I Was Raised in Dysfunction. I Was Born Into a Lie. I Choose Truth

 (Content warning: This piece speaks directly about childhood sexual abuse, religious trauma, and generational family dysfunction. Please take care while reading.)

People love to say, “You have to own the fact that you broke your own heart.”
And while that hit for the parts of me that chose bad relationships, self-sabotaged, or stayed too long in places I outgrew…

It didn’t sit right when I thought about my whole life.

Because how can I own a heartbreak I didn’t cause?
How do I "take responsibility" for a wound I never asked for?

Let me be clear:
I will not be held responsible for what happened to me as a child.
Not spiritually.
Not emotionally.
Not in the name of healing.
Not in the name of “accountability.”

But I will own the way I alchemized it.
I will own the woman I’ve become in spite of it.

See — I used to think that healing meant forgiving everybody.
That it meant finding a way to take the high road and “let it go.”
But that’s not healing. That’s bypassing.

Real healing asked me to stop pretending it didn’t happen.
Real healing asked: "How is this still living in your nervous system? In your relationships? In the way you trust people — or don’t?"

So I started asking the question that cracked something open:
What did being sexually abused as a child teach me?

Not what should it have taught me. Not what lesson am I supposed to pull out of it to justify the pain.
But what did it actually teach me?

And here’s what I found:

• It taught me to leave my body before I knew what embodiment even meant.

• It taught me silence — not because I was shy, but because survival required it.

• It taught me how to read energy before words.

• It taught me hyper-vigilance, people-pleasing, and perfectionism.

• It taught me to shrink.

• It taught me shame.

And now — as a grown-ass woman reclaiming herself — it’s teaching me something else:

• That my body is mine.

• That pleasure can be sacred.

• That boundaries are love in action.

• That silence is not the same as peace.

• That shame was never mine to carry.

• That the child in me never stopped wanting to be protected — and I can be the one to do that now.

So no, I didn’t break my own heart as a little girl.
But I did carry the pieces.
And I’m learning how to put them back together with softness, with ceremony, with rage when it needs to be felt — and with a love I’ve never stopped deserving.

This isn’t about spiritualizing abuse.
This is about reclaiming power in a world that tried to take it before I even had a name for what was happening.

I am not my trauma.
But I am the one who chose to alchemize it.
And that — that’s mine.

Surviving childhood sexual abuse gave me something I didn’t expect:
Clarity.
Not just about my own healing, but about the world I was raised in — and the roles we’re taught to play in it.

Because once you’ve had to rebuild trust from the inside out, you start to see everything differently.
You stop romanticizing systems that failed you.
You stop giving grace to harm that came dressed as love.
You start asking the real questions — the uncomfortable ones.

And I started seeing clearly:

• That patriarchy has never been safe for women or children.

• That most men haven’t been taught to love us — just to own us, control us, consume us.

• That the fairytales we were fed were just bedtime stories to keep us docile.

And most of all?
I saw how so many of us — myself included — spent years waiting for “Mr. Right.”

The one who’d heal the wound.
The one who’d make it all worth it.
The one who’d prove not all men are the same.

But I woke up one day and realized:
It’s not Mr. Right.
It’s Mrs. Right.
And I. Am. Her.

I’m the one who holds myself at night when old memories creep in.
I’m the one who learned how to touch my own body with reverence and not recoil.
I’m the one who built a life rooted in safety, softness, and sovereignty.
I’m the one who chose not to pass this pain down like an heirloom.

So no — I’m not sitting around waiting for a man to validate my worth.
Because the men who hurt me were never exceptional. They were raised by the same world we all were.
And that’s why women can’t afford to romanticize male validation or structure our lives around the idea that a good man will come fix it.

We fix it.
We mother ourselves.
We protect each other.
We become the safety we never had.
We raise our standards and lower our tolerance.
We build sisterhoods. Matriarchies. Real homes.

Because Mrs. Right is already here.
She lives in your voice.
She lives in your spine.
She lives in every time you said no, walked away, chose peace, or stood your sacred ground.

And I’m not saying love isn’t possible.
I’m saying love starts when you meet yourself without shame.
That’s the real partnership. That’s the holy reunion.

Everything else?
It’s just overflow.

I grew up inside the performance. And now? I see it for what it was.

A "Christian" family with patriarchal beliefs.
A woman taught her only worth was in how many children she could bear.
A male-centered wife who clung to her husband despite the blind amount of lack he represented.

A man with no formal education, a job that barely paid the bills.
Multiple children from previous relationships — none of them in his care.
An abusive ex-wife, raising his children while he played house with someone new.
And somehow she was supposed to feel chosen?

This wasn’t love.
It was dysfunction dressed up in holy language.
It was shame wrapped in scripture.
It was struggle passed off as “God’s plan.”

And for years, I blamed myself.
I thought my awkwardness came from being homeschooled.
I thought my solitude was a side effect of trauma.
I thought the part of me that didn’t want to be around people was broken.

But now I know:
I’ve always been who I am.

Different. Particular. Maybe even weird.

But I wasn’t broken. I was intact in a world that wanted me fragmented.

I always knew. I always trusted myself.
I just didn’t have the language for it.
I didn’t know what to call the quiet power in me — the one that didn’t need approval, that didn’t care to perform.

I used to think it was absurd — that men would want something from me.
What could I possibly have?

But that’s the thing.

Even when I believed I had nothing,
they knew I had everything.
Before I turned 21, my worth had already been drained.
Because feminine energy — real divine feminine energy — is powerful.
And power gets targeted.

But now I know who I am.
And I’m not asking anyone to understand.
I’m just telling the truth.

Author Note

If this landed heavy, that’s okay. Let it land. Let it rise. Let it breathe.
This is a piece of truth-telling — not to cause pain, but to release it.
If you’re someone who’s survived any form of childhood abuse, know this:
You don’t have to carry their shame. You never did.
You don’t owe silence. You don’t owe protection. You owe yourself peace.