Are They Victims Or Are They Abusers?
Daughters, and thus many survivors, often look to their mother's experiences (in the home and with their fathers) as their future, and identify with their mother's situation. If their mother is in an upsetting situation, survivors will often feel empathy for their mothers, and want to help them. This is heightened for survivors whose mothers turn to them for support.
If the perpetrator views herself as a victim of circumstances, or is a victim of her husband, the survivor often feels sorry for her and fears losing her. This dynamic makes it very hard for the daughter to see her mother as an abuser. Many of us tend to see people in extreme categories - either victim or abuser. For children, this either-or-thinking is the norm, but for survivors it often remains with them and becomes entrenched. The truth is that people can be both - victims in one context, and abusers in another.
"I Feel Like I Am My Mother"
The more a survivor identifies with her mother, the harder it is to separate her identity from her abuser - a crucial step in healing. Many survivors of mother-daughter incest report looking in the mirror and seeing their mothers, and hating themselves for it. When they see their own body naked (which they may avoid doing), many survivors see their mother's body, and as a result feel deeply ashamed of and angry at their bodies. Some survivors respond to these feelings by not wanting to be women, or lesbian (as they may perceive their mother to be), or anything associated with women or lesbians.
The feelings of shame and self-hatred that survivors can have may lead to their feeling uncomfortable with and/or hatred toward women and lesbians; inadequate and bad about themselves; confused and ashamed about being women; uncomfortable with their sexuality; engaging in self-injurious behavior (particularly in the genital and breast area); developing an eating disorder; experiencing body shame; and having difficulties in relationships, particularly with other women.
It is crucial for survivors of mother-daughter sexual abuse to create boundaries with their mothers (physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual); to re-claim their bodies as their own, and to truly know the differences between themselves and their mothers.
Longing for a Mother's Love
Mother-daughter sexual abuse wounds survivors' hearts and souls. Their mothers were often their only care-givers and the only source of much-needed care. When this care is mixed with sexual abuse, the effects are devastating. This mixture of nurturance (if there was any) and sexual abuse may have been all the parenting a survivor received. Often the father was absent or simply did not take an active role in parenting. This mixture of caring and sexual abuse leaves survivors with an unpleasant, and often sickening or repulsive feeling. On the one hand, the survivor desperately needed to be loved, held, kissed, and nurtured, but when that nurturance comes with such a high price, it is devastating to the child's psyche. Even nurturance that is offered separate from the sexual abuse becomes hard to trust or to take in freely and openly. This leaves many survivors feeling a desperate need for love, and at the same time, highly conflicted about that need, and wary of those, particularly women who offer support. The grief connected to not receiving safe love from a mother or primary caregiver is profound.
Summary of the Effects of Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse
While survivors of mother-daughter sexual abuse experience many of the same effects as other incest and sexual abuse survivors, they tend to have heightened difficulties with:
· Naming their experience as abuse. This is particularly true in light of the myth that women do not sexually abuse children.
· Identity. Many survivors have difficulty knowing that they are separate from and different than their perpetrators.
· Boundaries. Many survivors have difficulty maintaining their boundaries, especially with other women. They may be overly flexible or overly rigid.
· Self-blame. This is particularly true in light of the fact that they were abused by their mothers who are mythologized as all loving and caring.
· Gender identity. Many survivors do not want to be a woman, have trouble identifying as women, or do not like what they perceive women to be, because the abuser was a woman.
· Gender shame. Many survivors feel great shame about being a woman because of their identification with the perpetrator.
· Body shame. Survivors often feel great shame about their bodies, particularly their bodies' womanliness, because the perpetrator had a woman's body.
· Homophobic fears about one's actual or perceived sexuality. Survivors are often very confused about the differences between sexual abuse and lesbian sexuality, and may believe the myth that abuse causes a survivor's sexuality.
· Longing to be loved. Survivors frequently have a profound need to be loved in the way that they were not as a child, and they may fear or be unable to accept it, particularly from other women.
Final ThoughtsAbuse is never pleasant. However, mother-daughter sexual abuse seems to provoke particularly strong reactions in people, even those working in the area of trauma. Sometimes, when mother-daughter sexual abuse is acknowledged, people feel the need to say that it doesn't happen as frequently as father-daughter sexual abuse, or that women aren't as violent as men. Even if those things are true, it is not helpful information when listening to and understanding women who have been sexually abused by their mothers (or other women). If we want to create a safe environment for women to speak about their experiences, we need to talk and write about the fact that women and mothers do sexually abuse children. Only in that environment will survivors be truly free to tell their stories and heal themselves.
©Kali Munro, 2000.
Kali Munro, M.Ed. is a psychotherapist in private practice in Toronto with twenty years experience. She is a survivor of child sexual abuse herself, and has worked extensively with adult survivors. She has a website which offers lots of free healing resources including a private bulletin board for survivors. Check out her website: http://www.KaliMunro.com
Ms. Munro has written a number of articles about child sexual abuse which you can see at: http://www.kalimunro.com/articles.html#sexualabuse
Please send any comments on Ms. Munro's work in care of Survivor Haven
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