Dry Your Wings and Fly

My name is Oscar Crawford. I am alive in the eighth decade of my life, and I am on a mission.

Actually, I have two.

The first is to prevent as many bees as I can from drowning in swimming pools.

The second is to help as many women as I can heal from the effects of childhood sexual and domestic trauma.

Every summer, you can find me rescuing bees struggling to escape death in chlorinated water. And for more than 30 years, I have worked diligently and consistently with women carrying wounds inflicted upon them when they were children.

To both, I am committed.

According to U.S. child protective services data cited by RAINN, at least 56,575 children are sexually abused in a single year.

That number is staggering. Yet it represents only abuse that becomes known to authorities, is reported, investigated, and determined likely to have occurred among children ages 0–17.

And there is something those numbers cannot tell us.

They cannot count every child who never told.

They cannot count every family that kept its secret.

They cannot measure the years a child carried what happened to her because disclosure might threaten a parent, a household income, a family reputation, or someone she loved.

Over the years, thousands of women have entrusted me with stories of what they survived.

Some told me they remained silent because their perpetrators threatened to hurt them—or hurt them even more—if they ever spoke.

Others carried their stories quietly into adulthood.

Women have told me of being sexually abused as little girls by fathers, brothers, extended family members, family friends, religious professionals, educators, and other adults who should have protected them.

I did not go looking for these stories.

They found me.

In the late 1980s, after hearing one woman describe being sexually abused by her brother from the age of four until she was fourteen, something began happening that I did not understand.

Woman after woman began telling me her story.

It happened so frequently that eventually I became emotionally overwhelmed by what I was hearing.

Why were women telling me these things?

Why me?

I needed help understanding, so I flew from Columbus, Ohio, to Phoenix, Arizona, to see my mentor.

I will not identify her. I have always believed that experiences of this magnitude deserve the highest order of confidentiality.

When I arrived at her home, we went into her backyard. She could see immediately that something was troubling me.

I told her what had been happening.

I told her I had not sought any of it.

It had sought me.

After listening, she looked at me and asked:

“Do you remember our first evening together in Tokyo?”

Instantly, I did.

We had met while participating in a ministry tour of Japan and Korea. I had heard there was a remarkable woman in our group who held three Ph.D. degrees.

Naturally, I wanted to meet her.

A hotel desk clerk pointed her out as she was ascending an escalator. I hurried and caught up with her midway.

She was lovely in pink, wearing a magnificent Southern-belle-style hat, dressed as though she were on her way to a Kentucky Derby party.

I introduced myself.

She looked at me and said, “You are an assertive man.”

I explained that I was part of the ministry tour and had wanted to meet her.

She smiled and agreed to have dinner with me in the hotel restaurant.

We met at seven.

After we were seated, she looked into my eyes and began telling me a story I could never have imagined.

I fancy myself something of a poker player, so my face did not betray what I was feeling.

She reached across the table for my hand.

I held hers inside both of mine.

Years later, sitting in her backyard in Phoenix, I remembered that evening completely.

Then she gave me an answer that changed my understanding of everything that had been happening.

She told me that women experienced something in my presence that she herself had experienced that first evening in Japan:

a safe place.

I finally understood.

And the stories did not stop.

For more than three decades, women across the United States and around the world have trusted me with things they had sometimes carried silently for years.

Their stories have convinced me of something else as well.

There is an influence in our world that believes it has the right to take what does not belong to it.

We see it in what human beings do to one another. We see it in what we do to the Earth herself—extracting her black blood, her precious metals and minerals, taking and taking as though possession creates permission.

It does not.

A child's body does not belong to an adult.

Her silence does not constitute consent.

Her vulnerability is not an invitation.

And what was done to her does not have to determine the remainder of her life.

My team and I are committed to helping as many women as possible heal from childhood sexual and domestic trauma and rediscover the life that trauma tried to take from them.

Which brings me back to the bees.

When I see a bee struggling in a swimming pool, I lift her from the water.

And then something beautiful happens.

I do not give her wings.

I do not teach her how to fly.

I do not even dry her wings for her.

I simply help her out of the water.

Then I watch.

She becomes still.

She extends her wings.

She dries them.

And when she is ready—

she flies.

Over time, I began to understand why the bees reminded me of the women whose stories I had been entrusted to hear.

Not because they are fragile.

Because they still have wings.

Sometimes those wings have simply been underwater for a very long time.

And perhaps this is what healing so often looks like:

Lifted from the water.

Stillness.

Wings drying.

Flight.

Those of us privileged to accompany another human being through healing must remember something essential:

The helper never gets to claim the flight.

We may reach into the water.

We may provide a safe place to rest.

We may remain nearby while trembling wings begin to open again.

But the wings belong to her.

The strength belongs to her.

And the flight belongs to her.

Our task is not to become somebody's wings.

It is to help people remember their wings without ever pretending those wings are ours.

That understanding is at the heart of the work I have spent more than 30 years doing.

And it is at the heart of a 52-page book we have prepared to help women begin—or continue—their healing journey.

Its title is:

YOUR HEALING POWER IS ALIVE INSIDE YOU

and its subtitle is:

YOU CAN HEAL YOURSELF, JUST NOT BY YOURSELF.

Those words are intentional.

Your healing power is not something another person gives you.

It is not something a counselor, minister, teacher, author, friend, or helper owns.

It is alive inside you.

Someone may help you out of the water.

Someone may sit beside you while you become still.

Someone may provide a safe place while your wings dry.

But no one gets to claim your flight.

Your wings were always yours.

If you recognize yourself somewhere in these words, perhaps this is your time.

Not to pretend it never happened.

Not to excuse what was done.

Not to surrender another year of your life to someone else's violation.

Perhaps it is simply time to come out of the water.

To breathe.

To become still.

To extend your wings.

To let them dry.

And, when you are ready,

to fly.

Your first step can be taken confidentially here.

Click the link under the book cover.

https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/4PNJ72SG9GX3S

—Oscar Crawford