Chiomara

( note: the keyboard on this ancient laptop is dying, so various keys keep not working. I'm not drunk. )

Yes, the enabling thing seems just as common. Or just outright ignoring it and pretending everything is fine because acknowledging it would mean allowing their gossamer-thin facade of normalcy to unravel and they'd have to--god forbid-- pay attention to their child and stop coddling the abuser. I was shocked when I learned that my friend had been raped for years (I didn't have a reason to suspect since she never let me stay overnight more than once; she always wanted to stay over at mine for obvious reasons), as I couldn't imagine how her mother had allowed it. Boggles the mind. She was active in their church too; they were all very religious. It crushes me; out of all the people I'm close to, I know more people that have been raped or molested than people who haven't. I also recall reading recently in some studies that ANY trauma endured before age 22 or so [I don't remember exactly] affects us just as severely as childhood trauma.

It also bothers me how elementary and middle schools did the absolute bare minimum when going through the mandatory class talk explaining what to do if someone touched you inappropriately; I see very little discussion about the grooming process that often happens years before the abuse occurs, or the years of manipulation and gas lighting that occurs during and for years after. Oftentimes that manipulation seems to extend throughout the entire family so that everyone is controlled and the abusers always have the upper hand. (Obviously you all know this already, I'm just ranting because I've seen so much that could have been prevented. There's also the problem of children sometimes being granted little autonomy over their own bodies--often just in small ways like being forced to hugged people that make them uncomfortable-- and being treated like objects almost and, as a result, developing a very poor idea of what's okay and what isn't which then of course ends up muddling kids' understanding of consent later on etc etc it's quite a mess)

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