The Word No One Wants to Speak: Incest: A Healing Journey

By Loretta Joy Powers

The purpose of The Word No One Wants to Speak – Incest a Healing Journey is to describe to incest victims and their family members the journey from sudden memories, to weekly sessions of therapy and support groups. For hundreds of years sexual abuse was kept secret, first because the memories were suppressed and then because the severe shock of remembering was emotionally devastating. And another reason was no family wanted to accept the possibility of this abuse. In our day, therapy has been accepted. Therapists can specialize in helping people heal from the emotional trauma of incest. This is a huge change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781665755733

Loretta Joy Powers

At age forty-two Loretta Joy Powers began to have memories of the abuse she had experienced from age three months to age six years. When she was in her early forties, the suppressed memories of incest began to come to the surface. Slowly with weekly private therapy and group sessions for a period for two years, memories were shared and healing gradually occurred. This book tells of the journey.

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Copyright © 2024 Loretta Joy Powers.

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 author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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ISBN: 978-1-6657-5572-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5571-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5573-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024901451

Archway Publishing rev. date:  04/09/2024

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Part I The Healing Journey Begins

Essay 1 The First Suspicion Of Abuse

Essay 2 Repressed Memories

Essay 3 Hints Of Hidden Memories

Essay 4 Threats That Insure Silence

Part II Stories For Healing

Story 1 Grandma In The Hallway

Essay Grandma’s Fear

Story 2 Flowers For Mothers’ Day

Essay Generation After Generation

Story 3 Dancing For Daddy

Essay Deception By Distraction

Story 4 Quitting Dancing School

Essay Children Tell In Ways Besides Words

Story 5 Consulting The Doctor

Essay What You Don’t Know Will Hurt You

Story 6 Time To Start Nursery School

Essay Nursery School Social Skills

Story 7 A Child’s Prayer

Essay The Structure Of Families

Part III Therapy: The Journey To Wholeness

Story 8 A Daughter’s Revenge

Essay The Truth Is Better Than Lies

Story 9 If Your Father Were Alive Now

Essay Story 9 Hidden Love Revealed

Story 10 Four Steps To Forgetting

Essay Story 10 Memories Revealed In Therapy

Story 11 The Kerosene Lamp

Essay Freedom From Fears

Story 12 Hurting Hands

Essay Body Memories: Hope For Healing

Story 13 Children Arriving For Therapy

Essay 13 No Longer Alone: The Benefit Of Therapy

Part IV What We Need To Know To Heal

Essay 5 The Need For A Therapist

Essay 6 Triggers To Past Pain

Essay 7 Perpetrators Never Tell The Truth

Essay 8 The Purpose Of Reliving The Trauma

Essay 9 If Sexual Abuse Happened To You

Essay 10 Dissociation

Essay 11 Putting An End To Incest

Epilogue

Svetlana Prudovskaya

Fairytales don’t tell children that dragons exist; children already know that dragons exist. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed.

—G. K. Chesterton

PREFACE

The word incest has become less and less taboo during the past few decades. Yet it is still a frightening word that fosters shame and secrecy. For those in the process of uncovering hidden memories of childhood sexual abuse, this book will help. It will also help resolve the inevitable upheaval in family dynamics that follows when such memories are openly revealed. If the average person became aware of the signs and behaviors of perpetrators and abused children, he or she would have the courage to intervene. Humanity would be able to put a stop to this abuse. That is my intent.

The stories you will read in this book are of my own childhood, the characters my own family. Like many other women whom I met in group therapy sessions, I first had access to my memories at age forty-two. During the healing process, my understanding of the development of my own character became clear. I was not the shy child my family often described to strangers. I was a traumatized child, abused on a regular basis and suppressing all memory of that abuse in order to survive. When memories did start to come to the surface, I was fortunate enough to find a therapist who specialized in healing from incest.

In a family where incest occurs, everyone in the family, from the abuser to the relatives, unknowingly allows the abuse to continue for years. Decades later, when they are told about it, some family members may not be able to accept the truth that it happened, while others may provide support for the victim and seek help for themselves as well. That would be ideal.

This book provides support for healing incest. Healing means not only exposing the secret of the abuse, even when you’re not yet sure it really happened, but also receiving encouragement from a therapist who specializes in incest. The therapist will help the victim explore memories and regain the original feelings, which were likely repressed at the time of the event. If you are a victim, re-experiencing those feelings that occurred when the abuse happened will unlock doors to all the feelings in your present life as well. What you feel, you can heal.

Healing is a journey of remembering memories long repressed and sharing them with your therapist, who becomes your guide and comfort. As a survivor of incest, you are embarking on a difficult journey, but a journey far better than living in the wake of a tornado you don’t clearly remember, walking through the rubble under a cloud of shame you cannot understand, and continually coping with aftereffects you cannot name. Facing reality is much better than continuing to repress it. You gain the freedom to be yourself, to be open and honest in relationships, and to understand at depth the amazing person you really are. You are a survivor!

This is not an easy book to read, just as some movies are not easy to watch. Both have scenes that children should not see and adults cannot view comfortably. Incest includes trauma that grips a child into silence and silences a family in fear. Determination to know the truth is all you need to gain the freedom this information provides.

I invite you to use this book in any way you prefer. Some people like to open to a page somewhere in a book and start reading. This is not a novel; there is no plot. So go ahead, trust your intuition. I have trusted mine in writing it. The door is open, please come in. Welcome.

INTRODUCTION

No family welcomes the task of healing incest. In the past, generations of sexually abused women and men have kept the secret and exchanged their lives from potentially joyful to dreary, frightening, and unfulfilled. In our time, therapists began specializing in incest. Famous people, Oprah Winfrey for one, exposed this childhood trauma to the media. We now have permission to speak about it and heal from it.

I wrote this book primarily for the person who suspects that something like this may have happened. This person may harbor uncomfortable feelings about a particular family member, probably someone everyone in the family likes and appreciates, but there is a secret side. I know from experience. My father was well liked by everyone, but I didn’t shed a tear when I was fourteen years old looking at his casket. I was numb to feelings. Tears came years later with the memories of incest. Then I mourned the childhood I was never allowed to experience.

The reader I have in mind is someone who is just beginning to remember the long-repressed abuse or has the feeling of a memory about to surface. The person may be extremely sensitive to incidents of control over children. An incident of a mother reprimanding a child in public might cause this former victim to be very upset, an experience I had one day standing in line at a bank when a mother yanked her toddler’s arm, and the child began crying. An incest victim, having no conscious memory of abuse, might react strongly and want to get away from such situations. He or she would also be extremely uncomfortable watching any kind of torture or victimization in, for example, a movie.

Then one day a memory starts to come to the surface. It may be just a flash, a few seconds of foreboding. It can include a feeling of fear followed by no feeling at all. Absolute numbness. This could be a hint of hidden memories about to be revealed. The time has come. For some reason, the former victim now feels safe enough to begin healing.

While writing this book, I became aware of how many other people in the family would need help once incest becomes a viable topic. So, this book is not just for the incest survivor, it’s for everyone connected to the survivor. It is for the parents of the forty-two-year-old daughter who one day tells them she has just gotten memories of sexual abuse by her