Becoming Your Own Protector
The Alchemy of Healing From Shame, Rejection, and Abuse
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There comes a time when you become your own Protector.
The realization dawns not as a sudden epiphany, but as a slow, hardening of the spirit, like iron forged in the relentless fires of injustice.
You know you will speak up on your own behalf. The words, once choked back by fear and the ingrained conditioning to remain mute, begin to coalesce, sharp and resolute on your tongue.
Suddenly (slowly), you know you will no longer remain silent.
You know, within every fiber of your being, that you are done.
The dragon within has awakened.
The years of absorbing their casual cruelty and bullying, the years of internalizing their blame, of shrinking into the shadows to avoid their wrath and the crushing weight of their judgment and condemnation, reach a breaking point.
This isn't a gentle turning; it's a brutal severing. It means confronting the architects of your pain, past and present, including those who twisted love into a weapon and family into a battleground.
It means dismantling the “shaming and blaming” narratives they painstakingly constructed, the lies that painted you as deserving of their scorn, disrespect, unkindness, and maltreatment.
And yet, the tremors of fear still run deep, a primal memory etched into your DNA. The urge to appease, to placate, to become small and invisible, is a reflex honed over a lifetime.
And then, something shifts.
You acknowledge that the cost of silence has become greater than the fear of speaking. The assaults on the soul can no longer be tolerated.
This newfound resolve to protect, act, and speak isn't born of anger, though anger may be a fuel. It's born of a desperate, primal need to reclaim your humanity, to stand tall in the face of their dehumanization.
The path ahead will not be easy. The resistance to truth will be fierce.
They will try to shame and intimidate you back into silence, to reignite the old fears. Your boundaries won’t be respected. They will attempt to reach you - warn you - by any means they can. They will even believe they are right and are entitled to do so.
Because you were never a person to love. To respect. To consider.
You were little more than a toy, an object; something to control, use, abuse, and discard.
The voice, once a whisper, is finding its strength.
You have changed.
Your spirit, once heavy as lead, has unfurled into the radiancy of gold.
You are your own shield now.
Copyright 2025 | Rebecca C. Mandeville | All Rights Reserved
I'm certain that together we can get FSA on the map and taken seriously, especially given there is now a quantitative peer-reviewed study to refer to. I'm glad you're here, Rosalee, you add so much to our community with your comments and your support to other members. Including me! 😄
I’m so over “whispering.” My lifetime of silence in response to awful behavior, always rationalized as being respectful and peaceful, has done nothing but acquiesce the endless barrage of increasingly outrageous false accusations against my character that have no basis in reality.
They don’t even know me as an adult - haven’t seen nor spoken to me in years. They know nothing about my day to day existence, yet every so often, I run into an old friend or acquaintance, who mentions that they were a bit concerned about me, as my Dad requested the entire church pray for his daughter, as she’s [INSERT ALL THE WORST THINGS YOU COULD EVER BE ACCUSED OF THEN MULTIPLY IT BY 10 HERE.]
And, I finally found the perfect way to address this issue with an appropriate response: “I heard about that. Of course, it’s all nonsense, as you can see I’m quite fine. Does it sound like the symptoms of dementia to you, too?”