Dear Chris:

My replies to you yesterday are severely inadequate and I want to correct it this morning, Thanksgiving Day. I wish you a pleasant Thanksgiving and do not want to burden you with anything unnecessary, so I will make it as gentle as possible. The reason I bother at all to write to you is because your suffering has been ongoing and palpable, and maybe, just maybe I can give you that insight that you requested, and that may, I hope, make this day a better day for you.

Here is the biggest part of the story that has hurt you deeply for decades and which has been reactivated when Tim greeted you the way he did about a year ago, and then again recently when he didn’t apologize: “I was sexually attacked by a relative when I was 11… When I finally got it together to tell my mom, she didn’t say much about it and nothing happened”.

The hurt was intense, to see your mother not caring, not angry at the relative, not taking action to bring justice to the situation, not having that relative pay for what he did to you, not expressing deep empathy for you as she does all she can do to help you. To witness her do nothing is to be sent the message that you are of no value, not worthy of defending, not worthy of empathy and justice.

Fast forward, you were friendly toward Tim before and during that gathering:”When I saw him, I approached him to give him a hug” (similar to you being friendly toward that cousin at 11: “(I) wanted to go along when he was going out for milk”). Next came the verbal sexual assault, Tim’s greeting, parallel to the physical sexual assault by the cousin.

Next, just like you told your mother about the physical assault at 11 and she didn’t care and did nothing, you told your son about that verbal assault and he didn’t seem to care and did nothing: “I told my son, and he did not seem to think it was a big deal”, and a year later, when you told your son that Tim didn’t apologize, “he seemed frustrated. He said that it was my issue and that there was nothing he could do”.

The two experiences are similar and parallel, a few decades apart.

Following the childhood experience, you went through “decades of therapy.. and I thought that I healed from all of that”- when a child is hurt and betrayed (treated as unworthy) by her own mother, and yelled and accused by her father, with no apology and no efforts to correct over time, the emotional injury that results never fully heals. Sometimes we don’t feel the pain, but the pain is there nonetheless. Your pain was dormant for a while and then, it was activated.

“I am clinging to the expectation that my son should protect me.. I am going back to wanting to be protected. Worse, feelings of revenge come up a lot… I feel that it is a closed topic with my son… I find myself regretting that I was not more powerful at the time. That ranges from confronting him, to giving him a slap across the face”.

Because you are sure that Tim’s greeting was not due to him being intoxicated, and because “Tim wouldn’t greet his females peers that way.. it is not a raucous group where this would be acceptable”; because you are certain that “it is well understood by males and females that this is a term meant to show deep disrespect”- I think that the lesson here (“I know that I should see this as a lesson”), is that you should next say and do something to Tim so to let him know clearly how offensive he has been to you. I think you should say or do something publicly, so it is not only Tim who will hear you.

Because this is a closed topic for your son, don’t involve him. This is indeed your issue, your life. This time, when you are assaulted, be it verbally or physically, you don’t leave it to people who will not protect you (mother, father, son). This time you take action and do what makes sense to assert yourself and exact some measure of justice. When you do that publicly, you will experience more healing to that deep wound of long ago.

anita