I really don't like to think about/remember that time in my life that I mentioned below, when Domestic Violence sent me to a group therapy "boot camp" for survivors during the daytime, on a weekend, 15 years ago.
The "boot camp" group therapy was for women who had been abused by their partners, as well as anyone who had been sexually assaulted, sexually harassed, and/or stalked/cyberbullied.
But current and recent events, including the DEI removals, have triggered that memory, and I felt I needed to add this story of a worst-case example of the direction we're heading as a society.
That is because I'm not sure if people realize this, but along with removal of DEI programs and protection comes removing protections for things like whistleblower protection from retaliation, protection from sexual assault/harassment/stalking, as well as protection from discrimination and harassment/bullying, for whatever reason - race, religion, gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, age, or just because you're different than the others, for better or worse.
In fact, Trump already tried to remove sexual assault/harassment protection for women in the military in 2016.
And to top it all off, South-African, Nazi-saluting billionaire, Elon Musk - already born into wealth before his car company - voted for by no one into a new office that wasn't congressionally approved, himself disallowed constitutionally from ever being President - has just been given the keys to the US Treasury, and thus our social security and Medicare programs by Trump - in blatant defiance of our U.S. Constitution - and the supposed GOP "patriots" actually applaud it?!?
If we continue to believe lies told by billionaire power-abusers that there's no need for these provisions and protections, even those civil rights provided for within our constitution - and that anyone who claims there is need is the liar - then we will lose funding for these provisions and protections, and thus, they will be lost completely and very difficult to get back again.
Now, back to this "boot camp," there was one woman who spoke to us whose story I will never forget - and I feel terrible because I can't remember her name for the life of me, despite having a really good memory. 😢
I remember Bonnie (post below) and some other people, but I can't remember her name, isn't that odd?
So the facilitator wheeled her in to speak to us in a wheelchair with oxygen, dying of Stage IV lung cancer at the age of 47, but looking 20 years older than that.
Just 3 years prior, in Florida, she had been living with her husband and 3 children in Florida.
Her husband got drunk and began beating her again, in front of her in-laws and children, who literally cheered him on, so said the police who arrived later.
She hadn't been able to leave previously because she had no family, no job, and no money, and was disallowed friendships, even at church. He had total control of all communication outside of the home, all communication had to go through him.
If she left, she didn't know how she could provide for her children (whom he didn't beat - yet).
But what she did do finally is talk to a DV counselor on the sly, who advised her to have a "Go bag" - and if this happened again, leave to a hidden DV shelter, taking her kids if she could.
She escaped his hold, ran, grabbed the trash bag full of clothes, toiletries, and the cab card the social worker gave her, and ran out of the house - but he caught up with her - and dragged her back inside the house - by her hair.
Once inside, he knocked out most of her teeth and broke over 14 bones, 2 of her bones literally sticking through her skin - right in front of his parents and their 3 children.
A neighbor saw her being dragged back inside by her hair and had called the police.
In fact, her abuser tried to use the scratches on his face and the skin under her nails as "proof" that she attacked him and was abusing him, and he was simply defending himself, using the fact that he never beat anyone else as proof.
Incredibly, the extremely dysfunctional/sick family still backed him, saying she attacked him, and that if she was gone from their lives and dead, all would be well.
They didn't do this out of fear of him - as the children weren't beaten (yet, but he would go on to later - his parents lived with him and he couldn't justify it as easily).
They did so because he had scapegoated and blamed her as deserving it because she was the root of all the family's ills and and that all their problems would go away if she did, they'd all be better off if she was dead.
However, the police, not being complete idiots, knew the scratches on his face were self-defense wounds - and she was a bloody mess on the floor with 14 broken bones, missing teeth.
The police told the DV social workers that they were floored with how sick and brainwashed this family actually was.
The truth was right in front of their faces, but they instead chose to believe their version of reality, their father's version - that she deserved it, she was the cause of all of their ills, and she should be beaten and killed.
Why?
Because that's all their psyches would allow - otherwise, what would it mean about them for going along with it?
So the police took her to the hidden women's shelter, who moved her here to a shelter in the foothills of Eastern Kentucky, in hiding.
She and the social workers tried to convince her children to come with her, as the shelter had room for them, but they refused to go - still dysfunctional-family brainwashed that everything was her fault and she'd brought it on herself - plus they'd have a house on the beach in Florida, rather than living in a shelter in the foothills of Kentucky.
Being that she moved from the state, she tried to press charges, but didn't get very far, despite the police testifying on her behalf.
He owned a small construction company, with which he ignored building codes despite hurricanes, bribed local officials to look the other way, overcharged poor people for repairs after hurricanes, and then either didn't do the work at or did shoddy repair.
So he had money, lawyers, and local public officials on his side, whereas she had an appointed DV Legal Aid attorney and nothing, with no social support.
In the end, he got anger-management classes and 6 months in jail, and still, a family and community in Florida, who still believed he was the innocent victim and she was just crazy.
No one ever suggested to him to go to therapy, and even if they did, he wouldn't go or stay in therapy - because in his mind, there's nothing wrong with him.
For the next two years, she wrote her children, called them, sent cards and gifts on their birthdays - but they either wouldn't respond, or when they did, had to defend herself from new false accusations, they name-called her just like he did, told her to STFU and F off, and ordered her to never call them again - so she stopped, not wanting to upset them or put them in the middle further, waited, and prayed.
One year after that, she was now dying of Stage IV lung cancer - and her children wanted nothing to do with her, despite Child Welfare being called on the dad for now beating the oldest daughter.
She worked on bettering herself, stabilizing herself, healing.
She went to therapy, recognized that she was already raised in an abusive family, had previous abusive relationships out of familiarity and brainwashed to believe she deserved it, and learned that she never really learned to recognize appropriate boundaries, as well as what it was about herself that drew these people to her like a dinner bell.
She learned how to better recognize the red flags and avoid sharks, rather than trying to swim with them in the water while bleeding.
She learned better coping skills with her hair-trigger emotions as a result of trauma.
She cleaned the shelter in which she lived in gratitude, became a mentor to new entrants, and a honorary aunt and grandmother to all the children and a good babysitter when they went on job interviews, etc.
Then DV got her a small apartment and a part-time job at a grocery store, with her earning "Employee of the Month" several times.
And yet despite the therapy, despite doing everything she could to work on herself, to improve herself - her wounds, inside and out, including the grief about her children, never truly healed - she just learned to live with the pain and focus on gratitude and held out in silent hope.
Then I heard that she died 3 months later - never seeing her children again, nor did they attend her memorial 😢
The kids were still brainwashed by rich daddy, now singing the false song that she "abandoned" them, despite it being their choice to stay with him, despite the known risk of her life, and despite the social workers being there every step of the way, telling the children themselves they could come.
In fact, the police, the social workers, everyone tried to tell them the truth, but they literally put their hands over their ears.
And the sad truth in fact is this - statistically, groups who are that dysfunctional, that brainwashed, that group-sick, will never snap out of it - too scary for the psyche, what they went along with, so they need to justify it.
As proof of this, on a larger societal scale, Nazis went to their graves still believing that torturing and killing Jews was justified.
Now - if you still don't see the connection to DEI and the direction we're heading in, here it is.
Here we go again, we have learned nothing from history.
We live in a society that scapegoat/blames all their ills on the people who actually have the least amount of power.
We live in a society that "punches down" their frustrations on powerless people, because they can, and then flips any self-defense or their righteous anger back on them as the abuser.
We live in a society who is currently scapegoating/blaming poor, traumatized immigrants for all our problems, particularly if they have darker skin - despite the fact that our own Irish, Scottish, and Italian relatives were treated this way, and most of them were NOT legal.
We live in a society that removes federal and state protections from the poorest and and the most powerless.
We live in a society that makes people's poverty and suffering their own fault and about "not working hard enough," despite the lowest paying jobs actually being the most physically demanding."For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers."
Whether public or private assistance, somebody helped you/supported you, financially or otherwise, whether you want to admit that or not - from your parents paying for college or grants/loans, to your first boss taking a chance on an inexperienced you.
Even though we liberals like to believe we're better, we, and sometimes therapists themselves, advise victims to go to therapy to "learn how to cope better," and how to figure out how to better themselves, how to prevent themselves from being a victim again, rather than confronting/addressing the power-abusers that got them there.
And again, with as helpful as the suggestion of therapy can be for wounded, victimized people - none of it will actually solve the problem- and is still a form of victim-blaming.
I guess because viewing people struggling or wounded makes us uncomfortable.
It forces us to think about our own vulnerabilities, when we like to pretend they're not there, and our own vulnerability disgusts us.
So we tend to view people struggling as weak, rather than wounded.
All of this rather than truly addressing the real problem in society - the mental health of power abusers who victimize, whom we misperceive as stronger, saner and more stable, especially if they have money.
In this way, the only people carrying around consequences, shame, and end up in therapy are the victims - the abusers receive little or no consequences at all, never go to therapy or stay in therapy (because in their minds, there's nothing wrong with them, they are the victim), and so they go on to victimize again
But back to this woman, despite all of this, here she was, now with dentures, paid for by donations, smiling.
Despite her story making me question God myself, she was grateful to God that someone heard her and that she stopped believing her own brainwashing that she was at fault.
She started to believe now that whatever her flaws, his army of enablers telling her it was her fault - his abuse of her was NOT her fault - and it didn't matter how many people believed otherwise; though there is strength in numbers, there isn't always truth - mob rule doesn't make the mob right.
In fact, she had more hope than any of us, she put us to shame.
She had to stop sometimes, due to shortness of breath, and the social worker filled us in on the rest of the story, verified by the police reports and court records and being with her trying to reach out to her children.
We could all see the visible scars on her face, her arms and legs, it was hard to look at - and there wasn't a dry eye in the house when she was done speaking.
She was truly amazing, an inspiration - which is why they chose her to speak to us. 🥲
Stories of injustice to that degree literally make us wonder where God is, don't they, or karma?
In fact, perhaps that's why I can't remember her name - we don't like to think about stories about injustice, like that, without happy endings.
Though she was inspirational, her story still ended badly - no happy ending for her, and that's hard to process, the lack of justice or mercy in this woman's life.
In fact, there are even worse stories, where people walk right through EPOs and kill their victims, though, aren't there?'
And yet her gratitude for what little mercy she did receive before she died made a lasting impression I will never forget.
In fact, considering my story, I almost felt like I shouldn't be there.
But as my DV counselor reminded me, don't minimize your own pain, don't gaslight yourself - there IS a common thread, though different levels - which is why we all were there. There was a part of her in all of us there, that weekend.
Point being, snap out of it, America - God forbid you step out of your own often petty problems to help someone else.
Do we really want to go even further backwards into a societal mentality that blames people who are actually the most powerless for its own systemic problems and dysfunction?
The worst societal case example of this is, of course, is Fascism/Nazism.
Tell yourselves whatever you like to justify it, but the truth is, we're dancing dangerously close to the devil on that mentality, folks.
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