God Bless Cecibel Contreras for this beautiful, eloquent, and inspiring piece. I couldnt resist posting this

The lost girl.

She looked everywhere and she couldn’t find the lost little girl. She couldn't find the little girl that was physically and sexually abused. She had lost the most important part of her childhood. She had lost her identity and the loving, trusting, nurturing and protecting pieces that were stolen from her life. She spent more than two decades trying to find the missing pieces by restoring, re-parenting and learning to be whole again.

A journey from lost to found.

She resolved to heal for herself and to discover the missing pieces. Those important pieces that were taken away from her when she needed them the most as a child. She had to replace them with love and lots of self compassion because she was her worst enemy most of the time. Self loathing and anger was ruining her life. Yet finding or replacing the pieces was a difficult process that was necessary to find some sort of balance or healing in her life.

The discovery process.

In the process she discovered many important things that she refused to believe from her past. She discovered that she was not to be blamed. She discovered that she wasn’t worthless like her father made her believe as a child. She discovered that she was smart. She discovered that she was empathetic and loving even though she was afraid to show these great qualities to the world. Nevertheless, it was more important for her to recognize that she had discovered herself as a beautiful human being in spite of what happened to her as a child or in spite of the mistakes she had done during her healing process or the discovery years.

Hope & Healing

Once she discovered who she was and how worthy and beautiful she was, she became whole and happy. She became one with her inner child by giving her a voice. Some survivors let go or ignore our inner child because we don’t want to feel their pain. But we must feel their pain and validate them to walk through the process of healing from the trauma of sexual abuse. Today that precious little girl is the center of my work. She’s often the writer. She’s often the one who pushes me to help the community. She’s the creative one. She is also happy that together we were able to conquer our dreams of advocating for the abuse.

There is hope for healing and happiness.

I just want to say to every survivor that with appropriate help survivors of sexual abuse can find the healing they so deeply desire. It’s not going to be an easy process because life is not easy. There are times that we may have setbacks and challenges, but we must never give up. Once we find our inner child, we must always support and love our inner child regardless of the challenges or the mistakes that they did throughout their healing process. Some people don’t want to go through the healing process because they discover that there is devastating pain through the healing process. And that scares them to the point that they choose to remain victims for their entire lives. You cannot replace pain with peace if you don’t allow yourself to walk through the healing process. The process includes finding your inner child, acknowledging what happened and allowing the feelings of being hurt, scared, and sad to be felt, acknowledged, and validated. The process also entails discovering the real you and your true potential and restoring and rebuilding what was once lost or stolen from you as a child. You are not alone in this healing journey. I’m walking with you too.

Never give up!

Cecibel Contreras
It was ME Campaign