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
