Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 3100

Tonight's special guest is Fatma Ibrahim from Egypt, a child abuse survivor and author. She'll tell her story and talk about an upcoming art production on the impact of child sexual where she seeks contributions from survivors across the globe. Fatima tells us that she remembers very little of her actual child abuse, having recovered little tidbits in late 2018. "As a child, I always felt out of place, not wanted, ugly, that there was something inherently wrong with me," she says. "I would spend most of my time reading and forming my own inner world. I experimented in changing my state of being in different ways – from extreme shyness to aggression to social butterfly." She started developing lots of chronic illnesses, becoming a people pleaser and a workaholic. "I was a master attractor of abuse from some bosses, friends and even healers. And the thing is, I could not even see the abuse if it screamed at me. I would feel some discomfort which I was incapable of defining, but didn’t trust my feelings or my intuition." She asked herself, "Why was it I never wanted to be in a relationship?" She started working on identifying the abuse and how to deal with it; setting boundaries; recognizing her own needs; seeing her coping mechanisms; learning to trust her intuition. "I worked with different alternative therapists. Traditional ones never worked for me." Fatima says, "Just keep an open mind – many CSA survivors have little trust in anyone which can cloud our judgment when we first embark in healing. It’s important not to isolate as well – which is something I tend to do but try to get out of." She concludes, "Now, I am learning to live. Before that I was surviving. And to live is still new for me."