You are important enough, I Promise

The thing about being part of a relationship is that there are two people


If there is anything that anyone who has been abused knows a lot about it is the idea that in a relationship there is the idea that there are two people in it, but when we are speaking in terms of our actively being a part of that relationship, when we think about it further, in an abusive situation, there is only one person and one non-person, or at least this is the lie that we are told.

For many years I have stayed quiet about the things that I have gone through, being careful to not bring up the past, not only so that I would not raise the ire of my abuser, but also so that I would not have to live through the muck that impeded my life and my willingness to go through what I went through - that's right- I said it, now deal with it. Let it be well known that we humans do not go through anything that we do not choose to go through. Am I saying that those who have been abused wanted to go through that hell or really did make the choice consciously to go through it? Oh HELL no I ain't.

What I am saying is...

Precisely what I am saying is that every single person who has been abused chose to deal with the reality before them rather than risk what they did not know would or would not happen. There is no way that anyone, unless they are a sadomasochist, chooses to be beaten, to be belittled, to go through what I and many others like me have gone through.

Everyday we choose to deal with what we will, and we choose to have the reaction that we will have to it, and in the case where a woman is being abused, physically or otherwise, this same thing can be said. We would rather deal with the devil we know instead of risking what we assume is the safer option - which, in reality, is no where near safer. It is safer to get out of a situation where someone else has all the control and the other person is controlled. This is not the way that anyone's life is supposed to be, not at all, but there are a lot of people on the planet who go through this all day long everyday and they do it while quietly pining away underneath it all, watching time and life slip on by while they stay there in that fear wondering when it will end.

When will it end?

God bless my best friend, April, because she has a way with being able to tell me things that I need to hear without making me hurt anymore. She has told me for a lot of years that no, I am not worthless, and no, I do not have to do anything that my soon-to-be ex-husband tells me that I have to do (or else he will....really? who fucking cares, right?) and I want you all to know, right now, for sure and for real, April is right. (April is ALWAYS right!)

April told me these words on more than one occasion, and today they stuck to me like dried shit on a long haired dog's ass - "it will end when you choose for it to end."

This is correct, by the way. We abused and survivors of abuse pine and wait for the opportunity to finally choose to do something, and the one thing that is the hardest to choose is to choose to no longer be a victim. I am no victim. I am not some shrinking violet - not by any means, but when that sonofabitch decides to run his mouth all those years of taking his shit catch up to me and make me a jumblefuck of emotions, these days causing me to have physical pain whenever the adrenaline kicks in and the fight or flight reaction decides to take hold.

I have spent the entirety of my adult life under the thumb of one person, and when someone gets used to that sort of thing, it is a hard thing to not do anymore. He does not like that I, like the ever-blooming flowers, are pushing up through the bullshit of his own life and his own losses, and he does not like that I plan to no longer be married to him, and he does not like that I have chosen to no longer be his to walk all over - those days are over with. It will be a challenge for me to have to get through this all while he runs his mouth, all while he begs me not to do it, all while he still will be who he is and I am who I am now, and who I am now will not allow his bullshit and will not deal with the disrespect that I allowed for so long,

We allow it, guys...really...

While there is no excuse for abusing anyone, after we have been beaten down into an unrecognizable-from-who-we-really-are on the inside shell, because we so badly want peace and because it is that in an abusive situation we are already afraid, we do whatever we feel we must in order to simply keep the peace. Abusers are excellent at the art of confusion and they are willing to confuse their victim enough so that the victim will do anything just to not hear that they are horrible, just to know that they have escaped having the shit knocked out of them again, and of course we learn to duck very quickly because of all the things that get thrown at us both literally and figuratively.

But, again, if we did not eventually grow accustomed to what it is that we let other people do to us, and we do not allow people to turn us into their doormat, we will not become their doormat. Yet, if, like me, because of your size and the fact that you have always been a peace-loving, fun-loving, loving person, period, all your life,and you know this is the truth of you, then like me you likely opted to try to Love your attacker into becoming peaceful, and then later on down the road found out that it only gave them one more avenue through which they could get into the meat of your soul and do what they would in order for you to be so scared. I know this because I lived it and even now, at this late juncture, I still have a lot of fear, but it is not fear over what it is that he has already done but rather and only what it is that I assume he will do.

Collectively we have to stop allowing these behaviors to run amok, because amok running is what the abused are so great at. We run amok when we get a little bit of freedom, and we run amok thinking that the tiny amount, that tiny space of time that we are allowed by those who would like to keep us locked in a prison of our own making, of time that we do have to make a choice is going to last forever, but it isn't.

I know that if I do not divorce this person that I am the one who will pay for my own choice to not be well and not be happy and not be all who I really am, and who I really am is a person who loves fully, who lives to the brink of whatever it is that you want to think is the brink of anything, and I am hardcore when it comes to caring for others - there are only a few people who I know I can trust, and those people know that when I Love, I Love big and real and for a long, long time.

The lingering question is if this is the truth of me, why then was all I had to give to one person not enough? Well, because he could not evaluate it in terms of price tags and how much he could sell it for one day. He could not place a price on it and could not see what I had to give to him as being of any worth.

So, what's a girl to do?

I'll tell you what a girl's supposed to do - get a divorce, that's what, because there is one other person on this planet who deserves me, faults and all, nuttiness and all, me, and all...

...Me, that's who...

When it feels like no one loves you, go look in the mirror and find the one person who should love you and will again.
I Promise...

I Love You All!
...Roxanne...

Wounded, but not dying

There are truths to us all that are not really truth and meant but only to cause us hurt. It is when we are the most wounded in the soul that we are also the strongest we can be.

I am a wounded warrioress, and rightly so, because apparently it was known by God that I was strong enough to deal with all that I have gone through for so long now, with all that has happened, even up to these last few weeks.

Indeed... I am wounded, but I am not dead.

There are a lot of ways that an abuse survivor can heal from the wounds of abuse. Once it was that I accepted that I am a statistic I found that this designation made it so that I would think that people were staring at the big red "A" on my chest that stood not for "adulterer" but instead stood for "abused." And I am an abused woman who can truly call herself a survivor, because not everyone makes it through the ailments of the soul that are not our own. Abused people tend to think at the onset of the abuse that somehow that we are being victimized because of something that we did or said but that is not the truth. When we are abused by someone else it is never because of who we are or even something that we did, but because someone else who sees only what they want to see instead of accepting what is really there chose to vilify it, chose to make it "bad" when in reality what it is that we go through is nothing in comparison to what it is that we will go through if we choose to not speak up, to not defend ourselves and to do nothing - doing nothing is as bad as being the perpetrator. Doing nothing allows our abusers to think that what they are doing is acceptable, not because you would really think it were, but because you said nothing.

Saying nothing is almost like saying that it is ok that you are being hurt, that you are being targeted for sins you have not committed or perhaps sins that were committed a very long time ago. Saying nothing tells your abuser that what they are doing to you, even though they KNOW it is wrong, is somehow ok with you because you have said nothing.

I say to hell with that, to hell with him, with her, and you get your ass out there and you SAY SOMETHING!
Staying wounded by choice is like not bathing after you have gone for a 6 mile walk uphill in the middle of August in 75% humidity - it stinks!!

We get knocked down over and over again, and we do not see the light that we are because we think that when we get back up and we start to recover we are getting stronger and better and unfortunately for our abusers, they think we are just getting over ourselves.

It is hard to get over the shattered heart, hard to look past the idea that there is someone on the planet who thinks so little of themselves that they have to hone in on our "weaknesses," attacking us where we are vulnerable and never thinking for a minute that not only are they our abusers, but they unwittingly become the greatest spiritual personal trainers that no money could buy.

That's right- I said it now deal with it.

If there is a way to get through what it is that you are going through, that we have all gone through in the case of the emotionally abused, it is to think and to believe that we are here for a purpose far greater than we are, more important than the self important assholes who feel privy to treat us as though they own us. No more will there be the days of isolation and no longer will there be a day, at least not for you, the abused, when you will be stronger and better and greater than you ever imagined. I know this. I live it, and even though I have days when I would love nothing more than to watch my abuser writhing in  pain and stuck in the miry goo that is the aftermath of emotional abuse, the frank truth is that I cannot change the past, and I cannot make different what has been done to me, and that the only thing that I can do about his sorry ass is to not do like he has done.

There are always two different ways that any street will go, and in our case we have the option to stay or not stay, and it took me a long, long time to choose to not stay married to him, to grab what is rightly mine and to be happy and settled in the idea that I came to this decision all on my own without prodding from outside help and even thinking ahead and saying to my best friend that I needed her help and her guidance in this because she gets it, she understands me.

You can choose to stay a victim, where it seems that nothing changes and that all that we are is what someone else who won't bother to get to know us tells us we are, or you can choose to fight, like the wounded and wartorn warrior, never putting down the shield and sword and never looking back to choose to go back to what is familiar and "normal" for what we have gone through.

I chose to raise the sword, the shield, and to one last time move headlong into the battle zone, unafraid of what can happen, unwavering in my steadfastness and always knowing that this time, I can't lose...

...make it be your this time and soon, because eventually your blade will dull and your shield will be heavy, and you fought and got this far - it would be a shame to see you give up the fight now...

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

Courage

It takes courage to change your life


It took a whole lot of courage to remind the person to whom I am married just how much damage he has done to me, both physically and emotionally, and it took even more courage for me to finally do what I know I have to do, and what I have to do is not wait for him to pass away. What I have to do is forget about the past and move into the future.

I told him that I want a divorce, told him that I will file one regardless of what he thinks or says, and told him that the damage done is severe enough to make me shake, physically, and enough to impede my life and my health and the lives of my children.

In each of our lives and through each thing that we go through there comes a time, and more times than not the time has come for me, for me and him, to say goodbye to each other. That time has come. I can no longer allow the things and events and situations which await me to get pushed further into the future because I asked for them all the be, and daily they show signs of Being, and daily I sit thinking about what would happen if I stayed.

Well, I know what would happen if I stayed, which I will not be, and I know that there really is nothing for me to be afraid of. I know that I have the love and the support of everyone in my life, and I know, too, that much of who I am anymore is attributable, both in good and bad ways, to the things that I have gone through.

The things that I have gone through


There are a lot of things that abuse survivors go through just to make it through the days without shedding tears, and these last few days have been very emotional ones for me. Though I feel no guilt for choosing to divorce, there is still that manipulative way about him that has been, for the last twenty four hours, trying diligently to chip away my resolve, my strength and the will that I have within me. I begged this man, pleaded with him, for years even, to just please be kind to me, and it was his option to be other than kind.

What an abuser does not know is that the emotional abuse is far more difficult to get through than is the physical abuse, and it is because a survivor can watch the bruises fade, can check the calendar to see when the cast comes off, can physically feel the pain of a bite mark fade with time. The same cannot be said for the abuse that I feel is worse than getting beaten. Emotional abuse will kill you if you let it remain in your life, which is why I chose this to be.

I had to save myself this time, had to hear it from a stranger that I may need some counseling, and it took a day for it all to sink in, and once the reality set in, the tears began to roll and I began to see mental images of all that I have been through during the course of the last 23 years, and let me tell you something folks....it was not easy, and hell no it wasn't pretty, but I am here and I am alive and well and can see that there is much ahead of me that waits for me to finally take that last step in this part of the path.

It isn't easy, and yes, waiting for him to pass away would have been easier, but I am positive that this way is how it was supposed to be. You see, the way of the wounded warrior is never easy. It is rife with pain and heart ache, with failure and the humiliation that comes with it, but it the way that many people never see themselves as being and as living. I see myself as a warrior goddess, the sort that, even through battle, rises above the mess that is her life and sees the confusion and yet also can still see the shades of glory and hope shining through the cracks in the facade of who I was told I was.

Be Brave. Embrace Courage. Live Freely.


The last thing that an abuser wants his victim ever to be is independent of them. Had this man told me what I wanted...no, what I longed to hear for so long we might not be here right now, we might be able to get along, and that longing to hear what I wanted to hear should have started many, many years ago and not a day and a half after I told him that we are through.

It took a long time for me to come to this point, for me to no longer allow myself to care for this person on any other level than that of an angry wife of an emotionally abusive man is able to, which is mostly on a compassionate, human being level. I used to have a problem with telling him that he was hurting me, and it was because he made it a point to tell me to 'man up,' to 'quit pouting and deal with it' because he was dealing with whatever it was and is that he is dealing with, and right now what he is dealing with is what I had been forced to deal with for over two decades - HIS demons.

This is the part that no abused person realizes until one day they are forced to see a situation for what it really is, and what this really is is just another way of another victim of someone else's smallness becoming, through adversity, all they are. The bitch of this all is that he has yet to truly accept that I am done with him and more, that he really did need me all these years, that I was not stupid, neither a whore, nor pathetic, nor immature, not a bad mother, and no where near being a bad wife. All these things became what I was told when I told him that I need out of this marriage, not only to make things better for these three kids, but also, so that I could save myself.

These things I learned the moment that he chose to tell me that we could work it out, and when he began to tell me that I was not getting a divorce and that he would not let me, he learned the only thing that he needed to learn...the truth, and the truth is that I am no longer available for him to choose to behave in an abusive manner with me, and that all these years it has not been me who has been causing him his grief, but his very self.

Here's to new starts....we get one everyday, by the way...

I Love You All!

...Rox...

The Monsters in the closet of the past

Fearing the monsters of the past

My other blog discusses the price that we must pay for forgiveness. Survivors of emotional and physical domestic abuse are very good at retaining the memories of what happened to us. I used to do it a whole lot. I feared everything, all the way down to the color of nail polish I would wear on my toenails. We do not need to fear things that happened to us. I know that this sounds and might read easy, and I also know that there are some of you right now, tsk tsking me and shaking your head in disbelief that someone like me would dare suggest that you should just get over what has happened to you.

No, I am not. I would never suggest that, but at the same time I also know that to be a victim who has raised her own self to the level of survivor is one of the greatest gifts that we can give to ourselves. Yet, it is a gift that, even as we all want it, many of us refuse to receive it because we are too afraid of what might happen to us should we venture down that road to personal and Spiritual freedom through the release of the things that we have been through.

This is not to say or to suggest that you can just easily shrug off all you have gone through - I am living proof of the idea that outwardly a person can appear very strong and very solid in their own convictions, but underneath the facade of all that they appear to be and to have there is the reality that on the inside we are very afraid of everything. We fear people and what they might say to us or do to us, and we fear situations that have not occur and may never occur. We fear our abuser will do exactly what they said they would and make good on threats that were made in the heat of passionate argument.

And yes, I sit here right now thinking about how much I do not trust this person even though my reality is no where near what I thought it might be should I choose to stand up for myself, keep my feet firmly planted in what is the truth right now and forgetting about what it is that I might THINK could happen. The truth is that yes, all those horrid and ugly things that have happened could very well happen again. But, when I think about it more and the way that it culminated for me, I know that I cannot ever turn back. I know that I will never turn back. I know that what I did on Friday the 13th of January, 2012, was what needed to be done, not only to release me from what was a love that may have been applicable for a younger and less confident woman, but also because it was just time for us to do like thinking adults do and finally, forgivingly, release each other to whatever it is that we each see as "our lives."

The Monsters in the Closet of the Past

For many years I have written about the Monsters which live in the closet of the past. The closet exists only in our minds and only in our memories, and the closet is ours, which means that we have the option to clean out the closet or just to simply shut the door. Cleaning out the closet makes more sense, but most of the time we choose only to shut the door, ignoring what all is behind it.

If we could realize that we are the ones who are keeping alive within us the monsters which exist there we would know for sure, the moment that we choose to acknowledge that there is a problem, we would find ourselves to be much better off and that we could simultaneously discover that we have always had the peace we want but that we chose the monster that only tells us that it will hurt us over the reality that what happened cannot be changed but what can happen IS change.

I chose, on Friday the 13th of January of this year, 2012, to no longer allow what might happen to me if I speak up and let this guy know that I am no longer his doormat, that he is no longer allowed to talk to me as though I am, that he is through telling me what I am allowed to do, and that no longer are we married anywhere else than on paper.

And believe it or not, he accepted it that way, and it was not for any other reason than that he had no choice but to.

When we choose to look at the monsters, we find out that the monsters only lived in our head, and that once it was that we saw it for what it really is, it really was nothing more than a spider whose ominous nature was highlighted by the flashlight which was trained only on the past which we feared would have been our future.

I Love You All !!

...Rox

Girlie Mojo

There comes a time in the life of every abuse victim to rise up and be a survivor


When it comes to things that break our hearts, there is nothing that makes my heart break faster than does a fellow female of the human persuasion willingly giving up her right to her own Girlie Mojo.

Call it our femaleness, our magical feminine selves, that thing that we do...whatever...whatever it is that you want to refer to your being able to well up the strength within you to be able to be all your beautiful girlie self that prompts you now to think a whole lot about taking your rightful place at the altar of womankind and use what you were born with, call it what you want, but there is one thing that is absolute in it, and that one thing is that you gave it up to one person at one time, and you allowed it to flounder and to just sit beneath the surface of your soul, and now there it is, scratching and clawing its way to the surface and now is the time that you have to let it rise to the top like cream.

There is a reason that now, in this time of your life, that you are wanting badly to wear make up and high heels, that you want to do your nails and get a facial and saunter around in those high heels as though you can run a mile in them (I can), why it is that you get giddy when you are in the company of other women and more, why it is that you can physically feel the stirrings of a man's soul, even as you may have only recently met said man or perhaps seen said man as only a friend for many years.

It is your Girlie Mojo, and I am glad to be the one to reintroduce you to that woman you thought you left behind when it was that you thought you would be able to change the man you Loved, and more, the "man" you became. You were turned into something that you were never meant to be, and at first that was a victim, and then one day you chose to call yourself a survivor. And now, here you are, all survived and gorgeous from the heat of the battle, and you really, really want your nails done ..haha!! You are not abnormal, honey - you are a girl and now is the time that you have to take the time to reinvent all the girl you can possibly be.

It is our Sacred and secret weapon against all who would try hard to take from us the Power that was ours before the abuse began, the Power that has always been there, the Power that you Are and were meant as. Beauty is Power, ladies, and Power is very sexy, sometimes more when a woman wears it than when a man does. That Power will never go away, will always belong to you, and can never be taken from you, and I say that it is time that you let it loose and let the fur fly...it is time to let your Girlie Mojo take the reigns and take you back on the Path you are meant to be on!  So what if you want to wear something tight or hot or cute? That is your right to do so! And so what if you want to do is sit and watch chick flicks and what of it if you just want to sit eating strawberries and chocolate and wash it all down with cheap champagne? What of it if you want your own tool belt to be soft pink and who cares that your work boots have to match and so do the gloves you wear to protect your perfectly manicured hands?

What you are feeling is nothing strange. You have felt this way all along, and you have denied within you the Power that is in a beautiful woman, and let me tell you what - ALL women, as I have said and maintained for many years, are beautiful creatures, all of us, and there is no man alive who can tell me otherwise. I don't care if you are pear shaped or shaped like a damned stick, don't care if your hair is blue or if you have a million and one tats and piercings everywhere - you are a part of the Divine Feminine, and you are beautiful and perfect just the way you are.

There is nothing wrong with healing from the travesty that was once your life, once your reality, through means of the Girlie Mojo.

Today can be the day that you would begin to use your own brand of Girlie Mojo


When I chose to no longer allow my husband to lead my life for me, and when I chose to move my things out of the room that we used to share, that was when I knew that finally, I was strong enough to use my Girlie Mojo to get myself out of a jam that took more than twenty years for me to end up stuck in. I got tired of him calling me names and more tired of my just taking his crap because that is what I had done for two decades. Yes, things are more icy than they were before I chose this way, but this way, even as it seems harder, even as it is testing my strength and testing my resolve and really testing the part in me that fears this guy, this way is the ONLY way that I will heal.

And truly, it is the only way that you will heal, too!

Standing up for yourself is a way of employing the Girlie Mojo. When you recall back to the time when you were directly in the middle of the crapstorm that your life became and you bring back that feeling that you have no choice, no say so, no nothing without this person telling you when you can or cannot do or be or have who you are and what you want, you are calling the ghosts back, not to be revisited but to be extricated from your life. This is what using the Divine Feminine within prompts us to do. It makes us look at who we thought we were when our ordeal began, and it forces us to choose if whether or not we like the way we are being treated and choose to no longer go through what it is, and it is hard to choose not to go through something that we have been going through for long periods of time.

When you choose the way of the empowered Woman, you are choosing the way of the Spirit Warrioress, and you are ultimately exacting your own healing through your willingness to go through, one last time, a lesson that has presented itself to you, to me, over and over again, showing us who we are in the eyes of someone else so that we can see to the truth of who we are to our very weary selves.

When we choose to no longer be in the Shadow of the past, and when we choose to not allow any longer that which became our lives to be who we think we are, this is when the healing begins. This is when the long,hard road back to our Selves begins and this is where we have to watch out for the boulders and the storms that caused us so much pain to be what we will base our lives on. The foundation that we were given prior to becoming the target of someone else's lack of vision and Soul becomes the ground on which we stand and becomes the ground upon which we rebuild and reinvent who we are and who we will choose to become in time to come.

When we choose to be empowered rather than hindered by what has happened to us and when we see that what we have been through is nothing more than yet one more lesson that we must learn, and most of all, when we can accept that this has been our life to this point but that it does not have to stay the thing that we recognize as such, we have begun to use the Girlie Mojo we were each born with. Once that happens and once it is that we have chosen to go through the pain one last time, this is when we start to see to it that we heal and this is when the doors open for us, doors which lead us into the future, not only as women, but as Spiritually strong and Divinely and finely tuned leaders.

...but you have to want it, and you have to choose it. You have to want to look past what you have been through, choose not to be the victim anymore and choose only to survive the hurts from the past,  choose to be part of something that is simultaneously within us and outside of us through our Sisterhood, through our Divine and Sacred nature, through all that is, was, and ever will be again.

You have to choose to be whole again. You have to choose to heal. You have to choose your Girlie Mojo over the whims of small people.

You can do it. I know you can. I did.

I'm not sorry that I did. I can handle the slings, the arrows, the attrition and the evil eyes. I can handle it all, because I was prepared for this fight- and make no mistake, it is a girl fight if ever there was one.

Choose. You cannot heal until you choose to.

I Love You All !!

Rox...

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding Stirring your own thing up, would like to discuss planning a charitable rock n roll event, 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)

You cannot make other people "get it"

Too often, the abused turn to people who cannot understand the depth of the issues

I won't bother to "out" the person who chose to run his mouth today about an issue that is really not a huge thing. I also will not go on to tell anyone who it was whose fracture of peace that was hard worked for almost wrecked, just because that person felt a little bit disgusted by the remnants of what someone else did. While I get it...really, I do...it - the 'it' that caused this havoc today, and surprisingly no, the "problem" has not seeped into my marriage to this person, was such a minor thing that it really is making me wonder if who in the lives of the abuse survivor and survivors-in-training are really listening to the people who are going through the mess called domestic abuse?

If you don't listen, you won't have a clue


This is not meant to insult anyone reading this, but if you are a loved one of someone who is being emotionally abused and you are not listening to what it is that they are telling you and if you are willing to compare your own childhood with your own abusive father to what it is that your loved one's children go through, please stop. Though the technical similarities are there, I know, for a fact, that no two situations are alike, so please stop behaving as though you know how to fix your loved one's problem because, no, you do not know.

You want to be there, and that is fine, and you want to help, and that, too, is fine. What is not fine is the idea that you think that what you yourself have been through in any way at all somehow validates that you know better than the victim does. Again - no, you don't, and there is no more bigger an insult that someone who goes through the abuse can receive. You cannot begin to know what is happening, are not qualified to give advice, can never fix things for them because the bottom line is that you do not know what to do and your attempts a trying to get your loved one through their time of heartache, though appreciated, may only serve them with more grief.

Believe me, I know this one personally. If I didn't, I would not have anything to write about today.

You cannot make things better by making your abused loved one feel like he or she is not doing enough to get out of the very volatile situation by making a phone call to the nearest shelter or even to the police.


From experience I can say that yes, calling the proper authorities when your loved one is being physically harmed is the best thing that you can do for them. Yet, when there is only an exchange of words, and this is not to tell anyone that verbal abuse is less damaging than physical abuse (because it is lots worse on the victim, and yes, I know this one, too), there really is nothing that calling any authority, any shrink, any person will do to help. And please, spare me the "they don't want help. If they really wanted out, they would get out." To those who would think and believe this, let me give you the biggest "go fuck yourself" that you have ever had.

You do not know what it is that abused people go through, even after their abuser is not in their lives. You do not know how to make it go away, and you can suggest all you want what you THINK you would do, but you are not in the situation and you cannot try to make an abused person get into your head when most assuredly it is YOU who needs to get into theirs.

To suggest that any abuse victim or survivor LIKES being told who they are, what they do, blah blah blah, is just adding huge insult to permanent emotional injury that the abused person has to heal from all on their own, and your adding your two fucking cents to a matter that you know nothing about, that you have not researched and that you are basically clueless about only pisses your loved on off. You are not helping the problem. You are adding to it, and you are quietly being placed on that list of people who abused them as well. Watch your mouth and your ass, because you do NOT get it and if you say horrible things to them about their life situation, you are just as creepy and clueless as is their attacker. You know nothing when it comes to what other people go through, and you will remain to know nothing as long as you continue to flap your fucking jaw muscles about an issue that you have some very real feelings about but not an ounce of real knowledge. Knowledge is key in these kinds of things, and without a scrap of even knowing at least your own part in their pain, again - you are no longer a part of the solution but have, without realizing it, become a part of the problem instead.

Way to go, hero!
Duh

...and arguing with an abused survivor or with someone in the middle of their crap over what YOU think they should do is like a sin against God and mankind


The term STFU completely applies here, because getting up in the proverbial ass of someone whose life is in utter turmoil is just like telling them what to do. Telling them what you would do if you were in their situation is a bad thing. You do not know what the hell we go through, so shut your sorry ass up and no, you WOULD NOT do all those things that you are telling your loved one to do. Stop turning them into your newest science project in societal bullshit. You do not know what you would do. You are telling your loved one this because you are not in the middle of the same pot of shit soup that they are in and you keep making it seem that they are somehow indebted to you for being the foremost expert on something that is foreign to you.

If you have not been hit by someone who outweighs you at least by 100 pounds, shut up. If you have not been bullied by someone who outweighs you by at least 100 pounds, shut up. If you have not been afraid of someone who outweighs you by at least 100 pounds because you have a memory of what happened to you and you cannot go through that shit again, please, shut the hell up, really. You cannot glean from television or the internet enough knowledge to get your ass out the door in terms of and in regards to having been abused in some way, shape or form.

Again, please, shut up. You do not know what the fuck you are talking about. Unbeknownst to you, and I am just telling you this as a favor to you - you, not so coincidentally, do not know it all, and no, your fucking big fat graduate degree does not make it so that you know more than a survivor or victim of domestic abuse and family violence. While you may know a lot more about whatever it is that you studied, unless you studied psychology and at least have a passing interest in the thinking of the abused...shut...the...fuck...up...today.

One more time...


You want to know how to help your loved one? That's easy - shut the fuck up and listen to them, because that is what all abuse victims and abuse survivors really do need, just someone to listen, to not judge them, to not put their own two cents in about how they feel about the abuser - talking about the abuser to the abused only places the attention and your attention on something that you do not need to further etch in the abused person's head.

Shut your foolish ass up and fucking listen. Listening will give you the opportunity to really know what it is, even in a very tiny way, what it is that they have gone through, what we have all gone through, and what a lot of us always go through, even after the abuser is no longer in our lives.

The very best thing that you can do for your loved one if you really want to help them is to simply just be there and to listen, because anything else you tell them will fall on deaf ears, as their entire lives are lived on the idea that they must always look over their shoulder, must always sleep with one eye open, must always have that sixth sense that tells us that we have to be careful...

Since we know that we have to be careful, perhaps, too, you might also want to be careful as well.

Wouldn't want to be the cause of yet another fight, or worse, another bruise caused to your loved one because you had shit to say, now, would you?

I Love You All...(yes, even you idiots with no idea of what you are advising to your loved ones)

Rox<3


(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. If you want to exact change and cause a Stir, you can contact Roxanne by clickinghere. Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)

FIGHTER, Part 2 (18+)

No one is anyone's Bitch

I like to think of myself as an advocate in training, because yes, my abuser still lives with me in the same house that I do, but this is the short end of it all because very truly his health is an issue. This does not mean that I am not damned angry at the idea that even in his current physical state of health he feels as though I am somehow still his sounding board for all the threats, veiled and otherwise, of "what might happen to you, Roxanne..."

So,ladies, gentlemen, today I am still so goddamned angry about the incidents of the last week that I know if I do not let it out somehow, not saying that I did not give him a taste of his own medicine, I am going to be the one to once again be the fool.

On behalf of all those who have suffered at the hands and because of the words ...


...you think you are so fucking smart, all of you, don't you?

You seem to think that the longer you fuck with me, with her, with them, with us all, that we will never decide to rise up against you, when you are in your neediest of time, and fuck right back with you. I have learned a thing or two about abusers, and the one thing that came through loud and clear yesterday was that you aren't all the shit you think you are. You have to reach back into the past - sometimes the very distant past - in order to have some sort of something against me, anything against, me, because you know that at this very moment in time, you've got nothin'- not one goddamned fucking thing to say to me that will ring true, that will heal the pain that is so still fresh in my head, the hurt that permeates me in every possible way that is not physical, the anger which causes me to shudder at the thoughts that come with it and what I will NOT do to you because frankly, asshole, you are just not worth my time anymore.

I have never had to resort to threats, to physical shows of aggression, and it is because that is not the way that I do things. Yet, I think about all the shit that you have said and done to me, and it makes me laugh that you think I would want you after all those times you bothered to talk AT me to tell me how much of a dirty whore you think I am because if I am not fucking you then I must be fucking someone else, because apparently that is all that I have to offer anyone, man or woman, and that is where my worth lies. Too bad for you that not even you believe that, because if you did you would not have had the very nerve to ask me if I would fuck you later on.

No, I will not, not ever again. I am too hurt, too angry, too preoccupied with my own priorities, and had you bothered to bother thinking that maybe there was and still is a human person living in this body that you can no longer have, no longer can abuse (because you are too ill to breathe without trying to, let alone chase me who walks a minimum of 3.5 miles almost daily, who eats right, has cut down on a lot of bad habits...) and can no longer judge with the harshness that you seem to think is needed with another person. You took the softness that was me, turned it into something that it totally was never, and now you expect me to just be nice and loving and most of all, horny for your sorry ass.

Well, I can't, and no self respecting woman would. If there is one thing that I have learned very well over more than two decades it is that you cannot demand anything out of someone, cannot belittle it out of them, cannot have respect if you are not willing to do more than bully a person into it, and I ain't being fuckin' bullied by another motherfucker ever again, no matter what, because when you met me I was a nice young lady with dreams and hopes, but now? Now I am pissed off, am the cunt and the vile bitch you keep telling me I am, and it is fine that you think so, because this is the monster which you yourself created, so you can take your accusations, your threats and your fucking insults and shove them up your ever-widening ass.

I am done with you. Do you not get it?

Oh, that's right...I'm a liar...so I must be lying when I tell you that I am no longer available for you for anything other than the most menial of tasks....

Sincerely...
The worthless cunt dirty whore bitch