Tag: viewpoints

  • My Truth Against Me

    The battle of the Blogs continue…and I wonder what its real agenda is?  What is the real meat of the discontentment and why does it really matter who writes what or if at all.  

    What I have found upon writing period, whether it be on a blog or not, is that if you write long enough, the truth will emerge…like magic.  If you want to know the answers, writing it out seems to straighten out the mind, so you can find a trail.

    In my pursuit of my own truth writing was and is my greatest tool.

    I write to understand me.  

    In writing I have learned a huge amount about me.  It has been a conversation between me and myself and I have shared this by putting it out in blog form.

    Due my history which I can't escape from, I write from the viewpoint of my history.  I am a woman who was raised in a very strict religion and was raped by my father. 

    The affects of having grown up in that environment changed who I was…it altered me, tilted me, put me on an awkward slant.  It had me seeing the world as a woman with a mental disease.

    Where abuse was a 'normal' life.

    My writings have been to right me.

    To untilt my beliefs.

    To see what abuse touched and to straighten out my mind.

    I write to see clearly, that which I am not able to see.

    I have learned what the affects have done to me and what I passed on to my children.

    I have learned how I left abuse…how I operated with my life due to this backwards start.  

    My blog is a public document of my private struggle.

    Having lived for 46 year so disingenuously, my razor sharp focus now is to be impeccable with my word and to follow them with actions of the same.  I aim to walk my talk.

    I know the cost of not facing my truth…so it is my intent to now live my truth as I know it.  And along the way point out things that I feel are off for me.  

    When they are off or don't seem quite right….I move away.  In the past, I may have stayed out of fear of reprisals, but not any more. Fear doesn't keep me frozen unable to change as life dictates.

    I love that I am free to support a blog and then free to change my mind. I love that others are free to read and then free not to read.  I love that they are free to agree or not agree.  Free to comment or not.  

    Blogging is indeed another vehicle of communication…what you say when you speak is up to you.  If you want to communicate with certain blogs, again up to you.  Or if you want to silently ride along, that too is up to you.  

    My blog tends to push buttons, for it is delving into sacred grounds that are typically unchallenged and usually not aired out in public. I am putting myself out there for anyone to take potshots and they do. I am shining lights upon subjects, people and beliefs that some fear to have disclosed.  I totally understand that I am breaking the unwritten rules.

    I am not being passive and apathetic or pleasing to get along…I am willing to share my life experiences, coming from whence I came….and talking about the two very influential life changing forces…Abuse and Religion… Two hot button subjects.

    I make no apologies…or step softly around items that I know will explode if I dare oppose. I step anyway.  

    Abuse thrives due to walking quietly around it, by whispering instead of putting it out where all can see.

    I have been convicted in the family court for knowing and saying nothing….I will not make that same mistake again.  If I know, If I feel, If I suspect….I will share.

    Tom Rosemergy is the first person I tell when I hear a new name.

    When I discover a new truth, it usually arrives on the blog.  This has been my vehicle to be an open book to read…for in the past, I was way too silent.

    In the past my silence was a vehicle that abuse used.

    Again, there are very few blogs about abuse within the FALC, or ex-members talking candid about their experiences, it isn't always easy to discern the value each blog has.

    My blog will not be of value to those who are in support of the church. My blog will not be of value for those who are not victims of abuse. My blog will not be of value for those who want to remain in toxic relationships. 

    Certainly there will be voyeurs into my life, who then go on and use it to disparage me…who will turn it with their own minds.  I can't control how other people see me.  

    What I have found is that when I am comfortable with my truth, you can't use my truth against me.

     

     

     

     

     

  • I am Lens Free

    When you write your story on a blog you are offering up the opportunity for others to plunge themselves into your story, to come in and walk awhile in your life.

    It is amazing the types of responses you get from others when you display your life on a blog.

    Some come in and bare some of our pain, add bits of wisdom and cheer us on.  These experienced travelers lend us their strength that helps us continue forward.  These cheerleaders are priceless. 

    And the other half or maybe three fourths are out to make our truth into lies by showing us their side.

    What is a lie to one side seems to be the truth to the other.

    That is why there are two sides.

    And the truth stands alone.  However, depending upon which side you are standing on you will look upon it differently.  Very few will face the truth head on.

    What I didn’t know in the beginning is that the reader is made to explore their own lives and feel if what you say is true for them or not.

    That half of writing is reading.

    The reading part I wasn’t paying attention to, for I was the writer part.  I didn’t know how the reader would feel reading what I wrote and I never paid attention to that and still won’t.

    I am not writing for the reader’s ease or comfort or even their understanding.  I am writing for me.  What I am doing is offering a view of my online journal to all who chose to read.

    It validates my life to put it in writing, for I am in a sea of known strangers who can’t seem to understand me, and if I didn’t have this space to connect to, sometimes I would feel like I am disconnected and floating in space.

    I need this connection to anchor me to me.

    You fail to realize how much your life gets anchored by others, until there is no place to hook into. 

    In the beginning it felt like I was the only one who was seeing reality with my view.  I was looking with eyes unshielded and others had these weird lenses that contorted even simple things into complex issues.

    They looked at reality through the lenses of family and religion, and if it didn’t fit that mold, it was reconfigured.

    I took off the glasses of family and religion, setting them aside, and life took on whole different view.

    For the first time I could see life outside of the frames of religion and family.  I could see independently.

    I no longer had to make reality fit into their rules and traditions; instead life got to flow free.

    It didn't have to work for family or for the religion, it just had to be.

    It was amazing and scary and horrific.  To now see what I hadn’t seen with the lenses on.

    I can tell when people read my story with the lenses on or with the lenses off. 

    I am writing without a lens…and can’t help how others see it.

    I just know that you can change my story to say something else if you are wearing the lenses of family or the lenses of the FALC.

    It matters and it will change how you view me.

    But what doesn’t change is how I view myself, for I am lens free! 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • With your loving support.

    My old definition of marriage was the joining of two people of like minds, and perhaps friendship held this too, but that you both viewed life from the same space and often responded to life with the same footsteps.

    Your histories and life pathways joined together for you shared similarities.

    I now find myself yoked to a man who hasn’t lived life as I have, hasn’t had to walk the same footsteps I have had to take, and we are dissimilar in the way we now respond to life as it happens.

    The yoke that held us close together didn’t matter, for we were the heading in the same direction, speaking in the same language and doing the same response.

    Now it feels odd, like our yoke is gone, and we are two separated individuals doing our own thing.

    Great freedom to be who you are, doing what you love, honoring your differences etc…all good and well, until your differences become a weak spot when combined.

    I have zero tolerance for abuse and he hasn’t been affected by it like I have so, he truly doesn’t grasp the affects, nor will he; his loving trusting belief in others is a weakness when you are dealing with abuse.

    Abuse and its manipulators can get away with what they do, for they bank on your trust and your kind nature and that you won’t hold them accountable for what they do.

    They rely on you seeing their behavior as an anomaly in their otherwise normal world.

    What we fail to appreciate is that the anomaly is the truth and all the ‘normal’ behavior is a shield to hide it.

    What I trust now, is what do they do when they are asked to stand with or against abuse, no matter who it is that is doing the abusing, be it a friend, a spouse, a father, mother, sister, brother, is who they are.

    I see who you are by who you support.

    The greatest weakness and hole that a perpetrator, or even an abusive man hurting a woman, uses is that we trust and believe that they are more good than bad.

    We want to believe that they just had a moment of confusion, a slip of control, a ‘moment of weakness’ but that all in all, they are good people.

    If we all stopped and cut our old opinions up the moment abuse entered the picture, we would save a lot of little children and even young adults who find themselves in a relationship that is detrimental to their well being.

    It is the stopping and not continuing that is the key.

    When people show you who they are, believe them. Damn it, Believe them.

    It seems so easy, so simple and yet time and time again, abuse slips by attached to the one you love.

    Attached to the one you trust.

    Attached to the old relationship, the kind man, the loving brother, abuse is attached to them, and you just refuse to see it.

    Oh, yeah…sometimes you see it but you will not toss out the old relationship for one little act of abuse.

    Or for one little moment of supporting abuse…we overlook the supporting for they too may be someone we love and trust.

    It is this blind trusting faith in a person who has abuse attached to them that keeps this cycle going, the legacy of abuse is mostly to blame on the ones who love and trust the ones with abuse attached to them.

    I never knew that abuse thrived more because of the love and trust than it did because of the driving desire of the perpetrator.

    In my one experience with abuse, if you don’t see the abuse attached to your loved one, and you continue to have relationships with him, then abuse gets attached to you.

    You are now the carrier, the supporter and the accomplice.

    The ‘love, trust and belief’ that my family had in my father has allowed him to be a free man.

    Each one of them who didn’t not see the abuse attached to him, now are carrying his legacy forward, in love, trust and faith in a man who gives abuse back.

    So, each time I am faced with a similar type event in my world, where abuse is attached. I see abuse and let the rest fall away.

    Again, the greatest supporter of abuse is love, trust and faith.

    Imagine?

    And yet the schools are teaching, good touch bad touch.
    Stop.

    They need to teach that we have the right to revoke friendship, love and trust, we can withdraw it at any time.

    So, my loving trusting and believing husband and I are on the opposite sides of this and my behavior seems harsh and so narrow minded. And it is.

    What I needed the most as a little girl was for someone to see the abuse, to act with the abuse and to see me and not see the man who clothed and fed 14 children, a lumberman, a hardworking, not asking for anything man.

    I needed one eye to see me, one ear to hear me, one hand to hold me, and to let him go. Instead all eyes, ears and hands reached out to him and they let me go.

    Me the abused child.

    Refusing to let his image of goodness die, instead they let me fade away, the one ‘insane’ voice against many.

    The majority wins; abuse will prevail…with your loving support.

    (What happens when in one home you have opposing voices?)