My Decision To Speak Out
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”. Viktor Frankl
:”Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Jesus Christ
Recently my son was abused so persistently and brutally by a coach and parent he nearly decided to end his life. The reason behind it is most terrifying: I made the decision to speak up about concerns and disconcerting facts involving the booster president. What has followed is the stuff of nightmares and jarring truths I’ve not wanted to face. This response is the next step in my growth and freedom.
For the sake of transparency and clarity, I’ll offer pertinent background: I was born to a very wounded woman who had spent her life, then 22, being dealt one life altering event after another. After enduring the loss of her mother, without comfort, support, or real understanding, she then became further overwhelmed in being a mom to her younger siblings while her father drank his pain and good decision making away. At age 17, looking for hope and a way out, she got married, had kids, and wanted to do better. As we know now, before things get better, they most certainly get worse, and that was true for Polly. We also know that, regardless of intention, patterns repeat, pain and trauma left unacknowledged changes us at the cellular level and makes us desperate. And desperation leads to the justification of myriad unjustifiable things; things that are vile, inhumane, unthinkable, and remain hidden in plain sight, in now epidemic levels, through known manipulation tactics that we’ve come to embrace.
Polly’s pain and fear became astronomical when, while pregnant with her fifth child, the already volatile, violent marriage grew to levels of toxicity that has left most of our blood radioactive to present day. Then, in 1981, always an early riser, I went to see and snuggle my baby brother. I climbed into the crib to find him cold and blue. In that moment my mother abandoned her humanity. She became driven, obsessed, and consumed with revenge, taking what she believed the world owed her from anyone and everyone. I had already been hated and the scapegoat, but- oh my God- the horrors thereafter…I should not be alive.
Like Polly, and most others, I suspect, I just KNEW I would be different, I swore. I would never repeat such terrors…but life has a way. It would take nearly two more decades, losing everything more than once, hurting a lot of really good people, and making one terrible decision after another for me to end my denials, forever take off the many masks I’d worn, and finally purge every last lie I’d been forced to tell and every secret I’d been threatened to keep. Things like: using her children, all under age 10, for the most vile means of financial gain, the endless chaos and confusion, joining a cult to further twist our minds for control, enmeshment, and avoidance of accountability. She set all of her female children up to fail in every possible way, so much so that when our other primary abuser gave us material things and regular “attention,” we flocked to him, begged and fought to go, even though…
All this to say I was deliberately sent into the world ignorant of how anything worked, hypersexualized by design, needy, neglected, gross. I was blaring, screaming, flashing-neon-arrow-pointing-down-on-me target for predators. We were kept in communities that normalized these types of behaviors, controlling religions, open secrets with other abusers, and, most of all, those who passed the ever present tests of such folks.
Everything I’ve touched on here are patterns of behaviors, development, and personalities known as Cluster-B. In this essay and forthcoming memoir, I dive deep into these in every aspect, but for now, this is the important part: the impact of such extreme abuses, with unrelenting, increasing intensity, over decades is meticulously designed to either fully control or fully destroy another, no exception. As I began to understand, heal, and grow, everything came to be validated, confirmed fact, proven true, and a surreal outpouring of truths finally saw light.
I’ve spent my life fighting to speak the truth only to endure further abuse akin to my childhood. I had to learn through costly mistakes, significant losses, betrayals, smears, slander, libel, and more in order to get here, this place in my life, and this article, back to my son.
I missed the signs at first because there was just so much happening unnecessarily, kids were being involved, and wildly unbelievable things occurred that left me not only in a state of shock, but caused cPTSD relapses and flashbacks, and left me physically ill. In a rare moment, after months of utter BS, I finally let loose, called out her behavior, lies, etc., copied the coach, thinking I was usurping a false narrative/ smear campaign, and unleashed the most sinister, truly insidious attack against myself and my son that seasoned professionals have been left paralyzed in the attempt to grasp, believe, and process.
At first, it took everything out of me and left me momentarily a lifeless, stripped down human like creature, who’d been hurled back in time, only to abruptly slam on the brakes, and speed-freak me through a near replica of my hell of a previous life, such were their actions in pain, harm, and utter lack of empathy, no remorse. Cluster B. We became terrorized. My son and I both experienced verbal, physical, emotional, and psychological abuse, mockery, deception, we were denied basic human and civil rights. It’s ongoing.
No one from the school has ever apologized, checked on him, been decent to him. Those adults remain, this school district in blatant disregard for their own rules, regulations, and safeguards. We’ve never had a conversation. It is dehumanization of the cruelest nature, and it reveals the depths of systemic denials we are drowning under; we are gaslighting ourselves.
It is still unreal.
I did lose my cool and was heavily called out, rightfully. However, I am human first. I hid everything for decades and I will not repeat the same mistakes and haven’t. I also refuse to live a curated, manufactured life, there’s too much of that. No, I will never again sacrifice my humanity, safety, truth, integrity, or lives of anyone else I know due to deeply egregious harms, scapegoating, bullying, belittling, or anything else I know to be driven by hatred, abuse, and the insidious need to feel in control, gaslighting, powerful, or any other delusion they may want to harbor.
I am scapegoat no longer. If I’m going to be hated, it’s for the truth and wisdom I impart and refuse to back down from. There are no more chances, this was more than enough proof that I never needed to begin with, but have left no doubt for others, too.
Welcome to this new journey with me. It’s going to be much more direct in confronting Cluster B head on, utilizing truth, radical acceptance, proper accountability, with compassionate insights swimming in empathy.
My entire life, from before birth, was all about getting here, to exactly this place, offering radical insights, decades of lived and professional experiences. I’ve been asked by doctors how I’m still alive, complimented in other aspects I should have failed at miserably, met some truly miraculous folks, with stories similar to mine, who I know were my angels and protectors all along, but I remained humbled and consider myself saved, rescued, and a masterpiece in progress, as we all are. Without the grace extended by you and so many, none of this would exist, for I certainly would not have lasted by myself.