The New Years I was Raped

Jessica Prado Hanson
5 min readDec 31, 2018

I haven’t been a big fan of New Year’s for most of my life because the holiday was always a terrifying reminder of being raped as a kid by an adult relative. Oddly the thing I was most terrified of before has become part of what I am most proud of now simply because I started to react differently to it. I am proud of how I am changing all the challenges in my life into opportunities for me to feel my greatness. I changed how I thought about challenges in life and I see them now for the opportunities within those challenges. I am grateful for the inner strength and fortitude these challenges have brought me. Facing the dark truth was hard but the truth is after the celebrations were over he decided he wanted me and he was going to take me by force while I and the rest of the house was sleeping. I was powerless and there was nothing I could have done to get out of it. That simple fact was one my brain could not process until recently because it was somehow easier to take responsibility so I could feel like I had some sort of control. But no, I had no control in that moment, I was a 14 year old little nerdy kid and he was a 19 year old 6 foot 3 bodybuilder that could hold me down by the neck with one hand. I had to start by admitting the truth to myself, I was helpless and had no power in that moment. I do have power now to evolve how I react.

Trauma damages us and I have never been…

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Jessica Prado Hanson

Artist Sharing the Deeper Truths of What I Survived and How I Learned Post Traumatic Growth to Find Sustainable Self-Transcendence to Thrive