Finding My Voice (Surviving Sexual Abuse), 2000s, by Bertram Miller

From MemoryArchive

Who: Bertram Miller
What: Surviving Sexual Abuse
When: 1990s, 2000s
Where: USA

A couple of years ago I was in a therapy group for male survivors of incest and childhood sexual abuse facilitated by Louise Kindley. Louise is an exceptional therapist, both thoughtful and empathetic. Perhaps her most memorable insight concerns the profound importance for survivors to find their voice.

Having a voice means being able to express one's feelings, needs, experiences, and one's soul to others. The abuse I suffered denied me a voice for much of my life. As an only child in a loveless marriage, I became my mother's surrogate "husband." Besides overtly sexualizing our relationship, she threw my father out of the bedroom when I was about seven. She told me that although it was very wrong, because I had wanted it so much, she would give me this wonderful "gift" and allow me to sleep in the bedroom with her. However, I was never to tell anyone about our (my) shameful secret.

This secret stole my voice from me. I was filled with a shame I could never express for decades. I thought that telling the truth meant revealing what was wrong with me, an incestuous child, teenager, later, young man, who somehow was cajoled by my mother into a relationship she knew was wrong but had it with me anyway because she loved me so! Bullshit! As the adult, she had all the power: physical, intellectual, emotional, and financial. Even if I had asked to sleep in the bedroom with her (and I do not remember this), I did not even know what a sexual relationship was. Only my mother had the power to sexualize our relationship.

My heavy burden of shame made it increasingly difficult to relate to other children. I gradually withdrew into profound self-loathing and depression. I had no friends from age 13 to 30. My sole reason for living was to be my mother's caretaker: her sexual stimulus, therapist, confidante, friend, and nurse when she was ill. I was the adult, assisting my mother through a life she found overwhelming.

I buried my voice so deeply that the first therapist I saw while in college, soon noticed that I seldom spoke in the first person. I always expressed feelings or experiences in the second person, as in: "When my mother yells, you feel lousy." Similarly, my writing voice was passive; instead of writing: "I took a trip," I would write: "A trip was taken by me." I could not speak in my own voice.

One of the cruelest denials of my voice came in junior high school. I had made the special progress classes, but my grades were disappointing (shortly before this, my mother started exposing herself to me). The dean repeatedly called me into his office, asked me what was wrong, and assured me I could come to him to talk. While I still could not discuss the incest, I gathered the courage to tell him about the emotional and verbal abuse I suffered from my parents. He paused before replying, then told me that he had students coming into his office who had no clothes or shelter, or not enough to eat. "How dare you come into my office and complain about your parents?" he shouted, when I obviously had shelter, clothing, and food. I should go home then and there and thank my parents for being so good to me. I shut down so strongly that I did not even try to again share anything about my real home life until I was 24.

By age 40, two years after my mother died, I had told just three therapists all, or part of the real story of my life. Then, miraculously, I found a group for male survivors that accepted me. I was very nervous, because I did not know if I could ever share my story with non-therapists. Even if I could, I thought it would take months.

Instead, I told the whole story in the first meeting. The four other survivors, had each in turn, told their stories. It was the first time I did not feel ashamed about the abuse I suffered. Each man had lived with his own "shameful" secrets for years too, but now realized that the shame belonged not to him but to his abusers.

In speaking my truth that night, I began my healing process, and began to recover my voice. Every time I speak in a meeting, or write my truth, I get more healing and recover more of my voice. I sincerely hope that survivors who read this will seek therapists and survivor groups that allow them to speak their truths and find their voices.

Reproduced with permission from New York City Voices, where you will also find more information about recovery.