What if your life story includes tales of incest … should you tell, or not tell?
Editor's note: Joe's story contains sexually explicit wording and may not be for everyone, but I've chosen to publish it, as is, so that you can hear the heart of a little girl now grown up. Joe's mission is to help raise awareness of incest so that all of us can more easily recognize the signs and help bring healing.
Many of us come to a place in telling our stories where we ask ourselves, "How much do we tell?" In my own story, "Breaking the Silence," I chose to begin to "go public". One rule of thumb is helpful in considering when to break silence, and when to be silent:
Break Silence: If you have been threatened or bullied in any way to be quiet about things done in darkness. If you have been harmed in any way: emotionally, physically, or spiritually, other people may be harmed as well, if you remain silent. (Ephesians 5)
Remain Silent: If you have had good success or received awards and recognition. Let other people praise you. Many times we are eager to share our good news, but others may not be as eager to hear. (Proverbs 27)
Joe is beginning to share her story and asks only that you listen to her heart so that more people may be awakened to see the signs of abuse in the eyes of little boys and girls all around us every day. Her story is not easy to listen to, but in the telling Joe is also healing her own heart. In the simple act of listening we can be part of bringing healing.
Sharing our life stories is usually never easy. Many of us are afraid of opening those long-closed closets, but as Joe shares just a little bit of her life here, it may be helpful to see that healing comes in the telling. Joe shared with me that each time she tells her story her heart is healed even more. Indeed, she is creating a new family legacy!
Here's Joe's story….
There is Healing in the Telling!
By: Joe Cheray
Why is going to New York City to speak at #140confNYC important to me? It is important because I need to continue to tell my story of being molested growing up so that others may not feel the same isolation I felt as a child. I still feel isolated in some ways. Not as bad as I felt growing up but, it is still there.
I could have handled the physical and emotional abuse I suffered at the hands of my grandfather, but the sexual abuse left me feeling dirty all the time. I still feel dirty sometimes when I think of all the things he did to me. Most of it was fondling, oral sex or rubbing his whiskered face up against my cheek when he was drunk. Once he had the nerve to rub himself up against me in plain sight of my family. He was drunk and I was helping wash the camper for our next family vacation. He came up behind me, pressed his crotch against me, rubbed his whiskered cheek against my ear and told me I missed a spot. He stayed there for at least a good minute or so before he stepped away leaving me feeling like I wanted to go take a shower for an infinite amount of time.
Showers though weren’t able to be enjoyed in private he watched me take showers and he would watch me take baths when he thought my grandma wasn’t paying attention. He would fondle my breasts when I would get laundry out of the washing machine and put them in the dryer. He performed oral sex on me after my grandmother was asleep. He tried to have actual sex with me when I was 12 but thankfully I managed to keep him from doing that. I probably would have killed myself the next day had he succeeded.
I did attempt suicide a few times in a valiant effort to get out of that hell. I overdosed on aspirin at least 2 times from the ages of 10 to 15. Everyone by the time I was in junior high thought I was just some whacko kid who didn’t care about themselves. I gave up caring I didn’t care if I lived or died from one day to the next. It wasn’t like anyone was going to be able to help me out of the situation I was in anyway. My grandfather was a fine upstanding member of society and no one ever thought otherwise or attempted to ever cross him.
Why did we live with our grandparents and not our parents? My mom was not a mom. She along with my dad was declared unfit parents when I was 3 years old and we were taken away by the state. When we were taken away that same night he killed himself or so the story goes. I don’t believe that for a moment. Not even two days after we were taken away we had to go to his funeral and then right back into the foster homes we were sent to. We stayed in foster homes until I was about 5 years old. When we were reunited we were told we were going to live with our grandparents and my mom. At the age of 6 my mom decided that my grandparents had a handle on things so she abandoned us for a piece of dick. We never heard from her again until I was about 12 years old.
Through extreme measures I was finally able to get out at the age of 15. I threatened to either kill myself in front of my high school counselor or kill her in front of her husband all the while telling her I wasn’t going back into that house ever again after a huge blow up that had me really worried about my safety from that point on.
It is important that I get to New York City in front of a larger global audience than I was in front of in Hutchinson so that I can amplify my message to more people that this crime within families is not ever okay and to give others who are going through the same thing a chance at hope to be able to get out of the unique hell that incest keeps its victims in.
So please help me get to New York to speak at #140confNYC to help others and yes also to help me out. Every time I talk about this it helps me heal a little more and a little more.
Please consider donating to my Go Fund Me donation site at http://www.gofundme.com/kb0qg. Also please spread this story and my link. I have two weeks left to raise money and I have $310 donated so far. My goal is $1000. Also on the Go Fund Me donation page there is a link to the speech I gave at #140confSmallTown in Hutchinson feel free to watch it and spread it far and wide as well.
Joe Cheray – Wildheart Social Media
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