Angel
Secondary Survivor of Human Trafficking
When I met Cheri I was a Pastor of Spiritual Transformation, I worked with a lot of people for inner healing. She came to me for inner healing.
I’m a multiple rape survivor and my pastor had worked with me through that, and I was in hospital and that night my pastor decided to come visit me and she just leaned over me and kissed my forehead and I saw the face of Jesus. And in that space I heard Jesus say, “No matter where you’ve been… I will always be with you and always love you”. And my Pastor shared that story from the pulpit and Cheri heard the story and said, “That woman, I want to work with her.”
What people don’t understand about the side of the secondary survivor is that when survivors will lash out, their defense mechanisms can be anything from threatening to violent, because you’ve become the safe person that they can say whatever they feel. You, as a secondary person, feel it.
One of the things that I’ve learned working with almost any trauma survivor, is that we have this thing called empathy but we don’t realize empathy means that you have to get into the pit with them. And you have to admit your own vulnerabilities and your own fears in order to work alongside them. You cannot stand aside from them and look at them and say I’m gonna help you. That doesn’t work. I have to come in there, I have to hook arms with you, and say we are gonna do this together, we’re gonna go down to this pit together.
I think that happens to everybody, transformation is for both people. If you choose to really walk alongside, you get healed as well, you get transformed as well.
