Chapter 2
What Is Sexual Abuse and Why It’s Not Your Fault
The only person responsible for abuse is the abuser. Always.
If you’re reading this with a knot in your stomach, wondering if what happened to you “counts” as abuse, or if you’re carrying guilt about something that was done TO you—take a breath. This chapter is about understanding what sexual abuse really is and releasing the blame you never should have carried.
We need to start by seeing each other for what happened to us, not what’s wrong with us. Children get traumatized not just by the bad acts, but because they’re left alone with the hurt, forced to make sense of something senseless.
What Sexual Abuse Actually Is
Sexual abuse is when someone uses power, control, or manipulation to violate your sexual boundaries. It’s any sexual act or behavior that you didn’t want, couldn’t consent to, or that made you feel unsafe. This includes:
- Unwanted touching of private areas
- Being forced or coerced into sexual acts
- Someone exposing themselves to you
- Being shown pornographic material
- Sexual comments that made you uncomfortable
- Someone taking sexual photos of you
- Being manipulated into sexual behavior through “games” or “secrets”
- Any sexual contact between an adult and child
- Sexual activity between children with a power imbalance
The key word here is POWER. Abuse is always about someone using their power—physical, emotional, age-related, or positional—to take what they want regardless of your wellbeing.
It might have happened once or hundreds of times. It might have been violent or seemingly “gentle.” It might have been a stranger, but more often it’s someone known and trusted. None of these details change this truth: it was abuse, and it was not your fault.
Chapter 3
The Science of Tonic Immobility
Their ears were pricked forward, bodies tense, and they kept glancing between me and the darkened yard. Something had caught their attention in the inky blackness beyond the porch light.
Curious and slightly concerned, I let them out—and instantly, they bolted into the yard like shots from a cannon. The sound of their paws thundering across the grass was followed within seconds by wild, frenzied barking. One dog positioned himself on one side of something on the ground, the other on the opposite side, both circling, locked in on whatever they’d discovered, their barks echoing off the neighbor’s fence.
I flipped on the harsh porch light and stepped outside, squinting as my eyes adjusted. There, illuminated in the yellow glow, was a possum. Lying completely still. Absolutely motionless. Its gray fur looked dull in the artificial light, its small black eyes stared unseeing at nothing. Clearly, it was dead.
[…story continues with possum “coming back to life” and disappearing…]
It hadn’t been dead. It had been in immobility—a full-body freeze response so convincing that even up close, even with two agitated dogs circling and barking, we were absolutely certain it wasn’t alive. That possum wasn’t “playing dead”—that phrase trivializes what was actually happening. It was surviving, using an ancient biological response that shut down its entire system to avoid further danger.
Here’s what matters: this isn’t just a “possum thing.” It’s a mammalian thing. We have it too.
The Science of Tonic Immobility
When you experience overwhelming threat—especially when escape seems impossible—your nervous system can trigger the same response.
So, when faced with a threat that feels overwhelming or inescapable, our bodies can shut down just like that possum’s. We might freeze. Go numb. Check out. Play dead — emotionally, mentally, even physically.
That shutdown is not weakness. It’s not giving up. It’s protection. It’s survival.