More about the Child Within

Sometimes, it is the child within who is the wisest


No one promised us that life will be without challenges


At this time in my life, I find that there are times when I just want to sit and cry and think about the things that have happened to me. I sit in quiet contemplation of who I used to be versus who the trials of my life have helped me evolve to be, and I will say with an absoluteness that one year ago today I was not happy with me or with what all the ills of my life had made me think I'd become.

Throughout the last year I have had plenty of opportunities to learn about where my pain originates from, and it is not from someone else who it comes from but rather and only the child within. I can get on the phone with a person and listen to the tone in their voice and become roiling mass of "I wonder what that meant," when in reality the truth is that what that meant was exactly what it was said it meant and nothing more.

The child within keeps us safe for the most part, but the child within is also the one who keeps us, through fear, from moving ahead, and the child within is a spoiled little brat who cannot see past her own hurt and her own fears and the child within is the person within us who makes stay alert to what we think others want to do or say to us.

It is the child within me who keeps me thinking that I have to be the center of a person's world, but what that child does not think about is that the center of the world that I must be is the center of my own world, and this is something that a lot of people forget about when they are embarking out into the world as a survivor of anything. On the other side of that is the idea that there are people who will miss out on all that we have to offer them, no matter in what capacity, and that they will miss out by choice - and they choose the way they do, not only for the convenience factor of things, but also because it is the child within them who is still aching and still very afraid of life itself. This is a sad way to be, and it is something that I had to and still am overcoming. There is nothing that I need to be afraid of, nothing at all, yet there is something inside of me telling me still that I am not an acceptable person, that somehow I am not good enough for certain life situations at this moment, and the truth is that I am fine and good with it, really, because right now I am busy doing things which pertain always and only to me.

The Selfish, Selfish Child...is not so selfish but needs self care...


I am not a selfish person. In fact, it can be said that the majority of people who have suffered some sort of abuse will either become the most self-centered and egotistical people who anyone will have the displeasure of learning anything from, or they will, typically, become more aware of the things that are needed by others simply for the reason that for a long time, myself included, they tried and tried to get the attention of one person, to get that one person to Love them the way that a human deserves to be Loved and not through the pain that was caused by the thing that was other than Love. I know what is Love and I know what is other than Love, and these days, because of my background in being abused emotionally, I am more inclined to wait until I am ready for anything that is not here and now.

I do not have to follow a set of rules that were not set by me, and it does not mean that I am conceding anything other than to the idea that sometimes, when we hurt and we want to believe that there is something way wrong with us, the truth is that there is nothing wrong with us and that we are not done learning.

The one thing that any abuse survivor needs to learn and to latch on to is the idea that we are Divine Beings, that we are meant to give and receive Love, and that no matter what, even when we think that there is not enough, there is plenty, and the plentiful nature of it starts with our very selves.

It is not selfish to Love one's self, and this is a lesson that is lost on almost all abuse survivors. While we may have been expected to and even forced to beg to be Loved by others, the bottom line is that the first person we should all be Loving the most is ourselves. This does not mean a conceited kind of Love, and neither should it be the sort that holds a person in place through conditional Love.

It simply means that you need, we need , I need....we all need to learn to Love us first, because without Loving our very selves first, we cannot know what it is to Love anyone else.

You will just know...


You will just know when the child within has evolved to become a less unruly and expectant child because all of the wrongs that seemed like forever to get over will take less time for us to get over, because we will have learned at that point something about the nature of Loving our own selves. This is an important part of Loving the Self, and survivors of abuse have no clue how to Love ourselves unless we are willing to know and believe that we are lovable and that we are acceptable.

There is no shame in knowing that you need more from Life, and I am right in the middle of this lesson at this time. This doesn't mean that what I wanted to do won't happen...

...it just means that when the time comes and I am better prepared for it, no matter what it is, that which I have learned and that which means the most to me will become all that it is meant to be and more, it will be absolute and right .

That alone is plenty to be happy about...trust me, I know.

Again...I am squarely in the middle of it right now

I Love You All !!

..Rox

The Sins of the Father...

When we are children we are not aware of the price we will pay for the things that our parents tell us are the truth


Being a parent is a scary thing, but it is never as scary as it is to be a child in some cases


I will never say that my parents abused me, because they didn't, but the thing that this post is about is not what they taught us or what they told us was right or wrong, but what they told us to believe that can be damaging to a person.

When I was a kid I was happy. I did like all the other little kids did. I played. I did my schoolwork. I ate my veggies. I went to church. I respected my elders...even the ones who can now be seen as having been, at least at a minimum, emotionally damaging. While I will never out the person in whose care I was left for a lot of years during the daytime prior to my attending grammar school, I will let you know what they did to me that was a huge part of my growing into the adult who I became.

When I was a little girl I was told that I had to respect my elders, because if I didn't respect my elders it was a sin and that God hated sinners. When I was a little girl I was told that no matter what - no matter what was said to me, no matter how what was said to me made me feel, and more, no matter how I felt about what was said, I was to listen to and obey the person in whose care my mother left me. While I love this person from a distance now, these days I have a hard time thinking that my mother chose to leave me in the care of a person who was so severe in her rendering of discipline, her doling out, if you will, punishment, and let me tell you what, for a long time I have felt like I was being punished, and now I know why - because I was.

Punished children grow up to be punished adults, or worse, punishing adults


I have come to have to accept the fact that my issues with people who bully, who belittle, who do the things and say the things that they do and say are because I have been bullied, belittled, done wrong for the entirety of my life - first with the caretaker, then, without their realizing it until I told them so today, my own parents, and of course, the person with whom I have spent the majority part of my adult life.

For most of my life I was not aware that my life was led by me in a constant state of feeling like I were being punished, and mostly it was by those who said that they only had my own safety in mind. While even that may be true, what is also true is that for a long time I felt ashamed of who I was and up until two days ago I was scared still to let the world see that in me because I was ashamed to let people know that and admit to the fact that I was a trained doormat.

I know what it is like to feel like you are being punished constantly, and it is not a laughing matter, because when you go on the premise that you are bad and have always been, you do not think about what it was that you actually did in order for you to feel like you do. It is a hard thing to think about constantly when all you do, all who you are, what you love, who you love, who loves you, EVERYTHING becomes something that you will believe has caused people to make you hurt.

For many years I had no idea why it was that I felt like I was a punished child, why it was every time my soon-to-be-former spouse and I argued that I felt like I was in the presence of a father figure. I always felt like my actions were being judged, like who I am is somehow not now nor has it ever been good enough, and that message that is never spoken (in most cases, when it is a parent or a caretaker) but is always there because in many cases no matter what you do to at least make it clear in the mind of your attacker that at a minimum you really have no idea what you did to be treated in such a manner, it does not change. And this is behavior that is learned, like learned helplessness. We aren't born horrible. We learn to be horrible. We are born helpless, but we do not stay that way, but under the right conditions for it, it, too, is a learned thing, and much like the learning that we do to become dependent on others for the sake of our shattered souls, we, too , must learn a new way, a new thought pattern and break free of the prison which has no walls.

It is not easy to let go of stuff


You know how it goes...you hurt so badly that all you want is someone to listen to you and know that you are heartbroken, but the best thing that anyone - yes and especially even an abuse survivor - can do for someone who just cannot let go of the things that someone else did to them or said to them is to find a friend who is willing to hurt us just one more time if it means that they are telling us the truth, are willing to have us mad at them because of the truth, because a friend like the one just described is a real friend and is someone who is not willing to let you continue through your own life hurt and angry and pissing people off because of something that happened that you cannot just get over.

And believe me when I say it - you will not just be able to get over what you are going through or have gone through - this I know for sure because I am in the middle of this very same battle with demons who are older than dirt in "Roxanne Years." It is not easy to learn new lessons that will banish and even make the old ones invalid. It is not easy to accept the kindness and the beautiful words from strangers that you are everything that they think you are and more, because always is that constant ethereal recording that plays over and over in our heads and permeates our very world. Feeling like a punished child tends to make one behave like one, but not in the manner that you would have a temper tantrum, but rather and in the manner of the hurt you felt a child that you are now experiencing as an adult.

Allow the adult you are to finish raising the child within who hurts so very much


Were it not for one very good, very well-meaning friend who Loves me like there will be no tomorrow (Love You, too, by the way!) I would still be in the fog that is the ego, and the ego is a wiry little prick. He is able to get to us by means of what it is that we covet, and she is able to make us feel like we are less than desirable as mates, and he makes us feel like we have nothing to offer someone else in terms of really anything, and she makes us feel fat and ugly and useless...I could go on and on, but the thing is that the ego is not always the ego that we hear about, the ego that likes to show off and feed on the perceived human failings of others. The ego can be in the form of feeling like we are not good enough to be loved by others, and that message comes through when we find that the one who we adore is somehow not being adorable. The ego can be the voice within that tells us that there is no way that anyone would want to be around us, and so we sulk and we believe what it is that our ego tells us. Our ego is the thing that shields us from hurt, but sometimes, when we come into a situation already bruised, lonely, bored, bummed, the little bastard is already in full swing mode and wreaking havoc on you through the constant reminders that are in our own heads that the people who told us that we were not all that we thought we were according to them ...those people were right...

I think not.

The Ego and the Truth of things


I can tend to be very vain and there really is nothing wrong with being vain...until the ego gets involved and starts telling us that how I feel needs to be bolstered and that I need to turn into an ass, and once that happens it can take a while for me to come back to my self, but eventually I do.

The truth of things is that you are what you know you are and have always been, and that no matter what anyone else tells you is the truth of you, only what you know and how you know who you are is the truth and nothing else. I know that I am not what I thought I was and it is not a bad thing, because what I thought I was is what other people told me.

In reality, I have always known the truth, and the truth is that I am loved and that I am accepted just as I am, and that there is no one on the planet who can tell me that I am not, because it is not the truth. Just like what those people who were the adults in my life was not the truth.

I have found that in order to live the truth you must first know what your own truth is. Your abusers told you that you were not all that you knew you were.

Your Soul will tell you that you totally and absolutely ALL are you think you are...

As Always...

...I Love You All !!...
...Rox...

...with your daughter in mind...

Political affiliation has zero to do with VAWA

Violence of any kind at all has less to do with political party affilitaion than it does a whole lot of much else. I bring this up today because of a conversation I'd had with my parents this morning regarding the current political climate in this country, and that "us versus them" thing is huge in the minds of some of the people who we share air with. My parents swore I vote democrat, and others swear I voted GOP or independent, when the truth is that how or who I cast my vote for is not as important as what I would vote for OTHER than a person who, for some represents every evil in the world, while for others represents everything good, Divine and Holy.

This is not about who you plan to vote for, and more, this is not something that anyone should be told they are wrong because of.

I was told that I was wrong about the VAWA, and this came from someone who strikes out from opinion rather than having gone through the trouble to actually do their research. When I was asked if my reasoning for wanting this particular person to not support those who would take away my safety net through changing the VAWA, I was met with the same acidic rhetoric that I am always met with - that I voted one way or another and that I was brainwashed because of what they assumed is my affiliation, politically. When I struck back with my statistics, with my research, with what I know to be true through personal experience, I went to the other person who I wrongly assumed would side with me because she, too, is a woman. I was wrong, and I was heartbroken.

I finally just told them both, "Mom, Dad, I am not asking you to vote for a person unless the person is me or Gracie or Napua or Teresa...I am not asking for you to not be true to yourselves, but I am asking that when you vote on things - NOT ON PEOPLE - that you cast your vote in favor of all the women in your lives who have been personally affected by domestic violence, and I am one such person, Mom." I walked away crushed, a little bit, that is, but also with the knowledge that I have to do more than make noise about this, and that very truly, tackling something like the VAWA and society as a whole in the manner which we think about violence at all is a big heavy thing for me to tackle, but also that there is no better person for that job than one who will be out in the world and in peoples' faces about this. We can no longer be blind to the ugliness, to the proverbial black eye that society has tried to push back into the darkness. We, in this country, are so worried about the budget, about foreign policy, about things that affect us as a whole, but we are inclined to turn away from those who would be the most vulnerable within our midst.

Abuse at home does not stop at the crying kids or the bruised and crying wife. It is bigger than that. It extends to our elders, a group of people who cannot defend themselves as perhaps they may have in the past, and it includes those within our midst who live alternative lifestyles and those who were born "minority," and on that end I was born with two strikes against me. Yet what people do not understand is that truly, those things about us that make us seem weak are the very things which will always make us a formidable opponent for anyone. If we can glorify in our weaknesses and learn to lean together with them all in full force, we will find that indeed, it is our weaknesses which will truly make us stronger.

Political affiliation is as personal and private as is religious belief. I have made it habit that I not discuss one of these two things with almost anyone, because the truth is that voting one way or the other - GOP or Dem - has not a goddamned thing to do with the thing at hand at this time.

What I am asking for is that when you do vote and when you are faced with issues and acts and initiatives, that you do so with your own family in mind, your own social place in life, and to please not let yourselves be blinded by the media fed frenzy of drama and bullshit that we all see all the time when speaking terms of politics.

Casting your vote this year will be different in terms of people who have been victimized by violence because this time around the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is up for reeaffirmation, and judging from all the things that I have read online lately it looks as though there are some in power who would prefer to move backward in time when it was ok to turn a blind eye to the things that went bump in the night, and I am too aware of what exactly it is that goes bump in the night, and no, it isn't a monster or a robber, at least for some of us, but instead, is a monster that in the daylight may look and seem as though it is not a monster but rather and only your own version of Jeckyll and Hyde. They already want to take away our choices with our bodies, and that is bad enough, but now it is being said in certain circles that they also want to go further and take away what keeps us minimally safe.

It is time, you guys, to stand up and do the right thing and cast your vote for safety, for life, for your own peace of mind. When you vote, think about Nicole Brown-Simpson, Rihanna, Mariska Hartigay, or better, think about me and everything that I have written about about my own experiences, and know now that everything that I have shared with you all for years is the truth and know, too, that the only way that we save anything in measures of safety and the rights of those who are part of an ugliness called Domestic Abuse is if you take what we have told you to heart and believe that what we have told you is the absolute truth.

Cast your vote with the people who you care about in mind first

I am making the plea right now to please vote for VAWA to stay intact, to be implemented with more protections for those whose lives are placed in danger everyday they live and breathe.

I am asking that you vote with your wives and daughters in mind, your sisters and cousins, your nieces and your mothers. I am asking that you vote this year with the rights of the minority agenda rather than the majority, because violence at home affects all of us. We pay for the ER visits, and we pay for the prosecution of the offenders, and we pay with so much that cannot be seen with the eyes but can detect with the heart and the soul. Do not be led to that part of thinking that tells you that women are not as important because I promise you that we very much are. I promise you that without us there is no vessels through which life passes, and without us there is no feminine Divine to lean on, and without us life is just not what it is meant to be because by and large it is the females in society who are the leveraging factor. We are the light left on at home at night, and we are the hearth to which the many have seen as being the one who makes home, home.

I am asking you to feel down deep in the core center of Your Self and feel the collective sadness, the anger, the resentments of generations of abused people who, even though they had the right to do certain things, to exercise their rights, did not have the choice to because someone else bullied them to the point where they, we, I just gave up my rights. I say this knowing that I am right in this because I have been there and I have done all those things that any abuse survivor has done in order to keep for themselves a tiny piece of who they really are. This is what no one realizes- that assuming that if no one says anything, that nothing is really being done, and this can be the truth in any situation where what is on the cover of things is not what boils below the surface.

There is a collective war, not only on women and girls and our rights, but common sense in general. To vote for a candidate because he is the candidate who you do not like lesser than the one you feel is the evil perpetrator you have conjured in your minds is irresponsible, and I am not asking that anyone vote against their own inclinations. All I am doing is asking that when you vote to please not forget about the women and girls in your lives. We are an important part of the fabric that is society, and because there are a few in high positions who feel that eliminating our rights to safety, our rights to not have to live in fear or under the constant pressure of living the life of an abused person will somehow make society better. They are saying that the reason that society has fallen apart is because single mothers are raising their kids alone and are suggesting that women stay in abusive marriages - basically blaming it all on us chicks, but the truth is that ignorances like that - the kind that do not bother with even thinking to say anything about an absent father - these are the things that are eroding our lives and NOT women with kids and no dad at home. There is no sense in the idea that society is becoming what it is because of us. Women are the bringers of life, not the harbingers of death and neither are we the ones who are solely responsible for all of the things in this life that can be seen as bad. No woman ever got pregnant on her own - there was always a man involved, even when it is that in the relationship there is no man. Once again women have been blamed, and once again, here I am telling you all that no, it is truly not ours alone to carry and that there needs to be some sort of balance - we ...the ones who want to exact changes where they are needed most, are that balance.

Society has become what it has because there are people in high places for whom the word "evolution" is a bad thing, when in reality it is just another way of saying that things are changing and things are becoming what they are because whether a few in office want to believe it or not, that is just the nature of life. I believe that the reason things are like they are is because of a strict aversion to change, a strict aversion to seeing what is really there versus what is a fantasy. It is a fantasy to scapegoat women when in fact the problem with being a single mother is that if you are not one you cannot ever know the reason that a woman with children is single at all, and it loans too much to the idea that somehow, she is the one to blame for the relationship no longer being.

We have to stop blaming victims for what they have gone through, and we have to take a deep look at what is going on in society for us to get a grasp on what is in our midst. We are being bullied into voting a certain way, and we are being told that we are not worth the time or the care that it will take for us all to stand up and make a difference in the lives of the women who contribute to your life in ways that no one who does not know them will ever know about. The VAWA keeps us all in line, all safe, and all able to know that we make a big difference, that we are part of the fabric of life - a BIG part, and that not one of us is meant to be treated like property or as though somehow, we do not count, are not important, will never be a priority in this life.

We Are.

We are every bit as important as we think we are, and we are every bit as needed to this life as anyone else is, and no, it is not the fault of single mothers, of mothers or women, period, the ailments that we all collectively experience as society as a whole, and we will always be.

I am asking you all to set aside what it is that you have against the "other party" when you cast your votes this year, and when it comes to things that can change the lives of those we each love the most, I am asking you, from the heart, to let go of your own political hostilities, your own assumptions and all of those things that raise your hackles about what the other party is doing and take a look at who it is that you love the very most and know for sure that yes, your vote does count and more, it will make a difference in the lives and the women in your own life.

The question, though, is what kind of difference will you make for us?

Will it be the difference that will ensure that they get to keep the safety, even in its limited form, that we have enjoyed for a few years, or will you vote with the idea in your head that it is not as important that you vote for something that will keep us all sleeping better at night .

Will your vote be the vote that makes it so that you no longer get that phone call from the police department or from the ER with the people on the other end telling you what has happened (again)...or will yours be the vote that makes it so that one day, out of the blue, you answer the door and on the other side of the door is a police officer giving you the news that they regret to inform you but...

When it comes to the VAWA, please, listen and please, by all means, yes, vote with your hearts...

As always...

I Love You All !

ROX

Come on, everybody...PROJECT:SHADES

"Never happen if we never try...all the nights awake and the tears we've cried could fill the seven seas...so...come on everybody...come on, everybody..we've got to give ourselves got to give ourselves a hand...and if we feel it's all a mess, yeah yeah, why don't we try a little...try a little...love and tenderness...we've got more than comes around, yeah yeah...why don't we care a little, share a liitle..it's sure to come back around..."(Tesla, "Stir it up," Psychotic Supper, 1991)

After the last few days of mulling over the bigness of a project like "Shades," and after trying to garner the attention and the support of service agencies who are in the business of helping those who need it, and after having door after door closed in my face, I have come to the conclusion and am thinking of it as more of a God given message that perhaps it is not those agencies whose help I need to get. Maybe this time instead of trying hard to get the attention and the support of agencies who do not need this sort of help or, let's face it, attention, I thought that there was a far better group who could help with this, and I know that you will agree with when I say that you know who that group is.

PROJECT: SHADES

PROJECT:SHADES is not about helping an agency or a few agencies. 

It is instead about people who are very weary of knowing that there is an entire population on the planet who lives their lives daily in the shadows of the darkness that is abuse, that is violence. Everyday people like me live with the memories of what has been our lives, and each and everyday we are taken back to a time in our lives when it seemed like everyday we had the possibility of going to the ER, which for a lot of survivors became a place of safety, of solace, but also may have become a place of confusion on the part of the workers and the emergency employees who treated them, and the confusion came from the fact that they'd seen these people so many times and for the very same reason - because they got beat up by their significant other. What those people cannot ever know in a personal way is that the victim they treated then, just like the very ones they treat now, do not leave their situation at home for one reason - they are scared shitless to leave because they do not want to find out if their attacker will make good on their threats. I have been there, and in some ways I am still in that mindset of fear.

The Fear

I am fearful of what he might do to me and I have always been. 

I used to be ashamed to admit this, but over the years I have managed to just accept that the fear has taught me much. The fear has made me think outside of my own safety zone, and the fear has made me want to prove this man wrong about who I am. The fear has made me strive to put it in his face that I am not some stupid woman who is nothing without him and my fear has made me far more intelligent than even I believe myself to be. My fear taught me not to settle for less than I deserve in my life, and my fear taught me that there is no one like me on this planet and it was this same fear that there would be many more people like me who are fearful as hell of the people who attack and abuse them daily and who would need to be stronger than they ever have been in their lives if ever their soul would survive this hellish part of their Journey.

I know this Path. It is the Path for the Strong Ones. I Am One of The Strong Ones...and so, too, are You...

My fear served me well. 

It made me stiffen my backbone, dust myself off and learn that I am not a doormat. It made me desirous of a better life, of a better love, of a better everything, and everyday I take a look at the fear that taught me so much and so very well, and I realize that my fear is the same fear that paralyzes an entire population of people in this country who live their lives daily not sure of anything more than that they do not want to piss their attacker off and that they want peace in their lives. I went through all of this, but at the same time, not so strangely, I was empowered by the anger that was fueled by the fear.

The Rage which is deep seated. The Anger, righteous. The Drive, real. The Love, True...in all cases and no matter what.

My rage is not the same rage that fueled me in the past, toward vengeance, toward thinking of doing tawdry and even unseemly things that no good person would do, but I didn't- and I pride myself on a whole lot...my integrity...my sense of respect for other people...but mostly, my ability to rise above the anger, the rage and the feelings of disgust that I have for a problem that has been made into something that is not as big as it is, that is not as harsh a reality for a lot of people that it is, and more, this issue with violence against domestic partners, no matter what their gender, has caused me to take up my sword, my shield, my broken heart and my great big Soul, my readership, and yes, my friends, my family and the people whom I love the very most, and makes me want us all to be a collective catalyst for change, makes me want to do what I can to help make these tears we've cried and this aching within just finally and forgivingly cease and dry up.

And the way that I will ask you to do this with me is the same way that I do anything - big, bold, in your face and unapologetically. I make no apologies for the thing that is at hand, and I make no excuses as to the reasons that We must do this - We don't have to explain ourselves to anyone. We just have to do this.

"I get by with a little help from my friends..."

I make it no secret that there are just a few people on this planet who I can give a hug of thanks to for always listening to me when I cried, when I couldn't figure out why I was in the situation that I was in, and always, they never turned their backs on me.

I want to make the call out to anyone who is reading this to help me with this project. I need people from all walks of life, and you are no exception. We need people from all age groups and from every income level, every race, color, creed, religious belief, every sexual orientation...everyone...and anyone who can take the time to help us put this together...and we need ya yesterday.

This is not an effort to collect or to raise money. It is an effort to collect pairs of shades and to raise awareness. I need artists and musicians, college presidents and politicians, rockers and rappers, every and anybody who is willing to help with this. I need videographers and techno-geeks, salesmen and marketing specialists, shop owners, pub owners, dog owners, cat owners...I need you, your parents, your siblings and cousins, and me, my parents, my siblings and cousins, and I just need any one with a heart and soul and the need to be part of something that is meant to grab attention, raise awareness, and bring a community together - the community of human beings who are ready for change - big change...and yes, you are needed now!!

If at all you should see little glimpses of your Self in this writing, I am hopeful, too, that you will see yourself helping with this, because this is huge, and it is needed. Give your time to this...this is big and life changing...for us all and for us each on our own...

Every 9 seconds someone in America is beaten by their significant other. Violence is never a good thing, no matter who tells you what.

We need to gather our strength, combine our voices, and get in the world's face.

We need change, and we are the ones who need to exact it, because without our efforts toward anything, ideas are just ideas that stay ideas.

Yet, ideas beget action, and I have been called by a Higher Power to Act rather than to only Think...

"And before it falls apart, yeah, yeah,Why don't we live a little, give a little, straight from the heart." (Tesla, "Stir it Up," Psychotic Supper, 1991)

Come on, everybody.

Come on, everybody.

We've got to give ourselves, got to give ourselves...a chance...

I Love You All!!

...Rox

You, only better - The Small Voice Within

I am often queried about "The Small Voice Within"


We do not realize how intuitively sharp we are until we are forced to go within to seek Solace


I have always been Empathic.

There has never been a day in my life that I have not been very sensitive to the energies and vibrations of other people. There are certain stores and places where I cannot venture because I am so sensitive that the negative energies that others send out affect me and suddenly what may have started out for me as a good day can, within a few short moments, become a bit of a very uncomfortable day for me very easily. This gift - my Empathic ability - allows me to be able to very quickly assess a situation and allows me to easily "Know" someone, even before I know their name. I sense their anger, and their sadness, and of course, I sense their joy and, sometimes, I can even tell what a person is thinking, all based on the energies, the vibes, if you will, that they send out into the world.

A funny thing about Empathy - some folks have no idea what it is. Chick people know what it is because we have a very deep sense of empathy about us - all of us. Guy people who are socially sensitive also have a heightened sense of intuition.

More than that, though, is the fact that those who have gone through any kind of abuse - we have the strongest Empathic abilities than most do, and it is because when you are in the middle of your own personal hell you begin to sharpen your 6th sense without even trying, and you have the inborn ability to fight or fly (fight versus flight) and at that point things begin to get very interesting.

Things begin to get very interesting


That you can tell from experience and the cycle of violence that you have already endured what kind of day you will have based on your attacker's demeanor upon waking in the morning. You already are scared out of your mind, and while I will never ever say that it is good that you are scared, what I will say is that there is a point in the lives of all abuse victims when each one of us no longer likes the stigma and neither the attention garnered by being seen as a victim. When the time comes and you have made the choice to be a survivor rather than a victim and when the attention that you seek is not the sort that one would get upon the first time that any one of us gets the nerve up to tell someone close to us what is happening to us, this is when you will start to actually feel the pronounced ability to Know things before you are meant to, and if you are smart about this newly heightened gift that you ended up with, you will NOT listen to your attacker and become a phone psychic and instead will hone your gift and your 6th sense so that you can intuit, first, what is in the mind of your attacker and then eventually you will learn that this 6th sense is something that you can use to get yourself back to healthy again, back to that place where the real you is and has been.

And once that happens, it begins to take on the sense that you are somehow on your way back home, back to wholeness, realizing then that what you have gone through has served you even as it broke you. You realize that the signs and all the little "coincidences" that you have been experienced were anything but chance, anything but what you have been told they are and you begin to see, for real, with your mind's eyes, an actual future.

The Small Voice Within has great big plans for you, so you'd better listen!


The Small Voice Within. Call it whatever you want. I call it God, and I call it God because it has never led me in the wrong direction, and it has never not had my best interest at heart, and while I was being victimized, it was the Voice Within that screamed with a whisper silence to me about how I did not deserve what I was going through, how it was and is that there are people on this planet who actually do love me, who actually do care about who I am and who want me to be the best me that I can be. The Small Voice Within was the temperature gauge which I would turn to in times of heated battle with a crazy person, and it is the same small voice that tells me who it is I can trust, who it is that I SHOULD be crazy about, and who only has my best interests at heart. These would be those same people who were there for me when I needed someone to be, and these are the same people who always, even when they disagreed with me, never made me feel foolish for having an original thought.

These are the same people who told me all the time that it is his loss, that he is the one who will have to learn to do without, and are the very same people who I know accept me as I am, flaws and all. These are the same people who have always had my back, and if they had to hurt me, did it with much kindness and with a big fat hug.

Your heightened intuition is an incidental that comes with the ugliness that became your life.

Use it wisely...

I Love You All !
ROX

BE BRAVE! Stand and FIGHT for your rights!

It really doesn't need to be called a "War on Women," because it really is a war on the sanctity of the Family.

All this time we have been being lied to by the GOP. Now, do not get me wrong - I LOVE everyone, and while people could and have called me a "liberal" (ummm...NOT!) these same people have not bothered themselves to find out what the hell I am really am, and what I really am is a good American, plain and simple. There is nothing about me that screams "democrat," and none of the things that I believe in in regards to family and spiritual beliefs or standing behind our troops says that I am a "conservative" or even "middle of the road" anything. If I must wear a label, then let that label be "Quiet Rebel Patriot," because if you know me, you know, too, that I am rebellious as hell when it comes to the rights of women and victims everywhere, no matter your gender. I have no problem exercising my Freedom of Speech, my Freedom of Expression, and I dare anyone to tell me that I haven't got the right to stand alone against the masses of people who are so needy for something to call "family" and the feeling you get from it that they will punish women and blame us for it.

I am made ill - nauseated even - by the idea that there are politicians in the midwest who feel that women should stay married to their abusers, who feel that the sanctity of the family has been marred by single parenthood. I am disgusted by the very thought that there are some men in office who believe that the fabric of society has been degraded by women alone - what the hell do they call an absent father, and how dare they blame the single mothers for the issues that society faces. I have yet to hear these shitheads say what they will of the fathers in the picture who are no where NEAR being in the picture and it was their CHOICE that they not stay with the mothers who they turned into single mothers. I am, to say the least, bursting at the very seams with rage, but it is a quiet and seething rage, the sort that causes people to get out into the world and to make a difference on their own, and this, you guys, is where I am today.

We, the Chick People, must be willing to fight for our rights because no one else will do it for us...

We have become completely complacent with what we have as ours, have settled for whatever it is that we are being told we are worth, being told we are able to do and being told, most of all, who we are. We are not second class citizens, and are not less than anyone else is, I Promise you this.

What else I promise you is that if mine is the only voice to be carried, through my words in writing or through my activism and through my own example of daily living, then that is what I am meant to do and yes, I carry the flame and the passion of my own cause - the rights of women and girls all over our nation - because even though I alone cannot bear the weight of this undertaking alone, I know, too, that there are others who are just as tired as I am of our being victimized by a small, elite group of people who can never know what it is that we go through, some of us daily, and what it is like for us to have to fear the daily living of our lives. No one should have to be afraid in Love, and no one should have to see the family they are part of as being a mixed blessing, where one parent has to compensate for the wrongdoings of the other. This is what lawmakers do not see and this is what they are not aware of, and I know that it has become my mission in life to make them see, through singular effort and through my own activist efforts that this will change.

While it might be a lot of time which passes before we see those changes materialize in our private lives, we can begin to exact those changes by being the lone voice in the wilderness, the lone voice which cries in the night, first with a whisper, then, with a scream...if we all continue to only whisper, we will only allow ourselves the changes made in a whisper of a moment, and what we need, what the world needs most right now is that generation of screamin' women who are fed up and no longer willing to be on our knees begging for our rights.

We all, at one time, bought into the pretend security that we were shown on "Leave it to Beaver," "Father knows best," and "The Brady Bunch," because those are the very examples of women that no longer apply in this current social climate. We are educated and angry, and we don't understand that we never had to take it on the chin, never had to do all that we trusted others to lead the nation of families into the future with.

Anymore now, it is a woman who is the head of household, and it is the woman who makes all the sacrifices she does for her children, and it is the woman, too, who is the unwitting poster child for all the blame that the GOP can come up with.

Planned Parenthood, VAWA, and the rights of abusers and how those rights give the rights of the abused less power

The GOP wanted to take away our rights to choose what is best for us. I would like to know when the hell it was that this was an issue that any man would have any knowledge about firsthand, and I want to know when it was that any man gave birth to a baby. I am not a man hater, and there are a few men - one in particular - who know this about me. I LOVE the men in our midst, because without them we would never know that we all have attributes that are feminine and Divine and completely ours alone to do with what we can and want (they are called "feminine wiles, ladies...use them with care and caution!). We have been villified by the media, and we have been made the current pariah of the times, all because a few unenlightened men in power seem to think that if they take away our rights that we can also be bullied into giving up our equality, but this is a blatant lie and one which will not be anything else but a lie unless and until we are willing to stand up for our rights.

Fuck equal rights for pay if equal rights for protection against that equality does not also come with the right to be safe in our own home, the right to not have to worry about getting an abortion if it is medically needed or worse, is needed because a woman was raped and she ends up pregnant. If all we are is truly and only the vessels through which human life is made real, and if this is your way of thinking, then please stop reading right now because you are just as bad as the men who would believe that we are weaker physically which also makes us weaker than they are, period.

There is no man alive who can handle the pressures of life that any woman cannot also handle. Yet, women, for the most part, are not physically abusive, and if they are, we need to ask what made her that way, just like we ask that in regards to an abuser who is a man. We want to find what happened to him in his past, but when it comes to us, we are simply just bitchy ...well hell yeah we are.

We are bitchy because we have to fight so much more and so much harder than the guys do, and we have to endure what horrible things are said to us, and we have to endure the idea that if we call the cops our attackers will be let out within 24-48 hours, unless we are put into a coma...it is when we are unable to speak and fight for ourselves when we are helped.

It should never get to that point, ever.

This is a war on women, guys, and it is not a GOP war only, but a societal war, and is one that I am seeing as our call to duty, our call to stand up, be brave and fight like the crazy people we have been told we are. It is time to get a good bout of emotional and spiritual PMS and take these fuckers on, one at a time, and not bow out and not shrink with fear and not do what we are expected to do and run and cry like the little girls they want to keep us all as. I do not only say "hell no" to that, but "hell FUCK NO and NEVER IN MY DAUGHTER'S OR MY SISTER'S OR MY BEST FRIENDS LIFE TIMES!!! HELL FUCK NO!!"

We are being robbed...our children kidnapped...all by a bureacracy that preaches one thing but does the opposite

I know about things that no one has the right to know, that no one really needs to know, and I know of attrocities of mothers losing their kids to the system when in fact they should not have. This is a war, you guys, on women, on children, on the family, and on society as a whole.

We respect the institution of marriage on its face, but we have no respect for the victims involved in an abusive marriage, citing that women can just leave - no, we can't, not without the threat of further injury or even being murdered.

We respect the two parent home even if it is a violent one, when instead we should be giving more attention to the fact that people who leave violent relationships deserve a standing ovation because they not only saved themselves from what could have ended up as a reason to mourn, but they also rescued their babies, and this is something that goes unnoticed and in some cases, is thought of as disruptive to the lives of children...I think people who bail out to save themselves and their kids are heroes, just as much are our men and women in our military.

The reason why I cannot stand Dr. Laura Schlezinger

I am a recovering Dr. Laura listener and have been for about a decade now, and it is because she is also in line with the thought that when you marry, it is forever, and if your man is belittling you, you should stay for the sake of the children. She advocates the preservation of emotionally abusive unions simply by broadcasting her personal feelings about the children who have to sit and listen to the shit that a lot of women go through all in the name of two parent households.

I know firsthand what happens to kids when one of their parents is saying terrible things to the other parent. I know that it affects children a whole lot to see their mother cry in pain, their mother beg their father, through tears as though she were in mourning, to please be kind and good to her, to not treat her like she is not worthy of kindness, not worthy of the love and respect and the preservation of her own dignity...I know this monster well, because I have slain this monster, all on my own, without outside help other than the support of those who love me and my kids. I know what it feels like.

Yet, educated idiots like Dr. Laura only have their textbook to go by and not real life experience. SHe negated her stance as a "feminist" when she began to broadcast that women should know better and that they would have seen the signs before we married these men. To that I give a great big "FUCK YOU!" to this stupid bitch who could never hold a candle to ANY single mother, to ANY abuse victim, to any woman whose heart and soul are truly Divine and Feminine.

Making the call out to the chosen ...

I see and know any victim of any sort of domestic abuse as being "chosen," because if you were not chosen then you would not be alive still to tell your story.

If you want to be part of a great big effort to bring about changes in the laws, then I beg you to please register to vote if you have not. I beg you to join forces with me, for PROJECT: Shades, to join voices with me in the writing of "The Abuse Book," and to stand your ground, no matter what.

It took me twenty three years to begin to take back my life, and I am doing it, one day at a time, but this does not mean that for every one person like me that there will be an influx of people who will cast aside their fears and march silently through the pain, through the ugliness, through everything they know as their own truth, to a better place societally

We cannot make changes outwardly or for the betterment of the world in which we live until we choose to also make singular and personal choices to do the same for ourselves.

Stand up. Be Brave. Choose to not be a victim anymore, because that is really where change starts for us all

I Love You All

ROX...

Never let anyone tell you who you are...ever

We never truly lose who we are.


People who have been abused lose their sense of identity. I know this is the truth because the friends I have always had told me lately that they did not like the me I was before I decided that I need a divorce. It takes a lot for a person to lose who they are to a relationship because there is no guarantee that who you try to become will satisfy your attacker. Again, I know this one personally.

We are who we are and we never have to change that for anybody


Just like no one "turns" gay, no one decides to no longer be who they really are. No one chooses to become something or someone they are not, but when it comes to those who suffer abuse at the hands at their betrothed, there is not a lot that the person who stands to lose themselves can do to avoid it. Abusers are terrific at manipulating people in general, namely those whom they believe they own property rights to. I know that my years as the spouse of one of the wheel and tire industry's most best known and trusted salesperson served me with a lesson in identity and the importance of keeping hold of our own.

I used to be an erratic fireball, but now my flame burns steadily, like the Sun. I used to be afraid to be who I am back in the day and at the beginning of my marriage, but now I cannot even think to try to be who I am not because it would be like trying to cram my size 8 and a 1/2 foot into a size 6 and a 1/2 shoe.  I used to be a whole lot of things that I was expected to become and these days I am just learning to be myself all over again.

Be Yourself, all over again


We do not realize the physical toll it takes on the body when internally we fight against the things going on externally, and this is really bad for us to do because it stresses the physical body badly. When we are told that we are not good enough, that we are not allowed to do things that we really love to do, that who we are is not the best person for the relationship, the person who is still very self-realized will leave the relationship. What no one realizes is that a lot of times the people in a relationship are not fully developed mentally enough yet to not depend on what someone else thinks of us. We are not ready yet to be with someone because we are not yet ready or even know who we really are because we have not yet become that person. We still have to go through some things, and we still have to learn about what is good for us versus what will break our hearts.

We so badly crave acceptance that we try hard to become all that the other person wants and in doing so we forget that there is another, more important person who needs us to be all the true person we are, and that one person is our very self.

We do what we can so that we can earn Love and in doing so fail to know one real truth - we are fine as we are, God made us this way, and no one on the planet knows better what we need and who we are and what is best for us than our very selves. This is a lesson that was hard learned for me, because for a lot of years I was a trophy wife. There came a time when I finally got tired of dressing to make myself look like the fantasy that I went in the other direction and tried hard to make myself less appealing because I believed that in doing so my spouse would love me more because I was not trying to make other men look at me. For many years I believed that this is what he was doing and then one day I realized that the reason he felt I should not look good was because of him - it was never because of another man, only because of one who never knew who he really is and likely never will.

Once we can Love who we are, and once we can accept that we are as perfect as God needs us to be, it is at this point when we can evolve because at this point we have made it ok that we are who we are without permission. Abuse victims always feel like they have to get permission from others to do what they want to do and to be who they really are. We are constantly checking to see if who we are is alright with other people, and this is not ok because it tells us that we are not ok, that no one loves us as we are, and that we had better change so that we can earn the love we need, and more, the very same love that we afford other people with.

This helps make sense as to why it is that abuse survivors, some of us, have ongoing emotional issues, and sometimes there is no help to be had because the truth is that you have to want the help and you have to see in the mirror that something just ain't quite right. I knew that something was not right with me when my mother told me a few years ago that I looked like an old woman. It made me cry because she was right.

I refuse to allow someone else's mistrust in me, allow someone else's issues with themselves be the guide for me. It hasn't been in a while, and I am positive it won't be ever again. If I did not bother to want to see to it that I not be the ass hat I turned into because I simply did not fit into the mold I was squished into. It took me some time to get back into shape and it took some time to reinvent what the outside looks like. What the outside looks like is very indicative of what the inside looks like.

So go and take a look at yourself in the mirror and see what your insides look like. If you like what you see, congratulations!

If you don't like what you see, cover your ears NOW because you are still listening to someone whose best interest they are taking to heart is not yours...

As Always...I Love You All!
...Rox...

Creating Beauty from Atrocity

All the pain has to have someplace to go


Abuse survivors know pain, and we know it very well, better than we think we do. Humans are phenomenal at hanging onto our intangibles, and one of those intangibles we like to hang onto is our pain. We earned it. It belongs to us. We "own" it.

Owning our pain is not the same as facing the fear that caused it. Yet we are not very well versed in letting it go, and not everyone will respond to the therapies that are meant for people who have been abused. In fact, sometimes there are things in therapy that don't really settle within us because the frank truth is that the things that are created for us we cannot relate to. Textbook knowledge can never replace experience as a learning tool. Abuse survivors know a whole lot about learning because we are taught to fear and then one day we choose to not be scared anymore, knowing fully that as much as we are used to being in that place of fear, and as much as we are afraid to try something new for fear of failing and having to deal with yet one more disappointment that was really never ours to begin with but belongs fully to us now.

We need to let go of the pain. The pain was meant only to show us that we are human, that someone else has caused us to hurt and that God is trying to tell us to take action, to head toward the Light within us because the Light is never gone, only hidden. Once it is that we can muddle our way through the dark night of the soul, we can begin to believe that what we have gone through is over with and that now all there is is the healing. The pain tells us that our soul has been fractured and that fractured state of mind is where we find the very strength needed to begin the process of remembering, and more importantly, eliminating. We hang onto pain for so long that it becomes second nature for us to react instead of respond. When we can simply respond to the pain and have an outlet for it is when we can also see that since we sought out a better way to feel that we are well on our way and that the Sun is just on the outside of the cave we hid in for so long.

We Are All Creators of a Divine Sort


People who have been harmed in some way usually feel as though there is no way out of the pain they are having. This is wrong. There is always a way out.

Human beings are creative. By this I mean that in each of us there is a creative nature, a nature which has always been there to remind us of the beauty that is the reality of who we truly are. We create our own truths through the ferreting out of the lies we have been told, and to ferret out anything we must remain as creative as we can be, and I know that for real, the most creative sort of people are the sort who have been kept so long in the dark about things and about the truth, and most abuse survivors begin very early on having a constant conversation with ourselves, telling ourselves that if things were different we could do this, that and the other, and as time wears on we start creating scenarios about what we can do to at least release some of the pain.

Had I known back then what I know now - that no matter what he has said or done to me, I am ultimately the creator of my own reality, and knowing this I also know that from within is where the beauty which was borne of pain rises to the top like cream. It is at this point where every survivor of domestic abuse comes into their own and we begin to create for ourselves a beauty that belongs only to ourselves but also a beauty that we are more than willing to share with the world and to show to other people, and we want to show others, not because we are very impressed with what it is that we have created, but so that we can know that the opinion that our abuser has of us is NOT the only opinion that counts, and in most cases is more a judgment on their part toward us, and the loveliest part of this is that we all have opinions about much in life and that an opinion is only one person's truth from their perspective.

Their opinion is not now and nor has it ever been your truth, and it never will be.

From the ashes of the fiery pain is borne the beauty which is ours alone to create with


I am a lifelong hula dancer. My best friend when I was a kid was not an actual friend (even though I loved her then and love her still now) but an activity. Hula has been the thing that has, time and again, salvaged the wreckage that I have been. Through its beauty, through my ancestral ties to it, I have found much solace, and in the time that has passed - 23 years worth - I have managed to see to it and to myself that this beauty remain untouched, primitive even in its gloriously gorgeous state. To manage my internal pain I danced...sometimes alone, other times with my hula sisters, but always, always, always I danced.

It is never until you are forced to look within to find what it is that has always made you feel good about who you are that you realize that up to this very moment in time you were brought to this place so that you could better understand whatever it was that you learned, through pain, through travesties, through it all, and you raised from the ashes of your life that thing that saved you over and over again. For some folks it is playing music, while for others it is creating beautiful art to share with the world, and yet still others sing, or draw, or paint, or sculpt...or dance. There is no greater love that a person has than to be able to create something out of their pain and to share that transformed pain as a thing that makes a person's soul cry out for the normalcy that once was, the normalcy that we all knew at one time or another.

Creating beauty in our life is the thing that tells us that we have so much to give, that the idea that one person can have all of who we are without thinking that maybe we might need to have some of who we are for our very selves, that we are somehow not beautiful, not smart, not whatever ...to create a thing of beauty is to acknowledge that our true self still is there, still is within us and that all we have to do is allow that part of us to be seen through our artwork, through our dance, through our song, through our life and living.

We are not ugly, human beings, but we can turn that way. Creating things for ourselves is also creating for others so that they may interpret our pain as a means for their healing. Creation of beauty in our lives where most of it has been shunned and stripped of us is the thing that will save us, and more, it is the thing that has never ever left us. Creativity in turmoil allows us to see what someone else gave us and it is up to us to decide if we want it to remain the eye sore that it is or if we would like to turn it into something that no one ever thought it would be...

...our own...

I Love You All !!
...Rox