Six years ago, I wrote a piece about Daisy Coleman’s death that has become an annual reminder to me that what we see as “healed” can often not mean anything a few days later. That healing is not a linear path with a finish line.
I want to share that reminder with you:
Daisy Coleman Found Her Voice, But Her Struggle Didn’t Stop
When the news of Daisy’s death broke, I didn’t say anything about it. I, admittedly, was not all that familiar with her story, nor had I seen the documentary. I did some reading on her and her story, and was going to leave it there, but a coincidence pushed me to write about it today.
During Tuesday night’s #SexAbuseChat on Twitter, the topic for the evening was about self-blame, and I picked up on a tangent involving the courts and how many survivors, and others, assume that we can heal by getting justice.
It has always bothered me when media reports talk about how survivors can’t heal until “justice” is done in the courts, nope, healing cannot be tied to that, it has to come from ourselves. If you can get court justice, great, but don’t wait for it to start healing. #SexAbuseChat
— Child Abuse Survivor (@CA_Survivor) August 12, 2020
Obviously, I don’t agree, and I’ve said so myself here previously:
Regardless of what happens in the legal system, healing is possible. The two are not tied at the hip. The justice system is about a lot of other people. It’s about what evidence exists, it’s about the decisions of judges, prosecutors, and juries. It’s about whether the abuser is even alive to have some sort of decision made against them.
Healing is about the survivor, and only the survivor. That journey is yours alone, and is not dependent on what other people or systems do. It is only about the work you put in, and whatever resources you may choose to help with that journey.
The issue that I was trying to identify at the time was that leaving a survivor dependent on the justice system for healing meant relying on a whole lot of things going right, which probably won’t go right. Thus, we need to focus on healing first and foremost, and whatever happens in the justice system will happen.
Which brings us to Daisy. She did not get her justice from the court system; quite the opposite. But she did something else that many assume is a sign of “being healed”: she found her voice. She told her story; she had a movie made where she could speak her truth to the whole world. Surely, that is healed, right?
As we now know, that probably wasn’t the case. I assume that many people who watched that documentary went on to become fans of Daisy, admiring her for having the courage to tell her story, happy for her that she was able to overcome, but that had nothing to do with the reality of what surviving actually is.
The coincidence that I spoke of came this morning, when I popped over to Twitter during a quick coffee break, and saw Rachel Denhollander, another survivor who’s made an appearance in a documentary, Athlete A, on her involvement with the Larry Nasser case, talking about this article:
Daisy Coleman’s Death Lays Bare the Myth of ‘Surviving
The very nature of PTSD means that the body is locked in a prolonged state of fight-or-flight response, playing out the trauma in fits and starts. Even the term survivor is inefficient, indicating that the person who has experienced sexual violence experienced it in the past and survived—not that they are currently surviving, day-to-day, an experience that is still happening irrespective of the actual date of the violence.
Now, the article also talks a lot about how the justice system failed Daisy, but again, I don’t think that’s the point. Even if she had been believed and her rapist put in jail, she would still be dealing with the trauma. Real-life sexual assault is not a criminal procedure TV show, where they reach a verdict at the end of the hour and that’s it. That’s not how any of this works. In fact, I thought what Rachel had to say about the women who found their voice at Larry Nassar’s hearing was powerful, and so I want to simply give her the last word on this.
I saw something very different. I looked at this precious group of sisters I never thought I’d meet, and wondered if we’d find ourselves missing some of us, a few years later. And we almost have - many times - lost one of us. I saw what was coming when the moment of triumph left.
— Rachael Denhollander (@R_Denhollander) August 12, 2020
Elsewhere in the archives:
When I surround myself with negative, toxic people, trying to be a better person can be ridiculously difficult. It adds yet another hurdle to healing. On the other hand, when I'm surrounded by positive, encouraging people, not only do I have the support I need, but I also have people whom I want to emulate. I see examples of thoughtfulness, kindness, and caring that I can learn from. I see work ethic and attitudes that I want to have myself.
Anyone who suggests there is a simple solution to the mental health problem facing us as a country and the world is not to be taken seriously.
An example of the path to healing being long
What I want my readers to pay attention to is that they list 13 stages. Expecting to go from deciding to start to "Resolution" is not going to be a matter of weeks or a few months. The other thing I want to add to what they've said is that it's not a straight path either. I took a long look at their list and identified a couple that I don't necessarily identify as part of my healing. More importantly, I identified some stages that I went through multiple times.
As a survivor, I'm reminded all the time that just because I spent much of my childhood dealing with bad things, it doesn't mean that I should expect everything to always go badly. Yes, my experience tells me that everyone is out to hurt me, and I should definitely be careful with who I trust, but there are people in the world who are not trying to abuse me. Also, if I spend my whole adult life looking for bad things to support my cognitive dissonance about what happens in my life, I'll be very unlikely to notice the good things around me. I won't allow people to get close to me; I won't be able to enjoy positive things, and I will spend my adult life simply waiting for something bad to happen. If that's what my adult life looks like, it's not healing.
Sharing - Thinking About Reaching Out to Someone? Science Says Do It
We're not very good at knowing what makes us happy. Perhaps more importantly, we're not very good at recognizing the mental health benefits of being connected to other people in small ways. Those little connections can make a huge difference.
"That journey is yours alone, and is not dependent on what other people or systems do." It took my a while to seperate myself and identity from validation from other parents, the childcare system and the justice system. Criminal law runs on a standard of proof that has nothing to do with what a body already knows happened, and hitching recovery to a verdict outsources your nervous system to an institution not built to hold it. The one thing I'd add: not being believed is its own distinct injury, separate from the abuse — worth processing it on its own terms rather than folding into the healing.