Losses We Suffer--Memory

One way some of us survive the pain is to forget it or push it out of our consciousness. If we have to deny or forget what was done to us so we can survive childhood, we may grow up, look back, and ask, "Where was my childhood?" To be deprived of the memories--even the good ones--is abuse. And when we begin to recover our memories, we also understand why we "forgot."

In one group meeting, we talked about our amnesia, and one man spoke up. "Now it makes sense!" He said that the only thing he had remembered about childhood was that he seemed always to be alone. "Now I understand that being alone was when I felt safe. There was no one around to hurt me."

--excerpted from When A Man You Love Was Abused by Cecil Murphey, Kregel Publications, 2010, page 43.