My mom was sexually and physically abused throughout much of her childhood. I feel as if I can say that aloud now because she is dead now, and all of her abusers (that I know of) are dead now, too. Now that the abusers and the victim have moved on to another world, there is no one left who might be hurt by something I write here, but there are millions left who still might need help now.

I know only a smidgen of the stories of abuse my mother endured growing up because she worked ferociously to protect me as a little girl. She did everything in her power to make my childhood one from a fairy  tale, and for the most part, she succeeded, until I was old enough to begin noticing life’s darker side myself. Eventually, she began to tell me some stories as a way to explain some of the decisions she would make – why she didn’t want to visit a particular relative’s house or why she didn’t want me to be at ‘this one place’ alone. I know for certain that she never told me everything that happened to her because I know that she could see how much the stories upset me, how her stories would cloud my eyes with fear and doubt, which I am sure she felt were necessary precautions to survive in this world. She had to tell me about dangers in this world to protect me from those dangers. Yet, I am also certain that when my eyes did fill with fear and doubt from her stories that she felt the pain of her abuse all over again. And that is why I would never have wanted to write about her abuse or its effects while she was still alive; I certainly never would have wanted to reopen old wounds or take her back to an unbearable moment in her life, especially when finding any moment of peace was nearly impossible for her, even in her sixties.

Yet, I do know that her abusive childhood never left her. It colored every decision she made in life, from whether to trust her intuition when her boss asked her to work late or whether she would wear a dress with a low neckline or whether she would take her daughters to church by herself. Memories that slithered through her mind like a deadly bacteria prompted her to drive away from a gas station all of a sudden, without getting gas, when a stranger stood too long at his own car after putting the pump back into its holder. There were times when she would make irrational decisions – to walk out of a family Christmas party and begin walking home, to verbally attack a coworker for seemingly no reason and cuss her boss when he asked her about it, to spend all day dying her comforters, pillowcases, and pillow shams a new color. From the outside, those decisions looked exactly as I said – irrational – but after some time, I began to see those seemingly irrational acts were defensive reactions to a trigger moment. Something in the moment before the irrational decision – a song, a look, a comment, a touch – triggered a memory so strong and so fearsome that she had to fight back or melt away into the memory’s toxic heat.

Those same memories sometimes prompted periodic break downs that consisted of days of screaming and crying and destructive outbursts where she hated everybody and everything and begged for what was rightly hers. She tried once to watch Forrest Gump, when everyone was hailing its brilliance, but the story was too real for her. Jenny’s life was way too close to her own. Another trigger point. We watched family stories, though, religiously – Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons every week when I was a little girl – all part of her plan to make my childhood perfect, to show me how things were ‘supposed to be.’ I remember coming home from school sometimes to find all the furniture rearranged, or to find she had pulled up bushes in the front yard and planted new ones, or to find she had bought me a piano and had found me a piano teacher.

Looking back, I think I understand  her battle plan was to keep busy – if she could keep her body working, she could ignore the seeping bacteria in her mind. When I was little, that meant throwing herself into my life and my sister’s life – piano lessons, scorekeeper for my softball team, health room volunteer at school, assistant leader for my Girl Scout troop. That also meant throwing herself into church – Sunday School teacher, VBS volunteer, choir singer. She kept a meticulous house, worked in the yard, and started new home projects as soon as one was finished. Somewhere around my pre-teen years, though, work at home lost its ability to keep the memories contained, and she began to battle long bouts of depression that left me perplexed and quite angry at her. This is when the trouble with my dad began, which soon led to their divorce. I didn’t understand then why my mom would change so suddenly, why her focus had changed from me to her, why she only cared about herself now. Truthfully, I felt as if she had even declared war on me by the time I hit my teens – almost inciting a competition between the two of us – who was prettier, who could attract more guys, who could lose the weight (an unfair competition from the start because my mom was a petite person all around – 5’3″ and never more than 115 pounds most of her life). Again, as a teenager, I had no concept of the war she waging with herself, and I had no reference to see why her frustrations erupted toward me instead. I can see that now, but a teenage girl is rather self-centered, plus she had sheltered me quite well. So, my teen response was to pull away – to be everything she didn’t want me to be – a nerd, a musician, an athlete.

Here is where her life began the proverbial roller coaster – weeks of quiet coasting followed by a sudden uphill climb of tense interactions and bursts of energy releasing itself into a downhill scream fest, tears included, until we hit the coasting part again. I never knew how long each section of the roller coaster would be, but I learned to ride out the hills, often staying quiet and stepping away until she was ready to coast again. She was able to manage life overall, though, until my grandmother died. When she lost her mother, I guess she lost her compass or her grounding force, the person who could bring her back to center, to help her regain focus. From the death of my grandmother to her own death, she rode a furious roller coaster filled with mental illness, physical illness, sadness, anger, and often loneliness. When she died on December 8, 2017, I was heartbroken, for sure, but also comforted knowing that she had finally found peace, had found a place where the memories couldn’t haunt her anymore.

I tell you all of this because sexual abuse and sexual harassment ruined my mother’s life. It tainted every positive moment and blessing she received, it corrupted every decision she made, and it exacerbated the smallest disappointment into tempest of self-doubt and self-loathing and despair.

I tell you this because I have seen first-hand the life-long damage sexual abuse and sexual harassment have on a victim.

I tell you this because time’s up. For real.

Time’s up for the caustic online remarks shaming victims who claim the #metoo tag.

Time’s up for the preacher who advises victims to stay in abusive marriages because it is God’s will for a woman to pray for healing for her husband.

Time’s up for bosses who require something more than ability from their employees to advance.

Time’s up for those who try to silence the voice of victims.

My mother passed away just as the #metoo movement began erupting; she never saw the abusers losing their jobs, their reputations, and their freedom as a result of the victims taking back their power, and that is why I must fight this battle for her. I cannot let her pain die with her body; her pain must be my fuel for finding justice for other victims. I pray that her life will become a testament to why we must fight for children to be protected, for women to be valued for their minds and their hearts and their abilities instead of their bodies, and for victims to be heard and believed and healed. Her story cannot be just a story of injury and not one of ultimate victory.

Now, I pray that I will remain strong in the face of those who find this message unsettling and disturbing and offer to reply in kind to me; this story is unsettling and disturbing, so unsettling and disturbing that it drove my mother to madness more than once. I ran and hid from her story when I was younger, and that was not fair to her. I will not run and hide from it now.

Now is the time for my mother’s story. Time’s up for those who want it silenced.

So for those who just don’t understand what the big deal is or who want to claim the movement is an underhanded feminist plot to destroy men, come sit by me. Let me tell you a story about my mom.