Teri Hatcher reveals sexual abuse
Teri Hatcher reveals in Vanity Fair magazine that she was sexually abused by an uncle as a child. “This is something I’ve tried to hide my whole life,” she said. “Nobody wanted to talk about it. But all I did was blame myself. I have so much pain. I’m a woman who carries around all these layers of fear and vulnerability. I’m trying to be my powerful me.”
“You ask yourself, ‘Am I just crazy? Did I make all this up?’ Somehow it might be easier to accept that you’re crazy and you made it all up than to admit that it happened, and how awful it was,” she said.
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Many other women have talked about being abused:
“Nothing exaggerates the torture of childhood. People say children are happy. They forget the terrible revelations… the sudden shadows on the ceilings.” Virginia Woolf, incest survivor
“It is these very experiences [of rape and molestation] which have shaped the person I am now. Without these experiences, there would not have been the drive and ambition to overcome and strive for more.” Minerva M., a survivor
[Quotes from my article: Cognitive Accommodations to Childhood Sexual Abuse]
The horrific experience of abuse interests me as a creativity researcher for how it can distort awareness and self concept in such destructive ways, and how much it can shut down or divert energy you could use for creative expression. It is clearly not something you can “get over” easily or quickly.
