No matter how long it’s been since the incident occurred, to the survivor, that fateful day definitely changed how you live and relate to others and if you keep the situation unchecked, it may lead you to continually living a lower quality of life than the one you should be living.

Trauma may consciously or subconsciously cause you to lack or be unable to truly show affections.  This makes you unable to truly express yourself because you feel detached and may harbour an isolation mentality.

In some cases, things that used to give you satisfaction and contentment no longer do, and you are angry for no apparent reason.

Understandably the shame, anger and guilt can be hard to lose but your life is more precious than to let the stigma and shame ruin your life further. Its one thing to be violated but to let the violation ruin the rest of your life is probably even worse.  Even if it happened 10 or 15 years ago you need to find someone to talk to who can help you deal with the shame and low self esteem and help you reclaim yourself back.

When you take the time to open up and share with someone what happened to you, it will in the long run enable you to take the bad emotions, anger and memory of the rape and replace them with emotions, feelings and attitudes that are beneficial to you.  Once you are on the healing path it will lead you to be able to remember the event but not the pain associated with it.  This in the long run will be able to let you be able to help others deal with the same pain.

It’s important to let the negative feelings and emotions out of your system by talking to someone who wants to help you uncover them and get you to the point of healing. 

If you need to talk to someone kindly call GVRC (Gender Violence Recovery Centre) at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital there are people there who are eager to help you and they will not charge you a cent for talking to them.  All Counselling is free