It can take only an instant for your life to change.
As the Soweto riots raged, my family made plans to move to the United States.
The sky was blue and the sun was out, a perfect moment to pick peaches in the backyard.
We asked my grandparents' African gardener for buckets, a ladder and some help.
I loved the feel of reaching high into the leaves, grabbing the ripe fruit, smelling its sweetness.
Over and over, I pulled down the peaches until the buckets he held up were full.
I hesitated, then followed him.
As soon as he shut the door behind me, I panicked.
I knew that this man, more than twice my size, was going to hurt me.
I choked in terror, trying to squeeze out an answer.
My voice was gone.
He put me on my feet and walked toward his closet.
With his back to me, I tried to scream.
My mouth formed a large empty oval, but still, nothing came out.
Then the gardener turned around and told me to lie down on the floor.
We sat on the edge of my bed until finally I burst into tears and it all came out.
I don’t remember much after that because I went numb.
I know my mother was hysterical, screaming and crying.
I didn’t recognize my mother in her agony.
I became even more scared and bewilderedand convinced that I was to blame for her pain.
I told her I never wanted anyone to talk about what had happened to me again.
And we never did, not until I was 24 years old.
I never wanted to tell my story, except to the people I loved.
I didn’t want to be seen as a victim.
Even after years of therapy, I have rarely spoken about what happened to me.
But silence is like black magicyou can’t see it, but you are in its thrall.
That journey can be marked by stubborn illnesses and self-destructive behavior.
Government and academic research links rape to sexual dysfunction, binge eating and bulimia.
They are at risk for suicidal thoughts, psychiatric disorders, abusive relationships and self-injury.
Listening to others recount the horror of their experiencesso fresh and raw in their mindsalso felt retraumatizing to me.
Slowly, assault victims and their supporters are trying to chart a more empowering path to recovery.
Therapists are finding better methods to help women work through post-traumatic stress.
“Healing from this is such an individual process, as with any major trauma.
So it’s great that these options are coming out.”
In our telephone calls, Greene held her experience with a lightness and ease I hardly imagined possible.
I wanted to know her secret.
“Some group therapy can feel like a pity party.
“you’re able to’t stop healing at the survivor stage.
You have to go beyond it to become a person who is growing rather than just surviving.”
It was the one-year anniversary of her rape at a university in Orlando.
“I get so frustrated with myself because I do want to heal, but it’s so hard.
Why don’t people understand being raped is not like catching a cold?
you might’t take a pill and make it go away.
I went from a 3.7 grade point average to a 1.3.
“That’s what makes me sleep all the time.”
If she is shunned, disbelieved or blamedparticularly by someone in authoritythen the opposite is true.
Blame leads to or deepens the shame that marks rape itself.
It’s a reflex of the parasympathetic nervous system designed to protect us from something noxious.”
I thought about how long it tookdecadesto shake the feeling of being sullied by my rape.
And I remembered the heartbreaking words of a woman who spoke only once during the weekend.
“I don’t want to talk to anybody about my story,” she said shakily.
“I’ve never said the words out loud.
Blame is conferred from the outside, too.
So they avoid the issue, deny the reality or even turn on their loved one.
“The shame comes from the blind fear they have.”
Police, prosecutors and jurors are not immune to these reactions.
It devastated my whole foundation.”
Fewer than 40 percent of women report their case to the police.
Jill VanderKam, a 38-year-old survivor turned activist from Tampa, was one.
“The day of my trial, I really took my power back,” VanderKam told us.
“Getting up and speaking out to the judges and the attorneys helped me process what happened to me.
It was one of the biggest days of my life.”
Yet she continues to suffer from terrifying flashbacks and panic attacks.
“These things can trigger my PTSD at any time.”
When that happens, Braxton says, the room suddenly goes still and perfectly quiet.
Sound itself disappears and in its place is her heartbeat thudding in her ears.
“When the person remembers the trauma, that activates the whole web link.”
Their deadened emotions lead them to withdraw from people, including those they love.
She may find herself constantly looking over her shoulder or flinching when someone touches her.
Or I hum a song, which helps my mind stay focused, or I multiply numbers.
It keeps me from making myself throw up or scarring myself.”
Recent years have seen a raft of promising new forms of cognitive therapies.
Multiple channel exposure therapy tackles both PTSD and panic attacks.
Both cognitive behavioral therapy and antidepressants are helping Braxton heal, but it is a slow process.
“You have to start remembering [the rape] and stop pushing it aside.
Sometimes I want to give up, but I have made a choice: I want to do this.
If you aren’t fighting, you aren’t a fighter.”
During the last stretch of SOAR SPA, we began exploring alternative healing tools.
“One is done with malice, the other with love.
How do you separate the two acts if the actions are so similar?”
It’s hard to know what’s worseto have unhealthy sexual boundaries or to shut down.
Storch cited CDC statistics showing that rape usually occurs more than once.
Women who have been raped as children are more likely to be raped later in life.
I don’t ever think of myself as a statistic.
That question is always with me, even though I’ve made a life out of confronting my fear.
And I have placed myself in some pretty hairy situations along the way.
Such close calls shook me awake: I had repeatedly put myself in harm’s way.
My self-protective instincts had been horribly damaged.
In the intervening years, I’ve worked hard to rebuild them.
Bray ran her hand through her hair, paused and looked at me with clear, blue eyes.
“It happened to me again,” she said quietly.
I may have unwittingly put myself in the position of being attacked again.
My second rape forced me to start healing.
It was life or death.
I know it sounds strange, but it was actually a blessing."
A former competitive athlete, she would overexercise to the point of exhaustion.
Now she is working full-time, writing grants for a domestic violence shelter.
Instead of overexercising, she has taken up gardening.
“I replanted the whole lawn.
I’m engaged to be married.
I have a house I love,” she says.
“It’s not a linear progression, and I fall back sometimes.
The more admiration and compassion I felt for them, the more I felt for myself.
Many of SOAR SPA’s participants, I discovered, felt the same way.
Their transformation was evident.
On our final day, I passed a knot of women holding each other in the hotel hallway.
A hand grabbed me and pulled me in.
It was Jill VanderKam.
At the center stood Terry Ponder, the woman I had chatted with that morning over coffee.
“I’m so mad,” she said, over and over again, her knees buckling.
“Why did he do this to me?
Why, why?”
“You’ve held it in for so long.”
“I hate him,” Ponder cried.
“I’m so afraid I’m going to go to hell because I want him to die.”
I kept quiet as we held her in our arms and gave her encouragement.
Finally, I found the words for what was running through my mind.
“It’s just passing through you.”
I knew I was talking to myself.
My anger (described as “thermonuclear” by a former therapist) wasn’t aimed at my rapist.
It was aimed at anyone I allowed to instill that old bad feeling in me all over again.
It had taken me a long time to realize I wasn’t bad and I wasn’t my anger.
I was learning how to identify the emotions that set me off, so I could better master them.
Feelings come and go.
Pain and struggle come and go.
Love, too, can find us in an instant.
As a final gesture, each of us said a word to describe what we were feeling.
I don’t remember them all, but one woman saidunity, and others addedpowerandinspired.
The word I chose wasfree.
Photo Credit: Daniela Stallinger
