My name is Scott Kinderman.

I am a victim of childhood sexual violence.

I found healing.

I transformed from victim to survivor.

I transformed from survivor to thriver.

I am a volunteer.

I am an advocate.


Most importantly, I am a voice.

**TRIGGER WARNING**

In telling who I am and how I came to be at this point, I speak directly to events of sexual violence that occurred in my life. If you feel these may be triggers for you, please do not read beyond the end of this paragraph. I am so sorry for what occurred for you and the pain that you carry from these events. Please know that healing is possible. Unfortunately, the hard part is that only you can choose to begin the journey and that you are the one who has to do the difficult work of healing. Not everyone is at the point where they are ready for the journey. AND that is ok. Click here to go to another page where I offer a list of resources that may help you begin. I wish you healing.

About Me

I wish I could say my story of trauma, discovery and healing had a well-defined starting point. Five years ago, I would have told you it did. Today, however, I recognize that I cannot claim this journey as mine alone. It is a shared legacy bequeathed to me from at least one previous generation, and maybe more.

“Never Present, Ever Present”

Between the ages of eleven and twelve, two of my mother’s boyfriends molested me. Surprisingly, one of them actually confessed to her what he had done. The police were never notified and she never informed my father. She told me afterwards that she had forgiven him, and that because she had, I had to as well. I had to put it behind me and forget about it.

Some additional context is needed here. My mother was not a nice person. I lived in never ending fear of her. There wasn’t physical abuse, however, there was constant emotional and psychological abuse. Two to three hour yelling and screaming fits were the norm. Knock over a cup of coffee, screaming fit. Take too long in the shower, screaming fit.

Positive accomplishments were weaponized against you. In standardized testing, I scored high enough that the scores could have been used to apply to Mensa. This was twisted to become “if you’re so god damned smart, why can’t you do anything right?”

Survival and a modicum of peace depended on not awakening the rage that always lay just below the surface.

So, I buried it.

The funny thing about buried emotions like shame and guilt, though, is they never really stay buried. They can be triggered by so many things – even simple, mundane things. Then all the power you thought you had in your life would just slip away again. It’s a cycle many never escape.

It took thirty-five years for me to finally tell my father and step-mom. Thirty-five years in which I estranged myself from them to the point where our only contact was Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. I felt like an imposter in my own life. I worked. I married. I had kids. (For the record, they are awesome – just sayin’). I divorced. I started a business. I lost a business. I bought three houses. I lost three houses.

And through it all, the presence of the molestation was always there. Never really surfacing, but making itself known through a lack of self-esteem and an inability to believe in myself. I would start things consciously knowing I was not going to finish them. It was an invisible wall that I could never get past. Today, I’ve learned to call it the “Never Present, Ever Present”.

The sinister part of “Never Present, Ever Present” is that it masked the underlying root cause. It never allowed the connection between past abuse and the continued failures to be made. Instead I was always left with “I’m a failure and I don’t deserve to succeed anyways”.

“Breathing Until The Breathing Stops”

For some survivors, life comes together in such a way that a crisis point presents itself and they know something has to change. Maybe it’s losing oneself in substance abuse or maybe they find therapy.

For others, life just… exists. You are simply going to keep putting in your years of breathing until the breathing stops. This is where I saw myself.

I am fortunate that I had a boss who liked my work ethic and saw potential in me. They offered to pay for me to attend a “personal and profession development” workshop. While there, it clicked. I made the connection between my past abuse and my cycle of failure. It marked the starting point of my healing.

I began the process of taking apart my life as I had lived it up to that point and putting those pieces back together again in better and stronger ways. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t linear. I had good days. I had bad days. I had some VERY bad days. And, I kept at it. I learned things about myself that I did not like. I was forced to confront things of which I am very ashamed. I learned forgiveness. I also learned the difference between forgiveness and absolution. I discovered something that had been missing in my life; I could accept myself for who I am and who I am not. I finally learned to love myself.

“Release The Advocate”

Healing to the point of learning to love yourself again is something I wish for all survivors. It is reclaiming the power in your life that the actions of someone else took away. If a survivor has come this far, I applaud them. If they are still on the journey (by the way, it never really ends), I offer my most sincere encouragement. A life brought back to this point is an amazing life.

For some survivors, getting this far is enough. And, this too is ok.

For others, the knowledge gained in their journey creates a desire to help others also find healing. These individuals make the additional step into advocacy.

I was ok stopping at learning to love myself again. It is here I owe my daughter a debt of gratitude that I can never repay. In 2020, a mere three weeks before the COVID shutdowns began, she started her first job after graduating college. She was hired as the Volunteer Coordinator and Outreach Specialist at a nonprofit sexual assualt service provider. She oversaw the volunteers who would take 24-hour shifts answering the 24/7 help line run by the organization. The volunteers would also be on call to respond to the local emergency room when a survivor was admitted.

When the shutdowns began, she quickly lost about half of her volunteers. Operating the help line and being on call for the ER are mandates that the organization had to meet to keep its funding. If a volunteer was not available, a staff member would need to pick up that shift. Very quickly, staff were overwhelmed and exhausted. My daughter called me and basically said “Dad…. HELP!!!!”.

I love my daughter. I became one of their volunteer advocates. Going forward, I would be there and present for survivors on what is possibly the worst day of their lives. I learned the true cathartic power of helping others. I made it my mission to be there for them in their time of need. I would be a voice when their’s was silenced or uncertain. I would be a voice for them because there had been no voice for me.

“Possible Futures and An Unexpected Gift”

I shared that I had been estranged from my father for 35 years. As I rebuilt my life, one of those things I discovered that left me ashamed was the estrangement was of my own doing. I found that I had carried so much anger at him for not trying harder to gain custody of me in his divorce from my mother. My thinking was if he had tried harder, then the emotional abuse I experienced from her and the sexual abuse she enabled to occur would not have happened. In hindsight, I now understand that my anger was misplaced. Survival had dictated that I could not express anger towards my mother. But, it had to go somewhere. Transferring it on to my father had been its only outlet.

Healing allowed for reconnection with my father. I wish it could have occurred sooner, yet I am so thankful he and I had three good years before he passed and I got to say and hear all those “I love you’s” that had no place to go for so long.

In 2023, my mother also passed.

If you had spoken with me anytime before then, I would have told you my relationship with her was complete. I had forgiven her. I had stepped beyond the pain of the abuse and into advocacy.

Sometimes though, the universe offers up an opportunity to heal in unexpected ways. I had been in Madison meeting with lawmakers on the day my brother called to say my mother was being moved to a hospice unit. It did not look good.

A good friend, who also happened to be the Executive Director of the nonprofit, had ridden with me. The call came while we were driving home. As we talked afterwards, with a single phrase she opened my eyes to a perspective I had never before considered, causing things I already knew about my mother to suddenly shift into a new context.

For the first time, I saw my mother as the incredibly talented and intelligent little girl who at one point in her life had her own hopes and dreams. A little girl who loved to learn. A little girl that had lived a block away from a branch of the Milwaukee Public Library. A little girl who literally had the depression era equivalent of high-speed internet. A little girl whose family had moved away from there to a much smaller town in northern Wisconsin. And after moving there, a little girl who had terrible things happen to her at the hands of someone else.

At that time, sexual assault service providers did not exist. There had been no help for her. There had been no voice. She had been told to put on her big girl pants and to get over it. She eventually became the toxic, bitter and angry adult who abused all three of her sons.

Through my friend, I was granted this gift of a new perspective. I realized my mother had been denied so many of the possible futures that had existed prior to her trauma. Without access to any resources, she had lived an unhealed life. I saw that, yes, the relationship I had with the unhealed version of my mother WAS complete.

AND

I could now create a new relationship with her. One based on empathy, compassion and a connection that had been denied to me before. I saw that without healing, her trauma had become generational – my trauma. This was our shared legacy.

My quote on the main page has become a mantra as my advocacy work took on a life of its own. In composing this last section of “About Me”, I realized it was no longer accurate. Perhaps, this version is now more fitting:

“I do this work for those who lost their voice because of the actions of another.

I do this work because there was no voice there for us.”

To my mother as a little girl, I give you my word I will work tirelessly for survivors to grant them access to the healing resouces that you never saw. I will transform this legacy for the both of us.

May you find the peace now that you never knew then. I love you.

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