Book excerpt spotted at Panache Report:
"Please understand that sexual molestation brutally violates a child's mind; destroying all traces of innocence. And more often than not, it takes with it their security and self-worth while imprisoning them in a painful world of silence and guilt."
"When I finally found the courage to let my father's deeds tumble from my lips, I did not know what to expect, but I never in a million years would have guessed that my mother would turn on me. Her words of betrayals did far more damage to me than my father's deeds. They spoke volumes to the fact that she really did not care about me, which my father obviously knew. It is because she was so expressive with her dislike for me that probably made my father know he could get away with violating me."
"It turned out to be true, when he told me that if I ever told, it would be he that my mother believed and me that the family hated."
"My father confessed his actions on the same day that I disclosed them to my mother. And on that frightful day of admission, I watched my mother, looking for a sign, any sign that she cared about me."
"I watched her as she stood in my bedroom citing their decision to send me away. Once again, I became the little girl who was always looking for her mother's signal of affection and approval, but once again there was none!"
"The memory of my father whispering in my ear during the wee hours of the night about the beauty of my body has played over and over in my head for many years. And as if that has not been incapacitating enough by itself, having to comprehend the fact that more often than not, he had just gotten out of the bed he shared with my mother to find his way to my bedroom has just added to the realization of the painful situation."
"It came to injure my mother's womanhood to such a point that she came to think of me as her adversary, with her striking out at me (the other woman) every chance she could, no matter where we were and what the occasion."
Source: "In My Family's Shadow," by: Deloris E. Jordan
