Womanly Wednesday: A Guest Post On Finding Worth After Sexual Abuse

Welcome to this week’s Womanly Wednesday! I love this series and am honored to have the chance to share the real life stories of beautiful woman like my friend Haley.  Haley, the creative mastermind behind June and Mae, is a brave warrior of a woman who has found healing and hope in the aftermath of what she describes in this post.  It’s an honor to have her story on my blog today! 

I thought my life was perfect. I was so blinded by my intense desire to feel needed that I completely lost myself in the process. I was with a guy who cared nothing about me yet I fell so hard I was clueless. He wasn’t the first male to come along and whisk me away with fancy words while having other motives. This wasn’t the first time I wore rose colored glasses out of ignorance. The string of disrespectful boys numbed me to the intense pain I would feel with this boy, though. This wasn’t just another boy.

He was handsome and charming, had quite the gift for weaseling his way into the deepest parts of your heart. He would get upset with me a lot, cursing me out in public parking lots over his alcohol problem and then bringing gifts the next day out of an apologetic spirit, or so he said. I learned the art of forgiveness quite well and threw the phrase around that “no one is perfect” a little too often. But the day he told me I was too skinny to be sexy hurt more than it should have, I hid the pain because I never wanted him to think I was emotionally weak.

By this time I had no friends, no real person to confide in, so I kept everything to myself and muttered scattered prayers. The next week he told me I was fat. I should have had the confidence to know I deserved better yet my mind kept replaying “He’s right, I’m fat. I’m not good enough for anyone else and I am so thankful he is still staying with me even though he realizes I am fat.” It’s the mind game surrounding emotional abuse that truly warps the truth.

Slowly, his hurtful words and phrases became normal and I did my best to become numb to his unfiltered thoughts about me. He loved me so surely he did not mean to inflict that much pain in what he was saying. Despite becoming accustomed to his hatefulness, he cheated on me. I became a wreck, fell apart, not knowing what to do with all the “I love you’s” said over that past year.

Instead of breaking up with him this caused me to feel as if I needed him even more in my life, as if I could never live without him. I was even more desperately trying to seek his attention. More hateful words that progressively got worse, occasional accidental bruises, and four side girls later… I became the victim of sexual abuse. He abused me in a variety of ways that had gotten progressively more extreme, but this was different.

I was physically violated. I had never felt that helpless before. I screamed, I cried, I attempted to hurt him before anything happened. I was dragged across the floor and before I knew it I was sitting in front of my steering wheel shaking and sobbing while watching him drive off. He said he loved me and I made myself vulnerable just to be sexually tortured. I was embarrassed and confused, with hints of intense anger that would wash over me.

There I was, someone who was used as a toy trying to make sense of everything. I kept everything hidden out of embarrassment until I met up with one of my friends to pray, he saw the bruises on my wrists and cried with me. We sat there and prayed for an hour and a half. I expected to feel healing and peace, but I felt neither. My friend forced me to go to counseling and my counselor insisted I take meds. This was the darkest time in my life, where suicidal thoughts were welcome. It was scary and God rescued me from that horrendous mindset.

Years later, I have spoken at women’s conferences in mission areas in the state I live in. I am currently married to a man that treats me far better than I could dream (we were dating in the picture above!). I will soon be a college graduate in Web Design, a field that I have become extremely passionate about. I launched my design business three weeks ago, called June & Mae. I am proof that God can turn your life around and take away your deepest pain if you lean heavily upon his chest. If it was not for God, I would not be able to list any of what I listed above.

You are worth more than all the lies, just like I was within the span of those few years. I look back on my writings and read some heavy, dark words that are quite poetic but ruled with self hatred and depression. I was told I would never be loved by anyone else but here I am, married and learning how to be treated as if I was a princess. Sometimes people can become monsters behind closed doors. One in three women are in abusive relationships, some leave with bruises but others leave with emotional scars that take decades to heal. If you need a listening ear, please email me at design@juneandmae.com so that I can help you in any way I can. Keep your head up because you are so beautiful and so loved by the Lord who created you. After a year of therapy and counseling, the trauma does not have near the grip on you that it does at first.

Cheers to all the girls who are strong enough to leave. Props to all the ladies who are brave enough to tell their story!

Haley is the owner of June & Mae, a design business that specializes in web design + blog design as well as branding. Any design inquiries can be sent to design@juneandmae.com! She is currently giving away 26 free stock photography images that any blogger or small biz owner can use for their website and if you would like these images you can sign up for them here. Her social media sites can be found below, feel free to follow!

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