I love words. No surprise there since I seem to have an unlimited capacity for speaking and writing them, but my love for words is mostly due to their nuances. For instance, consider these two sentences:
“Wow! That is unbelievable!”
“That seems unbelievable, don’t you think?”
The first sentence makes unbelievable an agreement while the second is a diminishment of someone’s truth. The inflections are different and it is easy to imagine the tone and facial expressions as being different.
Is everything that seems unbelievable not true? It seems like a good question to ask as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly robust and used. Flying pigs at sunset for example. In a world that seems to struggle with truth, it can be concerning.
One of the core principles of caring well for those who have experienced trauma is to believe them. Finding the stories of survivors unbelievable was put on national display during the Confirmation Hearing for Judge Brett Kavanaugh in September of 2018. I sat transfixed as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford seemed to be on trial—which should not have been the intent. Several committee members pointed out that an FBI investigation should have—by protocol—taken place first.
I now understand my deep interest in the hearing and why the following statement by Senator Leahy turned my carefully hidden story from unbelievable to believable:
“Dr. Ford has at times been criticized for what she does not remember from 36 years ago, but we have numerous experts, including a study by the U.S. Army Military Police School of Behavior Sciences Education, that lapses of memory are wholly consistent with severe trauma and stress of assault.” (Page 666)
As a survivor of sexual assault, there was not a single part of Dr. Ford’s testimony that felt unbelievable. The fact that she didn’t know how she got home made complete sense to me. Yet, it was clear that most who sat on the committee did not believe her. The extent that Rachel Mitchell, a career sex crime prosecutor seemed to say, “That seems unbelievable, don’t you think?” made it clear why so many survivors never report sexual abuse. (As a prosecutor of sex crimes, her role in the hearing seemed odd and decidedly inconsistent in unexpected ways.)
My goal in this is not to assign guilt but to say that something happened and Dr. Ford’s testimony was completely in line with how traumatic memories are stored in fragments and later lived out or retrieved by survivors. She was articulate in explaining this in neuroscientific terms. That she had installed a door on the second floor of her house when it was built was convincing evidence of trauma since I had so many examples of my own!
On the other side (there will be disagreement), I have accepted that if it is possible for my subconscious to repress memories, it is also possible for abusers to do the same. I don’t like that—I find it unbelievable. Yet, I have personal experiences that tell me it is true. I also believe few crimes deserve a life sentence—especially those committed in youth, with excess alcohol. Consequences and accountability, yes, but people can change. That change will include sincere apologies, not defensiveness.
At the same time, it is true that very few perpetrators ever stop harming others. On a side note, it is remarkable how adamant and convincing perpetrators can be of their innocence when questioned.
During the hearing, both sides proclaimed their truth with a fervent desire to be believed. In these situations, the less powerful will almost always come out on the losing end no matter the truth—especially when politics are involved. The most important question in my mind was who had the most power? It is rare for the person with the most power to be told that their story is unbelievable.
These thoughts became a musing today for two reasons. First, Christine Blasey Ford has recently published One Way Back: A Memoir and it is on my TBR list. Second, my recent six-month pause to heal from memories that surfaced last fall brought me to the realization that one of the most important people in my young life found one part of my story unbelievable. That disbelief kept me from seeking help because it caused me to doubt my own story and bury almost all of it for over fifty years.
Do pigs fly at sunset? Yes, apparently so in a world that struggles to discern truth. I wasn’t believed because the most powerful person in my small world said I was lying.
The greatest harm we can do to another hurting human is to not believe them. No one made us God! Believe the survivor—those with the least power—so they can feel safe enough to reflect on and unwind their story. Maybe parts of it will then be viewed differently, maybe not. Trust me, the belief that something horrible happened will not change—believe them.
“Trauma is not what happens to us,
but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”
~Peter A. Levine~
Note: My first three books are filled with my determined search for the truth that I buried because I was not believed—over and over again.
