Women Support Women

I feel so passionate about this! There’s nothing more girl boss then supporting other women. The women who’ve supported me in the last 9 months have taught me how much strength there is in working together; to protect one another, achieving dreams & goals together, healing together, fighting together.

I truly have angel people in my life who have gone above & beyond, and I have been really blessed to have a super strong support system. I’ve thought a lot about the things they do that I think are important for our growth and healing. So let’s talk about some of the things I’ve appreciated from supporters.

Something specific that has really been helpful for me is when my friends/ family open up to me about how they are doing and feeling in dealing with everything. I had been forced to be so vulnerable in every way so the open communication, trust, and vulnerability was nice to have reciprocated. This way we could grow together rather than just being watched/ “supported” from a distance. That two way trust is important balance & communication for any relationship.

There are a lot of things that make supporting your friends/ family through a trauma like SA or rape difficult.

It’s hard to watch people you love hurt or struggle. We’re humans & have empathy:) this means it can also be really hard keep from internalizing their trauma & fears and letting that affect your own life, mental health, and relationships.

Trauma is hard for everyone involved. The close people immediately in my life, helping me when I was first dealing with everything are what is called ‘secondhand victims’, this means they can go through a lot of the pain & fear & have their own struggles to cope with.

It’s common when coping with trauma experienced by a loved one to gaslight/ invalidate ourselves. When someone is struggling with something like this, it’s easy to tell ourselves that “I’m not allowed to feel hurt or be struggling because it’s not about me, it’s about the person who I’m supporting. Only the victim can struggle and be traumatized and have PTSD because it happened to them not me” This mindset is just simply not true or helpful. It’s ok to not be ok. We have to validate ourselves and take care of ourselves. You’re experience and feelings matter. You won’t be able to truly validate the people you love if you’re always gaslighting yourself. You can’t serve or help others if you neglect yourself too much.

I have learned that I need people. We need people. I wanted so badly to just deal with everything on my own because I didn’t want to be a burden to my friends but the fact was I needed them/ therapy/ group classes/ meds

It has also been beneficial that people just continue being my friend & allowing our relationship to build outside of what happened to me. My friends are really good at being mindful of things that could be triggering for me without treating me like a broken thing all the time.

At times what I needed was for my friends to just hold me & cry with me. Women I trusted to just hold my hand. They didn’t always try to fix it or me, or find solutions because; 1. That’s not what I needed. 2. Sometimes there’s JUST not a solution. It JUST is & it JUST sucks.

My friends & family often encourage me to try to heal and get better but also Allow me to JUST not be ok sometimes. The balance of BOTH is important.