Keeping Mum

Monique Lisbon

The silent cost of surviving childhood sexual abuse

I have known since I was a tiny child, that there are some things I could never say.

Even if I could have told my mother in words, she wouldn't have saved me. I did tell her without words in so many ways, and she didn't save me.

There was only one way to live through my childhood. 'Keeping mum' was the silent cost – my only possibility – of survival.