A Teaching on Abuse

I want to begin this by stating I am a biological male. Some people will read this and not automatically be aware of that fact because this is going to go out into a wide network. It feels important to state my physical maleness.

Further, I have never been sexually abused. When I was 19 a friend who was also a catholic priest and someone who had a certain amount of real power over me at that time, attempted to rape me. It did not get very far at all. I don't believe I suffered any real trauma from this incident. He was not a very good perpetrator, I believe, because he suspected I would not be easy prey. He was right. This was a serious act on his part. But I also recognized that he really did not have the requisite pathology nor physical strength to pull this off with me. I fear other younger and less rebellious and less self actualized males were not as fortunate as I.

I also have never been physically abused. Over the course of my professional career as a psychotherapist I became an expert in the area of gay and lesbian couples domestic violence. This is a part of the domestic violence world many do not seem to have a good amount of knowledge about. It is very real and pervasive. I count myself as blessed to have never experienced physical violence in a romantic relationship nor in any other scenario.

I believe I have suffered a significant amount of verbal, emotional and psychological abuse over the years. I helped to create and run a domestic violence program in rural Kentucky when I was first starting out as a therapist. I learned some incredible life lessons during my involvement with that program and all the ancillary programs I needed to avail myself to as part of providing excellent service to those who were in the program I helped to run.

One thing those who like me quickly learned when working in the area of domestic violence is that many of those who are brutally and physically abused in romantic relationships are simultaneously emotionally and psychologically abused in those same relationships. And when those people are asked which form of abuse is the worst, the lions share of people will say the emotional abuse is the worst. They will often conclude by saying these immortal words, "at least with the physical abuse, the scars will heal."

I first became acquainted with emotional and psychological abuse as a result of living with an alcoholic mother from my earliest memory. There were other adults in the household who would often and successfully shield me from any abusive behavior from my mother. And there was very little. It mostly consisted of her saying somewhat mean things every very great while. Once I got older and was involved in many extracurricular activities at school it manifested itself mostly by my mother forgetting to come and pick me up after a band rehearsal or drama club practice; events where I was often sitting alone outside the school building for three hours or more waiting to get picked up. I would end up telling friends (when I was in high school and when offered rides) that my ride was coming, because of being too embarrassed to admit that ride was my mother and she was probably on a bender and that's why I was still there.

In this same household I also had the unfortunate and perhaps unusual experience of having another adult in the house who was jealous of my relationship and closeness with my grandfather. This was largely my memory of my experience of living in a household with my maternal grandparents until the age of 18. It was the thing I talked exhaustively about to my spiritual directors in the seminary and it is what eventually led me to conventional psychotherapy when I was in my early 30's.

Finally, about a year before my grandmother's death in 2000, when I was 39 years old, I confronted her with 30 plus years of anger, rage and confusion around living with her emotional and psychological abuse of me while growing up. At this point she was a woman in her 80's with Alzheimers. She was not in a completely demented state at this point and in fact she never quite reached that state before her death. She was still quite sharp. And it would not have mattered to me if she had not been. What needed to be said, needed to be said. At first she did not want to listen. It is the only time I can remember in my entire life raising my voice to my grandmother, demanding that she sit her ass down and listen to me. She listened. I spoke. It was truly a life changing event. All those years of suspecting what was to me experienced as the absolute most bizarre and insane thing imaginable---that she simply could not stand the fact that me and her husband, my grandfather, were so close, was validated. She admitted everything. She also admitted to having a difficult time loving me because I reminded her so much of my biological father, whom she despised. During the talk we each cried profusely. It was one of the most healing moments I have ever had in my entire life. By the time my grandmother died, we were at great peace. All had been forgiven. Hallelujah!

One unfortunate thing however, that sprung from all those years of being emotionally and psychologically abused, was the devastating blow to my self esteem. That resulted in my going through life waving a larger than life and multi -hued florescent even-- flag, that spoke to the world, "Come to me. Come to me all of you with such woundedness that you need to project onto another; that you need to be mean to another. Come to me...and I will give you rest. I will give you much needed succor."

And so a veritable parade of supervisors, boyfriends, faux friends, biker club brothers and sisters, strangers in every type service industry imaginable, beat an absolute path to my person, answering that megaphoned call.

And Raven the victim was created. Doctor Frankenstein himself could not have created a more perfect specimen for the task he was created for.

So I began a chapter of unconscious and victim inspired living somewhere in my childhood that lasted until I was 48 years old. So what happened when I was 48? When I was 48, Hallelujah-- I experienced the big Trifecta, the Triple Crown, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit Trinity of calls to awakening. I experienced, in the course of 8 short months, the absolute rejection and betrayal of a group of people I had called my brothers and sisters in a motorcycle club I had founded. I also experienced the dramatic, mean spirited and seemingly heartless rejection of my boyfriend at the time. And I was unceremoniously laid off from my well paying job. The layoff, to some degree, was done in a very thoughtless, racist and corporate world type of way by not my corporate employer but by my doing very good work in the community but not truly knowing how to treat its employees non profit in San Francisco.

I honestly do not know what kept me from considering suicide. I believe one can be too blindsided by things to even consider suicide. But as has been the case for so many for time immemorial, the experience of my greatest pain brought forth in me my greatest invitation to awaken. And so gradually and then in speeded up fashion, I began to awake from a more than 40 year slumber.

One of the first things to disappear was my victim identity, even though the clarion call for people to come into my life who were abusive to me did not seem to dampen in the slightest. The call was still there apparently. The response was still there apparently. What was no longer there was the identity.

Ho’oponopono practice: I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.

I learned of this practice shortly after experiencing the Holy Trinity. I had studied various teachings on nonduality years before this discovery. It was this discovery however, that made it all come to life for me. Anyone...anyone I perceived as wronging me in any way was met either verbally or in spirit with: I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. Such simple words. Such tremendous transformation. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.

In these few years, as a result of some things that are known to me and other things that are not known to me, I have learned something curious about abuse. Here it is: I can appear, from all appearances, to be be on the receiving end of significant abuse (verbal/emotional/psychological) in my life and in some of my relationships and not feel abused at all. To that end there are some things I am certain of: I don't create defining stories about myself. I do not create defining stories about the other who could be perceived as being abusive towards me. I am not in denial about what is happening. It is not my attempt at being nice that keeps me from feeling abused. I am not nice in that way. I am not codependent. I don't minimize what's happening.

I am.

I have not labeled myself a victim anymore. I have not labeled the others as perpetrators of abuse or "people who are abusive to me." I have experienced what the world would label as abuse simply as something that is in that moment and have resisted any desire to add additional labels to it. I do my Ho’oponopono practice (I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you ). I practice this silently and continuously while I am experiencing what would be considered abuse. I engage in other helpful and beneficial practices as well. I also practice metta and tonglen, both from the Buddhist canon. I do reiki work on myself and these others. Ho’oponopono is believed to be from Hawai'i, from the Huna tradition. I engage in other practices still.  The Ho'oponopono practice however, forms the energetic foundation of all the practices. I am also completely open to needing to remove myself from a physical relationship with someone if I am guided in that action. In such a case, I continue to do all these practices from afar.

I honor the abuse you have experienced in this life. I honor the non-abuse you have experienced. I honor you not knowing whether or not you have experienced any real abuse in this life. I honor the victimization you have experienced whether it be real or imagined. I realize that at the end of the day that distinction becomes immaterial. I respect any unique journey you may have that is related to all or any of this. I am not saying that you can or that you should now or eventually have the same experience as mine with regard to these matters. I do understand violence. I do understand victimization. I understand it all. I do not write this in judgment. I do not write this in ignorance. I wrote it in authenticity and openness.

I believe what I ultimately am doing here is trying to talk about what most call abuse and all the related topics on a different level from the levels these discussions usually take place on. I understand what I am saying may be viewed as controversial. I understand I may be viewed as minimizing or being insensitive or that my words may be interpreted as the mad ramblings of someone completely lost in the netherworld of codependency or lost in the sugary sweet land of sugar coated bliss and/or with an additional case of terminal niceness. It is OK to believe that. It is all Ok. I am OK with some not getting what I'm talking about here.

I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.

© Raven/Sage Mahosadha

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