In my pictorial archives, there are two pictures that remind me of a time I would rather forget. Each time I look at them, I just want to reach out and wrap my arms around that little girl and tell her everything will be alright. I grieve for the little girl I see in the photos. I go back to that time and shiver.
I remember a few years back, I posted it on social media, and one of my siblings actually acknowledged that he knew exactly what was happening during that time. That shook me because I thought all along that the secret had been kept well. For all the times a piece of her was broken, my heart till now palpitates.
We all have gone through the process of grief at some point in our lives, and it is gruelling.
Through my personal experience, I have found that instead of ignoring the loss and trauma or quickly moving past them, we can choose to slow down, sit with each loss, examine it and grieve it.
I often wondered why I felt an overwhelming sense of pain each time I looked at these particular pictures. I realised that it was due to the overwhelming sense of loss I felt due to the things that happened to me during my childhood. While for others it was sunny days filled with laughter, for me it was fear and always checking if I was doing the right thing. But even that didn’t even matter because a reason would be found that warranted either a scolding or a beating.
Now that I’m older and have made the conscious decision to work through my pain, I have found that grieving, although it may seem too painful to deal with, has helped me become resilient in the face of past trauma and whatever I face through life.
For years, I had been drowning in past trauma that I could not voice. Now that I openly speak about everything and actually allow myself time to cry if I want to or just wallow in my pain, I find it liberating afterwards.
No one should ever allow you to rush through it like one person ordered me to. They just blatantly told me that the person was dead, so I had to forgive and move on. What they don’t get is that forgiveness is a process, and grieving is one of the most important parts of the whole process.
So fellow sister, when the freshness of a new phase of grief arrives, the tightness in the chest, shortness of breath, tears, palpitations, everything, just allow it to take over. Never fold and pack it away. Ride the wave, own the pain, because it does get better.
Footprints of a Survivor is a column written by Kim Mukwa, a survivor of childhood physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Each week, she reveals the layers of pain she lived through, the damage it caused and the steps she is taking to heal emotionally.
