Zora and Alana: Our healing journey

Trigger warning: Mention of childhood sexual abuse

This text is a dialogue between Alana, my queer self – one of my selves, my caring self, and Zora, one of my inner children, the one that lived through the sexual abuse and through emotional neglect and abuse.

Alana: Zora, you and me went through some healing journey together. Do you want to talk about that?

Zora: OK. I think now I feel ready. And, if it helps other, that would really make me happy.

Alana: So let’s start. I still remember how I first got to know you. Now I understand that it was you sending me these invasive images of childhood sexual abuse. When I tried EMDR, you sabotaged the session. And so I caught a glimpse of you, but you quickly hid again.

Zora: Yes, that was me. I was tired of dealing with all of that on my own, the abuse and the neglect. In fact, I couldn’t anymore, I never could. I always felt lonely. I needed someone, I needed you to see me, to be with me, to love me. But, I didn’t know if I could trust you, because whenever I trusted someone, I only got abuse or neglect. I wanted you to see me, but I also needed to protect myself, I needed to test if I could really trust you.

Initially, I didn’t let you get close, I didn’t let you touch me. I didn’t even look at you, or only when I thought you didn’t notice. You respected that. But I was really scared.

Alana: I was also very scared, Zora. I didn’t know how to talk to you. I told you that you were safe now, that I would look after you, and that I loved you. But, telling you I loved you made you retreat, so I had to find another way to say it. Slowly you allowed me to get close, until one day I sat down next to you. And then we hugged and we both cried. Out of relief, but there was also a lot of pain.

Zora: Yes, the people who had told me they loved me were the ones who had abused me, so when you said it I got scared. Now I know that love is something different, but back then, I didn’t.

And yes, I cried a lot. But, it was different, because I was not alone, you held me. Never before did anyone hold me when I had to cry, so I stopped crying, because crying without being held was too painful. Instead of releasing pain, it just added more pain. Now, it was different. Crying and being held by you allowed me to release pain. It was still painful, but it was also healing. It also helped me to trust you more.

Alana: It wasn’t easy for me to hold you while crying, it also brought out a lot of my own pain.

Also, you slowly told me in your way what actually had happened to you – to us. You did it through your paintings, mostly. Initially, I couldn’t imagine it, but then you started to paint – a lot of paintings of abuse, but also of your rage, your anger and your pain. I remember I had to ask you to also do some paintings of nice things, as I couldn’t sustain so much pain and rage.

Through your paintings, and through talking with you, I slowly started to understand and accept what had happened to us as children – the sexual abuse by our father. And once I accepted that, there was no need anymore for invasive images of abuse. While there was still pain, there was also some new calmness.

Zora: I could no longer keep quiet about it. I wanted you to know, but I also wanted the world to know*. I needed that to be able to work through the pain and slowly let go. You helped me a lot with that. You held me, you loved me. The first time in my life I felt seen, I felt held, I felt loved. That helped me a lot to heal.

And, you didn’t judge me because of my anger, because of my fantasies of slowly and painfully killing our father and our mother. You understood that these were expressions of my pain, but also of my rage against my abusers. I felt seen not only in my pain, but also in my rage.

Alana: I remember, and I always knew that this was a healthy rage. Even nowadays, three years later, you are the one of us who most easily connects with her anger and rage, which helps me a lot, I’m really grateful for that. For me, it is still difficult to connect with my anger, and even more so to express it.

And I know, behind you anger and rage, there is a lot of love and caring, I always notice that. Not for our abusers, but for all of our inner community, and for other people who are now important in our life.

Zora: That’s true. And feeling seen, held and loved by you has allowed me to open up to the world, to trust others, to relate in a much deeper way with others. I’m still slow in connecting with others, but when I do, I do so profoundly.

Alana: Exactly, Zora. I think our healing journey has allowed me to also relate differently, to open myself up, to make myself vulnerable with others. That makes for much more intimate relationships. This isn’t just about sexual abuse, it’s also about emotional neglect and abuse, about not being able to trust anyone, about other aspects of our trauma.

We are still on this journey, not just you and me, all our selves which form part of who we are. It started with you, you wanting to be seen, wanting to be discovered, to be held and loved. Thank you for this, Zora.

* Zora wrote a brief zine about this: For the right to our own bodies?, October 2023, https://alanaqueer.es/content/right-our-own-bodies