clew @58, Mary Frances @89
When Anne of Green Gables got married, "the twins were ready with rice and old shoes, in the throwing of which Charlotta the Fourth and Mr Harrison bore a valiant part." (L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams)
The offhand reference suggests to me that the custom was common in late 19th/early 20th century Canada, at least.
(Yes, I have all the books and practically know them by heart. Doesn't everyone?)
Carrie @307 - It's probably A Bad Thing that I knew at once you meant Natalya Simonova, but had entirely forgotten the name of the actress (Izabella Scorupco).
God bless you all.
The world is a better and safer place today than it was yesterday.
Teresa @133 - From my own small corner of England: I cannot give words to the joy, the hope, the jubilation I feel. America has turned from the darkness and into the light.
Charlie @187 - But the world dodged this bullet because the people the gunman claimed to represent calmly said "No" and took his gun away. That's cause to celebrate, I think. (And yes, I hope they use that gun wisely.)
Lynn @ 343
But at least one thing I am not hard on myself about is my needing to be better at not being hard on myself!
Heh. Yes. It's a good place to start. :-)
a collection of reminisces @ 341
they were actively holding on to the trauma in their past and the suffering it gave them in the present
In my experience, that's a normal part of the processing phase. Attempting to halt or disrupt it only delays completion.
Lynn @ 317 - I won't say "I do know", because I'm not a telepath. But I spent some years in a place that sounds similar to yours.
Based solely on that, what I can say is: It's a long road. Go easy on yourself if you can.
To everyone who has kindly taken the time to say that my comments here are useful: Thank you very much. It means a lot to me.
Rozasharn @ 326 - thank you. It was tough to write, but I'm glad I did.
The Absent One @ 318 - in my view, your parents were wrong.
Some things I personally have found useful:-
Say aloud: "Maybe no one else does love me. But I love me." (It's not necessary to believe it. Just saying it is OK.)
Visualise that suffering, abandoned child and then walk over as the adult you are now and cuddle him/her. Say they'll be OK, that they're loved, that they're safe. (Acting this out physically may help. No one ever needs to see.)
It's OK to cry. It's OK to scream and punch walls, too.
Lynn @ 307
I don't want to feel like I'm whining and making a big deal out of nothing
It may help to bear in mind that children physically need attention and affection. Lack of it can lead to serious illness and even death.
Also, neglecting a child's health and welfare to the extent you mention seems to me a clear case of physical abuse. If a child is in pain and the parents deny or dismiss it (which is also to block that child's access to treatment), then they are actively causing the pain to continue.
Long comment.
Mary Mark @ 304 & 305
You don't need the adrenaline rush to help you escape; you don't need the anger to help you stay strong and hold your boundaries. You don't need the hyper-awareness that becomes an automatic part of you, that makes it a habit to sit with your back to a wall, never a door.
I think it would be helpful - at least to me - if you didn't use the word "you" in this kind of context. It comes across to me as denying the reality of what many survivors deal with every moment of every day.
Several of my friends grew up in dysfunctional families. From what they've said, the best analogy I can come up with, is that living in a dysfunctional family must be like living in a minefield, never knowing when a perfectly innocuous step will cause a mine to blow your leg off.
I find the minefield analogy a bad one, personally, because mines aren't responsible for their behaviour whereas humans are. But I'll go with it anyway, because I think it ties in with my point about the previous quote.
Think about a baby born in the middle of the minefield, to parents who alternate between hysterical giggling and crazed rages where they bayonet anything that moves. The baby may move and set off a mine, in which case the baby dies, or s/he may move and get bayoneted by the parents, in which case the baby dies.
If the baby survives at all, s/he learns to keep very very still - especially any time the laughter stops.
The baby stays in that minefield for eighteen years. If s/he ever gets the chance to learn to crawl, maybe even to walk, it will be only during the intervals of giggling. In the meantime, more mines and more bayoneting.
If the child survives at all, s/he may try to escape. (This presupposes that the child gains any notion that things may be different elsewhere). More mines, more bayoneting. The child may lose one or more limbs and be left to stop the bleeding and tend the wound while rolling and ducking out of the way of explosions, shrapnel, and blades.
If the child manages to get away from the parents and not get blown up, there are plenty of people in and around the minefield who'll kick, punch, throw or bayonet him/her right back. (These are enablers.)
The (rare) young man or woman who actually gets to the point of crawling out of the minefield, crippled, bleeding, weeping, still needs to fight through the armed gangs forcing him or her back.
This survivor knows two things: when to keep still, and when to move.
The body has two basic responses to threat: mobilise energy and direct it inward (ready to flee), or mobilise energy and direct it outward (ready to fight). The conscious mind experiences the first as fear and the second as anger. But that's not what they are - it's merely how they are perceived.
The survivor's entire life experience has taught him or her the following responses:
fear = stay still
anger = move
So. Our survivor waits. (No laughter: stay still!) No mines so far. No blades so far. They could come at any second. Still nothing. Voices. Hands. Very strange.
Blade! - move
Telling a survivor, at this point, that "oh no, it's not really a bayonet and anyway I wasn't going to use it on you, gosh you need to learn to let go of your body's natural reflex reaction to threat" isn't helpful. It is, in my view, deeply offensive and borderline abusive.
Our survivor is lucky. S/he has just happened to reach a field where there are no mines, no crazed survivors (the people in the minefield are surviving too, as best they can), but there is food and shelter and medical care.
How long do you think it's likely to take before this survivor can see a scalpel without either turning very very still or lashing out?
How long before they manage to wrap their heads around the concept that there are no mines and bayonets?
For me personally, it took fifteen years of close regular contact with caring functional people before I was able to understand that they weren't going to assault me. Not ever. Not even if I annoyed them, or upset them, or if they raised their voice.
I still grapple with the concept of there being places without violence. (I literally start to black out when trying to conceptualise it, because my brain can't process visual input at the same time.)
So. Our survivor is in a safe place, and beginning to grasp that fact. Now s/he may begin the long and painful and difficult work of receiving proper medical care for the permanent injuries received, learning to live with severe disability, learning to manage prostheses and anything else that might help him/her lead a relatively functional life.
When all this is done, maybe s/he can start talking about the experience of life in the minefield. Maybe s/he can even begin - and perhaps, given time enough, even complete - the journey towards being able to feel joy at the sound of laughter, or admire the beauty of a well-crafted blade.
But don't count on it. Those physical responses - energy mobilised and directed - are what brought him/her out of the minefield. They are a deep and integral part of what makes someone a survivor.
Without them, we'd all be dead.
Arachne Jericho @ 219 - thank you for being here.
I am so disappointed in myself sometimes because I haven't put everything together and I end up hurting my relationships with other people.
In my view, survival is a victory. Reclaiming oneself is another. Refusing to perpetuate the abuse is yet another.
I think it's too easy, as a survivor, to feel that one should be doing "more" with one's life than "just" surviving. But actually, working to stop the chain of abuse - gathering the strength to say: "It ends here, with me" - is a noble and worthy lifetime's achievement.
j h woodyatt @ 231 - you seem to have two good things going for you: self-awareness and a sense of personal responsibility for your actions. Those will, I think, help you to parent well. That said, I think it's worth taking your intuition - your sense of foreboding - seriously. If you're worried about your ability to cope with a catastrophe, it might be worth building some safeguards now.
#
On forgiveness in the absence of repentance: what has been helpful to me is to imagine the abuser/enabler realising the full extent of the harm they caused, deeply and sincerely regretting it, and asking for forgiveness. With that image in mind, I've found it easy to forgive, love, and bless them. Then I mentally parcel that up and leave it in God's pigeonhole with their name on it. It's there for them to take if they ever get to the point of needing it.
Then I've done my bit, and I can get on with my life.
This is predicated on having a safe place to live, time to explore and deal with the ramifications of abuse, a network of love and support, and time for plenty of personal growth. It's not something that can be rushed or forced.
Mary Dell @ 167 - that's a good list. I agree that 'transcendence' is a more helpful concept.
The brand of forgiveness I come across most is Surrender 1a. I'm amazed how often I see or hear some version of "You have to forgive, which means go back to being abused and feel happy about it."
To which I reply: "No, I don't, and it doesn't, and I take no orders from you."
Mayhem ensues. :-)
pedantic peasant @ 168 - I think you're overlooking a crucial point (as well as the excellent ones raised @ 176 & 178).
I'd say that a great part of the proper business of childhood is to grow and learn and develop. Those who live through abuse during that time never get the chance to develop as children in functional families do. They spend their lives enduring, surviving, in combat (I mean this literally), and often struggling to protect other siblings from the worst of the abuse.
This isn't something that can be shrugged off with an "oh, just put it behind you". This is an entire lifetime of growth that never happened - was never allowed to happen.
For those who survive (and many don't; you can read about some of them in the newspapers), this is something that (in my view) needs to be acknowledged, honoured, owned, and eventually *reclaimed*.
It seems reasonable to me that one may need to spend *at least* as long processing the harm done as it took to do it, and *at least* as long catching up on the lost development as a child from a functional family might need. This work cannot even begin until one has found or made a safe place for oneself, which may take years or even decades.
So the entire process may well take somewhere in the region of 50 or 60 years. After that, it may be appropriate to talk of letting go, or of forgiving. But until then, it's simply a matter of trying to escape, get safe, process the damage, and (if possible) catch up on the normal development one has missed.
Today I celebrate by sending blessings to you abi @ 22. It is beyond words precious to me that even some people who haven't been forced to live it can still 'get' it.
I'm also celebrating by using my wonderful freedom from assault and abuse to tell enablers like JJ Fozz @ 9 to g fck thmslves.
And also by cuddling my chosen family. Happy holiday, all!
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| 2008 | 15 |
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