Raising Kick-Ass Daughters and Sons Who Do Not Become Woman-Haters

...Society demands that we raise little women, but not little women with a clue, and this is wrong. We also want to put our boys on top of pedestals that they cannot for the life of them stand upon without some sort of Guidance.


I Love my two sons. My Big Boy is a blessing to me everyday, and my Little Boy makes me laugh because he is so damned silly all the time. But that girl? Yeah, she has captured my very essence, my very Soul, and it is because I see so very much in her, so very much that I know our social mentality has already tried to steal away from her but that I will never allow to happen.

And my sons...oh, my sons...they are strong and mighty, like boys are meant to be, but they are also willing to listen to a girl, listen to her when she cries, when she is stomping and fighting mad, and they are chivalrous, the Big Boy far more than the Little Boy. None the less, I can sit here at this time, smile broadly even though I am the only one who knows that I am smiling, and know that thus far, I have been good to these children.

I am well aware of the fact that our kids are our mirror of us to the world, and I sit here proudly knowing that they have not made me look bad, have not done anything so terrible that we would never ever recover from it. I know that these kids are the way that they are because this is the way that they have been raised to this point and while it is that there are times when I want to shake them by the shoulders and tell them that they have, for that moment, made me the madwoman, over all, my children have done me very, very proud.

My Sons, Jeremy and Joshua, for all of their very "boyness" can be thought of as courteous, as boys who love their mama, and boys who any girl can take home to their own mothers and never worry that he is going to make that mother question what my boys are up to - I am confident of this. I know my sons. They are good boys. Yes, they do stupid things that make me question why they did not use their thinking skills when they could have and should have, but again, over all, I can only sit here smiling because I know that I have done well with them. I have raised, to this point, three kids, and four if you count my kid sister Napua, who have a damned clue, not only about life, but also and more, that you have to Be a Part of Life and in order to Be a Part of Life, you must not be apart from it. You must actively involve yourself with other people, because if you do not , you will live an existence which is frenetic and crazy at best, or lonely and suicidal, at worst.

Boys and Girls are different


Boys do not need to be told how to be boys, but we seem to feel like we need to direct our daughters to places that we never were able to reach, and we want to tell them how to do it, how to get there, who to talk to...as though they have no freaking clue of how to do this on their own. I mean, we are all blessed with an internal guidance system - all of us, including our kids. On the other side of that is the idea that just because they are boys they do not need our guidance. When I said that boys don't need to be told how to be boys, it was meant as my saying that boys, in most cultures, have their path set out for them by a society which is still very patriarchal in nature. I know that to this point in their lives my sons will have a clue as to how to treat the women in their lives and it will come from the way that they see their sister interact with other boys as much, if not more, than they watch me interact with people from many different walks of life.

We expect our daughters to pop out of the chute, so to speak, just waiting to be idealized by some other mother's son. We expect the world to be in Love with them as much as we are without thinking that the reason that we Love them so much is NOT because they are a little version of us as much as they are a vital piece of the Universe at large. It is wonderful when a little boy is born, but when a little girl is born it seems as though we can see in her the very facets which make up who we, their mothers, are, and we are not willing to not see her as being not a smaller semblance of who we are but worse than that, we see them as little tiny do-overs of ourselves. We cannot do this to our kids anymore. We have idealized them into a corner that a lot of us are too afraid to let them no longer be in, and it is not because of anything other than that we do not trust them to make the decisions that we want them to make which will please us. We want them to think like us and do like us all at the same time that we know that they need to be their own person. This was my reality, and it was a reality that only recently I was able to come to terms with and finally be rid of.

If there is one thing that was unspoken but very well learned by me, not only by the example set by my own mother, but also my father's mother, it was that wives are to be second in place to their husbands. This goes against all that I know I am and all that I have always been, but this is what I was taught - that a boy would never love a strong girl because he is too scared to lose his masculinity to an ideal rather than find out all the things about me that made me who I was. The person I married clued in on this very early and used it to his own advantage. My watching my mother be so passive and her not telling me that not all women are passive but that she was is where the message in my upbringing as a child of my not voicing who I was and Am to this person I married came well into play. When I saw my mother not argue back with my father, I took it as her being obedient. In reality it was only that my mother is a passive person and that is just how she is. The same thing happened with my father's mother, but it was with my grandfather, who was not very careful with how he treated her, and she took all of his emotional blows, took his barbs and took every single little spiteful thing that old codger gave her. She took it all. This is what I saw growing up, and this is what perplexed me and made me think that maybe what I had been through with my then caretaker and then the kids at school and then with the man who I married was all normal. Outwardly it was normal. Inside of me was a very different version of "normal."

The examples we show our kids are the only ones they have, so when we do not bother to tell them that they are their own person we rob them of the right and the ability to choose what is right for them. I could never tell my parents what I recently told them about my caretaker, at least not when I was a kid, not even a big kid, because the lesson throughout my growing up was that it was okay to be who you are but you cannot stray outside of what is acceptable, not only to your parents, but to society as well. This takes away from our children the ability to really and truly know who they are. When we tell them without telling them that what their preferences are in regards to who they are do not measure up to our standard, our kids bristle and the fun part about that is that when a kid bristles, a kid does things that an adult cannot or will not. Kids fear us, no matter what, and it is not because of anything other than that, to them, we are the knowledge keepers of all that is right and real, even when they disagree. This is a universal truth and not one I made up.

If we cannot bother to tell them the things that they need to know because of some stupid thing we were forced to accept as our truth, then we should not have any children at all. It is one thing to raise a kid with our beliefs but it is quite another when through those beliefs we try harder to scare them into not changing their minds about what they choose to believe. It is no secret that I have told my children that it is up to them to believe the same way that I do in things Spiritual, and it is no secret that I have taught my children that a lie is a lie no matter if it is spoken or kept secret. It is no secret that I Love these kids well enough, deeply enough, with everything in me enough to never NOT tell them that they have their own truths to form, their own truths to live up to, their own Path to follow. I have done what I had to, to this point, not because I have some crazy vendetta against what I was told was the truth but more, because of what I was NOT told.

We can tell them anything we want to tell them, tell them that there is no Santa, is no Easter Bunny, is no Great Pumpkin, and they will not believe us because their little kid brain will not let them - these are entities which we told them for many years were real, even though we knew they were not. Why, then, would we expect them to not question and even doubt what we tell them when what it is that we tell them is the absolute truth?

We want them to follow what we believe in, but as we stand there and in their faces when they are little and tell them about a fat guy making it down the chimney after he has parked his eight flying reindeer on our roof, we think we are carrying on a childhood tradition but in reality we are leading them to the path of heart break because for all their little lives to that point, they hang on our every word!! When you take the example of our telling them about Santa Claus you can clearly see my point that what we say to them matters more than we think it does.

So, why, I must ask, are we so inclined to try to make it still seem as though our sons can deal with life because they are boys, but our daughters need to be tip-toe'd into the future, as though these little versions of their Mother's Full Self somehow have no capacity for creating an Original Thought? Yes, we mothers do this to them, and I am not immune to the sin of seeing within my Gracie the things that I knew were in me when I was a young girl entering into high school. I am not immune to wanting to be there with her every step of the way, and I am not immune to embracing before it happens the very first time her first major crush disappoints her, and I am not immune to "gettin' her back" when it seems that her friends have all abandoned her (No, not you, Jordy, and neither you, either, Nathalie...).

And more, I am not immune to being so empathic about my one and only daughter, Grace, so much so that I want to shield her from all the hurts that she hasn't experienced yet. I see things from my perspective only, and because of this, I assume, wrongly, that my daughter cannot handle getting her heart broken, cannot handle getting her Self into a mess of teeny-bopper-with-rabies crap without also being able to get herself out of it. I do it a lot, without even thinking that thus far, with my own kids, and particularly, that one child - my only daughter, Gracie, I have done an incredible job.

I can pat myself on the back because this girl child knows how to stand up for herself, and I can smile widely knowing that on more than only one occasion, my "little girl" has done me proudly, has bared her girlie teeth and those proverbial girlie claws, and it was not ever for reasons that had nothing to do with her personally. Already I have been witness to this child giving a boy hell for starting to give her hell first, and already I have witnessed this child vehemently show her opposition to a person when said person was being so horribly creepy that the only way to make said creep stop his or her creepiness was to give them a ration of shit that could only come from a girl - from my girl... from my daughter, Gracie.

Raising Kick-Ass Daughters and Sons Who Do NOT Become Woman-Haters means that we have to let go of what we were taught...


...or at the very little least, have to update the things that we were taught by our parents. I cannot and will not go into anything that sounds like or mirrors words of man-hating harpies (goodness NO! I LOVE men...and the ones in my life who know me know this about me very well...or at least I believe they do). What I will say, though, is that there is absoluteness in the truths that we give to our kids as being THE Truth, and there is a sureness that comes with seeing the things that we have taught them in their little lives that prove to us that yes, we have started them out on the right path to their own lives, and look!!! She can stand up for herself!! Look! She has a backbone and LOOK!!! She is growing into a fine and wonderful young woman...yes, even with her lip piercings, even with her hair color going from black and purple to black and pink or black and blue on any given day.

More than that, through my telling Jeremy that it is not okay to hit other people, namely women, and through my showing Joshua that it is not okay to let the little girl across the street be mean to him or tell him things that make his little 8 year old heart crumble into a million sharply pointed pieces, my sons have learned well what is NOT okay to say, or to do or to be when in the company of girls and women. While my older son has a keen eye for beautiful girls, he has told me on many occasions that he cannot see girls as objects because he knows that it takes so little to make a girl hurt that he just cannot carry that on into the future with a girl or with anyone for that matter. He has, all on his own, chosen NOT to carry on the tradition of making women stand five paces behind him JUST because he was born with a penis. He knows that women hurt deeply when we hurt, namely when that hurt has been placed by someone who we Love. He knows that I am capable now to tell anyone, particularly a man - and any man, by the way - that I am hurt, that the action or inaction upset me enough to drive me to tears, and I am now able to just let it go. Through my kid, my oldest boy, I learned that it makes a man crazy to be left on my hook for too long so that I can feel better about what might be something that he could in no way ever begin to think would be something which would affect me to the point of tears.

My sons know that it is not okay to make a girl cry just because they can, and they know how to take care of a girl's heart and emotions even as they are not yet fully grown men  - these boys know through the example which I have given them, through my actions being the end result of my own words to them the thing which taught them the very most. I sit here confidently in the knowledge that at no time will I really need to worry about either of them carrying on the cycles of control that they have seen in the men from both their mother's side of the family as well, if not more, as their father's side.

Hey Mom! Just let go already !! Yeesh ! 

We have got to let go of the things that we considered the Truth and are the truths which applied to us when we were much younger, when we were children. I say this because when we begin to find out that many of the things that we were told as children are no longer applicable to who we are now we also begin to find out who we really are. Who we really are depends on us, not on the things which applied when we were children. We no longer fit into the same sized clothing that we did when we were in elementary school, and the same things that can applied to our clothing and how they fit or even if they still fit also applies to the things that we believe which no longer apply to our lives in the present.

It no longer fits my life that a woman is meant to be all she can be to a man, no way. I mean, yes, I can be all the woman I want to be to whoever it is that I care to be to those people, but my own truths always prevail, and if we would each, as parents, see to it that the kids we raise now become the adults who will carry on the traditions we create with these little people while they are in our care are not doormats, are not willing to do everything in their power to please one other person in their lives, we can also see to it that the changes which need to happen within society on its own happen, not to us, but for us.

If we would bother more to try getting these children of ours to just believe, through our actions toward them and on their behalf, if we would just not do what breaks their hearts and do what we know is best for them, no matter how much it hurts them right now while they are still clueless, we will, just by our very examples, be the change that we wish to see in the world.

If it is change that we want to exact we will exact it and it will not be through our own actions on behalf of our own Selves but rather and only through our example as lived into perpetuation by those people who call us "Mom" and "Dad"


I Love You All !!!
Rox

(c) 2012 Roxanne Cottell/Twisted Kitty PRomtions, all rights reserved. twistedkittyrocks@yahoo.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)

Guilt, part two...

This is the other part of the other blog that I wrote today...

Because I am part of a greater statistical whole in regards to domestic abuse I know that there is a lot that goes through our heads in relation to how we feel about things, about people, about ourselves, and the one thing that I am certain that no one ever thinks about is the idea that both victims and survivors of domestic abuse and domestic violence know very well is the guilt which is associated with our feelings toward ourselves and more, our views on our very sensual selves.

In my case, it didn't help much that I had the equivalent of Dana Carvey's "The Church Lady," for a mother, and neither a protestant evangelical minister for a father. It didn't help that my reality of what a woman was versus what I know that we are are markedly different, are nothing in relation to one another the same as each other by far. Add to this ...non-knowledge...of everything that I thought was sensual versus what I was told it was by a very "me-centered" guy for a husband, and throw in some self loathing in regards to my thinking and feeling the way that I used to about me in general, what you end up with is a very strange version of the truth.

The "truth" that I was exposed to was a Biblically inclined truth and one which was very man-positive while also being very woman-negative. In the Bible there is reference after reference of degradation of the life and purpose of women as a whole, references which name us as whores and harlots and purveyors of all things "sin," and for no other reason than because men, throughout history, have made it so that our sexuality was far more important in relation to how we feel about ourselves than was or is our inherent sensual nature.

The Sensual Nature of Women

We have been robbed of who we are and who we are has been chided, punished, reviled... When a man notices a woman's attributes he is being a man, but when a woman chooses to use said attributes to her advantage she is a whore. This is the reality of the woman who can be called a survivor of domestic abuse and domestic violence.

We end up chipping away, slowly, painfully, all that we are, and once it is that an abuser gets it into his head that because of what a woman looks like she is going to do with her body what he wants her only to do with him, and once it is that he has decided that even though he hasn't any concrete evidence of it, she is a cheating harlot with only his heartache on her mind. We are made to be ashamed of our very sensual nature, afraid to be what we were meant to be, and we become more aware from another's point of view of just how dirty and nasty we are according to them and their assumptions.

Women are sensual creatures by nature. We are, by design, meant to turn heads, meant to hush a room to a dead silence when we enter into it., and we are meant to have the attention of the opposite gender. We were never meant for the attrition we are met with, by both men who would like to control us and by other women who hate us because we know what to do with all these curves. A few days ago I was told that the only thing that I use is my looks, but that is the furthest from the truth because if I did not have the forethought in my head to use what I look like to get other women to know that there is life after abuse, I could then be accused of being a brainless twit.

I used to be very ashamed of my own sensuality, made afraid of it by a mother who swore that I would burn in hell for all the dirty thoughts that men had about women and that I was no different if I chose, when the time came, to utilize what I was born with to get what I need. What every abuse survivor needs is the reassurance that she is not dirty, not a whore, not all those things that abusers will tell his or her victim that they are because of the abuser's own declining sense of worth. We are denied the things and the thoughts that all women are privy to and it is because someone else told us that it was not ok that we felt the way we once did about ourselves, all the way down to the way that we feel toward our own sensual nature.

It is not a sin to love the skin you are in

I have always maintained, even while I was being beaten, that I loved Me. I love who I am and who I am is this evolved version of my former beaten self. I have grown into the acceptance that because I chose to believe what someone else said about me and that the only thing I am guilty of in that manner is that I chose to believe it at all. I am not guilty of being a whore because of what I look like, because of the things that I say and think, because I just love being who I am.

It is not a sin to love the skin you are in. It is nowhere near as dirty as any one man has the ability to make it. Abusers are masterful at the art of manipulation. Abusers will tell you that you are beautiful and then use it against you another time. They will tell you to be more freaky in the sheets and then when you do they end up telling you that you have cheated on them because they do not remember you learning that from them (never mind that you have an imagination and a history prior to their entrance into your life).

You are demanded to bring out your sensual diva and when you finally get the nerve up to do so, you are told that you are a whore and that everyone else in the world thinks so, too.

This is the travesty that is tantamount to all other travesties in the lives of the abused. We are made to think that we are the most important thing in someone else's life only to later find out that we are akin to a bracelet which hangs on the arm of our attacker. We end up, after the beatings and the accusations have become commonplace in our lives, feeling guilty for things that we do not and have not done, and eventually we begin to question our own sanity because the things that we are told we are and are told we do kept being repeated to us with the idea in the attacker's mind being only one of controlling us.

This also includes their controlling the way that we conduct our sensual nature. Our sensual nature is the Spirit within us, is that part of us that we each call our "inner goddess," and is the essence of our truest, highest, most important spiritual self. It is that part in us that our attackers want to no longer be in existence because with it we are dangerous, with it we are human, and with it we are able to draw to us other potential partners. This is the great big fear that abusers have - that they are not the last partner or even the last person to whom we will be attracted and that we will take our love away from them. Even our love becomes a possession to them, just like we do. We are no longer human from the start of the 'relationship' with them. We become, at that point, a possession, like a pet, meant to be controlled and never ever to be given the right to think or be who we are all on our own.

They take from us, or at least try to take from us, our inner identity, that piece of us that can be called Our Light. Yet what is not understood by them is that our Light can never be diminished, can never be taken away because it is ours now and forever. To be ashamed of who you are according your own Divine purpose is something that all abusers work diligently on from the day they put eyes on us. They see what they want and they enjoy the package and as soon as they can have what they see they begin to destroy it. This is the main objective of abusers - to destroy, not only what they do not understand but also what it is that they do not want others taking a shine to.

I like being shiny...so should you


It is now my own knowing that my purpose for being here in this lifetime is to bring to other domestic abuse survivors and domestic violence survivors that there is no reason why you cannot shine again. It takes a little ..no, it takes a lot.... of work to regain who you are. The first thing that you need to know is that you are not all those things that you were told you were, and that alone is a battle in and of itself. Now, I do not want anyone endangering themselves because of something that was read here - that is the last thing that I wish for anyone to have happen to them. However, starting where you left off - regaining control of your Soul and its purpose - is the only place that you can start because in essence that is the reason that you feel so empty inside. You have been put through the wringer, been told who you are and who you have been told you are is not the truth.

The truth is that yes, there is one other person on the planet who you can depend on to think correctly about you, and that person is you. There is nothing wrong, should be no guilt associated with any thought that comes to your mind regarding your Self, your worth, your personal sensual nature and power. It is a gift given to us all, to all womankind at conception, that we are granted because our sensual nature is the most powerful, most astounding thing in the world, and as a whole we should be grateful to not have to work to have such a thing.

I used to be afraid of these gifts. I am not anymore, and yes, it is because I chose it to be this way. You have to choose to want to give this gift back to your Self, to accept, realize and understand its potential and its power and know, too, that the potential and the power of it are what really scare the crap out of any abuser. You feel a lot less powerful with blackened eyes and bruises, with hairline fractures and a dwindling sense of Self.

Yet, just as quickly as you think they took it from you (in truth it was a systematic breaking down of who you really are over a stretch of time), you can take it back because you never really lost it. You chose instead to allow it to be covered by the assumptions and the presumptions of someone who does not like who they are, who feels threatened that you might take you and your nature and your love away from them if you found out who they really are. No person would choose to allow someone else to take away from them all who they are, and their taking it away from you does not happen overnight. It takes time to break a person down to a point where any sort of attention and any sort of positive reinforcement coming from anyone, even your abuser, is welcomed. I know this because I was like this. I used to love when he would compliment me for my intelligence and once he decided that my intelligence was not street smart enough is when he would begin to break me down. He broke me down all the way to the bones of my soul, but what he gave to me is priceless because he gave to me the fighter's instinct which instructs me to use what I have been given, but to use it in tiny and manageable amounts because there is no need to flood the world with my mixed blessings.

Yes, he used my own fear against me and it worked. It worked because he chose to take what was already a dirty thought in my mind and made it and me dirtier by his own design, and years later I willingly accept that the reason he felt this way is not because of what I did do but because of what I vehemently refused to do. When a man's only example of what women's sensuality is comes from lipstick lesbian pornography, and when said man's wife looks very much like those actresses in those movies, you can imagine that said man is going to try very hard to turn said wife into the nymphomaniac he thinks he is watching on that screen. When he found out and had to accept that I look like that but that I am so not like those women it became his mission to try to force upon me that somehow I was damaged because I did not perform according to what his primary thought about what a woman really is. I feared him and believed that I was lacking because I refused to go against my own primal and biological leanings, and for that refusal I was called a whore and was beaten.

Yes, there was a lot of fear...not anymore though, and he knows it.

He knows that I no longer fear the gift of being sensual, and he knows, too, that there is nothing that he will say or do to make me become who he wanted me to be because who he wanted me to be is nowhere near the me who I love, who I care about, who is in love with Being and in love with the idea that all he took away from me I took back with a sensual and feminine vengeance. And that sensual and feminine vengeance is something that no man can ever have because they are not women. That nature is what draws like to like, same to same, and in my case, the old man and me are markedly, strikingly different. Our only similarities are children, an address, a last name and history, but that is it.

Be all you can possibly be, even if all you can possibly be right now is a fractured version of your Self. Any start toward who you really Are is a start toward healing, is a start toward regaining everything about you that is all yours and that no one has the right and neither the power to take from any one of us, even though it might seem as though, at this moment, that there is nothing left for you to have because you were forced to give it all away.

Go look in the mirror and past the bruises and the broken heart and see there for a moment the woman who is in manifest and learn who she is now versus who her attacker tells her she is and I promise you that those two women are not the same women. There is the you they have created through violence and hurtful words and action.

And then there is the real You.

What are you waiting for? An invitation? Go! NOW ! Go take a look and see that I am right in telling you that you have always been there no matter what the hell it is that he or she has said or done to you, even if that was only moments ago.

Go now, please, and begin the healing process. You are meant to do this for you.

Don't be afraid and do not feel guilty.

You are yours for the taking, even if but a little bit at a time.

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)dreamhost coupon

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

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)