Emotional Abuse and Pop Culture Negligence

Abuse (Photo credit: Ex-InTransit)

 

February is National Teen Dating ViolenceAwareness and Prevention Month. 

Violence in relationships can be physical or emotional and it happens in a variety of different types of relationships.  What makes it even more difficult for teens is that little experience with relationships and the pop culture negligence can lead to confusion.  Even for adults it can be difficult for the abused to realize they are being abused.  This can be even more difficult with teens.  Casual relationships as well as very serious relationships in the teen years can be abusive.

These kinds of relationships can be very harmful to self-esteem, body image, mental health and can affect the whole life of the abused.  Abusers can also constantly struggle to experience fulfilling relationships and suffer from mental health issues.  These incidences can also be dangerous and it is very important to be aware of the signs and safety precautions.  It is important to acknowledge any issues with relationship violence head-on and as soon as possible, no matter how benign or over things might seem.  Although physical abuse is terrible, I’m focusing on emotional abuse because physical abuse is usually accompanied by emotional abuse, emotional abuse is more difficult to notice right away and I have personal experience with emotional abuse.

Image via Wikipedia

.  Chris Brown and Rihanna had a very public incident with domestic violence and now the two have collaborated on a song as if the whole thing never happened.  Did either of the two get the help they needed to recover from their abusive past?  Teens might think it’s possible to just forgive someone who has abused them and get back together because Chris Brown and Rihanna are okay.  Unfortunately abuse runs very, very deep.  Those who experience abuse in their childhood tend to either become abused or become abusers and unfortunately many, many people have experienced abuse in their childhoods, including neglect and abandonment and not having that in the past doesn’t prevent a person from experiencing it later in life.  It takes a concerted effort to really iron out the issues associated with domestic abuse.

Parents can also be emotionally abusive to their children.  Some children may take abandonment or neglect into themselves internally and cope with it by seeking abusive relationships or partners they can manipulate and control in response to their own perceived ways of participating in a loving relationship.  Oftentimes abusers have ideas of what the role of a man and woman are in a relationship that is unbalanced.  They believe there must be someone in control of the relationship and fill that role themselves.  This can lead to a number of surprising and confusing attitudes and activities.

Please check out www.thehotline.org and determine if your relationship is abusive or if someone you know might be in an abusive relationship.  Look into the ways of getting out or helping your friend or family with support.  This is important and it is very difficult to understand the reality in the face of careful manipulation.  For teens, families and relationships everywhere, we must stop this cycle of abuse in our culture.  A whopping 1 out of 3 high school relationships are abusive according to www.acadv.org  and similarly more than 1 in 4 teenage girls in a relationship (26%) report enduring repeated verbal abuse.

(Liz Claiborne Inc. study conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited; February 2005.)

Domestic Violence (Photo credit: UMWomen)

What is the solution to this problem we have? 

I think creating healthy models of relationships is important.  Another important thing is to make all these facts and warnings known to teens and adults, male and female.  We also need to seriously, as a culture, stop denying the trauma we have faced and work on correcting and healing from them… When we recognize our issues and the mental health reality of ourselves, our loved ones and our culture, we should take the responsibility to give realistic standards and expectations for growth and stability.  Should people with abuse in their past work on those issues or follow the status quo and keep falling into false love relationships because it is “normal”?

We also have to look at celebrities as real people;  People with high-stress lives and honestly consider that to live their lifestyles most of them will either have to be very, very unbalanced, or very, very balanced.  It is not difficult to see where one stands if you’re looking beyond the glitz, glamour and commercialism and look at their actions, expression and the way they present themselves.  Now, should we allow these celebrities to be role models?  She we encourage our kids to look up to celebrities like royalty?  Should they get tons of money and lose their privacy and personal identities to satisfy some skewed view of an American Dream?

I think not… they should not be working if they are not well.  They should not work all year long, constantly in their role of “celebrity”.  We need to create a sustainable community in which creative people are not fueled by marketing machines and management.  Maybe then people will stop looking at the TV at all the train-wreck scandals and wonder why so many of our hometowns are becoming world news.  Let’s take care of our children…teach them the value of community and establish healing from crises and healthy relationship standards based on sustainability rather than vanity and Hollywood dreams.

–Still Dreaming For A Healthy Future

Read these for a different side of the story:

• Rihanna & Chris Brown Collaboration (masculinityu.wordpress.com)
• Did Rihanna Forgive Chris Brown? (myfoxphoenix.com)
• Everyone Needs To Stop Misdirecting Their Anger Over Cultural Misogyny At Rihanna (thegloss.com)

A Dashboard Confessional: Where I Am Now

Put simply, I’m a dreamer. In many senses of the word I take dreams seriously. The dreams I have at night and the dreams that never go away. The ones worth living for.  On days like these I fasten myself to my dreams and hold on tight.

One of the first similarities my husband and I had was our loathing of popular for no particular reason bands. As I sit here in my trailer, near where the dashboard would be, if it had a dashboard, I think of how we traded our insults of the band Dashboard Confessionals.  I remember many dashboard confessionals between us and this blog is equipped with the perfect little dashboard for me to confess like I haven’t in a long time.

My husband has taken our girls outside.  I’m sitting in our trailer finally getting to the point I’ve been trying to get at for weeks.  The point of transparency.  I’m making myself ramen noodles(I don’t use the packets), since I haven’t really eaten all day.  I had no appetite for anything other than being with my dreams today.  I sat this morning and wrote out things about myself and my life that define my experience.  Things I want to write about, things I want to help people with, things I want to share and explore with others who have similar experiences.

Image via Wikipedia

That was my work for today.  Since that early morning experience, I’ve been sitting here reading about people who are living their dreams, and thinking about what I want for myself and where I am now.  I felt a few weeks ago that I reached a turning point with this blog.  I felt that I really needed to sit down and write out the things that I’m going through in my life.  Not my budget, or my meal plans, but my struggles.  Recently I had some tough struggles that forced me to ask advice on webforums that I frequent.

It was hard for me to have that information out there, so I went and deleted the links to my blogs from my profiles and signatures on all the webforums I frequent.  Today I sat and honestly admitted to myself some things about my life that bother me, and suddenly I realized I have the chance to do that here in one post, rather than little sentences here and there over the next month.

Things About My Life:

• I’m on food stamps
• I’m essentially unemployed (working on self-employment)
• I live in a small parking space (working on that)
• My neighborhood is full of drugs
• I have no working transportation (and haven’t for awhile, getting my bike fixed soon, though)

Things About Myself:

• I don’t really have in-person friends
• I don’t really leave my neighborhood, ever (the grocery store, flea market, pool and thrift stores are all in close walking distance)
• I have so many ideas I don’t know what to do with them I know exactly what to do with my ideas, I just haven’t gotten there yet
• I don’t have childcare or much time at all without my kids (working on that)
• I loathe grocery stores
• I’m struggling to support my husband as he struggles with mental & physical health issues
• I lose my cellphone like crazy
• I have too much self-doubt
• I have a history of eating and mental health issues(I have gluten sensitivies, but here I am eating ramen)

Mostly though, I have this feeling that it is finally time for me to do what I really want to do with my life.  Sometimes I say I don’t know what that is because maybe I’m too self-conscious to admit that I know exactly what I want to do and it seems a little daunting.  It seems very unconventional and somewhat impossible.  But I’ve seen the many different ways of making it work, and something tells me it is more than possible.  Maybe definitely it is the voices of people around me telling me what I want to do can’t be done.  In fact, I’m a very practical person.  It has kinda gotten in the way of my intuitive side.  Actually, now that I think about it, I think it blocked my intuitive side for many years.  I have seen others successful, I’m well researched, well planned and committed.  So what is stopping me?

Well, I’ve tried this before.  Before I took one path, on the road I was on at that time and I was unprepared for all that came along with it.  I had my feelings hurt by people I trusted.  I had my life crumble around me.  It severely broke my confidence.  Changed my relationships and brought me physical pain for over a year.

I avoid conflict.  Or I try to.  I stand up for what I believe in, but not as much as I could or probably should.  I let people know my stance, or I give them a glance of how I feel about a situation, but I’m not advocating for myself the way I would a friend, a stranger, or anyone else in my position.

I get stuck on the little things.  I get stuck in theories and philosophies.  I give audience to too many ‘what ifs’.  I’ve been trying to do this as cheaply as possible.  I need to invest some money and put money aside.  Luckily for me, I’ve stumbled across some great resources, really powerful books(Coaching The Artist Within by Eric Maisel and others by the same author) and I am determined, and finally in a good place to change these things around.  This is my confession… I’m great at helping people, but not without helping myself first.

What I’ve Been Up To…

I haven’t posted a lot lately. As a matter of fact I have several drafts waiting for me to finish right now. But I’m tired! Sacramento is hot and lots of things are changing in my life right now. I’m still looking for a bike trailer, similar to this:

I’m still working on books, websites, courses, still being a mama, of course. I’m still working on my business plan, and being active. I’m still working on a cost-share, however, I am so low on fruit right now it is not even funny…I got a bunch of bags of discount organic bananas from the co-op and I’ve been getting smoothie supplies from the 99cents store.  That might sound sad, but the truth is the quality of the food is much better than what I could get from the local supermarket.  Eating a high fruit diet for a few years now, I know how to get quality produce/groceries, most of the time.

However, my husband is entirely smoke and drug-free, including caffeine, tobacco, etc. and is courageously plowing through this transition and excited to go 80/10/10 together, again!  There are tons of birthdays coming up too, including my husband and two daughters in August and September.  My almost four year old is constantly talking about birthdays.  She actually went on vacation to Dillon Beach without us, with family for a few days, and I’m excited and nervous for her, but also happy for us, I’ll be taking advantage of the break from the world of 3-year-olds!

Also, I’ve been visualizing a lot lately. We’re getting a new trailer soon and going on a few trips this month. I’ve been looking at old videos and reflecting on my past. I’ve been going through the dozens of notebooks I have, and deciding how I’m going to organize them.  I’ve been finding so much inspirational materials lately, I feel very confident in the direction life is taking.  I’ve decided how I want to present all my blogs and websites now, so things will be clear and focused and full of the things I want to share with people soon.  This is how I’ve been thinking lately:

I’m getting there, day by day, moment by moment, and grateful for all of it…

My favorite internet things to do right now are www.pinterest.com as well as looking at websites related to road-schooling, and natural housing, such as yurts!  I also organized my bookmarks, which was quite a task, since I bookmark everything of interest to me…this should make linking and finding things to post on my blog much easier!

I’m also configuring my budget for this month and trying to decide what extra expenses/investments I want to make. Luckily I had a credit on my rent and only had to pay $266 this month!  Any budgeting suggestions are appreciated!

This is an exciting month so I do have lots of content coming up soon!  Topics including:  Multiculturalism, Sustainability, Spirituality, Radical Parenting, Commitment and more.  Stay tuned, things are getting excited and coming full circle!

A Wake-Up Crash!

The Impact

It is a warm day in Sacramento, CA.  It is a little after 3pm and I am carbing up to go buy a fan at the flea market before it closes…I will be walking.  Yesterday I actually got into the first car crash of my life.  My husband and two daughters (8mos. and 3yrs.) were in the car and we are all fine, but it was shocking and we feel ready to cancel our subscription to carville.  It was something we were considering anyway…wanting in fact, but the car accident certainly cemented and sped up that decision.

It was so much like those commercials, where the family is in a car, talking, laughing, and all of a sudden SMASH!  Ouch, ouch, ouch, we seemed to spin forever and hit over and over again.  It seemed to never stop.  My immediate thoughts centered around how much I dislike cars, how unsafe they seem and how isolating it was for me to get to my children promptly.  No one was hurt in either car, but it was very scary.

The accident happened because we ran a red light.  We were following behind a car that went through the light and didn’t see that the light was red until it was too late.  I remember seeing the car that hit us turning, and saying, is it gonna hit, then telling my husband to watch out for the car, but I didn’t think it was going to hit us or that it was that close.  It seemed like we had plenty of time, but still I was telling him to turn and he didn’t seem to see it, or hear me or know what I was talking about.  It is all a blur and I’m not even sure I had a chance to get my full sentence out.

My husband said sorry many times, but I didn’t feel like he needed to.  I felt like we had pushed ourselves too much that day, like we have many times before.  I felt like I should have let him eat more, and that we shouldn’t have been on the road at that moment.  Earlier in the day we had determined that we wanted to make more money for food.  It was one day until we got paid, but due to various out of the ordinary expenses we were low on money and felt that we needed more food.  We live close to a weekend flea market so we walked to it and tried to get money for some things, but the store owners bluntly told us we’d get much more money, as a matter of fact almost nothing for it there, if we took it back to Wal-Mart.

This was on another very warm day, walking back and forth, a low-food, under carbed day, and we decided to drive to Wal-mart, which wasn’t in walking distance.  We drove there, got our exchange and got food.  There was an old woman in the parking lot staring as my husband slammed fruit down his mouth and I felt self-conscious about it.  I felt like she was judging and sneering, maybe she was, maybe I was .  I put the pressure on my husband and we ended up leaving.  I felt like I should have let him eat more, and I should’ve eaten more too.  Whatever the case may be it has fueled our desire to stay carbed up, budget better and live more sustainably and efficiently.  These have always been our goals, but things have transitioned in our lives in a way to make it more immediate and more of a priority…particularly this car crash, which has deemed us officially car-free since 2008.

We are very excited about this journey.  We had finally really embraced natural hygiene down to the fullest degree.  No salt, no spices, sweet fruits and vegetables, low-fat, we only cooked when necessary, due to our budgeting needs, and yesterday, because we went to Wal-mart for our food, we had to get salted and processed and packaged foods, because calorically and strangely, these foods are cheaper than natural fruits and vegetables.  The produce there was also tragically under-ripe.  We did score some tropical fruit cups on sale.  They were papaya and pineapples in white grape juice.  This is a great emergency food item, for the fruitarian or raw fooder who has to buy from a regular grocery store and besides conventional strawberries, was the only ripe fruit we found.

We got no-salt corn chips, salted canned beans and canned tomatoes, rice, cabbage, orange juice and frozen broccoli and bell pepper strips. We already had raisins, spring water and lettuce.  When we came back to our motor home from the accident we ate chips and beans and tomato dip, and the children went to sleep while watching movies.  My husband and I watched more movies having a hard time falling asleep, with our headaches and shock.  Today…my throat is swollen and sore.  I’m struggling to eat enough I have phlegm and mucus coming out of me and I am ready to start anew.  As soon as we have the money to do so we will be purchasing bikes and bike trailers, as well as monthly rail passes, since the light rail is also very close to where we live now.  We are excited.