Feeling Afraid to Speak Up
Feeling afraid to speak up about my experiences around childhood sexual abuse made it hard to speak up as an adult until I began to heal my body.
When I was 11-years old, I went mute.
It was the summer before sixth grade, and one morning, I woke up with memories of things I did not understand. Things that brought me deep shame and suffocating guilt.
And hard as I tried, I could not bring myself to speak. The worst of it lasted several months. A few words here and there. But not at all what I wanted to say. And no one urged me to talk.
It would take me over 20 years before I’d finally get the support I needed to not only make sense of my experiences around childhood sexual abuse, but the courage to even BEGIN to speak openly about it.
To get to that point, it took removing everything from my life that was keeping my voice locked up.
Things like…
The weed that would give me twenty minutes of manic euphoria before leaving me feeling scattered and fatigued.
The alcohol, the toxic food, and the lack of exercise that kept me numb, inflamed, and lethargic.
The families – the one I was born into and the one I married into – that were rife with dysfunction and addiction.
The marriage where I was reduced to an object and spent more time shouldering their burdens and battles while barely shouldering my own.
Because...
I wasn’t saying much if I was high.
I wasn’t saying much if I was drunk.
I wasn’t saying much if I was busy keeping the peace and trying to help others.
And I definitely wasn’t saying much if I was preoccupied with a man.
And deep down...
I never did like staying quiet. I never did like biting my tongue. I never did like making excuses for other peoples' behaviors. Including my own.
And I never did get fully used to the gnawing feeling in my gut that there HAD to be more to life than THIS. I wasn't supposed to live my life feeling so... so... BLOCKED... right!?
So when I finally decided to get real about how I was living my life, started taking better care of my body, and began learning how to be there for MYSELF in a way no one was when I needed it most, THAT’S when my voice began to emerge.
THAT'S when I could even BEGIN to have a chance at truly helping others.
It had to start with me.
And it has to start with you.
– Malana
4/12/25
This post was originally published on my Instagram on August 20th, 2022, and is the first post of a three-part series: 1, 2, 3. This post would go on to be repurposed and featured in a book titled Intuitive Writing: The Remedy for Writer's Block and the Secret to Authentic Communication authored by Jacqueline Fisch. We discussed the story during a 24-minute writer's chat that you can listen to here.
