My name is Sophie Olson.

I was sexually abused in the family home, up to the age of 14, by a close family member, from a very young age. As well as sexual abuse, I was subjected to physical abuse (much of it hidden from others in the family), and emotional abuse that continued into adulthood). I am from a middle-class background, and from a family that would be considered privileged. I was privately educated. I subsequently suffered further abuse from others, including a clinician, as a young person, and beyond.

As a child and young person, I showed many signs of having experienced child sexual abuse, but these indicators were misunderstood or dismissed by my family, schools, and health professionals. I attempted to disclose what had happened to me at 18, 25, and 30, but I don’t consider these moments true disclosures. Most of the words I needed to say, I still couldn’t speak.

The turning point for me was the death of someone I knew: Frances Andrade. She was abused by her former music teacher and died by suicide after giving evidence in court. Her death became the catalyst for me to seek out my therapist, Patricia Walsh, who supported me in telling my story.

Initially my first steps towards healing was through accessing peer support at a local charity that I began to find some sense of validation. I connected with other survivors and for the first time felt like I was less alone with my experience. Then it was therapy, with Patricia Walsh – a therapist highly experienced in working with women who had suffered sexual violence.

I tried different creative methods in therapy to speak the ‘unspeakable’ - art, collage and eventually (and most successfully), writing. I wrote a creative account of the abuse in the style of a fairy tale. I immersed myself in my own story, with a lot of support from Pat. Speaking the words and sharing my story was the most vital part of the healing process. I wrote a lot of poetry too, always to express the words I find harder to say. Regular writing practice continues to help me, as healing from child sexual abuse doesn’t have an end point. The impacts of child sexual abuse are lifelong, which is why I am passionate about improving the current response to victims and survivors.

My therapist worked intuitively, was safely boundaried and able to offer more in terms of communication between sessions, and didn’t stick to scripted platitudes or a formulaic approach. This made the difference. I saw Pat as human first and professional second, and I felt she saw me as human first and client second. I’d had a lot of previous therapy and never experienced this before.

A resource that I find especially beneficial in my healing process was an online writing group led by Sasa Jankovic (who now facilitates The Flying Child writing groups for child sexual abuse survivors). I published some of the writing I did in the group on a The Flying Child blog. It later developed into a website for our nonprofit organisation: The Flying Child CIC.

By using my experiences as a driving force behind the set up of my own community interest company: The Flying Child CIC. My education was cut short by a course lead at university who saw me as a lazy, disengaged student, not a traumatised one – and threw me out of my degree. This had an extremely detrimental effect on my self worth and I believed I would never have a career.

Like many survivors in distress, I reached out for help to the mental health system, but this caused further harm, and when the ‘treatment’ made no difference to the distress of child sexual abuse, I was told I “would never recover or live without community support or medication.” I was put on lifelong benefits.

I reclaimed a sense of identity and agency through working and contributing to society, in a way I believed for decades was impossible, because I bought into the belief of others that I was too ‘damaged/fragile/broken.

The self-care practices that have become important to me during my healing are:

Writing. Working. Advocacy. Activism.

All my life I had been waiting for someone else to ‘fix’ me because I was told I needed fixing by a mental health system who diagnosed my survival strategies as mental illness. The turning point was when I realised Pat might be able to guide me from the darkness, but she couldn’t save me. Only I could do that. Pat helped me to see I didn’t need fixing because I wasn’t broken. I was sexually abused - I was reacting normally to trauma. Because of empathy, understanding, kindness, and non-pathologising support I was able to tell my story. My work and activism brings a sense of purpose to my life and helps me to live a happy life, despite the impacts of CSA.

I have encountered many setbacks on my healing journey.  In processing my story, I fell backwards into the familiar abyss. It was overwhelming to reveal, accept and process the abuse because I had minimised it for many years, mainly as a protective factor. Overcoming these setbacks were only possible because of the support of Pat - a skilled, patient, experienced and wise practitioner.

In sharing my story, I realised not everyone was able to stand by me. A couple of friends ghosted me after reading my manuscript (which has since been published). It was devastating because it made me feel ashamed of speaking out.

Then it made me angry. Why as survivors are we so hard to see and hear? Now I understand the reasons why as a society, people turn the other way, but it’s not enough to say: “This is too upsetting/shocking/uncomfortable,” because children are abused on an unprecedented scale, and the impacts are lifelong.

Yes - the subject is difficult, but negative societal responses to survivors, in workplaces, communities and families, exacerbate often deep-seated feelings of shame. The shunning, pathologising, disbelief and victim-blaming of survivors serves only the perpetrators.

I have a few words of advice to other CSA Survivors on their healing journey. Firstly, there is no such thing as a ‘perfect survivor.’ Don’t compare yourself to others. Life can be very challenging, and sometimes, simply putting one foot in front of the other is enough. Survivors contact me and say, “I can’t do what you do because of xyz.” I think much of this belief stems from interventions and judgements of others that have eroded hope over the years, particularly if the impacts have affected our career, relationships, and health.

There were doors open to me as a survivor of child sexual abuse that I never knew were there, and the right support, plus networking with the survivor community and survivor-led organisations, led me to places I believed (and had been told) were out of my reach, such as academia.

Today much of my work is in research, despite my lack of further education. As Pat would say - there is more than one path to a destination, none of your life has been wasted.

You can find out more about The Flying Child CIC - a nonprofit organisation leading conversation about survivor-led training, campaigning and support, at www.theflyingchild.com, and on our socials @TheFlyingChild

#SocietysShameNotMine #SideBySideCSA #TheFlyingChild