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The year is 1971. The family moved to California. Little Tina was four years old. Traveling across America and staying in strange places was an unsettling experience for her but like most children, she went with it.
She experienced a bit of motion sickness and the stay in the hotels with the whole family in the same room was uncomfortable. She even slept on a couple of chairs pushed together to make a little bed. She didn’t mind that because the arms of the chair felt protective and safe.
Before long the family was in California. When she asked where they were, Daddy told her that they got lost and ended up in California. Little Tina believed that for many years to come.
It was early in the day. The family was now living in Bell Gardens. It was an affordable little house in the Los Angeles area. Tina had a lot of interesting adventures walking to the store and other things kids do in life.
It was just an average day when Tina walked into the bathroom to use the toilet. Mommy was cleaning the bathroom at the time but mommy let her potty anyway. Little Tina got up on the toilet to pee. It hurt badly to pee. It hurt because of what daddy did last night. Daddy caused it.
So, when little Tina was finished, she walked up to mommy and said, “Mommy, can you tell daddy not to hurt me down there anymore? It makes it hurt to pee.”
Mommy became very angry and smacked little Tina right in the mouth. It made her mouth bleed. Tina didn’t understand why mommy hit her for asking her to make daddy stop hurting her.
Then Mommy angrily told little Tina to never say that again. All Tina knew at that moment is that Daddy is doing something bad to her and it is her fault. What Daddy did was bad because she is bad. She was silenced by her mom that day. Little Tina never brought it up to her mommy again.
What are the effects of childhood abuse?
To this day, I haven’t spoken to my mother about it. What for? She will deny it anyway just like she did that day in 1971 when I was a helpless little 4 years old making a legitimate request.
I have to admit it was one of the first silencing experiences that leave me feeling angry as I remember it. Through examining these traumas in therapy with a therapist who understands CPTSD and other Trauma-related issues, the feelings that arise today are not the same as how I felt about it before therapy.
I couldn’t even bear to think about it. I felt such shame and guilt. Now I know it’s not mine to bear and I get angry about it. I’m angry that anyone would put that shame and blame on a four-year-old.
I ask questions like, in what world is it ever the child’s fault that an adult is doing bad things to her/him? Why did my mother silence me instead of protect me? Those are answers only my mother knows but will never reveal.
The sexual abuse didn’t go along with the false family narrative that we have a perfectly respectable family and that the family is Godly and law-abiding while they hide the truth behind closed doors.
The truth was unbearable for them then and it is unbearable for them now. The truth is all I can deal with. I can’t cope with any more lies and today, I will not be silenced.
It wasn’t the only time I’ve been silenced. As a small child, I spoke frankly about the secrets that were happening in my family until they convinced everyone that I was a liar and that I make up stories.
These things I would say were so uncomfortable for the adults I was talking to that they went to my parents, you know, the ones who committed the crimes against the children in the home with the abuse in the first place.
How I make sense of human behavior
Why people go to the abusers instead of just encouraging the child to tell all and just listen is beyond me. Learn who the assailant is before you decide to speak to anyone other than the police.
I don’t know who called child protective services back then but someone did. I recall that event too. They made me do what my daddy had me do which was take off my panties and lay with my legs spread on the bed only for the male CPS worker to say, yes we can see there has been some bruising but we can’t say what caused it.
If there is nothing to gain from retraumatizing the child, then why are you looking down there in the first place. If there is nothing you can do based on looking, then don’t look. That useless exam was just retraumatizing for me even though no one touched me.
It was still very much like sexual abuse. CPS was called out to our house more than once and not once was anything ever done about it.
Between the adults who actively hid the abuse and the children who were silenced by shame, there wasn’t likely anything they can do. It requires someone to speak up. Not a small child but older children and adults.
Us kids were silenced and weren’t about to tell how bad of kids we are told we are. That day I got slapped was another face full of shame shoved on to me that didn’t belong to me. That shame is my mothers and my fathers. Yet I was forced to bear it as my own. This was another bit of damage to my self-identity.
Just as a side note about how this sort of thing affects the life of the child, with all the sexual abuse and the shame and guilt I endured, I became very sexually prudish.
I don’t know what it’s called but I dressed conservatively, acted conservatively, and live conservatively around the subject of sex.
My sex life was stifled in the sense that I don’t feel comfortable with my body or anyone touching my body (Even Doctors) nor do I feel comfortable touching anyone else.
It makes it really difficult to have a relationship with anyone else. Especially someone who doesn’t understand the shame and guilt revolving around sex. I’ve been told that some girls become promiscuous and some people go the opposite. I went to the opposite of promiscuous.
Feeling Alone after abuse.
My takeaway from this is that children may be resilient but when we as adults don’t know how to manage an uncomfortable situation, they can’t help the child manage the situation by putting it in its proper place for the child, the child will be negatively affected.
Not only is the original event traumatic but the reaction also becomes a traumatic experience which makes the original trauma worse like adding the trauma of the exam. It leaves lasting effects that cause debilitating life deficits in relationships because of the damaged attachment style that was developed from just the childhood traumas.
It doesn’t necessarily stop someone from learning how to do basic stuff like cooking, cleaning, driving, and basic stuff but it does ruin the child’s potential of having loving and lasting relationships.
Because I grew up with the burden of my family members’ shame and I was put as the scapegoat to carry all the burdens of the family shame, I didn’t develop a healthy self-view or a healthy view of the world.
I didn’t learn that I’m worth loving and I didn’t know how to love myself. In fact, I was taught that loving yourself was conceded. I began having nightmares and I even began to act out.
My sister Brenda told me once that she was embarrassed to bring friends over because I acted weird and hyper. I didn’t know how to cope with all the stress, anxiety, feeling alone, shame, and guilt. Symptoms of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) were strongly developing as I was developing and growing into an adult with social issues.
I felt very much alone even as a small child and that day proved to me that I was alone. I believed I was alone because I’m bad, I’m unworthy of love, unworthy of protection, unworthy, and didn’t have any right to have my own boundaries.
After 5 hard years of therapy work and shadow work, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I wasn’t a bad kid as I put that shame on the people it belongs to.
I’m slowly removing the shame from my shoulders. The end goal is to fully realize there is no shame and no need to blame. I’m not quite there yet, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The thing about people and relationships is that it is really difficult to love someone who can’t love oneself. A beginning goal is to learn how to love me.
I am currently learning how to be compassionate for myself so I can learn how to use my stifled compassion for others too. It’s very likely that if I can’t show myself compassion, I won’t be able to show others compassion either.
The compassion I never got from others. The compassion I never got from my mother or other family members. It’s all about reparenting myself with all the love, protection, compassion, understanding, and acceptance that I never got from caregivers that I needed so badly.
It all starts with the self by going within. The healing, being loved, being accepted, empathy, and compassion all begin within. Until I could be those things to myself, I can’t accept them from others or truly be that for others. That’s been a huge lesson for me.
“You can’t give what you don’t have.”
Tina Houston
