When Abuse Happens

"None of this is your fault"

I wanted to get back to you today because I was thinking about how I felt in the beginning. I wanted to make sure I explained how we tend to doubt ourselves when we're in an abusive relationship, and there are perfectly good reasons why.

First of all, most abusers are very practiced at pointing the finger at someone else when things aren't going their way. This means they will often have a very slanted way of making you doubt yourself and your feelings. They do this passively using statements that quietly point back to you and take the responsibility away from them. They "love" hooking up with women who are "responsible" because they know you'll take responsibility when they need to point their finger at you. These are some examples of how they might try to make you doubt yourself.

"I'm hurt you think I would want to make you feel bad."
"I hope you don't think that I would want to hurt you."
"I can't believe you think I did that on purpose."

Each of these, and there are many others, could very well give you the feeling that "you're" not thinking right: either you're not hearing him, or you're taking things the wrong way. Can you see the words here that point the guilt and responsibility back to you? This is very important to remember: they want to make you doubt yourself. If you doubt yourself, it's easier to keep you under their control. And when they play with your heart strings, even better. If he can make you feel as though you're the one who caused the problem, then he's off the hook.

As well, if you start to doubt yourself, it makes it easier for him to convince you that it's all your fault, or that he didn't mean it or that he'll never do it again.

Here's the kicker...you will always have a spirit within you that will respond to something that isn't true like these kinds of statements. We often call this our "gut feeling" or a ripple that trickles through you. And, it's far more accurate than anything anyone else can try and convince you of.

Remember: an abuser will play games with your head and your heart in order to dominate you. You don't have to let him, and it is doesn't have to be this way. Trust yourself and that little spark inside your gut that pings when something just doesn't seem to be the way it should be...because your gut feeling will be RIGHT ON.

Remember: there is an "Agenda" at work here to make you doubt yourself. I'm here to tell you, "None of this is your fault" and "You don't have to feel guilty."

Before I sign off today, one more thing. If you are in an abusive relationship, don't panic. Stay calm and learn and listen. I will walk you through what you need to know to safely change your situation...one step at a time. Whatever you do, keep our conversations "Private." Don't give him any reason to mistrust what you're doing right now, especially if you're planning on leaving. So, don't change what you're doing right now...lay low, keep your head down and don't send up any red flags.

You must take your time, stay safe, and do this very methodically. And, if you're at the stage where you're starting to wonder about the dynamics of your relationship, take some time to carefully learn for sure if you'll be in trouble with him in the future. He didn't get this way over night, and you shouldn't end the relationship quickly because that could be dangerous. Wait until you can be certain you can do it safely.

Reaching out to me, can be your first step. And I will teach you how to escape so you stay safe.
Please comment or ask questions...and stay in touch. I'm here for you...

The 3rd Energy

"Then he hit me again. My head snapped back against the wall,
and my glasses flew across the room. I could tell my lip was
bleeding as the liquid warmth slipped down my chin. The pain
rang through my head like a gun blast. It was all happening in
slow motion. Would he kill me? Could he kill me?

Betrayal was going to look very different from here on."

No more important diagram has ever been given to me than the ones in this article. As you're aware, I am a survivor from an abusive relationship. Well, actually from several. The important part is that I made it out alive. One of the reasons I have broken the cycle of abuse is because of diagrams like these. My mentor, Roann, has therefore been instrumental in my escape and continued growth toward a modicum of wisdom on relationships.

We all hope and some pray we find the perfect mate and we devote an awful lot of time, energy and attention to the task. Some, for no apparent reason at all, manage to find the perfect match, and some even manage to find their soulmate. Ah, what a wonderful thing. However, I was not quite so lucky. In fact, I survived nine abusers over the years, each one with their very own brand of torment from kidnapping, rape and stalking to emotional, physical and mental abuse so I guess I can call myself a bit of an expert in this department. I've seen them all.

Looking back all I really wanted to do was to complete "the picture" that I was shown as a child: 2.3 kids, 2 car garage, white picket fence...etc, you know, just like good old mom and dad. And it was easy to overlook some of the flaws of my suitors because "not everyone is perfect." After a great deal of anguish, sadness, fear and pain, I finally put my foot down and said, "No more." I became a student of human dynamics for the next eleven years. This diagram, had I seen it in the very beginning, had I been given the "recipe" for the perfect relationship, my story would have read very differently. The 3rd Energy has become my new picture...

Here you see two circles representing two individuals. They are equal and separate, and then they come together. The dynamics of their relationship will depend entirely on how they "VALUE" each other. When there is balance in a relationship, both people offer strength, help, support, encouragement and anything else their partner might need, and they offer it without obligation of any kind. This diagram is a representation of this idea.

In some relationships when one person dominates over the other, this is a perfect picture of what is happening. This picture shows the imbalance. This kind of relationship can be hurtful, demeaning, devaluing, fearful and/or painful as the dominant partner powers-over the other in many different ways. There is no 3rd Energy or soft place to fall...only fear, self-doubt, sorrow, frustration and eventually resentment where love used to be.

My husband of six years broke his promise that night. I knew I could never trust him again. And I also knew that if I left him, I'd loose everything. There would be no job, no home, no income, no car and certainly no money if I left. It was a huge decision. I was very grateful the kids were grown and gone and I was making this decision for only me.

Today, I'm glad I made the decision to get out because it was all a fantasy anyway. And fantasies always end sooner or later. I lost everything, it's true. But what I gained could never be valued through money or fame or things. What happened as a result of leaving would become the cost of my healing and it was well worth the time and effort. I am now more whole than I've ever been in my life, and I'm at a place where peace is starting to surround me more and more. I can finally smile again...and mean it.

Please...don't let it be too late to change your destiny. If you are in an abusive relationship, please come back and read this blog. I promise I will continue to give you tools that will help you survive too. Make comments on what I'm writing, ask questions, talk to me...especially if you have no one else you can trust. I will help you...just as someone else helped me.

Mother Nature's Power

I dated a guy once who was white and First Nations. I should mention that the First Nations part runs very deep because it's in me as well. I hadn't realized how much it had influenced me cause I grew up as a little white girl until later in life. Some of the things I learned being around my grandfather, who was half and half, still beat within my chest to this day and influence much of my life. Anyway, Rob took me out for target practise one day at the local gravel pit. This was in Zeballos, a tiny wee town on the west coast of Vancouver Island where he was fishing at the time.

He lined up the usual tin cans on a log near the foot of the cliff. Then he showed me how to safely load the gun, set it to my shoulder, line up the sight and fire. I was pretty cocky back then and hit a can with the first bullet. It made me feel really good when he commented on my amazing feat. I aimed again, and decided the cans were too easy, so I pointed up and toward a flock of crows that were flying around near the top of the cliff. From over my shoulder I heard a very steady, deep voice, "If you kill it, you eat it." Rob had an incredible respect for Mother Nature, and on that day I learned just how much. He used to say to never take more than you need and he always reminded me of the power of Mother Nature when we were out on the water fishing.

Native people know about conservation. They successfully gathered and fished and hunted from the land and sea for thousands of years without once bringing a single species to extinction. Today, it seems every species that lives on the earth is in jeopardy except perhaps dogs and cats because we happen to have found a particular use for them that encourages us to keep them alive. They're more fun to walk when they're alive!

The other day I was listening to a documentary about global warming and how things will start to drastically change once we increase the global temperature by over 1 degree. To date we've managed to get to .8 degrees which is close enough to 1 degree, if you ask me. Anyway, I started to think about Mother Nature and Her power. To me, all of those powers that make things happen: that which causes plants and trees to grow toward the sun, the physics behind black holes, miracles, gravity and other such things is what makes up God. The Universe, although seemingly chaotic and random, is no such thing. It is the perfect "fractal geometry" to which everything results.

And Mother Nature...well, She will always "balance" something that is imbalanced. If we spew tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and cause an imbalance in the temperature of the globe, She will certainly cause something that will "put us in our place." Just as the increasing temperature will surely melt the ice caps, the resulting rise in the level of the ocean will wipe out many highly populated areas along many, many coastlines. She will be saying to us that we are what must be decreased because we created the problem! How many people will have to die before balance is acheived, or can we get smart in time to decrease the emissions before we become Her target? We might do well to ask ourselves that question on a regular basis.

I can see our future now. As we increase the temperature by two, then three degrees, we will literally have to "shut down" parts of the country to decrease the carbon emissions until the earth can rebalance. No small task. Imagine that your work week becomes three days instead of five simply because you work in a specific industry that will be shut down two days a week for the next three years to reduce carbon emissions. Or, perhaps you're working in a city where half of it is now under water...and the rest of you suddenly need a boat to get to work, a row boat no less. Perhaps your part of the country is on a metered system whereby when your area gets to a certain usage of power each day, everything automatically shuts off. How about only being allowed to have one light bulb at home, and no cooking, computers or television six days a week?

Don't laugh. The alternatives to conservation are not pretty. The US needs to stop digging for more oil and Natural Gas (that's a huge oxymoron if I ever heard one) and seek to replace as much fossil fuel consumption with sun, wind and water power. How stupid have we been to believe spewing carbon into the atmosphere as we have could result in anything but destruction? The answer seems pretty simple if you think about it...

Spirit Talk

The word "Spirit" conjures up a wide variety of things. To some, Spirit is connected to God somehow, as in The Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to some it means the soul, to others they think of the spirit of giving or the human spirit and so on. For me, I must explain my Spirit as the sacred essence of me. So, what does that mean? It's a difficult thing to explain, as evidenced by the millions who have tried before me.

I have used a metaphor in the past that actually worked quite well, and I'll share it with you here. To me, Spirit is that which I have come here to be. And so, I liken my Spirit to a seed. Within each seed lies the exact ingredients of what each will eventually produce, nothing more, nothing less. The seed doesn't need any instructions in order to produce the resulting plant, just a little care and attention like water, sun and soil. The sacred essence of the seed will always burst forth exactly what it should given a fair chance and a little rain. Spirit works exactly the same way.

What ends up happening with humans however is that we can get in the way of our own bursting forth due to logic, pain, fear, sorrow, need, insecurities and basically just life in general. Regardless of the chaos in life, our essence remains entirely whole and exactly as it should within. The trick is being able to "get back" to that inner essence, our Spirit, when the world has us so distracted and frustrated we can hardly think straight. There is much peace to be realized to know that Spirit never wavers, never changes and is never asleep, and that we can tap back into it whenever we wish to. The only prerequisite is that we "want" to.

Picture the seed again. The plant comes "from" the seed but it doesn't "return" to the seed. This is the only place the metaphor doesn't work because we "come from" Spirit but we can also "return" to it. Spirit is always there, holding within it's wisdom, exactly what we were meant to realize while we're here. This makes Spirit the Sacred Essence, something that cannot be changed, given away, sold, bought or ever lost.

Tapping into this resource is slightly different than just "thinking" your way to happiness however like some would have you believe. Suffice it to say that behaviours are what we do, the meaning something has for you is the reason you do it. Changing the meaning that something has for you is the only way to tap into the resources that truly alter things in your life. Just "thinking" about something, is just thinking about something. Find peace and strength in knowing that Spirit is always there, just as it should be, unchanged, unaffected by life and waiting to guide you toward your true purpose...just like a little seed.