11 years sober - me and the mirrors; a journey into the collective shadow and recovery within it

11 years

The past few years my recovery journey has been a cakewalk when it comes to abuse of drugs and alcohol but I’ve been recovering from a very different form of abuse - abuse from people, groups, and collective unconscious shadows and false beliefs that have been passed down through the ages.

11 years of this deep conscious work

1 on 1 with life and all its facets with out numbing, hiding, evading, avoiding, dramatizing, minimizing or any of the other old coping mechanisms we use to get by.

1 to 1

Me and Truth

One and another,

My true Self and the Community of AA,

My Spirit and Spirituality, Patriarchy, Christianity, Misogyny

The many mirrors and I.

Halls of mirrors and seemingly never-ending undulating kaleidoscopes of them.

Recovering from domestic abuse and the misunderstandings in our culture about how it happens to the strongest most intelligent compassionate people (just like alcohol and drug abuse) and why a person would speak on it,

And how it wasn’t for the reasons people were projecting or pre-judging and falsely shaming me about,

was enough to make me lose my mind.

My sanity.

And that, insanity creeping back in, is the tipping point back to using the drugs and alcohol for most. Rigorous honesty got me and keeps me sober today.

Even though I knew and still know the truth, it is devastating to see and realize and grieve how many can not and will not come to see, but I understood the assignment and felt it all and kept speaking because my deepest with is that our world can come to understand how harmful these cycles or all types of abuse can be and how “normal” “good” people get caught up in it - sometimes via their own faults and other times it’s truly not anything they did “wrong”, they were just literal victims in another persons’ storms.

It’s paramount that we keep aligned with truth via practices of rigorous honesty, self study, and spiritual principles applied properly to our particular contexts and conditions.

When they are applied improperly they cause more harm and unfortunately these last few years I was given a rude awakening as to how deeply and corrosively the threads of spirituality used toxically actually run and even though I was already working through my own, in relationship, and guiding it privately in 1:1s and small groups for a living; the last few years I navigated it publicly and in larger community -on purpose to unveil some of the sicknesses- and even though it tore me apart in so many ways, I stayed loyal to the truth, and that, rigorous honesty, continued my daily spiritual/physical/emotional/mental therapies and disciplines and once again kept me sane and kept me sober.

In other words, not only did the relationship abuse itself threaten my livelihood, mostly because it was never fully acknowledged or amended,

But,

I this year I recovered from the additional trauma from our society’s misperceptions of it, additional community injuries which I sustained after the abusive relationship ended.

It crushed me repeatedly for years and still affects me today, but I am safe and sane aka recovered.

And,

I have no desire to drink or use over it. That’s a miracle which comes as a result of deep inventories and self-inquiries, connections to spirit and other Sadhana (spiritual practices).

The fires of anger are a tool which when we develop the capacity to sit with and discern the wisdom in it, instead of discarding it or harming other with it or internalizing the harm of it by holding it and suppressing it, can become a burning desire to help others understand how abhorrent the cycles and manipulations are within the relationship and with out it. Aka passion and courage to change.

Words wielded into sharp blades of precision discernment cutting out infections and cauterizing wounds. Heated for some, healing for others, depending on their readiness for truth, its complexities and many many subjective mirrors to contemplate and navigate back to the  objective truth.

Teeth sharpened to tell truth.

Insights into the labyrinth.

This is not a story of “how I became addicted “ or “how I got sober” but I do have those in my blogs and am available if you ever wanna know I’m an open book and here to help others in their journey.

This is more about how I didn’t die from being abused by people, how I stayed sober and didn’t use anything (or anyone) or turn into someone who harms others though I had ever “reason” to and like so many “hurt people hurting people”. This is a small peek into HOW I did that. A deep dive inventory so you can see HOW it works and what practices and depths we go to for recovery from all things.

A long story.

Perhaps for some.

But it’s a tiny fraction of the discoveries and recoveries these past few years.

Since I can’t say it all, here are just a few paramount points I hope to elucidate of things I continue to see “Take people back out” or OUT all together in not only in sobriety but in depression, suicide, chronic illnesses, and more.

If you subscribe to the WE do recover I hope you can read this with Honest Openmindedness Willingness to see where you may be contributing to the relapses in our communities, drug crises, mental health, suicide epidemics, as well as scan your own dis-ease to see where you may have some more spots to polish and refine.

It IS a continual practice for ALL of us.

*******

THE PRACTICE OR PRAYER:

Faith without works is dead & for so many spirituality is being weaponized instead of actualized

“First you pray for the hungry, then you FEED them” - Merton

Many of us are lacking the right uses of the prayer we chant in most meetings and churches:

Serenity to accept the things I can not change

Courage to change the things I can

And

Wisdom to know the difference

I see many rest on laurels and call it acceptance or spiritual but it’s actually avoidance.

Many blanket statement “acceptance is the answer to all my problems today” and use it bypass harms, forgetting that courage change after acceptance is the other part of the answer.

Accept THEN direct.

I see many claim “give it to god” as in “there’s nothing you can do” but it’s lie, they are forgetting the courage to even ask “what can I do” and then take action.

Many told me there was nothing I could do AS I was in a very confusing subtly abusive dynamic AND they repeated it when I was discarded and my life upended.

It wasn’t true.

Among a myriad of other things when I actually asked Spirit “why do I have this anger and challenge, what do I need to learn or do? Help me be useful and direct my energy” and listened for the answers,

I heard,

I could speak.

And still do.

The narrative my fellows suggested “to let go” supports oppressors of all types and when it comes to recovery and the places we seek refuge, community, connection and safety - it actually begins to create the opposite. The spaces and language begin to support those who are harming others and becomes a safe place for them to hide because “acceptance is the answer” which is only one part of a larger picture and it’s getting used toxically in these spaces and the world at large.

There’s a difference between acceptance as naming Truth v acquiescing to false humility.

There’s a difference between “give it to god” and let spirit help you discern wether or not you have power or responsibility and “give it god” and pretend someone else is going to take action in the issues and problems. God works through us. Faith without works is dead. And I see a lot of dead people walking in spiritual communities, in life in general but the tragedy is those people and their patterns are contributing to death of others who actually want more than anything to live and are being squashed and trapped and oppressed by the delusions, avoidance and abuse covered in spiritually cloaked words and ideologies.

We’ve lost the plot.

Things that are meant to help, are harming, and sometimes killing.

Some would say “there’s nothing you can do except move on” after abuse.

I beg to differ.

Yes, we rebuild our lives and play and have fun and heal etc

AND

I have found an overwhelming amount of collective karmic debt from people saying there’s nothing you can do (aka all you can do is accept).

From silencing victims with stories like “move on” “don’t be a victim” when the factual truth is it’s exactly what they were and there’s no shame - no shame - in honoring and speaking to that.

But the world has given us a false shame toward victims - we are only allowed to call ourselves “survivors” - more positivity used toxically squashing the truth and whitewashing the pain so no one has to feel the awful reality of abuse that has been normalized in our culture is helping NO ONE - except… drumroll… the abusers and oppressors themselves.

So, once I had some awareness and ACCEPTANCE of THAT truth, I asked in my daily rituals of prayer, meditation and inventory practices “what can I change?”

Not just “I guess I’ll just take another giant blow from being abuses yet again in relationships and be grateful I learned” etc or “forgive them for they know not what they do” or “trust they’ll get their karma” which are all useful tools but they are lacking action and courage and instead of assuming there was nothing I could do except what I had done - I got more curious as to why it was here - again - hadn’t I learned - don’t I guide this and help others - why was this happening - what do you want me to do with it? These were my prayers and inquiries. What I found was a monumental construct in our society false idols and spiritual principles and even therapeutic practices that disconnect us from truth rather than get us closer to it.

An abysmal Pandora’s Box.

I heard the assignment.

I did not like the assignment.

I asked “why me? haven’t I been through enough?”

Spirit answered “Because you have a constitution and capacity and courage that most do not. You practice spiritual principles and therapeutic modalities and healings daily, you guide it, you’ve seen so many through it, you have a family to support you, you have no children at risk, you have financial freedoms, you have a host of friends despite the ones who abandoned you and you have seen first hand experience of how this not only has almost taken you out but has actually taken your friends’ lives - so - if not you, who?”

Be the change.

I did not like this truth - I wanted to just skip to then end and be grateful and love and light my way out of the hurts like I used to be able to in the past, like so many others do, but I know, I knew, the truth is that as Pema chodron reminds “nothing ever goes away until it teaches you want you need to know”

So I accepted and asked for more courage to change - to bring the change I wish to see in the world.

I wish to see a world where people are able to hold their anger and fear and grief for long enough to discern the useful and non useful bits.

To hear the wisdom in each emotion, even the “bad” ones and to stop demonizing feelings as irrational, illogical, and un spirtual. Emotions are gifts from God and we live in a world that says “get rid of them or else you’ll be seen as hysterical” and THAT narrative is just one of many which perpetuates the cycle of abuse.

Emotional abuse.

Calm can be a superpower IF used properly.

Calm can be abusive, dismissive, avoidant, and disconnected if used improperly - aka stonewalling, neglect and more.

The most difficult and “negative” emotions get shamed the most. Even shame itself is shamed.

Shame is useful when we learn how to listen. So many these days claiming “don’t shame, shame never helps, shame is “low vibrational” (don’t get me started on the damn Power v Force spiritual bypassing lingo - but do hmu if you wanna know more bc it too is causing so much delusion).

Shame will tell you where you are living out of alignment with truth and your values.

UNLESS it’s the type of FALSE shame projected from others to gaslight you into believing you “should or should not” feel do be a particular way and the greatest task we have is to learn to discern the true from the false forms of - everything - but especially shame, fear, ego, anger and even joy.

Everything.

NBD ;)

I can’t outline it all for you here, it takes hours in my 1:1s to unpack it and depends largely on the filters of the person sitting across from me - there’s no way for me to speak to whomever is reading this and know their subjective truth and stories to be able to help them navigate the Pandora’s boxes and Labyrinths of their shame and possibilities of truths or falsehoods in it but I DO hope just the idea of this makes you curious enough to inquire within and or reach out for guidance from a therapist or mentor in that process.

My own discoveries in the journey back to the underworld are ineffably overwhelming and can not be contained on a lil screen but I’ll highlight anger, truth and “speaking on it” for a bit and just know there’s so much more:

THE USEFULNESS OF SHAME AND ANGER:

unlearning the spiritual and collective bypassing

Anger is fire, and if used well can cauterize a wound, burn out infections, burn bridges and  bring light to dark places. It can warm, it can heal, it can protect, and mostly it shows us where our passions are and what’s important and how to take action IF we can hold it long enough with the right energy and ask for guidance.

It can also turn to useless resentment but more often than not I see people claiming their or others’ very healthy normal anger is “bad” - that is where we begin to suppress and repress and DEpress ourselves.

I was taught that if I was angry it was “un spiritual” or “a resentment” and I needed to “clear it” as in “get rid of it” and what I learned early on in my recovery was that anger has a usefulness and I’ve been advocating for how “spiritual communities” including yoga, religion, and yes, AA, misuse and misunderstand the well-intentioned but often misguided rhetoric around anger.

Many shamed me for being angry at the abuse I experienced - it is a false shame - the truth is the person who abused me should feel shame - not me for being angry. My anger was pointing at purpose - it was ON PURPOSE and these words are part of that.

If you are angry at clear injustices (not misperceived ones), that is GOOD and normal and needed. It is there to inspire courage and movements for change. Do not change your anger, make use of it. Do not believe that all anger is “resentment” or even that all resentment is “bad”. Sometimes it’s true other times there’s more work. Get curious about yours.

I make my living guiding a process called Emotional Alchemy which is essentially trauma healing.

It’s something I’ve studied and developed and embodied in many of my trauma healing journeys including my journey in sobriety.

In 2020 - 6 years sober - people were requesting my 1:1 guidance, not just “people” but therapists AND many people in recovery that felt they were missing something or wanting to go deeper.

The journeys in and around my practices are amazing and immense and I’d love to tell you more about it, but this post is about how when every “fell apart” again, the trauma healing practice I’d cultivated and strengthened was put to the test yet again, and I survived because of it AND my family, friends, sponsor, mentor, therapy, self-study and more. AKA my spiritual fitness and support systems.

But to say “it fell apart” is not accurate, the rug was first ripped out from under me, putting me in a state of shock (PTSD) and then it was quietly dismantled by my ex, a covertly emotionally and psychologically abusive partner, as he played into their sympathy for him instead of owning and amending his harms, he hid them with logical sounding words, omissions of details, therapeutic and spiritual phrases and by being “a good AA fellow” so that when/ if I ever got healed and courageous enough to suss out all the BS and speak on this, I was already undermined. It was easy to believe him over me or to say “they both have truth” he’s counting on you to do that, but that too is part of the lie and the game and the pain bc he is stuck in a delusion that he was not abusive - abuse is not a subjective perspective issue - it’s an object fact of matter and action or inaction. He’s counting on the community to stay in “the middle” because that isolated me and supported him.

The saddest part was he didn’t need to do much. Just continue his regular routine (no surprise - he didn’t skip a beat in all his “pain from making a hard decision to end it” aka to discard me rather than face his harms) and the patriarchal misogyny embedded in our society did most of the work for him.

Every high-5 and hug he gets from someone offered the message “what you did to her is ok, I understand you, I’m not going to challenge you” and some people don’t know they’re doing this - others do - and unfortunately all of it harmful to me AND anyone else who’s gone through this aka victims of harm.

I understand that we are taught to be compassionate but I hope you can hear me when I say compassion used improperly can also contribute to abuse - sometimes it’s enabling the cycle to continue.

Compassion with out accountability is enabling abuse - drug abuse - people abuse etc

Sometimes silence is necessary for survival and health

Sometimes silence is violence.

As Thich Nhat Hahn states "Even if you do nothing while people kill or destroy, that is also violence".

As MLK states “we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends"

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

There’s SUBjective truth (my experience and biases, his experience and biases)

There’s OBjective truth (facts, definitions, details, contexts in right order)

Most do not have the capacity or energy to discern, so they lean on what’s comfortable or the path of least resistance - understandable - but often this is the cause of our collective Karmic debt - no one wants to or can do the sorting work.

Many think I am misperceiving his harms, speaking from my own bias, dramatizing, or twisting a story, or being violent myself – and from their perspective, I can see how it would look that way – but they are wrong and their misguided perceptions, projections, and pre-judgements based on their experiences rather than the truth and facts of mine, have not only harmed me, but supported him in what might be further injury toward himself and others because he is not being held accountable for the mistreatment of women he gets into relationships with.

Many think his perspective is valid and needs to be taken into consideration and I’d say, feel free to do that, I did that for 6 years, and what I - my sponsor, our couple’s therapist, my mentors, family and most of my friends found is he’s disconnected from the truth. He’s constitutionally incapable - he is missing pieces that help him see and feel and connect - that’s not bad, unless he misuses it - and he has and he has not cleaned up his mess and THAT is bad, wrong, injurious to himself and the ones he’s harmed and is in denial of it.

Many think I had a part, or an unconscious or codependent reason for staying, or something in me that was selfish or manipulative or abusive as well. Others think I didn’t leave because I was afraid of starting over or being alone or not being able to afford life, etc. etc. etc. and none of that is true. Although I am sure that they have experienced things like that, I too have experienced things like that in previous relationships, and in this relationship, it was not true.

I had worked through my traumas, I was healed and whole, not to say that I didn’t and still don’t have more to discover and uncover, but it was not what people were telling me it was. Shaming and blaming me for things that were not mine and were not true aka projecting their shadows and wounds onto me and when I stood strong they called me arrogant and close minded but the truth is I’d searched fearless and thoroughly through every nook and cranny and facet before I spoke because one of greatest fears is in hurting others AND there’s a difference between telling the truth with compassion and it exposing lies that “hurts others” to wake up to v claiming truth when it’s a lie or brutality masked as spirituality and I went to painstaking efforts to make sure I was not doing the latter.

Though some thought and still think I am.

Truth hurts

But only if you’re living a lie.

Lies called truth hurts bc they should - not bc you’re weak or need to let it go - stand up - defend yourself.

Defending yourself against a real attack is different from “being defensive” when someone is holding you accountable to harms you’re causing.

Learn to discern if you are “being defensive” as in unnecessarily blocking/dodging/deflecting etc or if you’re defending yourself against false accusations aka lies.

Once again we see the greatest task is to learn to discern the true from the false.

And then find the next right action aka courage to change aka step 4,5,6,7.

Another thing my anger offered me truth about was the phrase “you have a part” “you needed it” “you attracted it” etc

When I sat with my anger long enough to discern the truth, I found the lie. I did not “attract an abusive person“ because I needed to heal something. He PRESENTED as a match for me, compassionate, responsible, intelligent, a feminist, accountable, caring toward others, and so much more. Over the years, the image slowly eroded and was replaced with something quite the opposite, and at least incongruous from one day to the next. It was hard to see the truth. And that is all part of what we call psychological abuse. These are his distortions and manipulations, not mine. WE are not responsible for their in-congruencies or for our very normal confusion within the reflection of them, and it’s nothing we needed to heal, but they do.

KILLING THE MESSENGER:

What happens when we shame those who speak up about abuse

Many have what we call “contempt prior to investigation” in many ways toward understanding these concepts I’m outlining and toward anyone speaking up about domestic abuse or the myriad of other harms that occur in our society, and I used to too, so if that’s you I hope you can continue reading the details about it below with an open and curious mind.

They see “another woman claiming abuse” and roll their eyes and quietly pre-judge with thoughts like “sure, you had NO part in how he treated you huh? You did nothing to provoke him? You did nothing wrong? I’m sure he didn’t mean it and feels bad (sticking up for them, abuse enabling and victim shaming). It’s his trauma, give him grace to heal. (Trauma bonding) Maybe he DID hurt you but there’s no need to be public about it, you were tearing him down…” (victim shaming) and the rest of the collective misunderstandings about abuse were projected on to me continuously and STILL are today.

Little do they know those were the exact voices I had in the beginning of the relationship, and part of the reason I stayed, and kept sweet, and kept working with him, in the hope and belief in him making progress, (which easily turns into making excuses for his behavior, being overly compassionate without holding him accountable), sweeping things under the rug, trusting him to change because he was working a program of accountability And I saw him take accountability toward other people, and I knew he was capable of it, so why wouldn’t I believe that he would eventually come to see the error of his ways toward me? After all he raised money for the Utah domestic violence coalition, he couldn’t possibly be a perpetrator of it… Could he? I figured I must be misperceiving it too, so I understand anyone who is misunderstanding me, but please understand, it is a misunderstanding ;-)

This is what I call our collective shadow.

That won’t go away until more of us come to understand the nuances her and work through our patriarchal programming, misogyny, and more. Part of THAT work is women and especially MEN coming to understand this, taking accountability for IF they are guilty OF it and/or enabling it with their silence and instead speaking on it and amplifying our voices bc women are simply not respected in our society.. unless we are “tolerant of abuse” AND “taking accountability” for more than our fair share or for others’ actions when they were not our responsibility to begin with and I refuse to spend one more day of my short life shock-absorbing the pain that others have placed on me as “my responsibility to stay calm in” when the SANE response to abuse is ANGER and protection and defense. Mind you, there’s a difference between anger and violence, protection from real harms v imagined ones, and defense against false claims v “getting defensive” when someone is holding you accountable. I unpack this often in my 1:1s but it is too nuanced for this post so please simply stay curious (over defensive;) and ask yourself “what is the difference” and sit with it).

I’ve experienced abuse before, I thought I knew the ins and outs, I was helping others navigate theirs, and this was something that was so subtle and quiet not even I could catch it at first. It was covered by nice sounding logic, mostly calm-seeming or avoidant neglectful behaviors, but using spiritual and therapeutic phrases that confused reality. Sometimes it was more obvious, aggressive or passive-aggressive,  especially with the condescending tones and smug looks and scoffs AND it was intermittent - charming then harming - which keeps us believing (aka breadcrumbing and papercutting or like a repetive motion injury, or a frog boiling to death in a pot, slow, sinister, sneaky break to the mindbody until you don’t know what’s what) so it became very hard to discern the true from the false. Plus, in the beginning I was being mentored by a person who often reaffirmed I was being needy for wanting anything like basic respect or connection, and when I’d check in with her about the mistreatment I was not sure if I was assessing the situation correctly and she’d tell me to have compassion for him - which is unfortunately encouraging a very dangerous thing called trauma bonding - having compassion for a person who is currently harming you. To top it off, some of my friends in “the rooms” agreed especially bc my ex shows up well in this community.

All of that created more confusion when he would do subtle passive neglectful or passive aggressive and condescending things toward me in the relationship.

But I had experienced much worse, not just in relationship, but in life, and so truly, it did not seem that bad. At first glance and on paper, compared to my previous exes, he was a literal saint.

Plus, I am a tough girl, I don’t need much, I have a huge heart, and I am resilient. These things sound like character assets, and they are, in fact, I teach and guide people to be in this sovereign state, but when you’re in a relationship with an emotionally and psychologically abusive person , the person manipulating finds ways to exploit everything that is good and an asset and somehow twists them into liabilities. It is wild.

All of this made a very difficult to discern whether it was a me, problem, and us problem, a him problem, an abuse problem, if it was solvable, and if I even wanted to continue, but I continued to finding the truth and in general along my journey in sobriety, I have learned the leaning in lens more answers than leaving or leaning out.

The journey to the truth within the “is this abuse or just normal and how guys are?” quest in my relationship was found first through a rigorously honest practice of prayer, meditation, and self inquiry. In yoga they call this Satya and Svadhyaya and more - in AA they call this step 11 and a continued step 10.

I found the courage to trust my read over my then-sponsor’s and tried to express some of this and my findings that were not lining up with her advices of compassion and acceptance OR the other extreme which was to just leave (never was communication encouraged, in fact once I told her he’d told me. to shut up and instead of her pointing out how clearly wrong his unprovoked verbal abuse was and giving me solutions she said “I understand how he feels that way because I have felt the same urge toward you” insinuating I was needy for wanting my partner to own his harms and expressing it and THAT was why he’d told me to shut up - bc I should) but was unfortunately met with dismissiveness and inability to hear me, very similar to the pattern that my partner was reflecting. I sat with the possibility that I was wrong, the “common denominator”, I concluded I needed more help to find the truth, and thought maybe I did not need a sponsor but I caught the possible arrogance and instead of tossing the baby out with the bath water, I found the courage and reached out to another fellow who unpacked all of this with me, helped me discern the facts and REAL harms, mistreatment and more. She still walks with me in my inventory practices today and I owe her the deepest gratitudes.

(That process IN that ex-sponsor relationship was awful mottled with goodness or seeming sanity or truth and I can’t outline all of it by any means here but that’s just a tiny peek into it.)

But the worst fallout was what happened with my friendships and relationships in the community after I’d discerned the truth, the therapist agreed he was at fault and needed to change, and instead of owning it, and or amending his harms; he discarded me abruptly and made a beautiful lie and sold it to himself and the community. (The way he ended things and blamed me or “us” was detrimental in ways I can still barely describe but again hopefully you get a lil peek into it here.)

When I started speaking objective truth and facts on it, offering details and descriptions to help ppl understand the nuances and discern for themselves, showing the processes of healing and how I had feelings about being abused, normalizing that pain, how our voices are so needed, being rigorously honest and upfront publicly (as it IS what I guide) AND in hopes of protecting anyone else who may come into contact with him since this proved to be a pattern with him (his exes experienced almost identical harms), no longer protecting him from the reality of his actions, knowing it will hurt me to do so but staying loyal to the truth regardless of consequences, shining the light on these therapeutic and spiritual gaslights that all too many of us use in well-intended but harmful ways, pulling back the curtain on the collective traumbonded, misogynistic, patriarchal patterns, and offered the mirrors for how it literally is the root of our mental health epidemics, drug addictions, suicides, auto-immune dis-eases (even cancer is connected here) and was bold enough to say what happened to me and how the ignorance around it literally kills people,

I became the villain.

I was not surprised at the push back, but I did underestimate the fallout and its repercussions and capacity I’d need to recover from all of that too. The people I thought would surely understand or at least seek to understand, did not. I thought the ones closer to me and stronger in their recovery might get it, I was wrong. They not only did not get it, but went to bat for him some aggressively, most passively, and others pushed back in meek ways, or simply removed themselves from being in relationship with me. Some announced, some not. It all supported a person who’d harmed me and left me with even more healing on top of the giant pile of it. I was not prepared for the gravity of the detrimental effects an avoidant community could add.

Further discarded, shamed and isolated for having the courage to tell the truth - I was seen as petty, unprofessional, unhealed, and more. He was protected by their compassion and seen as “just a good guy going through a breakup and getting hurt by his ex”.

None of those things were true, the truth is he harmed me and I was no longer protecting his lies by keeping it hidden and he WAS hurt by that, but it was not my words, it was his behaviors that held the shame. The blame continued to be falsely shifted to me and this is what happens to so many.

I knew the pattern as it was the same one in the relationship,(I guide and practice the healing in these same still collectively shamed processes daily) God knew the objective truth I share here, My sponsor, mentor, therapists and a few friends and acquaintances knew it; but the majority of my previously safe spaces couldn’t see it, didn’t have the capacity to hear it, wanted to believe their own biases, felt bad for him as his misconduct was being exposed and ultimately continued to support a man who’d berated me in the relationship, then when finally being held accountable by a licensed therapist whom he’d agreed to respect and honor their discernment (because he did not trust mine) he instead upended my life and called it “just how relationships go” which further added to his covert passive harms and manipulations and isolated me from my community and made huge crevasses in the healing work I was doing for others to financially support myself, AND he did not honor my investment in our home leaving me further financially and energetically wounded.

The list goes on but many think I should not be focused on the harms he created - they are wrong. That rhetoric is exactly what perpetuates the cycle both IN and OUT of the relationship.

Silence literally kills.

We always need to know the problem before we can find a solution.

We are taught to look at ourselves and look at our part and I did that to a fault. Because the problem wasn’t me it was him. The solution was me telling THAT truth.

In other words “my part” was in knowing I didn’t have one.

That was hard for me to wrap my head around, so if it’s hard for you too, I get it.

It was an inversion of so much I’d been taught and been groomed to practice. That radical responsibility narrative is meant for all of us to a degree yes, and for abusers it is paramount they find their faults and own them so they can change bc to addicts and alcoholics, resisting this part can kill us.

That was true for me regarding addiction and in some areas of my life I found that narrative incredibly helpful and healing but at some point, it crossed the line from being helpful to me, to being enabling of him and harmful to me - and that IS STILL me looking at MY part - it’s just me looking all the way “through the looking glass” now.

I was afraid to point at him and say it’s not me it’s you. (Where your fear is there is your task - Carl Jung.)

****THE ANCESTRAL CURSE****

I asked myself why I had that fear and if it was true. I found a Pandora’s box of ancestral stories that had been created by my predecessors for survival from tyrants of all type -many of them being domestically, violent husbands- and it used to keep us safe not pointing at people.

I saw images of “good girls” and “religious women” pious and calm and “keeping sweet” because their survival depended on their false humility and fawning and pretending they didn’t know that they were being mistreated and that it was ok for this reason or that. I saw the way the world shamed so many women, even burned them at the stakes, for pointing out the metaphorical emperor wearing no clothes and calling it fashion. Or for having any knowledge or power at all.

I unpacked the ideologies around why people say “don’t air your dirty laundry in public” and “if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all” and “that boy is only mean because he hates himself so be nice to him” and and and it was a Mariana-sized-trench of traps and vows and curses that had silenced us into submission and tolerance of abuse otherwise we’d be committed to mental asylums or cast out or further harmed or murdered and I said - no more.

I saw that SOME still need to hide and be quiet - and if that’s you - my heart goes out to you - silence has place in healing too, especially if you’ve been the opposite, always loud, so either way it’s ok that you stay silent - but I did not need silence, I needed to reclaim my voice, and amplify it even at the risk of looking crazy or like I was too much which is another fear I got to work through.

I was safe enough to speak and so I heard the call “you must, for everyone who came before you, for everyone who died with out the words, for everyone still suffering, speak”.

I saw a fear that “I was wrong, that maybe it WAS me not him” and I continued to unpack my parts one strand at a time untangling the rats nest of confusion in my heart and mind and finding - much to my dismay actually - it WAS him not me.

Why the dismay at being right? Because it meant I was powerless. I’d much rather say “I had a part” bc for some of us taking accountability is the easier way, we’re better at that, and that gives me a sense of control AND that can actually a trauma response and conditioning from being abused some call it battered wife syndrome, others call it narcissistic abuse disorder, other call it Stockholm, others say it’s a residual trauma bond, regardless I found it was a cord that kept me tethered to a false sense of shame and a desire for control so I surrendered it.

Victims want to think they called it in or perpetuated it or something bc it helps them feel in control and that means in the future they’ll be able to stop it from happening again - and sometimes there’s truth to that - but I found out it wasn’t true for me. I had done everything consciously, continuously, rigorously honest, expressing my needs, making space for his, being clear but kind, regulated, taking space, giving space, holding space, the list goes on and at the bottom of the barrel I found - and my mirrors and mentors agreed - there was nothing I could have done differently to stop it from happening. I was powerless in the relationship dynamic. The only person that was responsible for his abuse, was him. And MY responsibility was to STOP taking responsibility for any of his mistreatment. In OR out of the relationship.

That’s what I learned to do. Give it all back.

That’s what saved my life.

That’s what kept me sane.

And when I’m sane, I can more easily stay sober.

So like I said, the staying sober was the cakewalk, the rest of it not so much.

Many said “if you would not have spoken up, you would not have ruined your relationship with the community and caused yourself so much cptsd, so it’s your own fault”.

I hope you can hear the victim shaming in this phrase.

If not, let me clarify it for you.

My words are not the problem, his lack of accountability is, and the communities’ inability to see that clearly is the compounded problem here. Not me pointing it out. This is the collective blame shift that continues to happen when victims, people who have been injured, speak out against the people who have harmed them.

The problem is his inability to simply be humble and own his abusive nature and be courageous enough to change it rather than deflect, dodge, dismiss, diminish and more.

Once he can do that - he no longer has to deal with his shame - he can use his shame and see it’s pointing him back to his values and sanity.

But instead he points at me as the source of his pain.

He relies on the community to remove his shame for him and corroborate his false stories a.k.a. cosine his poor behavior.

As if to say “if I’d stop speaking, the healing would occur”. That’s exactly what he did in the relationship and one guess what happened (it perpetuated his tyranny).

It will work for a time. But it will eventually stop working and he will have bigger problems.

The truth is “if he’d take accountability, the healing would occur” - but I’m not in charge of that timeline - so for now I live in limbo here building a bridge to another world where I am free.

That’s what all the tyrants want - for you to be quiet - complicit in your own harms - stay small and powerless and certainly DO NOT use your voice or anger (bc that’s what set us free and sets them aflame).

That’s what some of the sober community said to and about me, “be quiet”. In a hundred different ways. Echoing all the injuries of my past where I’d stayed silent and complicit and tough and loving and never was I allowed to be angry or honest or tell on the people who’d caused it

bc for some reason we are taught “it’s tattle-telling” and that’s bad -  but yet again I hope you ask “is what I’m doing tattling?” even IF I am, WHY in the world have we called that “bad”?

Can you see how this supports abusers and shames victims?

And guess what?

It’s the same pattern here in the community that I’d worked through in the relationship:

It’s them, not me. It’s that same story, that is perpetuating the violence and false narratives and victim shaming those who’ve actually been harmed into quietude. (PSA that it is by definition what we call a victim and victim is not a bad word, it’s different that “playing victim” which is what the perps are doing and WE are being painted AS that - let’s unlearn that cute lil gaslight yeah?).

There is a huge difference between someone unnecessarily stirring a pot and pointing out harms, misperceiving harms and complaining about it v someone doing to help us all move from a place of deeper love for our fellows - including the ones who harm - by helping hold THE PROPER person accountable.

OR

speaking up about abuse and actually lying about it which unfortunately DOES happen - I currently work with a man who IS experiencing it from a woman and it’s awful what he has to go through to recover from that.

I’ve seen a community member call out another AS harming them when the truth was actually reversed. I know it’s difficult to discern truth y’all but we REALLY must before we go “blanket-statement ing” things like “quiet is confidence and the truth doesn’t need defense and god will handle it”. Just because my story is a “woman calling out a man” doesn’t mean I’m lying though YOU may have experienced that. Just because you like the person I’m talking about doesn’t mean he’s not lying about what he did to me and his exes. Just because you may have experienced someone wrongfully but loudly calling out harm doesn’t mean loud people are always wrong. Or that quiet people ARE for that matter. There are SO many nuances and it’s necessary AS A COMMUNITY if “WE DO RECOVER” for us to all look at this. It is a root problem that branches out into a million harms and we don’t just sit

idly by. We take action. We clean house, help other trust god. But WE are part of GOD. Don’t forget it.

Ask in your prayers and meditations what you can do.

Don’t assume it’s nothing - ask - listen - take action - or surrender - or both and repeat repeat repeat.

What I heard in my practice of that and maybe you will hear it too is:

Others are dying from this same dynamic (my friend at 2 years sober had no support in this same dynamic, being told to take accountability for things that were never hers) and you have capacity and privilege to speak on it that they don’t. It is your literal job to help people heal so you have a responsibility that’s deeper than most to speak up.

You have a spiritual maintenance practice that is unmatched, that keeps you safe and sane and gives you the awareness and ability to discern the true from the false, come back to homeostasis after being triggered when you speak up.

You have a family, mentors, an amazing sponsor, and small group of people who DO hear you and support you in your healing which includes sharing the message to help others understand the less detectable types of abuse that are literally killing people.

Experience

Strength

Hope

And I share about it ALL today

Yes, I’m sober, I went through all of that and not only did not die, AND I did not use one single drug or thing to take me away from the raw reality of the moment.

I  found and cultivate sufficient substitutes for relief which includes a ridiculous amount of supplements, preventative care, and healing modalities like;

acupuncture, acupressure, chiropractors, all styles of yoga, trauma healing, daily mediations on grief, breath-work, practicing nervous system flexibility which includes letting yourself be dis regulated and angry and depressed AND NOT SHAMING YOURSELF for it, self-study, book studies, courses, classes, and lots of nature, isolation, doing nothing, walking for miles just to work it out in my mind, traveling to other countries to practice playing and celebrating, talking to others for hours and hours and hours, telling them the truth, telling you all the objective factual truth about ALL types of abuse including drug/alcohol abuse AND “people” abuse AND continuing to HELP others in their healing and in all of the above

AND

coffee and Oreos.

I have been speaking on these things for years.

I will continue speaking on them as long as it is helping me and others heal.

Even if it only helps one person. That’s enough.

I will not be remembered as a woman who stayed silent in the face of abuse and called it “spiritual’ when it’s fawning masked as “regulated” and “unaffected”. I’m affected, you’re affected, we must tell the truth about it bc as James Baldwin reminds:

And just like with our alcoholism and addiction and other dis-ease we can not find a solution until we know what the problem is - until then we run in circles misdiagnosing ourselves and anyone in recovery knows that it ends horribly.

Learn to unshame yourself and others for pointing at a problem. That’s the false shame. Give the shame back to those who need it for their shadow-work discoveries and redirection. That’s the true shame and it’s useful.

Then help find solutions - but first honor the pain - don’t just byass the feeling of it into solutions. Sometimes sitting with it and doing nothing but feeling it an witnessing it is the first step to change. Other times we need more action direction and help - learn to discern.

****THE HEALING: the new spells and breaking the ancestral curses****

I will not protect people who harm others and sweep it under the rug or minimize it and/or point at others for having a very valid and necessary response to their harms or try to twist the “who did what to whom” narrative, or try to pass it to the victim saying they tolerated it so… or bypass it by saying something compassionate toward or about the abuser and their pain rather than keeping with the focus “they caused harm, they need to clean it up” - you break it you buy - even if you didn’t mean to - you make it right - period.

I will continue to point out how he (and others) are using the “poor me, I hurt her but didn’t mean it and now she’s telling everyone and I’m so sad, and being made to look like an asshole,” narrative to pull on the community’s heartstrings (aka the collective trauma-bond feeling bad for people who harm others) to elicit an emotional response FOR them and against victims which CONTINUES to add to  harms, INSTEAD of him simply saying “she’s right, by definition I emotionally, verbally, psychologically, financially abused her, I am guilty of domestic violence and instead of just raising money for the same UDVC cause each year, and resting on my laurels or letting that be a delusion that I’m now a good guy, I need to face how I perpetuate it and go back and clean up my past like I preach to my sponsees to do in their inventory practices”. And then he needs to do it.

Shutting down my voice perpetuates the cycle. Him taking accountability stops the cycle.

When your shame is true, and you own it, it guides you home to integrity - that’s the healing.

My words do not need changing, his actions do.

Some of you think I keep speaking because I’m not healed and I want to reiterate as many times as needed, me speaking IS the healing. I had to walk through endless fear and shame and false narratives in our collective about people speaking up about harms, especially when it’s the “nice guy” in the community that so many love. I’m not asking you to hate him and shame him, I’m asking you to love him and hold him accountable to his own shame.

Imagine me telling y’all who share about your journey with drug/alcohol recovery that if you were healed you’d stop speaking on it. We practice these principles in all areas affairs so I hope you can apply that here.

Some need silence, sometimes silence is violence, learn what is healing for you and do it.

To make this abundantly clear: THE ONLY THING that will make HIS pain and shame less when I talk about how he harmed me is IF he has the capacity to FULLY own what he did to me and his exes whom he also has not fully cleared his harms with and when HE does the healing he needs.

Until then he and some of you will continue to think it’s my voice and this objective truth that needs to change, but when we accept accountability, and make amends, and change our behaviors - permanently - THAT is when the relief from shame comes - not when we try to change the truth.

It’s cute tho, that we think we can “justify” our way out of justice.

Remember friends, God works through us, our hands are God’s,

sometimes justice is JUST US

and if you are using the phrase “WE DO RECOVER” I hope you can ask in your daily prayer, mediation, and inventory practices “what if any part do I have in this cycle” and have the serenity to accept the things that are not changeable - like the TRUTH that this is happening right under our noses and being masked as spirituality and community when it’s actually an avoidance and denial of it in so many ways

The courage to look at how your behavior is playing a part in it and to CHANGE it in some way shape or form (may I suggest speaking up about it however it applies to you)

And then wisdom to know the difference between where I need action and where i need surrender

In truth and love we need both

In different doses on different days

Depending on context nuances details and scenarios

I hope you develop the capacity and courage to know, see, and tell the truth

To yourself

Another

And Spirit

PS - spirit already knows, the question is, can you align with it?

The best apology is changed behaviors.

The best self forgiveness is too.

This is how we remove shame (when it’s a true form of it).

Forgiveness is given for changed behaviors aka amends and a commitment to not harming ourselves or others again and a promise that IF we do we’ll clean it up immediately.

It’s a law - like karma - action reaction - a physics equation - it’s a force like gravity - we are not in control of it - we cannot forgive - it either is done or it isn’t - this is step 9.

Anything else is spiritual bypassing, and playing god. The concept of forgiveness is widely misunderstood - hears a snippet for more details on that:

As they say, the truth will set you free.

This is a program of rigorous honesty

There are some who are constitutionally, incapable of being honest with themselves, they are not at fault, but they do recover if they have their capacity to be honest.

There are other others to with grave mental disorders

Honesty is a capacity.

The capacity is developed through CONTINUAL self reflection and accountability.

A daily spiritual maintenance practice keeps us saying. When we keep our sanity, we can keep our sobriety.

When we lose our sanity, our default is to go back to using other coping to help our pain.

Sometimes our pain is of our own making.

Sometimes it is not.

In my case, pain was presented to me by no fault of my own.

It was as if I was driving down the road and got T-bone, ended up in the hospital with multiple injuries, while people were looking at me and shaming me for telling them that somebody had sideswiped me and left me broken.

Because mental, spiritual and emotional injuries cannot be seen, there is great and grave misunderstandings about them.

I’m here talking about this because I survived it and I continue to thrive.

Not because I want to hurt my ex, which is what many people think, in fact, the opposite is true I want to help him. But mostly, I’m done protecting him in any other abusers, that is abuse enabling, and our compassion for them without accountability harms them and the people they’ve harmed.

I’m here to put a stop to that pattern, and other spiritual harms caused inadvertantly by ourselves and in communities that are trying to help but causing harm.

I do this like my spiritual practices, continually practicing and speaking about it, because that is part of my rigorous honesty, that is how I continue to face my fears about how people might misperceive me, and let them, while still knowing the truth. And knowing that, if and when they have capacity for it, they will see it, and it will help them.

Until then, I will “give it to god” because I’ve taken all the action I can and down we “let go”.

Sending a deeper capacity for love and truth and spirit to all who are struggling in anyway to recover from any thing. And a prayer for courage to change and be the change to those who are not struggling bc we need you to a take actions and help and serve the whole to a united freedom.

“When you get free, go back and help the others”

“No one is free until we are all free”

“We are all one”

“We do recover”

Step 12

Seva

Karma yoga

The bodhisattva vow

Trust God - Clean House - Serve Other

Honesty Open-mindedness Willingness

To thine own self be true.

“This is how we do it” Montell Jordan ;)

Reach out if you have questions, need support or direction, want to seek to understand the concepts I’ve offered here, or want any details about emotional and psychological types of abuse, how to spot in IN yourself or In another. I’ll help best I can, either personally or I can guide to other people and places who can offer the support you might be seeking.

Cheers to my 11 years of recovery and a lifetime of self-study that help me show up for our world and my self today.

My deepest prayer every morning is:

May all beings awaken to Sat Chit Ananda

Truth Consciousness Bliss