Sophia’s Story: One Woman's Survivance in the Misogynist Minefield

Womanly Work - The Grist in a Sourceress's Mill

Telling Truth to Power in #metoo times.

There is a lot wrong with our culture, but for little girls growing up, even more so. We are raised in innocence only to discover that the world is fraught with peril. We are given messages that ill prepare us for the realities of a world where the agenda of men overrides just about everything, and for the girls who come up ‘hard’ for whatever unfairness in their young lives, that agenda also puts girls in emotionally dangerous situations where they must choose between things they were never prepared or ready for.

This is the story of the decades long shamanic rite of passage I call my life. I named that part of me that is pre-CPTSD diagnosis, Sophia, to be able to lay her to rest when the time is right. The Goddess of Knowledge was an apt title for all I had learned.

At the age of 14, Sophia left home. She had trick or treated with her little 6 year old sister the night before and was still very much a little girl. The next day, she gathered up her school bag with its hidden bank book with all of $15 she’d saved in it. She slipped out the back door of her childhood home for the last time, praying that this was one morning where she would not be inspected from head to toe on the way as her controlling and usually angry mother often did.

At school, Sophia cleaned out her locker, her heart in her throat, and took the furthest bus out of town that the city provided, determined to hitchhike anywhere. She took one last look at her cute little sister she loved so much and she left, not knowing where she was headed. She just knew that she had to get away from the insanity of a violent mother who screamed and hit without warning every day she had been in her care. Now that Sophia had started to look like the man that had fathered her (out of wedlock), the resentment had increased and Sophia was being blamed, criticized and diminished on a daily basis. Her little blond, blue eyed sister was safe, she could do no wrong, but Sophia was in real danger of her mother’s lateral resentment and after a particularily ugly and threatening incident, she felt she had no choice but to get away or stay and die. It was the 12^th time she’d run, and the charm, this time, with no well meaning adult returning her to have the sense beaten into her.

That first year in the wild was measured in nights. Sophia slept where she could, learned through being raped while hitchhiking that if she befriended men they would feed her in exchange for what they wanted. She learned to not value herself so that she could stomach the treatment.  She developed skills that were not taught in school. She learned how to mince and preen, how to wiggle and wink to act available, being sexual became her survival skills. Before long Sophia was discovered by other working girls and introduced to pimps who passed her around like so much property, shipping her  from town to town. She escaped from one, was discovered by another and beaten worse than her mother ever did and forced to work before she healed.

Eventually, Sophia just became docile and just let whatever happened to her happen. By the time she was 16, she’d been raped more times than she could  remember. By the time she was 17, she’d had a baby with no idea who the father was, and gave the child up for adoption. Without dental insurance and in another country, her teeth decayed and disintegrated, causing her to consume handfuls of aspirin by the day for the constant pain. Her face was a map of acne and open sores from the constant stress, but the men just kept putting themselves in her. Not one saw past what she was to them to see who she was to herself.

By the time she was 18, she’d done hard time as an adult in a US federal maximum security jail. Being tall for her age worked against her as she could pass for being an adult and she even fooled the jail staff until her 4^th month in the honour dorm, a temporary home that was the best thing to ever happen to her, where Sophia had no men wanting to ‘touch’ her for the first time in her life. Her ID said she was 27, Sophia was 17.

 In her 19^th year, she was back in the states, returning boomeranged by another pimp, after her ‘voluntary departure’ to Canada.  By 20, Sophia had spent 6 months making heaps of money she never saw, at the Mustang Ranch in Nevada. She traveled around the western US and out of necessity, became an exotic dancer to generate business interest. Winning several amateur talent contests in men's clubs enough to earn a dance contract, for the first time in her life, she felt personal power.

On the stage, she was a breathtakingly entertaining amazon, an amazing beauty who could be anything she wanted, she learned the art of illusion, of subterfuge.  Suddenly, Sophia had a headline on the sign outside the club and she had esteem. But it was not the right kind of esteem and it was distorted, and she was still used and utilized by men as an object for their own perverse agendas. Those years, Sophia remembers spending Christmasses alone in Macdonalds restaurants, watching as other families coddled their kids and knowing that was not her lot in life. Sophia’s childhood was over.

In 1980, Sophia was 22, she’d been in a robbery and left to die, in a bondage dungeon where her customers were the cream of the West Hollywood crop; men, of course, lawyers, judges, accountants, CEOs, they all frequented the little twisted business. The sight of what was in those back rooms, shackles and whips, so frightened the little old man with the silver gun who was robbing them that he tried to kill her and one well placed bullet severed her carotid so that he almost succeeded. Sophia lost over 50% of her blood that day. But her death was not meant to be and a few months later, as soon as she healed, as soon as she restored the use of her atrophied arms, she escaped  by flying to Alaska, arriving the day before Christmas, appearing at the door of a brothel with 20 dollars to her name and all her worldly goods in one small suitcase, hoping and praying that they had a place for her.

Sophia was trying to get away from the life that took her to every major lower 48 city and every major city in Canada to the endless use of men, and she was hoping that she could find the means to escape once and for all, in order to survive. It was dawning on her that no woman lays down like that because she wants to, no woman, given a choice of a life with dignity or one of being overtly sexualized, would choose the path that Sophia had been forced to endure.

And escape she did. Through meeting people who helped her get ‘out’, she soon learned how to waitress in the clubs she used to work out of, then she learned bartending, then management. She graduated to working as a caterer for the medical offices and left ‘the lifestyle’ behind just before her son was conceived. Sophia was 30 and finally had a pregnancy where she knew who the father was, who was not conceived in accident. Sadly, the transient roofer who loved her moved on and she never let him know he had a son. But that was ok. Compared to the long, scary, dark and dangerous road that took her 16 years to escape, single motherhood was a piece of cake, or so she thought. She got healthy, found another man who claimed to love her, and had her dental work repaired and replaced. But happiness evaded her when she traveled back to Vancouver to straighten out her citizenship, engaged to this man who loved her back in Alaska, but arrived in Canada to be greeted by a letter written in his new girlfriend’s hand, telling her they were through. Sophia brushed herself off, and started over. Again.

In the coming years, Sophia raised her son, began underground ventures supporting women and met a man who promised to love and take care of her and her boy, forever. She even waited a whole year before she kissed him, believing that was how a ‘good girl’ acted, but still, just after they moved in together, Sophia tearfully confided her sordid past to him. She could not abide being in intimacy and planning a marriage with someone and not have him know her horrible story.

Instead of sheltering his precious woman in his arms, he pushed Sophia away and shortly after that, when she discovered she was pregnant with her daughter, he sued Sophia for custody based on the secrets she’d confided, resulting in losing primary custody of her daughter. 

Fast forward through many years as a single parent.  Sophia’s son, fatherless, acted out and was a traitor to the family with his lies and deceit to the point of her having to utilize tough love in his late teens to protect her daughter and their life. His antics made holding a job increasingly more impossible for her and it wasn’t until he was out of the house that Sophia considered finishing her education by going back to school. Those years were spent involved intimately with her underground organization, dedicated to educating women about menstrual health, and working as a volunteer with the local women’s centre,  the women’s shelter, a women’s society and a food security group.  When she became a teen, Sophia’s daughter returned to her mother out of her own free will, and Sophia used the horrors of her teen years as a model of what to protect her daughter from. She never told anyone again about her past. That was too dangerous, she’d learned. For a long time, she believed that the consequences of people finding out about her past were too severe in a world that could never understand.

Sophia was determined that she was NOT going to let the same thing happen to her daughter. As Sophia moved into University, she began to work for deans, department chairs and the office of scholarly activities, a far cry from being forced to her knees in alleys for the reward of a hotel room later or a greasy meal, all that she was worth or valued for. Suddenly she felt a different kind of inclusivity, of worth, or being a valid human.

It was paying kindness forward that encouraged Sophia at 45, to take in two sisters, teen friends of her daughter’s, who’s mother was dealing with challenges. The girls had been raised to take care of her because she  couldn’t take care of herself and in Sophia’s care, those girls flourished and became whole, no longer needing to fight off the men their mother brought home.  Soon they brought Sophia another young teen girl who had lost her mom at 10, and who had been labeled a difficult child because of her rage at the unfairness of it all. All in all, Sophia raised 5 young people to adulthood, four of them female.

Suddenly, Sophia found herself degreed, without kids and with the attentions of a man who professed to be Christly, a career soldier who understood that we all come from somewhere and who never put judgment on her, while she was in his good graces, for the past she’d endured. He acted like he cherished Sophia for the most part, and she felt so relieved that she was safe at last. She had come so far by the time she was 53, and she could finally feel herself gluing together those bits of broken girl, to become someone who was whole and stronger than ever. She became a writer, an artist, a poet and a wife, something she appreciated with every cell in her body.

But once again, unfairness struck when Sophia’s world crumbled upon discovering her husbands illicit affair that had lasted the duration of their relationship. When Sophia discovered the dishonesty, she never thought to bite her tongue, it never occurred to her that her status had declined in his eyes and when she called him on it, she was stunned to hear his voice  accusing Sophia of being to blame for his dishonesty.

Her husband admonished her for being a drain on his life, even though she’d devoted three years to solely taking care of him and making a loving home in return for the kindness he showed her,  so grateful for any little scraps of redemption cast her way. Maybe it was her fault.

The military spousal abuse unit told Sophia to escape with her life, as soldiers noted for their ptsd often turned violent when cornered by their dishonest actions, and before she knew it, she was back on those same streets, this time, sleeping in the car. But now she is a different Sophia, educated and refined by the grist in the mill of her unfair existence.

Sophia is still in limbo, but now she has good women (and even the odd male) friends of long standing who have adopted her, who have known her through decades of overcoming adversity, and who inherently know that she is a good person worthy of helping. Because of their kindness, Sophia has been housed and can begin to put her life back together, but she can never forget where she came from. And she never falters from paying the kindnesses forward when given the opportunity to help another young woman escape from the unfairness of our sexist, highly sexualized and sexually demeaning culture. Today, Sophia felt like she had to stop job hunting and home hunting for a minute, so that she could confess, share and witness her story. Many people have no idea about the secrets she’s carried all these years as she is a walking miracle yet still she can’t wrap her brain around valuing herself because she’d been so hurt and mistreated in her developing years, in spite of knowing the miracle that is she.

There is a little Facebook meme that went around recently that goes something like, when you see someone having a bad day, you don’t know what they’ve had to endure, you can’t see hidden handicaps and it would be nice if you could smile their way instead of passing judgment. Sophia is one of those people who you can’t see what she’s carrying in the way of handicaps or differences of ability. Perhaps after reading this, you will better understand girls and women like her.

Sophia is done hiding the truth. 

There is a quote that came out about 20 years ago, in a song by Ani de Franco. Ani sings ‘silence is violence, and a good brain ain’t worth diddly, if you don’t have the facts’.  Sophia has always had a ‘good brain’ although being  shot in the head filled her memory capabilities with swiss cheese, but she didn’t have the ‘facts’ until she majored in Women’s Studies and delved deeply into the sociology of western culture’s tendency to support gender bias, specifically by diminishing women’s rights.  While acquiring her bachelor’s degree, Sophia also heard another quote that struck home, by Sally Kempton, ‘it’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head’. How true. 

Women grow up feeling the need to teeter on heels that push their uteruses forwards causing a physical invitation to men to utilize their unproven wombs to be accepted, valued and validated because that is how we are taught to value ourselves. We apply cosmetics that mimic the flush of sexual availability and fecundity, and men grow up learning to only appreciate the superficial exterior of women. Those boys who do not grow up because of their unaddressed traumas become dominators and usurpers, perpetrators of abuses directed at those innocent young women who dress in manners that attract the kind of attention they have no idea what the consequences will be. ‘Giving our power away’ is what women are taught by media, by magazines, by the hootchy kootchy ass shaking half naked dancers on music videos and as a result of the influences flooding them from every side, young girls mince, preen so that they will feel acceptable. They have no idea of what they're attracting, so lampshaded by the effective gaslighting of our misogynist culture.

Now that she’s come clean, she can start finding a way to helping others break free. And if she’d known how good it feels to get it off her chest, she would have done it a long time ago.

The Beginning

Today, the name Sophia is being surrendered to a new evolution as her owner decides to invest herself in compensating for a prematurely shortened girlhood. Even at 61, its never too late to start. There's a new name to come for this whimsical, creative creature. Stay tuned.

To find out more about one organization that advocates and works tirelessly to rescue girls trapped in these horrible existences, click on the url below.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Living-Water-for-Girls/310735163856?v=info&sk=info

Out of the Belly of the Misogynist Beast

(Back story: TW:  The author survived a robbery in 1980. By never dealing with the emotional scars this left, the oversight has compounded until, over three decades later, she was flooded with anxiety, in almost constant pain or discomfort. Compensating for blood vessel damage, there is a drum in her head that accompanies her every waking minute igniting episodes that she experiences on TOP of daily anxiety attacks that mimic heart attacks, weakness spells, joint stiffness, body dysmorphia, varying levels of capacity in a day, fogmindedness and depression. Before the C-PTSD diagnosis, you can imagine this could cause quite a smokescreen to have to function within to be able to have any kind of normal life.

Prior to discovering there was a name for all she experienced that put obstacles endlessly in her path, she raised children to adults, acquired a women's studies and indigenous studies degree, married and divorced. The exit from the betrayed marriage destroyed what was left of her safety, and a year of homelessness became a downward spiral of pain, panic, disaster, suicidal thought and  hopelessness. Amazingly, she pulled herself out of that tailspin, found a physician who could diagnose what had been wrong with her all along, and she could get on with educating herself, and emerging into a new life, blinders and obstacles removed, she could start to share her stories to shed light on issues for those who like her, had been voiceless.
 
Free at Last

The astonishing revelations with a counselor couched in PTSD and my world finally feels like it's turned around. The information I have gleaned about my physiology has given me the missing puzzle pieces for many things.

I have been looking at how my past relationships began and how they existed. I have turned the lens on how it might have been different, had I known what I know now about my fragility, about my responses to threats to my safety, about my decision to have children even...

The discovery that I experienced when I began university was one of the saving graces when I was in my blindness about the syndrome that I function within. Because of my finding out that in spite of my internal dialogue constantly running a vicious commentary behind the scenes, behind my eyes, of putting me down and making me feel less than, I could now see with my own two eyes that I was high functioning with a capacity for intellect that astonished me. I discovered that there was a body of work, a feminist sociological body of work, that addressed this beast that was my world, the patriarchal culture I was at the mercy of, and that information became a pool I swam in, voluntarily, on a daily basis... and when I wasn't ingesting the philosophies of feminist minds, I was applying the analysis of what I'd read and learned to the world around me.

Little did I know, I was drowning myself in triggers.

I mentioned to N (my therapist) that I was having a difficult time reading without getting nauseous. Other than what I read on my laptop, which oddly, doesn't make me react, every time I pick up something and attempt to focus on the topic it's portraying, my stomach responded with flipflops and a tightening of my throat.

She asked me, 'What are you reading?'

That gave me pause. Why would she ask that? I had been thinking that I needed my eyes checked, never associating it to the big elephant that lives in my room 24/7. I thought about it. I read autobiographies, murder mysteries, feminist discourse and the interwebz. All but the latter have lately made me so ill that I have been putting the book down within minutes of picking it up.

N said 'You have been in the belly of the misogynist beast and now you're out. Why would you immerse yourself in triggers about the beast in your recovery?'

Then she explained that the flood of fight or flight endorphins make my gut go acidic and that causes the immediate nausea as my stomach counters the input of gastric acids. It's not just 'in my head'. Imagine that.

What a way to close a session, huh?

I went home and couldn't get that phrase out of my mind. The belly of the misogynist beast.

I looked at what I do with my beautiful feminist Sistahoodz phenomena, with the bevy of smaller pages that she umbrellas over, and realized that I had missed something in my attempt to create space for the relevant discourses of the healing wise woman and her allies... I realized that what I was missing was a place for the triggering information that is still important, when it is couched in respectful and non-diminishing non-violent language, but it doesn't need to be mixed up with all the empowering and beautiful information that comprises the day to day context of Sistahoodz' page.

I thought about 'The Belly of The Misogynist Beast' as a title for a page to put all the dark that was still valid in and then I looked at what an acronym that created... B.O.M.B. Not a particularily attractive option, considering this coincidentially turned out to be the day that the Boston Marathon was blown to bits... And so... out of the  darkness, Bmb was born...

The feminist Facebook pages that I personally  currently follow who have the word 'feminism' in their names constantly deal with strange, angry male commentors who challenge and bait. I didn't want that to happen to my pages. I had learned how to repel this mentality of miscreant over the years of teaching alternative menstruation so I applied that to avoid attracting that element. By using simple initials, and then informing the Sistahoodz followers that the page was there for them, was good enough for me. Word of mouth will do the rest, letting conscious people share with other good conscious people, and leaving the problem children of the misogynist beastie to their own devices.

Bmb - The belly of the misogynist beast... Truth to Power Over

Starhawk's writings about Power-over of the current western industrial model speak of a Power - with, that is in keeping with permacultural, sustainable, healing, affirmative living that can counter that imposing, wasteful influence. Wherever 'Power Over' information comes my way that is reflective of patriarchy, misogyny or its assorted associations, those postings will find themselves relegated to the Bmb, it's where they belong, a safe space where the karma and vibes are inured and rendered useless, a kryptonite-proof, lead-lined chamber where we can don our gloves, smudge ourselves, get grounded and then enter, to pick up and look at these unfairnesses, inequities and random horrors that comprise the world where women are required to prove their worth and men assume their privilege without having earned it. To turn a feminist lens on the darkness and bring it into light so that those of us who are living in the flood of our constant anxiousness can gain a better understanding on the root of this phenomena of PTSD, especially in relation to how we are women in such a distorted reality.

Feminist PTSD Analysis - Shedding Light on Domestic PTSD

This page brings light to conversations that are solution oriented and relevant to people who are not first responders or military vets yet who have had life traumas enough to qualify for being at the mercy of this life challenging disorder.

For the past 30 years, I have been living in a constant FLOOD of countering fear in my gut. Dread follows me like a bad debt.

Through the years of raising my five kids, I thought that it was just my debts and mother instinct that caused me to experience the sensation of constant trepidation. Now I am learning that I have a physiological response to the sum of all the abuses I have suffered in my life and its taken its toll on me.

Thank heavens, I am out of the belly of the misogynist beast at last.

I have been instructed to read books that don't contain triggers, to identify what triggers me and then to seek to remove that from my world. I should watch movies that don't contribute to the trigger response. Do you know how hard that is? TV is triggering me within 30 seconds of turning it on because of its hard line on murder as normality.

I am realizing that there needs to be a feminist PTSD discourse. We need to couch the language of the beast in our own terms.

But, right now, I am not going to be the one to initiate this. I've been told to step away from that belly for now. I am free. Let others pick up that gauntlet as it is spring in my world. There is a garden to plant and sunny skies to walk under and I am getting the help I need.

No jangling phones, no angry men, no diminishment, nada. Stay out of the trigger zone, my sistas. I got out. When I must deal with authorities who seek to belittle, I will do it with my army of support and not take it personally, putting someone grounded between the affront and my tender, fragile psyche.

I am going to do yoga, meditate, get massage, investigate other modalities that help me centre and ground and counter 33 years of living unaware that I was being an amazingly resilient survivor who didn't have to be coping alone.

The Bmb Facebook page will continue to showcase the hard-to-swallow issues that are relevant, but I don't have to discern their analysis... I'll leave that to the sistas who are not triggered.

I'm out of the belly of the misogynist beast.

Water is sacred, hot plastic is not

The latest phenomena to fascinate me is the ability of water to change molecular structure depending on a variety of factors. Dr. Emoto studies water and has learned that water responds to emotion, anger, flattery, love, the sacred, laughter, tears. His tests show on youtube, that if you freeze water after its exposure to these different things, the crystals will be predictable.  Angry water crystallizes in chaotic weakness without symmetry. Super sacred water has extremely intricate crystalizations that fractal to the infinite.

My first introduction to the changeability of water was in a class called "Land as life" during the aquisition of my BA degree. We explored how human interaction for indigenous cultures interconnected with the sacred, and in that course, we were able to whale watch in high seas, take a trip in a war canoe, experience the honour of a dawn swim in a nearby lake, as well as discovering Dr. Emoto's inspiring research.

The idea of holy water is not new to the traditional western culture's churches, but I wonder if they ever knew that to bless the water, or pray over or into it, or set your intent by choosing how to interact with water, would actually have an effect on the shapes it can take on a molecular level ?

Which leads me to finding a beautiful clear glass jug of fresh water sparkling on the kitchen counter of my new home. My housemate and I were matched by a mutual friend recently because she saw similarities in our values and head space. When I first saw this jug, I remembered Dr. Emoto and I touched its soothing coolness with both hands as if to get a sense of if this water had been prayed over or not. Just for a lark. I knew that my conscientious housemate had understandings about many things. Imagine my delight when her voice came back to me from the other room where she was researching Pakistan, a surprised 'Yes!'

That moment was a key turning point for me. Knowing I had sanctuary where this gentle evolved soul would know that drinking blessed water was  the way to go, let me breath.

So we drink water that is always thanked for being sacred and vital. There is never a time, we don't stop in the refilling of the jug, just to ask the water for permission, to give thanks, to optimize its ability to nourish and rebalance whoever ingests it.

When we were making tea the other evening, I asked my housemate why we were blessing the water if we were boiling it in a plastic kettle. A few years old, it was showing a bit of wear and I was hesistant to use heated old plastic because of the issue of pthalates offgassing from plastics that are heated and cooled repeatedly. Pthalates are nasty things that seek fat/oil to attach to, stockpiling in our bodies, mimicking hornones and confusing our immune systems.

If you take a look around your house, you will see where plastic, old and new, will be heated and exposed to us. Your shower curtain, if it is plastic, gasses you as you stand in the steam. Plastic dishes, cups and bottles, all filled with hot contents, all react similarily. Even your plastic sex toys, hate to tell you.

Hospitals scald plastics every day and put fresh coffee in cups that smell like stale coffee and bleach them within an inch of their little lives. The kettle you boil water in, the coffeemaker's basket where the grounds are kept, these are all culprits for the transference of pthalates from their plastic hosts to our delicate bodies.

The toys that bob in your warm bath when you wash the kiddies, the plastic gel filled teething ring you boiled to protect baby, is now being gummed ferociously by a teething infant. Heat applied to plastics causes it to begin to disintegrate.

So be kind to the water you drink, and look at your life's patterns and see where plastics intersect with it. How can you eliminate exposure to its offgassing?

Wise Wild Woman

Years ago, on Saltspring Island, a trippy little enclave of sanity surrounded by water, I took a 5 year hiatus from chaos and lived a wild woman, wise woman life. I had lovely weekend workshops with amazing and inspirational women who taught me all about the wise woman way of seeking different means than mainstream in which to live my life. Fast forward almost 20 years to a 55 year old woman in distress. I have no children any longer, I am fresh out of a relationship where my spouse's dishonesty broke our love into pieces and I spent a dicey 5 weeks as I sought to get my feet under me.

This is the resolution part of that episode of my life.

Wise Wild Woman

I find myself in that place where I have no responsibilities and no structure. There are no definites these days and my plans are nebulous at best. I have people well intentions and not so much who suggest routines, I anticipate returning to them soon, but for now, I am on the loose.

As an ex-wife, ex-mom, ex-student, I am in that enviable place in my life where magic is afoot and big changes are in the process of occurring. To some, I am sure, I am thought of as being out of control, but for the immediate moment, I am happy just the way things are, and just the way I am.

The wild woman uses her wheels like a rolling support vehicle. It is loaded with all the necessary accoutrements of daily life, and also, camping gear, bedding, assorted snackage that doesn't need refrigeration as well as a full office suite - cell phone, laptop, digital camera and all the supporting cordage and tripodage. Like a Girl Guide, I am prepared for any eventuality I can possibly anticipate and ready to greet it with grace.

This wild woman is NOT a martyr and she does NOT suffer. I have my hair done, keep an immaculate manicure and skin care regimen and dress as well as any woman with a home. Unlike the woman with the home however, I also know where the nearest wifi is, wherever I may drift, where the good public bathrooms are and last but not least, where the best parking spots are for Vancouver Island wild wise women. Scenery is a must, the vaster, the more breathtaking the better.

Parking spots for wild women have intense criteria. They need to either be deep in the shady forest, on the shoulder of a sparsely traveled road, but that has access to wifi for my nefarious wild woman dealings. Or the perfect parking spot should be in a solitary seaside position where no other signs of human life are nearby.

Here, I will write, draw, communicate with supportive allies near and far, rest, read, listen to podcasts or watch tv shows on my netbook. I walk, take photos, videos, upload them, blog, eat, relax, sing, doze and sometimes when it all catches up to me, I sob, I cry, I pray or I scream my bloody head off. Get it out is my motto. Wild women don't need all that angst locked up inside.

The way I look at it is, this wild woman's breeding days are over. I am no longer sought as a sexual liason. Life is way less complicated, especially now that my husband has given up on us and cast me free. I am invisible to our culture now. An old woman who is seemingly purposeless. In the grand scheme of things, I have no assets, no worth, no financial value, hence, I don't have much of a vote with the meagre dollars I do spend.

Let it be known that for this six foot amazon to be invisible is just where I want to be. I am happy to not exist to the powers that be - making a minimum visible means of support and then building my goddesscracy underground.

Who expects a homeless woman to be a societal catalyst?

Works for me.

*Note- Since this was written, I have found a lovely sanctuary that I can function comfortably out of. Goddess bless! I give thanks to my Creator for hearing my cries and dreams and helping me resourceress my way out of the dark and back into a light where life is much more conducive to being my wise, wild woman self.

One Winged Wind - for Debbie Hagan in recovery

You can't get to the beach from here...
But you're still here to see
You're still here to smell it
Still here to me.

Out on the windy water
The single sails wheel
It only takes a single sail
Their bodies to spin and reel.

Leap into the wind
Leap in as you turn.
Life is full of surprises.
Another lesson we've learned.

Another lesson we share.
We can't get to the beach from here
But we can get from here to where
One winged wind will wheel us.

Carry us in its embrace.
As long as the wind carries our prayers
On its wings, we can handle anything
Together, with grace.

You can't get to the beach from here, Debbie,
But you're still here to see.
You're still here to smell it, Alex,
You're still here to me.

Little sister... check this out.

http://www.phoenixtearsplus.com/


I invite anyone who has access to a digital camera, to take a photo of something in flight, and put a prayer on its wings so that the wind can bring your healing energy to Debbie... envision a gold light that pours down over her body, a healing flood of amber, honey gold, brought to her on the wings of love. Take a photo of something on the wind and please send it to me at resourceressbudeweit@gmail.com. I would like to create a caring I-Card that includes all the photos of her prayers.

This url will be sent to her upon her recovery and I hope that all my FB friends take a second to sign the comments in here to wish her well.

Namaste, little sister.

The Saga of Christina – Finding Herself - Finding Family

Episode 15 and a half – Finding out Dan is a fine man

The current mindset of the writer is verging on morose. Blindsided by a disloyal husband, when I swore for decades I’d never marry, yet was stupid enough to over ride that bit of wisdom to immediately be kicked in the teeth for it, within weeks of the override. However, having been given my walking papers, I am now wild and free, on the street, after calling him on his dishonesty backfired and instead of begging for forgiveness, the unfortunate soul told me to get the hell out.

With 40+ years of Army under his belt and all the resultant Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome on top of it, he is due to retire out. The counselor at the Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC) told me its common for the ‘member’ to act irrationally, even become dangerous. Well, my husband is as irrational as they come now, and I’ve been told that since he returned from 2 months away on assignment elsewhere, on Sunday, I should steer clear of him and find other places to stay until calmer heads prevail.

So, since I’m the one that is feeling like I’ve just had open heart surgery as an outpatient, I am honouring myself while I wait for him to clear out for a few days so I can pack, by spending  time with the people in my life who are important to me. Since I am being informed that I am losing my vehicle as well, I am making the most of my time as a set adrift soul by travelling between the homes of my various children and friends who need me themselves, or who are there for me.

The first night, I was caught in a huge traffic jam for hours and wound up driving past an accident scene where folks were having a worse day than I. And between leaving for the highway and arriving at my destination, my hostess informed me that her beloved dog, Serena, had a stroke and had to be put down before I got there. Did we ever need each other to get through that night!

The second night, was spent on Saltspring, where a loving daughter held me as I cried and who bolstered me with promises of help, of a place to stay to get through the next day. Grace reassured me, talked me down off the mountaintop of doom and gloom as that was all I could feel, my sails ripped from my masts, my hull smashed out from under me. She reminded me that I’d been trying to lose weight and that I’d lost a good 198 lbs.

The third night was spent in the company of Avona and her sister Lynda, a single mom with two cute and cantankerous little boys. It was so lovely to be able to stay on the couch and hear the sounds of a normal little family in their mundane day to day routines. I got lots of hugs, spent some one on one time with Avona, getting more and more grounded by the hug, and the next day, started the decision of where to go by sunset.

At the risk of being fragile to a son who doesn't understand what his mom is up against, I bit the bullet and headed up to Qualicum Bay to spend a day with my son, Dan. I didn’t know what to expect, but Grace had said that she and Dan had been talking about me and he was looking forward to seeing me up his way for a visit. With Mr. WronG bowing out, he had become the androcentric male of the family and I wanted time with him, in spite of the risk of being misunderstood or having my feelings tramped upon, as he had been famous for, in years previous as he was growing up.

 When I got there we texted a bit about how to get to a local rock quarry where there is no traffic and I was pretty safe to camp. He wasn’t able to have a house guest because he was couch surfing up there himself, staying with his best friend while there was some animal sitting for him to do so the next best thing was to help me set up a camp nearby. I was hesitant and slightly fearful. The quarry was vast and multilayered and overgrown. In my sad shape, I felt all the fear and anguish I’d ever felt as a 13 year old girl, thrown out on the street by her insane mother all over again, so disappointed in myself that at 54, I was in no better shape, but out on the street again, looking at houses where people had beds they knew they were getting to in a little while.  I cried my heart out with Dan . He’d ridden out from the house nearby on his dirtbike and brought along a beautiful spaghetti dinner and a bag with some cherries and a golden kiwi. Then he said something that just made me cry all over again, but this time out of appreciation of the love of my son. He said ‘Mom, I’ll set up your tent and air mattress for you. We’ll park the Ford this way and put the tent over there and between the ditch and the gully you’ll be safely hemmed in with the fire on the other side. Then after he set up the tent, he rounded up round firestones, made a lovely small fire and bushwacked to find more wood, using the light of his Iphone.

The thing that really got me though, when he said that he would help me get set up was ‘Mom, I’ll stay with you as long as you want, and I won’t leave until you fall asleep, and I’ll go to the house and set the alarm and bring you coffee at 7:00 in the morning.’

And he did. We had a beautiful fire. I sat on the minibike like a queen as he built the fire up over and over and we talked. He set up his ipod with nice music and we watched the fire and he helped me ground, helped me process, helped me grieve. I could have written my intentions on a slip of paper and set it ablaze, but there are other fires where I can attend to the necessary healing rituals to move me past this, as is the way of my people. But this time, I was just happy to be alone in that cleared out, overgrown rock quarry, with my 25 year old beautiful, loving son. Finally, I told him I was exhausted. Hadn't slept much in days, spending most of the night staring at dark ceilings looking for some sign of light. Dan then crawled into the tent, just like old times, and asked for a back scratch, just like old times, and I did just like old times. After a while, we talked some more and then I told him it was okay for him to go. He slipped out of the tent, zipped me in, and walked the minibike up the hill so that he wasn’t too noisy leaving. When did my holy terror become so thoughtful? Then in a little while, my cell phone buzzed from under my pillow, a text had arrived. “Made it home safe, Mom. Love you.”

Today, we had breakfast, I took him to a job interview and we had some sushi for lunch. We went dutch and it was the first meal I’d eaten since Thursday’s disastrous news killed my appetite. We went back to where he is staying and he fixed the duct tape on the roof, filled my water bottles and stocked me up with ice. As I sat there, wondering where I would go tonight, he said ‘Why don’t you go to see Grace again?’ to which I replied, ‘Because I don’t want to spend another $42.” And he handed me $20, saying “Now you only need $22.”

I can’t help feeling like this is the gift that is coming out of this spiritual experience that is pushing all my buttons of worthlessness and abandonment. I have splendid, healthy, capable adults for children who love me. I also can’t help but feel that somewhere in the twisted recesses of the mind of a man who claimed he loved me one day, and didn’t the next, there is a soupcon of jealousy motivating his resentment, because now that he’s shot himself in the foot and run off the only person who knows him better than anyone, he doesn’t have this kind of genuine, unconditional love in his life at all.

“Mom, I’ll stay here with you until you fall asleep. And I’ll even bring you coffee the way you like it in the morning.”

I may be homeless and feeling lost, but if I continue to take things day by day, I know I will wade through  this mire of unknowns and I will emerge on the other side with an intact self esteem, and dare I say, be even better, even more independent, than I have ever been before.

If only I hadn’t gotten that job and hadn’t discovered that stuff on WronG’s laptop, I know now, I wouldn’t be so proud of my children and friends.

Silver linings… bathing me in their golden light. I am healing.

I hope, in my heart of hearts, that the catalyst to all this does serious healing too.

I Don't Know About You, But For Me I am Exiting the Betrayal Grounds

Nights consist of three hour patches of staring at a dark ceiling trying to find the bright side of life

This is where I thought I had a home.

Days trying to maneuvre in a morras of blindsided betrayal that has torn my time / space continuum asunder

How do I manage to get into these situations that have me so helpless and powerless?

Pink skin ring, I sunburned the patch where the ring used to be.

One of these days, I will be on the other side of this and things will be good again.

I have to believe that for both of our sakes.

But I will be on my own way.

I never saw it coming.

They say the wife is the last to know...

Honesty we said, we agreed, in the early days of establishing each other's core values... honesty
like porcelain. it can be mended if broken, but can never be whole again. Trust is everything.

Now we have nothing

with one deal breaker decision

or maybe more

I don't ask for details because I don't want to know.

Don't make me out to be the crazy

one.

I'm trying to keep both our dignities intact.

And exit the betrayal grounds

with Grace.