The Body I Left Behind

Content note: This personal account includes childhood rape and sexual violence, the failure of adults to protect a child, strong language, imagined violence, dissociation, reflections on how these protective responses helped me stay alive, and spiritual imagery.

I am sharing the experience as it unfolded within me, without needing to decide whether every image represents memory, symbolism, another realm or something else. Please read at your own pace.

It began with an ordinary disagreement about people-pleasing.

I was trying to explain something that matters deeply to me: there is a difference between giving freely from love and giving because we feel we have no choice.

I love giving. I have no problem sharing what I have, helping someone, or offering something simply because they need it or because it will bring them joy and help them feel loved. When I give from love, I am free. I can say yes. I can say no. I can give more than anyone expects, or decide not to give at all.

But when giving comes from fear, something happens to that freedom. We might give because we are frightened of disappointing someone. Because we don't want conflict. Because we need someone to love us, accept us or think well of us.

And sometimes, the cost of keeping someone else comfortable is abandoning ourselves.

Some parts of me find it particularly difficult to watch someone surrender their truth or boundaries out of fear. This becomes even harder when it is someone I am in a close relationship with.

As we explored this, I began to recognise why it was so charged for me.

It took me back to my childhood. To the adults who knew what was happening and did nothing. To the people who should have protected me but didn't.

There was a part of me carrying enormous anger towards my parents, particularly towards my mother.

I could understand some of the reasons they might have responded as they did. I knew something about the pain and fear they carried themselves. But understanding wasn't making the anger disappear.

And there were other parts of me that felt ashamed of that anger. Parts that struggled with the intensity of what I felt towards my own parents, particularly my mother. So alongside the rage, there was shame about having the rage at all.

I wanted to make room for both, without asking the angry part to become quieter or more acceptable.

When I connected with this part, I could feel the anger in my body. My jaw tightened. My back hurt.

There were images of violence towards my parents. A part of me wanted to beat them, to stab my mother, to make them feel the enormity of what they had allowed to happen. Another part of me found these images frightening.

I had spent so much of my life looking after my mother's feelings, protecting her from pain, making sure she was okay. And here was a part that wanted to hurt her.

I didn't want to silence this part simply because what she was showing me was uncomfortable. She had something to say.

Why the fuck didn't you protect me?

I was a child. I was vulnerable. I needed you.

There was grief underneath the rage too. A longing for a different moment in history. For just one adult to have stood up for me.

I needed an adult to stop the blame, make clear that this was not my fault, and refuse to let anyone speak to me that way.

A part of me wanted someone to get up and beat the shit out of the people who had hurt me. For that part, even this felt preferable to nobody doing anything at all.

Maybe seeing someone so fiercely willing to fight for me would have meant that, at last, I knew I mattered. That somebody was willing to protect me.

That does not mean violence would have been the right answer. Another part of me would have been terrified of more violence. She would have wanted all of it to stop, and would have blamed herself for what was unfolding.

What I needed was a confident adult with clear boundaries and the strength to say no. Someone who could take me home, stay with me and protect me, rather than react from a frozen place or from frightened rage.

I needed presence and calm. I needed help for my nervous system to recover from the violations, and to know that I was safe and protected.

But beneath all of that was something so fundamental: I needed to know I was safe.

I needed an adult who would stand up for me. Who would not collapse into fear, shame or the need to keep somebody else happy. Someone who could confidently stand their ground, no matter how much was thrown at them.

That night, my father sat beside me, stroked my hair and told me it wasn't my fault. There was comfort in that. But he did not go back and stand up for me. He did not make the repair I needed.

But comforting me afterwards was not the same as protecting me. Nor was it the same as standing up for me.

I needed to see that somebody was willing to stand between me and the people who hurt me. I needed to experience what protection actually felt like. And the pain of that absence was enormous.

I felt alone, hurt and lost in a world that could hurt me at any moment, with nobody there to help. It felt as though there had never been anyone. As though I had to let the monsters take me, because nobody would come.

I am grateful to the part that helped me dissociate, and to the one that minimised what had happened. They helped me survive pain I could not have borne all at once. Without that distance, being so alone with so much pain would have felt unbearable. I do not know how I could have stayed alive with all of it fully present.

As I went further into the experience, I found myself with the twelve-year-old girl.

I remembered the broken bus in my grandmother's garden. I remembered being at the back of it.

I don't remember everything that happened there. There are fragments, sensations, moments that have remained with me.

I had believed that someone I knew loved me. He had spoken about marriage, about what we would do together one day. He had used that promise of love to persuade me to give him what he wanted. He told me that if I didn't, he would go to other people.

And after he had used and hurt me, something happened that I have never forgotten.

The person who had lied to me told me I should give my body to another person too, to keep him from speaking about what had happened.

I remember the devastation. The sudden understanding that the love I had believed in wasn't there. That I had been used and violated. And now I was being handed over again, as though my body meant nothing.

I said no. I pleaded not to be made to do it. The other person said that if I didn't want to, he wouldn't. But the cruelty of being told to give my body to keep someone quiet stayed with me.

And then there were the adults. My brother had tried to alert someone to what was happening. There were people nearby who could have intervened. Nobody came.

I remember leaving the bus, walking up the drive and going back into the house where the adults were.

I don't remember what happened once we were inside. There were many family members there, and I believe it was some kind of family gathering or event. I can only imagine that life continued as usual.

What I do remember is that something terrible had happened just metres away from the adults, and nobody had come to protect me.

I was twelve. I was left to make sense of something no child should have had to make sense of alone.

And somewhere inside, a belief had formed: If I want love, I have to give my body.

In the past, no one had shown that little girl something different. No one had stood up and demonstrated that her body was hers, that she could say no, that love did not require surrendering herself. Why would she expect this time to be any different?

And it wasn't only that the adults had failed to stand up for her. They had handed her shame. It felt easier to be alone with the pain than to reach for help and have shame added to it.

Of course, this was never freely giving. She was a child being manipulated and sexually abused, and she had begged him not to. Yet the adults' responses had left her with a terrible message.

It was never the truth. But it was what she had learnt.

As I stayed with the little girl, something became clear. She wasn't really there.

Her body was there, but she wasn't inside it. I could see the body that had been hurt, but the little girl herself seemed to have gone somewhere else.

I knew dissociation had helped me survive. What I hadn't fully appreciated was the difference between knowing that something happened and feeling the reality of what it had been like.

I had remembered pieces of the experience for years. I had known the words that were spoken. I had known what had happened. Yet it was as though I had only touched one per cent of the pain.

Now I was seeing how utterly alone she had been. The shock. The disbelief. The physical pain. The desperate longing for somebody to care. And the enormous grief of being discarded by someone she thought loved her.

I wasn't trying to make her relive everything. I wanted her to know that she was no longer alone.

But she couldn't seem to see me. Because she wasn't there.

Then another scene appeared. It was strange, and I couldn't make sense of it.

There were two worlds, separate and yet somehow connected. One was the world of the earth, where her body was. The other was cold. Blue and white. Clinical.

There was something hospital-like about it. Almost like a laboratory or an institution. I could taste something medical in my mouth. There were images of corridors, curtains, and scenes moving in and out of focus. It felt suffocating.

There was something terribly wrong in this place.

In the experience, it seemed that human beings were being used for experiments. Innocent beings were suffering, and what was happening to them was hidden.

I couldn't tell what this world was or where it had come from. I only knew what I was experiencing.

The little girl was there, a blue-white, shadow-like presence, separated from the earthly world by something like a wall of glass. On the other side, she could see her body, dark and distant, resting on the ground.

For the first time, she seemed to recognise that she wanted to return to it. But she couldn't get through. She was stuck.

Then I realised she could put her hand through the glass. She hadn't known she could. She tried. And her hand passed through. But getting through that way was really difficult.

Then another opening appeared, like a portal offering a way home. But leaving wasn't going to be that simple.

The little girl didn't want to leave the world behind the glass.

There were beings there who were suffering. They were frightened. They wanted someone to know what was happening. They wanted the suffering to stop. And now she knew.

She couldn't bear the thought of abandoning them. Some of them seemed to be grasping at her ankles, begging her not to leave.

She needed to know they wouldn't be forgotten. That someone would come. That their pain would be seen.

I recognised something painfully familiar in this. Even while trying to return to her own hurt body, she was worried about everyone else.

She didn't want to leave them alone with their suffering. She wanted to make sure they were safe before she could allow herself to be safe.

Then another relationship became visible. There was a blue-white spirit figure who felt like a mother.

But the relationship was reversed. The mother was the child. The little girl was the one looking after her, caring for her, holding responsibility for her.

The spirit mother didn’t want to let her go. She held on to the little girl’s leg, desperately wanting her to stay so the little girl could continue looking after her.

The parallels with my own life were extraordinary. I had spent so long caring for my mother's vulnerability, protecting her from feelings she couldn't hold.

And here, even in this other world, the little girl was struggling to choose her own return because somebody else needed her.

As the experience unfolded, it became possible for the beings in that world to leave. They didn't need to remain trapped there. There was another way, upwards, away from the cold place.

They could all go upwards, towards an opening above them.

The mother figure was still holding on to the little girl, wanting to take her upwards too. And the little girl wanted to return to her body. She needed to stay here, in this life.

There was love between them. There was sadness. And there was the difficult truth that loving someone did not mean having to go wherever they went.

The mother needed to love her enough to let her go.

Eventually, she did.

There was one last kiss before they parted.

The mother went upwards with the others through the opening. And the little girl was free to return to her body.

While all of this was happening, another part of the scene had been unfolding.

Her body had been taken out of the place where she was hurt. It was lying on the earth. On the grass and soil.

A little brown rabbit had come. It was covering her body with leaves. Brown leaves, soft layers of the natural world.

There was something incredibly peaceful about it. Nature was looking after her.

I started to gently place more leaves over her body. It wasn't a burial. It wasn't about hiding her away or keeping her trapped.

The earth was holding her. The rabbit was helping. Her body was being cared for in a way it hadn't been cared for before.

As the leaves covered her, her body began to brighten. There was light. Warmth. Something healing.

Her broken body was no longer being abandoned.

It was being restored. And now the little girl could come home.

When she finally returned, it was beautiful. She reunited with her body.

She was playful. Curious. Watching her hands, her fingers, her arms. Almost as though she was discovering the experience of having a body for the first time.

She was still sitting among the leaves, finding life in her upper body. Her hands and arms were becoming more human, while her legs were still dark and shadow-like.

There was joy in her movements. Her body was no longer in pain. It was alive.

The upper half felt bright and bouncy, full of movement. The lower half needed more time. From the hips down, things were still coming together.

I could feel vibrations. The sense that the earth was still working with her, helping her regain her form.

Every time this little girl had tried to express rage, somebody else's anger or shame had come down upon her. Her rage had been treated as something bad. Something that needed stopping.

But her rage wasn't bad. It was the voice of a child in a helpless situation. It was a cry for help.

She wasn't trying to be rude or disrespectful. She was desperate to be heard. She wanted somebody to recognise the injustice of what had happened. To tell her she hadn't deserved it. To stand up and protect her.

And when nobody came, the rage had nowhere to go. It had been carried for years.

I could feel how exhausted she was. How tired she was of holding the anger and resentment.

But she didn't need to forgive anyone to make somebody else comfortable. She didn't need to rush towards forgiveness.

She needed her pain to be seen. Her anger to be allowed. Her body to be cared for. And her truth to exist without somebody placing shame on top of it.

Her legs were partly within the earth. A part of me felt scared, as though she were half buried. But this wasn’t about constraint. Her legs were rooted, strong and connected to the earth.

The rooting could spread down, deep into the earth, while she drew nourishment back up.

The earth could receive the stress and heaviness she had been carrying, and return light and life-giving energy.

One of the most important things I took from this experience was the difference between retrieving a part and retrieving the body.

I have done a great deal of inner work over the years. Parts have been witnessed, retrieved, unburdened and brought into safety.

I've worked with soul/parts retrieval, spiritual imagery and experiences of reconnection.

But something has been becoming increasingly important to me.

What happens to the body that was left behind?

When a child has to leave their experience in order to survive, we may find and reconnect with the part of them that went away. We may help that part feel safe.

But what of the body that endured the experience? The body that froze. The body that braced for pain. The body that was left carrying what happened.

In this inner journey, it wasn't enough for the little girl to return. Her body needed to be found, taken somewhere safe, tended to and restored. Only then could she reunite with it.

I don't yet know everything this means. I don't know how it connects with all the different experiences of dissociation, trauma, IFS or the spiritual work I have come to know.

But I know how important it felt. Not just soul/parts retrieval.

Body retrieval, too.

I don't feel that this work is finished.

There is still grief. There may be other parts who need to be heard, other aspects of the story that have not yet found their way into awareness. I don't need to force them.

Something significant happened when I allowed this little girl to feel the reality of her pain, without rushing her towards forgiveness or trying to make her anger more acceptable.

She wasn't bad for being furious. She wasn't wrong for wanting protection. She wasn't responsible for the adults who failed her. And she hadn't lost her goodness because of what was done to her.

She came back to her body. I saw her joy in moving her fingers and hands. I felt the earth holding her.

And I could begin to understand something that knowing the story alone had never quite allowed me to feel.

She had been left alone with so much pain.

This time, she wasn't alone. And this time, her body came home.

The disagreement about people-pleasing that opened this reflection also raised a wider question: what happens when partners seek safety in different ways? I explore that question in the accompanying article, The dance between keeping the peace and seeking protection.

This experience has left me wondering about embodiment in parts work and trauma healing.

When a part has been retrieved or unburdened, what might still be held within the person's relationship with their body? Does the part feel able to inhabit their body safely? Is there more that needs to be witnessed, cared for or restored?

These aren't conclusions about what every trauma survivor needs, or a new sequence that should be applied to everyone. They are questions arising from my own experience.

Gabor Maté distinguishes between what happened and the wound it left within us. In his conversation with Mel Robbins, he also speaks about the pain of being alone with what happened. That resonates with this experience: the violations mattered, but the loneliness of having no one there afterwards to protect me and stay with me hurt even more. That loneliness felt unbearable. You can listen to the conversation or read the transcript here (particularly around 58 minutes).

For me, the important thing was not to hurry the little girl towards healing. It was to notice what was still missing and allow her experience to show me what she needed.

Sometimes the work isn't only about bringing a lost part back.

It is also about making room for the body that survived.