Around March of 2024, I decided to do something about my fear of the hallucinations and the trauma I had experienced as a child. I knew I was raped, but I never fully dealt with all the emotions that came along with that. I felt dirty, I felt ashamed, I felt like somehow it was my fault. I remember some of the physical feelings, the things that I saw, and the smell. It was all in bits and pieces, but I didn’t want that to stop me from healing. So, I contacted my counselor, who gave me the contact information of one of her trauma therapist friends (let’s call this trauma therapist Sarah).
I had the first several meetings with Sarah, and I liked her, but I didn’t feel we were making much progress. She did tell me things would be slow, and that we had to establish safety first. However, I felt that this was taking it too slow. But Sarah knew I was frustrated and reminded me that this was normal. We continued meeting, developing coping mechanisms and strategies, making a safe space, and eventually tried some new techniques to help me process things.
Eventually, I had made a timeline of my life with both positive and negative items on it. Throughout our time, I had great days and terrible days. I had experienced extremely joyful and grateful days (for example, so excited and fulfilled at my job), and I had experienced the lowest of low days (contemplating suicide by various methods or running away to another state). Sarah remained constant through this process, and has helped me grow tremendously.
During my time working with Sarah, John and I decided we wanted to try to adopt. We contacted a local adoption agency and started filling out paperwork. We took our time, as we had George, who was not even 2 years old yet.
Toward the end of 2024, I decided to switch jobs to a mental health nursing position. I still loved my current job, but I thought the Lord was calling me into this position. Another reason to move jobs was to save my back (my job at the time required regular lifting of around 60 pounds), and to help challenge and grow me. I was currently paired with one patient as a home health nurse, and also wanted to expand my knowledge and skills.
While I was debating switching jobs, my therapist Sarah expressed that she thought I may have autism. That explains a lot, I thought to myself. We took some online tests (some pretty extensive), but nothing official. But we did decide that I probably do have autism. It was something interesting to me that I felt helped explain me and some of my quirks.
It just happened that around the same time I was starting my new job, we got paired with a birth mom! I was ecstatic.
While we were waiting for it to be time for the birth mom to deliver, I started my new job at a mental health hospital. It ended up not being a good fit for me. It was too much stress, and I felt that I was being asked to do some things that I simply was not comfortable doing. I had stayed on part time with my previous job, in case this new job was not a good fit (I had heard many poor things about this as a workplace). Due to this extra stress, however, I was having more hallucinations and dissociations (I would actually think I was 7 and wouldn’t recognize my husband. This phenomenon was not new, it was just part of me having hallucinations and dissociating).
The adoption agency spoke with us about preparing for a new baby, and when they found out that I was having some job stress (and possibly not going to stay at my mental hospital job), they told us to pause the adoption process until they got a letter from my psychiatrist saying I was mentally fit to accept a new child. I was devastated. And angry. I didn’t feel that I had any kind of say in putting a pause on the process, and I did want to adopt that baby. However, because we had to put a pause on adopting, we were not able to adopt the baby of the birth mom we were paired with.
However, I think that it God did use it for good. I know He has a baby for us. I guess it’s just not quite time yet for us to adopt. I did end up leaving the mental health hospital. I am now working at my home health company full time. It’s a little difficult working in the evenings (12:30-20:30) and not getting to see George before bed. But it has been a great job so far, and I do get to see George in the mornings before daycare and on the weekends. Somehow, I scored a Monday through Friday job as a nurse, no weekends!
It is now the beginning of March 2025. I have been working at my new job for about a month. But about three and a half weeks ago, I remembered all the details of the rape. Most importantly, though, I remembered who it was.
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