Jaala On The Invisible Wounds of Abuse: A Powerful Letter to Survivors Everywhere

The thing most people don’t understand is that abuse strips us of our identities and even our sense of reality. Half the work afterward is regaining a lens on the world and on ourselves. We do this while managing a house, being the sole provider for children, building a career, pursuing further education, creating safety and stability, and chasing new goals.

The loss of identity and sense of reality is by far the hardest part of abuse recovery. Honestly, the physical wounds were easier to heal. It’s the psychological damage that cuts the deepest. This is the part you simply cannot grasp unless you’ve been here.

It is a long process, and if you haven’t had to live it, heal it, or face the psychological remnants, please don’t judge what you don’t understand.

When Others Just Don’t Get It

Survivors often encounter well-meaning but damaging comments. Here’s how to reframe those moments for yourself and others:

“I would never let that happen to me.”

This comment isn’t about the survivor; it’s about the speaker’s ego. In that moment, they’re clinging to a false sense of control, needing to believe they’re somehow above it. When you catch yourself in judgement, pause and bring some curiosity. You don’t need to rush to fill the space. You can simply sit back and listen without needing to “fix” things so you feel comfortable.

Don’t ask a survivor to absorb your shame so you can feel better about yourself. That’s your character in question now. Own it. We didn’t think it would happen to us either.

“Just move on and get over it.”

You have no idea how someone is handling things day to day. You have no idea what they’re doing to make necessary changes. This is a slow process from the outside—and it needs to be. We are healing massive depths of ourselves.

This isn’t a case where you remove the abuser and suddenly everything is fine. That’s a fantasy and a complete dismissal of the actual journey this person is on.

Again, reset your empathy here. These are normal human reactions when confronted with the reality of abuse. I’m not shaming you for feeling them. I’m reminding you to offer more compassion and humanity in those harder moments of connection. We know it isn’t easy. We appreciate the extra effort.

Replace the Judgement with Real Support

Listen and encourage.
Offer practical help that actually supports a real obstacle.
Small gestures matter. Something as simple as offering to go on a walk usually helps more than you realise.

A Letter to the Survivors: Holding Your Truth

Part of healing is learning not to get bent out of shape every time someone doesn’t understand. Early on, it feels like a dagger and we want to defend or prove. Later, we learn to let it pass. Their ignorance doesn’t change our truth. One of the clearest signs of recovery is when you no longer crumble or rage at being misunderstood.

Hold your head high. Don’t waste energy trying to prove or explain. That’s not your work anymore.

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” — T.S. Eliot

Your identity will move through victimhood and then into the survivor stage. It’s part of the journey. We can’t stay victims, and we also can’t stay stuck as survivors.

Victimhood is a necessary step. You are allowed to own what happened to you. In fact, finally saying “this happened to me,” loud and unapologetic, is a massive liberation for abuse survivors. We have to truly own all the hurt and make sense of the confusion inside the fog of cognitive dissonance.

Our identity often stays tethered to the past. I accept that I’m in the survivor phase right now. I have processed it all, found peace, and started building my life: changed jobs, gone back to school, started writing, raised children, gone to therapy, tried new hobbies, travelled, made new friends.

I can still feel the shadow of the abuse on my identity. I still see myself as a warrior or a survivor. But I also trust this is just one leg of the journey. One day, I’ll be living the “new” life I’m building. That layer of life will make my story less about what was and more about the new present waiting ahead.

I don’t know what the next stage looks like yet. I call it the “living stage.” It’s still taking shape, but I can see pieces coming together more each month. I trust it to unfold how and when it’s meant to. And I trust myself to get there, hurdles and all.

There are times I get frustrated that I’m not further ahead. We all have those days. But when I look back over my shoulder, I see more of what I’ve built and less of what used to be. When I look in the mirror, I see this new version of myself: a woman who will keep living, with laughter along the way, into the next stage of life. Don’t get caught up feeling defeated by what you haven’t figured out yet. Keep looking for the tiny ways you’ve grown and built forward. Keep going.

Yes, this is the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Some days it will be awful. But listen—by the end, you’ll be the strongest, most interesting person you know.