Survivors Share Stories of Recovering Repressed Memories after Child Sexual Trauma
- Maria Socolof
- May 2
- 5 min read
By Maria Socolof, 5WAVES Cofounder, Author of the memoir The Invisible Key: Unlocking the Mystery of My Chronic Pain and the website healingfromchronicpain.com.
This blog post has been adapted with permission from Maria’s Prologue to Mary Knight’s memoir, My Life NOW.
Our stories may differ, but traumatization can occur from many varied underlying events. I had the pleasure of meeting Mary Knight in 2021 through the advocacy group Incest AWARE. After I enjoyed a successful twenty-two-year career as an environmental health scientist, my life’s focus shifted when I was forced to face a past trauma that resulted in debilitating chronic pain. Unable to continue my hard-earned career, I had to concentrate on healing and ultimately found myself compelled to tell my story. I had recently published my memoir and was ready and determined to continue speaking out on behalf of others who have suffered as a result of childhood sexual trauma.
During Incest AWARE’s inaugural meeting, survivor advocates shared about their past anti-incest work and what they hoped to accomplish in the future. It was then that I learned of Mary’s film projects. I was immediately intrigued, and later impressed when I had the privilege of viewing them.
As I continued to get to know Mary through her website and later from direct one-on-one conversations, I learned that our backstories are vastly different. Yet we formed a strong connection based on our shared healing experiences.
What is trauma?
Trauma is how an individual reacts to an unbearable situation. It affects each of us in our own unique way. The US’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration describes it in this way:
“Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”
What are the impacts of trauma?
In many ways contrasting Mary’s upbringing of being sex-trafficked by adult family members, I grew up in what would be considered a safe and loving environment under the guidance of my two devoted parents in our happy suburban home. Yet I was sexually violated on one occasion by my sibling, who had been sexually abused outside of the family. Not fully understanding the consequences of his actions, he passed his trauma on to me. The unfathomable assault on my body by my beloved and trusted sibling caused my protective brain to put this memory in the far recesses of my subconscious, where it stayed for thirty-two years.
What is repressed memory, or dissociative amnesia?
Repressing a memory, clinically called dissociative amnesia, is rather common among trauma and sexual abuse survivors. In fact, research indicates that 32 percent of trauma survivors [1] and 42 percent of sexual abuse survivors [2] do not remember their trauma or abuse for a period of time, lasting anywhere from days to decades.
This is a natural coping method we use to mentally escape from the horror of a situation and is well recognized in neuroscience and trauma research. There are many conditions that might increase the likelihood that a survivor will not remember their abuse [3].These include being victimized at a young age; high frequency, duration, or severity of the abuse; having more than one perpetrator; being psychologically close, such as with a family member; lack of support, particularly from one’s mother, when disclosing the abuse; and a natural tendency for some people to dissociate. Even seemingly minor events can cause dissociative amnesia or have long-lasting effects. What causes us to not remember can vary significantly.
Not until I was forty-two years old, and prompted by a nightmare, did I recall that one of my brothers molested me when I was ten. I later learned that repressing the memory was a survival strategy. It allowed me to remove from my memory what I couldn’t fully process at the time. It allowed me to function in spite of an incomprehensible act. It allowed me to live under the same roof as someone who had violated my body—and my trust. It allowed me to keep my family together and to stay with my parents, who didn’t come to my rescue (to no fault of their own), but whom I depended on for survival.
I had made a cryptic attempt to tell my parents at the time, as evidenced by a note that my parents found in their attic thirty-three years after the fact. Without explaining what had happened, I asked my mother if I could sleep with her the night after it happened. This was not a common request from ten-year-old me, and since my mother didn’t know what had occurred, she rejected my subtle cry for help.
My young mind learned that my parents didn’t protect me. This, however, was in stark contrast to my consciously lived childhood of love and support from wonderful parents.
While my charmed life went on, my subconscious held a dark secret. The one-time violation, and what I perceived as my mother’s rejection, seem to have been enough for me to be traumatized and to push the memory far away for decades.
Experiencing recovered memories, or delayed recall
My mind-blowing recollection–a recovered memory–was ultimately corroborated by my brother who molested me. When I asked him point-blank about it, he immediately took full responsibility for what he did to me. I was immensely grateful for this acknowledgement, and yet I spent the next dozen-plus years working through my trauma via various bodywork and psychological therapies, as well as many self-care approaches. I dug into my mind and body to find deeply buried emotions that were holding me hostage and causing me chronic physical pain. Fear, anger, confusion, shame, unworthiness. Through all this work and countless hours of cathartic writing, I’m now able to tell my story. In doing so, I have learned that I am not alone in my suffering and that millions of others are living with the aftereffects of trauma, too.
Mary reminded me not to compare my abuse to hers and not to minimize what happened to me. Even if what I experienced seemed insignificant compared to the abuse she and others have suffered, I was still traumatized by something that my child-brain could not process, and I need to respect and honor that fact. That is how we heal.
Although Mary and I had quite different childhood experiences, we share many commonalities. We were both traumatized by family members, we both repressed our memories for years, we both have lived with debilitating chronic pain, and we both have undergone many types of therapies and tried numerous self-care approaches to further our healing. We both created websites detailing how we have healed, we both have penned our stories, and we both are driven toward advocacy work. As such, we are building awareness of the diversity of childhood sexual trauma, providing support to other survivors, and demonstrating that there is a path to healing.
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