I am a reflection of my mother’s secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers. Audre Lorde Being a mother is a hard thing. So is being a daughter. My mother stopped talking to me the year I turned 26. I fell in love with a woman and after a year of accommodating myContinue reading “Mother’s Day #50: On Being Both Mother and Daughter”
Category Archives: Woman to Woman
‘She’ll Just Go Back to Him’ ~ Desperation, Safety, & Survival Calculations
This is not how your story ends. It’s simply where it takes a turn you didn’t expect. Cheryl Strayed Today I read a post, in one of the private groups I’m in, by a member who posted anonymously about being in the situation with the abusive ex of trying to reconcile, while already in courtContinue reading “‘She’ll Just Go Back to Him’ ~ Desperation, Safety, & Survival Calculations”
It Didn’t *Make* Me Stronger (& Saying That It Did Insults the People Who Didn’t Survive)
I’d walk and think about my entire life. I’d find my strength again, far from everything that had made my life ridiculous. Cheryl Strayed I wasn’t weak when I met x and then I left him and became strong. I wasn’t strong when I met x and then weakened by him and then when IContinue reading “It Didn’t *Make* Me Stronger (& Saying That It Did Insults the People Who Didn’t Survive)”
Ten Years Ago ~ The Day That Could Have Been My Ruin
It is coming down the mountain, fear that holds you like the cold,It wants to settle in your footprints, keep you still from where you’re goingAll you think you know of losing, all you doubt of innocence,The big sky still hangs above you. Every day just want to quit.There’s no light you see to guideContinue reading “Ten Years Ago ~ The Day That Could Have Been My Ruin”
Pretty, But the R is Silent ~ You Can’t Petty Me Anymore
Petty. It’s a word abuse victims have had lobbed at them too many times to count. For years, we hear it from our abuser. Why are you so petty? Are you really going to be that petty and make a big deal about this? Don’t be petty. My ex-wife was always so damn petty –Continue reading “Pretty, But the R is Silent ~ You Can’t Petty Me Anymore”
Trauma Tumor: Cut This Out of Me, Please.
To live in the body of a survivor is to never be able to leave the scene of the crime. I cannot ignore the fact that I live here. Blythe Baird PTSD is a whole-body tragedy, an integral human event of enormous proportions with massive repercussions. Susan Pease Banitt Three months ago I was diagnosedContinue reading “Trauma Tumor: Cut This Out of Me, Please.”
Day 731: It *is* Still Sad, Of Course I Know That.
Three weeks before the second anniversary of what I am now calling Love and Hope Day – my first day intentionally free from abuse in my own home – x no showed to court and my life suddenly became my own and my child was given the gift of an indefinite amount of time toContinue reading “Day 731: It *is* Still Sad, Of Course I Know That.”
There is No ‘Both Sides’: Sometimes We Have to Be Reminded Why Cutting Ties with Mutual Friends is One of the Necessary Pains of Healing
The poison leaves bit by bit, not all at once.Be patient. You are healing. Yasmin Mogahed It started over a picture of cupcakes. Lined up in cute little rows in front of a birthday sign I made. For x’s birthday party. Well, one of three birthday parties I threw him that year for his 50th.Continue reading “There is No ‘Both Sides’: Sometimes We Have to Be Reminded Why Cutting Ties with Mutual Friends is One of the Necessary Pains of Healing”
To the Woman Who Met Me on One of My Very Worst Days
It was my daughter’s very first time at the beach. It should have been a beautiful day. Looking in from the outside, it was: sunshine and ocean and junk food and boardwalk rides. But my daughter cried every time her fat little toddler toes touched the sand and she would creep back to the centerContinue reading “To the Woman Who Met Me on One of My Very Worst Days”
An Open Letter to the Friends of My Abuser
“As long as we see abusers as victims, or as out-of-control monsters, they will continue getting away with ruining lives. If we want abusers to change, we will have to require them to give up the luxury of exploitation” Lundy Bancroft A couple of months after x had moved out, when we were still tryingContinue reading “An Open Letter to the Friends of My Abuser”
Life After Emotional Abuse 