Breaking the Silence: Speaking the Truth in the Present to the Lies of the Past

By John Kruk and Melissa Kruk

Breaking the Silence; Speaking the Truth in the Present to the Lies of the Past.

A desolate broken heart, rejected by those who should love her, searching everywhere but the one place true love can always be found. Cutting to relieve the pain; ironic when that hurts less than the wounds of the heart. Silent screams for help that never comes, until…

Breaking the Silence is a brutally honest and open look into one woman's life of sexual abuse and neglect; documenting the pain and betrayal of sexual abuse and the struggle to survive and then overcome it. Jora remembers 'weird things happening with Dad' when she was very young, but hasn't quite connected them with the cutting that started when she was a teenager, and continues even today when the pressure inside her head gets too much, and the alienation and intense loneliness she feels as an adult. It is only when her marriage is breaking down and she fears the impact that will have on her young children that she reaches out. In her coaching sessions, either face to face or via email, with John and Melissa Kruk, Jora takes one step forward or two steps back, but slowly the darkness of her past, and pain of her present, is exposed in courageous detail in her journal entries.

John and Melissa Kruk are experienced life coaches working with those who have been through painful life experiences. John, who has a Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy, and Melissa, with a Bachelor's in Psychology, have been working as life coaches since 2004. They have successfully reached many people through retreats for couples, men, and/or women as well as individual coaching sessions, focusing on the inner heart belief systems which either free us or imprison us. They offer insights into how we slowly change those long held and sometimes false internal belief systems which cause us pain and cause us to stumble through life in various ways. They call Texas home, but they reach out to help and heal wounded hearts all over the world.

"This book, 'Breaking the Silence' is a wonderful example of the tremendous positive impact someone can have on another person. Jora's honesty is breathtaking; John and Melissa's words of guidance and healing apply to us all. When I first read it, I was amazed at the impact John and Melissa had on Jora, seeing her gradually healed from cutting, intense rage, and feelings of worthlessness. But several days later, I found out my own 13-year-old son was cutting because of his anger and negative feelings about himself. This book helped equip me to walk along with my son in ways that he needs as he tries to take small steps away from this form of self-abuse. I am very grateful to have learned many things about his heart (and mine) through this book."
Sarah Brightson* Speech Therapist.
*name changed

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9780986367816

Book preview

Jora: My Story……

For most of my life I thought I was different…I had secrets that no one else knew. My family on the outside looked like the perfect family. We went to church, my mom and dad were still together, I went to a Christian school pre-k through 12th grade, my dad provided well financially for us, and everywhere we went we looked like we had it all! But at home it was a different story. My dad was what you would call a functioning alcoholic, and when he would get mad, he would get very mad, more like enraged. He was incredibly verbally abusive to my mom and also to my sister and me. He was an angry man, and we lived our lives in fear of when he would explode again. What’s more, my dad sexually abused me, he was addicted to pornography, and he would stalk women he was interested in.

I have no idea when the abuse started. I imagine there where things that happened before I could even remember, but I have memories from when I was about five all the way until now, and I am twenty-seven (married with three children of my own). The abuse ranges from what some would call covert sexual abuse and then there is also the overt sexual abuse. I can say that my dad never had sexual intercourse with me and for this I am grateful. In all my memories of his sexual abuse, my mom was never around… Because of how I was raised and my home environment, I was incredibly lonely and continually filled with great amounts of anxiety.

Not only was my dad a sexual abuser, but his dad was also a sexual abuser. My grandfather would make your skin crawl just being in the same room with him. I have no memories of him doing anything to me, but he did do things to my sister, my mom, my aunt, my cousin, and many more. He was a very sick man.

And so my story of recovery began several years ago as I began to wade through the memories of a childhood that I had always told myself was great… I had come to a place where my marriage was falling apart, I was lashing out in anger, I was depressed, I was cutting myself, my parents were getting a divorce, and basically my life felt like it was falling apart. I felt like I was drowning and I needed a life preserver to save me from life and save me from myself; I didn’t know where to turn.

So my husband and I decided to go to a marriage retreat at our church and it was there that I found a glimmer of hope…it was there that we met J and M…..it was there, at a place of brokenness, that my life and my family’s life changed forever. It was there that J&M stepped into the journey of our lives and through the Lord’s grace and mercy, our lives and hearts have been healed in many different ways…

I will be sharing journals, thoughts, emails, and poetry from the last few years as well as the present so hang in there as I get it all together. This healing of the heart is not an instantaneous event, but rather an evolving and changing of my heart, which continues to this day.

My thoughts on people…

All through my life the Lord has been faithful and has placed people in my life who would come alongside me, care for and hear my heart. Every place I have been He has put someone there who was an incredible blessing. Several years ago the Lord placed a couple in my family’s life and I can say with confidence that because they are in my life (and the way the Lord has used them), my family and I will never be the same. They are an incredibly giving, loving, insightful, faithful, and blessed couple. They have walked with me these past few years and I am so thankful they have not left me alone on the journey through my heart. They have been there to share the pain and the joys of things I have discovered. I have felt love and acceptance from them even when I did not feel lovable or worthy or acceptable…it is an incredibly freeing feeling to catch a glimpse of what this unconditional love feels like…it is healing, especially to a heart that has not known that kind of love.

I look back and I am amazed they found their way into my heart (it was the grace of the Lord) because I do not let people in. Forever they will be a part of my heart, and for this I am thankful. The Lord has used them to touch many people’s lives and I know he will continue to use them in the future. For the purposes of this journey we will call them J&M…

Early Beliefs and Foundations…..

October 2007

Jora’s Journal Entry…

I sit around sometimes and allow my heart to be truly honest; honest about what is really there. I survey the remains of what used to be: my confidence in my looks, my abilities, my talents, my physical appearance, my confidence in what I have to offer emotionally, my self-esteem, my belief in love, my innocence, my ability to trust, my belief that I had value, my belief of being really loved, and so on. Now granted these were never magnificent structures or firm beliefs within my heart, but they were there and I felt I had come to a place where I was building on them.

Then the truth of life, the truth of my marriage, just ripped through my heart like a wildfire and destroyed it all (actually some of it was already on a slow burn, with logs being thrown onto the fire by events along the way). Now I no longer know who I am; I no longer have any confidence in what I have to offer because every day the desolation of my heart is a constant reminder, screaming at me Look at the clear proof you don’t measure up, you aren’t good enough!! FOOL!! You thought you could be loved! You thought you had something to offer…you aren’t good enough physically, you aren’t good enough mentally, you aren’t good enough emotionally, you aren’t good enough spiritually…you are worthless!!

Basically I have been found wanting in the eyes of the ones I love the most; true to my life story, this confirmed to me that those who are closest to you cannot really love you. They cannot love you because they hurt you and they never know who you really are. They think they know but they do NOT; they only know the person who is trying desperately to hold it all together, to pick up the pieces, to be everything that they desperately know they aren’t…so that maybe, somehow, the brokenness will disappear. Basically I was trying to be perfect so that someone might find me remotely valuable, but this was shattered.

So now here I am with a desolate broken heart, and I wander around every day trying to make sense of it. Sometimes I do gain the courage to start picking up the remains but inevitably something else comes along and slaps them out of my hand (and the slow burn continues); and inwardly I hear a taunting evil laugh. When will you stop hoping for more?! I wonder that too…how long will it take me to figure out the truth? I keep hoping because I desperately need there to be a different truth, because I desperately want there to be a different truth, because I desperately want to be loved for who I am, I desperately want to know I have what it takes to be loved, to feel safe.

Then there is another irony to all this; Jesus offers all this and more, but for some reason my heart still longs for it from those who walk this human journey with me. I know Jesus wants to do this for me, but sometimes I feel very distant from myself… So every day I walk around with this war raging inside me. Every day there are constant reminders that I am not smart enough, beautiful enough, skinny enough, sexy enough, confident enough, fun enough, honest enough, patient enough, loving enough, good enough, submissive enough, forgiving enough, fun-loving enough, outgoing enough, open enough, in-shape enough, tough enough, positive enough, strong enough, godly enough, and the list goes on and on… But every day I wear a beautiful composed mask to cover the reality of my heart because it is too fragile and desolate, and really there is not much more that could be destroyed so I feel a desperate need to protect what I have left. Because now I feel I have learned my lesson. I thought I had as a child, but I became foolish when love came knocking on the door of my heart again, and I believed it would be different. But, oh, how foolish I was.

So anyway, this is some of how I feel inside. I love those closest to me and I desperately want to be known by them, but the walls are so secure, so protective. The crazy thing is I do really think, given time and the proper care, I could take down the walls, I could see the brokenness and the destruction being healed…how refreshing that would be. I know in some ways my Savior has already began working, however, it is a long journey…I can’t wait for the day that I can walk with the one I love the most on this earth (my husband) and know that I am known by him and know that I am still loved by him and know that he protects my heart with a fierceness none has known.

November 7, 2007

Jora’s Journal Entry

…

Another journey that I have walked almost simultaneously with healing from sexual abuse is the healing of my marriage and my heart from the effects of pornography. My husband and I have been married seven years and through the first five years there were several incidents with pornography and it devastated my already broken heart…Time and the Lord have brought some healing to these places…but my heart remains fearful.

I have been pondering a lot lately about what is in my heart. I guess what holds me back is just the cold harsh truth that I can never measure up. I can’t be, I don’t have, I am not what pornography (or whatever else there is out there) has to offer. I can NEVER measure up to that type of beauty so no matter what is said, I will always know that I just don’t have any of that. I just don’t!! (Believe me I have tried…but I don’t) It is incredibly frustrating to me that I have no confidence, but how can I, knowing that I don’t have what it takes to keep my husband’s eyes from straying? I don’t have what it takes to be a great person, I don’t have what it takes to be a great wife, a great mother, a great friend, a great daughter…nothing. It is a completely shameful, isolating, and degrading existence.

Many, many, many times, I picture just cutting myself like crazy because there is a part of me that thinks somehow it would make it clear to me exactly how I feel on the inside…just destroyed. I feel destroyed to the point now that I don’t even know what to fix or how to fix it. I just know there is a part of me that feels empty, worthless, burned, and gone. I feel like a shell of a person. Then, to top it off, it feels like everyone is screaming at me to trust again (which I know in my head to forgive and trust is the only way, but my heart feels and believes very differently). How the HELL do you trust…how do you lay your heart out there when there is hardly anything left? It just seems crazy to me to put my heart out there knowing that it could be finished off at any moment depending on what someone else chooses to do. I have no control over their choices, NONE! The only choice I have is to not put my heart out there, but then, as irritating as it is, the relationship cannot move on without hearts that are open and engaged.

At this point I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place; to not do anything is painful, to do something is painful. I feel sure that I can share my heart, sure I can say how I feel, sure all of that can happen, but the reality is that I believe those steps won’t change the truth of what I know, of what has been cut and scarred into my heart. So we are back at the beginning of this entry…no matter what is said, no matter what is done…I ALWAYS know that I am not good enough!! The proof is in the pain, in the scars, in the cuts. The fact is I didn’t, I don’t, and I won’t ever measure up. I will always be lacking. It feels like life has stamped Case Closed across my heart, and this is just how it is. Then there is a whole other side to this…yes, I know the Christian arguments to everything I just wrote (which is even more confusing for me), but I for now I just want to write my feelings…no matter how wrong they are… because I need to get my feelings and my thoughts out there – so at least I can hear my inner thoughts. Even if no one else understands me or accepts me, I need to speak out what I have desperately tried to say for many years while I was suffering in silence.

November 17, 2007

Jora’s Journal Entry…

This year we are traveling to Mom and Dad’s for Thanksgiving. My husband and I decided that we will not be staying at their house. This is the wisest decision, even though it is not what my heart wants. My head knows it is the right thing to do, but my heart again feels something completely different! I just have to face the reality that home isn’t what I want it to be. Dad has other women besides Mom in his life, he is drinking a lot, he is using some illegal drugs and then selling some prescription drugs, and he isn’t sorry about any of it. All of it combined makes the situation such that we do not want to put our family in the middle of it. The issues with Dad and Mom have brought everything crashing down in my heart. I thought I had dealt with all this before. I totally feel the rejection from my dad (all over again). He couldn’t care less about me, Mom, my sister, or my family. We all stand in the way of his better or perfect life. I remember as a kid waking up in the middle of the night many times, crying because of nightmares that he didn’t want me, I wasn’t good enough, and I definitely was a disappointment because I was a daughter and not a son.

I tried my whole childhood to be the perfect daughter and even to be as much of a son as I could. I made great grades in school, I played and excelled in sports, I did carpentry work, mechanic work, plumbing work, whatever Dad was doing. I cried as little as possible and the only emotion I really expressed was anger; I would even treat my mom and my sister with the same lack of respect that he did (cutting them down, making fun of them, acting like they were stupid). I thought that he would like me, accept me, and approve of me, even though I didn’t like treating them that way and I don’t treat them like that now. I would do anything I could think of to make him happy and to gain his approval.

The sad part was none of it made him happy, none of it made him think I had it, that I was worth anything to him. I just never measured up, I never could do it right (no one could, only Dad). I was never acceptable, always lacking something. I was just some burden in his life that had to be dealt with; that required his time, energy, and money. I was a complete inconvenience to him and to everything and I only complicated both of their lives.

I walked away from my childhood knowing that nothing I am is worth anybody’s time, energy, or whatever; knowing nothing I do is good enough; knowing that I never measure up, there is just something inherent within me that isn’t worth anything. It has been written on my heart and no matter where life takes me now, I will always know this, and sometimes when I think maybe it is different, something always puts me back in my place.

J&M’s Comments

The beginning steps of growth take place when we begin to see, think, believe, and then act differently. The first step of this process is to be able to see things as they are, not the way we hoped they would be. We believe that in all of us there is a built-in hypocrisy factor which means that, ironically, the one person in the world that we don’t see clearly is ourselves.

There are those in the world who believe that they are nearly perfect, having very few, if any, inner or exterior flaws – and the other extreme (introverts), who analyze a great deal but usually take an overtly negative view of themselves. Rarely do we encounter people who have balance in their self-view – seeing their strengths and also acknowledging their growth areas.

We tend to view as normal those things that resonate or reflect the way we were raised. If your family did not verbalize love or give hugs or touch often, then you would be very comfortable meeting someone who had similar physical and emotional boundaries and, conversely, you would be more uncomfortable with those who tend to touch more and express more openly how they feel.

In Jora’s case, she came from a family that outwardly could not comfortably express positive emotions, but felt more at home expressing anger and other negative emotions. Since her family of origin, her biological family, did not express love outwardly with touch, and she only experienced inappropriate touching in her sexual abuse, she had tremendous outward boundaries (don’t get close and don’t touch me) coupled with internal turbulence that manifested in explosive anger to the ones closest to her.

By taking some time to visit with her and her husband in these formative months as part of our spiritual ministry at the church, she began to entertain ideas which were in opposition to the way she was raised – kindness instead of anger; understanding and acceptance instead of judgment and condemnation; love and warmth instead of a cold shoulder. Through these earliest steps, her mind began to see and think about many of the principles that make a healthy person, and a happy and healthy family. She began to compare the principles that she was learning to the false principles of the past. This is a painful journey of truth but in order to take wise steps, we must first discern and question the landscape of our lives; who is walking along with me, why are they here and are they helping or hurting me?

If we hear a new perspective, a new way of looking at life, we need to (and we should) test it against the people, experiences, and