”I am the protector of you, our family, our home,” my son has said to my daughter today, at first, as a mother, I felt proud then fear sank in along scenarios of what-ifs. My first thought was what if something bad happens to my daughter and he feels guilty for not being able to save her from that and have to live with that blame and guilt eating him up all of his life? I just froze, my mind shut off for a second, their conversation blurred and I felt bile rising up.

I remembered a very old memory, I guess I was around 8 or 9, I was not even developing so-to-speak. I was walking home with my grandmother, we saw a shephard and his goats, they were so lovely, I remember there was a black baby goat, it was very cute and I stopped to pet it. It ran away to the shephard, he was an old man, around probably 60s. He caught up the goat, saying he would hold the baby for me to pet. I do not remember how the rest of the details were but I remember finding myself sitting on his lap, he was stroking my legs, saying beautiful, beautiful. I remember my grandmother watching it all, without intervening, without telling him to stop, without calling me back to her-just watching, well-knowing I was being assulted and not caring because I wanted to pet the baby goat at the first place. I can’t really remember how I moved away, I only remember the shame, knowing it was all wrong, feeling dirty and exposed, vulnerable in the most terrible way.

I now know why she stayed silent, to save her own face, selfish and toxic to the bone. I go batshit crazy when people I do not know tries to touch my kids, I can’t count how many times I ended up simply roaring to the strangers trying to touch my kids. Ironically enough, I had always been called out to be the b*tchy one, grumpy one and so many other names. Society has been teaching us how to ignore sexual assult, look to the other side, play pretend it was not a big deal, never mention it again.

Why did I write this tonight? I had been judged many times to cut ties with my toxic blood family. I am only glad I had done that. Can I ever trust these people around my kids when they failed to protect me as a kid? They ignored me, my feelings and labeled me as the rebel, black sheep as if they had never ever played a part in all of these events.

I had taught my kids to scream as a no, shrug from touches, slap hands away if necessary. When we go somewhere, we have a very basic rule: stay where I can always see you. Am I overprotective? As a little girl who had been sexually assulted more than one time, I will answer damn no! If you think I am an overprotective control-freak, I am only jealous of you because you had never been assulted and never carried the blame, shame, pain of it.

I had been asked a lot of times to write about my own motherhood journey. It is not easy, it requires a lot of mental work, a lot of patience. I am highly aware, my own traumas are blending in my own motherhood, it is an ugly world we live in, I only aim for them to remember their memories; not supress their own memories like I had done.

Ugly, ugly world.