Physical & Emotional Abuse Support Group
Abuse is a general term for the treatment of someone that causes some kind of harm (to the abused person, to the abusers themselves, or to someone else) that is unlawful or wrongful. No one deserves abuse, period. Abuse can be emotional, physical, or sexual.
Hello Visitors and Regulars ----
Many readers are celebrating a religious holiday today ----- some Easter, some Passover, maybe others -- a holiday I'm not personally aware of.
Blessings and best wishes to all observing a special day, today. And blessings and best wishes to those for whom today is an otherwise ordinary day.
Since HEAL is not affiliated with any one faith system or perspective, I ask those with us today, to cultivate tolerance for all (while you simultaneously cultivate INtolerance of abuse).
In recent days, I've been considering if it's possible to regenerate, reclaim and restore our birthright, our entitlement to peace, satisfaction and joy.
I know that deep in the abyss of the pain caused by abuse and trauma, it doesn't seem possible, ever.
I know, that for some very few, it may not be possible.
I believe that for most survivors, with an alignment of the right elements, regeneration, reclamation and restoration to peace, satisfaction and joy ---- is possible.
For myself, (and please, let me assure you up-front that I'm still a "work in progress"), I feel that I am now, not merely the person I was before my series of abusive situations ---- but someone even more enlightened, evolved and growing beyond my best day, before the pain.
Having said that, I confess that I feel that certain events and traumas would still shake me so profoundly, I'm not sure I could soon recover ------ but, at this moment, I feel like the ground I've been tilling and cultivating as my base camp, is enriched, enhanced and nourished to a point that on a moment-to-moment basis, I'm closer to an emphatic OKAY than I've ever been before.
So ---- in my opinion, for the majority of survivors, it's possible. I believe it's certainly possible for even profoundly damaged psyches to be capable of some degree of repair, even if perhaps not the entire way.
I saw a feature on a TV magazine show, this morning. It was a piece about Bas (or Bat) Mitzvahs.
My great-grandfather was an Orthodox rabbi somewhere in Russia. I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home and received a thorough religious education. I'm not now, a practicing Orthodox Jew, though I'm a deeply spiritual person.
In the Orthodox teachings, there were Bar Mitzvahs and that was that. Boys were obligated to celebrate their rite of passage into adulthood. Girls had no such celebration.
Approaching their 13th birthday, boys prepared special readings from the scriptures (yes, in Hebrew), and sang and recited in a special Saturday service, attended by their relatives, their friends and their parents' friends and community. Afterward, there was a reception as lavish as the family could afford.
Girls did not stand at the front of the synagogue singing and reciting, nor afterward, getting a wedding-like reception.
In the mid-1960's, probably together with the "Women's Movement." Conservative and Reform Jewish families, began protesting this exclusion, and thus was born the Bas (Bat) Mitzvah.
Possibly, if my family belonged to one of those other congregations, I'd have had one.
Frankly, I didn't miss having one. Later on, I wasn't delighted with a religious framework that seemed so pointedly dismissive of the female gender, which is one reason why I moved away from my early religious education.
Back to the piece on TV.
In the story, a group of very mature older Jewish women, in their eighies and nineties, decided that they should have been entitled to the same recognition and celebration as their adolescent brothers had been. They decided that they would reclaim that moment for themselves.
So as a group, they went and insisted on being given the instruction their brothers had received, so many decades before. And they had the ceremony and then celebrated at a reception, a moment denied to them so long before.
I bring this to the Howl today as an illustration that there is no "too late."
In this season of renewal, rebirth, regeneration ---- reach for anything and everything you feel was stolen from you.
Each of us, every one of us, is entitled to peace and satisfaction and joy.
No one will ever know those states perfectly. And though perfect isn't possible, you're totally entitled to get what was supposed to be yours, as best as you can.
My prayers and wishes for this on-line community is that each of us be filled with warmth and growth and healing and wholeness.
Grow new shoots, along with the sprouts and buds and tender new leaves that are peeking out for the first time, every day from here on forward.
Be well, and be filled with light and delight.
Ilene
Many readers are celebrating a religious holiday today ----- some Easter, some Passover, maybe others -- a holiday I'm not personally aware of.
Blessings and best wishes to all observing a special day, today. And blessings and best wishes to those for whom today is an otherwise ordinary day.
Since HEAL is not affiliated with any one faith system or perspective, I ask those with us today, to cultivate tolerance for all (while you simultaneously cultivate INtolerance of abuse).
In recent days, I've been considering if it's possible to regenerate, reclaim and restore our birthright, our entitlement to peace, satisfaction and joy.
I know that deep in the abyss of the pain caused by abuse and trauma, it doesn't seem possible, ever.
I know, that for some very few, it may not be possible.
I believe that for most survivors, with an alignment of the right elements, regeneration, reclamation and restoration to peace, satisfaction and joy ---- is possible.
For myself, (and please, let me assure you up-front that I'm still a "work in progress"), I feel that I am now, not merely the person I was before my series of abusive situations ---- but someone even more enlightened, evolved and growing beyond my best day, before the pain.
Having said that, I confess that I feel that certain events and traumas would still shake me so profoundly, I'm not sure I could soon recover ------ but, at this moment, I feel like the ground I've been tilling and cultivating as my base camp, is enriched, enhanced and nourished to a point that on a moment-to-moment basis, I'm closer to an emphatic OKAY than I've ever been before.
So ---- in my opinion, for the majority of survivors, it's possible. I believe it's certainly possible for even profoundly damaged psyches to be capable of some degree of repair, even if perhaps not the entire way.
I saw a feature on a TV magazine show, this morning. It was a piece about Bas (or Bat) Mitzvahs.
My great-grandfather was an Orthodox rabbi somewhere in Russia. I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home and received a thorough religious education. I'm not now, a practicing Orthodox Jew, though I'm a deeply spiritual person.
In the Orthodox teachings, there were Bar Mitzvahs and that was that. Boys were obligated to celebrate their rite of passage into adulthood. Girls had no such celebration.
Approaching their 13th birthday, boys prepared special readings from the scriptures (yes, in Hebrew), and sang and recited in a special Saturday service, attended by their relatives, their friends and their parents' friends and community. Afterward, there was a reception as lavish as the family could afford.
Girls did not stand at the front of the synagogue singing and reciting, nor afterward, getting a wedding-like reception.
In the mid-1960's, probably together with the "Women's Movement." Conservative and Reform Jewish families, began protesting this exclusion, and thus was born the Bas (Bat) Mitzvah.
Possibly, if my family belonged to one of those other congregations, I'd have had one.
Frankly, I didn't miss having one. Later on, I wasn't delighted with a religious framework that seemed so pointedly dismissive of the female gender, which is one reason why I moved away from my early religious education.
Back to the piece on TV.
In the story, a group of very mature older Jewish women, in their eighies and nineties, decided that they should have been entitled to the same recognition and celebration as their adolescent brothers had been. They decided that they would reclaim that moment for themselves.
So as a group, they went and insisted on being given the instruction their brothers had received, so many decades before. And they had the ceremony and then celebrated at a reception, a moment denied to them so long before.
I bring this to the Howl today as an illustration that there is no "too late."
In this season of renewal, rebirth, regeneration ---- reach for anything and everything you feel was stolen from you.
Each of us, every one of us, is entitled to peace and satisfaction and joy.
No one will ever know those states perfectly. And though perfect isn't possible, you're totally entitled to get what was supposed to be yours, as best as you can.
My prayers and wishes for this on-line community is that each of us be filled with warmth and growth and healing and wholeness.
Grow new shoots, along with the sprouts and buds and tender new leaves that are peeking out for the first time, every day from here on forward.
Be well, and be filled with light and delight.
Ilene
It is so important that we reclaim our lives, and then, at least try to make them better than we ever dreamed they could be.
In the midst of abuse, all we can think of is getting out, being free of the abuse, the absence of the pain. Think about what you want to replace it with...in my case, my mantra during the years I prepared to leave was, "I want a life of joy." I didn't even know what it meant, but I knew that I was supposed to have it...and that it had been taken from me, that it was being taken from my son.
Rise up....you can heal, you can get out, you can have a joyful life, you can, as Ilene so eloquently state, reclaim your birthright....Every time I read that someone got out, I celebrate, that someone has elevated their life, I celebrate....Every little bit of progress any of us make toward reclaiming this birthright, of joy, of peace, lifts us all. That's why I love this site...So much good comes from this. My life is a long way from perfect, I have much work to do...but it is beginning now to be joyful. And right now, that's all I ask...is that I stay on this path.
Rise up, reclaim your life...find joy. It is possible....All things are possible, if you just believe they are.
Hugs to all of you....
Hockeymom, joy was one of the things I was striving for as well as I was leaving my abusive relationship. That and a life of peace. And those are the two things I'm still focused on, trying to guide my decisions by. I so badly wanted a life free from the chaos, uncertainty, instability. Each day that passes, I get a little stronger. Sometimes I slip back a little, but progress is being made and peace and joy are felt much more now. It's so empowering and freeing.