The Other Child: In Conversation with Author and Domestic Violence Advocate Courageous Fire

“One of the ways you know something is pivotal is when your brain buries it.”

This sentence leveled me in the world of author and advocate Courageous Fire. Her memoir, This is For the Other Child: the forgotten sibling in families of child sexual assault,” centers her story as a child witnessing the sexual abuse of her older sister by the hands of their father. It’s a perspective you don’t find in many memoirs centering domestic assault, which makes Courageous’ voice stand out even more. Reading her recollection of her turbulent family life stirred up so much for me, not only as a mother but as a Black woman moving around in the world. Being raised in an African American family sometimes means that the pain of abuse tends to be swept under the rug. The abuser is often confronted, and the abused are left in the wreckage. It’s apparent in the culture – and in the statistics.

According to the Sexual Assault Support Center, African American girls and women ages 12 and over experience higher rates of rape and sexual assault than any other female demographic. The Office of Violence Against Women reports that at least three out of every ten Black women are survivors of child sexual abuse, or CSA. Of those survivors, nearly 44% of them were abused at the hands of a family member. While our community continues to do the work of amplifying the voices of the abused, it’s people like the author whose cries often get lost in the madness.

After absorbing Courageous’ written words, I sat down in a virtual discussion with the writer. When I asked what, in addition to her lived experience, inspired her to write the memoir from the perspective of the child witnessing the abuse of a sibling, her answer was simultaneously simple and complex: “I wanted to form a tribe. Even if it’s ugly, let’s still start from the truth.”

Since there were so many segments of Courageous’ story to unravel, we began with her mother – who had died just four months before Courageous began writing her memoir.

“It was the pea in the mattress,” Courageous quips.

The author highlights specific events throughout the memoir where she contends that her mother pitted the sisters against one another, taking out her anger on the older sister while using her relationship with the younger sister as emotional warfare. Once Courageous was old enough to understand the manipulation she perceived, there was no holding back.

“It wasn’t until I got some age that I gained the perspective enough to confront her,” she said. “I deserved that unfiltered moment with her.”

The moment Courageous refers to ironically occurred during her mother’s funeral. She writes of that moment in her memoir:

“I knew that my mother had done things for and with me that were really compassionate, attentive, thoughtful and fun,” she said. “But after what she admitted to me, I had no idea how to view it, where to put it . . . “

So, how did she balance her love for her mother and keeping a boundary with her? The author replied, “I don’t think there is any such thing as balance. Once I knew better, I stopped that access.”

When our conversation shifts to the abuser himself, the author’s father, who is also deceased., this is where we see the inner child of Courageous show up. “That was the little girl in me that needed to know why,” she said of her father’s abuse toward her sibling. “He needed to say, ‘I’m sorry I did this to you.'”

Although her father eventually admitted to the abuse before his death, the author contends that it simply wasn’t sufficient.

“He had no excuse, no apology. An apology could have salvaged the relationship between my sister and I. [His admittance] didn’t change anything. It wasn’t enough,” she said.

“I have no family, but my family is still alive.”

This is the sentence that begins our portion of the conversation about Courageous’ older sister, from whom she is currently estranged. Throughout the family dysfunction, the author states that she attempted to reconnect with her sister several times. There were copious phone calls and emails, but nothing ever worked, Courageous claims, leading to a cycle of reaching out, being ignored and disconnecting.

“I tried calling . . . she would always let me know it needed to be about her,” she said.

“My oldest niece grew up with a perspective of her grandparents as loving,” Courageous says. The author shares that her parents were members of a social activist drama club in the 1960s when they first met. Does she feel the interactions among all family members were just performances? She nodded onscreen and said: “Yes. And that makes me very sad.”

As we wrap up our hourlong conversation, I ask Courageous if there’s anything she wants her readers – especially fellow “other children” – to gain from her life story. She replies, “I want them to know that someone remembered them. I want to take them out of this place of guilt. I’m hoping they feel permission to look at how they, too, suffered.”

Correction: This story has been corrected from earlier versions. We apologize for the error.

---