the wizard of oz

From Bad To Worse

by

Dorothy’s run-in with Almira Gulch is the beginning of a series of progressively worsening events. No one at home understands why she’s so upset. They’re too busy and they brush her aside with shallow, disjointed advice. She falls into the pig pen and is threatened by the pigs. Then, to top it off, Almira Gulch comes to take Toto from her.

As things go from bad to worse, Dorothy wants to run away. She wants to escape the mounting heaviness of her difficult sepia existence. She wants to go somewhere “over the rainbow” where things are peaceful and non-threatening. But when she starts to run, her guilt and the needs of others call her back.

So she heads back to the life she’s known, sadly resigned to being stuck in sepia forever.

Have you ever felt things were going from bad to worse? Have you ever felt like you were overshadowed by a mountain of difficulties and one more problem would bury you in the rubble?

Your first reaction might be to run. To find a place where things are better and stress is lower. To find that place “over the rainbow.” But no matter where you try to go (physically or emotionally) you still feel unsettled and even guilty. So you go back and try again, and the cycle starts all over.

This building unsettledness is a sign that things are coming to a head and you will not be able to put off the journey much longer.

Skipping the Backstory

by

Did you ever notice how The Wizard of Oz  jumps right into the story. After the opening music fades, we immediately see Dorothy and Toto anxiously running home after an altercation with Almira Gulch.

In other words, the movie skips the backstory.

We don’t know what happened to Dorothy’s parents or why she’s living with her aunt and uncle. We don’t know why Dorothy seems closer to her aunt than her uncle. We don’t know what makes Almira Gulch so mean, or how long she’s been that way.

It’s as if the past has been lopped off and all that seems to matter is the present moment and the present crisis.

This is often true for survivors of sexual abuse. If you’ve been the victim of sexual abuse, you want to fix the current problem or crisis and not delve into the painful backstory. You would rather stay away from those memories and feelings and not open that can of worms.

Some survivors have ignored their backstory for so long it’s hard for them to even remember their backstory.

But the backstory is important. It holds the keys to why you’re feeling what you’re feeling and doing what you’re doing. Your present trajectory is impacted by your past experiences. That’s why a counselor will ask you to review what has happened to you, rather than just helping you “fix” your current problems.

Don’t skip the backstory. If you’re serious about healing, you must be willing to look at the reality of your past. It’s a part of your journey on the road out of Oz.

Searching For a Way to Explain It

by

I’ve been helping women* recover from sexual abuse since 1992, and over the years I’ve noticed that women who are trying to decide whether to begin the process of recovery often have some common questions…

  • How long will this take?
  • What do I need to do?
  • What will happen?
  • What if I can’t handle it?
  • How will I know when I’m done?
  • Will I be the same person when I’m done?

For years I have tried to answer these questions as best I could, but questions like these are not easily answered. Each woman is different, and each woman’s experience of sexual abuse is unique. There is not a one-answer-fits-all response to these questions.

I was able to piece together helpful responses and analogies, but I was unable to come up with anything that would be as comprehensive and as adaptable as I desired. This led me to look for a simple, yet sensitive way to explain the process of recovering from sexual abuse.

I began to think about a story from my childhood that might give sexual abuse survivors a simple and memorable way to understand the journey of recovery. That led me to use the well know movie The Wizard of Oz as a type of road map to understand what happens to a woman who undertakes the journey of recovering from sexual abuse.

The use of this children’s story is not meant to cheapen the offense of the abuse. The road to healing is not a fanciful children’s story. It is a tragic children’s story. Few things are as dastardly and as damaging as being victimized in this way, and it would be just as dastardly and damaging to trivialize it.

The Road Out of Oz is not meant to minimize a survivor’s experience, but rather to give the survivor the understanding they need to move forward.

I hope that you, or someone you know, will subscribe to this blog and join me as we seek to better understand what it means to take the road out of Oz and walk the road of recovering from sexual abuse.

*Though many of the themes and issues discussed in this book are common to male victims of sexual abuse, my experience has been that of working with women, and so this book is written from that perspective.