Coming Out as a Ritual Abuse Survivor

Last week I went to my 60th High School reunion. Can you imagine? Twenty-five old ladies talking about what they did in 10th grade. It was fun.

At one point, we had a two-hour block of time to talk about anything we wanted. Ignoring retirement homes and hospice care, we chose to talk about what we were doing these days. We went around the table and I realized that I was going to be the last one to speak. I kept thinking about whether I wanted to disclose my ritual abuse past or not. (Happily, I still had enough brain power to listen to what others were saying.)

I saw that I had a choice: I could stick to the facts of my life – cats, gardening, chronic pain, doing social-worky things on the Internet.

But if I did they wouldn’t know the real me. I took a deep breath and decided to disclose my past.

I told them I had been born into a Satanic cult and was abused by that group and sold for pornography and that I managed to get out in college. I remained amnesic for all this until my early fifties and then, boy, it hit like a ton of bricks. In the meantime, I’d managed to raise two wonderful kids and protect them from being abused, by the cult or by anybody else. I feel that is a miracle!.

When I retired, I started to work for the RA community on the Internet, forming e-mail support groups for both survivors and therapists. My web page was the very first one on ritual abuse when the Internet was black and white and text only. I also have a blog. And then my disclosure was done and nobody fainted!

I don’t talk in groups much and, when I do, it is to survivors or professionals who already know about ritual abuse. Presumably nobody in this group knew much of anything about ritual abuse: if they had heard of it, it probably was in the context of how it didn’t exist. This was a first for me, and it was scary. It was also scary because these were people weren’t strangers and they meant something to me. I was a little nervous but not enough to have my voice and hands shake. At the end, I was asked for the urls of my website and blog.

One woman came up to me afterwards and thanked me. Another asked what Satanic cults were like and told me she had been to Salem and was told that Satanic groups were still practicing there. She also told me that some women were talking about my disclosure and saying I was brave. I’m going to write her and tell her that our connection meant a lot to me. It showed me that my words didn’t just fall into a void, as I often think they do.

I am glad I did this. I am proud of myself!!!