Article July 4, 2011 Issue

Healing victories and freedom from the past

Name withheld

For many years, I felt like Job in the Bible. It looked as if I had lost everything—my fortune, contact with my children, all that I most loved—just as he had. But when Job finally stood for his perfection and his love for God, and saw that his suffering never came from God, all that he had lost was returned even greater than before. I, too, learned a purer sense of identity and freedom as a spiritual idea of God, without mortal birth, having no mortal history. 

I suffered the pains of child abuse and eventually sexual abuse at a very young age. The shame and guilt from these experiences affected my life, both as a child and as an adult. I always had a sense of unworthiness. I felt I didn’t deserve to have a happy, loving relationship, and I made mistakes in three marriages. I felt I could make up for my guilt by changing my marriage partners’ behavior. 

But even though I thought of myself as a strong person, I always felt very submissive toward each of my husbands and unsure of myself. I never really trusted them, and through the years I have come to realize that I was actually afraid of them. Yet I stayed in those unhappy marriages in order to protect my four children and to make sure they had a home.