To The Women Who Felt Pressured: Healing From Past Sexual Sin

Hey, girl! I want to speak into the heaviness on your heart.

A heaviness I know well.

The weight of past experiences with sexual sin that have left you feeling numb, empty, or confused about your goodness. 

I want you to know something…

You have the right to feel hurt. 

I don’t know the fullness of your story, or the places where you’ve been, but I have heard story after story from women who have felt weighed down by the contents of their past and don’t know where to go with it. Women left with not only the wounds caused by the decisions they’ve made, but the confusion of reconciling the fact that they made certain decisions in the first place… wrestling with their hearts, desires, and self-understanding. And I have found that NO MATTER WHAT our story or struggle, we are meant to be made NEW!

I’m not here to discredit our agency in our stories. Taking responsibility for our choices and noticing unhealthy patterns in our lives is an important part of moving forward into healing. But I am here to acknowledge how incredibly profoundly we were let down by a culture that led us into certain decisions in the first place. I’m here to destroy any chains of shame that keep us weighed down by our past. To throw away the lies about we might carry in our minds, bodies, and hearts about who we are because of where we’ve been. To reclaim the beautiful gift of ourselves and our sexuality. To restore our faith in our own unalienable goodness.  

Because no matter where you’ve been, 

before that,

YOU WERE LIED TO.

You were lied to about what would lead to your ultimate fulfillment, pleasure, or liberation. Almost every form of media you were exposed to equated sexual intimacy outside of its proper context of marriage to true love or freedom. You were groomed by subtle comments made to your impressionable heart. “This person you look up to goes this far with their boyfriend.” “As long as it’s not sex then it’s fine.”  “Hookups will empower you.” “Viewing porn will empower you.” “Sexting will empower you and make you feel seen/loved.” “If you loved me you would do this.”

You were lied to and that’s not fair.

It’s not fair that your boundaries were questioned or compromised instead of fought for and protected.

It’s an injustice that no one was there to stand up for your authentic good, or if there was, you were taught not to listen.

You can mourn the fact that you were slowly led to become comfortable with things that ended up hurting you, like a frog getting used to boiling water. 

There should have been someone there to fight for you. 

Dear sister, Your goodness was not taken from you. 

Your desire for love is so infinitely good. It is literally designed to bring you to Heaven.

It was your good desire to love and be loved that was manipulated in your life. Used against you.

That’s why some of your experiences may seem so blurry and confusing. Because it was good things, such as our desires for communion, that were distorted. Boundaries might have been compromised and, wanting to love and make others feel good, wanting to be loved and to feel good, you felt confused about what love called for in the moment; guilty for continuing and guilty for pulling away. Not walking in the fullness of freedom and the brilliant light of truth.

But you are now ready to walk forward in the freedom that protects and guides your desires rightly.

The freedom of knowing the fullness of truth. The freedom of engaging in healthy relationships that are devoid of pressure or fear. The freedom of virtue controlling your passions to direct them towards real love instead of lust.

Dear sister, You have not lost your purity. 

Your purity is not something that you can lose… it’s something you on-goingly practice and cultivate. Chastity is a lifestyle always ready for our embrace. How beautiful is that?

You are not dirty. You are not spoiled. You are not ruined. You are not “too far gone.” NOPE.

You are on the journey of learning what you really deserve and how you can love well. 

You are on the journey towards greater and greater freedom.

And we are all in this together!

I’m so sorry that our culture hasn’t always cherished you enough to walk with you on that journey. That it has led you instead into making mistakes. But you are not your mistakes. Seriously. I promise you are NOT the one exception to that statement. You are not your brokenness. You are not someone else’s own brokenness turned against you. And even though these things have wounded you, you are not your wounds. You are a daughter of God. Loved by Him. His love defines your destiny. That’s unshakable.

You have the right to feel hurt. 

But you also have the brilliant invitation to be utterly healed.

Here are four steps to help you work through and move forward from your past experiences:

1) Invite God into your story for healing: You are NOT your past, but your story matters and deserves to be processed. Christ can help bring clarity into the full picture of what you’ve been through. When memories come up, ask the Lord, “Where were you in this?” Upon asking this question I have been greeted with images of Christ crying for me and my situation. Loving me. His heart blazing with love and mercy for everyone involved. Not condemning me, but longing and aching for his daughter’s greatest good. This helped me to process the way evil played a role in my life and acknowledge the pain of the wounds I have experienced without internalizing them as something I should carry as shame. However you feel called to work through these things, healing these memories helps put them to rest. While this is something you can start to do in personal prayer, you may find that you need the help of others to navigate your past experiences. Consider counseling, spiritual direction, and vulnerable conversation with your close female friends. 

2) Seek forgiveness: As you walk through your story, you may encounter actions you are not proud of. You might recognize the way you used someone, even if the use was mutual, and if that person is still in your life, feel called to have a conversation with them towards forgiveness. You may encounter in your story actions of others that made you feel used or led to sin, and find feelings of anger or pain that can only be released through forgiveness. If it is not healthy to engage with these relationships anymore, this forgiveness is meant to happen within your heart. This may take time and radical grace from God, but this forgiveness will help you to wholly heal. Finally, you may need to extend forgiveness towards yourself… to learn to embrace your past self with love, compassion, and mercy. We can come to understand this mercy through the sacrament of confession. Through confession, we can experience the mercy God has for us in a tangible way, as the Lord works through a priest. You can TRUST in the forgiveness you receive there. God doesn’t see you as your sin. He sees you as his beloved child and can’t wait to welcome you back into his arms no matter how many times you fall and to give you the strength to grow closer and closer to the person He created you to be.

3) Set yourself in freedom: We can play a role in freeing our hearts from the chains that lead us into sin or pain in the past. How? Firstly, by removing ourselves from relationships or environmental influences that put pressure on us to choose anything but real love! We have to surround ourselves with people who acknowledge our dignity and seek to uphold it, and with media that upholds the gift of the human person and of our sexuality lived according to God’s design. Anything else, is not healthy for our hearts and lives. Our environment should never desensitize us to offenses against the human person, but encourage us to grow in our desire to love well. This sets us up to make decisions from the depths of our free will, instead of out of pressure or fear. Secondly, we become more free when we actively grow in knowledge of the truth. By more deeply learning how we are called to live, we increase our capacity to choose authentic love for ourselves and others. We can discover the boundaries we might need to set in our lives, and learn how to grow in the virtue of chastity which helps to guide our passions towards authentic love. Like any habit, the more we practice chastity, the more natural it becomes to choose the good… the more truly free we are!

4) Let authentic love reign: Love is what you were made for. Loving well and being loved well teaches us who we are and what we are worthy of. To be honest, I originally chose to embrace the virtue of chastity because I simply wanted to avoid being hurt. However, I quickly found that a life of chastity offered, not just a lack of pain, but so much more beauty that I could have imagined. Authentic love helps us to heal. It is through healthily giving the gift of ourselves in which we fully discover ourselves. Help build the culture of love that you needed and still need. You may find that your story is exactly what helps you minister and relate to women who have been through similar situations. God makes all things work together for good. 

P.S. Sister, if while going through your story you come to realize that some of your experiences were not just orchestrated through the general pressure of the culture, but the coercion of a particular individual, I am so sorry. If you did not explicitly say yes to something, you did not consent. This is called sexual abuse. This was NOT your choice or your fault. This is an incredibly deep abuse and injustice to your full personhood and unalienable freedom. Not only are these experiences not your fault, but a crime against your good. You did not deserve to be abused, used, or assaulted. You do deserve healing, help, justice, and love. The sins of someone else are not your own, and your heart needs to be ministered to. Please check out Women Made New Ministries and their many resources to aid your journey towards deeper help and healing.

I don’t know about you, but I look forward to further embracing my role in helping to raise a generation of men and women that treat one another with love and respect. To a culture that champions authentic love and freedom. To women helping one another through their stories.

I hope you’ve come to recognize that it’s okay to feel hurt, that you’re not alone, that you are loved, and that your inherent goodness remains untouched. Shame can’t win when God Himself is fighting for our flourishing and restoration. May our stories help save others from feeling pressured too. 

With much love,

Alex