I presented on a panel recently at the 20th Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. Someone asked me after I had shared my experiences of pedophilic torture as a young girl: How did you survive all that?

I found myself reviewing the last 25 years and listing all the different healing modalities I’ve tried: Jungian analysis, psychotherapy, intensive regression and feeling work, massage, Rolfing, acupuncture, meditation, tantric and otherwise. But still my list didn’t answer the question. There wasn’t just one technique that did the trick or even one level. I worked on the physical, emotional and spiritual levels. I tried everything to get well. And getting well seems like a dally event, an ongoing process….But what was the key? What did all these therapies have in common?

After the conference I was talking to my colleague Jeanne Sarson, who said to me “We’re practicing a new kind of feminism. Relational feminism.” She mentioned the words: human connection. Then it hit me….the one thing that had been healing in every case, was a positive human connection.

My grandmother was the only adult I knew as a child who told me I was a good girl. I thought of myself as difficult and unloved because those were the messages I got from the pedophiles. I was often a bother to my single mother who couldn’t cope with the needs of a traumatized child. Later in my twenties I found a kind woman therapist. Her listening validated my experience and gave me the courage to share. On my healing journey I have been blessed with at least one kind stranger who offered me compassion. Those single acts of kindness, even when they were fleeting and far between, as they were in my girlhood, were the raft that kept me from drowning, and upon which I began to build a healthy self, healthy relationships, a new faith in myself and the world.

We often don’t realize how one small act of generosity can resonate in a child’s life. Next time someone asks me what helped me survive, I won’t list all the techniques I’ve tried. I will say: human kindness saved my life.