You might not feel like a hero but I consider you one. Why? Because everything you’ve been through has taken enormous strength and courage.

Our stories as abused women are hero’s stories. They are stories that most people don’t want to hear or acknowledge, but that doesn’t change the reality of their truth, or of who we are.

You have survived and are overcoming abuse, often in the face of no support and even betrayal by those who were once your friends. If that’s not a hero, I don’t know what is!

Look at our stories of overcoming against all odds

We:
~ survived gaslighting, brainwashing, lies, blame shifting, and the total craziness of the man we trusted trying to destroying us

~ found the courage to face the nightmare that our husband was abusing us

~ told the truth about what we were enduring when few people wanted to believe us

~ lost our friends and our church when we left our abuser, yet continued on

~ have to share custody due to a legal system that ignores abuse

~ have PTSD but still gett out of bed each day to go to work, and care for our kids

~ live in a culture that tells us we’re ugly, fat, not good enough, and too much, yet still try to love ourselves

~ know how much emotional and psychological abuse messed with us, yet choose to heal and rebuild our lives

Do you see how much strength, resilience, and bravery that takes?

That’s you!

You might think “I’m not a hero, I’m a failure because my marriage failed.” But you didn’t cause the marriage to fail. I know you did your part in your marriage. You were loving, loyal, and committed. You gave it your all and tried past the point of exhaustion. You sacrificed yourself over and over for the sake of your children and marriage.

Your husband/ex sabotaged your every effort so there was no way to save the marriage, but that isn’t your fault – that’s on him. You did all a hero can do.

Perhaps you don’t feel like a hero because you feel empty, shattered, exhausted, and powerless in your life. That’s the result of the trauma of abuse, that’s not who you are. And you can become a hero for yourself and heal from the trauma.

When you heal, you are a hero

You already have the traits of a hero; loyal, hard-working, loving, committed, gentle, strong, and compassionate. Here’s the beautiful part– you can take all these traits and focus them on yourself.

You get to love yourself, be compassionate and gentle toward yourself, be loyal and committed to yourself, and to work hard for yourself for your healing.

We get to become our own best friend (along with Jesus), our own advocate, and a strong survivor. Jesus is right there with us helping us to become our own hero and smiling as we see ourselves for who we really are.

Does thinking about yourself as your own hero make you feel selfish or uncomfortable?
Do you think that’s being proud and it’s wrong to feel that way?

These are common lies that can plague us as Christian women: lies that we shouldn’t take care of ourselves; that we can’t think good things about ourselves; and that we can’t be proud of ourselves. Dismantling these lies is part of our healing journey.

When you resisted abuse, you were being your own hero

One way we can get in touch with ourselves as our own hero is to see how we’ve resisted the abuse. Let me share an example with you.

My ex would drag me into hours-long conversations about our relationship. He would use intense word twisting, blame shifting, confusion, rewriting history, and all the other tactics. I would slowly become unable to talk.

Then he would use my reaction as proof that I had serious issues that were the real problem in our marriage.

At the time I really thought I did have serious problems. But in trauma therapy I realized that my reaction was actually brilliant.

There was no way for me to leave those conversations since they usually happened late into the night. There was no reasoning with him, no following his twisted conversations, and no resolving anything we were discussing. If I didn’t shut down, his psychological abuse would have continued on for hours and hours. I used the only resistance I could at the time.

My reaction was also a trauma reaction called freeze, but it still served me well in that particular situation.It can be hard to identify how we resisted because it’s often labeled something else. In my example, my resistance was labeled craziness and emotional instability.

Here are some other examples:

If you stopped sharing your emotions to protect yourself (this was another thing I did) you were probably accused of being avoidant, distant, detached or unloving. (I know I was.)

If you confronted him and pointed out his inconsistencies, you were probably called argumentative. (I was.)

If you cooperated with him to reduce retaliation you might have been labeled co-dependent. (I used to think I was.)

If you kept seeing old friends even though he was trying to isolate you, you might have been called rebellious.

If you resisted his control, you were probably called passive/aggressive or uncooperative. (I was.)

If you kept a record of what he was doing so you could get a clear picture of the abuse, you were probably scared or told you were being unforgiving. (I was.)

If you made the agonizing decision to leave your marriage to save yourself and provide your children with a loving home, you were blamed for destroying the marriage. (I was.)

Think about how you resisted the abuse. And think about if it was labeled by you or someone else as anything other than you being strong and resisting wickedness. Label it for what it really was! Take a moment to see how creative, strong, and heroic you were.

The healing journey

When we choose to heal from abuse, we gain the ability and stability to be in charge of our selves. Not in a way that separates us from God as if we don’t need Him, but by gaining that self-agency and leadership over our choices and inner world that was stolen from us by abuse.

We need to be intentional with our healing during and after abuse because we don’t just completely heal after we leave. Trauma leaves its mark on us.

The healing journey is a hero’s journey. It’s an beautiful journey of being a hero to yourself by committing to your healing.

Every woman who has had the strength to survive abuse also has the strength to become her own hero and heal.

If you’re ready to begin your healing journey, the Arise Healing Community will guide you.

Reconnecting with who you really are is one of the 6 pillars of the Arise Healing Journey. I see you as your own hero. And I can’t wait until you can start seeing that for yourself.