Oprah, I have watched your television show for years attempting to gather as much information and knowledge about attracting the most positive life possible. My life’s circumstances kept me ‘shooting myself in the foot’ no matter how hard I worked or tried to break the behavior patterns. Much time has been spent floundering and making one mistake after another. However, I learned from The Secret that the Law of Attraction brings our deepest positive thoughts into our lives. However, as an inquiring mind I must also confirm that the Law of Magnetism (opposites attract and like repel) is also as true, equal and valid as a universal law of energy. Since there is always balance in the universe, I believe the Law of Attraction comes into our lives because it brings the people, circumstances and events that support us. The Law of Magnetism comes into our lives to present the challenges that help us to grow and have depth of character. But it is the Law of Forgiveness that gives us the freedom to be alive!
The program you aired about Mrs. Still’s left me deeply moved and feeling that I am not alone living in the silence and shadows of abuse. Although I got out physically, the experiences from a lifetime of abuse never seem to go away. I have been in therapy for all of my adult life (EMDR, psychotherapy, psychiatrists, Richian, Gestalt, holistic, Tai Chi, Rebirthing, Massage, Acupuncture, diet, you name it, I’ve done it). The ramifications of living with verbal, sexual, physical abuse are so wide and deep that to this day at age 57, I am still plagued by the experiences from my father, mother, brothers and the romantic relationships in my life. I was sexually molested by my father (with the knowledge of my mother) from the time I was three-years-old until I was nine-years-old as well as from my alcoholic grandfather. In addition, I was physically beaten for ‘normal childhood behavior’ (with the broken bones in my back to prove it) with the added punishment of sitting in a corner all day (to peel the paint off the wall, dangle my feet until they became numb and fantasize about what a life of love might look like). When my father came home from work, he beat me so hard with the strap or hand that he broke the bones in my back. I was raped at age 17 by the captain of the football team and again at 31 years-of-age by the psychologist who hypnotized me. Because my father’s mantra to me while being molested was ‘don’t worry, you will never get pregnant’, I never carried a child full term as an adult. My inner core, although I wanted to birth a baby so very much, led me to having two abortions that led to endometriosis, which led to an ectopic pregnancy. The combination of abortions, ectopic pregnancy and birth control pills left me sterile and devastated and of course, feeling inadequate as a woman (because according to the women in my life, the function of the female is to make a man happy and have his children).
It is my belief that children who are abused have an energy field around them coupled with an inability to discriminate or discern harmful, hurtful people. Because the modeling behavior for the child is one of abuse, then love equals abuse. The child has no concept of what a healthy, nurturing, safe and secure home or relationship with a man looks like. The two marriages in my life were to two unhealthy men. One was a closet homosexual who married me for societal validity (his reason for refraining from having sex before marriage was that he respected me:). The other was a gigolo who divorced me for a millionaire after first taking my money and possessions (even my children’s savings accounts). Both were verbally and physically abusive to me. Because I had no self-worth, both of my husbands managed to get all of the money accumulated in the marriage, even the homes as well as poisoning the children against me (much like my mother did to me). I adopted two sons with my first husband and raised the four children of my second husband only one of whom has a relationship with me today (I have never seen my granddaughter). My inability to have discrimination and discernment skills and feeling of unworthiness, confusion and depression, have left me broken hearted, broken spirited, alone and empty. Nothing I accomplish seems to fill the void.
However, there was some intelligent part that challenged me to use my rage creatively and for the benefit of mankind. For my last divorce, I built a skateboard park (which took five years of fighting City Hall.). For my first divorce, I started a holistic health institute. During another time, I started an environmentally friendly wholesale retail store. I have also spent time fighting for children’s rights and attempting to change laws with regards to education and child rearing. However, not only is it never enough but I have nothing to show for any of it. Because of my self-worth issues, my last business partner stole all of my money (like my two husbands) and I lost my home, car and all of my possessions. I have always been a hard worker but it seems every time I get to the top, some unforeseen something blind sides me and brings me falling back to the bottom with my nose in the dirt. Usually I keep getting up and start all over but I am getting too old to start over and over. No matter how much therapy I do, no matter how many books I read, no matter how many mantras I say, the results are the same.
My mother informed me after many years that she too had been molested as a child by the male borders that my grandmother housed in her Bed and Breakfast. My maternal grandmother was abused as well although she would not speak directly about it. Her remarks to me, “You’re mother put up with it, I put up with it so you should put up with it for the sake of saving your marriage” was my grandmothers response to my getting a divorce and getting out of the abuse. My mother’s anger with knowing that my father had his way with me, led her to make me the family scapegoat as revenge. She continuously told me she only wanted boys. Her love and affection was only lavished on my brothers- all of them becoming successful physicians and medical practitioners (at my father’s insistence). When I received my doctorate, my mother told me that my degree was invalid and worthless because I did not graduate from a top ten school like my brothers. While I was sitting in the corner all day, I received the only real touch from my mother, the brush of my skin against her skirt as she breezed past me to the kitchen. She even hit me with the metal rod of the vacuum cleaner because her hand would not be as strong and effective. When I told my mother that I was raped at age 17 by the captain of the football team, she told me that the boy was from a good, prominent family, she would not have them embarrassed in front of the community. Therefore, I must have deserved it or incited it in some way.
Abuse occurs in poor, middle class and wealthy families as well as all ethnic groups alike. I know because my friends, who have all silently suffered from one kind of abuse or another, are from all economic, ethnic and educational backgrounds and countries. I developed several coping mechanisms that were socially respectable and acceptable. In addition to using my rage creatively to benefit others, I danced and sang (especially in the church), was the church organist and became highly intellectual rationalizing my circumstances into deep denial. I hold a doctorate in education and psychology. I noticed that many of my friends use rationalization tools as well. Yet, no amount of knowledge and intelligence overshadows the deep, deep ‘feelings’ and scars in the wake of abuse. It would seem that broken individuals have some kind of energy field around them, which for all of my adult life, I have tried to alter, re-magnetize, re-energize and re-direct. Abusive energy attracts:
- Acceptance of abuse as the modeling behavior of loved ones
- The concept of love becomes abuse
- Low self-esteem, unworthiness, worthlessness
- Victim mentality
- The more abusive events occur the more worthlessness is reinforced
- Exhaustion from having to maintain Basic Survival needs
- And creates a broken psyche and spirit for the child
- Unknown conceptualizations about safety, security or healthy love
- Hellish lives and living on the edge as a way of life
- Looking at the negative side of life is easier than the positive that seems fantasy
- Unworthy of money, things, a good, happy life
- Self-destructive behaviors
- Unhealthy ways and means of getting attention
- Negative social skills like lying, cheating, stealing, etc.
The year I saw the Color Purple for the first time in a movie theatre, I spent five hours sobbing in the theatre’s bathroom. It struck so many chords with me that, to this day each time I see it the tears are uncontrollable. The sad part remains that there are so many women and children living lives of desperation and abuse in this country. There are so many broken children whose parents and grandparents have perpetuated the genetic pattern of abuse of all kinds. The prisons are full of them (especially mass murderers.) The schools are full of them. The infrastructural design of schools is so far removed from a child’s existence and reality because of size, paper trails, etc. that these children are either lost in the cracks (those that live in quiet desperation caved in and walled up in silence) those that act out their rage in inappropriate ways, and those drugged into complacency (and wonder why after taking anti-depressants when they reach puberty, shoot up their schools and themselves). Is it part of the genetic makeup of humans to be abusive and violent? Will the cycle ever end?
As the planet is environmentally disintegrating, more and more people are becoming narcissistic and ego-centric and less and less humanistic and altruistic, the media keeps filling our brains with the ills of our culture, the government gets bigger and bigger and more and more corrupt and less and less a reflection of the will of the people… Is there any hope Oprah? You are the model of those of us who keep trying to change our fate only to have the past creep in time and time again. Positive attitudes, positive thoughts, positive actions sometimes are just not enough in overcoming a life with no support systems and no tools for developing them (especially after spending the formative years sitting in a corner and not learning socialization skills). Perhaps one day, I will find the way out, the way to a happy, healthy, loving, safe and secure life. Just perhaps….. Until then, like the rest of the abused women and children, I just keep on keeping on every day with a gleam in my eye, a song in my heart, a dance in my feet and a passion for making this world a better place for the generations of children who follow in our footsteps.
Thank you Oprah for all that you do for us.