presently, now that we are adults, we need to be as powerful in our own lives as possible, to reject and fight against abuse in all its forms, to never accept/ allow harm to be done to us (as much as it is in our power), and to do no harm to others.

Anything you’d like to add, dear reader?

anita