Experiencing sexual abuse as a child creates a whole assembly of ghosts, buried within you. A faint shadow of unresolved pain, always between you and the sun. A flicker of fear when stepping into an elevator with strange men.  A false but persistent inner stain, that won’t wash away in any bath.  An untrue whisper about how you were born bent, and that’s why it happened.  A bitter wind, spreading the lie that you are not worth much, and that what there is of you is damaged beyond repair.

In my case, these ghosts were joined by others, caused by the terrible burden of enforced secrecy:  a sad loneliness that I could not talk about; a sense of isolation from those I loved; a sense of abandonment in being stranded with a pain that I did not know how to process.

I found healing, after I became an adult, in a group of people who accepted me as I was and who loved me until I could love all parts of myself again.

I found healing in the help of a loving and experienced therapist who sat with me to release the pain and to help free that little girl inside me who was stuck in a dreadful, defining experience that still felt alive within me.

And as I traveled this healing path, I wrote. 

I wrote poems, journal entries, personal inventories, prayers.  I wrote about what I was learning in therapy: that I could go to a Listening Place within me, a place where all parts of me would feel safe and cherished. Being a writer, I made my Listening Place into a kingdom of mountains and green grass and sunshine. There, each hurt part of me grew a name and a story, and as I wrote their stories, I healed. 

In my stories, I wrote about Gorilla, my anger, who I was terrified to meet, certain he would destroy my life.  But I am wiser now than I was when I was a child. As a little girl I did not get to be angry at the man who sexually abused me. As an adult, I am free to be angry at all those who inflict pain on innocent children. Gorilla has become my friend and a trusted companion; reminding me that it is appropriate and even the right thing to do, sometimes, to be angry.

The day we finished healing that hurt little girl inside of me, we went back into the past, listened to her story, and took away the burdens she was too young to carry. Then we brought her forward into today, into that sunny safe kingdom inside me. We gave her a new dress, made from white light, bright as diamonds.

When it was over, I watched as she ran up a green grass-covered hillside, laughing and twirling, dancing and free.

I wrote her story of healing, and mine. 

Finally, I wrote and published The Twice and Always Princess, a fairy tale about how to heal, for wounded children.

I know that everyone must travel their own healing path.

I know that hearing other people’s stories can give me courage to move forward on my own path. 

So maybe, just maybe, The Twice and Always Princess can help another wounded little girl.  Maybe, just maybe, she can see the path I took and, maybe, just maybe, she won’t have to wait until she’s grown to be healed.

Maybe, just maybe, The Twice and Always Princess can tell another little girl that there can be healing.  There can be a new diamond-bright dress.  There can be dancing on a hill in the sunshine. 

There can be freedom.