Cheryl Burke.Photo:Corine Solberg/Getty
Corine Solberg/Getty
Cheryl Burkeis sharing how past trauma has impacted her adult life.
“Sharna, you were saying, ‘People must think that you have this life, this perfect life, and it’s so beautiful how you went from all this child abuse, you know, me getting sexually molested when I was a little girl,’” Burke said. “In my brain, this is home, unfortunately.”
She continued: “[It] was not having a father figure and turning to men who weren’t, I guess, healthy, but also I was attracting physical and mental abuse because this is all I knew, so it felt like home.”
Cheryl Burke.Monica Schipper/Getty
Monica Schipper/Getty
She went on to say that the feeling of comfort in mistreatment seeped into her life as she got older, even shaping the way she felt about her job as a dancer.
Burke, who has been open in the past aboutchoosing celibacyafter herseparation from Matthew Lawrencein 2022, said that trauma response is one of the reasons she isn’t dating right now.
“This is why I’ve been single, and I choose to be single until I can — well there’s no magic switch — but I know I’m not ready to date yet,” she said.
Cheryl Burke.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
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In addition to the sexual abuse, Burke said she experienced other trauma as a child that led her to bring negative people into her life as she grew up.
“My first memory as a kid was seeing my father with another woman, like literally as if it was yesterday,” she revealed. “It’s so funny because I always ask my guests this, like, ‘What’s your first memory as a kid?’ For the most part, it’s all like, ‘My grandma picked me out of the crib.’ But I’m like, ‘Great, I saw my father literally be intimate with another Filipino woman,’ which was his secretary. And [her parents] were already separated, mind you, but still I was like freaking 2 years old.”
“So right then and there is like an imprint in my brain, I would say, on what my life unfolded to be as far as the choices and the men and not stable men I had in my life until my stepfather came into my life, who I call dad to this day,” she added.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
source: people.com
