I am a survivor of child ab*se.
I am very fortunate to have healed from my experience; thankfully, it is similar to this woman's story in Spilled Milk.
This book recalls the upbringing of Brooke, a young girl living a very tumultuous childhood in a family of five children. From the age of 7, she experiences various forms of abuse at the hands of her father, and Brooke constantly struggles with protecting her family while inadvertently protecting her abuser...
There were many things in this book that resonated with me, with perhaps the biggest one being how egregiously the abuse was normalized.
For example, there is a line where Brooke says, "I thought that what happened in my house was normal because I didn't know anything else, he molested me from the time I was a little kid."
This was a similar experience for me -- I did not realize the abuse was wrong until several years later, when my teacher played our class a video on the topic.
Like many victims, it took seeing a healthy family interacting for Brooke to recognize that her family was not right...
"The sudden cognizance about my defective family was hard to swallow. Somewhere in the depths of my gut I knew something wasn't right, but I could never put my finger on it. No one ever pointed out that my home life was not normal. Now, no one had to. I was witnessing it with my own eyes."
I was around the same age, about 13 when one is old enough to begin visiting others' homes, when I saw for myself that other families interacted differently; happier, and safer...
What was absolutely abhorrent was Brooke's mother's reaction to learning about the abuse -- and, again, unfortunately I can also speak from experience...
Firstly, her mother was aware of the possibility, if not reality, of the abuse very early on, after reading one of Brooke's journals.
"You're only a child and this should not be. My God, help me to make Brooke's life a whole lot better. ... please help her, she's only 11-years-old."
As opposed to EVER helping her own daughter, even AFTER the truth finally comes to light, the mother chooses to blame Brooke, and hide from the truth about her husband.
"He won't be there, Brooke, he's gone. Who cares that he lived there? We can live there just as happy."
After revealing my own abuse to my mother (my abuser was her father; my grandfather), she refused to believe me, took his side, and even cut contact with me for several years. When we did speak again, she continued to bring me around my abuser!
To this day, my mother continues to choose her father over me, over the truth -- he has been deceased for over a decade and my mother's pride chooses a memory over her family... I have refused contact with my mother this time, in an effort to protect my young children from the strange men she tries to bring around them.
So now, one can probably understand why the term "survivor" is used. Yes, for many, they may escape the clutches of the initial abuse, whether a one-time incident or abuse that transcends over the years. But the consequences of bringing it to light -- attending court, loss of family members and friends, little emotional support, coping with rumors, healing during future relationships -- is often too much for victims to bear...
Statistics tell us that victims of abuse are 10× more likely than those who did not experience abuse, to commit suicide.