Rebuilding Faith after CSA
For many survivors of child sexual abuse, the question is not how to heal, but more how to live without lying to oneself. Faith, for a significant number of survivors, does not simply fail in moments of crisis. What collapses is not belief in the abstract, but trust in systems that claimed moral authority while being structurally incapable of recognising harm, accountability, or power. In that sense, faith is not lost so much as exposed.
Returning to it would require a form of self-betrayal. It would mean disbelieving your own history, overriding the discernment earned through survival, and accepting metaphysical explanations that smooth over violence rather than naming it. Appeals to forgiveness without accountability, hope without structural change, and meaning imposed from above rather than built from lived truth all ask survivors to prioritise comfort over reality. For those who have already learned what it costs to stay silent, this is not an option.
Rebuilding meaning after abuse therefore cannot be restorative in a nostalgic sense. It cannot involve returning to what was already broken. It must be constructive, grounded, and sovereign. Meaning has to be made in a way that does not require disbelief.
That is where a fundamental shift occurred for me. Traditional faith systems ask what you believe. My new faith system simply requires me to ‘do’ and accept what is demonstrably true in the body, in memory, in behaviour, and in relationships. Meaning has moved away from transcendence and toward immanence, away from doctrine and toward experience, away from submission and toward authorship. My faith has slowly been assembled.
For many survivors, art becomes central to this reconstruction, not as expression or therapy, but as a belief system in its own right. Art does not attempt to explain suffering or redeem it. It does not require harm to be transformed into purpose, nor does it demand moral cleanliness in exchange for recognition. Art simply bears witness. In this sense, art is not expressive but ontological. It asserts being, and creation becomes proof of meaning. I act, therefore I exist. I think, therefore I am. This is why survivor art often unsettles audiences because it does not reassure. It does not resolve. It stands where it is placed and refuses to be softened.
Alongside art, testimony replaces prayer. Where prayer traditionally seeks witness, recognition, and relief, testimony provides these without illusion. Prayer speaks upward, hoping to be heard. Testimony speaks outward, insisting on presence. It is not a request but a declaration.
Survivor testimony is often misunderstood as disclosure for healing alone. In reality, it is jurisdictional. It asserts narrative authority. It names harm without mitigation. It places responsibility where it belongs. In this framework, silence is no longer virtuous, endurance is no longer moral, and survival is no longer something for which gratitude is owed. Truth becomes relational rather than divine. Meaning is forged between people, not deferred to metaphysics.
The final authority in this reconstructed system is the body. Abuse fractures the relationship between body and meaning. Sensation becomes unreliable. Desire becomes suspect. The body is no longer experienced as a source of truth but as a site of danger or betrayal. Embodiment reverses this rupture by reinstating the body. Embodied meaning insists that if the body registers danger, it is real. If the body relaxes, something is safe. If the body resists, that resistance matters. This is not wellness culture or self-optimisation. It is reclaimed sovereignty. Where faith once demanded override, trust despite what you feel, embodiment demands attunement. The body becomes the boundary-maker, the truth-barometer, the site of consent.
Over time, many survivors arrive at a quiet but rigorous worldview, even if they never articulate it as such. Truth precedes comfort. Safety is earned, not assumed. Power must be named to be ethical. Meaning is made through action, not promise. This belief system does not evangelise. It does not seek converts or offer salvation. It simply refuses to lie.
This refusal is precisely what makes survivor-led meaning threatening to institutions. Art, testimony, and embodiment bypass hierarchy, resist abstraction, expose performative care, and demand structural response rather than emotional applause. They do not ask to belong. They ask to be reckoned with. This is why survivor work is so often praised rhetorically while being resisted in practice. It destabilises systems that rely on faith without accountability.
What emerges from this process is not hope in the conventional sense. It is not the reassurance that everything happens for a reason. It is something quieter and more durable: clarity, self-trust, discernment. Not a promise. Not a belief.
Just this: I know what is true, and I know how to make something real.
This is the faith I live by now. It offers no guarantees, yet it has held when nothing was promised, and the outlook was bleak.
