Sherry's Story of Survival........


Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I am also a survivor of abuse. But of course mine is different.

It all started when my mom and dad got divorced. My mother flat out told me and my older brother that she needed to be on her own and that she didn't want us. I remember that conversation as if it was yesterday. My dad decided that my mother would never see us again and moved me and brother to Ohio from Texas without her knowledge.

It took about two years for my mom to contact us and by then she was remarried. She wanted me and my brother to come to Texas for a visit with my grandmother who lived in PA, she would just pick us up on the way. So my dad agreed to let us go! The trip down was good. Once we got there I met my step father for the first time. Now mind you, I was twelve years old at the time and an earlier developer. That night I would have my first experience with sex. My stepfather waited until my mother went to sleep, crept into my room where me and my brother were sleeping and proceeded to whisper in my ear "don't worry I can't get you pregnant" when I heard those words I froze. What was he going to do to me? Why? Then he proceeded to his business. My brother was still fast asleep across the room. It all happened so fast I didn't know if I should scream or what. The next day I couldn't even look at him or my mother. He of course wanted me to go everywhere with him. I didn't know what to do should I tell my grandmother what was happening, should I tell my mother, what if they didn't believe me. So I just kept quite. After the fourth day we were there my grandmother started to become suspicious as to why we were spending so much time together, she decided to confront me. She thought that I was spending so much time with my stepfather to steal him away from my mother! Because I was jealous, but still I remained silent. The next morning my grandmother left without saying a word to me or my brother and returned home. Every summer from that point on I paid an annual visit to my mother knowing what was in store for me when I got there. But I couldn't tell her I had so much fear that she wouldn't believe me because she never believed anything I told her. This continued until I was 18 my mother called one day to tell me that my stepfather had had a massive stroke, and was paralyzed I was over joy at the news. I couldn't help it he was finally getting what he deserved PAYBACK.

About a year later I finally got up enough courage to tell my mother what happened to me on my yearly visits. Once it came out of mouth she called me a liar and hung up on me. I didn't speak to her for several months until she called me to apologize that she had found out that he had abused his own daughter for years until her mother divorced him when she found out. But I was so hurt that it took someone else to tell her to believe and not believe her own daughter.

The story doesn't end there though, my mother after divorcing my stepfather was in financial trouble. So I asked to her to come live with me and my husband so we could help her out after all she was my mother. This would give us the opportunity to maybe repair some of the damage. So me and my husband took our vacation and all the savings we had went to Oklahoma and packed her up and moved her to Pennsylvania. She was there about a year and received a phone call one day from my stepfather saying he was rehabilitated enough to leave the nursing home and wanted her to come back down to Texas and be with him. So my mother decided to ask me if that was OK with ME! WHAT! How could you even consider this one, I thought to myself? What was she thinking how could you go back to a man that you know abused your own daughter not to mention his own or whoever else? I was crushed. She made the decision to go back with him.

Two years later I think it all finally hit me, I found myself getting ready for work one morning crying and crying I couldn't even finish getting ready I sat on the couch took out my bottle of antidepressants open them and swallowed every single one of them. After I did it I realized that maybe I didn't want to die so I picked up the phone and called my sister-in-law to help me. Of course I made it, or else I would be talking to you today. But I was feeling that everything was my fault, I was a terrible person to let this happen to me what a big looser. But after two suicide attempts a lot of counseling I am still healing. Of course this isn't the whole story but it is pretty much the gist. Me and my mother still are not talking she to this day still doesn't think she did anything wrong.

Thank you for listening