White Ribbon: a survivor speaks
Today is White Ribbon Day. A survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence worked with Laurilee McMichael to tell her story.
Nicole (not her real name) was born and bred in the central North Island. As a young child, there was a lot of laughter at home and kai on the table.
Her best friend, and still is to this day, is a special tree in the bush near her home.
Nicole told her tree all her secrets, all her pain and shed a lot of tears. Mother Nature, and her tree, became one of her counsellors along the journey that lay ahead.
At the age of just 6, Nicole was sexually abused, not just once but a number of times and also witnessed domestic violence. At 11, she was sexually abused again by another individual. At the age of 13 she was raped. She says during that time she had already accumulated a lot of emotional darkness as well as anxiety and depression which led to suicidal thoughts.
“Those individuals bestowed their sickness within me and stole everything from me: my inner lights, my inner child, my inner worth, my inner power, my inner love.”
Little wonder Nicole grew up feeling empty and alone with her pain. She says she carried a lot of anger and hatred: to the world, to others and to herself. As an adult her relationships were marred by domestic violence, alcohol and drug use, including P.
It is only 12 years later that she has, as she says, removed the mask she was hiding behind, told her story and let go of everything that was weighing her down.
As an adult, when it came to relationships with men, because of her own traumatic experiences, she attracted others who also had emotional baggage. To her, love felt like anger and being treated badly.
The abusive relationships weren’t just one but a string, and Nicole says they generally started with mental abuse and moved onto physical, emotional and spiritual abuse.
“Mental was the hardest. When
you’re fresh in a relationship it doesn’t mean much, but after a while you’re stuck, it holds you there those words, because they [the abuser] want the control.
“When you hear ‘you’re hopeless, you’re a slut, you’re a leech, you’re just a nobody’ for years, those words rub off on you and you start to believe in it.”
Nicole says at the time that’s what she thought she deserved, not only because of what had happened as a child but also because of her dark thoughts and her emotional baggage. She medicated on alcohol and drugs to numb her pain for many years.
But, the more she numbed herself, the more she lost herself. She felt guilty, ashamed, lonely, angry and afraid.
She became isolated to the point that she made excuses to her family and friends that she couldn’t make it out to functions because it saved her
having to put up with drama and negativity at home.
She wanted to break free but it was hard because she also felt that there was nothing else better out there for her. What she had was all she knew.
The change came one day when she realised she needed to make a clean break for the sake of her children.
“I was looking at my kids — at the time they were 2 and 3 — and that was enough. I felt it. I’m going on this path and I’m taking my kids with me. I wanted to heal myself and heal my lineage and I didn’t want my children to carry on and repeat my pain.”
Nicole left the house with just a bag of possessions and her kids. She stayed with family and sought help.
She did counselling and enrolled for a women against violence programme, and worked to sort out her financial situation. Going into the unknown and facing all the emotions she had suppressed was scary but looking back, it was the best decision she ever made.
Nicole wanted to be free from the pain. What changed was when she stepped back, stopped blaming, took ownership for herself and began letting go of everything that weighed her down.
Now Nicole is a different woman. She says she has rediscovered her inner light, her inner power and the power of forgiveness, regained her strength and spoken her truth.
It feels as though a big weight has come off her shoulders.
Now Nicole is sending out her own message to help and guide women and men to take back their power back. Nicole now helps others with their emotional pain by allowing them to form connections and trust with her so they can let go of their pain.
She knows from personal experience that when you are in a dark place, you need others to be a beacon of light and that it is possible to be whole again.
“I gave myself permission and took 100 percent responsibility for my healing,” Nicole says.
“My mask that I took off to do all my healing was my smile. My smile was my mask, it was like my shield
. . . behind my smile I was crying on the inside for help. When I took my mask off, that was the start of my healing journey.”
Her advice for others is: “find the courage to ask for help and the courage to speak their truth“.
“There’s a lot of people out there who will help and guide the individual through situations on their healing journey . . . to guide the individuals to reclaim their inner power back, their inner light, their inner worth and their inner warrior from within,” says Nicole.
“Who do they become? They become unbreakable, they become FREE.”