Finding Community

Having support is always good, and support can come in many forms. It can come from friends, family, classmates, you name it. When you go through something traumatic, whether it’s a sexual assault (or attempted assault), combat, domestic abuse, or any other trauma, I think that another form of support that is essential is a community. In this context, community means people that have a similar experience to yours.

For me, I experienced an attempted sexual assault and now I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Therefore, I have found community with other sexual assault and PTSD survivors. It allows me to talk more candidly, to talk about what makes surviving so difficult, and sharing other details about day-to-day life that people who haven’t gone through the experience can’t understand. Not to say that you can’t have these conversations with a non-survivor of a similar trauma, but it may feel more one sided than reciprocated.

Finding community with other survivors has helped me better understand my own trauma as well as figuring out who I am. When I meet with these amazingly strong survivors, I don’t just see their trauma. I see them living their life: having a job, settling down with a family, or being spontaneous like their trauma never happened. Yes, they suffer setbacks (as we all do), but the more I speak with these people and observe them from afar, I see that the trauma, the PTSD, the anxiety and depression, the triggers, the flashbacks and the fear are all one part of them. There is so much more to all of us than something that happened to us in the past.

I go back and forth on the emotional scale of thriving and being down in the dumps. It changes on a daily basis and I never know what the next day, or heck, the next hour might bring. This means that I have to choose to try to live in the present moment and be excited about where I am NOW, who I’m with NOW. And if the anxiety is too overpowering, then I do my best to calm myself down somehow or remove myself from a seemingly threatening situation.

All of these skills and tricks are things that I have picked up from other survivors. I learned different forms of self care, how to prioritize myself, and how to start communicating with others what I am going through and what I need from others if they want to help me. I have found community online, on social media. There are so many people out there who have been through something horrific and are willing to share it with the world. Take Elizabeth Smart for example: kidnapped at the age of 14 from her bedroom, held captive for 9 months, repeatedly raped and starved. Today, she is married, has children, and speaks all over the nation if not world wide, talking about how she has overcome her experience. Or Bre Lasley and her sister Kayli were attacked by a man who broke into their home one night, with a knife. Bre was stabbed multiple times and was told by her attacker that he was going to kill her. Her sister Kayli had flagged down an officer and Bre was saved. After her experience, she started Fight Like Girls, which is her way of giving back to the community to promote awareness about self defense and other things like that. And guess what, Elizabeth Smart and Bre Lasley found community with each other and are friends to this day, celebrating and promoting each other while trying to make the world a better place.

The point is, finding community can take you a long way. It can validate you, it can help you put into words what you haven’t been able to describe before. I know that when I started finding my community, these survivors were able to put my feelings into words, and I was able to then talk with my family, using those same words, to help them better understand me. I felt like less of a misfit, less ashamed, and less alone. These are the people I call when I can’t breathe because I’m having an anxiety attack. These are the ones I talk to when I am confused about why I feel a certain way. And these are the people that I find so much joy with because we live our lives with pride, knowing that we are overcoming something that tried to take away our reason for living, our dignity, our security, our confidence. Each day is a battle, but in the end, we are going to triumph. We are the ones who are going to walk away with a life full of memories we cherish and people we love and fought for.