Though I mostly sat in the counselor’s office silently and sullenly, I continued to go to therapy throughout high school. I didn’t make a lot of progress, but it was a space where I could escape the pressure of needing to earn good grades at an aggressively demanding school. I could escape from being an unpopular and awkward teenager who was desperately lonely. I could escape from being a disappointing daughter.
Eventually, I was assigned to a woman counselor and she gave me a copy of The Courage to Heal, by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. At first, I hated the book because it included a “workbook,” as well as cheesy exercises I couldn’t possibly take seriously. The language was too flowery and full of affirmations that also made me distrustful.
Many of the theories that book espouses have now been discredited, but at that time, when I was so scared and shattered, The Courage to Heal gave me a vocabulary for what I had been through. I needed that book as much as I hated it for all the infantile exercises it encouraged. I learned about victims and survivors and trauma, and that getting past trauma was possible. I learned that I was not alone. I learned that being raped wasn’t my fault, and though I didn’t believe everything I learned, it was important to know such ideas, such truths, were out there. I didn’t feel like I was healing and I didn’t feel like I could ever reshape myself into what that book suggested healing looked like, but I did feel like at least there was something of a map I could follow to get to a place where healing felt possible. I needed that solidarity and hope, even if I couldn’t imagine a time when I would become whole again.