Writing, Memoir, and Healing—An Interwoven Path
(Trigger warning: Sexual abuse.)
My memoir, Light in Bandaged Places: Healing in the Wake of Young Betrayal, did not begin its life as a book. It began almost 20 years ago as random writings about my childhood and adolescence designed to help me unlock murky memories. I found that the more I wrote, the more I remembered. The very process of writing opened floodgates as I worked in therapy to discover the roots of my sense of unworthiness and inability to be close in relationships, particularly my marriage.
(Writing from shame is hard, but it’s still the best place to begin.)
My therapy and my writing took me back to life as a lonely girl, living in a large house with my parents and four siblings. Although there were seven of us, I felt alone because we had little meaningful interaction. My parents were religious and seemed to feel God would parent me, and although I was physically provided for, emotionally, I was on my own.
My shyness and emotional disconnection made me a prime target for my middle-school teacher to take a special liking to me. I loved his attention; he made me feel seen and wanted. He became my closest friend. So, when he wanted to add sex to our relationship, I would do anything not to lose his attention. No one knew about our secret, and because I was left to come and go without parental attention, he had easy access to me, even as a 14- and 15-year-old.
Although I cherished his interest in me, I also carried guilt about having a secret relationship with a married family man twice my age. Finally, just as I prepared to leave for college, I found the strength to end things. To my surprise, he became angry and, within months, slept with my three closest girlfriends.
My response to these five years with him and our rough ending was to push it all far down—to compartmentalize the events and my feelings about them. For decades I felt that what we had at the time was love, as far as I understood what love was. What I didn’t realize is that the combination of emotional neglect as a child, followed by the betrayal of an adult I trusted, ushered me into young adulthood without the basic tools of knowing how to be honest and open with people, whether in romantic relationships or friendships.
After many failed relationships, I married a kind, sensitive man who adored me. In short order, he realized how emotionally unavailable I was. I didn’t understand what he said was missing, and we spent years in confusion and disappointed expectations. I felt worthless and incapable of being in a close, committed relationship.
Amid this despair, I stumbled upon a video that showed a priest seducing a vulnerable teenage boy. I was shocked at the visceral response I had when witnessing the manipulation, and for the first time, I realized that what my teacher did to me was a betrayal of trust and the use of sex to meet his own needs, regardless of the impact on me. I saw how my teacher had groomed me; all the while, I thought he loved me and treated me well.
This is what sent me into therapy and began my writing. Writing uncovered forgotten and hidden parts of my past, then in therapy, l learned that the trauma from sexual abuse as a child leads to shutting down or compartmentalizing the emotional parts of us that were hurt. Additionally, when a child’s emotional needs are not met by their caretakers, this too makes it difficult for that adult to access their emotions. Unless addressed, trauma shuts us down emotionally, and our experience and all its associated emotions live in our unconscious. From there, fear silently governs our lives.
These factors made it difficult for me to be open and loving in adult relationships. Therapy helped me uncover, dismantle, and rewire those messages of unworthiness that had been hardwired into my psyche from a young age. I learned to re-parent my ‘inner child’ by offering her (myself) the attention, compassion, and loving presence that she never got as a child. Accessing my emotions, feeling empathy, compassion, and connecting with myself and others all came more easily.
Simultaneously, I enhanced a meditation practice that began in college and found the teachings of Buddhism to reinforce what I was learning in therapy. The teachings of mindfulness and compassion offered rich new territory for me to explore. I slowly softened a lifetime behavior of ignoring my needs, devaluing my worth, and ruminating and catastrophizing over events I cannot control.
As Buddhist practice and meditation became my anchor, I became more connected to myself, more embodied, and developed a broader field of vision. Listening, feeling empathy, compassion, and connecting with people all came more easily when I slowed down enough to be in the present moment. I became a better advocate for myself, knowing I deserve to have my opinions, emotions, and preferences and not erase them before they even have life. I learned there is joy, always available, waiting for me to embrace it.
I returned to all the writing from this period of my life and saw how there was an arc to my story—trauma, struggle, and healing. This is a universal theme that people experience in many different ways. I began to wonder if my story might offer reassurance that healing is possible, whether from the kinds of trauma I experienced or others. I also began to wonder if women who struggle the way I did might feel seen and understood and know there is a path through the struggle. It is from deep gratitude for my healing that I wrote my memoir, Light in Bandaged Places, and it is my hope that it can benefit others who have touched experiences similar to mine.
Check out Liz Kinchen’s Light in Bandaged Places here:
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