Here is a recent comment that I left on the website Bossip.com . You can find the article that I commented to at the following link: [Warning: the language of the comments may be offensive to some. The video could also be a trigger for some incest survivors.]
http://bossip.com/224627/damn-gabourey-sidibes-precious-audition-tape-is-powerful-video/ .
"Incest is a very big problem in our society. I have never heard Oprah or anyone else say that it only happens in the black community. Believe me, it doesn't.
Those of us who are incest survivors know just how big this problem is. I am an incest survivor and my skin color is white. Black or white, skin color doesn't matter if you are an incest survivor.
This problem has been hidden for so very long. I think we are blessed that Oprah and other celebrities are bringing the secret of incest out into the open. As long as it is hidden, we will never stop it from happening to our children. The children are important. They are our future.
If you don't like Oprah's choice of movies or her topics on her show, don't watch them. Tell [should have been "turn"] the TV off. Don't buy tickets to the movie. You have a simple choice not to go there.
As an incest survivor, I can't turn off my life. My past has molded me into who I am today. Today I am a survivor. "Get over it" as some other commenter said isn't as easy as you would like to believe. Today incest doesn't rule my life like it once did.
If "getting over it" was an easy option, don't you think we would do that. It isn't easy. Incest affects every area of my life. Shame, low-self worth, self-hatred, rage, a hurt so deep that it seems like you will never recover from it---I have dealt with all of these. People who tell you to just "get over it" don't know what the hell they are talking about and I hope that they never learn about incest first hand. Don't let your ignorance make you heartless.
What you want is for me to go back into denial of my incest issues. That isn't healthy and helps no one, lest of all me. Pretending that I am not affected by incest just makes me more of a victim which I refuse to ever be again. How about you stop pretending that incest isn't a part of our world?"
In the video audition, Miss Sidibe say two things that jumped out at me. She said, "I'm tired." and she said, "I've had enough of love."
For most of my life since I was a very small child, I have lived with a bone weary tiredness that never seemed to leave. I think that I still carry some of that feeling in my body. I learned to live with that tiredness a long time ago if I wanted to achieve anything in my life. I have been reading about doing body work on several other blogs over the past few months. Maybe it is time for me to find out if I can trust enough to do body work.
I think that many incest survivors have decided that they have had enough of love. Love to an incest survivor often has the sexual abuse so tied up in the concept of love that it is hard to trust anyone else to be intimate enough to give healthy love a chance to grow. Trust is so much involved with loving another person, letting that person get close enough for love to grow. Some of us have been so abused that trust in another person is almost impossible to even imagine. Having someone abuse you sexually while they are saying that they love you really messes up your concept of trust and love. Having someone tell you, like my dad did, that if you love me you will let me do this makes you not even trust yourself, much less someone else. Only by the grace of God did I take a chance and let myself learn to love my husband when he came into my life back in 1972. He is worth loving and so am I. I don't know where I got the courage to even try. Some incest survivors don't.
Incest and violence neither one are confined to just one race. Neither cares about the color of your skin or what language you speak or if you are even old enough to speak. Sometimes they don't even care if you are male or female. They don't care how much money your family has and they don't care what educational level your family comes from. They don't discriminate like some people would like you to believe.
Patricia