Darlene Ouimet CTACC
My mother taught me that my only value was sexual and that my success in life would be based on my looks and appeal. She began teaching me very young about sexuality. She modeled sexuality, she flirted constantly with most men, she said inappropriate things in front of me and she did inappropriate things involving me so that I would be able to survive in what she called “a man’s world” She thought she was equipping me for life. Sex is the only power that a woman has; that was her mantra, her creed.
I believe that my mother was sexually abused herself and that she had somehow come to the conclusion that her sexuality was her only value. It was different for me; in my case I had been sexually abused and sexuality scared me. I think one reason I developed dissociative identity disorder and fragmented into many personalities was because I was so scared of sexuality and yet had been taught that it was my value so I believed that I had to be sexual and to have that appeal or I would not survive, first as a child, and then as a female. As children, we have to somehow learn to cope with these conflicting beliefs. We have to somehow comprehend what we have been taught. I was not able to so I split into multiples. My earliest memories of sexual abuse were at the hands of females. That complicated the way that I processed things too, because my mother’s teaching had to do with my value in the eyes of men and didn’t seem to have anything to do with other women.
It was shocking to me when I read a book about mother daughter incest, and I related to the whole thing. I do not recall having an incestuous relationship with my mother, but yet this book hit me like a ton of bricks. My mother sexualized me. She taught me the wrong definition of value. She taught me inappropriate things, she modeled inappropriate behavior. She used me to attract men when I was a small child and when I was a teenager. She accused me of doing the things she taught me to do, even though I wasn’t doing those things. She approved of me when men were pleased with me, when men looked at me appreciatively. That isn’t the healthiest way to get approval. Certainly it must have been confusing to me that this was what my mother seemed the most proud of, or maybe it had become normal to me by then.
My blog Emerging from Broken is about the solutions that I found and implemented in my life so that I could become one whole person and live in wholeness and freedom. This article is about just one of the many lies that my mother taught to me about the world and about myself. There were others; other liars and other abusers all of which make up my story, and all of which contribute to my understanding of broken and then of healing.
I hope we meet on the journey;
Bright blessings, Darlene Ouimet
