Healing Abuse

I was meditating today on "abuse" because someone brought it up last night, and I was reminded of a friend I had in Germany. Her name was Ina and this was her story...

"I was a battered wife. Oh not just once, not twice, but in three separate relationships. By the time I got through the third one I was thoroughly convinced that men were the scum of the earth - all of them. I sat in that assumed knowledge for a couple of years, fuming and angry, full of hate and venom towards half of the human race. It was a very painful time for me.

I blamed the men I had been with, I hated them. They were all evil and bad. I was so bitter and so angry, I walked around like a boiling pot of water waiting to spill. I hated myself, but I hated them more. They messed up my life, they made me into a lonely person, all full of hatred and bitterness. I was who I was because of the scars I wore from them.

But I still wanted to be loved and so I investigted the lesbian world to try and find it. Only can you believe it? I met a very angry woman and before long, she was getting more and more explosive and beginning to get very physical with her anger. I already knew these symptoms, but I was incredulous. This was my turning moment. I had to leave, and I did, but I walked around like a stunned person for many weeks. I just kept repeating, 'How can this be? how can this be?'

Really, it was weeks and weeks I walked around like that. And then one day I realised the one thing I had overlooked: that none of those evil people had snatched me from the side of the road, or taken me against my will. I had gone to them willingly and seeking love and I was so desperate for love that I wasn't willing to use my intuition or my caution. They may have been evil people but I am the one who chose them."

Ina was a great friend. She ran a cafe in Hamburg on a street off of Hudtwalkerstrasse called Isis. Thankfully I hadn't had the same experiences as her, but I could really feel for her. Not only her pain but also her great healing when she acknowledged her own responsibility in her painful past. Once she recognized that it had been her choice to walk into relationships with those men that battered her, she was empowered to make different choices; and she did. She chose relationships that expressed love in gentle, kind ways instead of in anger and brutality. When you are abused it is easy to get self-righteous and judgmental, and blame every evil on the perpetrator, but without recognizing your own responsbility, I don't believe there is any real healing.

She died about 4 years ago, but she died peacefully, and well-loved. Whenever I hear stories of abuse I think about Ina and what she taught me.

Blessings.
- Darshan

© 2009 Darshan F Jessop