Piece by Piece: Sheryl Hauk on Surviving Childhood Abuse and Rebuilding a Life

In this episode of The Science Intersection, Rachel speaks with author, educator and advocate Sheryl Hauk about her memoir, Piece by Piece.

Sheryl discusses surviving childhood sexual abuse, the lasting effects of trauma and what rebuilding a life can look like. She explains how storytelling, teaching and music helped her find identity, connection and hope. The conversation also considers what adults need to understand when a child discloses abuse, as well as Sheryl’s legal action and campaigning to improve protection for survivors.

Content note: This episode discusses childhood sexual abuse and its lasting effects. It does not contain graphic descriptions, but some listeners may find the subject distressing. Please take care while listening.

Learn more about Sheryl and Piece by Piece:
https://sherylhauk.com/

Support and information

United Kingdom

·       NAPAC supports adults affected by childhood abuse: 0808 801 0331.

·       Rape Crisis England & Wales provides free, confidential support: 0808 500 2222, with online chat available 24 hours a day.

·       For concerns about a child, contact the NSPCC Helpline: 0808 800 5000.

United States

·       RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline provides support 24 hours a day: call 800-656-HOPE (4673), use its online chat or text HOPE to 64673.

·       The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline offers advice and support 24 hours a day: call or text 800-422-4453.

Other countries

·       Find A Helpline lists verified support services by country and subject.

·       Child Helpline International lists services for children and young people around the world.

If someone is in immediate danger, contact the emergency services in their country.

Be part of the podcast

If you have relevant expertise or a personal story that connects science, health and society and would like to be considered as a guest, visit https://www.thescienceintersection.com/ to learn more about Rachel and contact her about a potential recording slot.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:10

What happened next may sound like fiction. My petite, impeccably dressed friend stood on the beach holding her designer purse over her head while I walked into the Pacific Ocean, letting the waves wash away what my grandmother would have called the ugly. As I swam out past the surf break, I saw a large shadow moving near me. My first thought, crap, a hammerhead shark. I braced to punch it in the nose, but it wasn't a shark. It was a giant sea turtle, a honu. I had never seen one close before. He was so close I could see the three stripes across his face, the markings on his long, powerful flippers, and the shell wider than my arms could reach. His eyes were round and green. He looked straight at me. He didn't look away. He held the gaze until I broke it. But that wasn't enough. He stayed with me back and forth for forty five minutes, always just a few feet away. When I finally turned towards shore, the honu followed me. As I reached the waves and walked into the beach, I turned back one last time, and arm's length away he lifted his head above the surface and looked me straight in the eye. But I heard it. It will be alright. And then he disappeared into the sea.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

That was a reading from Peace by Peace, written by Cheryl Hawke. Cheryl is a survivor of childhood abuse as well as a mother, grandmother, and former music educator. In this episode, I'll be talking about her book, her experiences, and the process of rebuilding a life piece by piece. Before we continue, a brief content note. This conversation includes a discussion of childhood abuse and its lasting effects. Although we won't go into graphic detail, some listeners may find the subject distressing. So please take care while listening. So your book begins with the idea of writing things down after you've been told not to talk or tell. Can you take us back to a moment you realize that you're you're going to write this book?

SPEAKER_01 2:22

So I was a storyteller to my students, to my own children, to my friends, to my book club, all I talk about in the book. And for years they were write a book, write a book, write a book. And I don't think any of them knew what they were really asking. Write a book, write a book. About a year and a half ago, I fell and I went into the doctors and they took some x-rays. And subsequently they found a lot of tumors in my lungs. And initially they said, and I tell this story in the book about Rusty the dog, they said, You have three three months to live. You probably have a fast-growing lung cancer. I'm still here, so that's not what I had. But at that point, I thought, oh my gosh, it's time to write the book. It's time to tell my story. And so I began telling it, and it had been in my mind 40, 50 years. It took me about six weeks to write. Hear a lot of people it takes years, but it was being written in my head for all of those years. And so it was time to write it down. And that's what I did.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

So the title of the book is Piece by Piece. So what was the first piece of the story you knew had to be in the book?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

So it's kind of giving the punchline of the book. But I had a son who he played Legos, and he had a tumor the size of his softball in his skull, and he was dying for a real long time that no one knew. The doctors didn't know, we didn't know. And this tumor is slowly growing, and he would just play Legos, and he built these massive, massive Lego sets. He was only nine years old. It was the Millennium Falcon over a thousand pieces. And I'll tell the story. After his surgery, I decided to clean the shelves where all the Legos were. And I picked one up and I just shattered it to the floor. And I thought, oh my gosh, this kid's been through 24 hours of surgery. His head's been open. He barely survived. And now I've I've wrecked all the pieces. And I turned around and in the door frame was my son. And he said, Mommy, that's okay. We'll just make something new. And so my original title of the book was decorating with Legos. But my publisher said, That will confuse readers when they look at it. And so then they made it broken pieces. And I thought about it for a month, and I went back to the publisher and said, nope, can't be broken pieces. I'm not broken. And so we came up with piece by piece because that's how I've rebuilt my life. And that's how survivors rebuild their lives. They don't do it in one aha moment. It doesn't work that way. We just kind of try to fit pieces together and make something new and beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

I suppose it's about sort of coming to terms and surviving. So how would you say that surviving kind of looks day-to-day?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

So it looks really different than it looked before. In the book, you you see and understand what it was like to be a child surviving, which is you're departmentalizing, you're hyper-vigilant all the time. I still do those things, but after suing my own father, winning, and then being able to change laws in my state to protect survivors, I now can look forward. I still get triggered. I'm still hyper-vigilant. I tell stories in the book about that even now. But I'm not just always looking over my shoulder. I'm not always keeping a secret. I'm not always got butterflies in my stomach and throwing up all night long every night. I'm now able to get through the day without throwing up, or get through the day without having to curl up in a ball and cry. Now I get to share my story, listen to other people share their story, change laws, and try to make a difference in the world.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Do you think that being a music teacher helped in terms of healing?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

So the only picture I have in the book, and I have a couple pictures on my website, is of me at 18 months old sitting at a piano. And I often, I actually know a lot of psychiatrists who are my friends and psychologists. And they often ask me, we don't know how you do what you do. And I think that the answer, that the real core answer, and it's more complicated than this, is music. And I was lucky enough, I mean, I made music as a child in high school. I won the American Choral Directors Award because I was in the choir room playing the piano or singing almost every subject. I don't know how I passed my other classes. Then when I went to college, I majored in music. And then I've been so fortunate. And the endorphins themselves that are made when you make music, the way that the brain is changed, we know that trauma changes a child's brain as it's growing. But we also know music in the opposite way changes a child's brain for the good. When you're making music with other people, especially, we know that when singers are singing, their heartbeats are at the same level, same heartbeat. We know that people communicating together in a community is much better than all the loneliness that so many of us feel, whether you've been through trauma or not. Yeah, the answer is absolutely. And there are stories in the book. We lost one of our teachers, another student to suicide. So I think the experience of trauma and how to use music to heal was something I could share within my teaching classroom.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Music wasn't only part of Cheryl's healing. As a teacher, it also placed her alongside children who might themselves be struggling. That brings us to a crucial question. What adults need to understand when a child tries to disclose abuse?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

So, in any situation where a child discloses, they need a safe environment. When I say safe, I don't mean just physically safe. I mean emotionally safe and intellectually safe. So often, I'll give you an example, teachers are like, oh, well, that child is just a really, really misbehaving child. They don't sit in their seat, they don't listen to me. What we know about the brain now, and it's very interesting, I this is not in my book. I just went to a summit, is that when you go through trauma, and the medical definition of trauma is actually when you feel like your life is at risk, and sexual abuse is one of those things. The front of your brain, the thinker part of your brain totally goes off, and the amygdala part of your brain just kicks in. And it stays that way up to 96 hours. So imagine if a kid, and this was me at night, I'm abused at night, I get up to go to school, and the front part of my brain is not working, just the survivor part. I go to school and my teacher sees me as someone who is just not behaving, not sitting down, and just not memorizing those spelling words, right? Except for my brain can't do that because I was just abused. And the good part to learn all that, my brain got shut off, right? So we have to create these safe environments where we don't say, oh, that's a that's a kid who's getting out of their seat. A safe environment that listens to all children, that makes them feel intellectually safe, not saying, that's the wrong answer. That's an answer that I'm really gonna think about and I really appreciate you sharing. You have to make those environments for those kids then to disclose, because they're never gonna disclose if they don't feel safe. So that's the number one thing. And I know I've gone on and on about that, but being an educator, that classroom environment, being a family, that family environment, it has to be safe enough for a child to disclose. And when they do disclose, they usually aren't telling you a fib. Kids do not make up, uncle touched me there. They don't make that up. That's real. And you need to act because you're the adults and it is your responsibility to take care of children. I have a lot of resources on my website and in the book, in the physical book, for people to be able to go to to have some resources because adults often don't know what to do, to go to those resources and find out what to do if someone discloses to them.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

You talked about supporting survivors through resources, but changing the law is another way of supporting and protecting people. So this is something you talk about in your book, right? Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Yes, I tell the story about my first brick, which was stopping the abuse, and then I tell the story of how I then was asked by a human rights activist if I would help change laws, but I needed to sue my abuser first. So I took my own father to court. I won the largest settlement at the time for a single individual. And then I tell the story of how I changed the statute of limitations and I'm still trying to change those statute of limitations all over the world. Additionally, how I use the money, I call it blood money that I won to help organizations for both survivors and children. So all of those stories are told within the book.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Is there anything else you'd like listeners to know?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Yeah. So I'm gonna say I'm gonna address two types of listeners. First, for people who live with survivors or may not even know. In the United States, one in five girls has been sexually abused at least once before 18. That means most of the people around you, a lot of people around you that you don't know or abuse, have these things like hypervigilance. Please think about empathy and think about grace when someone might be behaving the way you don't expect them to behave. That will go a long way both for survivors and for relationships. And to the survivors, I just want to read something out of my book. It says, if no one believes you, believe yourself. If they looked away, look inward. You'll find the truth. If you're ready to tell your story, do it in your own time and your own voice in your own way. If you ever drop a large Lego project, you're not alone. You can build something new too.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Thank you to Cheryl Hawk for sharing her story with such honesty and generosity. If anything discussed in this episode has affected you, you don't have to do a bit alone. Details of specialist support services for listeners in the UK, United States, and elsewhere are available in the episode notes. If you're worried that a child may be at risk, please contact an appropriate safeguarding service. If somebody is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services. The Science Intersection is now releasing two episodes a month, with the next episode planned for the 18th of September. If you found this conversation valuable, please consider sharing it with someone who may benefit from hearing it. You can also support the Science Intersection by following the podcast, leaving a review, and making a donation using the link in the episode notes. Thank you for listening.