Making love, having sex, being intimate. Whatever you call it, it can be a wonderful thing. Don't let rape rob you of the chance to have genuine happiness in your life. Choose to reclaim your sexuality, without abusing it yourself, and move on with your life. Be happy, take time to love yourself, stay safe.

“Rape is about having your choices taken away. Being intimate with your partner is something you can choose to do or choose not to do. You can ask your partner to stop and he/she would stop. You may find that some positions may now seem frightening to you and you may feel you want to use positions where you feel more in control over what is happening. If you are with someone who cares about you, loves you, respects you that is entirely different from a man who is abusing you, who has no care or respect for you.”

So I’ve made some progress. After the break down last week I had let go of a lot of things I was holding on to. Like the rapes, abuse and being molested. When Justin molested me it took away my childhood innocence. I had lost that special place that no one was supposed to touch and I knew that no one was supposed to touch me there. But ever since Justin started to molest me, my privates would always hurt and I couldn’t explain it. After I had my daughter( I have a vaginal birth) I tore and needed stitched for the second time(I had stitches from a rape years ago) and I remember laying in the hospital on my side crying because my anal area had hurt so bad. It wasn’t from the stitches per se but I kept feeling like someone had put something in my rectum and I couldn’t get it out. It didn’t hit me until earlier this week that I was having body memories of Justin putting his finger in my rectum when I was 5. I never really understood that everything was connected to each other as far as emotions and feelings.

“Separating rape/abuse and sex
It is important to learn to separate rape/abuse and sex. Healthy sex is nothing like the violation you experienced, and in working on your sexual healing and rediscovering your likes and dislikes; you can learn to differentiate the two. The actual acts may be the same, but that is where the similarities end.

This task can become complicated, as many non-survivors connect rape and sex, so their perceptions become skewed. Survivors may worry that others are judging them for wanting to become sexually active, or that the assault must not have been “that bad” if they are able to enjoy sex again. Some people may even openly question a survivor’s desire to engage in sex after rape or abuse. As difficult and wounding as these types of comments can be, it is important not to let them interfere with your own views and desires. You are entitled to healthy sex, and no one can tell you how to feel.”

When it came to sex, I always felt dirty and nasty. I felt like I wasn’t deserving of anything but pain because that’s the only thing I was used to. After being raped and abused for so long, it’s so hard to get used to being treated with respect. I had no emotional connection with the act of sex but pain and Frank along with Banky and the other men. It’s a hard concept to grasp, knowing that you have the right to your body and no one else does. It was hard for me to accept that I can say no to sex now. That I don’t have to do anything that I don’t want to.  The Vaginismus makes it that much more difficult, especially when you do want to be intimate because the anxiety and fear of sex made my body go on danger mode and my vagina would close up.

So this is where my journey begins. I had to take back what Justin, Frank and Banky took from me. I am so determined to thrive from this instead of bouncing between victim and survivor. Right now I’m in Sex Therapy and working around the issues that makes me so anxious about sex. It’s going really well so far. I understand how my body is connected to my past but also to my mind.

I went and bough Ben Wa Balls for kegel exercises and so far its helping me relaxes a lot more. Ummmm…………. Sexually I feel so free right now. I don’t feel like I’m being pressured to do anything I’m way more open about what I want and what I like and what I’m willing to try. It’s like I have control over my body and I don’t feel like it’s in danger anymore.

It is important to remember that rape and sexual assault is NOT the same as consensual sex/making love/being intimate with someone who cares about you. Rape is about having your choices taken away. Being intimate with your partner is something you can choose to do or choose not to do. You can ask your partner to stop and he/she would stop. You may find that some positions may now seem frightening to you and you may feel you want to use positions where you feel more in control over what is happening. If you are with someone who cares about you, loves you, respects you that is entirely different from a man who is abusing you, who has no care or respect for you. An intimate relationship with someone you care for and someone who cares for you is entirely different from forced sex. Abusive sex is someone hurting you, having power and control over you, consensual sex is someone you choose to be intimate with, someone you are caring for and someone caring for you.

I feel like a failure as a wife and woman.

This sex therapy is so much harder than I thought it was ever going to be. So yes I am healing and yes it kind of is working but it hurts. It hurts because it seems like no matter what I do I just can’t get it right.

I have so many problems sexually I don’t know where to begin. When I think I’ve fixed one problem, 100 more appear with no solution. After going through the sexual experiences I have encountered and my feelings towards them I was shocked.

I’ve always associated sex with being raped. I had no feelings or attitude towards sex because I never had it before I was raped. With nothing to compare it too besides my own feelings and what people tell me it’s supposed to feel like I was lost.

I didn’t know how to react, I knew that there were a lot of feelings and emotions that I was having that I liked but was also afraid of because I couldn’t control them. There were a lot of feelings I couldn’t stand because it reminded me of being raped. Finding out what my triggers are, going into details about the rape, the smells, sounds, what was in the room really opened up my eyes.

I learned that I still cannot be intimate whenever I want to. That I’m confused about the sexual feelings that I do have.

Unless I’m 100% sure that the feelings I do have are real and not just my past messing with me, I don’t act on them. I don’t act on the feelings because I know I wouldn’t be able to be intimate with anyone in a healthy way. Now I’m starting to understand how my feelings affect my sex life. The sex dreams I have all the time, it seems as though it’s the only thing on my mind and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing but I feel disgusting because of it. I feel disgusting for wanting sex, I feel embarrassed and I don’t know how to talk about it. Like I guess I never thought that being molested or raped would ever effect anyone this much or this deep.

I have a problem with controlling sex. I have a problem with my feelings towards sex and how I act out on them. I’m doing things that are only hurting the progression I’ve made.

I masturbate all the time if I had the chance. I do it so much because it just feels like all this pain is inside of my body and it just hurts when I can’t get it out. The pain feels like my vagina and pelvis is on fire from the pain and there’s nothing but pins and needles and my stomach starts to cramp up and my who body feels like it’s been hit by a mac truck. I masturbate to the point where it doesn’t feel good anymore.

It’s really painful but it lets the bad feelings about sex out. Afterwards I’m usually embarrassed and disgusted with myself but I don’t have anyone I can relate to. I just want to have a healthy sex life. I don’t want to feel bad about sex again….

“I think the black family itself is just so different from the white family. When a black woman is rape, it kind of weakens her as the female part in that family”***

“I think you learn it from watching your mother. Not being taught, just watching. I know my mom, when she would so something and injure herself, she’d say, “Damn.” Then she’d wrap something around it and go back to what she was doing. She’d say, ”Blood coming through there, but got to keep going.”***

“Black women are quick to get up. They may not be ready to stand on two feet, but they do it. You know? They say, “Okay. I need to put this back together. Let me get up.” Say she had this beautiful porcelain vase and say that represents her life and it gets cracked by something like… like a rape. Boom--it splatters everywhere. A black woman would do something like--she would take something like rope and put those pieces back together. It may not be as pretty as the white woman’s vase--taking all that time to put crazy glue on every spot and put it all together real nice and pretty. It may not be pretty but it works just the same. That’s the way we go about putting our lives together. May end up having some kind of little drawback or maybe we have to deal with things like anger and controlling our temper, but we do it. It may not be beautiful, but it gets fixed fast. And it works.”***

Now what my question is does it work? Does it really work to quick fix a problem that big and expect it to work the rest of your life? What is so wrong with taking our time and trying to put the pieces back together again? So what if it takes a long time to individually put each tiny piece back? Wouldn’t that route work out better for us in the long run?

A lot of us take that route of temporarily trying to fix a problem and in the end it always comes back up and bites us in the ass.That vase eventually gets shattered again, even if its by something minor and minuscule.
Those thousands of pieces that were tied together by that rope shatter again.

How many times are we going to wrap a cloth around a broken bone and expect it to heal? Ignoring the pain only allows more time to pass while the anger manifests in your soul. Then you start taking it out on other people. Trying to do your daily, “normal duties” with that mask on your face pretending that nothing is wrong.

Just because we get raped, it does not make us weaker as women, as black women. Because we end up in violent relationships, it does not make us weaker as black women. What another person does to your body is their blame to carry around, not yours. IF you choose to seek help, you are NOT weak. IF you choose not to seek help, you are NOT weak.

Often times we rely on family for advise and how we should handle certain situations. Family IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT. Just because they are related to you does not make their advice remotely right or even in your best interest. I have experienced this in a negative way. My family chooses to ignore my molestation, my rape, my feelings. They chose to try to keep it in the family, that infamous don’t air dirty laundry tactic that black families are famous for. Hell my father told me not to tell anyone about what happened. When I was raped and he had to come home from work the only thing he kept saying was what am I going to tell my job. Like he was ashamed because I was raped.

Now I find that very hilarious.

I know that families “try to keep your best interest at heart” it does not mean they are going about it the right way. It was always drilled into your head that family should be number one in your life and no one should come before them. THAT’S BULLSHIT to me.

My family only made my healing a more difficult process. Once I finally saw the truth and how they really were that’s when I started to change myself and didn’t care if they liked who I was becoming.
  My families ignorance is their own burden to carry not mine, I cant change anyone else but me. I choose not to be close to them because of that ignorance that was hurting me, that’s my own choice.

I’m not obligated to be involved with them just because we are blood and I think that’s wrong with black families now. When someone is hurting you stay away from them. SOME black families have this no matter how much family is hurting you or what they do to you still be involved with them. No, I don’t believe in that idea. If the victim doesn’t want to be around the person who has hurt them then they shouldn’t be criticized for protecting themselves.

We just need to open our minds and hearts and actually look and understand reality. Accept that black women get raped and its not their fault. Accept that black children get molested by family members and friends and its not their fault. Accept that some black men do rape black women and black men and its NOT the victims fault.

Stop being so ignorant and blaming the victims because you want to protect your family.

A Little Girls White Dress

My white dress has been
Covered in blood.
My beautiful white dress has been
Beaten so much
The back is ripped and its
Seam is torn.
My sparkly white dress is
Smudged whit unearthly prints
And stains that can not be
Removed.
My innocent white dress was ripped
Apart into pieces and
Carelessly put back together again.

I’ve tried to burn it, drown it
Pour alcohol on it to set on fire
And it still finds its way to the
Front of my closet
Dirty, fire stains, muddy, smeared with
Blood reeking
Of Jack Daniels, holding on by
A thread.

Sitting in front of what use to be
My white dress, I scream, I bellow
And finally I cry.

Realizing the blood, the torn seam
Smudges and pieces were only visible
To me.

The damage I had done to my own
White dress can be fix,
Even if I can get the blood out.
©Golden Rays

***Excerpt from Jacqueline a survivors of rape, the above quoted text was taken from the book “surviving the Silence Black Women’s Stories of Rape” by Charlotte Pierce-Baker

The Strong Black Woman Is Dead

She died from having the multiple births of children she never really wanted but was forced to have by the strangling morality of those around her. She died from being a mother at 15 and a grandmother at 30 and an ancestor at 45. She died from being dragged down and sat upon by un-evolved women posing as sisters.

She died from pretending the life she was living was a Kodak moment instead of a 20th century, post-slavery nightmare. She died from tolerating Mr. Pitiful, just to have a man around the house. She died from lack of orgasms because she never learned what made her body happy and no one took the time to teach her
And sometimes, when she found arms that were tender, died because those arms belonged to someone of the same gender.

She died from sacrificing herself for everybody and everything when what she wanted to do was be a singer, a dancer, or some other magnificent other.She died from lies of omission because she didn't want to "bring the black man down." She died from race memories of being snatched and raped and snatched and sold and snatched and bred and snatched and whipped and snatched and worked to death.

She died from tributes from her counterparts who should have been matching her efforts instead of showering her with dead words and empty songs.
She died from myths that would not allow her to show weakness without being chastised by the lazy and hazy. She died from hiding her real feelings until they became hard and bitter enough to invade her womb and breasts like angry tumors.
She died from always lifting something from heavy boxes to refrigerators.

The strong black woman is DEAD

She died from the punishments received from being honest about life, racism and men. She died from being called a bitch for being verbal, a dyke for being assertive and a whore for picking her own lovers. She died for never being enough of what men wanted, or being too much for the men she wanted.

She died from being too black and died again for not being black enough.
She died from castration every time somebody thought of her as only a woman, or treated her like less than a man. She died from being misinformed about her mind, her body and the extent of her royal capabilities. She died from knees pressed too close together because respect was never part of the foreplay being shoved at her.

She died from loneliness in birthing rooms and abandonment in abortion centers. She died of shock in courtrooms where she sat, alone, watching her children being legally lynched. She died in bathrooms with her veins busting open with self-hatred and neglect.

She died in her mind, fighting life, racism and men, while her body was carted away and stashed in a human warehouse for the spiritually mutilated. And sometimes when she refused to die, when she just refused to give in, she was killed by the lethal images of blond hair, blue eyes and flat butts; rejected by the O.J.'s, the Quincy's, the Tiger's and the Poitier's.

Sometimes she was stomped to death by racism and sexism, executed by hi-tech ignorance while she carried the family in her belly, the community on her head, and the race on her back!