Sister Survivor

Cycles in Life

2012-02-07T20:17:00.000-08:00

One of the things that never ceases to fascinate me are the cycles people go through over and over. All of our lives have a rhythm. Life goes up, and it goes down. Our relationships have cycles, our jobs have cycles, our moods have cycles.

When we are in an up-cycle, life is good, everything is great, and it is easy to keep thinking positive. Then we reach the top of the peak, and things slowly start sliding downhill. People always seem to be surprised when this happens, and the fact that they are surprised always surprises me.

I suffered from depression for a long time. When times were good I was unable to trust them to stay that way, when they were bad I would look back at all of the other bad times in my life and think, "See, life will always be bad." Who wouldn’t be depressed?

It wasn’t until I began to observe and accept these cycles in my life that I realized I could look at it however I wanted. Yes, the rough times will come again, but given enough time the good times will cycle back around. Sometimes depression still sneaks its way into my life, but it lasts hours now rather than years.

A lot of us go through these cycles without recognizing them for what they really are. As certainly as they come, they will also go again. Nobody has figured out how to make those difficult times go away forever, those people who are happiest in life have just figured out that cycles are always changing.

Now instead of missing the good times in anticipation of the bad, I weather the bad by anticipating the good. Positive thinking is a habit, and just like any other habit it takes practice. I didn’t just wake up one day and decide that I was going to think positive, and neither will you.

Life is a journey, and no journey worth taking was ever completed in just one step. One step after another, after another, is how we reach our goals. If someone could just read “The Secret” and get everything they ever wanted to fall right into their lap, it wouldn’t be much of a secret, would it?

That’s all I’m trying to do, help you take those small steps every day that lead up to something big.

Where will your steps take you?

Breast Cancer, Bullying, Infant Loss, and Domestic Violence - October is a Month for Survivors:

2011-10-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

October is

Domestic Violence Awareness Month?. So what?

It also happens to be National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, National Bullying Prevention Month, National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. All excellent causes to be certain, but there are now so many national awareness months that is is hard to be sure what causes we should be aware of when.

Those who have survived these events need no reminders, so surely they aren’t the people these months are created for. A month long reminder of those who have is probably not a bad idea for those who need reminding but I am not certain that disease, bullies or death put much stock in days of observation.

So, perhaps October Awareness Months are supposed to do something more than just observe that these things happen?

It takes a great deal of courage to survive the hardships life sometimes throws our way. To take a stand against breast cancer. To have your childhood innocence tainted by fear. To keep going on after the loss of a child. To escape abuse not just physically but emotionally.

Not everybody does.

October is a month to honor survivors. To thank them for the strength they show every single day. To thank them for being an inspiration to the rest of us. October is a month to remember those who did not overcome their demons. To remember those they left behind.

October also happens to be National Pork Month, Vegetarian Awareness Month, National Pizza Month, and National Dental Hygiene Month as well.

Don’t let the true heroes get lost among the pork and the pizzas.

October is Survivors Month.

Thank a survivor today.

Slips in Recovery...

2011-09-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

I regressed. To have come so far in recovery to be stopped now is painful.

...but this time it is different.

I hadn’t had a full panic attack in a while, at least not the kind that seem to happen for no reason whatsoever.

I had three small panic attacks yesterday and two rather large ones. One of them happened while I was crossing Main street, out of the blue I felt totally exposed and vulnerable. There wasn’t even a car coming, I just had to get out of the open. Fight or flight kicked into full gear.

So apparently I am now afraid of open spaces in addition to enclosed spaces. I can’t go to the store. I can’t drive down the street. I can’t be alone without locking all of the doors at least ten times, making sure the dogs are on watch a few dozen times, needing to have self-defense items nearby at all times.

Almost like old times, only I am not hating myself for doing so.

The difference is... I know it is PTSD now. I know that recent events have triggered old neural pathways in my brain. As things have grown more and more unstable in my surroundings I have groped for more and more control over my environment.

Instead of fighting it, I’m just doing what I can to accept that right now I need to feel safe. Trying to assess what I can control and what I can't. Trying to keep myself out of situations where I am likely to feel insecure. Allowing myself to do things that seem silly because they make me feel safe.

This time I know the problem isn’t really an outside force, they are merely the vehicle, it is my brain and the way it processes information that is causing my problem. I also know I can handle it.

So instead of giving into the panic attacks or fighting them I just let them pass. I found a safe space to let it happen, and as soon as I was calmed down I went into mother mode and talked myself the rest of the way down.

I know a lot more about my brain and how it works than I used to. I understand triggers and my reactions now. More and more I am able to split off into psychology mode. To step back and see what is going on as a scientific observer.

I’m still learning lessons... but when I need them they are there. To see myself not as insane but someone who has had to develop some abnormal coping skills to get me through some abnormal situations. If normal people had faced some of the things I have... they wouldn't pass for normal either.

Most of all, I no longer view myself as a failure when things slip a little... I just remind myself that I am a survivor.

A lot of us see ourselves as weak when flashbacks and panic attacks happen, or when we backslide in our recovery. It is hard not to feel crazy when your brain is spinning out of control. You aren't crazy, you just have a different kind of normal.

Instead of beating yourself up about a panic attack, stop and step outside of the situation. Figure out what you need to feel better and do it. Resorting to self-destructive habits is only going to prolong your struggle.

People Are Like Trees - Words of Wisdom From Madea

2011-08-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

Madea is a wise woman when it comes to the ways of the world. Here she explains her theory of relationships and how to differentiate between those that were meant to last for a season and those that were meant to last forever...

"If somebody wants to walk out of your life, let - them - go!

Some people are meant to come into your life for a lifetime, some for only a season, and you got to know which is which. And you're always messing up when you mix those seasonal people up with lifetime expectations.

I put everybody that comes into my life in the category of a tree. Some people are like leaves on a tree. When the wind blows, they're over there... wind blow that way they over here... they're unstable. When the seasons change they wither and die, they're gone. That's alright. Most people are like that, they're not there to do anything but take from the tree and give shade every now and then. That's all they can do. But don't get mad at people like that, that's who they are. That's all they were put on this earth to be. A leaf.

Some people are like a branch on that tree. You have to be careful with those branches too, cause they'll fool you. They'll make you think they're a good friend and they're real strong but the minute you step out there on them, they'll break and leave you high and dry.

But if you find two or three people in your life that's like the roots at the bottom of that tree, you are blessed. Those are the kind of people that aren't going nowhere. They aren't worried about being seen, nobody has to know that they know you, they don't have to know what they're doing for you, but if those roots weren't there, that tree couldn't live.

A tree could have a hundred million branches but it only takes a few roots down at the bottom to make sure that tree gets everything it needs. When you get some roots, hold on to them, but the rest of it... just let it go. Let folks go."

(From the stage play 'Madea Goes to Jail' by Tyler Perry)

Afraid of Being the Bitch

2011-07-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Somehow, in the past few months I stopped being afraid of being a bitch.

Perhaps it was a build up of the whole year, and this month was only a culmination of this past year. Either way, for the first time in my life someone called me a bitch and I was actually proud of it.

Always before, I back down. If I didn't back down, if someone pushed me past my bitch point I felt guilty. Years later.

Perhaps it was because this time I really did earn it.

Because when I said no. I meant it.

He was only touching me, he said. Patting my cheek and smiling. The first time I only looked at him, puzzled. The second, I pulled away. The third time I saw his hand coming towards me, I stepped back.

“Dude! Boundaries!”

I then proceeded to explain to him that I had a personal bubble, as did he. I would stay in my space for the rest of the evening, and I expected him to stay in his.

He didn’t believe me.

By the end of the night, we had words. Very loud words. Nobody else had heard the other conversations... only the ending. “If you don’t back the f*&$ off, I’m going to knock your ass in the dirt.”

After I left, the other men discussed my bitch-hood in depth with my husband. Culminating in the concern that he was perhaps being led around on a leash. He fully admits that he is whipped, but so am I, and I admit it just as freely. We think other people's concern for our marriage is funny, by the way.

He defended my actions, because he knows how rare it is for me to blow like that. He knows that I am very casual about setting boundaries in the beginning. I progress with each step. When I get to the point of raising my voice, I am done being nice.

No means no.

I do not deny that I was being a bitch at the moment. I gave him plenty of warnings. Then he decided he was going to give a friend a ride home, both of them were beyond driving. I told him hell no. I was designated driver for a reason. I told him that I was perfectly capable of taking care of her. He said he was going to anyhow and grabbed my friend's arm.

So, I stood up.

And for that I got called a bitch.

Is it wrong for me to be a little bit proud of that?

This was the same group of men who had caught my husband making out earlier and observed that we weren’t going to make it because we were “too in love.” *blink-blink-blink*He also defended our marriage. We’ve been together ten years and still make out by the firelight. I still worship the ground he walks on. We’re okay with that being considered a modern marriage failure.

No, we don’t do things the “right” way anymore. I don’t insult my husband, he doesn’t crack jokes about me. He doesn’t refer to me as fat, even when I am. I tell him that his hair loss only makes him sexier, and I mean it. We do a lot of things that aren’t normal for marriage, and it works for us. Either of us would do anything for the other, and we have proven that a dozen times over.

I think those men actually felt sorry for my husband because he was married to me. For that I am sorry. I strive to make him proud of me in all that I do. But, he wasn’t embarrassed at all. He was proud of me too.

He has worked hard to give me a safe place to experiment with all of the concepts I wrote about in “Sister, Survivor.” Boundaries. Assertiveness. Saying what you mean, and meaning what you say. He let me play with these concepts, and blow them over and over. He didn’t want a doormat as a wife any more than I wanted to be one. Those concepts saved my life. They certainly saved our marriage.

If that is a failure, then yeah, we are okay with it.

So I am a bitch now.

But, I’m a happy bitch.

Triage

2011-04-20T10:33:00.000-07:00

I know what happened. I was there.

In the end, nobody can take that truth from me.

It was the word triage that did it. The second that word was thrown on the table I knew the investigation was over. It had never even begun. They don’t explain the need to triage cases to the people that are first in line, only to those who are on their own.

It was that word that pushed me past scared and straight to pissed.

They had already spent a year defining and redefining the word rape for me, and for so many others. One man had changed our lives, and the lives of our friends and loved ones. Nothing was the same after Prince Charming. Were we wrong in thinking that he owed us something in return?

He had taken something from each of us, without permission, without compassion, and without warning. We can’t just take that something back. It’s gone. One night in jail for each night we cried ourselves to sleep. One day of hard labor for each sleepless night. He deserves to know what it is like to live in the same fear he kept us in for so long.

Those of us who survived built something new and better in its place, but the scar is there and it will always be there. We deserved something in return. I still believed that the justice system worked back then, that it was created for people like me, not people like him. I was so very wrong.

Time and time again I found more system than justice.

This person said that person had the case. That person said someone else was handling it. Someone else said they’d never heard of it. I was a piece of paper lost in the shuffle. I’d already been branded a troublemaker. I could hear it in their voices when I called. They knew who I was. They knew what I wanted and they really didn’t want to deal with me.

Each time I called, “Nope, we still don’t know anything, but we will call you as soon as we do.”

Shuffle some more papers around.

They never called.

Nobody ever called.

A year later there I was, sitting in front of the cop with that cocky little grin on his face, listening to him brush us off. “Triage.” They had already decided that I didn’t need their help. It was a done deal for them. I really was on my own.

Triage: Sorting and allocating aid on the basis of need for or likely benefit from.

I came home and read that definition over and over for the next few months, hoping to find some reason, some rationality, but there was none. They couldn’t help me? They wouldn’t help me? They just didn’t want to?

They only spend their time on cases that they think they can win.

Triage: Padding the win-loss record. Padding the conviction rate. Padding the numbers.

They didn’t want more victims. That was the one number they didn’t pad. In the year I filed my rape case, I know at least two other girls who did as well. Yet the statistics for that year, and many other years in the files, say no sexual assaults were reported.

Victims don’t look good on paper. We got shuffled around again.

If anybody wants proof that politics have ruined this country they need only look in the courtroom for confirmation.

There were cops who were kind and compassionate over the next few years. There were cops who were impatient and condescending. There were a few cops who scared me even worse than Prince Charming did. I found the same types of people no matter where I went, even among the attorneys I spoke with, and among the judges I dealt with.

Nobody could do anything without blaming three other people. Finding a real human being to talk to is getting more and more difficult. Being treated like a real human being is becoming more and more rare. Justice has become a well-oiled bureaucratic machine. It isn’t efficient, it isn’t effective, and it mostly just makes a lot of noise.

It also doesn’t respond well to sand in its gears.

We aren’t technically rape victims until the court grants us that indignity. We are just grains in the gears. They shuffle us around just long enough for us to get lost. Eventually, we do go away.

Prince Charming is still on the streets, a lot of Prince Charmings are. No matter who they are or where they come from, they know how to exist within that bureaucracy; sometimes I think they are the oil that keeps it running. The machine did more to protect Prince Charming than it ever did to protect his victims.

They told me that I couldn’t go around calling him “the rapist.” Prince Charming could brand nearly a dozen girls as liars, sluts, and even delusional psychotics who imagined the whole thing, but we couldn’t call him what we already knew him to be without a judge's approval.

I know what happened. I was there.

In the end, nobody can take that truth from me.

Like a Bullet

2010-08-26T22:52:00.000-07:00

"Sexual abuse is like a bullet that's never been removed." - Ksenia Oustiougova

Sexual abuse leaves scars. Even the survivors themselves sometimes forget how deeply that damage can run. Long after the initial wound has healed, the things we don't see can be just as painful as the original wound. Years later, those fragments are there inside of us, pressing on nerves, causing new and different complications in our daily lives.

Many years ago, my great uncle Hal and a friend were out target shooting. Afterward, they returned to Hal's home and were sitting in the living room visiting. After they were comfortable, Hal went to remove the gun from its holster when it caught. A shot rang through the house.

His friend looked at him surprised. "Hal are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he said. "Just scared me, that's all." Neither of them could see any place in the room where the bullet had gone. A few minutes later my uncle's friend looked at Hal strangely, asking if Hal was sure he was alright. "Yes, why?" "Because you are bleeding like a stuck pig."

My uncle hadn't even felt the bullet enter his body. By the time his friend noticed it, it was almost too late. My uncle was rushed to the E.R. and flown out to Denver. There was little hope that he would survive his injury. Doctors said there was no point in repairing most of the damage, my uncle was a goner. They patched him up enough to make him presentable, then phone calls were made so the family could say their last goodbyes.

Hal didn't give up that easily. He fought his way back, and it would be some time before the doctors opened him up again to survey the damage caused that day. When they went in to clean him up all those years later, they found a great deal of scar tissue. The bullet that struck him was a hollow point, as it passed through his rib cage it broke apart. So in addition to bone fragments, he also had several smaller pieces of lead in his body. Some of those fragments had worked their way toward his spine over the years and were pressing on nerves. The doctors did the best they could to remove all of it, but up until his death a few fragments remained because they were too close to his spine to be removed safely.

When we survive sexual abuse, it isn't all that different from my great uncle's gunshot wound. Most people see what is on the surface. They may see the scar tissue on the outside, but once it is healed over they assume that all is well. Some of us work very hard to keep people from even seeing that initial scar.

A huge part of the healing process is recognizing those fragments that are causing our discomfort, making a conscious effort to remove them from our lives whenever possible. It's about learning to live comfortably with those parts that can't be removed entirely.

People so often see physical injuries as the only "real" threats to our lives. It is easy to be sympathetic towards someone when they have suffered a gunshot wound. Allow them the time to heal properly. Remind them to take care of themselves. See to it that they focus on their own recovery.

I've found that healing from an emotional injury requires many of the same things as healing physically. Taking care of our emotional selves is just as important as taking care of our physical selves, and it requires many of the same steps. Eating right. Giving ourselves time to rest. Giving ourselves permission to heal properly. Not pushing ourselves to do too much, too fast. Focusing on our recovery without guilt or shame. Giving ourselves permission to be less than perfect.

No, those injuries may not be visible to the outside world, but as long as you know they are there you can focus on healing them. You can work those fragments out one by one, step by step, day by day. This is the path of the survivor.

Verbal Abuse - Words Can Hurt

2010-08-18T22:50:00.000-07:00

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me...”

Weren’t we all taught these words as children? Sticks and stones may break our bones but words can wound far deeper.

It was George Carlin who said "There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions. And wooords. "

Most people quickly accept that physical abuse is dangerous, but they aren’t so sure when it comes to verbal abuse. It’s true, names can’t harm us physically. Simple words don’t break bones or leave bruises. Sometimes it would be far easier if they did. Then people could actually see the damage that was being done, then they would be able to clearly label it as abuse.

Words have no power of their own. They can neither harm nor heal without the aid of human beings. Perhaps that is why people so easily dismiss verbal abuse. It is hard to imagine that mere words could actually damage another human being but they can and do every single day.

The damage done with words is not always visible on the outside, but that doesn’t mean it is not there. Verbal abuse is a cancer, spreading itself not through our bodies, but through our souls. Infesting the most intimate areas of our brain, infecting our very thoughts.

At its core, verbal abuse is an attempt to exert power and control over another person, in the case of verbal abuse the control is exercised through the use of words.

The words used aren't near as important as the underlying message. If the intent behind the words is to harm or to control, then words take on a new power. They find a way to get inside of our minds and take root. The more we feed it, the bigger it grows.

As the flood of words continue a slow stripping away of your defenses take place. Your freedoms fall away one by one. Love has become a prison. The harder you try to please your captor, the more it seems you disappoint them. The words fly just a bit faster each time, the bring with them just a bit more stinging.

After a time it feels that even your most intimate being no longer belongs to you.

Verbal abuse is just as dangerous as any other type of abuse, it is just harder to recognize.

Name calling
Insults
Hurtful Criticism
Negative Labeling
Blaming
False Accusations
Cruel Jokes
Taunts
Threats

There are many other types of verbal abuse, but the easiest way to determine whether or not you have been verbally abused is to stop and think about how those words make you feel. Verbal abuse affects your self-esteem deeply, and a negative self image is essential to the ability to recognize an unhealthy relationship and escape it.

If you are feeling hopeless and helpless, you are less likely to stand up for yourself or leave, so it is a popular tool with many abusers. Physical violence is not always present in an abusive relationship, but verbal abuse is just as dangerous to your health and well being.

As long as someone has the power to keep you from seeing that you really do deserve better, they have the power to control almost every facet of your life.