I remember, as a small child, having no framework for hope. I never dared to hope or dream because I did not know those were options. One night is seared into my memory. We kept the windows open to cool the house from the sweltering heat. I was afraid, and the hopelessness felt heavy on my small frame. I climbed from my bed onto the windowsill. The screen had been pushed out long before that night. I scooted into the darkness, onto the brick ledge outside the house. My body still remembers the desperation and loneliness.
My heart ached as I prayed to a God I did not yet know existed, asking Him to help me, to come get me. Across the way, I could see the warm glow of light from my neighbor’s house, and I longed to be there. Safe. Time felt suspended in that moment, as if the world paused while my small heart reached for something it could not name.
That same sense of hopelessness would return again and again throughout my childhood. Unknowingly, it followed me into adulthood. I did not realize that a lie had taken root in my heart. I had no other framework. As a child, my ability to imagine a different future was stolen. I lived in the present moment, surviving and silent.
Like many survivors, my brain shifted from growing and thriving to surviving. I lived with a constant sense of dread about the next minute. What was going to happen? What would my soul have to endure next? I could not predict it. I could not escape it.
“I’m always going to be this way.”
“This is just who I am.”
“I’m stuck and I can’t change.”
If you are a survivor, those thoughts may sound familiar. I believed them too. I believed that how I was wired was my nature, something fixed and beyond my control. The hopelessness and powerlessness spoke directly to the wounded places in me.
For many of us, especially those who were sexually abused as children, our feelings feel like reality. They feel permanent. And for a long time, they may have been true. But what if those feelings were not proof of who you are, but evidence of how you survived?
What if your mind did exactly what it needed to do to protect you when evil stepped in?
God did not intend for terrible things to happen to you. But He did equip your mind with remarkable tools to survive. Those tools served you well in danger. The problem is that survival strategies do not turn themselves off when the danger ends. They follow us into adulthood, shaping how we see ourselves, our relationships, and our future.
Healing from childhood sexual abuse allows truth to come alive about who we are and who we are not. It exposes the difference between survival wiring and identity. It reveals that being stuck was never your destiny.
So many survivors carry a deep sense of isolation and aloneness, and that isolation feeds hopelessness. What I want you to know is this: you were never meant to heal alone.
The Mustard Seed exists to invite you into a journey you do not have to walk by yourself. You are not trapped. You are not broken beyond repair. There is a pathway to liberation. We help connect survivors to safe, trauma-informed resources and communities that understand the unique wounds of childhood sexual abuse.
When my husband and I began the journey of opening The Mustard Seed, I knew many people, yet I was not connected and felt deeply alone. Through my time with the Seed and my participation in groups at SOAR Ministry, I found sisters in healing. Women who understood without explanation. That shared safety allowed my nervous system to finally begin to settle. It laid a foundation for real healing.
Community did not fix everything, but it made healing possible.
If any part of this story feels familiar, maybe it is time to begin your own journey. Hope may not yet feel real to you, but I dare you to hope! You are not alone anymore.
If you are ready to begin your journey please reach out at [email protected].
