Ann -- How did your session go? My hope is that it went well for you.
Your post from a few days ago affected me quite deeply - I could not even respond until now. It was so real to me becasue my father molested one of my sisters. My other sister in some way had to know what was going on. I knew what was happening but feared getting killed by him. I'm a man so I cannot imagine what it must have been like for the one sister to know the other sister was getting treated like that. She must have been terrified that she would be next; enraged he was doing it at all; angry at our mother for not stopping it (at a minimum our mother "looked the other way"). But the saddest thing at least to me is that the sister who was not physically touched by our father might have been thinking unconsiously "I'm glad it's her and not me." If she felt that way it must be a horrible burden for her to bear.
As a man, I've paid attention over the years to the issue of "survivor's guilt" and before now could never understand why a soldier who "survived" combat would feel bad about being alive. But through my own therapy I came to realize that it's natural for someone in a violently traumatic situtation to feel relieved that what happened to someone else did not happen to them. It's not that they are happy someone else was hurt but that they themselves were not. In the emotional turmoil following trauma that feeling of relief gets mis-interpreted as a "wish come true" -- i.e. a wish that harm would happen to someone else. The younger the age of the person going through the trauma the more those feelings can get mis-interpreted. (That's one of the worst things about secrecy to me. The fact that there is no supportive loving adult to help a child work through those feelings.)
I saw an interview of an air force combat veteran who survived a bombing misison while other men he knew were killed. He said that he saw one of his friend's plane going down and said to himself "I'm not glad it's happening to you...but better thee than me." I have survivor's guilt but when I here men say things like that I realize I am not alone.
Neither are you, Ann.