victim – Soul Reflection

Radiant Glory

I am struggling with the continued dialogue around the toxic masculine predator. Whilst I agree that consent needs to be clear (though hopefully without killing every last vestige of romance and spontaneity), I believe there is a place for female accountability too.

I have stood as a disempowered woman who has said ‘No’, provided the body language of discomfort and rigidity and not been heard or respected. I have had a man’s hand at my throat for not fulfilling his needs; I have said ‘no more’ to the boyfriend I was leaving but he still took more; I have walked away from too many situations feeling unclean, unhappy and abused. And I have had a part to play in that dynamic occurring.

Yes there are the rare but horrifying psychopaths whose terror we would have no control over, but so many of the ‘me too’ stories are women asking for men to define the scenario, to be respectful, healthy, wholesome no matter what they are confronted with. We are again giving away our power by asking them to be solely responsible for holding women safely.

We are asking for men to be brought up to respect women, to do things differently, but why aren’t we asking for women to make this change too? In every relationship dynamic, we can never expect our opposite to make the change, we have to create the change for ourselves and perhaps they might follow our shining example!

Why have we been meeting film directors in their hotel rooms, instead of insisting on a space we are comfortable with? Why do we choose to drink away our inhibitions at frat parties? Why did I stay in the room when I ended a relationship, after I had said ‘no’ to one more time? Why did I not get up at leave, why did I not set my boundaries clearly, why did I not honour and respect myself enough to do what I needed to keep me safe?

We are asking men to respect us, but do we respect ourselves? When do we say ‘No’ with clarity, strength and follow through. I’m not talking about the ‘life in danger’ scenarios, I’m talking about the every day abuses that I hear women happy to rage about but refuse to take accountability for. Yes men have their work to do, but so do women. Should a man take advantage of a inebriated woman, absolutely not. Should a women be inebriated in a circle of people she is not safe with? Are we treating ourselves with respect as we stumble and slur? Are we treating ourselves with respect when we stay with a misogynist boss for the sake of our career? I can hear the thousands of excuses being hurled at me as I write this, the shunning of blame straight back to the men, the justifications for staying when your body was screaming to leave, the fears. I hear them all, I acknowledge them all, I honour them all AND still there is space to take back our power for ourselves, not from men but from the ether where we left it. We don’t need to lord over the masculine, we simply need to claim back the feminine in all its powerful and radiant glory.

Robert Moore lectured to the effect that the uninitiated man becomes an unwise aggressor and the uninitiated woman a victim.

Initiation (the supported process of shifting the psyche from child to adult) helped me find my strength, my clarity, my respect and my ‘No’. Not since my initiation have I encountered these myriad dynamics of abuse that I previously encountered daily, because my energy and perspective has shifted so significantly. It is in my power to deign to let myself become victim or instead to hold compassion for those who act out their wounds and place my boundaries firmly between us.

I will endeavour to raise my son to be a man of self respect and my daughter to be a woman of self respect. I know that if I achieve these aims, they will mirror that respect out into the world through their actions, words and deeds. That is also the choice I make for myself.

I stand in my power and say and act ‘No’ when I need. That is enough.

Initiation

I was listening to a lecture by Robert Moore the other day and heard him describe what happens to our children when they are not supported through to adulthood with the appropriate initiation.

An appropriate initiation meaning a rite of passage supported by the elders of the community that delivers the teenager into their authentic strength, their self belief and their burgeoning knowing.

Robert Moore described how men without initiation have a tendencey to lack the wisdom to handle their natural aggression; it has not been tempered or guided with the knowledge of the elders. This is a big topic of conversation on social media and the world stage right now. Men and their aggression. I’ll come back to that…

He then went on to say that women without initiation have a tendencey to fall into the space of victim; they are not empowered in their self belief and inner strength. Bingo!

Aggressive Men / Victim Women…. is that not the constant narrative on twitter/facebook/instagram etc at the moment. The topic du jour.

Except that we are looking at it face on, rather than behind the scenes. I have heard very few voices who actually understand where this dynamic is coming from, reaching back to our ancestry and forward to our knowledge of psychology to bring forth this vital information.

Our society is failing our children by not supporting, creating and delivering this aspect of transition, from child to adult. We can continue to spend the days verbalising on social media or we can take action and begin to change the world with a true and meaningful understanding of how to achieve that.

Healthy initiation (and university style trauma is definitely not that!) is a critical piece of the puzzle of healing.

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I personally know of three global organisations that help to create that process of initiation for men & woman, no matter what age:

The ManKind Project

Woman Within International

Women in Power

Maverick

This week I watched ‘The Darkest Hour’ with Gary Oldman playing Winston Churchill. One of the core pieces that I loved within this film was how clear it was that Churchill was an emotionally messy individual; by all accounts an alcoholic, perhaps without financial savvy, fractious, demanding AND alongside this a brilliant mind, a wordsmith, family man, and the one who determined to save Great Britain from Adolf Hitler.

He was a maverick: ‘an unorthodox or independent-minded person’

When my brothers and I had to decide which three words we would have on my father’s gravestone, I pushed for Maverick. I can’t even remember now what the other two words are but I knew I wanted a word to honour his fuck-ups and his genius all at once. That is who he was to me.

What I saw from the film was that it took the character of a Maverick to save us from invasion, it took that single minded belief, that ability to walk against the tide, and a little bit of ‘crazy’. I watched the film and I saw my father.

My father did terrible things, he sexually molested me, he paid little attention to the emotional needs of his children, he was frightening in his temper. And he did wonderful things too. He transformed people’s lives both through his psychiatry practice and his generosity in bringing in to his home those in need, including the homeless. He invented psychometric computer programs that are still used globally today (he just forgot to patent them!). His mind was brilliant and broken.

I was not really able to see my father this way until after he died, until then our relationship was just too painful. In watching ‘The Darkest Hour’, I was reminded how important Mavericks are in the world and how an individual can be two parts simultaneously – dark and light.

There is a cleansing going on in our western society right now, where anyone who has ever faltered, made a mistake, royally fucked up or, worst case, been severely abusive is being silenced and shut down. I’ve seen on social media something to the effect of: ‘it doesn’t matter what good they have done, abusive behaviour wipes all of that away’. Does it? Should it?

I just don’t know if life is this back and white, that right and wrong is so clear cut. What if someone can have blurred and damaging boundaries and also create magic in the world? My relationship with my mother is super toxic but she is also a wonderful friend to others. I worked with Jamie Oliver once upon a time and I personally found him difficult (others found him inspiring) but I also hugely respect his drive to change the health of our children through food. My experience of someone can be diametrically opposite to someone else’s. I can also dislike one aspect of someone and appreciate another. One person can experience abuse another healing at the hands of the same person. So how does this tally? How do we bring abusers or fault makers to justice without cleansing our society of the inspiration and necessary change that they sometimes bring?

It makes me wonder how Einstein, Marie Curie, Van Gogh, Michael Angelo, Mother Theresa, Alexander Fleming, Emmeline Pankhurst, Jesus or Mary Magdalene would fair on social media today? Would we celebrate their achievements or chastise them for their failings?

How I reached this place with my father, of being able to respect his achievements whilst not accepting his abuse, was through conversation. Before he died we spoke about my accusation of molestation, he said his mother had done the same to him and there wasn’t anything wrong with that. It wasn’t an apology, it wasn’t really even an admission; soulfully, he still had a long way to go before being accountable to his actions. Yet from that conversation I could understand that he had been taught as a child that this behaviour was ok, that to look at it from my perspective (and indeed much of society’s) was something quite unfathomable to his psyche. He was acting from trauma. I have compassion for that.

And before I am shouted down from the rooftops, yes I still believe abuse must be called to account and appropriately dealt with. But that is the extreme end of our current cleansing and there are multiple shades of grey in between for all the characters and individuals of the world.

I am a flawed and loving person, which part do you see?

Victim Complex

When I was 22, I was operated on to remove a large ovarian cyst. Keyhole surgery and back home that afternoon was the suggestion; instead I nearly died.

The operation did not go as planned and I had to have four blood transfusions to replace my significant loss. I was a week in hospital and it was several months before I felt my strength return on so many levels.

During my recovery at home (if memory serves, just a few days back from hospital), I became upset when my mother left me alone in the shower to answer the phone. I couldn’t lift my right leg more than a few centimetres off the ground and I felt trapped within the high bath sides. My mother returned to find me in floods of tears. She sighed and told me that I was getting a ‘victim complex’.

What I really had was PTSD.

My mother’s family and background is one of army and boarding school, so I fully understand that she had been raised to have that stiff, British, upper lip and empathy was not a trait much nurtured, but wow those few words smacked me hard.

They spun around my head for years and years trying to tally with the way I had felt post that operation (and all the others shifts that had been made because of it – change of job, country and relationship). I believed my mother. I believed I was not handling my trauma ‘well enough’.

What I also noticed over those years was how invested I was in telling the story of my operation. It felt like such an enormous part of who I was; I would drunkenly insist on revealing my physical scars to all those that listened; it became an excuse for all my failings – weight, relationships, jobs. Most telling of all, I could barely recount the full story without feeling like collapsing into unending tears.

It was only when I began to explore the world of healing that I started to empathise with that younger self and the overwhelm I had been dealing with. I realised that without the right tools and support I had been left with two choices, the stiff upper lip of denial or the Groundhog Day story that defined me completely.

But there is a space in between denial and holding on to the story, neither of which serve, and that place is one of healing. That delicate place of acceptance – something happened to me and I was a victim without becoming victim to that trauma. I think that nuance is key to addressing how trauma can be honoured and processed and also crucial to moving beyond the potential to remain fixed in a story that can inhibit growth and vitality.

That space is one of liberation and is the right of everyone and it is a space that needs to be consciously chosen and strived for. It is a doorway that requires effort and application to open. It is not easy nor is it meant to be.

As Scott Stabile’s quote says ‘…I could survive it. It wasn’t comfortable, but it didn’t destroy me.’

Scapegoat

I have so much to say and I’m not sure how’s it’s all going to come out but it’s a real mixture of what’s tumbling around my head, heart and soul and also how that relates to the pertinent space the global media is reflecting right now.

I received a real lashing for a recent post (Weinstein et al). It hit me hard and I have taken some time to reflect on it. As much as I work hard to construct my opinions as solely mine and I endeavour to use ‘I’ statements to emphasise that, I have realised that when I post something on someone else’s social media page, it turns my I statements into a ‘you should’. It can feel as if I am telling someone that my opinion belongs in their space. So I have learned from that and will be more cautious about how and where I share my thoughts.

But the essence of that blog still stands for me and I have delved a little deeper into my psyche as to why I hold these beliefs which are perhaps in conflict with a majority. What are my reasons?

What comes up for me is the concept of the Scapegoat. Because not only I have created a scapegoat to escape facing my own issues in the past but I have also been heavily labelled as the scapegoat in my family of origin.

Being the scapegoat within my family dynamic has meant that I am the excuse for them to not be accountable and responsible for their own actions and parts within a story. If I am the person who is ‘wrong’ then that makes those labelling me ‘right’.

And the water is murky because as sure as some of what I’ve been accused of are downright lies, some rumours are carried in truth. Which, more than anything, gives them greater fuel. But what I have come to learn is that my truth and their truth are two very different animals. So whilst my behaviour may be judged by one to be sordid, or untrustworthy, neurotic or perhaps even a little bit crazy. My truth is that I can see the cause and effect on how these events unfolded. I can see the beginning of pain and woundedness that developed into acts of desperate love seeking, or unhealthy out-letting. Once I stopped believing the stories about me from them, I started to see how unhappiness evolves.

And truthfully, it has been the most extraordinary gift, because now I can no longer see ‘bad behaviour’ but only brokenness. I can no longer label someone a predator or an abuser because I see their desperation, their shattered spirits trying to find a way home. I know that being labelled the bad one only spiralled me into deeper despair and I can’t see how it is a solution to anything except the abdication of accountability for all parties.

Because not only have I been the scapegoat but I have also made others my scapegoat. I have been abused and I have abused. When I think of the #metoo campaign, I wonder how many of those speaking out have ever abused others in some form? How many people have used their power to manipulate a person or scenario for their own gain or safety? And why is sexual abuse the pinnacle of this discussion? Some of my experiences that have had no sexual overtones or physical violation have been far more damaging to my spirit than the more overt domination. None of it is right but perhaps neither is it simply wrong.

I cannot stand on a pedestal and say #metoo without also saying that perhaps I have left others uncomfortable, damaged, hurt by my own actions – from a place of unconscious woundedness maybe. But isn’t that the same for most?

Speaking out, speaking up, reclaiming our power is vitally important but with that comes the core piece of accountability and compassion. Where are our own wounds reflected in these others? How can healing really occur without understanding?

I am a scapegoat, I am an abuser, I am a wounded and healing woman.

Did Women Birth the Patriachy?

‘The job of the initiator…. is to prove to the boy or girl that he or she is more than mere flesh and blood. ‘

Iron John by Robert Bly

I struggle with the polarities of feminism and patriarchy. We are, not only, interconnected beings, but, more critically than that, the perpetrators of patriarchy have been birthed from the vaginas of women.

Women have been just as much of an integral cog in the creation of the ‘demonised’ patriarchy as men; we are a dominant and powerful influence on the children we birth and raise in this world.

This is what we can no longer ignore. We can no longer speak from the place of victim but must acknowledge our own accountability towards the state of our lives and the lives of our ancestors and our future generations.

When we raise our children we need to be deeply aware of the choices we make towards them, this is not about academic education, status, employment; this is about the psychology of raising a child. What creates a grounded, stable, kind, compassionate being? Our role as parents, mothers and fathers, is critical.

The deep truth is that it is not about gender, it is about love. Both women AND men are being abandoned by our current structure, where we place emphasis in all the wrong places. Women’s opportunities being suppressed, men committing suicide at horrendous rates, LGBT communities persecuted. This is not about feminism or patriarchy, it is about our humanity towards each other.

Our children need to feel deeply & soulfully loved in order to be able to walk into the world with kindness and compassion. And this is not as simple as saying ‘I love you’ and packing them off to daycare or nannies or school or extra classes. This love is not about who there are going to be in the world it is about who they already are – a soul, born with all the potential of total acceptance. We teach our children to hate, we teach our children to fear, we teach our children to create clear separate identities to each other. Parents are responsible for every generation that comes forth, it is the single most important job in the world and it’s time to take it more seriously.

It is time to focus on healing the wounds that prevent us from raising our children well, to be wholly accountable for the impact our own actions and choices create in the world.

I will not call myself a feminist when my brothers are being punished for acting out their wounds nor will I align myself with the patriarchy when my sisters are struggling to reach their power.

I will continue to advocate for emotional healing and natural parenting to be the only recourse to humanitarian living, to kindness.

To love.

“… It is easy to love the part of ourselves which resembles a radiant God but real love is to also to love the part of ourselves which is like an imperfect, lost, grief-stricken wanderer lying by the roadside. This wandering, grief-filled soul exiled in the broken world is redeemed by our love, and at the same time this lost wanderer is the one who will guide us home…”

Jason Hine