It was not your fault

As mentioned in my last post, I've recently been reading a book by Justin and Lindsey Holcomb called Rid of my Disgrace. I posted the opening paragraph of the first chapter (see previous post The most helpful paragraph I've read in a long time...). I said I'd take each sentence of the paragraph in turn to give space for consideration, discussion and to give it time to sink in.

So here goes...

It was not your fault. IT was not your fault. It was NOT your fault. It was not YOUR fault. It was not your FAULT. Do I hear this? IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT. Do you hear this? It. was. not. your. fault. You are not to blame. You didn't deserve this. I didn't deserve this. It was not our fault.

I don't know about you, but this is something that I find hard to believe. Self-blame has been a close friend. I tried to understand what happened to me. I tried to understand why someone would touch me in such an intimate way. Why someone would play a game that felt so scary. Why someone would push my hand onto his penis and encourage me to rub it. Or why someone would kiss me without my consent and then push me onto a sofa, climb on top of me and assault me. Why?

It was not your fault.

It was NOT your fault.

I've come to understand that we may never know the exact reason for these things. But we can know that it was not our fault. We can know that we weren't to blame. We can know that we were not responsible for this. This isn't our guilt to carry. This isn't our weight. This is not our fault.

It was not your fault.

Julia x