My name is Maïlé Onfray.

I am a woman, a mother of two children. So far nothing very original ...

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I was born and raised in a Catholic sect from which I escaped when I was 27 years old.

 

Then begins a long struggle, difficult and painful for me ...

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A personal legal fight: my divorce, to obtain the nullity of my wedding by the church as well as my change of first name which had been chosen by members of the sect.

An informative fight: to inform the State and the Catholic Church of the sectarian excesses of the community in which I was born, which resulted in their withdrawal from their canonical recognition by the Church.

A moral struggle, I had to learn to unlearn all the beliefs that had been instilled in me in the sect. I'm still working on it ...

A psychiatric fight, I did not know anything about the world of mental health and I had to fight and search for several years before finding specialized professionals to have quality care adapted to my needs.

A material struggle, I left the sect with 3 bags, my children under my arm ... I was quickly confronted with the difficulty of being a "solo mom" without a penny.

A fight against the harassment of the sect so that I come back. They pressured me for years and tried to force me to commit suicide.

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But all this was not the most difficult for me ...

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By leaving my ex-husband and the sect, following the suicide of one of my brothers and the death of my father, everything exploded in me ...

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The memories of the rapes I had suffered throughout my childhood in the sect, the pervasive violence and manipulation in which I had been raised ... The first years after my departure, I was focused solely on survival. Put my daughters to safety, find a job, and hold on despite the pressures and threats from the sect.

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Little by little, I managed to create a healthy environment around me, and that's when everything exploded ... From the moment the sect married me to one of its members, I had total amnesia (for almost 15 years) from everything I had suffered there. When I left him and finally managed to escape them, everything came right back to me ...

 

I was diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder. These two diagnoses have helped me a lot to understand myself better, to accept myself better.

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But that's where the hard part for me started.

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I began to realize things that were obvious in my life but that I systematically put aside.

 

My amnesias from my childhood, my amnesias in my present.

These voices in my head that I heard constantly since I was little.

Those times when I felt so cold, detached, cut off from my surroundings.

Those moments when my loved ones were strangers, when I no longer knew where I lived, my name, my age ...

Those moments when my skills at work were disappearing without me understanding why.

Those moments when I found myself once again trapped in toxic relationships, replaying the same scenarios over and over again, frozen, unable to defend myself, unable to flee, unable to get to safety.

Those moments when at home, terrified I was plunged into atrocious physical, sensory, auditory, olfactory memories from which I could not extricate myself ...

The anxiety attacks, the terror, the emotional and physical pains which took more and more place ... The despair which invaded me, the anger also sometimes ...

 

Little by little, to make sense of what I was going through, I began to research.

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I created this site because I would have liked to find a similar site and the possibility of reading day by day the testimony of a person having the same psychiatric disorders as me. To be able to reassure myself about the steps to be taken, the difficulties and the victories experienced ...

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I therefore invite you on a journey into the world of dissociation and dissociative disorders ... Society has many beliefs and prejudices vis-à-vis psychiatry and people with psychiatric disorders. I therefore wish with my words to make you understand my day-to-day experience, not only to share my difficulties, my research, the helping resources that I find and my rants ....

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I know for a fact that a single testimony does not have the value of proof. This is why I also share here scientific articles, specialized resource sites, as well as my research on these subjects and all the supports that I find useful ...

 

 

Good reading !

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Maïlé