Shattering the Silence: The Courage to Let Go and Live Forward
In this Survivor to Thriver Blog, Darlene Lekowski shares her journey of resilience, justice, and healing to break the silence about sibling sexual trauma and abuse to encourage others in claiming their own truth. We thank Darlene for her courage and heart.
The Silence That Lasted Half a Century
For more than fifty years, I lived inside a silence so heavy it shaped every breath, every choice, every dream I dared to have.
- I was sexually assaulted by two of my oldest brothers as a young girl.
- They told me that if I ever spoke out, I’d destroy our family, be abandoned, and end up alone.
- In the conservative, upper-middle-class Midwest home where I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s, nobody talked about their problems.
We pretended everything was fine.
- I loved my parents and believed they would have protected me—but I also believed the truth would kill my mother and shame me forever. So, I stayed quiet.
- The cost of that silence was my freedom.
- Every relationship, every achievement, even every success was built atop a secret that kept me trapped in survival mode.
- I learned to control, to plan, to anticipate harm before it arrived.
That hyper-vigilance made me a strong businesswoman and effective leader—but a deeply wounded human being.
When Survival Becomes a Cage
For decades, I measured safety by control.
- If I could outthink every situation, I could keep the chaos of my childhood from repeating itself.
- But control is not the same as peace.
- When you live your life constantly fighting unseen enemies, everyone starts to look like an opponent—even the people who love you.
- My silence and fear built a prison that looked, from the outside, like success.
- I had a career, a family, and a life that most would call enviable.
- Inside, I was still that little girl begging to be believed.
- After my mother passed away and my father was slipping into dementia, I confronted one of my brothers. I wasn’t looking for vengeance—only an apology and acknowledgment of what had been done to me.
What I received instead was a lawsuit.
- He sued me for defamation, and I countersued for the same.
- In court, the weight of half a century of fear met the light of truth.
- The jury believed me. I won.
- I thought victory would feel like peace, but it didn’t.
- The anger, shame, and bitterness I’d buried didn’t dissolve with the verdict. It began to leak out—especially toward those I loved most.
That was when I understood: survival had carried me this far, but it could not take me home.
The Breaking Point
The lowest moment of my life wasn’t in that courtroom—it was in a restaurant parking lot in Charleston, SC, when I hit my daughter in the head during a PTSD episode, thinking she was the brother who raped me.
That moment became my mirror. It allowed me to see that trauma doesn’t end when the abuse stops—it ends only when we stop running from it.
What triggered it wasn’t what was happening in front of me—it was what had happened fifty years earlier.
- My mind replayed a child’s terror of abandonment; I believed, for an instant, that my daughter leaving her brother meant she was abandoning me as well, and I’d lose her forever.
- I saw my brother’s face where hers should have been.
That day, I hit the person I loved most because I had never truly faced the depth of my pain. It shattered me. My daughter told me that unless I got real help, she couldn’t have me in her life. And she was right.
Letting Go: The Second Act
The second act of my life began the day I chose to let go.
- Letting go meant more than forgiving my abusers or accepting the past.
- It meant dismantling the strategies that had once kept me alive but were now keeping me stuck: the obsession with control, the need to win at all costs, and the belief that silence equals safety.
- Letting go meant surrendering the narrative that being strong meant being unbreakable.
- It meant learning that vulnerability isn’t weakness—it’s truth in motion.
I started to release the emotional residue that clung to me like black tar: anger, shame, resentment, and bitterness.
- All that weight wasn’t about me anymore—it was about my brothers, about a history that no longer deserved ownership of my present.
- It was messy and painful. Healing always is.
- But once I began purging the darkness, light had somewhere to enter.
The Power of Speaking the Truth
There is no easy way to expose a terrible truth.
- To say I was sexually abused by my brothers for five years as a young girl still makes my body tremble.
- Even the word incest still triggers me.
- But I learned something miraculous happens when you name your pain: it begins to lose its power.
Every time I told someone, they believed me. That truth shattered fifty years of silence.
A Moment in the Courtroom
When the foreman read the verdict in my defamation trial, I cried silently. I looked at the faces of twelve strangers who believed me and mouthed ‘thank you’. That moment didn’t erase the trauma—but it affirmed my truth. For survivors, belief is everything. It’s oxygen after years of suffocation. That verdict was justice on paper, but the real justice has been in letting go of the silence of my secret.
What It Means to “Live Forward”
Living Forward isn’t just a slogan—it’s a daily practice.
- It means waking up and choosing presence over fear, hope over control, faith over perfection.
- It’s not erasing the past; it’s learning from it and refusing to let it dictate who you are today.
- To live forward, I had to cultivate seven inner tools that now define my healing mindset: Resilience, Optimism, Courage, Perseverance, Self-awareness, Self-help, and Hope.
These principles became my compass. They guided me away from shame and toward agency. They helped me rebuild relationships, especially with my husband, Tom—my “Viking,” whose steadiness has helped me find my own.
In the March 15th blog, Darlene will continue to explore her concept of what it means to “Live Forward.” These steps include: share your story, reframe your inner dialogue, work toward self-acceptance, set clear intentions, ask for help, and find your people.
Darlene Lekowski is a survivor, speaker, author, and advocate who transformed decades of pain into hope and healing—for herself and others. After fifty years of silence about the sibling sexual trauma and abuse (SSTA) she endured as a child, she found her voice, winning the civil lawsuit brought against her by her own brother.
Her debut memoir, Shattering Silence: A Story of Survival, Justice & the Power of Telling the Truth (April 2026), shares her journey of resilience, justice, and healing.
She speaks publicly about her journey and partners with SSTA and sexual assault organizations worldwide to raise awareness and give a voice to all survivors.
Darlene lives in the Charlotte, NC suburbs with her husband, Tom, their dog, Pepper, and is the proud mother of three adult children.
Visit darlene-lekowski.com and click on ‘Sign Up for Book Updates’ for monthly updates
Instagram: @darlenelekowski
Facebook: Darlene Lekowski
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