Twenty Years Later, I’m Shattering My Silence

An accident that nearly ended my life has opened me up

When I was silenced

I’d been quiet before. In May 2002, I finally opened my mouth and then fell silent. I had been keeping a terrible secret about my abusive past from everyone. I finally decided to come forward about what had happened to me for seven years, eight months, three weeks, and six days. I told the people I trusted most in the world; those I was closest to and had waited all those years to tell; my mom, dad, and brother. They chose not to believe me. I’d pictured the words I had finally spoken escaping my mouth as bubble letters like the ones girls write in junior high, puffy, white, and pale blue like clouds, ready to cushion me, carry me gently to a healing place. Instead, those words turned into sharp, dark letters like giant ones from a rusted-out marque, turned back, and attacked me.

I was living in sun-drenched southern California, but I was frozen in fear, unable to move forward.

Instead, I fell silent in a sense for the next twenty years, barely speaking to anyone on a personal level, knowing my words would be useless. Ironically, I did a lot of public speaking, coaching, mentoring, training and crisis counseling during that time. I was, and still am, very candid about something else I survived that I find solace in sharing. But I can count the close relationships I had on one hand, including my three children. I still never share my entire past, only dreamlike, incomplete commentary. Unless I was working, raising my three kids, running my nonprofit, or volunteering, I was a ghost. No one really knew all of me. Hiding beneath numerous layers of my other horrific story made it easy to suffocate my most grotesque secrets.

Coming within inches of death brought my voice back

In May 2022, I was involved in a motor vehicle accident that I don’t remember and never will. The two of us in that car barely escaped with our lives. Having spent over a decade and a half in auto insurance, I understand the mechanism of injury. I’ve seen thousands of vehicle fatalities. I know how mass, velocity, and speed interact. I’ve taken enough continuing education on metal versus the human body to comprehend precisely what occurs when vehicles collide. Had the car that struck us hit just one foot further back, we would almost certainly be dead.

I now live on the opposite coast of where I was twenty years ago, in South Carolina. I’ve accomplished things I never imagined, learned so much, and met amazing people during these last two decades. As I work on recovering from my accident, I think about my completed manuscripts, partial manuscripts, pieces and parts of so many works that sit in my computer, decades of writing. Then there are bins and boxes filled with all my handwritten works. Had I died that night, not a single person would’ve ever seen any of it. I have funny, light, strange, and dark stories, too, and then there are the wonderful and not-so-wonderful things that I want to share; all those words would’ve sat there, in neat little rows and paragraphs, forevermore; and become nothing more.

Today, I begin.