Rape victims of Hurricane Katrina, take heart: You can overcome the adversity that has assaulted your mind and your heart, but which cannot claim your spirit.

I know this is true, because it happened to me. I know from personal experience how violent rape is, even when the accepted violence – the cut of a knife, the cold barrel of a gun, the cuts and bruises from a clenched fist – does not accompany this terrible crime.

Hurricane Katrina rape victims, like rape victims anywhere, had their trust taken, their reality ravaged. They went to bed innocent one day, only to wake up cynical the next. Most of all, they had their faith in humanity stolen. If you were raped (whether during Katrina or some other time), then you belong to a shared sisterhood.

With no one to talk to, no one to report to, and no one to give you the needed feedback to help you sort things out, you may have closed up to the world, certain that this is the only way to never become a victim again. It is true that the police could not or did not protect you, just as it is true that they can’t always protect a woman who is raped within the four walls of her own home. The sad fact is this: Police can’t get involved until they know a rape has happened.

But if you remain silent to the crime that was committed against you, you tie their hands from ever being able to help you. You handicap them – and yourself. In essence, you help the rapist continue with his crime, by refusing to feel, refusing to see, and refusing to speak. This silence is deafening, and it is deadly.

I know. For the many years, I did not speak to another human being about what was happening to me. When I finally found the courage to speak up, it was to a so-called friend who minimized the crime, and tried to pin the blame on me. For the next few years, the guilt and shame I carried began to fester, making it nearly impossible to function. I did not speak to another soul until 1990, when I opened up to a caring and compassionate counselor.

That counselor, and a subsequent hospitalization for the PTSD that had become my constant companion, saved my life. But I saved my own life, as well. I didn’t fight back in a tenacious, bulldog kind of way. I just kept plugging along, knowing what I wanted from my life, and trying to find a way to achieve it.

You see, I expected better – of myself, and for myself, and certainly for my children. By getting professional help, and because of a deep faith, I achieved better, and rose above what happened to me. Looking back, I know I never allowed that experience to define who I am – for I am much, much more than that.

So are you.