13th of October 2018
Melanie Trump told us that if people are going to say they have been sexually abused they need hard evidence.
I saw this and I wondered: Where does this lady come from?
How old is she?
Where has she lived?
What is her life experience?
She did not even have the decency to write her own speech when she was talking about her wonderful husband. She stole a speech from a former president´s wife! Seriously! And now she tells us that if we want to report a sexual harassment we should take a photo, have a sound recording on our phone, maybe ask the rapist to wait a minute while we prepare for the hard evidence.
I know this is not a laughing matter, but I can’t help laughing.
What is this lady teaching her son?
She is telling us that she is the most bullied person in the world!
Oh, poor woman.
While listening to the lady testifying to the senate, which was full of old men who did hire a prosecutor to take her apart so they would not look bad and then watching the judge shout and show us how not to behave, I have to say that there was dignity against arrogance, and the dignity won in my mind.
While listening and after thinking about the testimony of the serene lady I thought about the wonders of the mind.
The mind is really clever.
Some people think about it like an apartment or a house full of different rooms with doors that we can open when we want to.
I think about my mind like storage with uncountable boxes.
In the boxes my memories are kept. Some are good and some are not so good.
What I find so wonderful and amazing about the mind is that it opens the boxes when I am ready to look inside.
Some memories are good and they warm my heart and I look at them often.
Other memories are hidden in their boxes and I have not looked at them yet. Maybe I will never see them and maybe one day I will be ready and able to open the boxes where the horror is kept.
When and after, Doctor Ford was testifying she was criticised for not remembering every detail.
Her mind is clever, just as every other mind of sexual abuse survivors.
She remembered some of the details clearly.
The president told his base that after 36 years you could not accuse anyone of a crime, and he mocked Dr. Ford for not remembering what he, the precident, thought was most important.
The president is a paedophile, according to the stories about him.
What amazes me is that his wife does not care and she sides with him against the women who have accused him. What is she teaching her son, the one she wants us to believe that is her priority?
I was sexually abused more than 60 years ago.
My mind helped me and buried the memory in one of the boxes and kept it locked there until something happened to my life and I felt destroyed.
There was a sunny beautiful day and my life was destroyed. My reputation was destroyed by lies. My whole life was scrutinised by people who hated me and the authorities did not listen to anyone who was on my side. My side of the story did not count.
This sunny day in December I felt like dying and the next days and weeks and years I struggled just to keep me going and trying to pick up the pieces. My mind helped me. My clever mind that had put the abuse 60 something years ago into a hidden place opened that box. My mind knew that I was ready to face the sexual abuse and my mind knew that by showing me that I survived that abuse I would survive what was happening now. I felt relieved. I remembered details which I am not going to write here. They are not for you, the reader. Remembering helped me to understand my life better. It helped me to understand why I felt sometimes so horrible sad and why I just wanted to sit down and cry forever. The sorrow was like a stone in my heart and remembering lifted the stone from my heart.
I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered and the words in front of me were “I understand, now I understand” and a long breath of relieve followed.
My point is this.
The mind is wise. It is clever and it knows when and what we are able to cope with.
There are boxes in my mind still closed. I have not tried to open them. I know they will open up one day if that is what I need.
A friend of mine told me many years ago that the mind never puts you through more than you can survive. I believe my friend.
I am grateful to my clever mind for protecting me through a long time. I am also grateful for my mind to opening the box with the sexual abuse when I thought I would die and felt like being shattered to million pieces because of something else.
I wish Dr Ford had been believed but I know she helped a lot of people to face their fairs and perhaps open the closed boxes in their minds so they could continue living and stop being dead inside without knowing why.
I am grateful every day to be alive and I am grateful for the inner strength my parents gave me when making me.
I am not perfect but I am not in shattered pieces. With help of wonderful people I glued the pieces together. The wonderful people were stronger than the ones who tried to break me forever.
Hulda Björnsdóttir
My thoughts shared with you 