As a young girl, I liked to play sports. Volleyball, soccer, and basketball evolved to become my favorite team sports. It was not uncommon my senior year of high school to have some sort of practice or even two practices, every day after school.
I had tried nearly every sport that my schools had to offer. As I got older, my practices became very demanding, and consequently my teams were very competitive.
While I struggle to do a proper push up now, doing 20 or 30 at a time for a bad volleyball serve or a ball hitting the floor was standard throughout practice. I remember my teammates all comparing forehead sweat puddles on the floor after each push up session.
Playing sports in high school and college led to some of my best memories and friendships. We worked hard together. We were super committed. We held each other accountable. And we looked out for one another.
**These images are of both my college Volleyball team at UCCS featuring some very special women and me playing soccer in high school. Our volleyball team story is saved for another day. Miss you Jacine.
This commitment taught me that hard work was OK. Sweat was expected to achieve the level of excellence we were striving for. You showed up every day ready to play. There would be days you were tired, hurt, or simply didn't want to be there- but you still showed up.
In Angela Duckworth's book, GRIT, my teammates and I likely would have scored a 6 out of 6 on her GRIT Scale at the time because we were super goal oriented and did not let setbacks discourage us from working to conquer the challenges. It was hard. I cried on more than one occasion after practice and after hard games, but I am still proud of the work I put in and the achievements we accomplished.
These skills kicked off my college career playing volleyball, majoring in a tough pre-med field, and had me working hard on both athletics and studies. Although I of course had the fun and typical college experiences, I was overall still very motivated towards my goals and stayed busy with my athletics.
Then mid-way through my Junior year while going to school in Boulder, Colorado, I was physically attacked in the early morning hours while sleeping in my bed. The police still guess that it was stalker I did not know existed based on all the cigarette butts they found outside my ground floor window. Needless to say, it terrorized me and left wounds both in and out. But I fought back and survived. This was the third but most violent attack that I had endured in about a one year period. And at that time, Boulder was engulfed in a series of attacks against women which ultimately culminated in the death of a young woman.
From that point on, my world changed. The curtains were pulled back and my outlook was forever shifted. I remember going to Old Chicago's for pizza with my Aunt and Uncle the night of the attack and watching the college girls swirl and laugh around me while wondering if I would ever be so carefree and able to do the same again.
These compounded events were catastrophic for me mentally. The attack put me into a spiral of coping with the injuries and the trauma and I started having terrible episodes of panic. I had no idea that what I was experiencing had a name, PTSD. I just knew that I was barely hanging on.
There was no therapy. No counseling. No professional help. And there was no break from the daily expectations of school and life. I had to continue to sleep in my same bedroom and the same bed where I was attacked.
Horrific nightmares plagued me forcing me to relive the experience amongst an amazingly elaborate variety of versions that my traumatized brain recreated each night. In search of a sense of safety, I asked anyone who would allow me to share a bed to do so to keep the night terrors at bay. My roommate, my cousin, and friends were kind enough for a while to help. And although I knew I was becoming a burden, I was so desperate for sleep I continued to impose myself. But when a close family member said, "Rachel, don't wear out your welcome." I knew I had to return to the scene of the crime where I lived in constant fear of the attacker returning and thus fight the demons at night in my dreams.
While I love my parents dearly and we have now moved past this history, at the time they did not know what to do. They are of a generation where holding the stiff upper lip is admired. Talking about our feelings was not. And while I now know how worried they were, at the time I remember just feeling utterly on my own to figure it out. Counseling may have been suggested, but I was in such a state of survival mode that I did not have the ability to seek out the help. My mother and I have recently been able to discuss these experiences somewhat, but to this day, my dad and I have still never talked about it.
I did decide to talk to my professors, but after a terribly awkward conversation with my Chemistry professor in which he said, "What do you want me to do about it?", I decided best to keep my story to myself.
However, as Dory says in Finding Nemo, "Just Keep Swimming" , the lessons of playing sports and being committed to a team gave me the willpower to get up each day, go to class, stay in school and continue towards my goal of graduating with a degree in Kinesiology and Applied Physiology.
During this period in Boulder (1998-1999), there were a rash of crimes being committed against young women. While many women suffered break in's and sexual assaults, there were many of us who endured the physical beatings. It was during this time that I got to know another young woman who had been physically attacked. She and I looked eerily similar and we bonded immediately. And although we connected really quickly and became empathetic lifelines for one another, soon the pressures of school and surviving became too much and she had to leave to move back home with her family and try to piece her life back together.
A degree in Kinesiology and Applied Physiology meant lots of studying. Lots of tests. And it required high comprehension, information processing, and retention. However, one of the challenges for me was that I no longer could focus while alone due to the PTSD I was experiencing. Silence was impossible for me because then my brain would start weaving its tales. I was also always scared the attacker was near and so I found busy places to study such as coffee shops around campus (of which Boulder has many) and I found study partners and formed groups which really helped.
On a bright and sunny Colorado spring day, I decided to study for a Physiology exam out on the big lawn in the middle of campus surrounded by kids throwing the frisbee, hanging out and playing hacky sack. The weather was perfect - blue skies, with a light breeze and I was momentarily at peace so I settled under one of the gorgeous huge oak trees on campus. I was deep in thought on the biomechanics of the muscular system when a pine cone fell from the top of a nearby tree and happened to land on my textbook with a little thump that I can still hear. This sent me into a total PTSD spiral.
I lost my breath. My vision narrowed to pin drops. Cold sweat broke out all over. My heart was instantly gripped in an icy claw. The sunny world around me went dark. And I froze. No flight or fright response kicked in. Just frozen.
"It is just a pinecone. It is just a pinecone." I repeated over and over again.
These two or three minutes would have likely looked like nothing to a student walking by or one catching a rogue frisbee pass. I certainly was not giving a signal that I was needing help or comfort. If anything, if another student had seen me, they likely would have thought that I was weird or "having an episode", so they may have laughed or shunned me for being dramatic or acting emotional - or at least so I thought.
When the PTSD storm finally started to subside, I remember sitting up, closing my eyes and feeling the hot tears start to fall. My moment of feeling safe had been torn away once again so I packed up my books and had to head back to my room where the whole thing took place.
Moments like this would plague me regularly for years to come. Whether it was a loud unexpected noise, a scene from a movie, or accidentally getting bumped on the head, I would be instantly thrust into a PTSD episode fully out of my control.
I eventually graduated from school with a 3.6 GPA in Kinesiology and Applied Physiology with the intention of going to Graduate or Physician Assistant School. But by this time, the emotional toll was too huge. I was exhausted and had not developed good coping skills.
What had started as a new job in the restaurant industry escalated into poor lifestyle decisions. I became desperate for a sense of safety and a night of sleep without dreams of being raped, tortured, murdered. What started as a glass of wine to sleep also led to more drinking, bad boyfriend choices, substance abuse and more decisions I am not proud of.
But I still knew that I had a goals to accomplish. I had worked so hard, had overcome so much, and people expected things from me, so I continued to work and tried to stay the course. However, eventually I gave up studying for the GRE's which I needed for both graduate school and for Physician Assistant applications.
I remember being completely exhausted but always seeking a distraction. By day I was exercising, trail running, mountain biking, weight lifting, anything punishing to get out of my head and into my body. By night I was seeking the next party, the next adventure, the next... the next...
Knowing that I would have the nightmares to contend with. I was running on fumes.
And the harsh reality was that I was also struggling with my anger and resentment at my parents and brother who avoided discussing what happened and encouraged me to "just move on". I knew I was loved, but I couldn't make sense of the feeling of abandonment I felt during my most profound time of need, however I also was not courageous enough to ask for help. I felt they just wanted me to figure it out on my own.
So I tried.
While still in school, I had chosen to volunteer with the Women's Resource Center, COURAGE (CU Rape and Gender Awareness) teaching incoming freshman about consent and how to protect themselves and others, and also as a Victim's Advocate for the Boulder Sheriff's Department. While I was not actually raped during that attack, when a woman's sense of safety is violated, she often has similar reactions and the mind plays out the scenario again and again as if she had. Becoming an advocate and volunteer was my effort in trying to understand the source of violence against women, help other women who had suffered, and surround myself with empathetic people for my own support.
But I was still struggling. PTSD episodes were happening regularly. One day while hiking, I bumped my head on an overhanging rock. This bump brought me to my knees and paralyzed me once again followed by the hot tears and shame as my friends watched me spiral with their mouths agape, wondering, "Why isn't she over it yet?" "It has been years" or "Why is she so dramatic?" Or at least that is what I thought they were saying.
During a visit at my parent's home, feeling safe, I drifted off early to sleep in my room. My father walked in to say goodnight not knowing I was asleep and scared me so badly I started screaming and screaming unable to stop. And not the pretty movie screams. It was more of a deep howling that terrified him as well.
Still, my parents did not know what to do to help.
So I continued to persevere. My current self wants to go back and find my old self, make her put down the books, put down the glass of wine, and walk her right over to the campus center and admit to needing help. It took a few years after college before I eventually started to ask for real help from some special female friends in my life at that time. They were a total lifeline.
It was finally one of those friends who gave me the name of a therapist. But at $125/hour, I was not sure that I could afford it as this was a ton of money to me. My job out of college paid a whopping $24,000 a year to start. But, at this point I was desperate for help and so I committed to the sessions and it became the best investment of my life.
It took many treatments to unravel both the initial trauma and the subsequent trauma I had self inflicted. The bad habits that had been created and the mental dialogue I was having internally. And by this time, I felt so off course of where I had planned to be which was really upsetting. While I was a functional member of society with a full time job and was in great physical shape, I was very broken inside and unable to challenge myself to do the big things I had always dreamed I would do. I did not have the skills nor the self confidence to heal and get back on course.
So I stuck with the therapy. My therapist's methods involved using EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy) which forced me to tackle the memories head on and eventually rewrite the script in my head. I had to go deep into the memories that I had been trying so hard to forget. Eventually, this work reframed the incidences and allowed me to take control of the narrative. This reframing allowed me to not just be the victim in the story but also the warrior who survived. While confronting the history and current realities was incredibly tough and painful, it was so worth it because soon my seemingly endless raging night terrors finally subsided to where I could actually get some sleep. My brain could start to heal. *While this method worked for me, each person will need to find the right treatment solution for themselves.
Through this work, I regained control of my story. I had survived. I had fought back. I am still alive because I am strong. Having this realization that I am a fighter not just a victim, allowed me to finally regain some self esteem which led to making better life choices and finding the right path again.
It has now been 25 years since my series of attacks. I still have moments of PTSD. Last month, while skiing with my kids, my son tossed his mitten and it hit the side of my head where I had been struck years ago and down I went. Same thing. Same spiral. But I was able to bounce back after a few minutes. And this time, some women saw me, recognized what was happening, offered their support and I accepted.
PTSD is real and is apparently hard to ever really recover from. Our brains are mysterious and are wired to protect us. In my case, without therapy intervention, I am not sure that I would have had the strength to correct my self destructive path.
Victims of assault and those struggling with PTSD in all its forms, need to know they have resources for help. They need to have access to funds to pay for the help. They may need guidance and nudging by people in their life wanting to help. Sometimes dialing a phone number and scheduling an appointment is an impossible task when you are laser focused on simply daily tasks and survival.
Because seeking assistance helps, it is a must. Doing nothing can lead to small steps down the wrong path, and can ultimately be catastrophic.
So while the strength and willpower I had learned from my athletics as a kid were essential to my ability to persevere, I would not be where I am today had I not had intervention and professional help.
I am eternally grateful to those who helped.
If you or someone you know is struggling with PTSD, reach out. Act. Find a local resource.
Most local law enforcement agencies have a Victim Advocacy program which will offer resources, including compensation, to pay for professional therapists and counseling services.
And so while I may complain about all the driving I do for my kids' athletics (which is TONS!), I also remind myself that they are building skills and work ethics that will undoubtedly help them in their life journeys too. Pick up a ball and play kiddos.
