Making Recovery Last

This week, we conclude our series with guest blogger Patricia Eagle, in which she offers suggestions on how a survivor of sexual abuse can make recovery last! All excerpts are from her book, Being Mean—A Memoir of Sexual Abuse & Survival.

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“Does life ever get any easier?” I asked one of my life mentors during a particularly challenging time of my life. “My life seems to stay in tangles that won’t let a comb slide through. I don’t think I’ll ever get the snarls out,” is how I described that time in my memoir, Being Mean—A Memoir of Sexual Abuse and Survival.

“Life doesn’t necessarily get any easier, but you do get better at it,” my mentor encouraged. This is good advice for survivors of child sex abuse. 

When memories continue to churn or new memories surface, it may still hurt, but we can get better at how we hold our memories and angst.

I attempt to describe this in my book: 

“Having memories surface and sorting through them over and over is almost as crazy-making as stuffing them down . . . I am discovering that some of the best tools for survival are having the courage to be open to what I have lived, forgiving myself, and accepting that this work may take a lifetime.” 

But sifting through memories as I try to make sense of them remains a challenge. How do I find meaning and sustain the balance I’ve created in recovery as memories continue to surface? 

For some survivors, it’s a challenge to stay open to our feelings. We learned to numb and dissociate as children, and these patterns persist unless we continue to take steps toward healing. In my book I wrote, 

“How do I get to that sadness inside of me, where that scared little girl resides—who had no idea she was living with trauma—and assure her that I know she is there, that I am choosing her, that I love her and will protect her, the very things I always wanted my mother to do for me?”

Oddly, I think that when we keep ourselves in a perpetual state of overwhelm, perhaps to prolong numbness and dissociation, we keep ourselves from deeper possibilities of healing our injured spirits and hearts. To help recovery sink in and last, it helps to build new habits and lifestyles. 

The compassion and self-compassion I mentioned in my last blog are critical, I believe, to sustaining recovery. In my book I quote my writing coach, Mark Matousek, when he talks about a Tibetan nun imprisoned twice in her life by the Chinese, for a total of 22 years, yet she insists that hate doesn’t end by hate. Real freedom, Matousek claims, may very well come from learning not to hate but instead by developing compassion.

The last time I saw my 88-year-old dad at a veteran’s home, amidst sparse conversation I told him this might be the our last visit. His final words to me were, “I love you.”

Hearing him utter this unfamiliar announcement, I felt a piercing ache, and described my feelings like this, 

“. . . I’m again touched by confusion. I feel like I hurt Dad by voicing my memories of sexual abuse, despite knowing that he hurt me terribly by doing those things. And even so, sitting here right now, I realize I love him, and I’m willing to believe he loves me as well. I don’t understand all this: how memories get trapped, then surface; how love gets learned and bartered; why good people do horrible things and call it love; how love can rise through unhappiness, confusion and control.” 

Having strengthened my compassion and self-compassion muscles helped me to navigate this experience more than practicing hatred.

But there are times when joy remains elusive in my efforts to sustain recovery. Sometimes it’s there, and other times not. What I’ve learned is that it is a constant process that requires a willingness “to have the courage to trust being truthful” as I say in the dedication of my book. 

A part of being truthful is practicing open and honest conversations with as many people as I dare: my spouse, my family, my friends, my community, and people who attend my readings and ask questions. When I do so, it’s like freeing my adult voice and also that of the little girl within. Her voice chimes in beside that of this older woman who is simply no longer willing to let joy be out of reach. 

In the epilogue of my book, I explain how

“I have worked hard to not allow my past take away my willingness to look at my story and explore how to best live with what happened to me, and also how to better understand the choices I made throughout my life . . . It has taken me six and a half decades to be able to stand before what I have lived and admit to it all. From this more secure place of reflecting on my life, I have chosen to peel back the layers and dig through the rubble. The risk I’m taking now is to accept who I am and to continually take steps to forgive myself and be willing to live with joy. As I l earn to do so, the weight of shame lessens.”

Having the courage to peel back the layers and dig through the rubble while simultaneously having the courage to trust being truthful requires persistence. Just like with developing physical strength, when building emotional and spiritual stamina, it requires practice in order to help recovery last.

Read Part 3: Creating Space for a Healing Heart

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Patricia Eagle is the author of Being Mean: A Memoir of Sexual Abuse and Survival. She discovered language with her first word, “bird,” and later found great solace in nature. Six decades of journaling also served as a life buoy – tangible evidence of a life explored in earnest while being tossed by the confounding experiences of childhood sexual abuse. Her experience as a high school teacher informed her master’s research on the use of “professional reflective journaling,” a method to help educators better understand themselves and their students. A story gatherer, Eagle maintains an unyielding commitment to excavating and acknowledging what is resilient about her life and the lives of others, as an author and a Life- Cycle Celebrant®. Eagle lives amidst mountains and hot springs in the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado, where she watches the Milky Way splash across the night skies. Visit her online at https://patriciaeagle.com/ to learn more about her upcoming speaking engagements in Houston, Austin, Sacramento, Dunsmuir, Pacifica, Novato, and Santa Barbara.

Creating Space for a Healing Heart

This week, we continue our series with guest blogger Patricia Eagle. In this post, she recounts how she gradually created spaces for her heart to heal from child sexual abuse and the consequences of that abuse on her life. All excerpts are from her book, “Being Mean—A Memoir of Sexual Abuse & Survival.”

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When my memories of sexual abuse first began surfacing, I experienced a crush of images and a flood of feelings. In my book I described this time like this: 

“Everything and nothing makes sense . . . I don’t know who I am, or who I have ever been, or if I even want to continue to be . . . I’m not who I thought I was, except that I’m even more fucked up than I already knew I was.”

Creating space for a healing heart can be raw and unfamiliar territory. At the time I was in therapy and a support group for child sex abuse survivors, but I wasn’t feeling my heart heal in ways that made life any easier. I met with my dad to discuss my accusations of his sexual abuse with me, but he insisted he didn’t know what I was talking about. His response helped me learn how painful a perpetrator’s denial can be and how it can add to a survivor’s doubts about agonizing memories of abuse that happened years ago. 

This, along with how recollections about abuse often emerge gradually, helps explain why organizations that work with survivors say that when memories surface, the experience can be more debilitating than when the abuse actually occurred. Although I struggled during the period of my memories surfacing and in the years that followed, I also began developing a resiliency to keep looking closely, not give up, and trust that eventually I would be able to see and understand what had happened to me.

It takes practice to make room for a healing heart. After years of not seeing or communicating with my parents, we made plans to see one another despite the fact that I hadn’t recanted my accusations nor they their denials. I was slowly coming to recognize that not one of us might ever come to understand why a father would have sex with his daughter or why a mother would ignore such behavior. At this point I wrote: 

“I never hated either of my parents, nor have I ever wished them misery. We get it, or we don’t, or we just get parts of it, until finally the entire jigsaw puzzle comes together, and we stand in awe at the intricate picture comprised of a thousand pieces, even if some of the pieces are missing.”

I was starting to see the big puzzle picture despite some holes, and found myself accepting that this might be the way life was going to be. When I beseeched a beloved therapist how I could ever trust distant and painful memories, especially after shutting them out for so long, he replied that we might not ever find the smoking gun, but he could sure see the hole in my head. That could just as easily been the hole in my heart. Encouraging myself to wake up and open my heart without feeling afraid of what might show up, and without shutting out my experiences or shutting down my emotions, were now habits and skills I wanted to develop.

As my heart began to make space to heal, joy began slipping into my life more often. It was as simple as creating opportunities to be outdoors where I could 

“. . . empty myself of all thoughts while following my breath. Valley breezes kiss my face, a spotted towhee trills just for me from the top of a pinion, and a large exquisite yellow and black butterfly glides close enough to my face for me to feel the air move . . . I’m remembering how to live.” 

My healing heart could count on solace in nature.

Becoming aware of how joy can be as much a part of life as trauma is a wide open window for living life differently.

Times of feeling my heart expand and heal soon became more frequent and occurred with more ease. Once while saying goodbye to my dad at the veteran’s home where he lived, he pulled me close to his wheelchair for a long hug. I wrote about my experience in this way: “It means something to me when Dad initiates these hugs. I’m standing, he’s sitting, he doesn’t smell good, the life we’ve shared is damn confusing, but the feelings between us now, for the most part, are healthy. I’ve been able to become strong enough, for long enough, to see compassion emerge.” Developing compassion for my father, more than experiencing forgiveness, took the squeeze out of my heart. It also allowed me to also grow self-compassion.

An example from my life and in my book of experiencing a healing heart that was a particular relief to me came during an intimate time my spouse and I were sharing: 

“It’s taken decades of me chaotically bumping into memories of sexual abuse with no control over the timing of when they surface. They still show up. But I know how to not let those images and feelings interfere with healthy living, love, and intimacy . . . It’s important for us to give sex an honored place in our relationship, regardless of our ages, because at last we are in a place of no secrets and no shame. Making the precious time to be this open and this vulnerable with one another, in all our nakedness, feels like one of the most nourishing steps we take to strengthen our love.” 

Considering the challenge of many survivors to later experience healthy love and sex, being able to have this in my relationship reinforces the value of learning to create space for a healing heart.

The heart is a muscle and an organ, critical to staying alive. But why just survive when we have the opportunity to squeeze and flex it in ways that will help those of us who are survivors to live more fully as our hearts experience opportunities for healing spaces in our lives?

Read Part 2: Learning to Listen to Helpful Inner Voices

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Patricia Eagle is the author of Being Mean: A Memoir of Sexual Abuse and Survival. She discovered language with her first word, “bird,” and later found great solace in nature. Six decades of journaling also served as a life buoy – tangible evidence of a life explored in earnest while being tossed by the confounding experiences of childhood sexual abuse. Her experience as a high school teacher informed her master’s research on the use of “professional reflective journaling,” a method to help educators better understand themselves and their students. A story gatherer, Eagle maintains an unyielding commitment to excavating and acknowledging what is resilient about her life and the lives of others, as an author and a Life- Cycle Celebrant®. Eagle lives amidst mountains and hot springs in the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado, where she watches the Milky Way splash across the night skies. Visit her online at https://patriciaeagle.com/ to learn more about her upcoming speaking engagements in Houston, Austin, Sacramento, Dunsmuir, Pacifica, Novato, and Santa Barbara.

Learning to Listen to Helpful Inner Voices

This week, we continue our series with guest blogger Patricia Eagle. She talks about learning to listen to helpful inner voices that tell us we have value, are worthy of love and can trust ourselves.

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Learning to listen to that tiny voice inside can save a person’s life, even when it is barely a whisper. A survivor of child sexual abuse pushes that voice down so often that it can become barely discernible. Sometimes we find imaginative ways for helpful inner voices to surface.

As a small child, I heard this voice through my stuffed animals. I would talk to my animals out loud, giving them voices and words as I lined them up around my room to assure they would be present when I went to bed. These voices often told me they loved me and would be with me when I felt scared. Later, I could talk to them in my head when my dad crawled into bed with me, helping me to feel distracted from what felt confusing or painful. 

I also created a fairy godmother, whom I called Wendy––I think from having read Peter Pan. (My fairy godmother was a combination of Wendy and Tinker Bell.) She would help me slip out of the bed when Daddy was there and hover with me while I talked to my stuffed animals. In this comforting magic we floated above it all until it was safe for me to go back to bed. Wendy soothed me, patting my back, stroking my hair, and singing softly in my ears. With the comfort of Wendy and my stuffed animals, I developed a way to survive that helped me feel stronger, in charge, and like someone who was valued.

Around age eight, I got a real dog. I talked to “Dabb” constantly and even talked back to me for him. Through Dabb my inner voice strengthened, encouraged by real licks, adoring eyes and the warmth of his body. I began to recognize doubts and shame, confusion and anger. Nature became our playground, most often wandering beside the creek behind our house. I gave voices to the water, the mud, the trees, the birds, and even bugs. The innermost secrets I shared with Dabb were now overheard by nature, and she encouraged us both with promises that I would feel better someday and to not give up. 

Despite an insistent damaged voice that surfaced often as I grew older––telling me I was worthless––the small, promising voices inside persisted. It always helped when I had a dog; their behaviors helping me realize that if I felt sad, they seemed to feel bad too. Nature was also consistent in being a supportive presence around me, whether I was looking out a classroom or car window, planting a garden, or listening to a bird trill a melody. 

In one story from my book during a particularly challenging time of my life, I describe what happens while cycling on a road near my home when “I stop for a sip of water and suddenly a hundred cedar waxwings take off from what looked like empty branches of a gigantic tree. I gasp and with that sound another flock takes off. How did they do that? My heart whirs from its numbed state. Nature has put on a magic show, and I’m in the front row.” 

Nature could calm me when I found myself in places where sounds, smells, images, or something tangible like a feather wafting from the sky or a hundred birds taking flight gifted me. I just had to learn to keep listening, to keep looking, recognizing that a voice or experience that comforts doesn’t always have a sound. 

My dad doesn’t come into my room any longer, but memories of him in locations where he sexually abused me occasionally surface. Decades of developing my inner voices guide me now to gently caress my dog’s head, ask my beloved partner for a warm embrace, tickle the toes of a few stuffed animals I’ve collected, stroke the ear of my stuffed dog of 67 years, listen to a breeze and imagine the encouraging words it is carrying, or promise myself I may soon find the gift of a feather.


In the next blog post I’ll be writing about my experience of learning to create space for a healing heart.


Read Part 1: Damaged by Childhood Sexual Abuse

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Patricia Eagle is the author of Being Mean: A Memoir of Sexual Abuse and Survival. She discovered language with her first word, “bird,” and later found great solace in nature. Six decades of journaling also served as a life buoy – tangible evidence of a life explored in earnest while being tossed by the confounding experiences of childhood sexual abuse. Her experience as a high school teacher informed her master’s research on the use of “professional reflective journaling,” a method to help educators better understand themselves and their students. A story gatherer, Eagle maintains an unyielding commitment to excavating and acknowledging what is resilient about her life and the lives of others, as an author and a Life- Cycle Celebrant®. Eagle lives amidst mountains and hot springs in the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado, where she watches the Milky Way splash across the night skies. Visit her online at https://patriciaeagle.com/ to learn more about her upcoming speaking engagements in Houston, Austin, Sacramento, Dunsmuir, Pacifica, Novato, and Santa Barbara.

Damaged by Childhood Sexual Abuse

This is the first of a four part blog series on the experience of child sexual abuse and experiencing recovery by Patricia Eagle, the author of Being Mean--A Memoir of Sexual Abuse and Survival. Here Patricia shares her story and the damaging effects abuse had on her own life.

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It isn’t unusual for a survivor of child sex abuse to have little or no self worth and to feel damaged. I used to think of myself as a “throw-away girl.” I had developed a strong inner voice that told me I was wrong, not worthy of love, a liar, and couldn’t trust myself. 

At first my dad told me he loved me when we shared intimate times, which for us was masturbating together. I was only four when these times started, and I looked forward to them because of that “feel-good feeling,” and because Daddy paid attention to me then and might tell me he loved me. My mom called this activity “being mean,” which didn’t make sense to me for something that felt so good, but Daddy told me to not tell her about our times, even though somehow she seemed to know. I denied her accusations.

As I got older, I became suspicious about whether we were doing something that was wrong. Dad quit telling me he loved me and sometimes acted mean. Mom insisted that anything that went on “down there” was nasty and bad, so much so that I started worrying and felt confused about my times with Dad. Self-trust was non-existent by now.

When I got a boyfriend at fourteen, Dad quit coming to me, and I shifted what had become a craving for that “feel-good feeling” to someone my age. But my boyfriend was as on again-off again as Dad had been, appearing to like me when we were having sex, but not so much when we weren’t. He kept breaking up with me to date other girls, then coming back and saying how much he loved me when we had sex. I always took him back. 

That’s what I had learned about love, and what I had learned about doubting whether I was of value or not. This pattern confirmed what I thought about myself. I wasn’t worth someone’s sustained attentions. Maybe other girls weren’t having sex with my boyfriend so he came back to me, his nasty girlfriend. Soon I wanted my boyfriend to stay with me forever and love me so much I’d do whatever he wanted. By fifteen I thought I was pregnant. Luckily I was not, but that didn’t curb our sexual activity. 

I was damaged on the inside so subconsciously I tried to align my outer self as damaged, too. At eighteen, I did become pregnant. By now I was having intercourse with two young men, and I wasn’t sure which one was the father. (My boyfriend had broken up with me, but insisted we still “make love” while we dated other people.) After an illegal and dangerous abortion, I set out on a risky course of self-destructing. I’d create a hopeful path for myself, then self-sabotage, over and over. Sometimes it was as simple as becoming a long distance runner and running too far and too fast while maintaining an extremely poor diet, or as reckless as popping acid before going in for a day of public school teaching, or getting pregnant over and over and dangerously terminating the pregnancies. Without realizing what I was doing, create and destroy became my path. 

Such behavior confirmed what I thought of myself. When my Dad told me in my twenties that I was “a filthy slut and whore,” it made sense to me. As I wrote in my memoir, Being Mean--A Memoir of Sexual Abuse and Survival: 

“Now that I’m pregnant again, Dad’s words seem to fit. It occurs to me that there are not any corresponding insulting words like slut and whore that I could use against a man. Filthy itself says something, then slut feels like such a hard word, and whore is simple dismissive. All those words are like dirt, scum, waste, shit, discard, trash. That’s what I feel like when I’m pregnant. Something to throw away. It’s not just the baby that gets tossed, but a piece of my soul as well.”

Child sex abuse is a public health problem by virtue of the damaged humans it leaves in its wake. Our damage surfaces through over-sexualized and risky behaviors, unwanted pregnancies, suicide attempts, extremely poor judgment, debilitating depression and anxiety, PTSD, and patterns of treating ourselves with disdain and distrust. 

In the next blog post I’ll talk about learning to listen to helpful inner voices that tell us we have value, are worthy of love and can trust ourselves.



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Patricia Eagle is the author of Being Mean: A Memoir of Sexual Abuse and Survival. She discovered language with her first word, “bird,” and later found great solace in nature. Six decades of journaling also served as a life buoy – tangible evidence of a life explored in earnest while being tossed by the confounding experiences of childhood sexual abuse. Her experience as a high school teacher informed her master’s research on the use of “professional reflective journaling,” a method to help educators better understand themselves and their students. A story gatherer, Eagle maintains an unyielding commitment to excavating and acknowledging what is resilient about her life and the lives of others, as an author and a Life- Cycle Celebrant®. Eagle lives amidst mountains and hot springs in the San Luis Valley in south central Colorado, where she watches the Milky Way splash across the night skies. Visit her online at https://patriciaeagle.com/ to learn more about her upcoming speaking engagements in Houston, Austin, Sacramento, Dunsmuir, Pacifica, Novato, and Santa Barbara.