Step 4
Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 10:14 pmI have read about forgiving myself. In my time in therapy, this NEVER came up. At 11, I was placed in foster care and within months was put up in a psych ward for teens because I was acting out so badly. Even after returning to my family at 13, I resumed. My stepfather raped me twice within a week of me coming back. I told him to stop and he did but he moved on to my little sisters, his children with my mom. I vowed that if I found out he did to them what he did to me, he would have been dead. The main thing with me was that I kept silent about what this monster did to me for so long. At 17 I had enough and told my mom. Then my best adult friend God ever gave me. She went through some of what I did when she was a kid and I knew it. Later she told me that she knew something wasn't right but not sure what it was. For me it was about the emotions that came afterwards. The burden was off but the emotional tsunami was almost too much for me. I physically could feel the burden in my shoulders to where they ached. I wondered things like, "what if I had spoke up earlier?" or "What did I do to deserve this?". I know what happened wasn't my fault by any means, but it's so much more complex. Things I learned about God's love and all that I knew it in my head, but never allowed it to seep into my heart. Somehow, I made it to age 37 and now I'm pondering these things. I tended to take all the bad emotions and turn it into myself. Hoping to self destruct, even feeble attempts at suicide. 
