In the 1980s, I freed myself from an abusive relationship and started counseling. Then, I joined a group of women at my counselor suggestion so that I wouldn’t feel I was the only one who was going through that problem. THAT was a shocker, because those kinds of dysfunctions create your feeling like a freak and unable to tell anyone from sheer embarrassment.
I met someone who became a very good friend. We stayed close for years. We supported each other, had a lot of fun, our kids had a lot of fun together… She and I trusted each other with things we would never tell another soul. If we needed to reach out at 3:00 a.m., we both knew that it was important. She and I felt like we had developed a precious “sisterhood”.
My counselor was right. I wasn’t alone, and there were stories much worse than mine as well as those that seemed not as bad. But all our experiences were just as emotionally and spiritually damaging as any other.
Attending multiple 12-step groups for several years greatly helped me with issues like codependency, poor boundaries, low self-esteem, and misplaced anger and guilt. Best of all, hopelessness, helplessness, and feeling completely defeated became impotent, unpleasant memories.
During that time, my friend and I heard raves about a 12-step group close to Atlanta. Even though it wasn’t local and about an hour away, we decided to go. We had trouble finding it, but finally got inside just as the meeting started.
Imagine our surprise hearing right off the bat a 12-step group name that was NOT even CLOSE to the one we were trying to find. Our polite Oscar-worthy performances can only be credited to our manners, unwillingness to cause a scene and care not to embarrass anyone.
We had unwittingly joined members of an extremely private group of women: SAA. Sex Addicts Anonymous.
I could stop right there because, well! Face it: it is a funny story.
But the story doesn’t end there. The rest of the story isn’t funny AT ALL.
Before this night, I myself probably would have snickered at the thought of a real group called Sex Addicts Anonymous.
To make it shorter than it could be and maybe than it should be, let it suffice to say that these women were in extreme emotional and mental pain. There were professional women, factory workers, stay at home moms.. each had stories of broken marriages, destroyed families and careers leaving them empty and ashamed.
Their self hatred, disgust, and shame took a heavy toll on every aspect of their lives.
They were not having fun. They were not party girls. They were broken, miserable, self loathing “servants” to a powerful something inside that drove them to do the things their dis-ease demanded to keep their dysfunction comfortable. It’s perfectly described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:19:
“For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” (NIV)
One woman was so damaged that she’d frequently disassociate and would appear to be in a trance. It was not as “neat and pretty” as a trance, but it’s the only way I can describe it to be close to what she went through a few times in my presence that evening.
Her satanic cult parents abused her in ways I had couldn’t even imagine. When she was 12 years old, they began incorporating her into their rituals. She was frequently drugged, and her parents encouraged members to take turns sexually assaulting her.
Honestly, to this day, I will say a prayer for her and hold her in high regard for maintaining her sanity and keeping a strong determination to escape her past which had completely excluded her consent, her safety, and honestly, her pleasure.
TO BE CONTINUED…
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