There comes a time...

We do not know that we have rights until someone else comes along and reminds us that we do 


I have a friend whose name shall stay a secret, and it will stay a secret because the world is filled with abuse survivors who go through the same thing with their abusers.

As a citizen of the world, it is of utmost importance that all of us remember that we were all born with the same human rights that anyone ever is. This is the pisser of being an abuse victim or survivor - the idea that what one person told you was the truth is the God's honest truth. When it comes down to the nitty gritty, what no abuse survivor is ever going to think about is the very idea that you had rights before you entered into a relationship with this other person, you had those same rights throughout the time that you were going through what you went through, and now, at the end of it all, or in your case, the new start of things, you are still in that mindset that you have to ask another person who is comprised of the very same carbon substance that you were born into this life as being - you have rights just like anyone else does.

Never let another person be the thing that makes or breaks you, and while I should not be the one to say that to anyone, the idea that I have to ask permission of another adult, no matter who they are, just to live, is ridiculous. For all those people on the planet who feel like they have to control someone else in order to be anything at all, you have some serious issues and now you want to tell someone else how to live according to your rules and what makes you comfortable, and you don't care one little bit about it if the person who you think you own has a say so ever.

You need to grow up because one day you will find yourself miserable and lonely

God help you when...not if....WHEN that day comes !!

ROX

Find Your Voice...

Survivors must find their voice and use it


For a lot of survivors, making choices according to our own preferences at first seems scary and weird.


There are not a whole lot of people who know me...and I mean really know me...who will disagree with me when I say that I have never had a problem with expressing myself. For a very long time it was difficult for me to be true in the things that I wanted to say in completion because I was told for so long that maybe what I'd had  to say would sound stupid, or would make him look stupid, or, most of the time, told that no one wanted to hear what I had to say because it was not important to anyone, not even him.

There comes a day when you have to speak up or things will not change


Abuse survivors have a whole lot to get through, and one of those things is regaining the ability to choose what we like and what we want according to us. We are all uniquely Sacred in this life, and those of us who survive the insanity that someone else brings into our lives, once we are emotionally (even if not yet physically) apart from our abuser we can learn from our own bodily reactions what it is that we want, and more, what it is that makes us cringe.

We forget about the things that we love so much. In my case it was music and musicians, rock music and a good time. To my old man these things apparently should have been left behind the moment that we met, because to most abusers once it is that you have met them they believe that they really are all that their victim needs. This is a lie. I found out very early on after I married this person that I really needed to be able to see and talk to my family - I missed my parents, and I missed my brother, and my sister was always with me, but it was not enough. I missed seeing my grandmother, missed seeing my cousins, missed the things that I loved so much before the day that I signed my life over to my abuser was a reality.

Over time I'd grown used to staying quiet, grown used to not writing regularly, got used to carrying on conversations with myself, and just sort of dealt with the heavy and crushing isolation. While I hated being alone, I found my solace in reading, in writing with pen and paper volumes of poetry, found my solace in music and during his work hours would dance hula by myself, through tears of loneliness and resentment.

Yet I thrived in a sense as well, because I'd not realized back in 1995 that what I needed as well as friends and my family, what I so badly needed but did not know until then was that I needed to write in a manner that came not from a rock and roll perspective, not in a manner which was meant as a marketing piece, not in a manner that sold anyone anything.

I needed to find my voice, because in all of the fear that had become so much a part of my daily living I'd neglected that part of me that had always served me well - my Voice. And by "Voice" I am not talking about my talking voice but the Voice which speaks loudly through the silence of the tears, through the pounding and reverberations caused by the ongoing mental recording of my being told that I am useless, worthless, a whore and what not...the Voice of which I speak is that of your Soul, and for those whose lives have been fractured by the marring from abuse, it is the Soul which keeps an abuse victim going through what they do so that they can come out of the other side of Hell on Earth brand new, far wiser and better able to deal with what it is that has befallen and now stares at them in the face.

The Voice of the Soul


It is the Voice within which carries most of us through the hell that we do not create for ourselves. It is that part of us that many refer to as being "The God Within," and others refer to as our Guides. Whenever it is that we have found ourselves wanting to lash out and crush someone, it is the Voice that compels us to dream a little bit bigger, to delve into the fantasies which used to be a part of who we once were and to seek out the guidance and the answers to all of our questions, and it is the Voice within which addresses the pain and doles out the Love that we all retain even while for a time in our lives it seems that we are not lovable, like we truly are the worst person on the planet, and that we really are everything that the person who is our captor has said we are while they continue to have their way with us emotionally.

The Voice of the Soul remains with us, aching to be heard, and waiting for you to Become what you were meant to through the harshness that is being someone else's victim. Our Voice is that part of us that relates to the world, and it is not through our own hand and neither our own manipulations that we would get to the point where we would need someone to tell us that we are going to be just fine, because the truth is that no, we will not be, at least not until we can begin to see through the darkness that has become our pain to the light that will release us, even as some of us are still physically living with these people who took who we are and turned it into something that we would never be...

...something other than our True Selves.

Once you have regained your Self you will find that your Voice is that part of you that the world has done without not because you had the idea in your head that you might not get heard, but rather and only because one other person decided for you that your Voice was not ever that important to them, so why would it be important to anyone else?

Because. It is. You Are! You belong here in this life and you deserve to be heard...the real you keeps telling you over and over again to let her out...

You gonna start listening?

I LOVE YOU ALL !!
Roxanne

Friends...the family that isn't blood

Abuse Survivors Need Emotional Support...
...the reasons you need your friends are more important than you think they are!


When this madness of being someone else's victim became a part of my life I'd already "lost" a lot of my support system. Even as I take a quick glance back to the past and know that there were some 'friends' who were not really friends I see, too, that there were others who were there for me, who are still there for me, and these are the friends that I am talking about.

The main objective when it comes to an abuser is that the abuser wants to make sure that his or her victim has no support system - they want their victim completely dependent on them. Many victims fall prey to the line "...I want to be your everything - you don't need your friends. I am all you need," and while that, on its face, might seem like the abuser totally loves their victim, the truth is that the abuser is simply trying  (and usually succeeds) to make their victim live in a world of social isolation.

For some folks this is fine - they love being alone and they love the solitude, and I know this because this is the way that I had been for a long time. Yet, when it comes to the idea that even the lonest of lone wolves having at least the smallest circle of friends  -which I did at the time - even these people end up losing what little they have in means of a support group. I loved my friends, needed them, wanted them around and wanted the person I'd married and my little group of friends to like each other. My first red flag should have been that this person did all he could to make sure that I knew he was all I needed according to him. Eventually he wore me down and little by little, day by day, he'd made sure that what he thought of my friends was what I believed that I thought of them, too.

Don't get me wrong - I know that we all grow out of the people who served us with our life lessons when the time was that we were learning said lessons, but to not be able to fulfill the need for friends in my life was almost like trying to run a race with one leg and a flimsy dowel - while it might have been able to happen, the most likely thing to happen did happen - I gave up my relationships with people who I'd loved and been with for much of my life, and it was not for my own benefit but for his. He was not comfortable with people, his self esteem crushed by a selfish set of parents who'd only wanted children for the sake of living vicariously through them.

We cannot pin our hopes of self-actualization on anything substantial if we are more willing to give away the power to connect with someone else. When we are willing to do more for one other person and take more away from our own selves for the benefit of their self we ultimately also give up our rights as free beings, and this is the thing that is the hardest to recapture - the freedom of just Being who we really are. Abusers, I have found, like being surrounded by people who are just like they are and the more self unaware their victims are the better they feel about things. This is a good reason as to why it is not a good idea that the age of "adulthood" and the age at which we are allowed in this country to do as we please be left at the tender, fresh-outta-high-school age of barely 18. When a person is that young they have not yet had a taste of life the way that it is meant to be. NO one that age can make any sort of adult decision, at least for the collective most part, because they simply have not had time yet to have experiences such as paying their own bills, buying a house, and getting married. Young people have no idea of who they are yet, so how can they even begin to know anything about anyone else?

Your real friends will be there for you, with you, through it all - cherish them


If there is one thing that this entire two-decade time span has shown me is that I really do know who my true friends are. They are those people who, for whatever reasons they have, have been willing to get in my face about what I am going through, telling me that they are worried about me, that I am worthy of so much more than only what one person thinks is the truth of me, and while it may be that it is his truth, it doesn't mean that it is also mine or that it ever has been.

Your real friends are the ones who, even when they are very angry with you, love you enough to tell you when they have seen you go through too much and that they need you to be strong, if not for them then for your damned self. Your real friends are the ones who, even though they know, and even though you know, that the things that you are telling them about your situation are not all the facts and your real friends are the ones who will not pry, will not tell you what you have already heard a million times. Your real friends will never tell you anything to put you in danger, and your real friends (and this is the biggie) will Love you, always, no matter what, and they will not be shy with what they know to be their truth about your situation, but also are not the people who will leave you with no one and nothing to fall back on.

In short, through it all, your real friends will be there, even when they aren't. They will have your back and you will know that they have your back. They will not judge you, even though they have their own opinions of what you are going through and how you are handling your own situation. They will never question why it is that you would bother with this person, but when you give them your reason, they will accept it and still Love you anyway. Your real friends will never tell you that you should just leave and your real friends will never tell you to kick this person out because your real friends will already know that doing either will leave you in very real danger. They will never assume you to be the "typical" victim because they will already know that you are not.

Your real friends will be there, regardless, and your real friends will make sure that above all else, you are Loved and Cherished, and your real friends, yes, will always, always, always tell you that they think you should get out of the situation, but they will also make sure that you understand that the most important thing that you need to know is that they are only telling you this because they care and not because it is what they would do. Your real friends will know that they are not in your shoes, so your real friends will not ever "go there" because your real friends are your real friends because your real friends Love you because you are You.


...any questions?

No? Good!!

I Love You All !!
ROX

We are all Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens...we all have the strength and the glory of Ix

There comes a time when a victim becomes a survivor...


...no one ever plans to be abused, but it happens to the best of us. 


We all heal at one point or another.

We all wake up one day and think about the first time that it happened to us, and we look at ourselves in the mirror, and we see either a shiny new version of ourselves or we see what someone else has always seen. The trick in this is not that we see what we do but that we accept what we see. Healing, I have found, is not about feeling better only, but about the journey that every person who has been abused must take - the road back to the Self.

And I speak much of the Self in all of its Divinity.

There is a lot that happens when first you are abused, when first all the things that you thought were the truth become a lie - a horrible lie that no one ever told you is a possibility. The only thing you ever saw was a happy union between two adults and that was your ideal of what a relationship with someone else was. Then one day you wake up realizing that while that is the ideal, it is, more and more these days, namely if you have been through the hell that all abuse survivors go through, is the thing that makes good women cringe because most of the time, it is a good woman who is abused.

Then there are those who would use a false claim of abuse against an innocent person, and that innocent person's life is suddenly shaken up and turned inside, out, and the accused must prove that he or she didn't do what was blamed on them. This is an insult to people like me. These lies are the worst of all because as an abuse survivor one knows well the psychological and spiritual hell that a person goes through when they are being beaten, when they are being belittled, when they are so afraid of everything and everyone and when you are not sure who you can trust.

Then one day, you see through the haze that was your life and suddenly, all that made no sense very suddenly makes sense, and once again you can see your true self...


Ix..pronounced "eesh," is the Mayan Symbol of the Jaguar, of the High Priestess, of the Queen of the Jungle...

It is the Jaguar spirit which we all possess, bringing with her the feline femininity which is equated with the power within. It is this power, this spirit that eventually becomes an abused person, an abused woman, and at that point, the battered woman and the soul of the Ix within her become one.

She is stealthy with her movements, and cunning in thought, and as the days pass her strength can be seen and felt, and her power is what makes her beautiful.

What no one ever thinks about when they are being beaten is that one day the thing that we named "weakness" becomes the power within. It is the Ix within which brings us to the point where we choose to no longer be seen as the victim that once we were but now, now we see only the empowerment that came with the perceived weakness that at one point, we each were...

...welcome to the other side of the long, dark jungle...

I Love You All !!
Rox

(c) Roxanne Cottell/ Twisted Kitty Promotions, all rights reesrved. twistedkittyrocks@yahoo.com

More about the Child Within

Sometimes, it is the child within who is the wisest


No one promised us that life will be without challenges


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

You will just know...


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

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

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

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

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

I Love You All !!

..Rox

The Sins of the Father...

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


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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

It is not easy to let go of stuff


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

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

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


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

I think not.

The Ego and the Truth of things


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

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

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

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

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

As Always...

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

...with your daughter in mind...

Political affiliation has zero to do with VAWA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

As always...

I Love You All !

ROX