Why It May Take Years to Reach “Acceptance”

Many survivors of sexual violence, often hear phrases like "move on," "stay strong," or "focus on the future, don’t think about it anymore.” What many people don't understand - including victimized persons - is that before healing and recovery can begin, there is often a difficult journey toward accepting what was done to us in the first place.

Acceptance doesn’t mean approval. It doesn’t mean forgiveness. It doesn't mean forgetting what may be the worst thing we’ve ever endured. Acceptance simply means acknowledging the reality that we were severely harmed without minimizing, denying, or rewriting it.

While each of our lived experiences is unique, many people recognize some version of the following stages.

Stage 1: Confusion

After suffering a sexually violent act, the mind often struggles to make sense of what was done. As victimized persons, we may question memories, wonder whether we misunderstood the situation, or search for explanations that make the experience feel less painful.

Questions like "Was it really that bad?" or "Maybe I'm overreacting" or “Did it really happen at all?” are common. Confusion and memory loss aren’t signs that the violation wasn't harmful. They are often the brain's attempt to protect itself from the overwhelming reality.

Stage 2: Denial and Minimization

Some of us who are surviving sexual violence spend months or years convincing ourselves that what was done to us wasn't "serious enough" to count. We compare our experiences to worse stories. And, we may even tell ourselves that because we survived with less harm than someone else who was also violated, we should be fine.

To our own detriment, we focus on what we did or didn't do rather than what was done to us. This stage can feel “safer” than facing the truth. But, it often comes at the cost of carrying invisible mental, emotional, and physical pain.

Stage 3: Recognition

This is the moment when the reality begins to emerge, having a chance to begin to settle in. A conversation, a news story, a therapy session, or a simple realization can suddenly connect the dots.

We, the people victimized by sexual assault and/ or abuse, recognize that what was done to us was not a misunderstanding, a mistake, or a personal failure. It was a willful and intentional act of sexual violence.

Getting to the stage of “Recognition” can be scary and bring feelings of loneliness, grief, anger, and heartbreak. But, once we settle into the phase, it can be liberating.

Stage 4: Mourning

Many of us realize grief for more than the violation we suffered through. We may grieve lost trust, lost feeling of safety, lost innocence, lost relationships, a lost future/hope, lost opportunities, the lost individual versions of ourselves that we believed would always exist.

This stage is painful because it asks us to feel what we may have spent years avoiding. Yet grief is often evidence that we are finally honoring our own experiences and realizing the value that we hold.

Stage 5: Integration

Over time, many of us reach a place where the violence becomes part of our story, but not the whole story. The violent moment in our respective lives is no longer denied, hidden, or constantly fought against. It is acknowledged as something that was done to us, something that mattered, and something that truly affected and effected us.

This is not the same as being "over it” or “moving on”. It is learning to carry the truth without letting it lead or define every aspect of our lives.

For Survivors and Non-Survivors Alike

For anyone victimized via sexual violence, know this: there is no deadline for acceptance…Healing is not a race…there is no universal timeline to recover.

For anyone who has never experienced sexual violence, understand that acceptance is often a complex psychological process, not a simple decision. What may look like silence, inconsistency, or delay can actually be part of how a person shows up when surviving sexual trauma.

The most powerful thing we all can do is replace judgment with understanding and the desire to learn more. Because healing and recovery begin when a victimized person is allowed to tell the truth and when others are willing to receive it with care.