Remembering The Past: Honoring Our Days Of Loss
Disclaimer: This article contains material relating to sexual assault. Discretion is advised.
“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me…”
-A Lament
May 18th is a loss day of mine. Twelve years ago today, I was a victim of sexual assault that redirected my life in that one fateful moment. Today, I want to honor that loss — not just for myself, but to help others find the way through and out of suffering. In sharing my journey, I’ll answer two questions: first, why remember? Second, can we remember and still be fully healed?
Why remember?
I remember what happened to me that day. I remember the next two years where I first couldn’t handle life the same, and then had to find a way to endure the exhausting journey of getting all those toxins of the assault — and everything around it — out of my system.
I remember how, toward the end of those first two years, my service to God shifted and has never gone back. No longer was my ministry focused on my Christian camp and mission trip comfort zone.
I became a more private servant, a safe haven for many women who’d been assaulted or abused through Celebrate Recovery (a domestic violence group), drop-in prayer, and many spur-of-the-moment conversations where some other beautiful spirit felt safe enough around me to — and I say this with affection — word and emotion vomit all over me so they could have relief from their suffering. If I forget what the Lord did for me, would I be able to meet them genuinely?
The memories before the assault.
Below the surface of the 9/11 museum, in the heart of Ground Zero, is a mausoleum decorated with 2,983 different shades of blue. The name of this art piece to honor the fallen is “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning”.
How many firsthand accounts of that day note the blue of the sky before the planes hit the towers? There was the sky, imprinted in their memory, before the world changed forever.
Photo by Jin S. Lee
I have my own blue sky from May 18th, 2010. I remember the joke I told the night before that got my team to wet their pants with laughter. I remember the tangy-orange not-juice drink I had for breakfast that morning. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the bazaar our team walked through, a mall on steroids for someone who’d always been uncomfortable in crowds. I remember the conversation we had at lunch just a few short hours before the assault. I also remember what the Spirit of God whispered to me on the way to the outing where it happened: “You are as strong as the sun.” (You can hear the context in a 20-minute version of my story).
The memories after the assault.
The memories after the assault are a mix of the day’s fine details and the deeper memory imprints that came back to comfort me later on. The sounds of the aftermath are the deep melancholy of two cellos playing on the ferry at dusk and the pure water of my mom’s voice pressing through the incomprehensible void within me to remind me of the promises nestled in the lullaby she often sang to tuck me in.
The colors of the aftermath are the sea-glass green of the sea and the golden last light of the sunset. The feeling of the aftermath is one of a ship that’s taking on water one minute and a lifeguard carrying a drowning victim to shore the next — it’s the devastation of my spirit and the peace that passes understanding working at the same time.
Can we remember and be fully healed?
“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. But this I remember, and therefore, I have hope: because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
-Lamentations 3:19-23
Yes. We can remember, even occasionally experiencing the pain of the memory, and still be fully healed.
The Israelites left their slavery in Egypt after 400 years. And for the next 3,000 years, every single year, the Jewish people commemorate the suffering of their forefathers, as well as God’s faithfulness as the one who freed them.
Passover is a full body experience. Participants cry from the bitterness and the gall, then taste the sweetness of God; they even remember the tears that were shed by the Egyptians, those who oppressed their ancestors and faced unspeakable loss, too.
This is a ceremony God established. If he believed it was important for the celebrants to honor the suffering of people they’d never met millenia after the slavery ended, the how much more should we honor our own suffering and freedom?
Is the Passover about the slavery or the freedom? I’d argue it’s more about the freedom; more about the joy of being released from shackles.
The memories of the assault and the loss days.
Much of my healing journey was going from not being about to tell the story at all, to only being able to tell the story if I laughed through it, to telling it with anger, to telling it with tears, to eventually telling it without being thrown back into the shock, pain, and terror of the actual assault.
Depending on the context and what’s needed in the moment, I can tell the story in its full horror, or with minimal details, without any long-term damage to myself. There are moments when a woman needs to hear me say the words, so that she can have permission to say them, too. I haven’t forgotten what happened, but I don’t live there. I get to bring up the memories by choice. They don’t get to control me anymore.
My loss days parallel this journey. The first year was nearly impossible to get through. It was that first anniversary of my assault that threw me into the headspin that led to a full breakdown. Though, it was that same breakdown that also led to my healing.
The second anniversary was a marker on the road to healing. At one point, I put a self-imposed pause on driving, but had started driving again by May 18th, 2012 and even had my own car (partly because I remember when I couldn’t drive, driving is one of my favorite things!).
I was weaning off medication that took the edge off the constant nervous system overload that made me feel like I was being electrocuted. By the following loss day, I was leading a recovery group, working full-time as a radio producer, and prepping for my first 15k.
The next several loss days aren’t really distinguishable. And there were several years when the 18th would come and go without much thought — even this was a gift, the gift that the distance of time was also freeing.
It could have been that my sexual assault and the aftermath became a long-term memory that I never had to deal with anymore. But that’s not how it’s playing out — 12 years later, I’m not only fully healed, I’m allowing God to use me as an agent of His healing.
Since 2020, when I recorded a podcast on the 10th anniversary, I’ve made it a point to honor the day. Part of this came from a new chapter in the life of my recovery story — I started writing a screenplay inspired by what I went through.
As I do this, the memories of my affliction and wandering are stirred up. Sometimes I tell it and cry, honoring the suffering. Other times I tell it and it feels very far away. Many times I tell it and have to rest afterward.
So why keep doing it? First, because the pain does not last; it comes and it passes right through, with no old wound to cling to. And second, by going back into the darkness, I get to proclaim God’s faithfulness, His mercy that renews every morning.
I believe that my platform to share about what it looks like to heal from sexual assault is only going to grow. That’s actually scary. I don’t really want to be defined forever as the girl who is a sexual assault victim — but my friend reminded me that’s not the story. That’s now how this defines me.
I’m going to keep honoring my loss day; I’m going to share the story so that others can know that freedom is possible. And with that in mind, I’m becoming more comfortable with the idea of talking about it more often and with the idea of being known forever, not as the girl who was broken by sexual assault, but as the girl who healed from it.
Read Alyssa’s article about the moment she hit rock bottom on this journey, listen to her podcast of the story, and watch her teaching on what God’s goodness looks like before, during, through, and out of trauma.
