We do not know that we have rights until someone else comes along and reminds us that we do
I have a friend whose name shall stay a secret, and it will stay a secret because the world is filled with abuse survivors who go through the same thing with their abusers.
As a citizen of the world, it is of utmost importance that all of us remember that we were all born with the same human rights that anyone ever is. This is the pisser of being an abuse victim or survivor - the idea that what one person told you was the truth is the God's honest truth. When it comes down to the nitty gritty, what no abuse survivor is ever going to think about is the very idea that you had rights before you entered into a relationship with this other person, you had those same rights throughout the time that you were going through what you went through, and now, at the end of it all, or in your case, the new start of things, you are still in that mindset that you have to ask another person who is comprised of the very same carbon substance that you were born into this life as being - you have rights just like anyone else does.
Never let another person be the thing that makes or breaks you, and while I should not be the one to say that to anyone, the idea that I have to ask permission of another adult, no matter who they are, just to live, is ridiculous. For all those people on the planet who feel like they have to control someone else in order to be anything at all, you have some serious issues and now you want to tell someone else how to live according to your rules and what makes you comfortable, and you don't care one little bit about it if the person who you think you own has a say so ever.
You need to grow up because one day you will find yourself miserable and lonely
God help you when...not if....WHEN that day comes !!
ROX
Monday, May 28, 2012
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Find Your Voice...
Survivors must find their voice and use it
For a lot of survivors, making choices according to our own preferences at first seems scary and weird.
There are not a whole lot of people who know me...and I mean really know me...who will disagree with me when I say that I have never had a problem with expressing myself. For a very long time it was difficult for me to be true in the things that I wanted to say in completion because I was told for so long that maybe what I'd had to say would sound stupid, or would make him look stupid, or, most of the time, told that no one wanted to hear what I had to say because it was not important to anyone, not even him.
There comes a day when you have to speak up or things will not change
Abuse survivors have a whole lot to get through, and one of those things is regaining the ability to choose what we like and what we want according to us. We are all uniquely Sacred in this life, and those of us who survive the insanity that someone else brings into our lives, once we are emotionally (even if not yet physically) apart from our abuser we can learn from our own bodily reactions what it is that we want, and more, what it is that makes us cringe.
We forget about the things that we love so much. In my case it was music and musicians, rock music and a good time. To my old man these things apparently should have been left behind the moment that we met, because to most abusers once it is that you have met them they believe that they really are all that their victim needs. This is a lie. I found out very early on after I married this person that I really needed to be able to see and talk to my family - I missed my parents, and I missed my brother, and my sister was always with me, but it was not enough. I missed seeing my grandmother, missed seeing my cousins, missed the things that I loved so much before the day that I signed my life over to my abuser was a reality.
Over time I'd grown used to staying quiet, grown used to not writing regularly, got used to carrying on conversations with myself, and just sort of dealt with the heavy and crushing isolation. While I hated being alone, I found my solace in reading, in writing with pen and paper volumes of poetry, found my solace in music and during his work hours would dance hula by myself, through tears of loneliness and resentment.
Yet I thrived in a sense as well, because I'd not realized back in 1995 that what I needed as well as friends and my family, what I so badly needed but did not know until then was that I needed to write in a manner that came not from a rock and roll perspective, not in a manner which was meant as a marketing piece, not in a manner that sold anyone anything.
I needed to find my voice, because in all of the fear that had become so much a part of my daily living I'd neglected that part of me that had always served me well - my Voice. And by "Voice" I am not talking about my talking voice but the Voice which speaks loudly through the silence of the tears, through the pounding and reverberations caused by the ongoing mental recording of my being told that I am useless, worthless, a whore and what not...the Voice of which I speak is that of your Soul, and for those whose lives have been fractured by the marring from abuse, it is the Soul which keeps an abuse victim going through what they do so that they can come out of the other side of Hell on Earth brand new, far wiser and better able to deal with what it is that has befallen and now stares at them in the face.
The Voice of the Soul
It is the Voice within which carries most of us through the hell that we do not create for ourselves. It is that part of us that many refer to as being "The God Within," and others refer to as our Guides. Whenever it is that we have found ourselves wanting to lash out and crush someone, it is the Voice that compels us to dream a little bit bigger, to delve into the fantasies which used to be a part of who we once were and to seek out the guidance and the answers to all of our questions, and it is the Voice within which addresses the pain and doles out the Love that we all retain even while for a time in our lives it seems that we are not lovable, like we truly are the worst person on the planet, and that we really are everything that the person who is our captor has said we are while they continue to have their way with us emotionally.
The Voice of the Soul remains with us, aching to be heard, and waiting for you to Become what you were meant to through the harshness that is being someone else's victim. Our Voice is that part of us that relates to the world, and it is not through our own hand and neither our own manipulations that we would get to the point where we would need someone to tell us that we are going to be just fine, because the truth is that no, we will not be, at least not until we can begin to see through the darkness that has become our pain to the light that will release us, even as some of us are still physically living with these people who took who we are and turned it into something that we would never be...
...something other than our True Selves.
Once you have regained your Self you will find that your Voice is that part of you that the world has done without not because you had the idea in your head that you might not get heard, but rather and only because one other person decided for you that your Voice was not ever that important to them, so why would it be important to anyone else?
Because. It is. You Are! You belong here in this life and you deserve to be heard...the real you keeps telling you over and over again to let her out...
You gonna start listening?
I LOVE YOU ALL !!
Roxanne
For a lot of survivors, making choices according to our own preferences at first seems scary and weird.
There are not a whole lot of people who know me...and I mean really know me...who will disagree with me when I say that I have never had a problem with expressing myself. For a very long time it was difficult for me to be true in the things that I wanted to say in completion because I was told for so long that maybe what I'd had to say would sound stupid, or would make him look stupid, or, most of the time, told that no one wanted to hear what I had to say because it was not important to anyone, not even him.
There comes a day when you have to speak up or things will not change
Abuse survivors have a whole lot to get through, and one of those things is regaining the ability to choose what we like and what we want according to us. We are all uniquely Sacred in this life, and those of us who survive the insanity that someone else brings into our lives, once we are emotionally (even if not yet physically) apart from our abuser we can learn from our own bodily reactions what it is that we want, and more, what it is that makes us cringe.
We forget about the things that we love so much. In my case it was music and musicians, rock music and a good time. To my old man these things apparently should have been left behind the moment that we met, because to most abusers once it is that you have met them they believe that they really are all that their victim needs. This is a lie. I found out very early on after I married this person that I really needed to be able to see and talk to my family - I missed my parents, and I missed my brother, and my sister was always with me, but it was not enough. I missed seeing my grandmother, missed seeing my cousins, missed the things that I loved so much before the day that I signed my life over to my abuser was a reality.
Over time I'd grown used to staying quiet, grown used to not writing regularly, got used to carrying on conversations with myself, and just sort of dealt with the heavy and crushing isolation. While I hated being alone, I found my solace in reading, in writing with pen and paper volumes of poetry, found my solace in music and during his work hours would dance hula by myself, through tears of loneliness and resentment.
Yet I thrived in a sense as well, because I'd not realized back in 1995 that what I needed as well as friends and my family, what I so badly needed but did not know until then was that I needed to write in a manner that came not from a rock and roll perspective, not in a manner which was meant as a marketing piece, not in a manner that sold anyone anything.
I needed to find my voice, because in all of the fear that had become so much a part of my daily living I'd neglected that part of me that had always served me well - my Voice. And by "Voice" I am not talking about my talking voice but the Voice which speaks loudly through the silence of the tears, through the pounding and reverberations caused by the ongoing mental recording of my being told that I am useless, worthless, a whore and what not...the Voice of which I speak is that of your Soul, and for those whose lives have been fractured by the marring from abuse, it is the Soul which keeps an abuse victim going through what they do so that they can come out of the other side of Hell on Earth brand new, far wiser and better able to deal with what it is that has befallen and now stares at them in the face.
The Voice of the Soul
It is the Voice within which carries most of us through the hell that we do not create for ourselves. It is that part of us that many refer to as being "The God Within," and others refer to as our Guides. Whenever it is that we have found ourselves wanting to lash out and crush someone, it is the Voice that compels us to dream a little bit bigger, to delve into the fantasies which used to be a part of who we once were and to seek out the guidance and the answers to all of our questions, and it is the Voice within which addresses the pain and doles out the Love that we all retain even while for a time in our lives it seems that we are not lovable, like we truly are the worst person on the planet, and that we really are everything that the person who is our captor has said we are while they continue to have their way with us emotionally.
The Voice of the Soul remains with us, aching to be heard, and waiting for you to Become what you were meant to through the harshness that is being someone else's victim. Our Voice is that part of us that relates to the world, and it is not through our own hand and neither our own manipulations that we would get to the point where we would need someone to tell us that we are going to be just fine, because the truth is that no, we will not be, at least not until we can begin to see through the darkness that has become our pain to the light that will release us, even as some of us are still physically living with these people who took who we are and turned it into something that we would never be...
...something other than our True Selves.
Once you have regained your Self you will find that your Voice is that part of you that the world has done without not because you had the idea in your head that you might not get heard, but rather and only because one other person decided for you that your Voice was not ever that important to them, so why would it be important to anyone else?
Because. It is. You Are! You belong here in this life and you deserve to be heard...the real you keeps telling you over and over again to let her out...
You gonna start listening?
I LOVE YOU ALL !!
Roxanne
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Friends...the family that isn't blood
Abuse Survivors Need Emotional Support...
...the reasons you need your friends are more important than you think they are!
When this madness of being someone else's victim became a part of my life I'd already "lost" a lot of my support system. Even as I take a quick glance back to the past and know that there were some 'friends' who were not really friends I see, too, that there were others who were there for me, who are still there for me, and these are the friends that I am talking about.
The main objective when it comes to an abuser is that the abuser wants to make sure that his or her victim has no support system - they want their victim completely dependent on them. Many victims fall prey to the line "...I want to be your everything - you don't need your friends. I am all you need," and while that, on its face, might seem like the abuser totally loves their victim, the truth is that the abuser is simply trying (and usually succeeds) to make their victim live in a world of social isolation.
For some folks this is fine - they love being alone and they love the solitude, and I know this because this is the way that I had been for a long time. Yet, when it comes to the idea that even the lonest of lone wolves having at least the smallest circle of friends -which I did at the time - even these people end up losing what little they have in means of a support group. I loved my friends, needed them, wanted them around and wanted the person I'd married and my little group of friends to like each other. My first red flag should have been that this person did all he could to make sure that I knew he was all I needed according to him. Eventually he wore me down and little by little, day by day, he'd made sure that what he thought of my friends was what I believed that I thought of them, too.
Don't get me wrong - I know that we all grow out of the people who served us with our life lessons when the time was that we were learning said lessons, but to not be able to fulfill the need for friends in my life was almost like trying to run a race with one leg and a flimsy dowel - while it might have been able to happen, the most likely thing to happen did happen - I gave up my relationships with people who I'd loved and been with for much of my life, and it was not for my own benefit but for his. He was not comfortable with people, his self esteem crushed by a selfish set of parents who'd only wanted children for the sake of living vicariously through them.
We cannot pin our hopes of self-actualization on anything substantial if we are more willing to give away the power to connect with someone else. When we are willing to do more for one other person and take more away from our own selves for the benefit of their self we ultimately also give up our rights as free beings, and this is the thing that is the hardest to recapture - the freedom of just Being who we really are. Abusers, I have found, like being surrounded by people who are just like they are and the more self unaware their victims are the better they feel about things. This is a good reason as to why it is not a good idea that the age of "adulthood" and the age at which we are allowed in this country to do as we please be left at the tender, fresh-outta-high-school age of barely 18. When a person is that young they have not yet had a taste of life the way that it is meant to be. NO one that age can make any sort of adult decision, at least for the collective most part, because they simply have not had time yet to have experiences such as paying their own bills, buying a house, and getting married. Young people have no idea of who they are yet, so how can they even begin to know anything about anyone else?
Your real friends will be there for you, with you, through it all - cherish them
If there is one thing that this entire two-decade time span has shown me is that I really do know who my true friends are. They are those people who, for whatever reasons they have, have been willing to get in my face about what I am going through, telling me that they are worried about me, that I am worthy of so much more than only what one person thinks is the truth of me, and while it may be that it is his truth, it doesn't mean that it is also mine or that it ever has been.
Your real friends are the ones who, even when they are very angry with you, love you enough to tell you when they have seen you go through too much and that they need you to be strong, if not for them then for your damned self. Your real friends are the ones who, even though they know, and even though you know, that the things that you are telling them about your situation are not all the facts and your real friends are the ones who will not pry, will not tell you what you have already heard a million times. Your real friends will never tell you anything to put you in danger, and your real friends (and this is the biggie) will Love you, always, no matter what, and they will not be shy with what they know to be their truth about your situation, but also are not the people who will leave you with no one and nothing to fall back on.
In short, through it all, your real friends will be there, even when they aren't. They will have your back and you will know that they have your back. They will not judge you, even though they have their own opinions of what you are going through and how you are handling your own situation. They will never question why it is that you would bother with this person, but when you give them your reason, they will accept it and still Love you anyway. Your real friends will never tell you that you should just leave and your real friends will never tell you to kick this person out because your real friends will already know that doing either will leave you in very real danger. They will never assume you to be the "typical" victim because they will already know that you are not.
Your real friends will be there, regardless, and your real friends will make sure that above all else, you are Loved and Cherished, and your real friends, yes, will always, always, always tell you that they think you should get out of the situation, but they will also make sure that you understand that the most important thing that you need to know is that they are only telling you this because they care and not because it is what they would do. Your real friends will know that they are not in your shoes, so your real friends will not ever "go there" because your real friends are your real friends because your real friends Love you because you are You.
...any questions?
No? Good!!
I Love You All !!
ROX
...the reasons you need your friends are more important than you think they are!
When this madness of being someone else's victim became a part of my life I'd already "lost" a lot of my support system. Even as I take a quick glance back to the past and know that there were some 'friends' who were not really friends I see, too, that there were others who were there for me, who are still there for me, and these are the friends that I am talking about.
The main objective when it comes to an abuser is that the abuser wants to make sure that his or her victim has no support system - they want their victim completely dependent on them. Many victims fall prey to the line "...I want to be your everything - you don't need your friends. I am all you need," and while that, on its face, might seem like the abuser totally loves their victim, the truth is that the abuser is simply trying (and usually succeeds) to make their victim live in a world of social isolation.
For some folks this is fine - they love being alone and they love the solitude, and I know this because this is the way that I had been for a long time. Yet, when it comes to the idea that even the lonest of lone wolves having at least the smallest circle of friends -which I did at the time - even these people end up losing what little they have in means of a support group. I loved my friends, needed them, wanted them around and wanted the person I'd married and my little group of friends to like each other. My first red flag should have been that this person did all he could to make sure that I knew he was all I needed according to him. Eventually he wore me down and little by little, day by day, he'd made sure that what he thought of my friends was what I believed that I thought of them, too.
Don't get me wrong - I know that we all grow out of the people who served us with our life lessons when the time was that we were learning said lessons, but to not be able to fulfill the need for friends in my life was almost like trying to run a race with one leg and a flimsy dowel - while it might have been able to happen, the most likely thing to happen did happen - I gave up my relationships with people who I'd loved and been with for much of my life, and it was not for my own benefit but for his. He was not comfortable with people, his self esteem crushed by a selfish set of parents who'd only wanted children for the sake of living vicariously through them.
We cannot pin our hopes of self-actualization on anything substantial if we are more willing to give away the power to connect with someone else. When we are willing to do more for one other person and take more away from our own selves for the benefit of their self we ultimately also give up our rights as free beings, and this is the thing that is the hardest to recapture - the freedom of just Being who we really are. Abusers, I have found, like being surrounded by people who are just like they are and the more self unaware their victims are the better they feel about things. This is a good reason as to why it is not a good idea that the age of "adulthood" and the age at which we are allowed in this country to do as we please be left at the tender, fresh-outta-high-school age of barely 18. When a person is that young they have not yet had a taste of life the way that it is meant to be. NO one that age can make any sort of adult decision, at least for the collective most part, because they simply have not had time yet to have experiences such as paying their own bills, buying a house, and getting married. Young people have no idea of who they are yet, so how can they even begin to know anything about anyone else?
Your real friends will be there for you, with you, through it all - cherish them
If there is one thing that this entire two-decade time span has shown me is that I really do know who my true friends are. They are those people who, for whatever reasons they have, have been willing to get in my face about what I am going through, telling me that they are worried about me, that I am worthy of so much more than only what one person thinks is the truth of me, and while it may be that it is his truth, it doesn't mean that it is also mine or that it ever has been.
Your real friends are the ones who, even when they are very angry with you, love you enough to tell you when they have seen you go through too much and that they need you to be strong, if not for them then for your damned self. Your real friends are the ones who, even though they know, and even though you know, that the things that you are telling them about your situation are not all the facts and your real friends are the ones who will not pry, will not tell you what you have already heard a million times. Your real friends will never tell you anything to put you in danger, and your real friends (and this is the biggie) will Love you, always, no matter what, and they will not be shy with what they know to be their truth about your situation, but also are not the people who will leave you with no one and nothing to fall back on.
In short, through it all, your real friends will be there, even when they aren't. They will have your back and you will know that they have your back. They will not judge you, even though they have their own opinions of what you are going through and how you are handling your own situation. They will never question why it is that you would bother with this person, but when you give them your reason, they will accept it and still Love you anyway. Your real friends will never tell you that you should just leave and your real friends will never tell you to kick this person out because your real friends will already know that doing either will leave you in very real danger. They will never assume you to be the "typical" victim because they will already know that you are not.
Your real friends will be there, regardless, and your real friends will make sure that above all else, you are Loved and Cherished, and your real friends, yes, will always, always, always tell you that they think you should get out of the situation, but they will also make sure that you understand that the most important thing that you need to know is that they are only telling you this because they care and not because it is what they would do. Your real friends will know that they are not in your shoes, so your real friends will not ever "go there" because your real friends are your real friends because your real friends Love you because you are You.
...any questions?
No? Good!!
I Love You All !!
ROX
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
We are all Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens...we all have the strength and the glory of Ix
There comes a time when a victim becomes a survivor...
...no one ever plans to be abused, but it happens to the best of us.
We all heal at one point or another.
We all wake up one day and think about the first time that it happened to us, and we look at ourselves in the mirror, and we see either a shiny new version of ourselves or we see what someone else has always seen. The trick in this is not that we see what we do but that we accept what we see. Healing, I have found, is not about feeling better only, but about the journey that every person who has been abused must take - the road back to the Self.
And I speak much of the Self in all of its Divinity.
There is a lot that happens when first you are abused, when first all the things that you thought were the truth become a lie - a horrible lie that no one ever told you is a possibility. The only thing you ever saw was a happy union between two adults and that was your ideal of what a relationship with someone else was. Then one day you wake up realizing that while that is the ideal, it is, more and more these days, namely if you have been through the hell that all abuse survivors go through, is the thing that makes good women cringe because most of the time, it is a good woman who is abused.
Then there are those who would use a false claim of abuse against an innocent person, and that innocent person's life is suddenly shaken up and turned inside, out, and the accused must prove that he or she didn't do what was blamed on them. This is an insult to people like me. These lies are the worst of all because as an abuse survivor one knows well the psychological and spiritual hell that a person goes through when they are being beaten, when they are being belittled, when they are so afraid of everything and everyone and when you are not sure who you can trust.
Then one day, you see through the haze that was your life and suddenly, all that made no sense very suddenly makes sense, and once again you can see your true self...
Ix..pronounced "eesh," is the Mayan Symbol of the Jaguar, of the High Priestess, of the Queen of the Jungle...
It is the Jaguar spirit which we all possess, bringing with her the feline femininity which is equated with the power within. It is this power, this spirit that eventually becomes an abused person, an abused woman, and at that point, the battered woman and the soul of the Ix within her become one.
She is stealthy with her movements, and cunning in thought, and as the days pass her strength can be seen and felt, and her power is what makes her beautiful.
What no one ever thinks about when they are being beaten is that one day the thing that we named "weakness" becomes the power within. It is the Ix within which brings us to the point where we choose to no longer be seen as the victim that once we were but now, now we see only the empowerment that came with the perceived weakness that at one point, we each were...
...welcome to the other side of the long, dark jungle...
I Love You All !!
Rox
(c) Roxanne Cottell/ Twisted Kitty Promotions, all rights reesrved. twistedkittyrocks@yahoo.com
...no one ever plans to be abused, but it happens to the best of us.
We all heal at one point or another.
We all wake up one day and think about the first time that it happened to us, and we look at ourselves in the mirror, and we see either a shiny new version of ourselves or we see what someone else has always seen. The trick in this is not that we see what we do but that we accept what we see. Healing, I have found, is not about feeling better only, but about the journey that every person who has been abused must take - the road back to the Self.
And I speak much of the Self in all of its Divinity.
There is a lot that happens when first you are abused, when first all the things that you thought were the truth become a lie - a horrible lie that no one ever told you is a possibility. The only thing you ever saw was a happy union between two adults and that was your ideal of what a relationship with someone else was. Then one day you wake up realizing that while that is the ideal, it is, more and more these days, namely if you have been through the hell that all abuse survivors go through, is the thing that makes good women cringe because most of the time, it is a good woman who is abused.
Then there are those who would use a false claim of abuse against an innocent person, and that innocent person's life is suddenly shaken up and turned inside, out, and the accused must prove that he or she didn't do what was blamed on them. This is an insult to people like me. These lies are the worst of all because as an abuse survivor one knows well the psychological and spiritual hell that a person goes through when they are being beaten, when they are being belittled, when they are so afraid of everything and everyone and when you are not sure who you can trust.
Then one day, you see through the haze that was your life and suddenly, all that made no sense very suddenly makes sense, and once again you can see your true self...
Ix..pronounced "eesh," is the Mayan Symbol of the Jaguar, of the High Priestess, of the Queen of the Jungle...
It is the Jaguar spirit which we all possess, bringing with her the feline femininity which is equated with the power within. It is this power, this spirit that eventually becomes an abused person, an abused woman, and at that point, the battered woman and the soul of the Ix within her become one.
She is stealthy with her movements, and cunning in thought, and as the days pass her strength can be seen and felt, and her power is what makes her beautiful.
What no one ever thinks about when they are being beaten is that one day the thing that we named "weakness" becomes the power within. It is the Ix within which brings us to the point where we choose to no longer be seen as the victim that once we were but now, now we see only the empowerment that came with the perceived weakness that at one point, we each were...
...welcome to the other side of the long, dark jungle...
I Love You All !!
Rox
(c) Roxanne Cottell/ Twisted Kitty Promotions, all rights reesrved. twistedkittyrocks@yahoo.com
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