Tag: abuser

• Unconditionally loving the Abuser.

  As human beings we are used to riding along and adjusting to change, but we are not used to being “the change you want to see in your world” as Gandhi put it.

  We want change and we want it now, but we don’t want the change to start with us.

  Most of us change only when forced, when death or tragedy impacts our lives, but rarely do we actively make changes.

  Besides the lack of being a self-starter, we find it impossible to see the enemies that walk among us, for we have called them friends and family.  (This of course is only for those of us who suffered abuse within our family homes, in our friendly neighborhoods, and churches.)

  Since 90% of the abuse happens with someone we know, and 50% with family members, that leaves only 10% to be strangers.

  The changes that need to happen are folks need to start treating family and friends like strangers.

  I know this seems backwards, but so is abuse.

  The legacy of abuse will continue to flow in your family unless and until you start treating folks who abuse like enemies of family and love, for they are.

  They are not there to instill a safe secure environment, nor sowing love and kindness, they are inside infesting the core values of what family means.

  Abusers can’t be treated the same as members of the family who mean no harm.

  In order to stop abuse, you all have to stop treating abusers like constructive members of your family, but rather the destructive people they are.

  They need to get help, be taken out of the family, isolated…in order to preserve the family’s integrity.

   However, in my experience, the child (grown adult child) must leave in order to feel safe, for the perpetrator was not made to go. 

  He was cared for and protected within the family unit.

  This is the sole reason that abuse continues.  The family refuses to treat him like a stranger who came in and abused the girls.

  And as it stands today, I am treated like a stranger and he like a family member.

  This backwards treatment alone keeps abuse going.

  Most don’t want to speak up and act like I did, for they know the outcome.  So instead of being alone, they will be part of keeping the legacy of abuse going.

  What happens is you become a stranger to your family as you fight against abuse…and for most that is too big a price to pay, so they will settle back into the comfortable routine of being a family…unconditionally loving the abuser.

   

  October 4, 2011

  abuse, abuser, childhood, families, loving, sexual, stopping, The

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• Keeping Our Family Sweet

  I am drawn to stories of adult children who have escaped cult like religions and who speak out about the abuse they endured, and the juxtaposition between religion and abuse.

   

  The severity of the abuse almost seems equal to the severity of the religious beliefs, the stricter the more deviant the abuse.

   

  There seems to be a common theme of obeying.

   

  As Brent W. Jeffs writes in his book “Lost Boy” when speaking of his mother.

   

  “Her life was focused on following the church’s command to Keep Sweet.  This meant to submitting to its rules and leader and through him, God, not grudgingly but happily.” 

   

  “Submitting happily.”

   

  Under the veil of religion unspeakable things happen, and due to the ‘nature’ of religion we are seen worse for not submitting happily. 

   

  They focus on how we respond, not what has happened.  How do we accept being abused, am I a good abused girl?

   

  What does it mean in the eyes of the church to be a good abused girl?

   

  What is beyond what a mind can hold is that the focus and guilt or shame is put upon the child IF she can’t keep sweet. 

   

  I am the one with the problem, it’s my response, NOT him in his crime against me.  It is how I responded that is seen as a major fault.

   

  What I still find so utterly unfathomable is the guilt or wrongness I feel for not keeping sweet. 

   

  It is almost like feeling bad for not living the lie anymore, a feeling of being guilty for no longer pretending.

   

  The focus is on us no longer keeping sweet and that is a crime that is against the family rules, a sin that is punishable by shunning or being excommunicated.

   

  They don’t shun the criminal, but the one who fails to respond as the religion dictates.

   

  I had an adult woman tell me that there is no sin to big to forgive.  Laying the guilt upon me, IF I could not forgive this deed and remain a loving daughter.

   

  The religion doesn’t leave room for the child, no matter what age to move away from the abuser.

   

  While the forgiveness wipes the abuser clean, it leaves the abused pretending to be clean when we are not.

   

  The whole system that religion operates under, works wonderfully well for abusers and offers nothing for the abused.

   

  When I spoke up I paved my way out of the religion and out of my family.  I broke both their rules.

   

  Keeping our family sweet.

   

   

   

  September 1, 2010

  abuse, abuser, abusive, beliefs, Brent W. Jeffs, child, faith, forgiveness, keep sweet, Lost Boy, pedopiles, religious

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