SAHM? Waste of my life.

Before my children were born, I determined they were going to know love, exuberant love, all of their days.  Oh my, like many unloved people, I wanted to make sure they got all the things I never did.  I played with them, made sure they were surrounded by creative toys and opportunities. I took lots of pictures and made scrapbooks so they would feel celebrated and important.  If you read here, you know I home schooled- and I did it all the way, with plenty of crafts, models, projects and field trips.  I tried to be both mother and father to my children, especially my son, since Dad was always traveling and emotionally unavaliable when he was home.

And if they were sick, I took very good care of them.  I took them to the doctor, gave them nebulizer treatments, bought them special food and drink to try to ease the process.  I was always especially nurturing when they didn't feel well.

I thought that by my sacrifices and service to  my children that they would learn two foundational truths: that they were loved and worth loving, and in turn that they would also be drawn to live a life of loving sacrifice.  These were my aims, the values I had full confidence I was teaching in word and example.

But nope.  That is not what took.

What took is that mom is a doormat.

Oh, and my son has bad self-esteem issues.  Because you see, he does not see my sacrifice and service as worth much.  I was not a person of great worth, humbling herself to serve him. That was my intent, to confer honor on him, to show him that he was of high worth by laying down my other options in life to serve him.  This was not the message he received.

He saw all that as just mom's job.  Same with my daughter.  They didn't respect me and appreciate my sacrifice.  It didn't cause them to believe they were valuable or worthy, because they did not see mom as having all that much value.  The person serving them was a worthless bitch whose job in life was to serve others.  So, they were no impressed by my service than they are the hotel maid's service.  That's her job to be a nameless, faceless servant, and in the same way it was my job to be their mother.

Not only that, but all those days I managed to stay cheerful, optimistic and gentle counted for nothing.  Nada.  Nope, the days that counted were the days I cracked, the days I couldn't take any more of the opposition, and I raised my voice in frustration.

Now readers,  I do realize that most of this is because of their father's opinion of me and his reactions to me.  They clearly followed his lead.  The damage that his abuse did to me is really, when it boils right down to it, unforgiveable.  He made of mockery of me, of my faith and all I held dear and tried to accomplish.  He never sought God at all, had no heart of love, didn't pray, didn't teach the children (or try to, because apparently I didn't either, though I tried day and night) compassion or love or kindness.  He taught them to be self-centered and judgemental.  He taught them to hate their mother.  He taught them to despise me and feel superior to me.  And his lessons, apparently, took.

The biggest values of my life, the daily exercise of a living faith, my children reject. It was very important to me that they not smoke, as my bio dad died of lung cancer.  They both smoke.  I'm the only one in the family who wants to go back to church, the only one (as far as I know) who prays regularly for the rest of this family. As far as I can tell I'm the only one who thinks and plans how to be a blessing to the other members of this family.

And here is my reward: to find out that when my kids were teens at home, and they knew I was in physical need (lack of sleep, wheezing, sick with bronchitis), they did not put their heads together to find ways to bless me or help me.  They got together to declare it a "high alert" day because I was probably going to be more easily frustrated than usual at the lack of cooperation and more prone to yelling in exasperation and frustration.

They decided together to avoid me and ignore me when I was in need, not to mention self-righteously judge me.  That's what all my compassionate care when they were sick taught them.  It taught them that I was not important.  

 The example of their father, who was barely even home, had far greater influence on how they felt about me (themselves, life) than all the days of my loving sacrifice as a SAHM/home educator.They learned to despise me  from their father, and when I was sick, or tired, or over-burdened then they abandoned me.  My state of weakness caused them to despise me more.

It was a waste of my life to love these people.  It did nothing for them as far as passing on the values I held most dear, and it certainly did nothing for me.  I did not build the "household of faith" that I strived to create.  My FOO despised me, and the family I created myself also despised me.

I can not adequately express how devastated I am by this realization.

Yesterday, I was having trouble with my asthma (haven't had that happen in two years).  I still made it a point to bless my son with something he wanted and needed me to acquire.  I sacrificed my time and health, took precious energy and hours of my life, in spite of my asthma, TO SERVE MY SON IN LOVE.

Did he appreciate it? NO,  he totally ignored my needs, focused on what he wanted, and was put out when I insisted that we take time to meet my physical needs.  I was kind to his boyfriend, and careful to wait until we were alone to tell him how I felt about his being rude to me.  I expected a quick apology and reassurance that he was distracted or he would never ignore me like that, or be put out about helping me when I was sick.

 His response was to start yelling at me!  Seriously. I did take up for myself and tell him to stop being an asshole, but guess what happened next?  Yes, true to his father's form, he found fault with me for calling him names.  I get used and abused, and then he tries to play the moral superiority card because I wasn't happy about it.  My frustration at his disrespect and lack of concern for my weakened physical state is considered the grave moral failing, not using people or ignoring the needs of the sick.

That scripture, Proverbs 31, where a husband and children praise the virtuous wife and mother?  That does not apply to abused women.  That only applies when a husband has honored and appreciated his wife in front of his kids, and in private conversations with them.  That does not apply to my life.

Oh my.  I can't believe I threw myself so whole-heartedly into serving my family.  I was a true believer, you guys.  I really believed, honestly and with all my heart believed, everything would work out well because of my loving service.  Love never fails.  I believed that.

Except where it is not valued.  Love from a person that is not valued does not confer worth to the person being loved.  They will despise it as worthless if they deem the person offering it as having low worth.  

Well, the bright side is that now I will have no problem selling this house.  This house is covered with photos of my children and my loving service to my children.  I want to just go and pack them all away now, and not wait until I pack to move out of here. They mock me.  They tell me that all the love, the service, the genuine concern, the thoughtfulness was all ONE WAY.  I am the biggest chump on the planet.

I came over time to painfully discover all the love was only ONE WAY in my marriage, and I thought that was worse thing I would ever experience.  Having my son show no compassion for my physical weakness yesterday, and no appreciation for the time and effort I took out of my day to serve him, that made me angry.  But calling my daughter, and finding out that for years, she and my son have made a concerted effort to avoid me when I needed compassion and help them most, that, THAT is knife in my heart.  

I should probably go back to therapy.

Unconditional Respect= Participation Trophies?

Growing up I always had a special attraction to World War II stories.  I was taught to lionize Corrie Ten Boom and others who stood up against the Nazis, risking their lives to protect others.  I fell in love with Dietrich Boenhoffer.  I read Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I read about Jane Addams, Mary Bethune, Mother Jones and Amy Carmicheal.  These men and women were heroes because they took a personal stand against injustice.  I knew that all good people should aspire to be like them.

All good people would of course include all good Christians.  I did not study the long history of injustice and abuse sometimes instigated by the church (pogroms) and other times promoted by the church (Nazi propoganda) and in some cases merely given tacit approval by the church (Ku Klux Klan).  If I had, if Christians would study the dark side of their own history, maybe we wouldn't be so prone to repeat it.  But regardless, I grew up respecting these people because of their character and their accomplishments.

The church was supposed to lead a love revolution on the planet. This was Jesus' command, to love one another.  This was Jesus' example, to go about doing good.  This true Christianity still survives, but not in the Christian publishing empire.  Nope, the visible church is once again at time instigating abuse, promoting abuse and giving tacit approval to abuse. And this time, it's my beloved country. This time, it's my beloved fellow citizens foaming with self-righteous hatred at any suggestion of living a life of love as a society.

Pay a penny tax to help the children of the poor?  Suggestions like that provoke overt anger in "good Christian" men.  Restrict access to high-kill firearms so that society suffers less gun violence?  "Good Christian" men become livid at the suggestion that they modify their behavior in any way, for any purpose.  They demand their rights be respected!!

But other people's rights?  Let them fight for themselves.  Well-off white Christian men worked hard for what they have, and it's theirs!  It is not possible anymore to get them to consider that other Americans work just as hard, if not harder, for far less because they were born without the advantages of middle-class white people. They won't even admit these advantages exist.  And if they do admit to any advantage, they have no gratitude or sense of humility about having it, they will just claim it is because of their parents' hard work.  As if the children born into poverty all have lazy parents- which is what they truly believe.  They do not even try to understand what life is like for those on the bottom tier of economic system.  They don't believe it is right or good to do so.

That is where we are today. Good is called evil, and evil good, and by the very people (Christians- followers of Jesus Christ!) who should be leading the charge to minister to "the least of these".  

Today's evangelical church has a new cause- patriarchy, not brotherly love.  Today's evangelical church has a new enemy- gay people, not personal failure to live a life of love.  Today's evangelical even has a new "least of these" to be concerned about, and it's not the poor, the crippled, the widowed, the hungry or those in prison with whom Jesus chose to be concerned.  (Oh  no, especially not those in prison!)  The church is concerned about male privilege- the loss of which they liken to being castrated. This is the emergency the church must respond to NOW- not feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless or visiting the socially isolated.  The big need today is for wives to offer unconditional respect to their husbands.

Unconditional respect?!  When I was a child that would have been loudly denounced. That's what Stalin demanded of the people of the USSR.  That's what Hitler demanded first of Germany and then the world.  American earn respect, they don't demand it.  Unearned respect is an oxymoron anyway. 

Respect carries with it the idea of admiration, a belief in the superior nature of the one being respected for a real reason.  We respect Teddy Roosevelt for taking on trusts. We respect Mother Theresa for her dedication to the poor. Some respect athletes for the dedication that made them world class players, or even for the natural talent they possess.  But in all cases, respect is there because admiration was there first.

Recently the right wing has rightfully attacked "new age" pedagogy, which gives out trophies to all children for participation, rather than rewarding only the best results.  Conservatives scoffed at the notion that a child's self-esteem was at stake.  Life is competitive, and only the ones at the top get rewarded.  I tend to agree with this, that self-esteem will always be based on real accomplishment. Accomplishment should be recognized and rewarded, in an effort to encourage children to strive for true achievement.  Merely showing up should not earn awards.  The "self-respect" such awards create is short-lived and unsatisfying, and makes children expect big rewards for little effort.  Critics claim that the unearned awards would make lazy, demanding whiners out of our nation's children.

And yet these same conservatives want grown women to give unconditional respect to men!! They even claim that the men's self esteem is suffering because they do not get the moral equivalent of participation trophies each day from their beaming wives.  Women are urged to give "unconditional respect" to their husbands or their poor man will suffer from being emasculated.  Men "desperately need" this unconditional respect, according to popular author Eggerichs, in his big money-making enterprise (books, DVDs, seminars, $$$$$) Love and Respect.

Christian men are "desperate" for their participation trophies?  But won't all that unearned "respect" ultimately back-fire?  When reality breaks in and the marriages fail and the broken, wounded people emerge from families led by immature, lazy, demanding whiners won't that be a bad thing?  Because it is. It no more builds strong families to offer husbands "unconditional respect" than it builds winning sports franchises to give all players equal time in a starting position.  Human nature doesn't work that way.  

This Eggerichs guy is getting rich, filthy freaking rich, by telling Christian women to use the same "new age" pedagogy that conservative rightly criticized and applying it toward their relationship with the grown men they married.  I am sure it is generously proof-texted, but that doesn't make it true.  If only Christian women would seek God on their knees, and then use the good brain God gave them to seek our truth, this book would not be a best-seller.  The world will be a much better place when the self-made Christian golden ghetto disappears, and all the hucksters and snake oil salesman disappear with them.  

I am happy to report that my husband earns my respect by his character and achievement. When his character  or actions are not worthy of respect, he figures it out pretty quickly and takes appropriate action. THAT is why our marriage is making it where many others have failed.  The damage of misogynist fundamentalist religion in our marriage was addressed (is still being addressed) by both of the adults in this relationship.  We each, regardless of our gender, have taken (are still taking) responsibility for our beliefs and the actions that spring from them. As God spoke to Cain in the garden, "If you do good, shall you not be rewarded?" 

Trophies go to those who earn them.  Respect is awarded to those who earn it.  Unearned respect, like unearned trophies, may feel good at first but the concept is just setting men up for failure.  Ultimately the world does not continue to stroke the egos of lazy, demanding whiners.  It just is not going to make better men or better marriages, and by extension better families.  Christian homes will be a toxic mess of entitled husband/fathers, harried wives/mothers  and wounded children who will see right through it as they grow up under the madness of such a contrived emotional system of padre pandering.

PS The unconditional love that "women long for"?  All of humanity longs for it. And that, we are COMMANDED  to offer freely to one another, married  or not, regardless of gender, or age, or any other descriptive term.  

John 13:34

New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

³⁴ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Dear Fil

(Warning: strong language ahead.)

Dear Fil,

Please don't call here anymore. Every time you call, you set off a shitstorm of abuse in my household.  Once it even ended in a suicide gesture.  The worst part of that incident was that it involved criminal activity that endangered other people.  Yes, the missionary kid got blinding, puking drunk chugging Four Loco and malt liquor in the Wal-Mart parking lot and drove home.  He could've killed not only himself, but other innocent people.  This last phone call had him driving 25 miles over the speed limit in poor weather conditions, angry at all those people who were "in his way".

What did you do to this man's heart as he grew that has filled him with so much self-loathing and rage?  And why does driving seem to factor into the fallout?  You, Mr. Missionary Preacher Man, are a wicked, heartless, cold-blooded reptile.  You are completely self-centered.  You don't give a shit about your children's hearts, only how they make you look to your cult peers.  You don't even ask any important questions, ever, and when people try to talk about things like feelings, you change the subject.  You are a braggart, and the only value your children and grandchildren have for you is for bragging rights.  Fuck you.  You have contributed nothing  but harm to your family; your legacy is broken men who abuse their wives and children, religious addicts mired in depression and who seek release in bullying others. You are the lowest of the low.  And you suck up undeserved respect from your career choice and the children you intimidated into never questioning you or your cult.

In a perfect world, you would be having some kind of end-of-life fearless moral inventory.  In a perfect world, you would be seeking to truly know and truly care for the hearts of your children and grandchildren.  Hell, if you were even human some of that might be happening.  Non-religious people live this way all the time, without any prompting from moral tomes.  Here you claim to follow Jesus the Christ, a man who promoted love, sincere love, as the highest way any man can choose to live, and you have one of the most cold, lifeless hearts I have ever known.

But, it's not a perfect world. You won't ever change.  You are a self-centered, self-involved religious bigot and all you care about is gaining religious hit points to increase your stats with your fellow fundy cult members.  Shame on you.

What makes me the angriest is how *I* catch the heat for your abuse after you call.  My husband doesn't even try to talk to you about anything important anymore, though he has in the past.  It's too painful to come face to face with the reality that your parents don't love you.  So, he plays along with your little games.  Talk about the weather, talk about nothing, and then you issue your demand for him to show up and pay homage to you in person, opening that "invitation" with a remark of how older brother has just fulfilled HIS obligation, so when are you going to get with the program?

He stuffs all his feelings when you call. He becomes numb.  He says the phone call went well, and then changes the subject. The only difference in his demeanor right away is that he is a bit more distant.  Over the next few days he becomes less and less affectionate, a little more irritable. He starts to spend more time watching sports and disappearing into computer games.  When someone calls him on bad behavior, he will apologize, but not with the affection and sincere regard for the other's feelings that had characterized him in more recent weeks. In short, he becomes his "old self".

He disappears back into PAPD, needing to cause a conflict in order to discharge all of his anger, and ultimately, give reason to the overwhelming shame he feels because of your indifference to his heart.  The conflict has to arise from someone's response to his silence or inaction, so he can tell himself he didn't start it, it's the other person's fault.

That other person is always me.  That's because you, Fil, by your overt and covert teaching, raised my husband to hate women.  You raised him to view them as empty-headed and emotional, with emotional being a bad thing rather than a part of the healthy human condition.  When he is in this, his reptile brain, he becomes you, Fil.  He treats me with the same contempt and resentment that he saw (and I have seen) you treat his mother.  This time it took over twenty-four hours for him to come back to reality.

Right now I am not in danger when he gets like this, but only because my son is here to protect me.  My son goes away to college in a year.  If my husband isn't free of the bomb in the brain that you planted, that you set off every time you call, then I will have to leave him.  I will be forced to leave him for my own safety, because he won't stop taking your calls.  And you won't stop calling.

And fuck you for that.   Fuck you because you never call because you care for anyone but yourself.  You call because you have no heart friends, and the wife is in long term care now.  You can't even abuse her openly anymore.  It won't have the same affect when you tell her that her contribution to the conversation is "the stupidest thing you ever heard", because she has Alzheimer's now.   I wonder who you DO abuse now to try to feel better than everyone else?  People at church?

I think old abusive people are the saddest people on earth.  But don't come looking for pity here.  You won't find any from me. I wish my husband could tell you the truth about how you've hurt him, even though you wouldn't care and/or would deny responsibility.  I wish he was strong enough to cut you off completely from his life.  But he's not, not now, and he may never be.

And then your abuse just keeps on hurting him, because I will have to leave him if there's no hope he'll ever be completely safe for me to stay his wife.  That will really really suck if you get to cut him off from the only person in this world who has ever truly loved him or cared for his heart.  At least the children we raised together will always care for him, unlike your children who only come around you when the guilt you lay on them gets too much to bear.

Please don't call here anymore.  Just don't.  Oh, and get some help for your religious addiction before you die.  It would do so much good on the earth if you would.

It's a Personal Thing

In case anyone wonders why this flurry of blog activity, it's because I am between semesters at school.  So, I have the actual time to devote to writing about the things that I think about, rather than the topics I am assigned for a class.  I am still a perfectionist when it comes to school, or as I prefer to call myself, "one who pursues excellence".  By this, I mean I study like a mad man when school is in session, wanting no less than to thoroughly master any subject I am taking.  It pisses other people off sometimes, and makes others think I am an insufferable know-it-all, but learning brings me joy.  So, sucks to be them.  I am going for it with all I've got, no matter what the class is about.  There is no such thing as a throw-away class, imo.  Like a race horse was born to run, I was apparently born to learn.

I wish I had been raised in a family where I was valued and supported.  I would no doubt have been able to choose a challenging career (medical engineering technology would have been fascinating) or have my Ph. D. and be teaching in a college somewhere. But, life did not unfold for me with such a charmed and happy beginning, so I am where I am.  I look back with happiness, not regret, for the way I handled the circumstances and adversity I encountered in life.  I am pleased with who I am, what I have chosen, and also with my current GPA and career prospects.  So, yay for me, right?

I am also able to write so prolifically about other things because my marriage relationship is not giving me trouble right now.  It is crazy how many times things have been up and down in my marriage. Or rather, it is crazy how my spouse would go from loving and supportive to distant and withdrawn to hateful and cruel.  It is part and parcel of growing up a child of addicts, for that is what his parents are: religious addicts.

Imagine growing up the child of addicts, only instead of the world offering you pity and compassion for your plight, they praised your parents for their addiction and told you how lucky you were to have addicts for parents!  It's quite the mind-fuck.  The emotional abuse, mental confusion, and effed up thinking that creates in a child is something few people can overcome.

My spouse is an amazing person.  He is smart as a whip.  He scored a perfect score in math on his SATs and said he kept waiting to get to the "hard" sections he was warned about when he realized he had finished all the questions.  Those of you who have taken or helped someone study for the SATs knows that a perfect score shows more than mastery of the subject, it shows a keen attention to detail and above average critical thinking skills.  Without all that going for him, I think real change for my husband would not be possible.

Then there is also the level of abuse.  My husband was emotionally, physically and spiritually abused and neglected.  The religious addiction always came first; the needs of children were definitely lower on the hierarchy of parental concerns than feeding the religious addiction.  His boarding school experiences were a nightmare of rejection, bullying and neglect.  BUT others had it way worse, and their boarding school experiences included savage beatings, sexual molestation, rape and in some cases, violent gang rape.  I am actually trembling as I type this out, knowing the horrific abuse children suffered at the hands of "ministers of the gospel" who were assigned to the staff of the "missionary kid abandonment centers" known as missionary boarding schools.  Visit www.mksafety.net and www.fandaeagles.com  for books and other resources, including forums with the opportunity to talk to survivors online and find out how those who were sent to these schools have fared.

Still, though my husband didn't suffer as much as other people have suffered, he suffered plenty.  It warped his emotional coping mechanisms and turned him into an emotionally abusive person.  He was cursed with passive-aggressive personality disorder, which he developed as a coping mechanism for dealing with the anger and pain he was forced to experience but not allowed to express.  So, as recently as last month he was still acting out towards me in ways that required the use of our DAPP (domestic abuse prevention program- i.e., "time-outs").

Well, I am closing in on the last step of my five-year plan, and I am just done dealing with the unpredictable and irrational.  I decided that while calling DAPPs were a necessary step in the healing process for our relationship, it is not something I can live with the rest of my life.  So, in calm quiet times after the storm, I created a new requirement for living with me.  If it's bad enough to call another DAPP, then we will move into separate bedrooms for a minimum of three months.  We have the space, so we can do that.  Also I want him to know I'm not angry, I'm just unwilling to live off-balance and unable to fully relax and enjoy life, so that's the next step.  He understands and accepts that.

And, now, finally, he is working in EMDR as diligently as I have been doing all this time!  He seriously wants to work through all these issues himself now.  So, good for him.  For far too long he has resisted getting into the most painful memories, the root of the "shame spirals" that drag him into depression and hate.  Since he is seriously digging them out now, I think there is great hope for a happy life (even a happy married life) in his future.

Unfortunately, the way his inner MK was raised, dragging his feet in doing what's right was the only thing that ever gave him any sense of control over his own life.  He had no choice about what he would do, and if he flat out refused to do what he was told he would have been beaten and shamed.  Dragging his feet to the last possible second is a personality trait he developed to cope with his forced captivity.  I accept this about him, but I am not going to let it affect me anymore.

And he accepts that about me!  We are actually pretty happy now.  At night, we have been reading Jim Palmer's books, and he really identifies with the author.  Currently, we're reading "The Evangelical Universalist", but I'm ordering Palmer's "Wide Open Spaces" as soon as I finish this post.  He doesn't go to church anywhere (maybe won't ever again- it's fine with me!) while I go on Communion Sunday to a local UCC church with a wonderfully wise woman pastor.

So, that's the personal update.  I have finished EMDR, and I have more peace and happiness on an ongoing basis than I knew I could experience.  My walk with Jesus is very fulfilling.  I do a bit of yoga most mornings and evenings, and go to a yoga studio once or twice a week.  I read Trinity and Humanity's blog, John Shore's blog and Steve McVey's blog to see what Jesus is up to in the lives of others.

I pray daily as I have done for years.  I pray for much better things: the inclusion of the outcast in the body of Christ and for legal protection for all US citizens, the defeat of the religious right, the dismantling of the apostate Christian politco-business empire, the pre-eminence of Christ in the hearts of the church, the salvation and reconciliation of all people.  I pray for friendship, life satisfaction, challenge and accomplishment, love and acceptance for my family, healing for the sick and provision for us all.

Peace to all who read here, SS

Christianity is Not Imperative to Healing an Abusive Man's Heart

Well, I must respectfully disagree with the comment left by dorcas on my last post about "getting saved" being an imperative for a man learning to live without resorting to abuse. Honestly, if that DID work, the whole world would be turning to Christ.  But not only does "getting saved" NOT heal all the hurts of the past, for many raised in fundamentalism, dogma is used as a weapon to excuse abuse and heap shame on their children. That is how abusive men are created, by abusing little boys.

Nope, enlightenment may indeed by necessary, but Christianity is not the only means to connection with Love.  While as a Christian I believe Jesus is the only way to commune with God, I do not believe He is synonymous with Christianity.

The dogma (pray the sinners prayer, understand God hates you,foul sinner, and would burn you in hell if not for Jesus, you don't deserve mercy but God will pity you IF you become a fundamentalist and toe the line, hate what the religion hates, show up to services, give 10% of your money, read your Bible everyday) is a load of crap.

When Jesus spoke of being "born again" he said it was mysterious, unpredictable, and the rest of the world would only be able to tell it had happened because of the changes in a person's life. It sounds very mystical, akin to the Eastern term "enlightenment".

Fundamentalists have declared being "born again" VERY predictable (bow your head, repeat after me, teh magic spell, er, sinner's prayer, worked- you are now born again!), completely under the control of the person "praying" and (due to Finney's manipulative crowd control techniques) largely under the control of the preacher as well.

Nope, God reveals himself to honest seeker's by whatever means they are able to receive Him.  Jesus is not the errand boy of the fundagelical dogma masters.  The church likes to think it knows and can declare where the Spirit will move and under what conditions that is permissible, but you do not control God.

The fundamentalist, evangelical church makes a mockery of the gracious, loving heart of God.  It teaches its disciples that shame is ever present, and God hates sin (Which you are ALWAYS stepping in, loser! And if you don't agree then you're just full of pride, the stinkiest sin of all!) and the goal of the Christian life is (in practice, not necessarily doctrine) to avoid public shame.  That is the real bottom line.

For my husband to heal, it has meant NOT going to church and NOT reading his Bible. It is not more shaming (You *should* love your wife! The Bible demands it!  Bad Christian!) that is bringing healing to him. This is where Joel and Kathy are an epic fail. It is EMDR, science in action, that is healing my husband's broken heart.

It is not more fake, conditional acceptance for agreeing with all the right doctrines that is revealing real love to him.  It is a wife who will accept him no matter what, even if he becomes a full-on atheist, and a true friend from work who doesn't go to church at all.  Jesus with skin on.

Finding a way to break free of the mountain of shame fundamentalist Christianity laid on his young shoulders, that will end his compulsion to withdraw, sulk and seethe with resentment.  That's where the abuse comes from in his world: the rejection, shame and conditional love of fundamentalist missionary/preacher parents.  Their complete and total lack of interest in his thoughts and feelings is 100% responsible for why he ascribes that hardness of heart to his wife, and responds accordingly.  That they responded with violence to a young child(spanking, slapping, shaming!), abandoned him for religious reasons to boarding school as a young child, and the continual shaming, ugliness of that Christian boarding school, holding up the abusive system and abusive parents as saints of the highest order, THAT is WHY my husband is abusive!

Being born again some kind of magic cure, or even a necessary first step?  Only if by that you meant the mysterious connection with Love that Jesus spoke of and exemplified.  But by your comments, I think you mean praying the sinner's prayer and going regularly to church/reading your Bible daily to be given "marching orders".

Oh no.  That is why my husband is in so much pain buried under so much anger.  I do strongly disagree.

But this is actually good news!  This means wives of atheists, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, pagans, Bahia, etc., can all have hope and find healing for their marriages as well!  God is no respecter of persons, and loves us all with an everlasting love, and WILL help you, when you reach out to Him, regardless of your religion.  And THAT God, the One revealed in the life and words of Christ himself, NOT the one Christians have created with their dogmas, is not a thin-skinned hater who won't help you if you don't get His name right.

Jesus is no Rumplestilskin.  His love is much greater than the fundamentalist/evangelicals come close to understanding.

The body of Christ?  If by that you mean organized Christianity, then it is NOT a beautiful thing at all.  It is a heartless, proud, demagogue.  But, if by the body of Christ, you mean those who love, then yes, the body of Christ is a beautiful thing.

God does and will continue to bless me, so thanks for the kind closing.  I wish the same for you, and do honestly hope your husband finds the healing he needs to live a life of love.  Demanding he do so DOES NOT WORK.  EMDR to heal the traumas of the past, learning to reject the inner script of shame and ridicule, finding the courage to share his thoughts and feelings and THEN finding acceptance and love when he does: these things are necessary to healing.  Not ascribing to a religious creed.

Marriage Help for Christian Wives?

Recently it came to my attention that  I have a distant relative who is currently dealing with an abusive marriage.  With the hard turn toward the extreme patriarchal right that the evangelical church has taken recently, I am surprised that only *one* distant relative is dealing with this issue.  The doctrine of wifely submission creates an abusive scenario, even when husbands are determined to be loving partners.  See this blog post: Poison for my Marriage for my thoughts on that subject.

I was wondering where I would suggest this relative turn for help.  The ministry I once lauded, Joel and Kathy Davisson's Marriage Intensive has backed down off of their groundbreaking focus that abusive husbands are much more common in the Christian world than anyone dare mention out loud, and that emotional abuse unchecked never goes away or gets better on its own.  The have replaced the Life Skills movie (see next paragraph) with the propaganda piece Fireproof, just another "get saved and all your problems are solved" story that offers no help at all for the biggest problem-born again Christian men who are emotionally, verbally, economically, and in some cases physically abusive.

Joel Davisson was actually set straight himself by Paul Hegstrom of  Life Skills International.  I guess I would first recommend that a person in an abusive marriage order the video Unforgiveable from Life Skills International.  Unforgiveable is a made for television movie chronicling the story of how Paul Hegstrom came to finally admit he was an abusive man, and it tells the beginning of the story of the long (seven years long) process of healing and recovery it took to win back his wife Judy's hand in marriage again.  What is missing from the movie that is most significant, in my opinion, is that Paul Hegstrom was a Christian.  In fact, he was a preacher before taking up the position as car salesman that is portrayed in the movie.

Getting "saved" can't possibly change a man who is already "saved" before he gets married, and subsequently begins abusing his wife in any of the myriad ways a husband can abuse a wife.  Nope, he needs all kinds of help, starting most importantly with recognizing that he is an abuser of women.  I used to recommend Joel and Kathy's seminar as a great place to get that process started (people coming out of denial tend to retreat back into denial any chance they get, so it's a process!), because they were very adamant about holding the husband responsible when I was there in 2008.  I just don't know if this is true anymore.

Coming out of denial is an imperative first step, but it is only the first step.  The next  step is of course getting an abuser the help he needs to change.  Counselors can be good, but they can also become mere enablers.  I would never trust a "Christian" counselor to offer any real help in a marriage with an abusive husband.  The doctrine known as "complementarianism" or "wifely submission" is used by abusive men as justification for their feelings of entitlement that allow them to belittle their wives inwardly.  These inner thoughts about the wife as inferior, incompetent, unrealistic, a lesser being in the eyes of God, etc. occur first, and later are manifested through words (or silence) or behaviors that are intended to wound the wife- either emotionally or sometimes actually physically.  So most "Christian" counseling will be worthless.  Suffering in silence, submitting and merely relying on prayer to turn the situation around is useless at best, deadly in a worst case scenario.

I contacted Life Skills by email, and they were able to put me in touch with local help for my husband.  I was lucky enough to live in a large city with help nearby.  Most of the United States does not have Life Skills workshops going on nearby.  If you or someone you know needs help, get in touch with Life Skills.  If there is nothing close, pay the money to go to Colorado for whatever help they can offer.  It is imperative that the counselor you seek help from be well-trained in dealing with domestic abuse.  If they counselor is looking for a 50-50 split of responsibility for the marriage problems, stop going.  Such counsel will make the problem worse, as the abusive spouse will use it to excuse their behavior.

While my husband was completing this twenty-some odd group learning experience sponsored by Life Skills at a local church, I was reading everything I could get my hands on.  I purchased an expensive but very helpful book, /Passive-Aggression: A Guide for Therapist, Patient and Victim.  This helped me to understand how I was willingly being a part of the sado-masochistic emotional turmoil my husband was instigating at times.  I began to look for my own therapist.  I put it off for so long, because I knew that if I started my own personal counseling, I might conclude that the best choice for me was to leave the marriage.  When I was finally okay with that possibility, I was ready to start my own therapy.

I looked into EMDR (at www.emdr.org ) to help me deal with the PTSD caused by my husband's aggression.  That therapist (rightly) ascertained that my husband also probably had PTSD from his parents' abandoning him for their careers when he was so young, as well as from their authoritarian parenting style and avoidant (non-)communication style.  We started out seeing the same therapist, but that didn't work out.  So, he got custody of the original therapist, and I found another.

It's been two years now.  I will see my therapist for the last regular visit next week.  He will likely continue in therapy longer, as he still has more traumatic events to deprogram.  We both have left fundagelical thinking behind and are opening our hearts and lives to healthier, more authentic Christianity.  He doesn't got to church anymore; I'm still looking for one.  We have decided to love our children as they are, even though they are not living in all aspects the ideals who strenuously taught them when they were younger.  They love God and they love people.  I am proud of  them, and happy to have them in my life.

My opinions on so many things have not changed, and yet my allegiances certainly have changed.  On this journey to health and wholeness, I have learned so many things.  A woman who allows herself to be mistreated WILL be mistreated, but a women who demands RESPECT will be respected.  Marriage doesn't supercede any command of Christ.  The apostle Paul may have lived at a crucial time in history and written a lot of letters to the early church which they treasured enough to preserve, but he is not infallible and he is not the Son of God.  That honor belongs to Jesus alone.

I have a friend who suffers from a passive-aggressive abusive husband.  She relied entirely on Joel and Kathy's teachings, which failed her.  She was unwilling to seek secular counseling, or even to understand that her husband's arrested development could not be overcome by sheer will power.  She refused to start on the path to independence; refused to turn her back on the doctrines that have created a largely dysfunctional family dynamic; refused to understand that while she is not responsible for her husband's abuse, she IS responsible for allowing herself to remain vulnerable to his abuse.  She is in the middle of a divorce she initiated (but only as a manipulative measure which back-fired), her children have all been forced to take sides, she has no way to provide for herself but government assistance and reliance on her abusive husband. It's pretty easy to see that this will not turn out well for her, at least it is plain to everyone BUT her.

The main difference between our stories is that I sought counseling from all kinds of sources till I found what actually worked for us.  I did not buy in to religious ideology as the key to a successful marriage.  I was willing to admit that after twenty years of following the religious advice devotedly, it was a bust. I was also more than willing to leave my husband if he found himself unable or unwilling to live the life of love I believe marriage should encompass.  I also accepted responsibility for the reality that I had *let* things get this bad by my "submission", so it wasn't all my husband's fault.  I recognized that my own PTSD issues were making healing the marriage difficult, so I got my own help for that too.  All the while, I never stopped insisting that I loved my husband, wanted the best for us both, and was willing to give him time (five years in fact) to get it together.  We are now in the fourth year, and things are steadily improving.

That's our journey, but I don't know how to help a young couple  steeped in fundamentalism to get out of the abuse trap, other than to recommend a visit to Life Skills International's web site. Does anyone else know of any truly useful resources for Christian marriages affected by abuse?

Shame is My Enemy in More Ways Than One

I am wary rather than hopeful today. Cynical even.  Ugh.

Last night when I got home, my husband told me he had made a mistake that cost us money.  Not drained the retirement fund or anything that bad, but he made a hotel reservation for an upcoming special occasion for last week instead of next week.  His card had been charged as a no-show.  Big whoop, right?  People make mistakes.  It happens.  Move on.

As he told me this, he was not a grown man standing in front of me expressing frustration over a snafu.  He was a little boy in posture, fearing punishment.  He stood with shoulders slumped and head hanging down, his body shriveled into as small a space as he could make while standing up straighter than usual (missionary kid thing?) and twisting a tiny piece of paper in his hands compulsively.  He looked like maybe a six year old?

I don't remember all the details, but I pointed out the posture and the self-recrimination in his voice and told him it was unnecessary, that people make mistakes.  I told him if you want to challenge the charge, don't do it like this, repeating how you contributed to the snafu over and over; merely point out that the reset on their web page changed the date on you and you didn't catch it this time.  Ask for a credit. And if they don't give it to you, oh well.  People make mistakes that cost money all the time. It's part of the human condition.

At first he got offended, and told me that I wasn't "helping".  I would have none of it.  I plainly replied something along the lines that I didn't see how telling him to lose the shame and stand up for himself or let it go was hurting him in any way.  He agreed, but still his body trembled like I was going to spank him or something. He went upstairs to think and hopefully change his mind-set.

When I went up almost forty-five minutes later, he was crying.  When I asked him what was wrong, it took a long time for him to be able to stop crying long enough to tell me.  Here's what he was doing TO HIMSELF!

He said that he was crying because this hotel reservation for our anniversary, and we were a couple barely surviving (WTF?  Seriously?  After all the effort, love, forgiveness and good will I put into this relationship you dare to say it is "barely surviving"?  How insulting to me!  Where is this coming from?) and it is all his fault.

That is such bull.  He is crying because HE IS DEPRESSED.  He is shaming himself because that's what he does when he's depressed.  Our relationship has nothing to do with it.  And if the past continues to repeat itself, a shift is coming.  A shift from shaming himself to ascribing all that shame and recrimination as coming from ME!  I see where this is going.

Three options for me: puke because that is just a disgusting display of self-pity; storm out self-righteously because according to him all the love I have to give is apparently quite measly, or do the "Christian" thing and comfort him, tell him it's not true, etc.  I chose a mix of all three.

I did comfort him, but I was also angry.  I told him that anniversaries aren't celebrations of accomplishments, they are celebrations of people!  The point was to celebrate his wife and shower her with love, not to congratulate himself on what a fine husband ( or berate himself for what a lousy husband) HE is!  Just like the drunken binge on Thanksgiving, this is coming out of nowhere.  There is no reason for him to start assuming  that divorce is imminent.  It's all in his fricking head, but guess what?

This is getting really, really old.  If he is never going to shake this depression no matter how long he is in therapy, I am not going to stay in the marriage.  If his hobby is going to be berating himself and then projecting that onto me, I am not going to stay in this marriage.

I don't understand why he is not making any progress!  He's been in therapy for two years!  He should be BETTER.  I am getting stronger every day.

I don't understand why he still doesn't pray about this problems (He was indignant when I asked him if he prayed about it. Why would God care about that? he retorted.  This pissed me off too, because he said it in such a way as to belittle those of us who believe  GOD DOES CARE ABOUT US!) or why he doesn't recognize these thoughts as damaging, evil lies that should be replaced with the truth- God does love him!  Jesus delivered him from all shame and now presents him holy and blameless!  You can cast all your cares on God because He cares for you! It's like even though we are both Christians, we have two completely different dieties and doctrinal beliefs.

Or lose the religion completely and at least replace it with logic: People make mistakes.  It's part of being human.  It's no big deal.  He could ask himself "WHY do I hate myself so much over a little mistake?" and start fixing the real problem.  That's what other adults do all the time.

Seriously, I am tired of being this guy's rock and getting nothing back.  All the emotional support is one-way around here, and then I still get blamed for his depression!  You got that, didn't you reader, that his telling himself that he's such a horrible husband that I am going to leave him.  The real reason for his shame and depression has nothing to do with me or our marriage.

I am fed up with the bullcrap.

I don't know what to do, but every single time he pulls this self-pity crap about how awful our relationship is, he pushes me one step closer to the door.  I don't want to be part of an  endless cycle of self-hatred and abuse.  If he won't step out of that cycle, then I will step out of that door.

It's really ironic.  I didn't have divorce on my mind at all.  I was looking forward to the weekend.  Now I'm thinking he could be on to something.  Maybe I am being Pollyanna again, when clearly he is not getting any better.  It just sucks. He could have it all if only he wasn't stuck in such a mentally unhealthy place.  Ugh.

ps After he came back downstairs, he opened his laptop and for all intents and purposes ceased to exist in this plane.  I was getting grief from my son over making him redo his homework, and my son started acting physically intimidating and threatening, just like his dad.  His dad didn't even notice.  He just kept on playing Sudoku online, or minesweeper, or solitaire, whatever it was last night.  Ugh.  I do all the parenting, ALONE, even when he's right there.  I am so not okay with this.

Progress Report

For my regular reader's info:

There are still posts that I keep hidden, meaning that there are still times when my husband reverts back to his former ways of thinking about me and about life.  This blog, including the posts that stay hidden, is really valuable to me in helping me evaluate the real pace of progress in healing our sucky home school marriage.  Things are improving, but a lot more slowly than I had initially hoped.  Still, there are real world reasons for this.

One: The first ministry that got us headed in the right direction, Joel and Kathy Davisson's Marriage Intensive, was both a blessing and a hindrance.  They opened up our minds (both mine and my husband's) to the truth that  the problems in our marriage were my husband's problems,  and that they were rightly called abuse.  They also tear down Biblically the false doctrine that a woman's submission is the key to solving all marriage problems, which I greatly appreciate. They team taught and were openly loving to each other, showing how a healthy marriage plays out in real life.  They hindered our path to healing by teaching that my husband could just change through will power and being accountable to their ministry financially and by on-going participation in their forums and group telephone counseling.  While that may indeed be all some people need to reform, my husband needs to both heal and reform.  Will power alone can not accomplish this.  I would say that while they are great diagnosticians, and are plainly right about some things that don't work, their solution is simplistic and ineffective in most abusive marriages, ours included.  The Davisson's add three pluses in the "improving" column for their diagnostics and example, but two minuses there as well for setting unrealistic expectations and offering an  ultimately unsatisfactory remediation plan.

Two:  Thankfully, the Davission's rightly credited Paul Hegstrom's Life Skills program for helping abusive spouses (and their co-dependent victims) understand the wrong thinking that leads to abuse and helps provide clear tools for breaking out of the stronghold of ingrained bad thinking.  We were lucky enough to have a 20 week Life Skills program offered within an hour of our home, and my husband completed the course.  When he  is actively in what I will now refer to as a "reptile brain state", returning to his Life Skills material is a marriage-saver.  It was at Life Skills that the concept of a cool down separation (or 'time out' to use a sports analogy) agreement called a Domestic Abuse Prevention Plan was proposed to us.  This DAPP has proven its worth repeatedly,  and is only useless when my husband doesn't stick to it.  Alas, that happens.  But score one plus in the "improving" column for Life Skills.

Three:  Cindy Kunsman and all of her very,  very important blog posts about PTSD add  at least two pluses in the "improving" column.  Thank you, Cindy!  You opened my eyes to the reality that my husband's issues had way more  to do with the abuse he himself had suffered as a child than I would have guessed.  Even your latest post about freezing was precious to me.  Do you know how many times I have seen my husband freeze up in  times of crisis?  Kudos to you.  You are a blessing.  Thanks to your research and the courage to post the results publicly, I was/am able to reset my expectations for my husband's recovery to a more reasonable level.  I now expect progress to be slow and take years.  I now accept  that he may be on anti-depressants the rest of his life and struggle emotionally for years to come.  As long as he continues in therapy and does not go back to blaming me for his unhappiness, I will stand by him.  Unfortunately, he still slips back into misogyny when his depression worsens.  Forays into "blame the wife" are of shorter duration than they were two years ago, but they still happen. For our marriage to last, he will have to abandon that course of thinking entirely.  Due to your input (and others as well) dear Ms. Kunsman, I rightly expect that to take years to totally retrain his brain, and like an alcoholic may continue to be tempted to drink in times of stress, my husband may continue to be tempted to turn his unhappiness on me.  As long as he admits and resists the temptation, I  am good to stay married.  I have a lot of compassion for him, but I am no one's scapegoat anymore.

Four: Fanda Eagles and MKSafety.net both helped me to understand what my husband went through as a child, and what he still continues to wrestle with.  I honestly thought missionary kid was the pedigree for spiritual prowess!  I did not understand what really happens to a child's heart when he is summarily dumped at boarding school in the name of God, or the horrible pedagogy behind the way these boarding schools are run.  Like Cindy's work, these forums have helped me come to grips with the great depth  of my husband's problems (pain) and  more accurately assess  a timeline for healing that is in line with real possibility.  I also found much support from people on these forums, and for that I am very, very grateful.  Two pluses, one for education and the other for moral support.

Five:  Antidepressants and EMDR therapy each put two pluses in the "improving" column.  Without either of these my husband would not be healing.  Add another  plus for my being in therapy,  and another couple of pluses for those who comment on my blog.  Your support and encouragement to me are tremendously helpful.

Six: Unfortunately, my husband's family of origin's addiction to fundamentalist religion and all the bad decisions and poor parenting that resulted add an unknown but prolific number of minuses to the "improving" column.  Will the pluses adding up ultimately be enough to overcome the damage done?  I am thinking that the answer to that question is a qualified "yes".  "Yes" because I have the support and strength to put the length of time into recovery that such a deep wounding in my husband's heart will require.  "Yes" because he is willing to face the truth about himself and his family and his need for medication and therapy.  However, if he were to stop taking medications too early (may be he'll need them the rest of his life) or quit therapy too early, then the "yes" could revert to "no".  But for now, it looks like a "yes".

I thought a progress report was in order.  Much thanks to all who put a plus in the "improving" column.

Peace and good will, SS

Great Link about PTSD/EMDR and past abuse

Post Traumatic Stress: what it is (biology), what makes it worse and what helps it heal.

HUGE shout out of thanks to Cindy Kunsman for posting this!  Girlfriend, you are doing so much good in the world.   You teach us so much about our brains and why we experience so much pain from spiritual and emotional abuse.  I can't thank you enough for your web site.  You have blessed more people than you will ever know.  Stay strong sister, and know you are very dearly loved!

Still reeling

I am still reeling from the blows to my heart that came from seeing my sister.  Being with her in person was hard enough, but her bizarre response to my sending her flowers pushed me over the edge.  I had been perilously close to the edge of depression.  I am afraid that listening to her voice mail, one that should have said:

"Thanks for the flowers!  They are so beautiful and you are so thoughtful."

but instead went something like:

"Um, I just got some flowers from you, and...what exactly are you trying to say? (tinge of anger in voice, then the command) Call me back, we need to talk."

Then of course life keeps happening.  I've been encouraging my kids to go to therapy while they were still on our insurance, and they are both taking me up on that now.  This week in fact.

Guess what that includes?  They are going to be dealing with the fall-out from all those years I was trying to give them the perfect childhood according to Christian Book Distributors while dealing with an abusive marriage as well as trying to figure out what was up with my daughter and be both father and mother to my son.  

I was at times a screaming banshee.  I'm not proud of that, but I am proud that I was 1000 times better of a mom than I had modeled to me. I have forgiven myself for falling apart when I did, but that doesn't mean it was any less hard on my kids. Hence the encouragement to counseling by me.  

All that doesn't excuse me from responsibility for the times I lost it (including today, I'm afraid) when the pressure of my life was more than I could cope.  Today, though, was not the best day to be confronted with that old crap.  I knew it had to happen.  I encouraged it to happen.  I just shouldn't have to deal with my old abusive family of origin AND my personal failures as a mother at the same time.  That's just asking too much.

For the first time in years, I am experiencing the same symptoms of depression my husband has been going through.  If it isn't cleared up in two weeks, I'll mention it to my therapist and we'll see about where to go from there.  The logical side of my brain knows that this will pass and I will go on to living my dreams in happiness and contentment before long at all.

One thing is really different though.  It is becoming plain that I will never be loved and accepted in my family of origin.  I though that my oldest sister, with the help of God, was wanting to honestly do "whatever it takes" to heal the rifts.  Now I am doubtful that she was honest.  I don't think she understood the cost, that she would have to give up her bias in the story where she is the hero, mom is the victim and my twin and I are the villains.  She likes that story.  It makes her feel good about herself.

So, what do you think, ifriends?  Should I just break it off for good?  Wondering what other folks out there have done.

Does it ever end?

Probable Cause Affidavit in the Hanna Williams case

If you will take the time to read the above link about the tragic death of Hanna Williams, one thing becomes painfully clear.  Child abuse is never one on one.  The whole family system is complicit in the abuse of a scapegoated child.  Now where older sibling are concerned, it is apparent that the vilification of the scape goated child was not their original idea.  Clearly it all comes from the parents and is taken up as accepted truth by the other children the way all the family truths are transmitted.  In most families, the truths are benign and even beneficial: one must clean one's plate before getting dessert, or bedtime is always nine o'clock on a school night, or one should always brush your teeth after meals.  Only sick twisted families pass on ideas like: the outcast child is rebellious, disobedient, a liar.

As you read through this affidavit, notice how often those three words are used about Hanna BY HER SIBLINGS.  These same children watched her freeze to death, all the while encouraging themselves to denounce and taunt her as faking her symptoms of hypothermia because she was a bad person.

The mother uses word forms of "rebellious", "refuse" and "pretending" in her statement.  She admits to using her older children to carry out her orders to "check to see" what Hanna was doing- not to help Hanna or make sure she was safe but merely to spy and report to mom what was happening.

When detective first interviewed the other children, they reported that "They all stated that HGW
was "rebellious" and disrespectful  to their parents and that HGW didn't mind their mother."  The emphasis on the word ALL  is mine.  This is how I grew up.  My other sisters would have said the EXACT SAME WORDS ABOUT ME had anyone ever bothered to intervene in our family while I was growing up.

When the surviving adopted child could not remember his birthday, the mother interjected that he "chose" not to take part in a birthday celebration.  All the abuse against this boy and his sister is excused in the family as being the fault of the victim.  The victims either chose it, or they deserved it, or they were lying about it or faking the symptoms of abuse.

The 16 yr old sibling "continually used the word "rebellious" and indicated that both HGW and IJW were rebelling  and would  be disciplined for their behavior."


The 11 yr old male sibling "said that HGW and IJW were rebellious and they were punished ... Neither one
were allowed  to celebrate  their birthdays  because they didn't deserve it."


The 11 yr old female sibling " indicated  me that (Hanna) lived in the closet for disobeying" and admitted she "didn't like (Hanna) but loved her as her sister..."  She further stated that "(Hanna) was spanked because  she was "disobedient"  all of the time. She stated that (Hanna) had to be outside "all of the time." She said (Hanna( was outside because (Hanna) could not obey"

The 7 yr old female sibling " said she saw (Hanna) on the night of her death and "(Hanna) was pretending  she was cold and couldn't  walk."..When asked why (Hanna) had to eat outside (she) stated "my mom said we don't want to look it her grumpy  face."  


The children boldly say that they did not like their sister, morever they said it was because she was rebellious, could not obey, was a thief and a liar and faked the symptoms of abuse.

My older and younger sister would have said the same things about me if you had asked.  They would maintain these suspicions about me today.  I just sent my older sister flowers and she reacted with suspicion.  Since they came from me, in her mind there had to be something sinister about my intention.  In her mind, I am incapable of good will from a good heart.  It's been over thirty years since we were children.

I don't think it is possible my my family of origin to stop the abuse.  My sisters may have been coopted into the abuse against their will as children, but it still forms their narrative of our family.  It will not be undone.  Maybe it can't be undone.  Mom will never recant any of her behavior or her lies, so if it relies on her then there will be no change of narrative.

And even though my older sister says she wants to see change in our family dynamic, she automatically shows anger and suspicion towards me every time we are together.  She fights it to some extent, but it is so deeply ingrained in her mind, it is as much a part of her narrative of life as that the sun rises in the east.

To her mind, Shadowspring is:
Rebellious
Liar
Disobedient
Wicked
Selfish
Mean

It will never end, as far as I can see. Abusive family systems don't change. The best that you can do is get the hell out and stay the hell out of these damaging families.  They won't let you be anything except what they choose to label you.  Thirty years out, the answer is still NO, IT NEVER ENDS.

Both Hope and Regret:How is that possible?

I feel both hope and regret today.  It is the weirdest thing.  I don't feel them both at the same time, but I do feel them both within the same ten minutes.  I think EMDR is working, as before I would likely just be crushed with guilt and shame, and only be able to cultivate hope through a lot of tears, bible reading and journaling.  Now I just feel hope.  It's totally cool to be hopeful without extensive work to get there.

So here's the deal: I was a sorry ass mother in many ways to my little girl.  The irony is that my number one desire was to be a good mother!  It was both my deliverance and my curse.  My deep, deep desire to be a good mother is what led me to buy all those Christian books, go to all the seminars and Bible studies, put my kids in all the children's programs and include such a huge dose of "wholesome morality" in my home school.  That is the curse part.  The true sincerity of my longing to love my children in the way that was best is the deliverance part.  Isn't it ironic that what I meant for good turned out to detour me in the wrong direction, and actually put up a barrier between my daughter and myself?

You know the saying "better late than never"?  I really hope it turns out to be an absolute truth. My daughter  needs it to be,  and I need it to be true for her.  Yesterday in tears, as I was making these confessions to her, I apologized for not being the mother she needed me to be.  She, also in tears, replied to me that I was the mom she needed me to be NOW and that she loved for me that.  (Okay I'm getting all misty-eyed again now. Deep breath.  Exhale.  Carry on.)

I feel like I should reiterate here that I love Jesus still and always will.  I don't find fault with the Bible as much as with the way it is used.  Lewis Wells calls it "bibliolatry" and he is so right.  I was hoodwinked by the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.  It is a heresy, in my opinion.  The Bible is a record of people whose lives were affected by the Divine, and while it may be a true record of what they experienced, believed and taught (my opinion) none of those people are/were Divine themselves, except for Jesus.  Proverbs are just that, proverbs: generalizations that are true much of the time.  The history books are just that: a historical record of what people thought, did, said, felt and heard.  They are not encyclopedias of fact.  Whoever wrote Genesis was recording the stories of early Judaism.  It is not eyewitness testimony, and if it were, we would still have to consider the character and motivations of the witness.  The poetry is poetry; the gospels are four written records of what was remembered of the life and words of Jesus in the decades after his death (and resurrection!  Yes, I believe in the resurrection.); the epistles are letters written to congregations of the early church and the book of Revelations is apocalyptic writing meant to encourage the persecuted church.

But when my daughter was growing up, I thought I believed in the inerrancy of scripture, and I went to churches that taught the Bible from that perspective.  I listened to nice, wholesome, middle-class Christian teaching- nobody who dressed funny (like Mennonites, the Pearls, etc.) or acted too strange (IBLP, for example).  Nope, the people I associated with and to whom I listened dressed like everyone else and was appropriately integrated into the culture at large.  You could wear makeup and dress nice, as long as you didn't show too much skin.  You could watch television and movies, as long as you were selective about what you saw.  You couldn't cuss or drink, though, and of course you should go to church every Sunday and, generally speaking, seek moral perfection in all you do.

Ah, and therein lies the curse.  Do you know what moral perfection is, boys and girls?  It is when you look, act, talk and feel, in a word, Christian.  In order to become that kind of person, everything has to be a moral lesson.  One should be appropriately emotional- cry at the right times, smile at the right times, all that sort of outward proof of your inward transformation.  You should feel the right feelings and if you are a good Christian you will feel these right feelings at the right times.

For example, really holy people will cry at the showing of mission films.  How can you not feel despair and sorrow at the nice people on the screen who are all going to hell?  Also, you should choke up with regret and remorse at sermons calling for repentance.  If you are unfeeling, you must be some kind of amoral monster, though no one will come right out and tell you that.  And if you are reading all those family devotions, you know that these moments calling for appropriate emotional responses happen all the time.  Good Christian children will respond in the good Christian way to the sermonettes popping up in all those "teachable moments" that good Christian parents are forever alert to recognizing. Not to mention the extras the church throws in unintentionally, like athletic prowess is godly (Awana) and being beautiful is also godly (check out the casting on those plays and musicals, we all know it's true).

So here I am, earnestly wanting to be the best mom ever to my children, relying on the Christian parenting industry because I could not rely on experience, so grateful to have married into a truly godly Christian family, because in my naivete, I thought Christian was synonymous with love and nurture.  For the record, I do believe that Christ is synonymous with love and nurture, and that it is possible to be a good and loving parent by putting into practice the commands of Christ.  My mistake was in thinking that the evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity being marketed was at all about obeying the commands of Christ.  Not even close.

See, I bought into the line of reasoning (insane that it is, in my now much more humble opinion) that since the Apostle John called Jesus the Word of God made flesh, and since Christians called the Bible the Word of God, that following Jesus meant trying to obey everything in the Bible.  That is insane, because Jesus actually gave precious few commands in his life on earth, and all of them centered around empathetic love for others.  The Bible, on the other hand, has commands out the wazoo about everything from what you can eat, to how to greet people, and everything in between, much of which are contradictory to one another and very few of which actually involve empathetic love for others.

So, my daughter was pretty much screwed from the get-go.  If she had been a neurologically typical child, she might have been better able to comply.  But, unbeknownst to me for many years, my daughter is Aspie.  She doesn't feel things like other people. She doesn't experience life like other people.  I might have known that if I had been asking her questions about her experience of life, without a mental template of what was good and acceptable with which I measured everything she said and did.    If I had been parenting with the idea that there is a wide range of human experience, and all of it is acceptable, I might  have learned much earlier what kind of mom she needed me to be.  As a Christian mom, I was never encouraged to ask that question. The Bible had the answer to that question, and there were plenty of Christian authors to explain it to me, should I need more than the weekly sermon and a good look around to get it through my thick skull.

I didn't need to try to empathize with or understand my daughter: I needed to demand that she empathize with and understand others.  If she couldn't (when she couldn't) do that, it was plain enough what was going on.  She had a sinful, selfish heart, and was in rebellion to the Word of God.  There is only one right way for a Christian child to be: cheerfully obedient, appropriately compliant to whatever was expected in the moment.  Everything else is rebellion, and can be trained out of them with the right effort.

I am ashamed to admit that I punished my daughter for being who she intrinsically was.  I shamed her for being who she was, as who she was did not fit according to the template of acceptable evangelical Christian thoughts/feelings/actions.  If I could go back in time and change it, I would.  If I thought there was any depth of remorse I could feel that would undue the damage, I would dig deep into depression and regret and stay there as long as it took.  Since that won't help at all, I won't go that route, though that also is an unhealthy ideal I picked up along the way in Christianity.  Sackcloth and ashes- if you are really, really sorry enough, long enough- moves the heart of God like nothing else, at least according to some Old Testament stories.

Thankfully, I didn't have the stomach to keep it up forever.  When I saw my daughter hurting so badly in middle school/high school, I backed the hell off.  I was willing to suffer the shame (yes, I wrote shame- sad but true, it's how I internalized it, and that's how the Christian community dished it out, too) of allowing her to be herself, because it was plain that she needed that freedom in order to know she was loved.  In my evangelical delusion, I thought that such sacrifice on my part would result in healing for whatever hurts she was suffering, and THEN she would transform into the perfect Christian girl!

Little by little, over the last eight years, I have come to understand who she really is inside.  She is beautiful, inside and out, just as she is.  She does not need to change.

She doesn't need to feel anything she doesn't authentically feel.  Not feeling on cue does not make her an amoral monster.  She is as loving and sweet as anyone else, just not on cue.

She doesn't need to clean up her artistic bent.  She is an amazingly talented artist, and while her style isn't as dark as it used to be, there was nothing wrong with her earlier darker images.  She was expressing dark truths, which do also exist you know, as surely as sunshine and rainbows.

She does not have to become an athlete.  She will never be very athletic, and who really cares?  Adults aren't put into high pressure athletic events against their will. Awana is over, finally and forever.  I just wish I hadn't made her try to fit in there as a child.

There are ways in which her neurologically atypical brain will always be at a loss.  She will always have trouble navigating through space in an absent-minded professor sort of way.  She will dress in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing to her, and if it burns someone else's moral or fashion sensibilities, they had better not tell me about it.  I think she is freaking amazing, and I will back her up to anyone, anytime.

I hate that she smokes, because I love her fresh pink lung parynchema and want it to be nurtured forever.  But since she likes it, I accept it.  I refused to feel shame for anything about my daughter ever again.  I am proud of her in every way.

Thank God (literally) that I quit trying to make her into something she is not when I did.  I just wish I could have back all those early years to enjoy her for who she is, and be better equipped to help her find her place in this world without all the shaming and yelling and frustration on my part.  I don't have a time-machine, but I will pay for her therapy, and pray that somehow the love of God can heal the damage I did back then.

She'll never be evangelically fashionable, which was what I was striving to produce in her all those years.  Nope, she is much better than that.  She is authentically who she is, and I love her for it.  Shine on, beautiful. Someone cue up Katy Perry's song "Firework".

Depression sucks

Things are going a bit better this morning, though depression never plays fair so that could change at any time.  At least there were large swathes of uninterrupted sleep last night.

I spent a lot of time researching depression yesterday, specifically, major depressive episodes.  I am also doing my best to encourage and love on my husband as much as I can.  It's tricky, because when he needs it most is when he is most cynical about my sincerity.  That is a hallmark of depression.  Depression sucks.  I hate it.

One of the articles I read yesterday was this:

Ability to Love Takes Root in Infancy

This particular paragraph jumped out at me:

“Before you can remember, before you have language to describe it, and in ways you aren’t aware of, implicit attitudes get encoded into the mind” about how you’ll be treated or how worthy you are of love and affection, he said.  While those attitudes can change with new relationships, introspection, and therapy, in times of stress old patterns often reassert themselves, the researchers note. A mistreated infant becomes a defensive arguer; a baby whose mother was attentive works through problems, secure in the goodwill of the other person.

A mistreated infant becomes a defensive arguer.  It  is a most apt and succinctly put description of my husband's communication style when what I have called "an abusive episode"  is taking place.  I have my own grandmother (and the great good fortune to have been born a twin, so that my mom sent us away to live with my grandmother as infants!) to thank for the reality that I can even attempt to "work(s) through problems, secure in the goodwill of the other person."

Yet another reason that the Pearls and Ezzos of this world should be shouted down so strongly by civilized society that they spend the rest of their lives hiding in obscurity, making bonfires of all their published works as an act of penance in hopes that they will find mercy at the end of their lives.

Anyway, it's certainly food for thought for me.  I have a lot of IRL work to do today, so I won't put out all my comments on the subject right now.  I have my own  comment on yesterday's post which shares a bit more, if anyone is interested.

Peace and good will, SS

Confession is Good.

Hmmm, blogger changed the user interface and I am having a very hard time navigating the new layout. I am trying to publish drafts I left unposted at the time, but it's not working. I am not sure what the problem is, but I hope to get it figured out soon.

I have been refraining from posting about my reforming Crappy Home School Marriage for a couple of reasons. The number one reason being that my husband now reads here occasionally, and I don't want to offend or discourage him. The second reason is that if my anonymity is ever breached, the highly personal nature of my blog could affect my family in ways I never intended. That explains my caution. But I owe it to my readers, especially other home school moms in crappy marriages, to be honest about the whole journey. Trying to heal an abusive relationship is hard. The road is not a freshly paved express highway to fulfillment and happiness. It is under construction, and we all know what that means: delays, rough conditions, and sometimes debilitating collisions that don't always end well. It looks so far like I am going to be one of the lucky ones, who makes it through to a whole relationship without irreparable,permanent loss. That does not mean it is still not a rough go.

My readers deserve to know that this Thanksgiving, I spent with my husband overnight in the Emergency Room. Howie Mandel's horrible show was an extreme trigger for my husband, whose missionary parents also want to be hailed as heroes when they are in reality abusive, self-centered asses. Though our entire family showed him much tenderness, compassion and understanding, he still could not break through the devastation of abandonment that viewing Mobbed brought out in full force. The evening ended with a suicide gesture.

When I figured out what was happening (he went missing for a bit) I went looking for him. He came home on his own accord while I was out, but we took him to the ER anyway. He stayed until morning, when a psych eval ruled that he was no longer in any danger and he was released. He followed up with a new appointment to check his meds and continued with his weekly counseling sessions. As distressing as this was, a friend pointed out that it could be a personal turning point. He took his anger out on himself instead of on his wife.

Maybe. I hope so, although in his depression, he tried to pin it on my preparing to be financially self-sufficient (and therefore preparing to also abandon him).  Once he recovered he was able to ascribe his painful feelings of abandonment to his own inner state, rather than anything I had or hadn't done "to him". This is a huge breakthrough.

Also, it was that very evening, while he was out of the house, that I discovered the Date With the Family video clip. It explained SO MUCH about my husband: why he accuses me of not caring about his thoughts or feelings (not allowed by his family of origin) along with why he was so innately misogynist (in that video, the only good woman is the silent woman- every time a woman speaks it is allowed as an example of UNACCEPTABLE SPEECH/BEHAVIOR and the men are shown as IN THE RIGHT when they roll their eyes at the speaking women and share knowing glances of disgust) in spite of intellectually rejecting misogyny. The MST3K version is so spot-on about everything wrong with that 50s scenario.

The kids and I watched THAT version with him a few days after Thanksgiving, to hug him and tell him we think it sucked eggs that he grew up in such an emotionally abusive environment. Insisting on taking him to the hospital was key to taking this suicide gesture and making it his bottoming out experience. If we as a family had blown off this gesture, or been cynical about it, he would not be healing. If we had ignored it or dismissed it as overly-dramatic or mere foolishness, he would have continued the downward spiral. He needed to see that we CARE, that we take his life seriously. He did not need to be shamed, which is all he would have felt if we did not treat it like a medical emergency. The only other choice- to treat it as a moral failure- would have hurt him further. It was also have encouraged future repeat events, as we would have been saying it was no big deal if we did nothing in response.

As it is, he told me that when he opened his eyes the next morning and saw me smiling at him, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He was not actively trying to kill himself, though he could have. He committed the cardinal sin for a missionary kid: he got drunk. He got miserably, embarrassingly, in-a-stupor-vomit-fest drunk. And since he is on anti-depressants, that made it a medical emergency. His meds are clearly labelled "do not drink alcohol with this medication".

I called his doctor for advice and was told to take him to the ER, so I did. In treating this as a medical emergency instead of a moral failure, we not only saved his physical life, we honored his heart. We also kicked denial right in the teeth as well. No one could just pretend nothing happened the next day. Something big had happened, and we treated it as such.

The very good news is that my husband is talking now. He talks about his unhappy feelings, his happy feelings, his bored feelings. He has FEELINGS! And he is dealing with his parental issues, instead of making everything about me. This is progress.

We are three years into my five year plan, and I am right on schedule. If I get accepted into the school to which I have applied, I will be able to work in the field in thirty months at the earliest. I can be proud of that. I should be done with my own EMDR therapy by summer, if not before. I read my print off from Youarenotcrazy.com every day. I am so much happier and confident about the future, no matter whether my marriage works out or not.

On my spouses part, he has been steadily working at getting his own life together since I shared my plan with him. He completed the 20 week Life Skills program, and still refers to the notebook when one of us (usually me) calls a time-out. He also reads a copy of my print off from Youarenotcrazy.com every day. He went to the sleep clinic and his sleep apnea is now treated. He is in weekly EMDR counseling. He saw a doctor about his depression and is on medications. He is exercising regularly and eating more healthy. Things are looking better for his future as well, no matter how things turn out between us.

It really looks like things are going to turn out good between us, I will cautiously admit. He regularly thanks me for being his friend these past two weeks. He is talking more and about more personal stuff than ever before. We are both pretty happy.

And none of this good- not one bit of it- would be happening if I were still silently suffering in submission! So, to all my readers, don't take any more Poison for your marriage. Stand up for yourself and in doing so, begin an end to the abuse and a start on a life of peace and good will. It won't happen overnight, but it will never happen if you don't start standing up for yourself.

Merry Christmas, SS

Family Idols

Read this
and then go watch this and tell me,
how the hell did this happen?

Abusers, flash mobs, and Howie Mandel

My family couldn't wait to talk about last night's episode of Mobbed today.

They were repulsed.

They were traumatized.

They were disgusted.

I watched it this morning online, and I concur. It WAS repulsive and disgusting.

That poor daughter and that poor abandoned wife, set up on national television to take part in the "what a great guy the abusive man is" spectacular. Howie even ends it all by telling the abusive husband and father, "You are the man!"

For a family that is healing, this show highlights everything wrong with abusive men. First, the abusive dad has set the whole thing up in public, on national television, so that if the abused women in his life don't just immediately forgive and adore him, THEY look like the douchebags instead of him. Public displays of affection, devotion and remorse are common among abusive men. The public face is always that of all-around great guy.

Pukish.


Second, he gets to abuse his daughter on national television, with Howie Mandel's help! Before his grand entrance as the remorseful dad, begging for forgiveness, HE ABANDONS HER AGAIN, RIPPING OPEN HER BROKEN HEART and then imploring her to forgive him on national television.

Why abandon the girl first? What the hell, Howie? How did wounding her afresh make your flash mob of "love" a better production? I hope they both (mother and daughter) sue the shit out Howie for the emotional battering that girl took on national television. That was so effing cruel,to have Dad call and say he wasn't coming and hang up on the DAUGHTER HE ABANDONED! The producers of this show actually did that! Howie had his arm around the dad while he was doing the dastardly deed!

Who would do that? They have no psychological consultants on this show? They are going to go involving themselves in people's most painful traumas for entertainment value, without any concern that they might be helping to revictimize these women?

Unbelievably cruel, that's what it was.

So, they helped this abusive man start off the show re-traumatizing the daughter, then REFUSE TO LET HER LEAVE!!

Howie is giving secret instructions to his employees to not let this crying, confused, distraught woman leave. The rest of the show people are smiling, enthusiastic, giving high-energy performances at Howie's direction, doing everything possible to manipulate this girl to act happy.

If they were decent people they would have just stopped. They would have let that girl leave, taken her somewhere safe that she could try to recover from this fresh abandonment from her father. To be fair, most of the people involved in the production probably didn't know about the abusive phone call that started the event. I don't think the mother did, since she got out of the limo smiling at her daughter. Still, Howie and his producers KNEW. They made it happen!

But no, at Howie's direction, his employees lead the daughter into the flash mob, where people sing nice words to her while her heart has just been ripped open. She smiles the smile of the abused, but her body language- arms closed around her body, hand covering her face- tells the truth that she wants to disappear and find a safe place; that where she is at the time is not safe. And you know what? It was not.

The whole extravaganza was a power play by the abusive husband. Public displays of grandeur are common with abusers.

The whole thing was about him, not about his daughter. I am sure those women have been through this before. Love bombing, is what a friend called it recently. She rightly told me that women stay in abusive relationships because they forgive too quickly. The abuser says he's sorry and then love bombs them. Ostentatious displays of affection: roses, serenades, expensive gifts are often a part of it. The women want so desperately to be loved that they forgive, and the stage is set for the cycle of abuse to begin again.

This man was not sorry for abandoning his daughter. He would never have started off the show by abandoning her again if he understood the damage his abandonment had already done. He manipulated Howie into helping him manipulate his daughter. Sick. Twisted. Horrifying.

Imagine how different the show would have been if dad showed up like he promised, showing he was a different man by BEING DEPENDABLE. The girl was so happy at the beginning of the show, thinking her dad was coming to support her in a musical production. If he had kept his word, and then the flash mob broke out, that would have been a beautiful sight to behold.

But, no. True to abusive form, he has to hurt his daughter before he can be good to her. There she is, heart full of hope, beaming, expecting her dad to show up....then the phone call.

"I'm not coming. I can't explain," he says and hangs up.

The girl is devastated.

It's obvious she's devastated. Does Howie do the compassionate thing and send a counselor down to talk to her? Does he cancel the show, and apologize for using her pain as a source of entertainment? I wish.

No,Howie has his employees steer her out to where the flash mob starts singing to her, and eventually, the abusive dad IN THE SPOTLIGHT, calls down to the daughter he just emotionally bitch-slapped on the phone and wants to be forgiven.

This is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen on television.

So, no one on Howie's staff knows anything about domestic violence/emotional abuse? No one checked around to see if this show was a good idea?

Grandiose statement of remorse are a hallmark of domestic abuse.

Apologizing in public, so the victim can't possibly have a real conversation about the pain the abuse has caused, is also a pretty common abuse tactic.

And Howie Mandel helps this man publicly humiliate his daughter AND praises him for it. Unbelievable. I want to believe he was duped out of ignorance, but honestly how can anyone be ignorant of domestic abuse in this day and age? Abandonment IS abuse, Howie. People who abandon ARE abusers. Call you local shrink to verify, but it's pretty common knowledge.

You can find the episode online somewhere. In the thirty-ninth minute, in the lower right hand corner of the screen, is one lone face that seems to reflect that he knows what is really going on. Everyone else, true to the script, keeps maniacally smiling and cheering like this is a great thing that just happened. Thank you, sir, whoever you are, for your sanity.

Howie Mandel helped a man use a flash mob and nationwide television to publicly emotionally abuse his daughter. They all try their best to manipulate the girl to say she's happy about it, but she honestly says instead, "I don't know how I feel."

Yeah, that's cause inside you're devastated, but a cast of hundreds is being used to emotionally manipulate you to be happy about your abuse. I hope that girl get some help.

Repulsive.