It’S All About Me: Surviving Childhood Sexual Abuse

By Becky Smattern

This is the story of an adult experiencing triumph over brutal abuse suffered as a child. Becky Smattern tells how she was able not only to survive the abuse but also to find peace and healing. Abuse in childhood can follow you throughout your life and continue to damage relationships, but Becky did not allow that to happen. You can learn how she found peace, forgiveness, and freedom from the horrors of childhood abuse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Sep 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781489700254

Becky Smattern

Becky Smattern is pursuing a degree in Bible and theology. She has written Sunday school curricula and teaches an adult Sunday school class. She lives with her husband in the Northeast, and they enjoy traveling and are active in their church.

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Copyright © 2008-2013 Becky Smattern.

This is a memoir. While inspired by true events and the author’s recollections, they may not coincide with what others depicted in the story experienced or remember. Therefore, in consideration of that fact and in the interest of protecting their privacy, names, locations, situations and relationships have been changed. Dialogue has been recreated from memory. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales are coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-0024-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-0025-4 (e)

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 8/29/2013

leaves.png Table Contents

Prologue

Sparse Memories

School Days

Lonely, Hurting Days

The Transformation!

Unbearable Memories

Ronnie

Lana

Peter and Grandma

The Brothers

Granddad

It’s All About God

Endnotes

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the women suffering from childhood abuse. I pray you have been victorious in not allowing it to dominate your life.

I thank God for rescuing me from a life of loneliness and shame and for giving me a new life of love and peace.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the two women, dear friends, who believed in me from the beginning. After sharing with them the first thought of the actually writing down my story, they were excited. They continually encouraged me and believed in me throughout the whole process. They spent countless hours proofreading and correcting all the way through to the finished manuscript. It could not have been completed without Abigail and Marlene’s encouragement and confidence in me.

Thank you with all my love and appreciation.

leaves.png Prologue

T O ANYONE WHO HAPPENED BY at the right time, it would look like a normal summer morning. They would probably even smile as they watched. It was a sunny day, with a soft breeze blowing. Three siblings sitting in a sandbox playing, two girls and a boy. The older girl, Stella, was six years old, the boy, Butch, was five, and the youngest girl, at four years old, was Becky. Three innocent children playing together in the sandbox on a beautiful summer morning. It would make anyone smile.

But, then the dad came with harsh, grinding, angry strides. It was far from normal, far from something to smile about. The two older children knew to run when they saw the rage, but the youngest had not yet learned how to run and hide.

So dad grabbed her arm and began kicking, and kicking, and kicking, holding tight to her arm so she could not run away… .

leaves.png Sparse Memories

M Y PASTOR CALLS, ASKING IF I will be a member of a support group of women from the church. He says I would be a great asset to the group by being a good listener and being supportive. My daughter is in school and my in-laws live across the field and would love a chance to have my infant son, Gordon, to spoil for an hour or two. So I agree. My life is going so well, a good husband, Jimmy, and two great, healthy kids. In-laws that love me as their own, spoil me as they spoil my children. What a great opportunity to get out of housework, dress up a little, and join friends for an hour of talking. We meet once a week, several women are struggling with personal problems; some in relationships, some within themselves. Each of the women is lovely and lovable and I hate to see them in pain, but consider it a privilege to be there to love them and pray for them.

The women are talking about their lives as children. I’m amazed at the clarity of their memories as children. For the first time I realize I have only a few memories of my childhood except from sixth grade on, even then, only snatches of memories. Why?

One memory after the sandbox is crying in bed because my eyes hurt so much, with stabbing relentless pain. Mom came and told me to be quiet. But because I couldn’t stop crying and wanting the hurt to stop, she came back and wiped my eyes with a damp cloth.

I remember some men coming to the house to work—one standing on a ladder doing something. I don’t know why, but my mother says I have to take a bath—even though it’s in the middle of the day. She takes me in a bedroom and strips me naked, tells me I have to go take a bath. Why do I have to walk past those men naked? I’m humiliated and try to cover myself as I’m forced to walk to the bathroom alone and naked in front of them.

Then, another memory—being in the bathtub in the middle of the night. I don’t remember how I got there or why I was in the bathtub. Then the doctor was there and saying I had to go away—to a hospital. Only much later did I understand strep throat left untreated causes Rheumatic Fever.

Remembering lonely weeks in the hospital ward, nurses whispering together about the child that no one came to see. The worst times were during visiting hours seeing all the other children talking and laughing with their parents. At least I was safe, even if I missed school, I was safe. Feeling safe from what?

But still wanting to go home and crying all the time. Then the meal that included beets that I didn’t like, but was forced to eat by a mean nurse. Is that why I’m nauseous whenever I smell beets?

The Christmas after being in the hospital was special. Somehow my older sister, Stella, and older brother, Butch, found out we would get bikes this year. I would be like the other kids—be able to ride a bike anytime I wanted! Something of my very own! Finally Christmas morning came. The gifts were locked in one room and our father had the only key. We were all standing by the door when he got up. He told us we had to wait until he had his breakfast before he would open the door. It seemed like hours as we waited until our mother cooked the breakfast, then to wait quietly until he ate, then he got up from the table and got the key!

We were not disappointed, there they were—three NEW bikes! Stella got the biggest, Butch got the next one, WAIT—the third bike was a boy’s bike, what’s wrong? My mother said, You’re not getting a bike—that belongs to your little brother. Why, why, why? Crying my heart out, Allan’s only four, why does he get a bike and I’m six? You can’t have a bike, you get this doll. My brothers grab the doll and take her dress off. She has holes in her body so you can hear her say ‘momma’. They call her a ‘cheese doll’ as they take their bikes outside. They taunt me about my ‘cheese doll’ as I beg them to let me have a turn on their bikes. The neighbor took a picture of us—the three kids with their bikes in the back, me and my little sister, Lana, with our dolls in the front. I never realized every time I looked at that picture, why it caused so much pain.

After the hospital stay, being back in school was something to be cherished. Nice ladies were there, speaking kind words, encouraging words, praising my work.

I remember early years going to school not having underwear and praying no one would know. Having to wear my father’s socks and hoping no one would notice they were men’s, not children’s socks. Wearing a dress ripped in the back and having a girl tell me that she could see in the back of the dress. The meal times when we would get a spoonful of beans and a