Your Life Was Not Always This Way...(A Soares Ohana Tribute)

...and as with all else, this too shall change and you will no longer hurt from it...

You have to start somewhere. Today I did just that. Today I went to a domestic violence support organization because the frank truth is that this entire ordeal has rendered me "stuck," sort of, in a place where I am damned if I do, and damned if I don't, and whether I do it now or do it a month from now, it is still going to get done because of this, that and of course, the other...however...

Life was not always this way...


...and Life will not remain this way. No matter how hard it seems for you at this moment to really believe that there is an end to all of this madness that you are currently witnessing as being the thing that is your life, know, believe, and accept, too, that none of it is permanent, that it WILL get better as you get stronger, and as you get stronger, you will find that you can do just about anything you put your mind AND your soul to, and that, really, is the ONLY thing that any one of us HAS TO try to do - accept what  I just wrote up there as a basic Truth which applies to each and every one of us who graces the crust of this planet.

Not one thing that you can look at within your eyes' line of sight will remain just exactly as it is at this moment. Some peoples' lives will change markedly, and other's lives will just be implemented with those things and those people -some who may already be there and in place and waiting...waiting, waiting, waiting...not for the change to happen to or for them, but by them...and very much indeed we find that these changes, they are permanent.

But change and its ever presence is the only thing that does NOT change ... changes, paradoxically, never changes. Change is the thing that makes us fear, and change is the thing that makes us grow, and we humans do not like to change and we do not like to grow. We become comfortable in settling for less than what we see ourselves as, and let me tell you something, folks - if there is one thing that I have learned absolutely in these last two decades, it is that we would rather settle for what we have been told we are able to have and deserve to have, and we allow someone else to tell us what THEY think we are worthy of, and it is not much, guys, not at all. ...

Which is the reason that I contemplated doing what I did today, knowing that I had to do it, that I am the one who is totally responsible for my own healing, that I was not going to the place where I went to today for any other person than myself, because I can no longer deal with the sadness that I have been given and I can no longer carry my burden and someone else's at the same time and that I should never have volunteered to do it for as long as I have.

I learned something about me today, and it is that I really am a soul warrior, that I really am all that I have known that I am, for the entirety of my life and NOT only the last 23 - I was someone prior to the day that I met the person who I married, and here I am, many  years later, almost to the date, 21 years later, and I see in this person the thing that I have always seen, and what I have always seen has been something of a shell of what someone was and that person hanging on to that memory when he'd held all the marbles, had all the control, and little did I realize that I am still afraid, so very, very afraid, that I am still a little rough around the edges, and if you saw me the way that I see me, the rough edges are not unacceptable. I worked hard for them...we all work hard for them...

I have enough rough edges, all on the inside, and it was not until tonight that I began to orate to my oldest about the reason that I have not gone completely off of the deep end, not at all, and why it is that every time hear Hawaiian music, I am brought to tears, but I am smiling, and it is because there is a group of people with whom I share an emotional bond who know me as well as any group would. I love them. They Love me. They are my cousins...my Soares cousins...the ones who are more like my siblings than anything else.

There are only so many times in our lives when we are afforded the opportunity to tell people who mean a whole lot to us that indeed we Love them...that truly, I do Love you, each and every one of you, with every bit of aloha that I can think to even contain within me. Normally, at a time of night when I am sitting in my Sacred Space in prayer with God and asking for the things that my soul so desires, I thought about the many things that I have been privileged to have said that I have owned, places I have visited, people I have met, places I have lived... all of it, I am instead sitting here at my keyboard and listening to Keali'i Reichel, thinking about all those times we were together, even recently, and always at Uncle Reggie's house. Always eating and drinking and sneaking out to have a smoke...and most of all, just being right there, in another space which is considered to me to be Sacred. It is a place where I know we are all of one heart and soul, that we are a family, that we are looking at each other and in that split second we are seeing that missing front tooth, long braided hair, slippahs from Longs Drugstore, the Silver Shave Ice Truck...

And yes...of course we broke each others' hearts, and said things that hurt each other, and even sometimes allowed ourselves to throw blows, all over what?

No, not pride, or greed, or anything stupid and 'adult,' like that...nah, we fought because for a split second we feared that we'd lost the love of a person who was our...sibling...you guys, all of you, are my brothers and sisters, and I am so glad to tell you that for as long as I can remember and think about growing up "Hawaiian," I can see us all...all there at the most important times of each of our lives, and though I may have missed out one some pretty significant times and events, I sit here thinking about it, and knowing that I have the chance every single day of my life to tell someone how much they mean to me. I have done that for years - told the people who mean the most to me that I love them...and I say it to them often, and they know who they are, because when I see them, I tell them. I tell them that I love them, and I mean it, I really, really mean it.

For every time that we fought and said ugly words to one another, know that each time I thought of you afterwards, it was never about the fight that just happened but about the time that we fought when we were kids and then I laughed and suddenly missed you.

For every tear that we shared when one of our hearts got broken, know that when you cried, I cried with you, maybe not where you could see it, but I hurt for you, and I grieved for you, but I always knew you would be okay because that is the way that we were raised.

For every laughter filled room of kids we call our own, and seeing them play together just like we did, in them I see shades of us, and I am taken right back to Booth Park, to Ala Moana Park, to The Bus, The Waikiki Zoo, Makapu'u Beach, Erleene's truck, and finding an EPT test in my mom's carry-on.

I am sure that you can all see all these things in your minds now, right now, and I know that just as I am recalling these good times and these good memories, I am glad to say that I know you, that I have always Loved you, and that forever we will be bound, not by the memories of who we were or where we are going or doing with our lives, but because we are the truest Ohana there is, and I am happy tho know that this is who we will always be. I miss you all, and when I see you I see the real You, the One Who has always honored and Loved the Real Me...all of you...

Thank you all for always being right there for me, right at the right time, and never forgetting to let me know that I am Loved !!

Aloha...

...Mapuana...

Gratitude (Or "What Christmas is really all about")

Gratitude is hard when you think you have nothing to be grateful for

When it seems that you have had everything that matters to you stripped from your life, and when you believe that there is nothing left for yourself, Be Grateful.

Be Grateful, even for everything that someone else has put you through


As difficult as it may be for some of us to be grateful to the creeps who made us fear everything and everyone, namely them, it is good practice for healing to be able to forgive and to build an attitude of gratitude toward our oppressors, and it is because without them we know not the things that we are and have always been capable of. When I say be grateful, I really mean it, and I say it because it brings to you a feeling of peace, a feeling that you can get through everything and anything that comes your way.

Be grateful for the things that have been presented as challenges in your life, because without the challenges, we cannot ever know just how deep the well of strength is within us, how strong the person who we really are and who we really have been all along really is. Without oppressors in our lives we do not know what needs to be seen to and repaired, and we can never begin to heal without it. We can never begin to understand who we really are without something or someone there to tell us what they think we are, and what they think we are is so far removed from the reality of who we really are that once it is that we have been goaded, or hounded, or belittled, or even beaten, into knowing who we are, we never know and we can never return to it unless we are paying attention.

This is not my telling you that I am fine with the abuses that many have suffered, but it is to say that whatever happens to us is meant as a lesson, if not in trusting people we shouldn't, then in trusting ourselves to know that we can rise above everything that we have been witness to, everything that we have been told we are but are not, everything that we see as mean and horrible and things that cripple the soul. Without the tears we cannot know the depth or the joy that laughter brings and can never really experience it because there is nothing to measure it against. Without the pain we can never know what feels right, and without the daggers sent straight to the middle of the soul of our hearts we can never find out that every heart, no matter how broken, has the propensity to heal.

Without the ugly things that visit our lives we cannot know the depth and the worth of the beauty which resides within us all.

Take the good, the bad, and the ugly, and you come up with something beautiful


If there is one that I am very familiar with it is the depth of the soul of a person who lives their lives outwardly, lives their lives as though the only thing that counts, that has ever counted, was what they could accomplish in the material world, but there is nothing in the material world that has roots in the material and no matter what anyone thinks, it never will and it is because all of those material goodies came from a thought - a good thought, or perhaps even a very bad one, but none the less, the soul is where everything starts, because the soul is where our most precious treasures really are.

No matter what ugliness is part of your life right now, as Polly Anna as it might seem, you can turn it into something beautiful, something that somewhere along the Path that you are on right now will culminate into being something gorgeous and real and permanent and yours - you just have to believe that it is, and most of all, you must first have gratitude for it, even as it is still in your mind and in manifest and lives only as an intention.

And speaking of intention, never forget that it is the intention of a thought, of a desire that matters most, and not the thing itself. It is often said and widely believed that it is not the reward as much as the journey to the reward that we all pine for, and in the case of being grateful it is the one thing that matters the most. The journey to wholeness is not one for the weak of heart, the meek of soul, but it is the journey that all abuse survivors eventually must take, for without the drive to want to further your life, and without the desire to see things in a different light, there is nothing else that will lift a person out of the pit of hell called their life at present moment than knowing that one truth. No journey has ever been taken without also taking the very first step. In this case, the first step is simply believing, which, in an abuse survivor's world, is something that must be relearned as it, too, is stripped of us.

Yet, once we have it back ( I refer to it as my "Girl Mojo"), there is nothing and no one who can stop us. Nothing. Not one person. It is this way because we have used the Spiritual muscles built up by hurtful words and action taken against us, and it is this that carries us through to our highest learning. It is the experience as an abused person that prompts us to become survivors, and once we are survivors, we then become fighters, and in our case, the fighter never does not reign victorious. We go from being just a survivor to being a reigning and victorious Soul with a heart and mind to match, and by my count, that is a lot to be grateful for. We find that we can handle almost anything that comes our way, and if we cannot handle it at that very moment, we know that our moment will come. It is not a matter of if, anymore, not in the case of the survivor of domestic abuse and violence, but rather and only, when.

It is Beautiful to be Grateful...

A person living in the Light of Love and with Gratitude in their heart is a person who has begun the Journey to healing. If we can manage to rise above the anger, above the shame and above the remnants of what we thought our lives should have been, we can manage to see to it that everything in our lives brought us to this point, to this place where we can stand atop the proverbial mountain, look out onto the world that is our lives, and see that we have much to be grateful for, see that we are not so without that we cannot manage to also see to it that we are a better beacon of Light than we are a purveyor of the darkness. Abuse survivors live their lives shrouded in darkness that is not their own but becomes theirs once it is that someone whose darkness is not bigger, but whose darkness is backed by all the power that they have within them.

People who have survived such things have not used every bit of what they were granted at birth, and in so knowing this cannot use it if they do not realize that they have it. We all have it, and once we can take hold of and harness it, there is nothing that we cannot do - not one damned thing, and this is the most beautiful and most important thing about Gratitude.

Gratitude is a Light unto its own. It sheds light on the things that are of importance to us, and breaks us free of the belief that we want more than we deserve, and we do not realize that wanting is different than desiring. Want leaves us feeling empty, but desire fills us with hope and banishes the fear which has permeated the Light within us for too long. When we can be filled with Gratitude our lives begin to change.

So, be in the Light that is Gratitude - YOUR Light that is Gratitude, and find within the one Christmas gift that has been yours all along...

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


(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. send an email by clicking this link . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com) 

Learning to Trust again, to Love again takes a lot of Soul Work

"It's like the wind...I can't see it, but I can feel it..." (Victoria Kristine White)

It is a rare occasion when I will quote another person's words, but it was this young woman named Victoria,a woman with whom I am only familiar in a Facebook kind of way. Yet, her post this evening sent my being stuck for words a bit of a kick in the ass, and I know what it is that I wanted to tell you all, and yes, it relates to all that we have, as survivors, been through.

Regaining our sense of trust in others begins with our own ability in our sense of Trust, not only in ourselves, but also with the Soul, with the Spirit which guides us and with the idea that everything in the world, other than what you see materially, begins with a thought, and this does include those things which can be counted as 'intangible.' It would be cliche' for me to write something about Christmas, but in trying to keep with the whole  holiday spirit, I guess this would be an attempt at my reminding people that we cannot know how to give anything to anyone until we can first give ourselves a chance to grow. If we do not allow ourselves to grow, we will not be able to heal, and if we cannot heal, we cannot trust, and if we cannot trust, we can never really truly know how to Love again, no, not even ourselves. While this is a very ugly thought, it is the truth of the matter.

It took a lot for me to trust, as well it should have, because trust is the thing that is the hardest for people to rebuild within themselves. Mistrust is where doubt is created, and the first person we doubt is never someone else, but only ourselves, and we project it out onto other people, this feeling that we cannot let go of, at least not right away. It is too hard to let go sometimes, because we know that the risk is too great. Risk is what got us into the messes that we found ourselves in and it will be the trust that we will rebuild within that will help us to climb out of the despair that has enclosed us in a shell that might look like us, might act like us, might technically be us, but it is so not who we really are.

First, you must remember

The first thing that you must remember is that you learned how to mistrust people and that just as you learned how to do that, like much else, you will have to relearn trust. It is a sad truth that abuse survivors end up going through more than we bargained for when all is said and done, but the beautiful part in all of this is that you get to pick how you want to come back, and you get to practice talking to people, practice not talking about you so much that you give away more than you even have for yourself. It took me these last three  years to come back to me, to know and to reinvent me, and it has been a bitch of a time doing so, but it has also been a great time that offered me the opportunity to grow into this outrageous, fiery, passionate person who is full of Spirit and is deeper than the very recesses of the Soul within. This is who I am. This is who I have always been, and I Love Me, just as you should also be so inclined to Love You.

"...don't you even worry pretty darlin', 'cause you'll find Love again, I Know..." (Tesla, "Love Song")
The thing that I am asked all the time by other survivors of domestic violence is if I am scared to Love another person, and to that question I simply explain that I never lost Love for people and that Love is the thing that will carry you through everything and anything and will always be the thing that you will find will heal you faster and better than everything else.

When a person is abused by another person who has promised to Love them and that person chooses to fracture the trust that an abuse survivor has built up, it is hard to imagine that there is any Love there at all, but there is, and the Love that remains is the Love which has always been within ourselves. If we continue to believe that the Love we deserve is outside of us, we will always be chasing it, and we all know what happens when we chase something or someone - they run. They run like fire burns old newspaper - fast. The reason that we chase is because there within us is the person we were the last time we thought we had to go out into the world to find what already lived within us. We were made from Love, which means that we do not have to chase it because it exists within us and never will die.

Love does not die, even the shattered remnants of what it was that we were told and shown was Love from someone who themselves could not fathom Love because to them Love equals ownership. Love and trust are not borne out of a need for someone else to control who we are - yes, I said need. We seek the approval from someone outside ourselves to validate us, and all we get is the version of ourselves that someone else wanted or wants and is never really the person who we know we are, and the person who we know we are is the best person we can hope to even think to be because it is ourselves in our truest essence. There is nothing quite more beautiful than a person - a woman - who knows who she is and who is confident in herself, who Loves all of herself, even her quirks and the little things makes us who we each are.

It is not only the Romantic sort of Love that I am telling you about


Love is the highest form of respect that anyone can show another person. It was a long time before I could even think to tell anyone that I Loved them, but these days, after a whole lot of work on myself, it is a daily thing for me to tell someone that they are cared for, that even if it seems that they are unlovable, that I Love them, and when I say it, I mean it.

Yet, being able to tell another person you Love them takes a lot of trust. You must trust that you can give that piece of your Self away and you must trust your Self not to get hurt when they do not say it back - not everyone is comfortable or feels safe saying that they Love someone, anyone, and even if they don't say it, you know it because like Ms. White posted, Love is very much like the wind- you cannot see it, but you can surely feel it, and that is what matters the very most. It is important that we realize this about us, that we are able to Love, and that we are able to Love from the moment that we are brought into this life. Because someone else takes away the Love that we have for them, chips it away by being horrible to us, it does not mean that the Love within us dies. Love does not die. It is like Light - you can have all the darkness in the world and it can engulf you, but once the tiniest sliver of Light is shone, there is no more darkness. This is what Love does.

Illumination

Love illuminates our Selves, and with that illumination we are able to Light the world with the flame within which is our true selves. Once we have illuminated who we are and once it is that we have seen, through that illumination, our own flaws and imperfections is when we can know within that we have reached a point where we never thought we would ever be again. While there will still be much work to do, and while it will be that no one but us can reclaim that piece, it is a freedom like no other to no longer fear that we are not able to Love or to be Loved.

Being someone else's victim hurts in many ways, but being able to come back to who we are is like water for a thirsty person. Love drenches us in its healing nature and brings to the surface the ugliness that we have allowed to rule us and it sets the standard for who we want to be and who we want to grow into. Being abused makes us shrink into ourselves, makes us believe that this is all we will ever be - defeated, bruised, Spiritually maimed and scarred in the soul. Yet knowing that scars mean that healing has taken place is the salve that brings us back to Life, back to who we are, and makes us know that everything is going to be alright.

If we can believe that we can trust ourselves to do anything, then we should also believe that we will be able to Love again, in every way imaginable, and that what we asked for in the past has come and gone and now we can Love the person we have grown to become. We can take the ugliness, the hurt, the anger and the pain and turn it into the beautiful thing that we have become. We can turn someone else's trash and the rubble of what was and what became of us in to a beautiful piece of art, original and raw and primal and screaming from the inside, out.

We can choose to be who we are and we can choose to Love who we have become, and we can do all this all on our own. Yes, it will take time, and yes, you will cry like a woman in mourning, and yes, you will feel cleansed and brand new. One day you will wake up and just know....

One day, you will just know...it is like the wind...you know it is there, and you know it because you can see the evidence in the birds which fight it in flight, and even though you cannot see the wind, you can feel it.

So, too, is the nature of Love. You know it is there. You cannot see it.

You can feel it.

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

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. send an email by clicking this link . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)

Time Heals

Setting our sights only on the hurt we have suffered impedes our healing

Pisces people are fabulous martyrs. I know. I am one. On the other side of that martyrdom is someone who is strong and vibrant and full of both Spirit and Life and someone who is literally aching to experience the healing needed to survive all the things that they have been through, and I promise you that what they have been through is a whole lot.

If we are left only to ponder the reasons that anyone would want to hurt us we end up trying to find the corner in a circular room. There is no reason good enough to hurt anyone intentionally. No matter what kind of abuse it is - regardless if it is physical or emotional -  there is not a good enough reason to put hands on another person. The abuse begins subtly, can be a passing glance of disapproval or distaste, can be a remark made in regards to what a victim looks like (I always heard that I was a whore because I wore make up, did my hair, liked having my nails done, got waxed...you know...being a girl...I enjoyed it then as much as I do now), can be about their level of intellect, can be anything at all so long as it pertains to what must be done, according to the attacker, by the victim to make them more acceptable and lovable by the person who tries to change you.

There is no level that will be acceptable and there never will be. Once you stop doing all the things that you are told bothers your attacker, and once it is that you have changed everything outwardly they begin the cycle again and this time the damage is not something that can be see (yet) but can be felt and will be known by those who have known you longer than your attacker has. They begin to chip away at the self-existence that is built up, and they start an all out war on who you are, and this is where the real damage begins because the only and the very next thing that happens are the physical beatings. It all happens over time. First you are coerced into not being lovely to look at, then you are manipulated into a pattern of thinking that causes you to react to their words as though they were the words of God himself. Once you are changed both inside and outside, there is nothing left other than the physical beatings which are always the victims fault, at least and according to the person doling out the physical terror on their victim.

I tend to think of my  husband's fate as a Karmic debt being forcibly repaid by him through his losing his life at his very own hands. Only a moron would basically turn their back on their family, decide early on that since they feel that the system owes them something for all the time they put into it that they are now entitled to whatever it is that they feel they are owed, would choose, after having had a major heart attack and then having had open heart surgery, to continue to smoke, to eat like a pig, to be angry all the time, to live their lives with the bitterness that is them to be in charge of their lives.. This is the mantra of the abuser, that they are owed, that they live their lives at a deficit and that everyone within their own circle of social contact somehow is indebted to them for something. In my case it is because he simply did his job and, by his own demanding it, I stayed home with the children and raised them, doing what I had always done - I wrote - books, ghostwriting, marketing and ad materials, basically anything that I was tasked with and contracted for - and I danced, performed, choreographed, taught (and now use as a healing tool with other women with "beauty" issues that cannot be fixed with the help of make up or cosmetic surgeon) hula, and yes, he tried like hell to make me see hula as yet one more island girl's way of ensnaring another white man into her den of iniquity.

But he did not succeed at it. I would not let him. I still will not let him. He cannot take this from me again.
And now he is not long for this world , just as he said he would not be, and just as I have always known and believed.

Time Heals

Time heals. As time passes and memories fade we find that we are no longer the people we were so many years ago when there were blackened eyes and hairline fractures, when there were excuses made for behavior not befitting of a pig as it wallows in its own filth, when there were days filled with terror and nights filled with tears. Gone are the days where I would spend the entirety of a day trying to find a way to make this person see me the way that I knew I was - fine and capable of being my own person, no matter what he thought.

Here we are, the memories of a grimace before the blow, of 17 years long gone, and the voice which was silenced by a choice not made by me but forced upon me through being stalked, being belittled, being all the things in his eyes that I knew I was not. He'd never bothered one time to see me as I really am, and he still thinks that I am a little too weird for "acceptable" society, but if I bothered to let his words and his idiocy be what still ruled me, I might still be that timid little twit who was willing to please him to make him happy which eventually was a requirement needed to please him to keep myself safe. These days, it is the altruist in me, the Piscean nature, that damned Certificate of Ordination and the degrees in health sciences alongside the certificates in wellness that cause me to allow him his last days to be spent with his children. I am hurt, but I am not horrible. I am no longer as angry as I was,but it is all still there, the memories, as though I can watch them on my television screen. It is all like a long and drawn out miniseries that took too long to come to an end.

I have grown since that time and know well now that I have always been safe, always been nurtured by the Light of Love and the Infinite Universe, have always known that God has always had me. He must. If He didn't I might not be here. I might be a statistic that is a far grimmer shade of gray. I might be in traction permanently. I might be an addict. I might be ...anything that I am not truly.

But I am not. I am not any of those things that this man whose last name I share, with whom I share three marvelously Spiritual children, with whom I have shared history, an address, a car....with now whom I share only history, but not much else. I find now that after all these years, it was never me who was damaged and I was not damaged until after he damaged me.

Now I am scarred, but scarred means that to some degree, I am also healed, because the scar is the evidence that the wound that once was there has healed.

Scarred....scarred is good..

I Love You All!

Rox...

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. send an email by clicking this link . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)

Healing your Spirit: How I raised my Self from being Spiritually dead

Just as it took time to become a statistic, it will also take time for you to heal

Those who live their lives in a constant state of fear know very well that the beginning of the end of their safety and more, their sanity, is the moment that something seems amiss in their closest relationships. In many cases, the closest relationships are not our marriages, as I found out quite on my own and with my own marriage. It took me twenty years to accept that my closest relationships were those built because of my crappy marriage.

No matter what they tell you, you totally need the support of your family and friends

When my story started twenty years ago my husband blocked me from seeing my friends, at first, and then eventually he stopped me from seeing my family. I am Hawaiian. Hawaiians and family are synonymous with each other. You cannot be one and not also be part of the other. It just does not happen that way. The first thing to be taken from you is your support group. When I met my old man it never occurred to me that he was systematically excluding people who I loved from my life for a selfish purpose, and that selfish purpose was because he felt, as most abusers do feel and believe, that he was all that I would need to make it in life. Many of them assume that if they take care of us that we have no needs for anyone else in our lives. This was what I was told, and at the time I was a very young woman - barely 21 - and I, like any young and impressionable young woman has the propensity to - believed him.

I believed that when I married him, because he said so, that I would not really need the majority of my friends anymore, and this was wrong, at least partially wrong, because sometimes we do not need certain friends in our lives. However, it is not the truth of all of our friends. Our friends are normally in our lives prior to the creep we let in to tell us how to live and who we are allowed to hang out with. 

It was not until I moved to the high desert that I met with the group of friends I now also consider my family. None of them knew what was happening until I told them what was going on. I told them that this sort of thing was happening for years, that I didn't tell anyone what was going on because I was afraid to let people know that this is what John has been doing to me for as long as we had been a couple. I told them that all my friends from the place where I grew up - friends whom I had for years and some who are still part of my life - no longer wanted to be around me as long as he was around. This was something that just dug into my soul and crushed my spirit. I so loved being with my social group, with my pals, and when John came into my life he shuttered them out. He did the same thing with my family.

Friends are one thing, but family?

My mother, as "churchy" as she can be, is a beautiful soul. There is nothing that this woman could do that would deter me from that truth. John has always adored her. However, when it comes to my father, John hates him. He also hates any male cousins that I have, cannot stand any of my female cousins unless they are easy on the eyes, and do not get me started on the spouses and significant others of any of my female cousins, because according to him they all want to do me, all of them. 

I mentioned that Hawaiian is synonymous with the word "family" and because of this whenever it was that there was a family gathering, the longer that I was married to him, the less I saw of my cousins, and this really tore me apart. It is said that our cousins are our first friends, and in my case this was the very epitome of my childhood. I spent a whole lot of time with my cousins, namely the ones on my dad's side of the family, which is a group that John despises for whatever reason it is that he has. I was used to them being with me, and when he decided that he did not like them because they did not rank high enough on his level of what he felt was good enough for him and not me was the moment that I was no longer allowed to see them as much as I had in the past, and eventually, I never saw them at all.

They were hurt and angry with me, but there was no way that I could tell them about what was going on without also giving caution to the wind and hoping upon hope that he would not figure out that I had spoken to them at all, ever. He hated them for his own reasons, and none of them were valid. Most abusers will tell you that the people who you love are stupid, are not worth his time and that you have to choose between your friends and your man. I tried choosing my freedom, but somehow he was always able to come back into my life, and it was through his systematically crushing my spirit so that he could eventually control me and my life.

Without your support system healing the crushed spirit is almost impossible

A truth that I was exposed to was something that I never saw coming. This man made it impossible for me to have a social group to return to. I was bullied constantly about them, told that I was just as stupid as they were but that my saving grace was that I was beautiful and that apparently "saved" me. He said a lot of terrible things about them all, and I eventually agreed with him and it was for no other reason than that I could no longer bear the pain of being told that I was just as stupid as they were and that if I wanted to be with them I could go with them.

The bitch of it all was that I bought into it. I thought that if I just agreed with him about his thoughts about me and the people who I still loved that it would bring us closer, but it didn't. What it did do was reinforce for him the assumptions that he'd made about me, about anyone who knew me before he did. I still think about it all and am sad at the idea that I allowed him to do this and to have that much control of me. He did what he did because without anyone else in my life my attention would be all his, and just like anything else that happens to be there constantly in your face it becomes something that you want nothing to do with. I wanted nothing to do with him anymore, but he was always right there, in my face, telling me that I loved him and that no one else would love me like he did. What that really meant was that, according to him, I needed no one else because all I needed was him. I needed no girlfriends to talk to (because they were all "worthless cunt whores"). I needed no guy friends (because all they wanted to do was have sex with me). I needed no contact with my family (because he and I were married and now he was all the family I needed). To him he was more than enough, but that is not the truth.

Having too much of one thing is never a good thing. Eventually you get tired of that one thing. This is something that does not hold credence for those with abusive tendencies because to them anyone else in your life is there to make them no longer be in your life. And they are right - if anyone who loves me knew what he was doing when he started doing it he would not have been around for the beatings to start, which, in most instances they normally do. Abusers want to keep you to themselves so that they can force you to be someone you are not. I never thought of myself as being anyone's trophy, as being property, but in the eyes of some men once you take on their last name they somehow own you. This is what he'd told me.

It was at that moment that I could feel the effects of my soul being stolen, of my spirit being crushed by the weight of his assumptions and abuse. 

It was at that moment that I had lost my zeal for life. I felt as though I no longer had a soul.

How I came back from the dead, so to speak

It took losing everything we materially owned and his having had a massive two sided heart attack for me to have been forced into looking at me with my eyes wide open. I thought about everything that led to the point of his heart attack and thought to myself that he deserved this happening to him because of all the things he'd done to break my heart, to crush my soul and to try to change me. There was nothing that I could have done to make him stop being who he was, and who I had become was someone I knew I was not happy with being. I knew at that time that things occurred as they had for a myriad of reasons, but because I am highly spiritual, I also knew that it was my turn to return to who I am. These losses and his ailment were my ticket back to being me. And yes, he completely hates that I no longer am willing to take his shit. He hates that I am strong. He hates that one of my very best friends is a successful business man who is not hard to gawk at. He hates that my best friend is someone who can totally relate to my life. He hates that I am healing nicely, thank you very much.

It took a heart attack for me to realize that all those years that he 'd picked on me. beat on me, threatened me, called me names, and the like, were meant for me to finally, one day, return to who I really am. Who I really am is not someone my husband much cares for because who I really am is not this shut-her-mouth-or-get-her-ass-beat woman and in fact I am the very opposite of what he wanted me to be. I found out that through spiritual practice, through my own choice to return to My Self that I never went anywhere and that I was simply hiding and waiting to Be again. All the things that I loved doing and all the people who I loved being with suddenly showed themselves as my having a second chance at loving and doing all over again. Never again would I allow my fear of this person be what ruled me, and I am not sure if it was because I knew that his heart attack was it - it was the beginning of the end for him because he is a slave to his habits.

I enjoyed dancing and teaching dance, and I enjoyed writing my books. But I enjoyed taking the time to see my friends, and I enjoyed hanging out with my cousins, and most of all, I began to enjoy being me again - loud, boisterous, outrageous, and yes, beautiful Me. It was like the rebirth of Ms. Roxanne...in fact, I know it was. I know that his heart attack was from Spirit, was a gift from the angels, as sick as that sounds. I'd always vowed to him that I would be the Reaper in that I would walk him to his grave, and that is exactly what I am doing now.

A long look...

I took a long look at myself in the mirror one day, about a week after his heart attack while he was not yet released from the hospital, and looked deep into my own eyes in the mirror and started crying like a child. Sometimes we need to cry like a lost child, or like we are in mourning, in order for us to reboot and start where we left off many months or years ago. We have to come back to the heartache, to the thing that made us the way we ended up, and we have to allow the tears to flow because the tears tell us that we have come so far and in so short a time that we had no idea that the pain for another is the healing for ourselves, and not in the ah-HA!You-Deserve-this-you-fuck kind of way. The pain for the other is that we are still very much alive in our spirit, that our spirit never died but went to sleep and the Love within us was covered up so that no one could get to it or hurt it.

The way that we start the journey back to ourselves is simply to take a good look in the mirror and see there what is missing, and we find out that not only is our support system gone by his hand, but he was trying to take us away from our selves as well. This is the epiphany that survivors of domestic abuse and violence in the home all end up knowing - that he was trying to kill my soul so that he could own me. He was able to cripple my soul but kill it he could not because he does not have that kind of power. No one has that kind of power.

You return to your self and you heal your soul through knowing that they were not ever dead, that no one can kill the soul because the soul is eternal. He killed the ego in you so that his could be fed. I loathed being paraded around like a show pony, later to be treated like a whore and then the next day put through it again until there was nothing but me and my big bottle of Patron Silver. This is how my three kids were conceived, and this was how I made it through being the show pony trophy wife living in the private country club community, and this is the way that I was able to rationalize and make "ok" the things that he'd said and done to me over the years. 

Yet the booze was not the thing that healed me. I knew then what I know now, and that is that I am not an alcoholic, that I am not weak, that I do not defer to acts of self hatred and self mutilation. I still enjoy the occasional evening filled with knocking back shots and beers, but these days it is because I want to party with my pal Wendy or because my best friend just so happens to be tending bar the night that I am visiting the place where I am returning to the moment that I am widowed...

We return to who we are and become healed through self truths and NOT through our forcing ourselves to believe the things that our abusers tell us are the truth. While the things that we are told by them may in fact be their truth, even as sordid and sick as it all may seem, it is never our own truth. We are the ones who Know for sure what our own truth is.

My own truth is that I am beautiful, not only on the outside but more so, on the inside, and that the people who I draw to my life are as beautiful. We only draw to us what we are, which is really great. It also explains the reason why he is so repelled by me and me by him...

Take the time to look at you in the mirror and know the truths that are held by that stranger who is staring back at you. I promise you that she is the one with all the answers...

I Love You All !!

Rox...

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. please contact her by clicking here . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)

Emotional Abuse : When and Where it all starts

Cultural and Familial behaviors contribute much to the lives of those victimized, and none of it good!

I am finding that for a very long time I was and have been the target of much emotional abuse which sometimes led those whose care I was left in using brutal means to 'correct' my less than desired behaviors. This is not something that is new and this is not something that is not generationally accepted behavior.

This is, however, something that needs to be stopped...like, NOW.

Emotional Abuse begins in childhood

It is no secret that I Am a woman of Polynesian decent, specifically Hawaiian decent. All my life I was taught that it was normal behavior for the adults in the lives of some (not all) Hawaiian children to threaten physically painful means for correcting behavior that was and is considered as being less than acceptable. For me to have heard that if I got out of line that I would be disciplined with a belt or a wooden spoon was normal, was something that just was ok and typical, and unfortunately, was somehow acceptable. Not only was I brutalized by one person in particular (a caretaker...we will just leave her name out of this for purposes of not stirring up anymore animosity within the familial circle), but that it was ok that this person threatened me, allowed me to cry in fear for my father, and more, thought it was ok because it would toughen me up and make my skin thicker is somehow the way that a lot of children in my culture are raised - with fear instead of understanding. I could be wrong, but in talking with other hawaiians about this, I find that I am closer to the truth than not. It is a sickness, really.

I am sorry, but how the hell is it that a child between the ages of two years old until ..well...UNTIL whatever age...supposed to know the difference between being abused and being disciplined if the adults in her life are making it ok to pick on her, to hit her with a belt or a wooden spoon, to allow their own kids to mess with her endlessly and to call the wrongly named abuse "discipline"?

The easiest answer is SHE ISN'T, and that is a huge reason, at least in my own story, why, for many years, I have just assumed that the man I married would stop hurting me. He stopped the physical abuse, but there is still the issue of the emotional abuse, and I am living proof that emotional abuse is not something to be ignored, is very real, is very damaging and takes a blot of patience and time for one's own Self for the survivor of it to recoup their losses, including and especially their very own self-identity. For many years during this 'marriage' to this ...guy...I thought and believed that the things he'd said to me were really meant as being constructive criticisms, but they were not. As time went on I found myself doubting me, doubting his feelings, and doubting, period. The words were not constructive, but they were criticisms - harsh criticisms. They were hurtful and they made me cry. His words broke my heart and shattered my Spirit for years, and even in this, the last days of his life, he manages to be an ass about a lot of things, and I know now that the reason anyone is the way that I turned out and the reason that anyone finds themselves in such a situation for as long as I have been is because to those people, being emotionally abused is (yikes) normal. Being emotionally abused, I find, has been going on throughout my entire life and likely has been going on for generations before I was born. 

Normal

One definition for this word is "of sound mind and body." There is NOTHING normal about being awful to little kids just because you can be and just because you think you have some sort of strange omnipotent power over them because making a child cry out of fear is like shooting dead fish in a child's sand bucket- not that hard to do. Children, it is said and believed, are our most precious resource. Children remind us of our own vulnerable nature and children are storehouses of creativity and imagination. It breaks my heart when I think about how many children are being hurt emotionally by family members, not just sexually, and it is all because in some cultures it is normal for this sort of thing to go on without any boundaires and allowed to continue unchecked. I am all for disciplining children, and really, I have no problem with giving a spanking to a child if and when the need for it arises, but there is a fine line between abuse and discipline.

My mother disciplined me.

My caretaker abused me.

This is the distinction between the two - one was done out of a need for me to stop being an unruly and less-than-disciplined child, and the other was out of a need to control me, no matter the physical and emotional cost to me. And the caretaker was not the only one who emotionally tormented me. Both grandfathers did, three of my mother's brothers did, some of my cousins did.

Because it was normal and accepted in my family to just keep a stiff upper lip and not let a tear fall (because we would be threatened with more 'punishment'), I followed suit with the rest of the kids because I was so damned scared.

I was scared that they would not love me, and I was scared that I would be abandoned by them, and I was scared, period. What is really bad is that I carried that fear with me into adulthood and ended up marrying a man who would be able to hone in on that fear and use it against me for his own need and gain. He compounded the problem. I always felt and sometimes still feel like I am not good enough and it is totally because to this day he still tells me these things. He still tells me that I am a useless, no talent wash out who no man will ever have because I am also a whore. I still am told that I am worthless and pathetic. I still carry that fear of not being Loved or accepted, but these days it is not he who I care will Love or accept me, but it is everyone else who this pounding fear exists for. I used to fear that I would be left in the dust, so to speak, by my friends. I used to fear that the men in my life would also be abusive to me because apparently if it were alright that my spouse did it then it should be ok that others do it, too. 

Hawaiians are known for our brute strength and our size. I am not your typical Hawaiian woman in that I am not "thick." I am tall, thin and athletically built. The person who was my caretaker as a child was and still is a thickly built woman. I recall being terribly afraid of her, to the point that I would voluntarily hide in a hallway closet and pretend to be playing a game of hide and seek with her kids and my imaginary friend, Gabby. Sometimes I would be in there until my father came to take me home, which would be hours and that was ok by me. I was safe in the company of the sheets, towels, blankets and "Gabby'".  I grew up very needy for the Love and affection of others, and I always felt like I was somehow not good enough for that Love which made me think that I had to beg for Love, beg for acceptance, beg for the things that normal people just get to have. I was different. I was strange. I saw things out of the corner of my eyes that no one else did and instead of telling me that I had a wild imagination, they instead told me that I was a liar, that I was trying to get more attention that I did not deserve.

Even now there are people with whom I share DNA and a set of grandparents who probably still think the thing that they told me I was when I was younger - an attention whore and a liar because I am too sensitive. I am not too sensitive. I am also no longer letting them tell me what is normal. I know what is normal. This way of being is not normal. Scaring the hell out of little kids - not normal. Disgusting, but oh SO not normal.

They were terribly wrong, not only about me, but about how I was treated, how my cousins, at least some of them, were treated, about so many things that they just made out to be right and acceptable because that is the way that they themselves were raised. If I had known differently, had known that I did not have to go through what it was that I went through, I would not be sitting here today championing survivors of abuse everywhere.

My Mission in life, I am finding, was carved out of the fear that I experienced as a little girl and that fear carried on throughout my lifetime. It is of little wonder that I ended up this way, ended up with who I married, and I find that the things that I went through were also done to my very own mother by the very same people who'd done it to me. If these things were not done to her then they would not have tried to do to me what was done, I would not have gone through it because it would not have been normal to her. 

Of course, my dad's dad was as abusive toward us, but it was never normal for my dad, no matter how long he'd lived in Hawaii - it was not ok for my grandfather to pick on me, on us, ever, and Dad made it known to him. When I was older my baby sister called me when the old guy was visiting to tell me that the old creep was saying some awful stuff to her. I understand now that the reason I was there with a swiftness was because I did not want Napua to have to endure the same level of abuse I had by that man.

We do not realize the level nor the severity of abuse that we endured as children by the adults in our lives when we are children because we are told that what we are experiencing is normal and acceptable behavior. Anymore now I know the difference between discipline and abuse, between what is OK and what is so, so not. I think back to the things that I have gone through with and for people whom I no longer have contact or a desire to be in contact with anymore, and I know that the reason that I put up with John's nonsense all this time is because I have been abused emotionally for the bulk of my almost 42 years and that throughout my life I have been emotionally abused, making his cruelty normal but totally not acceptable. 

We cannot allow this to happen, the acceptance of emotional brutality within the confines of the family just because it is and has been generationally accepted as normal. We cannot make it anywhere being ok for adults to talk to children as though what they tell them will not be carried on with said children throughout the bulk of their little lives. The world cannot afford to continue to turn out children who end up being afraid of everything and mistrusting of everyone in their lives, because in doing so we allow the monsters in the closets of our minds to wreak havoc and run amok in the world through the people who were once emotionally battered children. I come from a culture which is simultaneously rich with beauty and love as well as the harshness of abuse and addiction,a culture which keeps silent the thing that is accepted as being discipline when in reality, when left unchecked, amounts to the emotional brutalization of generations of children who grow up and for whom said abuse is normal and accepted that way.

No more, I say!

No more threatening children with the boogeyman visiting them in their dreams at night if they do not listen to their caretakers, because when that happens it is automatically the caretaker who becomes the boogeyman, the monster who refuses to stay in the closet. We cannot allow this to go on, and it is not just because it is not ok to scare kids into doing what we want them to, but more because if we allow it to go on unchecked we will willingly be raising another generation of victims of domestic abuse and violence.

And we all know what happens to those victims who are not given the opportunity to see things as they really are and truly should be...

Those victims end up, many times more than not, victimizing people, too. I know this, because the piece of garbage my spouse used to call "Dad" is one such...rather, was, thankfully, one such victimizer...thankfully he is gone, just as his namesake is on his way to being, too.

I Love You All !

Rox

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. please contact her by clicking here . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com

Words Hurt

Words don't leave a mark you can see

I am a writer. Words are how I make my living. Words mean everything to me, even as they are intangible. Words, I know, are very powerful. Words can also hurt us like no fist to the eye can.

The intangible bruise

I have been called many ugly, hurtful things, things that have made me cry like a baby for hours and things that have enraged me to an impossible height. No one thinks about the damage caused by the things that we say to each other, and when it comes to the point where we hear ourselves defending who we are against someone who says that they love us, I become the jungle cat on the keyboard like nobody's business.

Some harsh words for those who use their words to hurt those they pretend to Love...

There is nothing like having to defend one's self against someone whose vocabulary only includes words that have no more than 5 letters at the most.  You people sicken me. You behave as the things you say are somehow ok because they do not leave a mark. They do leave a mark, and the mark is in the form of the memory of your angry face, you clenched jaw, the pulsating artery that bulges when you get in our faces, screaming obscenities at us as though your being loud and obnoxious somehow makes your point clear to us when instead what you are doing is simply and only making a fool of yourselves. This is for all those people who have made someone else hurt because of you, and yes, this IS truly how I feel about anyone who is willing to be anything less than kind to someone else, namely your betrothed and every female, young or old, who has been handled less than kindly by the man in their life.  And of course, it is for that one person who still feels that he is better than I am...

You want to believe the things that you are saying. You want to think that she really is a whore, or perhaps that she is having sapphic adventures with her best girlfriends, or that she really is screwing herand your  best guy friends, or that she actually is the cousinfucker that you think she is, but she is not. You are a disgusting person. It bothers me that you have the capacity to think thoughts like the ones that cause you to say that you do not believe her when she tells you that she has been faithful, that she would love nothing more than to hang out with you but can't because you act like a moron when she is around and you act like you are better than she is when in reality you are not. In fact, you are so not better than she is but you sure do think that she is better than you are - in fact, you believe it, because if you didn't you would not go to the lengths you have and the lengths you do to make the person you say you Love feel like shit.

And I know a thing or two about feeling like shit. I know what it is like to defend myself against accusations of infidelity, and I know what it is like to have to try to make a reason for whatever it was that I did or did not do to have to deal with your bullshit. It is not ok for you to call anyone the names that you do. It is not ok to call a woman a whore when she is not. It is not ok to accuse someone of lying when they are not. It is not ok to be an asshole just because you feel badly about you and always have. That you would bother to make it a big deal is one thing, but that you would do so with the expectation that you would be taken seriously is quite another. There was a time when what you said would be the thing that dictated her next move...every move...but you forget one thing, buddy - even this shit is temporary. 

You demand respect but refuse to give it. You accuse without having facts and it is you who lives on just the facts, man. You tell her that everything that she says is an excuse but when it is your turn they are not excuses, they are reasons. And your reasons for brutalizing her verbally is because of your lack of brain capacity. You cannot hold on to a thought that is good about her - you think you own her, and you do not own anyone, not even your self. You want the world to fear you and that is because you are afraid of everything. You are probably even scared of your damned self. 

You expect that people will bow to your own perceived greatness, and then you refuse to see the greatness in others while trashing the one you say you love and everything she's about. The things that charmed you now are the things that you use against that lovely woman, the one you say you love, and you would rather she change to suit your need and your obsession with your fucking self that you have even taken pains to make sure that she has nothing left for her. You want to change her so that you will be able to better understand her, but you make no changes yourself. You want her to reveal to you everything she is, and you want her to be a whore in your bed and you want to have the right to call her one when you think she is out of line. Where it is that you think you have her where you want her is also the same place some other guy WILL have her, and you will be helpless to do anything about it. 

Your words have crushed her to any and every end. Your accusations have caused her to mistrust you and your careless nature has made it so that she has to hide everything from you - all the way down to hiding her purse so that you do not steal what little she has left for herself. You check her cellphone messages and erase the ones from the people who you don't want around her (mostly men, and women with weight problems) and you talk to her pals as though they are scared of you - they aren't. You are only scary to that one woman- the one who you keep on hurting and the one who has always been there. You tell her that she is worthless, that she is stupid, that she is a whore, that she is a cunt, that she is everything that she knows she is not. You tell her over and over, and then you expect her to be grateful that you are still in her life when in reality all she wants is for you to be gone, forever. 

Though you believe that you are right, that you have the right to say what you will, what you are not realizing is that she is saving herself from you one day at a time. She is building reserves of inner strength, and she is enlarging her circle of friends, and she is making her own way in the world without you. If you knew what goes through her head and you found out that you are not the one who is her priority anymore, you would want to kick her ass. And that is why she remains quiet. That is why she has stopped having words of anger and hatred in return for you. That is why she simply smiles while trying to hide the hurt and the tears and that is why she says nothing to you that you needn't know. It is because she has come to depend on herself. She has grown closer to other people, including and especially other men, and it is because she has to relearn all the things that she thought she knew because of you through other people - other male people, and it is not a bad thing.

She is out there in the great big world not staying put under your thumb anymore. You can say whatever it is that you want to her and she will just rebound without going on the rebound. Because of you and your bullshit she has learned how not to talk to people, she has learned how to Love others and most importantly, she has also learned what is NOT Love. She knows that Love hurts but not the way that it does with you. She knows that you will use your charm against her when this all "blows over" and she knows that you will expect her to be as kind and loving as she always has been. And she will be, but it will all only be because in the back of her head she also knows that there is an entire other group of people who Love her, who want to be with her, who will let her be herself and that she will not be called anything but her name for it. She knows that you are not the last man on the planet who will have her and she knows, too, that on said same planet there is another man who is just aching to make all her pain go away...and she wants him to make her pain go away. 

You deserve every little bit of pain you are now feeling, and it is not a mistake that you are having chest pains, that your head seems to sometimes feel like a railrod tie has been shot through it, that you cannot breathe and that you seem to be drinking more and more anti-acid (baking soda and water is not as safe as you think it is, Mr Heart attack). These are the things that are born of anger and hatred, and these are the places that you made her hurt physically, and now you want her to hurt on your behalf more, but the thing is - she refuses to.

She refuses to allow your smallness to become the thing that rules her life again. She refuses to allow your words be what make or break her. She has allowed all of your friends into her world and now they are her friends even as they are yours. They will never see you as you want them to because to them you are now a woman hating wife beater, and you will always be. You tell her that you served your time and paid your debt to society, but you have not yet paid your debt to her because you feel that jail time was enough.

Jail time is not enough. You should be made to wear a sandwich board that is emblazoned with the words "I AM A PANSY ASS" in only your dirty, holey underwear and to walk over the 15 northbound freeway overpass at Bear Valley Road over the New Year's Eve holiday weekend, when everyone is taking off to Las Vegas, and made to do so after it snows, while singing "Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" loudly, with a bullhorn even, in front of little kids who will hurl snowballs with rocks in the center of them, and you should be made to do so on that holiday weekend Friday, during the daylight. 

And even if you did do this, it would mean nothing and would not be nearly enough to make right the things that you have done and said to her. You have shamed her, made her shun her own family, and you have told people lies about her.

Meanwhile, she has been there, watching your every move, hearing your every word, and quietly making her every plan, and you know what, asshole?

None of those plans involve YOU! 

...he he he...

Yup...damned skippy she's got plans...(right, April? LOL)

I Love You All !!

Rox...

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. please contact her by clicking here. Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com

Downright pissed off

Along with the fear is the Anger

Anger is something that comes and goes in the life of someone who has survived being victimized. Never think for a minute that the schoolyard bully grows out of their penchant for picking on people because not all of them do or even want to.

Raging and Permanently Injured Goddess

Throughout the course of my life I have been referred to as many things, most notably I have been referred to as an "angry goddess," and while that is a cool thing to be thought as, the way that I got this way was not so goddess like. I endured a whole lot of stuff that no one should have to. While I get it when people say 'you should have left' or ask "why didn't you just stay gone?" and I think my most favorite thing to tell these people is to screw themselves because unless you have had to endure it, you cannot say what is best for someone else and yes, although we are in a lot of danger while still in the presence of these brutes, we are more endangering ourselves when we leave and try to stay gone.

You can never know peace if you are constantly looking over your shoulder, looking to see if in the fray of unfamiliar faces there will be the one face you would rather not see. I know that I am probably pissing a few people off, but I am sick to death of covering up my husband's sins against me and ultimately, at least in my own mind and in my own thinking, the legion of brutality loving idiots on the face of the planet, but I probably no longer care and I am sure it is because of the fact that no one bothered to even try to see the side of reason, which was always mine. 

Being brutalized does something to a person. You become mistrusting of everyone and anyone who you do not know. You start believing that there are no good people left on the planet and then one day you break down in tears, wondering why it is that God would send such a person into your life and when said person is going to be gone. This was my prayer and my query to the almighty God above for a lot of years, and I recall, too, being alone and cursing at the ceiling through angry tears, wondering why it was that God left me all alone to fend for myself. It is enough that you are being told to leave, and enough that people think you are some sort of moron for staying, and there are a lot of people who will even get mad at you for not having the balls to turn around and look your attacker in the eyes and tell him to go fuck himself, and that is not exactly the sanest idea either because an already violent person has the ability to snap and go from being Jeckyl to Hyde in the blink of an eye. Again, although the idea of leaving seems easy enough, it is anything but easy.

You get angry, eventually, angry enough to contemplate other uses for kitchen cutlery, accidents that could happen if you just knew where the main battery cable in the golf cart can be put so that when he'd start it he would fry to death, but then you just give up, realizing that watching them die that way is not the greatest idea because you would end up in prison for the rest of your life over someone who would not do the same for you. You get angry at yourself because you cannot believe that you did not see this shit coming, and when you started feeling a little bit perturbed they noticed and held you in an even tighter grip, never letting you out of the house, not even to get some air. You end up feeling like your life has been given to you because somewhere in time, perhaps in a past life you must have done something really, really bad because no one would ever choose to go through this. You think so many thoughts and you come up with so many different ways to get out and you start planning.

You start packing boxes and sending them to whoever it is that is left in your circle who will still talk to you, or you send them to your grandmother's house, or your auntie's house, or you just forget about them like I did all those times that I left. He always found me. He always knew where I was. Sometimes he followed me. Yes, part of being victimized means that you will be stalked, you wll be harassed and when you are found, you will be scared, at first, and then you will be angry. That anger never leaves you. It dies down a bit and becomes tolerable, but always you are on your guard wondering when the hell you will be able to smile for real again. It seems like forever and a day, but you eventually do smile.

My real smile began December 20, 2008.

How God made an angry goddess smile

It is sickening to me sometimes, but in a deliciously and delightfully sinfully wonderful way I get a little giddy when I think about all of the things that took place from July 2008 until December 20, 2008, which was the day that the man I married had a massive two-sided heart attack. I say giddy because I knew that he was going to go through quadruple bypass surgery but also that he would only do so because he felt it might shut me up. What would have shut me up was if he had just not had the surgery. Yes, that is bad. I know it is bad, but there is nary a soul who, after having read my story thus far, and more, who has, themselves, gone through something as horrible as being the receiving half of a union which becomes marred with the cuts and scars of domestic abuse, who will be able to blame me for the way that I feel right now. 

There are some reading this right now who are muttering to themselves "I told her to leave. I told her to kick him out," and while their sentiments and their care is received with Love, it is also a mixed feeling. Not all abusers are the same. Some are more violent while some are not violent at all and who are more prone to speaking to their victim in an abusive manner. 

I got a taste of both, and to this day this moron seems to think that because they are only words being spoken that those words do not affect me. They do and they don't. They do because I know that he says them just to be an asshole, but they don't because they are words spoken out of complete vitriol over what he himself lacks as a human being. While he chose to take the time that has passed since 2008 to find everything and every reason to no longer want to live, I chose to take this time to evolve into something he never thought I would be able to...

...a Bad Ass Me...

Take my words however you will, but I earned the right to call myself a Bad Ass. I earned the right to be this angry, and I earned the right to say what I have to. I earned the right and am entitled to having my say so because for a very long time now I was only picking the scabs off of the wounds left by the shards of my shattered and broken self when instead I should have been ripping the scab off so that the wounds could heal and leave the scar and the memory. 

I am not a large woman, but I am a very angry one, and one whose time has come to let the world of survivors know that you are ok in being angry, that you are ok in thinking that what you have been through made you more bad ass than you can ever have claimed to be in the past. A lot of people in your life, and probably more who are no longer there because of your attacker, have probably had a lot to say to you, probably told you that they were telling you off because they cared, and while them caring about you might be true, they can never ever know what it is that you singly know on your own. While we do not wish this sort of thing on anyone else, there are times when I do wish that those who'd told me to get out while I could would have been there when I tried, and more, when he'd found me, because it was always the same...at first he was nice and I was still scared, so I left with him just so that I would not have to find out if his threats on my family and their home would be made true...and then a few weeks go by and he is at it again, starting with the yelling and the getting in my face...then the pushing...then came the biting that left scars, one bad enough for me to have a small tattoo put over it that has to be redone because it is fading and though no one else can see the scar, I know it is there and it will fuck with me if it is not somehow made no longer visible...then came the slapping...the kicking...and eventually the closed fists...the blackened eyes...the bruise on my back as long as my spine from my neck all the way to my lower back...over and over and over again, and then ...I left, again.

When you live your life at the mercy and the will of another, and when you weigh, in comparison, next to them, but a-buck-o-five soaking wet, you pretty basically have not a lot of options other than to come up with another plan to leave, a plan that you know will be temporary because of the threats made to you on the lives of your loved ones. It is an ugly cycle that never ends unless and until you wake up one day and start to implement the plan to leave. A plan to leave does not need to be elaborate and it does not need to involve your loved ones. You can leave on the sly, like I did more than one time. But never forget about where you told them your family lives, all of them, because I thought I had a great plan. I thought leaving to be with family in Northern California who would help me get to Hawaii to my grandparents' house would be easy. It wasn't. When a man loves a woman he will go to the end of the earth for her, but when he thinks he owns her, he will go even further than that. 

When you have to go through this much and you have to deal with what you have been given, you begin to see that you are far smarter than you ever thought you were, and you start thinking beyond what you normally would. You come up with all sorts of different plans and most of the time you will try them all, and hopefully, one of them finally works.

And when you get to where it is that you are safe and can be yourself again, you begin to see yourself, I mean really see who you are, and once again, you like who you are. You can see that you are angry, hurt, gnarly pissed off, because I know that I am, and I know that I have been, but I earned it. I got my heart broken and my life shattered, but now I get the chance to redo it all, all over again, without him, and I like it. I figure that if I can deal with his sorry ass all these years, can endure the harsh words and the beatings and the threats of brutality and the threats on the lives of my family, I am pretty sure taking the world by the balls and making my part of it my bitch should be a cake walk.

Whatever you do, don't tell anyone your plans. Just make them. Be careful and execute them.

...because it is nice being thought of and referred to as a Goddess, but it ain't easy being an angry goddess

I Love You All!

Rox...

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. please contact her by clicking here . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)