Turning Pain Into Power…Life After Rape

Being a person who was raped is weird. It’s not something you can really talk about casually, especially as an African female, yet you feel its effects every day. It’s a lonely, frustrating, and isolating existence, and it’s punctuated by fear and shame. Many of us in this group have lived alone with these memories and feelings for so many years and did our best to avoid them and bury them. Avoidance didn’t always work though, in the long run it actually made us even more afraid.

Our mental health suffered on and off throughout some of our adult life until we decided to face the feelings of fear and shame head on. And then we decided to turn pain into power by starting a group where we would all share our views, our problems, our insights, our goals, our visions, and our aspirations.

”By A Sister For A Sister” was born with a group of about 10 women and it has slowly grown to 30. Today we are making bead work, bags, bracelets, and bangles – all using beads. These products are hand made and that is how each one of us is able to put food on our tables, pay our bills, and get an education.

Each cent counts for us. That is what makes a difference.

After rape many people feel like they are broken and that there is no hope. This is not true. We are not broken; we just need the right support so that we can recover. You need to be strong, push ahead, and arm yourself with a tool belt of resources which include (but is not limited to) supportive friends, a good therapist, healthy routines around sleep and food, reading books, and reaching out to others.

There is life after rape, a new life where you don’t feel ashamed of who you are, or that you are to blame for what happened to you. A life where those around you support you, a life where fear doesn’t creep up on you and explode.

We cannot let the fear of negative experiences stifle our recovery. Please donate and share.

~The By A Sister For A Sister team.