DeShawn Hernandez

About

Something is worth establishing straight away: you are permitted to be uncertain about what to call it. A great many people spend years unable to start because they cannot decide whether their experience qualifies for the word. You do not need the word to begin. Whether or not what happened to you meets someone else's definition of abuse, the effects you are living with are real and they respond to treatment. We can work on those effects without ever settling the terminology, and plenty of people never do settle it. The label is for paperwork and not for this room. My formation happened in community mental health, where I met many people stuck at the definitional question while their actual difficulties went unaddressed for years. It is a costly place to be stuck. If you cannot decide what to call it, come anyway. The word can stay unsettled for as long as you need.