Want me? Need me?

I'm guest posting over at Emerging From Broken, come on over and see the post and the great comments that are being shared as well.  Look for a fresh post here over the weekend!

"I was taught to take the abuse because I was obligated to they needed me for that role.  When I STOPPED being available, when their NEED wasn’t met then my life, my wishes to be wanted were revealed to have no value.  I was being taught a very wrong lesson about need and want."

Love isn't about Hurt

This is the first time I'm going to be doing a two part post, one here and one on Strawberry Roan.  I've been seriously drawn to do this, especially for our sisters and brothers who believe that desires of humans trump the will of God.  This verse is the one that pushed me forward, and I hope you'll join me here and over there as well.

There is no fear in love; 

but perfect love casteth out fear ...—1 John 4:18

When they said, I love you but I don't like you there was no love.

When they said, You better love them they are your ____ there was no love.

When the said, You have to love me on my terms there was no love.

When you said I'm afraid and they laughed and then punished you for not loving them right there was no love.

I've come to a huge, world shattering understanding in my life and that is I cannot truly love you if I fear you.  I cannot live and breathe and be love if there is control, neglect, abuse, obligation and fear.

My second huge, world healing understanding has been when there is love the fear can be cast out.  Fear, like a living thing, doesn't go easily but it cannot live where there is love.  Fear must feed and to feed it needs tears, pain, hurt, mistrust, greed, and blood.  When those things are absent, so is fear.

I was taught fear  and I was taught obligatory love but what I wasn't taught was this: neither of these things are love.

I yearned towards God and God's love.  I wanted so badly to share in that but even the church became a place of fear and a supposed 'man of God' delivered that fear.  The threats of wrath and the who would believe someone like YOU kept me thinking that there was something wrong but no one could tell me what that was.  More on this over at Strawberry Roan...

Fear had an icy hand on my life for so long...and looking back I realize that fear isn't a hand.

Fear is a glove that abusers wear.

Fear is a hammer that controllers wield.

Fear is a threat that bullies wave around.

Fear can be healthy don't think it can't.  It was fear that made me run away from an abusive family and ex husband.   It was fear that drove me to consider seriously the impact of certain people in my life. 

 Fear can keep us alive.  Fear can also keep us from living.

Fear is not love.  Love is not fear.

Love isn't about hurting someone.

Love isn't about using fear to control someone.

Love is imperfect, human and all to wonderful but with all the things that it is fear is not one of them.

I refused to stay living in fear, and that meant setting some boundaries and establishing some distance.  Strangely, I should have feared doing that, but instead I was set free!  Isn't that something?

What fears have held you away from love?

Stronger In Broken Places

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, 

some are strong at the broken places.” 

Ernest Hemingway 

Broken places.  When I think about broken places I think of hurt, confusion, surprise and mostly healing.  Not all broken places are the same, there are as many ways to break as there are kinds of people.  


Some people are broken by circumstances which are entirely beyond their control.  Others are broken by those they should have been able to trust but in the end were not.  


Accidental or intentional Hemingway was right we all are broken.  Some breaks are small, bruises on the bone.  They may pass with only a lingering ache to remind you of the hurt.  Other breaks are larger but with quick care they heal straight and strong.  They also ache but they are not crippling.  


There is a sympathy, an empathy with these breaks.  They are socially and visually acceptable as injuries.  You didn't do anything to deserve them and there is no crippling after effects to make people uncomfortable.  No one ever deserves abuse I just want to be clear, but for most people they like that things have a simple reason which is easy to accept.  Abuse is neither and so for so many the after affects make them uncomfortable.  They would rather see something accidental than to face something intentional.


Sometimes, though, there are breaks which are not set straight, they never get a chance to properly heal and they leave us with limps and twists.  They can cause us to stumble and fall.  They are, to others and sometimes ourselves, both embarrassing and hard to ignore.


They make us, the survivors, very aware of our breaks.  They make us, the survivors, very aware of both our weak spots and the strong ones.


Those broken places that didn't heal are covered in scars, calcified bones and even bone chips.  The skin shows the bumps and scars.  The bones of our bodies, minds and spirits were broken but no one took the time to help them heal.  There was no caring hands there was no brace or splint.  We survived, some of us thrive, but we all limp, drag or twist.


Underneath though, in the strong places, we are stronger for surviving. Whether it be from war, abuse, neglect or other horrors.  We are stronger because we survived.  


We may not be pretty but there is a beauty in the broken places and in  the scars.  The beauty is that of a spring emerging from a dreadful winter, the flowers blooming in the barrenness of a landslide, the first green that comes out of the scorched, fire burnt earth. 


There is a beauty in our broken places which doesn't get enough recognition because the message of healing crooked is missed in our beauty obsessed world.  We are obsessed with 'cut flowers' trimmed, dyed and propped up in sugar water.  They appear lovely and in truth  they are dying.  They are already dead because they have no strength and no roots.  The enduring beauty of something that isn't perfect is in the imperfection.  


Broken places that heal stronger have a strong message for us all: they mean we survived what broke us!  We lived through it.  We passed through it.  We are on the other side.  A bit twisted and sometimes stumbling but stronger.  We get stronger, we learn to walk with that limp and instead of hiding it we are confident.  They failed to keep us broken! 


Why is it that those who had control or abused us wish for us to stay broken?  Because it means we cannot heal and if we cannot heal there is no way we can be free!  That means they win.  But when we are stronger in the broken places that means they failed.  We did heal and we did get strong and we did survive!


Broken places aren't pretty but surviving  and healing are beautiful!  They are strong! They are us!

Let Them Fall

"I have so been struggling with the ‘things’ that I felt gave me ‘value’ and when I’m not able to (for various reasons) use those talents I’ve felt quite useless and without value. When I purposefully pulled back from places where I used to be, and there wasn’t any response I was feeling like a stick being pulled out of water. I left nothing behind but a fading ripple and a small dent in the mud below. I’ve been blocked and haven’t written for weeks as I struggle with the value of BEING and the value of DOING. I’ve got value, I’m valuable for WHO I am, not for what I DO. Sole value of a person shouldn’t be whether they are impressed by another person, or whether they can do something – it should be based on who they are and how far they have come to be there.

Where is my value? Where am I if doing the things I love or thought were of value to others are not there or not used? I fear sometimes, even through my prayers, that I’ll be foot prints in the snow – filled in and forgotten in the cold wind. I don’t WANT that, but finding my way through the reasons that I learned it from my childhood forward has been very difficult. My whole life was based on a few key, foundational lies, and now that I am dismantling them some of my former foundation stones are crumbling…do I shore up the wobbly parts or let them fall?"

My comments on Darlene's post at Emerging From Broken. 

How do you make it balance or even make sense when your whole being seems to either hold or lose value depending on someone else's valuation of you?  When you look in the mirror and you don't see what is supposed to matter but rather you see your failure?

Growing up I understood a few things, things I thought were truths, but have in actuality turned out to be foundational lies.  Perhaps, to be fair, they were not intentional to start with but when they are still hounding, haunting and torturing me it is time for them to be brought out, examined and, hold on to your shorts, dismissed?

"You look just like your Mom."  (But I'm NOT my Mom!  We are two different people!)

"You act like your Father."  (But I'm NOT my Dad!  I don't act THAT much like him.)

"If you were a calf I'd have smashed your head in, you are useless."

"Shut up.  You'll embarrass us."

"If it wasn't for us you'd be nothing."

"Everything you are is because of US, not YOU."

"Live your life the way we say or leave this family."

"You don't exactly have a great track record with ______"

There is a terrible expectation that burdens a child when they are taught their identity is not their own and that all the successes and all the failures of their family, the adults, are solely their responsibility.  If you fail to act the way you are told, if you fail to think the way you are taught, if you rebel to find yourself, if your greatest crime is to reach out when you were lonely then you learn very soon that YOU have FAILED.  You ARE failure.

When we are taught our value as persons is actually a value counted on compliance we lose the opportunity to really explore who we are as people.  When that compliance is tied to actions, then our success or failure is directly tied to external things.  When that measuring is in the hands of others, who use their power to control, then you, the child, becomes property, a novelty like a trained animal.

I've been blessed with the ability to be outgoing and appear confident even when I'm not.  This often leads people to misunderstand me.  Not so deep down I'm a woman who is facing some life long fears and quite honestly they cause me to quake and tremble.  I'm going to be 40 years old this summer, shouldn't I have a better sense of self?  I've been working on it.

Starting from the outside  and working my way inward I've build boundaries.  I've created structure and in turn I've found some scary places.  Places inside of me where fears live, where old dreams live, where there is a frustration machine and a garden full of poisonous angry plants which grow into choking vines.  I've been burning, chopping, digging and finally at the stones which are my foundation I'm learning which ones to leave standing and which ones to let fall.

(this post doesn't flow, it is painful to write and yet it is bellowing to be written - forgive me for this roughness)

What if I let them fall? Will I then be a true failure?  Can it be okay to let the ruins crash down? If I let them fall, or stand, on their own without me what happens then?  I'm looking at the foundation lies of obligation disguised as love, of being valued for what I can do rather than for who I am and tangled up in those two I find fear.  A deep chilling fear.

Why fear?  I think it is because of the two lies: that love is an obligation and that what we DO is vastly more important than WHO we are.  Fear is the control factor in both.  Past experience has taught me this.  My fear is real although it is deeply rooted in a childhood response because really they won't come to hurt me now, will they?

What happens to those carefully maintained facades if I walk away? Do I have the courage to walk or will I cower around the corner?  What if I suck in a deep breath and walk up to the door of that relationship and firmly close it?  What if I don't stop there?  What if I brick it shut?  What if I move with no forwarding address?  What if I just let them fall?

The achievements I have in my life mean nothing to me without the love of my husband and son.  My honour amongst my peers means nothing to me without my faith.  My waking hours are filled with grace beyond measure when I don't let the obligation, the fear and the devaluing expectations into that day.  My sleep is peaceful when I'm not flinching from an angry phone call.  My friendships blossom and grow out of mutual respect for both the scars and the healing.

To heal, to find out who I really am outside of those foundational lies has become a need I must meet.  I need to be freed.  I don't really need to understand because I understand enough to know there is no explanation.  Sure, you could say, They don't know better. or that's how they were raised or the classic  that's just how he or she or they are.  But saying it doesn't make it true nor does it excuse anything.

Consider this your formal notice: I am no longer under that obligation to accept your actions or words.  Stand or fall as you will but you won't be taking me with you.  I'm walking away.  No fights, no stand offs or show downs.  I have come to the fork in the road of my healing journey and if I take one it leads right back to where we go around again and the other takes me forward.  Maybe one day you'll be there too...you'll know where to find me.  

I'll be laughing under a tree or walking by the stream.  I won't be afraid, you won't find me by my fear.  Come with love and you'll be met with love.  Come with anger and I'm walking away.

Fuel on the Fire

Today I'm guest posting over at Emerging From Broken.  


Stop by and read my post, and those before it on the theme of anger.  Great posts there and some awesome conversations in the comments.  More great posts to come as we move through December.


"You cannot control your anger until you know it, understand it and can face it.  We can still be angry – anger is a natural response to certain kinds of danger, certain kinds of injustices.  Controlling our anger so it is a vent which safely lets the pressure off.  Finding ways to release that anger can be positive and healing, it can clean our wounds and cauterize the cuts, it can be a warning and it can be a signal. " Shanyn Silinski

Motivational Posters & Greeting Cards

I have an issue with motivational posters and most greeting cards.

My friend Darlene, over at Emerging from Broken, shared yesterday about a motivational video which really struck her and the comments are really coming.  I got done my comment and I knew it was something I had to blog about too!


Have you ever struggled to find a good greeting card?  In a greeting card world where do we find real sentiment?  I'm always seeing lovely card images and struck by the verses which don't apply, that seem patently false.  I cannot, really truly cannot buy a card which says things that are not true!  This seriously limits the sentimental card selection for me and  not every occasion can be handled by Maxine!  


I didn't understand why so many cards made me leave the store feeling frustrated and strangely hurt or angry but as I've moved along this healing path I'm learning that sentiments are not truth.  I remember looking for a card for Father's Day and they all were either praising, apologizing or laughing at the Dads.  I wasn't someone with a sports Dad whose prowess I could praise.  I didn't feel like I had to apologize for not being a good daughter and I didn't see how calling someone names or teasing them was funny.

Cards for anniversaries, birthdays and even everyday sentiments seemed laced with all sorts of cutting barbs, lies and strangeness.  I certainly didn't feel like I could call my brother my best friend nor did I think I should be sorry for being his sister.  But those were the choices!  Father's Day was always hard, birthday cards were sometimes almost enough to bring me to tears.  Why couldn't they be honest?  Why did they have to make the giver sound like a cheerleader or a beggar? Cards for spouses are especially strange to me.  I'm alive because of you or I'd be lost without you or there isn't a world without you and I'm sorry for not being as great as you.  Where is the equality, the love, the we are in this together?


I make my own cards now and avoid that racket.

"Soar Like An Eagle" or how about "Fight, Steal and Bully Like A Big Bird"?

Motivational posters, videos, seminars and books have the 'bully you for your own good' flavor that used to confuse me because it seemed I was the only one they hurt!  Mike Rowe, on a wonderful Dirty Jobs episode tore apart the whole motivational thing and I loved it!  He saw through it from a working person's point of view and I saw through it from a survivor's point of view.


"There is no 'I' in TEAM." but there is a ME and that's who I look out for.  I don't let the TEAM take ME away any more!  You don't get to drag me into the darkness of your abuse!  You don't get to 'motivate me' with your cutting words, your sly, "it's for your own good".  

 Don't try to motivate me with your bullying and your threats, you false team and your strange bullying disguised as motivator.  I don't need someone to shout at me, even from a poster.  I don't need your seminar to show me where I'm not social enough for the herd or that I'm not a team player.  Survivors, like me, tend not to be team players because it was the team mentality that crushed us down, pushed us down, drug us through the hurt and blamed us.

The sarcastic inner me loves to edit those posters is that same inner me that doesn't 'get' the other kind.  Is it my gallows humor or my cynical nature?  I don't know, except that I've learned this one lesson: no matter how 'nicely' it is put in words, on a poster or from whose 'caring mouth' the words come - if they hurt they are hurtful words!

It can be hard to tell but you can almost always spot the clues and you can feel when it is wrong for you.  Respect that intuition, that instinct, that my healing path, surviving to thriving friends is the start of learning to listen to a healed part of you.  The part that, as an adult, can say nope I don't care HOW nicely you say THAT, it still hurts and that is WRONG.  That part, as an adult, which says I'm caring enough of myself to walk away from a hurt and it is that instinct which was pushed down, squished and almost killed when we were being abused.

As children, as people trapped in abuse we couldn't act on those instincts because we didn't know to listen to them and we weren't strong enough.  Everyone was trying to make us something else and we lost our self.  We didn't have a choice but we do now.  We can ACT NOW because we CAN be strong enough.  I can - for myself.  For my husband. For my son. For my friends and family.  I can, and I do.  Even when it has me leaving Hallmark's store empty handed or  has me laughing out loud in a corporate lobby at their 'motivational posters'. 

Take Sides!

 "Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

 Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. " ~ Elie Wiesel

What? What? Take sides? Don't be neutral?  Isn't neutral good? What are you saying?


I'm saying taking sides ensures there is an acknowledgement of both sides, of all sides.  Even if it is just to say, "No! Stop! That's wrong!"


I'm saying being neutral is a false safe place, it is a big lie which removes anything that looks like responsibility.


Neutral can be a temporary measure to get you to safety, to pause a cycle of violence, to create an escape for a time.  It can not be permanent - you have to stand for something.


When someone tries so hard to be fair, to be neutral, to NOT take sides they are actually taking a side.  They are drinking the sweet poison of denial.  

They can sound something like this - with their excuses:

"We treat our children equally, we don't take sides, parents have to be neutral."

"You cannot take sides, you don't understand the whole situation."

"You need to be quiet, it's none of your business."

(When my family didn't choose sides, they choose for abuse and they choose for silence and they didn't choose for the one being hurt.  They didn't choose to speak up for me, they choose silence.  Not just once, not just because they didn't know better but because there was something more important to them than my hurt, my pain, my wounds.  The friends of my brother, maybe even him, who watched me being raped choose silence, they choose for the one taking.  Even as they laughed about it later, even as they labelled me and blamed me they still thought they were neutral.  They did NOTHING .)


When the youth pastor took advantage of his position, when the gym teacher, basketball coach or anyone else takes advantage of other's silence they are winning!  When someone thinks the long term solution is silence there is nothing being done for the wounded, the injured, the abused.  They are not helping anything but the status quo.


It makes me want to scream when I hear, "Someone should do some thing."  Is that their version of neutral?  Is that their way of not taking sides?  To stand there and ask for someone, besides them, to do something.  


Or have the neutral people tried any of these on you: maybe you misunderstood, maybe you need to see it from their point of view, I'm just trying to see both sides. 


I'm pretty sure I didn't misunderstand a broken arm and a whispered, "Keep your mouth shut.", I think I've seen enough of their point of view to last a lifetime and I live on  my side and it hurts and that's the one that matters to me.


It seems to me that it isn't that complicated.  Simple steps to avoid being stuck in neutral, easy ways to take sides and yet we are faced with the on-going stony stare of silence, the manufactured bliss of neutral and still there is blood, there are tears, there are people wounded and dying because no one will risk being the one saying what everyone knows.  Don't believe them someone always knows.  Even if they only suspect they are the ones who are not surprised when the secret is out.


And what does everyone know?  We know that abuse is wrong.  We know silence gives permission by default.  We know that history shows bullies, abusers and cruelly neutral parties always end up on the side of pain, where they like to be, where they can dish it out.  We also know what history shows that silence, once broken, is never repaired.  It is then that we can start healing.


it's not super complicated to speak up for what is right, to speak out when something is wrong.  People make things complicated, they make things hard. Sadly, I cannot even say these are 'Basic School Rules' as our schools are some of the most deadly places for children.  These are the basics, in my playground, where you stick up for those who are being picked on, share and be kind, everyone gets on a team so pick sides and don't let me catch you acting like you don't know better!


I will not be silent!  Won't do it.  Won't risk it.  Because when I look back and I start to wonder what would have changed in the world I lived in, the world I live in now if one person had spoken up?  If one person has one less scar, if they have one less minute of shame, if they have one less day in the myth of neutral then my own scars mean something.  


Silence can be safe in the short term, being on neither side of a fight can be safe in the short term, attempting to find a way without confrontation when it is not safe is wise. Survivors survive because they have learned these things but there will come a time to start living and that means we need to stop being silent. 


It only takes one voice to change the world. It only takes one candle to light thousands.  It only takes one hand to hold another and a chain grows that won't be broken.  I'm still healing and I'm still finding my voice.  I'm praying that you find your voice, I'm praying for you on the healing path and I'm praying for us all no matter where we are in our journey.