Sexual violence

Being sexually abused as a child by a parent or caregiver

Sexual contact, exposure, or exploitation by a parent or caregiver during childhood. Whether it happened once or over years. Whether you understood what was happening at the time or not.

If some version of this is part of your story, you already know that the hardest part is rarely the memory itself. It is carrying it in a world that mostly does not want to hear about it. This fellowship exists so you do not have to carry it alone, and so you never have to explain it to someone who has no idea what it means.

What can follow an experience like this

No two people carry the same experience the same way. These are some of the effects that people with this experience often describe. Having some of them, all of them, or none of them says nothing about how real what happened to you was.

Being easily startled or jumpy The nervous system calibrated to danger will flinch at sounds, movements, or surprises that others barely notice. Feeling responsible for everyone around you The person who holds everyone else together while quietly falling apart. Ending up in the same harmful situations again The relationship that looks different at the start but ends up in the same place. Fear of being abandoned Not just not wanting people to leave. Thoughts about not wanting to be here Thoughts about not existing anymore. Eating disorder or difficult relationship with food Using food, or the control of food, to manage what cannot otherwise be managed. Physical collapse when there is nowhere left to go Beyond freeze there is flop. Self-harm Self harm is not about wanting to die.

Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.

You do not have to carry this alone.

Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.

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