9 years sober a reflection on the love and abuse in AA and spiritual circles.

9 years sober a reflection on the love and abuse in AA and spiritual circles.

P1

44 years old and 9 years sober and life is still life-ing and dying at me, with me, for me, through me.

I totally get why ppl just leave AA, or religious orgs, cuz who the hell has the capacity, patience, and courage it takes to come back to discernment after trauma like this. I do, apparently, it seems to be part of my patterning in life, at least in some of my relationships. I didn’t want to write and feel this, but IT seemed to want me to, so here we are:

I’ve been trying to reflect for weeks so please forgive this fragmented and imperfectly edited essay or short story as I'm still swirling in the amount of muchness this year. Even this last month I’ve been invited to enormous amounts to comprehend, chew, digest, metabolize, make use of unravel from, reweave and/or discard and it is uncanny. The serenity to accept, courage to change, and wisdom to know which of what to to which or what or both or neither with has been spinning in and around me like a hurricane all year.

Like the actual category 4 hurricane I was just in,

While having covid,

In a foreign country,

By myself,

The first trip out of the country on my own,

Which ended up being just a fun lil fractal of the pattern for the entire year.

The way I won my trip at my now ex’s punk rock show as they raise $ for the UDVC and all year have been accepting the deep painful truth that I’m a woman who had suffered for 30 years, through 3 long term relationships, at the hands and mouths of partners who were domestically violent to varying degrees. (All of which I "tough girl-ed, higher-minded, and hero-journeyed" my way through.) Some of that being covert emotional abuse from the very person who was raising money FOR an organization who is against it. Often times the “nice guys” are also the mean ones and I don’t like accepting this truth bc I have a story in my head that says “everyone is doing their best” and “there are no victims only volunteers” which means there are no villains, and it is meant to be an empowering phrase to help us take charge of our lives, forgive others, to see the gifts and responsibilities with in each horrible thing and how we have a part in all of it

AND

this 9th year sober I got to see how it’s not true. How that same story perpetuated the cycle of abuse within myself, him and I see it in the rooms, yoga classes, religion, and the whole world systems too.

My first 6 yr relationship in 1994 was more classically abusive (what sick phrase btw;) obvious, often even publicly. I did finally leave.

My second of 12 years was neglectful and drowning in drug abuse too, often to cope with the pain of it, to the point I was literally dying and my teeth and body rotting away waiting for him to recover and have these hard convos. When he finally recovered and I was stuck in so much cptsd, then he cheated on me & ghosted.

I had some of responsibility in these messes, but it doesn’t negate those harms, and I tell you those bullet points to illustrate that THIS last 6 yr relationship was pretty great comparatively, and still the way I was treated behind closed doors was shit sometimes. I don’t mind people having moments and bad days even months, but there was an insidious lack of accountability and blame shifted on me via AA principles and even therapy speak that was difficult to put my finger on bc “we always have a part” (I teach it in the ways ALL and it makes sense on many levels but when it comes to abuse, everything gets flipped) and compared to my prev relationships the pain WAS minimal and it was speckled with good too. Plus I’m a tough independent chill gf with “god within” me so who needs to be treated well by your bf all the time 🤪😣😵‍💫

(Side note : me naming these harms is not shaming, the shame comes when a person hasn't amended their behavior, not bc it's being pointed out, more on understanding that in the blog).

It’s been a huge unraveling and unpacking and undoing of nearly every spiritual or therapeutically healing phrase that has been used against me, that I used against myself and others who were actually victims and not just stuck in a “victim mindset”.

What’s the difference? Victims are actually being hurt by outside sources, the “victim mindsets” are those who are perceiving hurt, where it’s not, and/or making a bigger deal of their environment, staying stuck, rather than taking charge and making changes.

There ARE people who are stuck in victim mindset for sure and plenty of spots where i have been and needed that phrase for what it was good for, and then it became a spiritually and verbally abusive tool that dismissed my humanness, actual grieving, personally it was oppressing my anger which was simply trying to protect me from a person who would swing unpredictably from decent to passive-aggressive and stoically dismissive.

My anger and anxiety and fear were actually truth trying to tell me I was not safe, and the idea that I needed to get rid of anger and just have compassion and forgive was the lie and kept me in a cycle of abuse. Read that again.

We are told fear is false evidence appearing real.

But what I have found over and over is that sometimes fear is simply the truth we are not willing to face yet.

(Face everything and rise is still helpful and this year, this, is what I’m facing.)

The seemingly crazy realization is, there is wisdom in fear, is not new to me, I teach it, however the particular facets in this blog kept eluding me. It looks like instead of saying “I always have a part, where is my part” the truth was i don’t always have a part - at least not the way I thought - "my part" was seeing I don't have one, except to call out bad behavior which I couldn't do bc it felt like I was "blaming him" and that's exactly what he was doing to me so I was bound by the story that said "if you name it you're judging" etc but the ttruth was sometimes you need to "judge" and the difference between what he was doing to me, and what I was doing to him was that he was adding a shame and I was not. I'm still not. I totally understand why he did this, because I hope people unpack it daily, and I've unpacked mine, and that understanding, seemingly a good thing. Actually kept me in it.

How are you doing? You're following me? I know it's a mindfuck.

The truth is that the environment we are in, and trauma we sustain and endure is not always our fault, not our part, “god’s will” either, but the changing it by either, adjusting our attitude, speaking up, or leaving a.k.a. healing is our responsibility AND we need supportive spaces in order to validate and discern which is which, and then repair.

THAT healing is “god’s will” not the circumstantial bombing we endure. Sure, sometimes “bad things” wake us up and those can be seen as gifts, but what i sustained this year was not a “thing god did to me  so I could heal”, it was a thing my ex did to me because he didn’t want to heal from his pain, trauma, fear, and I was the collateral damage in his own personal war.

This was no FOR me, it was done TO me and because I continue to face my traumas, old and new, I, with the help of “god’s will” community, family and more, will and have recovered once again from devastation.

Healing is rarely done in isolation. But unfortunately we are significantly under equipped with safe spaces for healing and even some of our safe spaces have become unsafe because the way that “spirituality” is used these days is all too often to oppress, suppress, or avoid the hard truths, and to bypass harms done to us by others and it needs to stop.

My personal experience in the rooms of AA, Mormon churches, yoga rooms, inner child workshops since the 90’s and more has been both helpful and harmful - my last relationship was the same.

This year my life was turned upside down and inside out by my partner (not me or God) and he showed little to no remorse and while I understand the wiring of abusive and addicted people and how they're NOT bad just miswired etc (again “seeking to understand” kept me in it) and how they have hard things they are (or should be) working through but often don’t largely because “spiritual people” are inadvertently supportive of them through silence that sounds like “love and tolerance” “let go let god” “we just need to forgive them for they know not what they do” etc and sometimes it’s true and other times you just created a safer space for the ones instigating harm and a very scary space for the ones experiencing it -aka the actual victims.

When we say healing starts with us, it means, I see the cycle and I’m ready to break it.

It does not mean, “now don’t worry about or take action on harms happening around you” “don’t change your outside circumstance bc wherever you go there you are”, “don’t speak up bc you can’t change anyone so don’t even try”. I am someone, and every time I speak I change my self. Plus WE literally go to meetings where we hear ppl speak and it changes us, how many times have YOU been changed by something you read or heard? Yet we tell ppl to “just let go” “walk away” “turn the other cheek” - I Rarely hear, “to thine own self be true”, “trust your read, you’ve been restored to sanity”, “speak up, be honest, have courage”, but I always hear “you’re insane, you can’t trust your mind, accept, surrender serenity” and it needs to come into balance. We need to discern which things apply where instead of so many blanket statements.  It’s creating more delusion.

Again I keep seeing the spiritual communities use spiritual healing concepts or even pop-psychology meditation yoga and stoicism as avoidance tactics and it’s exacerbating the problem.

At least it did in my relationship (and not just my partnership but friendships, work, family and more).

He could call his neglect and dismissiveness of my emotions and basic needs “spiritual” because he was taught that’s what it was stonewalling and silencing me was masquerading as boundaries and self-responsibility. I questioned if he was right for years and tried to “seek to understand” and thought maybe I Am “self seeking” by having basic needs like wanting to spend time with my partner once a week outside of going to an AA mtg or family gathering or wanting him to engage in conversation or instigate connection. I thought “I should just be grateful he’s walking a spiritual path and sober and not hitting me or cheating on me, we have a house and usually get along when I’m not wanting anything, focus on gratitude, maybe I just need to want less and give myself more so he doesn’t need to, I don’t want to add anything to his plate, he’s so busy as it is, keep sweet”

&

often even though I caught the “good girl” pattern, when I’d get to that type of understanding I’d feel better and that clearing of fear and anger lead to complacency and avoiding right action like hard convos altogether.  All too often avoidance gets labeled as “peace”. It starts as healthy detachment and independent, radical personal responsibility, and then it goes into disassociation, delusion, codependency or hyper independent, spiritual narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy and abuse.

Look at the any historically harmful person, especially the “nice guys”, and you’ll find this to some degree.

The problem is, in 2020 with a more regular prayer meditation practice, when I started discerning how this was happening within me, within my relationship and having hard convos about how it was in those hurtful stages, started integrating courage, speaking up about it, then I got spiritually gaslit by my partner, myself, people in the rooms, yogis - many who were my good friends with decades of sobriety and instead of helping me name and discern the problem outside of me, it kept me thinking it was something inside of me i needed to fix, I was misperceiving the situation or crazy and part OF it, AND then because of that over processing I WAS part of it because it kept me frantically unpacking and over-functioning fawning trying to figure out “my inventory and my part” which often looked like and was suggested from others as more acceptance and compassion for him but what I really needed was to call out the bullshit behavior, to be angry and have equal compassion for myself.

“compassion is incomplete. If it does not include yourself” Jack Kornfield.

Too many spiritual groups will tell you not to be angry because it’s poisonous and violent and only causes harm BUT it’s not true. Anger ≠ violence. Nor is anger resentment. Resentment is re-feeling. Any feeling.

We need to separate those ideas.

Violence and resentment (& I don’t just mean physical) is a response, usually unconscious, to anger AND unfortunately it remains happily unconscious bc too many of us “love a light” over the reactivity with “acceptance and letting the bad behavior of that person go bc you can’t change them you can only change yourself ... so why say anything”? (It's a great question, I hope you actually ask yourself.)

Uhg can you hear how we shut our voice and the truth off and down? And we do it to others too. I certainly have and that’s why I speak now.

One to say I’m sorry to anyone I ever said that to,

Two as an amends to myself for doing it for my whole life. (Often times as a mode of survival but when I became safe enough, healed enough from the wound of abandonment and fear of being judged and disliked and discarded, I spoke up, and today I am healed enough to share this vulnerable truth with you.).

In fact, BECAUSE I thought “don’t be angry, be nice, don’t tell him he’s being mean to you, that’s taking HIS inventory, blaming him, it’ll hurt HIM” instead of caring that I was hurt because I was taught caring about yourself is selfishness and self seeking and “we must be rid of that”, as I continued to “higher mind” my way through the pain, the abuse cycle persisted.

It wasn’t until in I started learning my right use anger to see the harder truth, that he WAS being mean, I’m not crazy or too sensitive or making a big deal of it, in fact I was making a too small of a deal of it and it’s not ok AND I don’t have a part except that I needed to speak up more. So i did. And learned that me naming that abuse or his cross addiction is not BLAMING or shaming him, or taking his inventory and it’s not a “Mikelle problem” like he used to say. He even told me once that I was being abusive by me saying his Stonewalling and Blame Shifting and Projecting and character assaults on me were abusive,… If someone is hurting you, and you say “you’re hurting me” and they say “you can’t say that, that’s YOU hurting me” you are being gaslit.  You saying someone actions are hurtful might indeed hurt them bc they are being asked to look at the truth of the harm in their actions and take accountability, apologize and amend by changing their behavior - the thing that is hurtful is THE TRUTH OF THEIR BEHAVIOR, not you naming it. If the truth about your behavior hurts you, maybe you need to change your actions, not my words. (The wisdom to know the difference;).

I spent the last 3 years with a new sponsor unpacking each scenario each week, a therapist and outside mentorship as i continually asked “am i crazy or is he being mean?”  One of my mentors said very plainly “if I told my husband that he was hurting me, do you know what he would say“ I paused curiously, waiting for some complex mind blowing answer, and her answer was mind blowing, but it was not complex. She said “he would say I’m sorry for hurting you“. It occurred to me how that hadn't happened and how much energy I was spending trying to figure out

1- if I was really being hurt (this is what ppl with narcissistic abuse disorder do btw) and

2-when I figured out that I WAS being hurt, I was NOT crazy, how to get him to see it and, how to communicate more clearly and/or considering leaving every few months

3- how understood the mistakes but how infuriatingly hypocritical of him talking about working a program which including how NOT to do these things and if you do fuck up, how to make amends which he seemed to be able to do for others to others but not for me

4- if I spoke up about it I was “taking his inventory” or being mean and it was somehow MY problem, and my past trauma - not anything actually happening currently or that HE was doing to me, aka gaslighting me with spiritual principles. He said “you teach this how to not be triggered, why are you still triggered by me?” I said “what i teach is not about NOT being triggered, it’s about making space for it and learning to navigate within it but that doesn’t mean I have to stand for it” - he couldn’t hear me and continued to shirk responsibility. I continued to be patient and helpful bc I saw progress in 2021, 2022 there were ACTUAL repairs from our ruptures. That was all I could hope for, progress not perfection.

P2

Below are 9 examples of the countless spiritual phrases that over these 9 years have sometimes been helpful sometimes harmful and this year especially were used against me in my journey AND compounded my trauma as attempted to work my way out of the abuse my grief was unintentionally but still irresponsibly gaslit over and over. I’m clear that these phrases might actually be helpful for you and I’m certainly not saying they are always harmful, I’m simply hoping to bring awareness to how indelibly important the proper context of our words can be.

1-“triggers are our teachers”

Yes and no.

Yes as in “if I’m triggered I can see what needs to be healed in me” and no as in “if i continue to be triggered sometimes it’s not my internal trauma or past or perception it’s actually the thing outside of me that keeps triggering me and what I need to learn is not about healing my insecurity but listening to it and trusting that it’s telling you this situation is not ok, you need to speak up or leave, you don’t need more inner work and to be less affected, you need more “outer work” aka to honor the truth that this is affecting you from an external source, to call a spade a spade, and it’s NOT ok". In other words, try to communicate to the thing outside of us that they need to stop. We don’t need to be less triggered, we need ppl to be less triggering sometimes. Not coddle us or tip toe but co-operate. This is NOT codependency it's interdependence.

We need to have more capacity to listen to the triggers, (not just be less triggered) as they contain useful info that keeps us safe - too many are focused on clearing them.  We need our fear, it tells us where the edge of the cliff is.  Many of us have psychological false fear, but we need to learn the diff between a trigger that keeps us safe and one that keeps us running from safety and love.

We say “it always starts with us, it’s never the other person” - sometimes it truly is the thing outside of you harming you. If someone cuts you off on the road, they didn’t physically harm you, but your anxiety is triggered - as it should be since your life may have just been threatened, and we can learn to self soothe and forgive bc they likely I didn’t mean it and they’re doing their best, and/or perhaps they are spiritually sick.

If you take the same analogy and pretend someone is doing this to you every other day, and won’t make any changes and when you ask for more awareness about it they tell YOU to change your pattern but then continue to figuratively cut into you, what can you do - keep “letting it go”, “speak up” and/or stop driving next to them - right?

But then they finally say “ok, I’ll work on not swerving you off the road anymore” and make small progress but after years of practice they run you off the road for good and say “sorry it’s just who I am”.

Then ppl say, “your triggers were teaching you, it’s your fault for trusting him”.  Maybe, or maybe what we need to hear is “wow, HE was untrustworthy" not "you need to trust less". That's bullshit advice.

Here's what would be healing to hear " I'm sorry that happened TO you (not for you) what an absolute jerk, I probably would’ve done the same thing, trusted him, especially if it were someone I loved and who claimed to love me said they’d work on being better. I can totally understand why you did that, you did nothing wrong, you didn't "attract this bc you need to learn" etc.

I certainly can’t understand his erratic bs behavior, I hope you’re ok - can I help support you with anything?” Etc etc but instead we get “what’s your part? obviously you didn’t listen to your trigger or you would’ve left. You attract what you are or what you need etc” cold callous and uncalled for statements.

It IS a fair question: Why didn’t I leave?

I unpacked this often with my sponsor and therapist and higher power - I stayed bc it didn't start out this way, and I believed he was going through a phase, plus he leaned into therapy of his own volition and I saw progress.  And, I loved him, us, and believed we could be restored to sanity. It works if you work it. I was not repeating old patterns, similarities were there but I was leaning into new growth and communication and ways of relating.  I was willing to risk my heart and all my cards for us. It may have been a LOT to risk, but my courage was not wrong, however HE did not believe or have that courage and it takes two. I used to think the only reason ppl don’t leave abusive situations is bc fear, I’ve come to learn that was not true for me this time. The harder thing to do for me was stay.

2- Similar but different, let’s rephrase “pain and abusers and trauma and triggers are our teachers” and start telling people “you can choose to learn from pain, abusers, trauma, and triggers” because I’ll tell you that was the difference between him and me - I saw the opportunity and he chose not to.  I faced my fear and healed from its redirection into usefulness which looked like speaking up in the face of harm - he chose to run and harm me further and then hide from the truth that he harmed me calling it “doing his best” “just who he is” “we are too different” “it’s ok to let things end” while there is some truth to those phrases it’s not THE WHOLE truth in this situation and he admits “unwilling to invest in this relationship” he will not admit the fear behind why, the porn addiction running his life, (again no shame, let's destigmatize that addiction so we can name it and heal it too) the abusive cycle still persisting in him and being reflected back to him with the mirror of that brought out in our relationship, and the accountability and amends I (and his past partners) deserve. Instead he continued to say things “like we are just too different and I gotta find someone more aligned with me” aka someone who will put up with these pain inducing patterns, instead of “I’m sorry I lied to you, lead you on for 6 years, had you investing in a life and home with me, then degraded you hoping you’d leave when it got hard for me, and when you persevered I tried to starve you out with neglect, and when the therapist confirmed it was infact my shit, I ripped the rug out from under you bc I didn’t want to face that, then continued to play victim bc it was a 'hard choice' for me completely bypassing how fucked up you must be rn because of me choosing to keep my bad behaviors, secrets and addictive behaviors rather than heal and I see how much you've lost bc you invested so much in me, us, this life as a solid ground and now it's been ripped away”. Etc

3-People say, “hurt people hurt people” yes AND that doesn’t excuse his behavior because guess what?!

I’m a hurt person and I choose to heal and continue to HEAL people. I get that that phrase is meant to help us understand their pain, they’re sick, etc and I’ll admit it DOES help to relieve some but THEN like everything, it can get overused and ABused and in this case ppl used it to dismiss his harms and inability to take accountability when they should be asking him questions they are just “letting by gones be by gones”. And I’m left to clean up the mess he made in my heart, my head, my life.  As Nate Postlewaithe says, “sometimes the healing isn’t always the victims responsibility, sometimes the healing is in the community that stands up against the harms they endured”.  Think about how healing it is when someone goes to bat for you.  That’s what we need a lil more of - less “not my monkeys not my circus” "let go let god" and more “I’m a close personal friend or family member, maybe I could say something, maybe it is my monkey and circus, at least in part”.

You get to decide if EACH of these spiritual tropes are things that empower and align you or as Thich Nhat Hahn says “leads you closer toward or further FROM spirit”.

Thank god for my meditation practice, my studies in psychology, my new sponsor to help me do just that; who held my hand and heart all the way to the end as we unpacked the truth or the emotional abuse and did not tell me I was perceiving wrong for once in my life, and my therapists who helped me see the same “I was not crazy or doing it wrong, it was in fact him that had the insane behaviors that needed mending and amending”.  As I’ve been saying for years “sometimes the only part of me that’s crazy, is the part of me that thinks I’m crazy.“ When he started to glimpse this truth, that his “crazy illogical, overly sensitive, astrology, loving Birkenstock wearing, healing hippie-hearted girlfriend, was, in fact, the more sane one“ he abruptly abandoned me.

And called it love.

And today it’s not important for me to say whether it was or wasn’t. It’s important for me to say whatever it was it hurt and it’s not ok.

Abusers/victims and alcoholics/addicts (all mental illnesses) are similar in that there’s a huge stigma about that they are bad stupid weak people.  Most people understand when you break a bone, have a physical injury, you can’t operate the same. Few people understand that with mental health issues (like addiction, abuse, trauma, depression, psychosis and even psychopaths) you break your brain and your power to "just choose" to stop cycles and change habits is mostly offline. Literally we are “out of line” and alignment with the True self.  Aka god.

We have science to explain how a muscle and physical injury heals, science is starting to explain how the brain heals, there little science to explain trauma/emotional healing and all of it and then some is the spiritual healing that is required to recover from addiction and abuse cycles wether within you, your relationships, or this entire fucking world. We call it “god” and “miracles” that heal these things but again sometimes that can erase the human response-ability here, often times we a PART OF god and the energy that either heals or re-injures.

4-Please stop telling ppl who are struggling with the above issues that “healing is a choice” “happiness is a choice” - when you are “on line” in alignment and of sound mind and body it certainly is - but nobody chooses addiction, abuse, depression, grief etc.  That said they DO have a responsibility to become willing to receive help - the rest as they say - is up to god.

I’m v much done exploring the theme of abuse in my life. Thoroughly understand the nuance, thx life, and please no more.

I understand deeply the trauma and inability to face it that he has a lot of work to do and I know you can’t rush your healing, but when you run from it at the expense of others and lie about it to them, yourself, your community, it’s not ok and again I’m not shaming, as I said above, it’s often not a conscious choice and I understand that but STILL I’m naming the harm. If I simply say “I forgive him bc I understand that you can’t force anyone to face themselves or addictions or force ppl to prioritize you” etc I actually deny the part of me who got her life demolished AND i did that since i was 14 with my first 6 year highly aggressive abusive relationship, second 12 year highly neglectful and abusive, and not doing it with this 6 year passive-aggressively abusive one. I’m breaking the cycle in myself - that - is my part. This, me typing, every tic of the keyboard clips a thread of the abusive knots I’ve entangled myself in as I learn to tell a deeper and darker truth, the light begins to shine on shadows of spirituality that don’t want to be shone or shown the truth and love that will set them free.

But I do it anyway.

Love and Truth are the deepest form of rebellion.

Being fully human, kind but authentic and honest, is the path to spirit.

5–“just forgive”

I forgive his spirit and wish him healing but I DO NOT forgive the actions that have yet to be amended. My response-ability to myself, him, AND you, religion, AA, yoga, “love and lighters” is to NOT sweep it under the rug where it can happen again and again. It’s to bring it to light and give it a voice to help myself be aware, hopefully others too, and let go of the rest. THAT part I do willing “give to God” and trust more will be revealed, all things in time with patience and love. In the meantime I keep walking in as much grace as possible which often includes full stops, many pauses, stumbles, crumbles, and leaps of faith.

This 9th year has been a hurricane. It, like the actual hurricane i was just in, did not “need” to happen.  It was not “god’s plan”. Though it DID happen and I’m in full acceptance of that and currently moving with that current of change. There were an infinite amount of choices he could’ve made that would not have retraumatized my relationship wounds and would’ve actually continued to heal them as I was already. You telling me that is “god’s will” adds insult to injustice.

I, more than anyone, know that there’s much magic in the giant mystery of “god’s will” which unfolds as I step and rise again, I can see the bigger picture but can you see the deeper, smaller more human one too? If “god wanted me to learn” anything, it’s that.

6-I’m also acutely aware that “relationships bring out our shadows and traumas and wounds so that we can heal them” AND that’s exactly what I was doing IN the relationship as I was integrating my anger, values, self-respect, boundaries and more. What he did to me was not “so I could heal” those - it created more trauma AND NOW I AM healing those too. I DO see gifts in it - but not because it was meant to be - because I’m good at making negatives into positives. Because I choose to over and over face the fear, the embarrassment, the disgrace, the humiliation that leads me back again and again to the wholeness and middleway of  humility, grace, courage, and love.

It’s not all happening FOR me, or through me, sometimes it IS happening TO me - and sometimes, like that actual hurricane, it’s just as Alan Watts says “a happening”. WE DO NOT NEED TO SPIN EVERY TRAUMA INTO A GIFT. We don’t need every bad to become good, every negative positive, all the darkness to light.  Just let it be dark - the light comes on it’s own and quite frankly we could all use a little more of the blackness, night, the dirt, mud, and mess with out it all having to become stars, lotuses, or messages.  Just let it be a hurricane, an awful crazy hurricane, not a “storm that cleared me out” and tell me you’re glad I survived. (Thank you to those who did and do;).

7-There is a huge difference between “pain that helps us grow” and pain that retraumatizes us.  Will I create an amazing use of this, realign, feel cleared out by all the “storms” and that actual fucking hurricane I was just in that mirrored my relationship and my “tough girl” programming in the face of fear? Yes, because that is how I choose to respond, the healing that’s my response-ability as I sustain traumas like figurative and literal hurricanes AND when you tell people “this is meant to happen” you can add trauma to their trauma. I never needed to be “less afraid” in a literal hurricane and I never needed to be “more chill and compassionate and understanding of my partner” as he was creating hurricane-like volatility in our relationship.  I don’t need to be “more chill and let go” of the hurricane my life has been this past year bc of a person who ripped my home, heart, place of work and other connections away from me, I needed the same thing in each situation, to honor the pain and horror, to say “this is not ok” and be ok with that unfiltered non-glorified truth.  It’s ok to freak out in a hurricane.  It’s ok to freak out when someone is hurting you (though I never did).  It’s ok to freak out when you see that you stayed calm in the face of those hurricanes and rugs (literal and figurative) were upped out from under you and you didn’t need to be that strong and compassionate toward him- you needed to be more supported by him and others - and instead you were abandoned.  It’s ok to talk about it and it doesn’t mean you’re being a “whiny victim” it means you’re strong enough to be weak and vulnerable and show it, name the truth of where it came from, and give that karma back to the rightful owners.  It’s not my fault.  It’s not god’s will.  It was theirs and “my part” is I was in the room when the hurricane hit.

8- which leads to the next harmful phrase “what’s your part”.  Obviously this is helpful, self accountability, but in my case it’s what kept me in it and as I unraveled from that, it too got thrown back in my face. For the record, “My part” is that sometimes I don’t have a part - i know, mind boggling.  My part is I loved and wanted love from someone who said they loved me and even showed it sometimes. It doesn’t mean I didn’t value myself, or was afraid of leaving as so many projected their experience on to me, it simply means I was doing the work to try to relate. My part is that I sought to understand when their hurtful actions were suddenly not fitting with “love” they were claiming for and from me anymore. That’s something people need in order be in relationships not something I would’ve changed or a character defect I have to be rid of. I CAN admit I MIGHT have a lil too much courage and “Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. That’s why life is hard.” But me being loving understanding, compassionate, honest, vulnerable, adventurous and courageous is something I will continue to be despite the possibility of falling, I will continue to take risks in the name of love and trust someday someone will be able to match mine.

To thine own self be true.

9- “Anger is the dubious luxury of a normal man” - first off, that is not the quote but it gets misquoted as that often. Second, can we please stop living our lives by one line that one old man wrote a hundred years ago or thousands as the older religious books go?  Imagine, someone centuries later reading this post and using it as gospel truth. Can you see the insanity in that dogma? Third, Yes, anger, the big book says and other spiritual leaders say “we must free of it” but that doesn’t mean we discard it.  It means we stop letting it control us and we step into the driver’s seat with it. Sometimes that looks like discarding it or transmuting it into compassion and sometimes that looks like feeling it all the way and redirecting it.  When we have too much of it in the form of resentment or when we discard it too often, we can become a breeding ground for abuse and war.

YES squashing our anger leads to war! Internal and external. This also playing out with the new age spiritual language of what ppl call “toxic masculinity” meaning the masculine trait of anger, fight, right action, protection, ego, all the things we are told not have, has a rebound effect that looks like explosiveness and/or depression as it gets literally de-pressed into our systems. Within and with out.

WE NEED OUR ANGER.

We don’t need our violence per se but we need to learn to express our pains and hurts so others can understand they are hurting us instead of just pretending we are so spiritual we don’t feel or fear anything. Or coping through addictions like drugs, alcohol, shopping, consumerism, porn (there’s a huge way the masculine is coping with their unprocessed anger and ruining any chance a real connection and presence) and so so so much more.  EVEN meditation has become a way of escapism from anger and fear and IT WAS ALWAYS meant to bring you closer to it because that’s the real yoga and spirituality is FACING these hard parts and truths.

THIS IS BY NO MEANS AND EXHAUSTIVE LIST BUT TO SUM UP:

We need an entire restructuring of spirituality. More nuances and discernment, less blanket statement BS that keeps us gaslighting ourselves and others.

We need an entire restructuring of the capitalist, patriarchal, misogynist, toxically independent “freedom” masked as individuality over interconnectedness with all systems from our hearts/minds/bodies/spirits to the wide world. NBD.

Freedom is discipline, devotion, the ability to respond - not “no one can tell me what to do” so much but “care about myself and others and the world”.

Service serves us.

Justice is Just Us.

There is TOO much “radical responsibility” independence and spirituality used toxically, emotional avoidance masked as “unfuckablewithness - fearlessness” and not enough vulnerability, truth, INTERdependence and acknowledgement of how we are often grieving, angry, affected, afraid, and DO affect others and sometimes WE DO have response-ability to how we make others feel and it’s ok to name that.  To notice when/if we are helping others heal or “triggering them and calling it medicine” cuz it’s good for them to “tough through their trauma”. That’s often what keeps us in survival mode and sure it CAN be good for us but, pressure makes a diamond, blah blah blah, but there’s a huge difference between pain that promotes growth and pain that is injurious and gets a pass cuz “pain is a touchstone” - not always, and it doesn’t have to be the only way I promote growth in myself or others.  For me in fact, it’s not, I grow because I choose it, I love it, not because I’m forced into to.

SO

WHAT IF, instead of continuing to abuse each other with all this non-sensical higher mindedness, we just helped each other feel safe and supported with out crossing into “toxic” codependency? (Sometimes codependency is useful, sometimes it’s not btw, just like everything.) There’s no blanket formula for this, each person and situation will need different things, but hopefully we can learn the art of relating, truly, caring about ourselves and others in equal amounts.  Creating equanimity and in my humble opinion TRUE love with in it - our world and our homes and our hearts.

This is OUR responsibility and THIS post is how I’m taking mine.

There’s a prayer I was given by this program that HAS continued to be super healing and even though we don’t have to make use of all things, we don’t have to make fertilizer out of our shit, I still prefer to for the most part;) So all 9 years I continue to pray “help me be useful, help me make use of this” pain, anger, fear or joy freedom and peace.

In yoga it’s likened to Brahmacharya which loosely translates to walking with God.

“Everything is a vehicle for transformation”, use it. Ram Dass

Too many people hear the call to usefulness can only be “bring peace” or “let go” and what I’ve been learning and integrating deeply is how to bring anger’s usefulness which mind bogglingly is more than just “transmuting it to compassion” and “learning to let go” It’s other uses lead us to know what we are passionate about and for me, it’s everything in this blog. It leads us to truth as it tells me where injustice is, which leads to courage as I learn to call it out and let go of needing to be understood and liked by all, which leads to more inner and outer peace, equanimity, harmony and love.

There’s so much more that “just let go and let god” and OR maybe we’ve forgotten is GOD is everything and/or nothing, then WE are part of that everything and SO there’s a response-ability to our godliness that looks way more complex than just “allowing the karmic forces outside of me to go to work”.  That’s easier in so many ways for sure and this time around apparently the universe was like “but wait, there’s more”.

Nisargadatta Maharaj — 'Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.'

I CAN happily end this with gratitude and show you all the places Ive grown and opportunities that have arisen from this tragedy but I won’t, because even though gratitude is magic and and was my first G. O. D. “Gratitude Over Despair” and worked wonders in my life as I faced a magnitude of CPTSD that I had zero capacity to hold or understand, I also see the shadow of gratitude which became a welcomed rose colored glass for me to continue floating on a pink cloud of delusion which in the beginning helped me out of addictions and self abusive thoughts and behaviors the great conundrum and irony is I rode that pink dragon of “grateful bc everything is here FOR me” right back into the arms of abuse.  Each time I was being hurt I said “this is here FOR me” and found gratitude and usefulness that looked like creating more compassion and understanding but I needed truth and anger that lead me out of it and ultimately yes, once integrated I now have MORE compassion and love because it includes myself not JUST the other.

The truth and anger is like a knife. Most think of a knife and assume violence, but the knife has many uses, it can kill and maim just like honesty can be brutal, or it can cut out infections and cut open fruit to share, how will you use your anger and truth? Or another analogy, like a fire, will you use it to warm or burn? To light or blind? Can you add compassion and a will to serve and connect through it? Or will you continue to incite violence and call it “owning your truth”? A delicate balance and dependent on the person in front of you, again there is no “recipe” for what it is or isn’t and even though we can’t be expected to tiptoe around every person, I can agree that:

“Honesty without empathy is cruelty.” —Bell Hooks

PLUS

“Empathy without boundaries is self destruction.” Silvy Khoucasian

Boundaries are a practice of Rigorous Honesty. So too is sobriety.

Practicing compassionate boundaries creates harmony within yourself, relationships, and the world.

It is the way to inter-connectedness and imho TRUE love.

I have been asking how to be both honest and kind for 9 years it’s been my prayer and today, I CAN have gratitude for the fact that it seems to have not only moved from my head to my heart, the longest journey ever as Thich Nhat Hahn states, but it’s now all the way into the marrow of my bones, my blood, each follicle of hair to the tips of my toenails to the sharp edges of my teeth as I speak the truth, the air that carries my vehemence through them and even the space and spirit between each cell. I am clarified, embodied in it, and enlightened from it and I hope you feel that truth of my voice cutting away any harmful stories you’ve stored in your cells and psyche as well as light and warmth from the rightful angry fires in my heart now lovingly emanating through this screen into yours.

P3

As lengthy as this is, this is where it gets good;) Below are some fun and horrible stories about this year, my overall journey within abuse, and how I was treated after my devastation. How I lost a friend to suicide with some of this spiritual abuse, and what my friends tried to say to help me that actually wounded me further. Hopefully it’ll elucidate the philosophical points above and help you relate to the horrors and the love we find in spiritual circles and especially AA as this pertains to my sobriety journey.

The day after I got to Puerto Vallarta was my sober anniversary and I couldn’t get any of this out, I could barely let it in, like I could feel the hurricane and. Covid coming, the state of myself and the world, it was all just too much.

I decided to just do it differently and not pressure myself to reflect - I’m in Mexico just be in Mexico.

I walked to the minimart to grab a snack before my Uber ride but realized after getting the snack I had no Wi-Fi to call the Uber so I walked into the Pharmacy next door and asked if they had wi-if.

The tiny lady behind the counter in a medical coat said with her Hispanic accent “nooooo but I have…” and began rattling off a list of my favorite drugs as she slyly handed me a menu. I glanced at it uncertain and immediately handed it back shaking my head “no, no I just need wi-if, you dont have wi-if here?” She said “I have….” And grabbed a different but similar menu and handed it to me again as she started naming more drugs.  It felt like I’d stepped into a hologram scenario on the Enterprise mixed with some weird Willy-Wonka Mexican umpa-loompa energy.  I laughed, shook my head again, thinking you can’t make this shit up, said no thank you and walked out.

Honestly there was so much, there’s been so much for so many months and maybe even years, since covid, IDK it’s hard to say, but that seemingly small yet significant moment barely registered even though 25 years ago it used to be my only focus. I’d cross into Tijuana looking for everything she just offered me.  I’d spend hours with doctors and dealers trying to find the things she handed on a menu to me.  And i laughed at it, like it was fake, like it was a joke, because ultimately it was.

I probably wouldn’t have remembered it or really felt its significance if I didn’t have a regular practice of checking in with my sponsor where I get to tell her all the things.

Just a moment of appreciation for that woman who not only held my hand as I walked through the discerning phases of my emotionally and psychologically abusive relationship and then through all the grief suffered this year at his abrupt action to end it and retraumatize instead of heal the hurts he’d caused in me.  Helping me see my part was only that I kept thinking I had a part because I’d been so trained to look for one and think it’s always my responsibility that learning sometimes you truly are just a victim to someone else’s bad behavior.

I hate admitting I’ve been a victim. It feels weak, irresponsible, powerless and messy.  But as they say “what you resist persists, feel it to heal it, where your fear is there is your task” and so I repeated a pattern until I finally honored the part of me that had been wounded, by no fault of my own, and stopped taking ownership for other ppl’s shit behavior.  I’ve been trained since impact trainings in 1993 to “not be in victim mindset” and through state championship coaches to “push through, make it happen, don’t complain, mind over matter” my way through pain and through patriarchy, AA, religion, and even yoga to just “forgive, let go surrender, we are all doing our best, love and tolerance, be higher minded, no egos, no self-seeking” and so much more that there was no room for victims.

I’ve been in survival mode most of my life and at 15, much to my own surprise I found myself jumping through my basement window as things got heated at my home, and into the arms of my first abuser because he felt safer and more accepting of me than my family did at the time.

I knew about owning my choices and keeping my power in that response-ability, I never knew that there was a certain lack of power I was still running from wired into my body called “survival mode” aka “fight flight fawn freeze” “coping mechanisms” and I certainly didn’t want to feel that weakness that kept me running so I called it “choice”.

(It was the same thing i did with my drug use, i called it choice, and at first it was, but eventually it too becomes a coping mechanism and you break the parts in your brain that can control the response-ability to choose.  This is a huge stigma that is widely misunderstood for addicts, mental illness, and abuse - survivors AND perpetrators.)

But the truth is, those coping mechanisms and wirings with in me toward abuse and neglect in relationships run a life-long program and even though I’d done so much healing and understanding and forgiving, they still cropped up in the face of a similar situation with my ex and i didn’t catch it for the first couple years.  Because I’d been gaslit by my previous partners my “am I perceiving this correctly” which initially starts as good self reflection, got turned against me again.

I spent the last 3 years of my relationship unraveling that cross-wire.  As I unraveled it, the emotional abuse got bigger, because I was no longer able to be manipulated.  I stayed because there was promise of amends around the corner through our mutually agreed therapy.  He ended things because he started to see it truly was his perception not mine that needed correcting.  His behavior that needed amending. I thought our love was greater than his fear.  I was wrong.  I’ve been devastated and left to pick up the pieces of my life that were shattered and scattered about, yet again.

At first I thought “NBD, we go this, you’ve been here before, it’s been worse, you’re a tough cookie, just make peace” and for the first few weeks I did just that, “tough girl”ed my way through yet more trauma,.. but I caught it and got honest and admitted none of that felt true or right.

When someone stabs you in the heart, most people’s reaction is “you fucker!”

When he did it to me I grabbed his hands, looked up lovingly, and said “I know that was hard for you”.

I hope you shuddered.

At the time I thought it the higher minded thing to do - and maybe it is - but the realization that keeps coming through is “why in TF are we always trying to be higher minded and godly? Why aren’t we allowed to be human? Isn’t our human nature our god nature too? Then wtf am I doing?” And I saw, I’m trying to be the “good girl, chili gf, responsible, clean, pure” one because the alternative is “the hurt one, the victim, the mess, the loud one, the weak human who struggles”. How interesting to meet so many versions of my shadow.  The process this year more than ever is to welcome and walk all those parts home.

People say “this happened so that you could heal all those parts of you”, I say fuck right off.

“Relationships bring up all your unhealed parts and shadows” yes AND this did NOT need to happen for me to heal those parts.  It was actually on a trajectory to be healed for the first time ever within an arena of love and understanding and communication and cooperation but he chose to demolish my heart and I’m left once again to heal it on my own (yes community and god help but bear with me). When you tell ppl the above statements, you add abuse to the abuse they just endured.  “Everything happens for a reason” is a bullshit thing to say right after some one sustains trauma.  Please consider ever fucking spiritual trope that you’ve ever offered someone for comfort might actually be doing the opposite.

It robs them of their human experience, their feelings, their pain, their grief.  It dismissed the hurtful actions of the other person.  It teaches that the only way to heal is through hurt and it’s simply not true.

Is there truth to ever phrase I’ve mentioned above? Yes. And just about every phrase in the book thrown at me in a harmful way, most inadvertent, but the point is to bring awareness to the spiritual arrogance parading around as healing.

Please. Be aware.

Growth can happen from painful situations as a person learns to turn toward it with grace.

Growth can happen from loving fertile situations as a person is nurtured and supported.

No one deserves to be traumatized like I was, no one “signs up for this” as was suggested by my “friends”, this is the cataclysmic result of one person not taking ownership of their shit and causing fall out in another’s and not picking up the pieces.

No one signs up for trauma. No one signs up for alcoholism, it’s a bandaid to the trauma.

No one signs up for abuse. This particular case was like a frog in a pot of water where someone turn on the heat and the frog slowly boils to death because the temperature change is so gradual.

Addiction happens to smart people.

Abuse happens to smart people.

Abusers ARE smart people.

Victims ARE smart people using coping mechanism that have kept them safe in unsafe environments - and it’s time to stop telling victims they are being selfish for wanting safety and they need to be tougher - it’s the abusers that need to be softer and more present and connected not the victims that need to be less.

I am a victim. Fawning/appeasing with “spiritual principles” was how I tolerated emotional abuse as a coping mechanism to an unsafe environment and pre-conditioning in my childhood.

I developed an addiction for the same reasons.

I’m bringing awareness and undoing all of that here.

What I really want to say is the way we placate and coddle and support abusers in our society, religious and spiritual circles, and AA needs to go.

Yes we all have patterns to unlearn but the bulk of the reprogramming healing and response-ability gets put on the victim, in the name of spirituality,

let’s shift that.

We use spirituality toxically, we detach and call it higher mindedness when really it’s emotional avoidance, we continue hurting others who are brave enough to feel their feelings and call out abuse by calling them hyper-sensitive or “playing victims” and it needs to stop.

Honoring the victim, being “that bitch” was my inventory this year.  Emotional honesty and vulnerability to a level I've never practiced - letting go even deeper what others think of me - learning the nuance of naming a bad behavior vs shaming one - telling the truth and knowing that if you tell on your abuser you’re NOT being abusive - they were. Trusting my read on someone attacking me verbally, emotionally, or psychologically and knowing I’m not misperceiving it and/or being too sensitive.  Most ppl are inherently good but there are still plenty of jerks and real monsters out there and even though I deeply understand the psychology of a jerk and monster as I've met my own internally, it doesn’t mean I have to tolerate it externally. And just because I tolerated it, doesn’t mean they don’t have responsibility to amend the harms.

In 2014 I started with sobriety and spirituality, 101, which is basically “how not to be a dick“ since 2019 I’ve been working through how sometimes it’s OK to be what feels like for me “a dick” in the face of people who are being abusive and harmful. (Which is really just a deeper ability to be honest and use the sword of truth and call a spade a spade and cut them out sometimes).

Today everything feels inverted in the inside out. And the Rumi “comes to mind “do not be worried that your life is turning upside down, how do you know it’s not turning right side up“ and I have two things to say

1-yes and it always seems to be making these turns, which is why they say enlightenment and awakening, is not an arrival it’s a continual discarding of what you knew to be true and

2-it’s still fucking sucks and it’s OK for you to honor that truth in the suffering too. It doesn’t mean you’re complaining or in victim mindset. In fact, it means you’re being honest and we need more honesty. The program is one of “rigorous honesty“. The more honest, we get the clearer of a mirror we become and often times people don’t like their reflection when they look at you. And our responsibility is to get comfortable with that while also honoring how fucking uncomfortable it is to be so vulnerable and to help others see theirs.

Sometimes I want to turn back from this path of awakening.  I think about the days when alcohol and drugs worked for me, when it was the cure for the pain, when it was the catalyst for joy and how much easier things seemed. Darker as in ignorant, which yes sometimes is bliss, and the truth is it was the worst hell I’ve even existed in. But I walked through, or was miraculously carried through somehow to the sober level.

And in the early years is was a similar pattern, meetings and gratitude “light work” and fellowship “worked”, and then there was more. Compassion and gratitude was the medicine for everything - the pink cloud I rode for years.

But wait there’s more…

Yoga, meditation, moon ceremonies, “shadow work” all continued to expand and deepen my awareness and compassion and then as Alan Watts says “We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.” And as that deepened so did my awareness of the anger and pain in my relationship (and the world) that I found I was bypassing with things like “just be grateful” “positive mindset” which ended up looking like making excuses for people’s shitty behavior and by 2019 another layer of cracking open began.

By 2020 I was being guided by my previous AA sponsor and fellows to "more compassion, seek to understand" & “acceptance is the answer” to my partner’s harmful attitudes toward me or “to change” which was only suggested as “leave”.  I saw these options and a third one, “courage to speak up”. (Which was never suggested by others but luckily found in my prayer/meditation practice) speaking up, Thereby changing me and maybe inspiring him or at least catalyzing a new pattern between us.

People said “you’re trying to change him”, as if wanting my partner to treat me with respect and love as he SAID he did, was bad or wrong.

He also said I was being manipulative, and in a toxically spiritual environment where emotional avoidance is called spirituality this makes sense, but in TRUTH, too many spiritual people see wanting to have hard convos as problematic, complaining, and manipulation.  He even said that when I expressed myself he felt controlled when it’s simply called “direct, honest COMMUNICATION” to find a better way of relating and valuing each other. It became abusive through this kind of patterning of avoidance, neglect, stonewalling, shaming, gaslighting me to think I was the problem because I couldn’t just be satisfied with mistreatment and I had a part in it too and more.

Integrating the useful AA prayer “God, grant me the serenity, to accept the things I can not change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference” is a life long practice and in too many cases I see people resting on acceptance and forgetting the rest.

Resting on your laurels can look like “just doing exactly as you did when you first got sober” aka never changing and God is always changing, it’s the constant of the universe, it’s how we grow and evolve along spiritual lines and so our program needs to evolve too. I see too many people hide in the rooms, in service, checking the boxes of recovery which might keep the sober but complacent as they're avoiding their deeper work.

AA is meant to be a starting point, not an ending.  It doesn’t mean you have to leave, keep practicing those principals, but also be open to seeing there’s so much more.  The idea is to be useful to the world, and to see the “realm of spirit is broad and roomy”.

The tools and terms and phrases that were helpful for me in the beginning became weaponized toward me in the end.

The same as drugs and alcohol did.

One person said “your ego was running the show”:

Ego is not always bad, it simply needs to be “right sized”. I’d just worked through FINALLY having enough ego to stand up to the mistreatment with confidence and certainty that I was allowed to say what I needed and when I was being hurt and this guy just threw the abuse right back in my face the same way my partner had - shaming me for having basic needs and speaking up against his harmful behavior. In other words, because I had “no ego” I was get walked over and 3 years later finally comfortable with having one, I get cut down and shut up again by a “peer in AA” mansplaining my relationship and inventory to me.

“It’s ok to leave a toxic relationship, you can love someone and choose to leave”, yes, if it were ME leaving him, and when ppl said this to me to excuse his abandonment, it reinjured me.  HE ended me with the same ideology and it was a lie for him because I was NOT the toxic one. It may have been hard for him to face the harms he was inflicting on me, but you don’t leave people you love when they’re being supportive, you leave people you’re using when they stop enabling and tolerating the abuse.

One of best friends said “you’re hurting him by asking him to show up for you when he’s not capable, he was just finally speaking his truth.”

1- he used this at first and at first I agreed bc I’d been feeling so guilty, like I was just “too much” and it’s like someone asking a person to carry a 100lbs when they’re only capable of 20, but then I remembered how in the beginning it was different, how he WAS capable, how he prioritized everything else before me, and how this phrase was another form of spiritual/psychology gaslighting and abuse.

2-He DID admit in the end he COULD, he just was “no longer willing to invest in this relationship” which sealed the way shut and I surrendered fully bc where there’s no will, there’s no way, and you COULD say he’s “speaking his truth” but it’s simultaneously a lie bc the REASON he’s not willing was not bc he “just didn’t like me, we weren’t aligned” etc According to him he even tried to say “you like astrology and I just can’t get on board with that.” To him “astrology is bullshit and illogical” and I say “you know what’s bullshit and illogical, someone ending a 6 year relationship bc their gf is into and always has been into astrology”. It’s insanity, it is a lie, it is hiding a deeper darker truth that he wont speak, so NO, he’s not JUST speaking his truth, he’s still running from it and blaming it on all things, the astrology - oh the irony.

Another friend said “you both just had so much resentment for each other”

1- complaining to trusted friends is NOT holding a resentment (or gossip for that matter) it’s unpacking and processing and it’s what helped me clear it

2-I had no resentment or anger for him, I was so good at clearing it AND it became abusive toward me because I would - as they say - do the emotional labor - or as I coined it “the emotional laundry.

The problem was not resentment for me, but it WAS for him. The compassion for myself was minimal and huge for him and the truth was I needed my anger to show my self compassion. Additionally he had developed contempt for me bc he couldn’t “clear his” or understand it and didn’t want to unpack that and so there we were, him being abusive and me tolerating it bc “relationships take work” and it’s true! But it takes work from both sides - i was willing, he was not.  I wouldn’t change anything I did except speak up sooner but I absolutely wish he’d chosen differently and I also embrace the changes and grace that will come as I accept the heartbreaking reality that someone I cared so deeply for would not/could not do the same for me. Does that make him a bad person, no, does that make him in an unamended deficit and state of incongruity and dishonesty, yes, and it’s absolutely ok for me to name that harm done to me without attributing shame to him or making it “my part” bc I tolerated it and pushing the bulk of the responsibility back on to myself. Do we have responsibility, always, should it be the responsibility of a person who’s being hurt to always say “stop hurting me” or should it be the person who’s doing the hurting to recognize and stop it before it starts?  Like why is there so much emphasis on a woman’s responsibility to protect herself, ie carry a rape whistle and less emphasis a man’s responsibility to stop being a rape threat to women? And simultaneously when she speaks up about harms, instead of hearing her we roll our eyes and call her “playing a victim”. We are set up to fail. We need to shift this response-ability from bulking onto victims and back onto victimizers and learn to tell the difference. This pattern is pervasive in our capitalist economy as well.

Yet another friend with decades of sobriety said “you signed up for this” and I replied, “no one signs up for abuse”. He said “you knew what you were getting into and that he was emotionally immature”, I replied, “no, I chose him because he showed maturity, he was being accountable to those around him, he was a nice guy, he seemed emotionally available, and at first he WAS all those things and somewhere along the path he stopped or the facade dropped IDK but that’s why I stayed to seek to understand and meet me partner whom I loved and thought loved me, only to find the truth was he truly didn’t care.” Either he did and stopped, or did love and care to the best of his ability but couldn’t sustain it, wasn’t willing, or whatever but the thing that gets skipped is that he hurt me.  Over and over. Didn’t amend the behavior, he didn’t think he had to because of the exact theology “i signed up for this”.  No one signs up for abuse.  No one signs up to be traumatized. No one signs up for hurricanes.  But they creep in don’t they.  Our responsibility is to heal front them and help others.  As a society we are more prone to helping and protecting the abusers than the victims and THAT needs to change.  If the victims of trauma, abuse and war crimes has as much support and compassion as the one’s doing the hurting we MIGHT actually break the cycle.

The shame isn’t in being a victim, it’s in being hurt by people and thinking there’s something wrong with us or that we caused it.  This is where thee majority of our energy needs to go, helping victims feel safe enough to heal.  When people feel safe, there is a natural healing that occurs.

And not only do we all need to stop “higher minded spiritual and psychologically advising” people who are going through terrifying shit, we need to learn how to listen with compassion to their experience and believe them instead of telling them it’s all in their perception, ask what their experience is first and THEN IF they want your fucking advice, offer.

When I was two years sober my first friend in AA killed her self. She has been struggling with suicidal thoughts and much trauma from loss and abuse.  The week before suicide took her life we were walking in the canyons of Moab with bats around us at dusk, and she admitted she had been thinking of killing herself. My friend and sponsor at the time gave her some “higher minded advice“ and said “well why don’t you do it then?“

We both looked at each other quizzically.

She continued “if people want to drink, we tell them to try it, and then they know whether they really want to or not.“

I hope you’re feeling a sick to your stomach as I am as I type this truth and completely an-used spiritual lingo taken way out of it realm of helpfulness. I want you to know back then I questioned whether or not that was good advice. That’s how susceptible we are when we are first getting sober. When we are taught not to trust ourselves by to look for outside authority.

In addition to that terrible deadly uneducated advice, my friend was also told by her sponsor at the time to “make amends“ a.k.a. apologize to a person who had harmed her greatly. This is what the program teaches us to “take ownership of our part“. The problem is, it too gets used as a blanket statement and victims end up apologizing to the ones who have victimized them when they truly don't have "a part" that needs apology other than maybe a seeking to understand themselves and a safe space to grieve.

My friend did apologize to him,

and then killed her self that night.

I would never say that any of these people or the program or spirituality in general are solely responsible for her, but I would say they are at least partially, and it needs to be talked about. Abuse of community over support of community will kill.

But instead, and bc we don't understand the brokenness of trauma or want to ask hard questions like "is what I'm saying true for this situation" "should I say anything to those ppl" "is it my place, what about anonymity"etc, we sweep it under the rug.

Today, after many years with these self-inquiries and more, as an amends to myself, and to her, and to everyone else that I have seen in similar situations, to people I have lost because of the same pattern, to ppl I've done similar unintended but still harmful emotional abuse to through my own spiritual arrogance over the years, I speak up in hope that we can stop fucking doing this shit to each other and calling it spirituality.

I don’t think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, we just really need to clean the bathwater.

When I was three years sober, another woman who is no longer in the program, and I’m really not sure if she’s doing OK, showed me a video of her security camera of her ex trying to break in to her home.

This man was well respected in the community and had become abusive toward her as she tried to exit the relationship.

She told she told people of these events, they all said “oh yeah he did that to his last girlfriend”.

She looked at me wild-eyed and said “why didn’t anybody warn me?“ I looked at her perplexed, paused and said “I don’t know, my guess is that they wanted to give him another chance“.  After all, “love, and tolerance is our code”.

But why, I wonder, do we seem to tolerate the harmful ones with more ease than the ones being harmed?

That moment has been echoing as I’ve gone through this grief, because my ex did the same thing to his ex-wife and I assumed he’d do it different because he was working spiritual program. It was a pretty sound assumption, and I was wrong.

Part of the reason I speak up now, is so that we can undo this silence that we’re calling anonymity, in the face of people who harm others it is creating a safer space for the perpetrators then it is for the ones they perpetrate.

If it looks like my ex has abusive patterns of harming the women closest to him, of leading them on then abruptly discarding them, of minimizing his cross addictions that end up causing harm in the relationship and refusing to look at it for what it is, people deserve to know, even IF it makes me look bad - I can get over that if it helps someone else use more caution around getting into a relationship with him.

The reminder is I'm not harming him by telling you he harmed me, he harmed me, that's where we need to focus.

Name not shame. I understand harming others comes from feeling threatened AND it doesn't excuse him from accountability or amended behavior in hopes he doesn't do it again.

People say “the only person you can change is yourself” and if that were true none of us would speak about anything ever.  No person that I’ve guided in meditation or sponsorship or alchemy was ever changed by me huh? No one was ever changed by going to a meeting or listening to a speaker? Reading a book? The big book changed you because someone thought they could make a difference. Why do we keep shutting this down in ppl?

I get that THEY decide what to do with my words and guidance but that famous Ram Dass phrase “the only thing I can do for you is work on me and the only thing you can do for me is work on you” gets over used and we end up in muted separate spaces never saying anything to or about anyone cuz “your shit is your shit” “people will learn in their own time” and bypass how we need the interconnected, interdependent, community.  WE do recover, right? Then what’s all this hyper independence about.

It’s bullshit when people take these well meaning phrases and use them against those who suffer to bypass abuse and I see it ALLLL too often.

Another friend sends me a screenshot “anything you can’t control is teaching you to let go”.

I say “I’ve chosen to learn so much of the in betweens of this this year especially.

One thing I like to add is “we choose to learn” rather than “teachers teach us” cuz y’all know some of us don’t learn from whatever is “teaching”;)

And beyond a blanket of surrender and acceptance I also chose to learn communication, expression, art and so much more from things I can’t control. To let myself have big emotions, to let them in, not go. How to dance how to love how to speak to stand in or yes stand up out and down.

So many things to explore beyond “just let go and forgive”.

We need desperately to discern these things and use our judgement as to who is the victim and who is the abuser in “victim mindset”.  That takes courage, to judge, and bravery to face and walk with fear of making decisions and taking responsibility.  It also is the path to freedom and peace.  But you can’t just skip to that part.  It’s an entire unfolding and when you “just be peaceful” you miss the point. 

To sin is to miss the point “The Greek word for sinning means to 'miss the point;'

The point is

eternal life which is here and now.”

And “The Bible defines sin as offense against God, either through neglect or through conscious intent.”

Neglect of response-ability to self and others which includes honoring suffering grief and more and this DOES NOT mean you are being negative or problematic, however, turning away from it through the guise of “being positive, grateful, focusing on solutions not problems, let of let god, forgive, progress not perfection” when those things don’t actually always apply certainly can be.

And Similar to my statement above;

The shame isn’t in the abuse (of drugs alcohol emotions like anger or people) it’s in the lack of honesty and accountability and amends.

The shame isn’t in the addiction, it’s in the lack of honesty, it’s in the shaming of the shameful patterns instead of the acceptance of the hard truth of them and the solutions to absolve the hurts we cause ourselves and others.

AND that can happen by releasing the stigmas that “if you do bad things, YOU are a bad person” You’re not bad, but you are broken, and even that’s not bad, weak isn’t bad, it’s just a place that needs love and healing and support. It's where we are forced to find community and connection aka god.  The wounds are where the light enters.  But first, you gotta recognize and get honest about the wounds.

As James Baldwin 'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.'

Or as Thich Nhat Hahn says “no mud no lotus”… but first, the mud.

Look I could go on endlessly with each encounter from each person and phrase, god there are endless things I’ve learned and integrated and gotten opportunities to speak up about and reframe a million times for myself and others to see the actual truth instead of the blanket statement lens we all too often look through for spiritual and psychological solutions. You could say “this is WHY I went through what I went through, to learn all of this” and then I’d slap you and say “haven’t you comprehended a single thing I just wrote”- lol.  Honestly though, there’s truth to the phrase which is why it exists AND I hope you’re seeing how injurious it can be when used out of context and to bypass the pain and trauma people endure at the harmful handling of others as well as how it excuses their behavior.  It is meant to empower and relieve us from anger and by all means if that ideology helps you, use it. And when you’re ready for a deeper fuller truth, to use more discernment, to see how abusive the spiritual circles and our systems in general are sometimes if left unchecked with reality and truth,

I’ll be here waiting, feet on the ground, head in the clouds, one hand on my heart and the other extended to you as we all walk each other home.