Introducing This Woman (TW) Part I

Introducing This Woman (TW) Part I     Posted on jadebeaty.com, 11/30/09

This Woman (TW) © was 32, beautiful, accomplished, educated and deeply in love with her husband of four years. They had been trying to get pregnant since the first year of their marriage and had recently checked into fertility treatments. The initial tests indicated that there did not seem to be any physical or hormonal cause for the lack of conception. But TW had a traumatic history that seemed to be blocking her ability to trust life and allow life to blossom in her. At age 12, she was kidnapped and gang raped by four young men. This happened in a small southern town and though they left her for dead, she lived and was able to identify her attackers. Because the crime was so horrific, the community rallied around her and provided emotional and even some monetary support for her and her family. She got counseling when it happened, and had spent years in therapy and working with other healing modalities to clear the damage of this first, horrible sexual experience.

Her husband participated in helping her continue to heal. He was supportive and adoring. They were so sweet with each other and had done a lot of work when they found me, but they felt there was still something major that was going unaddressed and unhealed.

I was struck, in our initial interview, by their open-mindedness and sincere desire for help. I worked with each of them individually first. I found him to be holding in a lot of rage, directed at men in general, and the men that had done this to his Beloved, which was absolutely appropriate. He made statements like, “All men are pigs,” and “I could kill these guys with my bare hands for what they did to her.” When I gently inquired that if he believed that all men were pigs, how did that impact his relationship with his own masculine energy, it dawned on him that he had work to do as well. 

My first session with TW allowed me to see where she was still accessing the story of ‘her’ rape, and how out of control she had felt. She courageously acknowledged that the story had gotten her a lot of attention and compassion, but she wanted to be free of having her life defined by The Rape. She was sick of always ‘working’ on it.

We came together for a couple’s session and I led them through an empowered communication process. They were able to speak of their individual fears, deep grief and anger with honesty and kindness. I began to form a plan for our next few sessions. To be continued…