I totally agree with this. For years I needed someone else, preferably someone in authority, to validate my beliefs, feelings, and experiences. My father, my husband, a minister, someone I deemed more intellectual than I. It's taken years and years to learn to consistently validate my own feelings, and I still have days when I need a cheerleader.
Something else resonated with me in that quote, though. The other day I had a conversation with an acquaintance. He asked if "my offenders" were still alive. I felt my body clinch when I read that line. It wasn't the "offenders" that bothered me, it was the "my". I don't apply possessive pronouns to anything related to the abuse. They are not MY offenders. It is not MY abuse. For years my parents were referred to as THE parents. I told the writer I don't use possessive pronouns in this scenario, that it's my little rebellion.
I made a joke of it at the time, but I've been thinking about it, mulling it over in the back of my mind. It's not just a little rebellion. It's an important distinction to me. By applying a possessive pronoun as an identifier or descriptor to the offenders or the abuse, I take ownership of them. I take responsibility for the actions and the people, and I've been fighting against that my whole life.
It was not, is not, and never will be my fault that I was abused. So they are not MY abusers and it is not MY abuse. I didn't have a choice or ownership in any of it. Words are important to me. I'm a reader, a librarian, a writer. Words have meanings, and those meanings carry a lot of weight.
Maybe it's not such a little rebellion after all.
