Amy
Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse
Starting at the age of 5, I was sexually abused almost every weekend by my father’s best friend. And then when I was 9 years old, I was in 4th grade, they had one of those good touch/bad touch presentations and I went to the counselor and said, “That happens to me.” She called my mother and pretty much the next year I was in and out of the courtroom.
I ended up developing a pretty severe eating disorder, and I was a cutter, I would burn myself, I would drink, anything I could do to sort of numb out. But the eating disorder stuck with me. I went to treatment but it didn’t address any of the trauma, it was “let’s get her to a normal weight and we’ll discharge her” so this went on for 12 years.
Through all of this, I always wanted to be a mom, I wanted to have kids and raise them differently, teach them to be strong and break the cycle that happened in my family. So my daughter is 2 and my son is 4 and I think I already have so far. And now what I do every day is help other women break the cycle with their children. I survived my past and I’ve been moving on with my future.
I have collected seaglass from all over the country. People throw their bottles away and they break and they are like these sharp glass shards, and it represents people that have been victimized – people that have been abused- they are broken, they are sharp, and they get beat up. Through the years the sea glass is banged against the rocks, and the waves, and everything, and it comes out and it ends up being really beautiful. And no piece is ever the same. I just feel like it represents my story, it represents a journey.
