I AM NOT AN OBJECT - More Rape & Death Threats
The words I'm about to share with you from my oldest journal aren’t pretty. They correspond with some of the ugliest things humans can do to each other. We're going to discuss those things today in graphic detail. Consider yourself warned.
Continued from THE SATYR INCIDENT:
BUILDING ARMOR - The Hard Way
THE DAMSEL - Predators, Instincts, “Nice Girls” & Neurodivergence
“YOU OWE ME” - Sexual Coercion, Expectation & Assault
FAWN, FREEZE, FIGHT, FLEE - How I Escaped That Rape Threat
Okay. Let's get this over with.
On June 13, 2021, as I was drafting the posts about doing medieval reenactment in my early SCA years, I found a small journal that I had forgotten about. It's my first journal. The opening entry is from December 23, 1991 during my freshman year of college.
I wasn’t an avid, daily journaler back then. I didn't write about day-to-day activities. That didn’t happen until 2000 when I started Morning Pages for The Artist's Way. (11) This means that, whenever really significant things happened during college and in the four years afterward, I was sometimes inspired to detail brief notes about them in the pretty little book I’d been given for my nineteenth birthday.
The final entry is February 19, 1999, less than two years before Dain Bramage from a drunk driver would wipe out my ability to consistently store memories overnight.
Throughout the years since my big car wreck, I have gotten bombs dropped on me multiple times as I “discovered” this tiny journal and read my words recounting certain incidents I had carved out of my memory and repressed because they were too traumatic to deal with as they were happening.
April 11, 1995
The wind blows so fiercely
Rattling the windows
Shaking the foundations
Of this empty house.
Howling…
Crying…
As if protesting that
--
May 10, 1995
Halfdan Leadfoot.
Halden…Hal…
I will miss you so. I knew you for such a short time. Not nearly as long as I would have liked. But you were so special and you touched my life so deeply, like few have ever done. I was blessed to have known you. R.I.P.
--
May 28, 1995
So much has happened these past weeks. If anything is to happen to me, please check out Theo. I’m pretty nervous and I can’t wait to leave Minnesota. I’m so lucky. I’m free. But not Marlene and little Matty. There is so much I want for them! So much I want to show them. I want them to know how beautiful life is. Can you believe it? Me? Thinking life is good?
These past few years, I’ve realized what I want out of life and what is important! I love my family, friends, arts…I love flowers and trees and beaches and sunsets and stars. I love waking up early to see the sunrise… I love my cats and most of all I love Kyle.
Sigh…Please keep me safe, keep Marlene and Matty and her sister and the baby safe.
Keep my love safe. Keep him warm until I am there.
--
June 1, 1995
Even more scared…and now I’m pissed! Pissed that someone could take all this away from someone else - or from me! I need to live. Because I love my life and I have true love.
Should I transfer my credits and go to California now? If she gets free of him, will they take it out on me and our friends?
I wish I had Kyle to run to and hold me.
I have to live!
Wait…WUT?!
"Have to live?"
Yup. You read that correctly, exactly like I did.
The discovery of these journal entries dropped a monkey wrench into the trajectory of all the posts I had been drafting and researching this past summer. Kyle, my introduction to the SCA, the oil-and-water that those two aspects of my life became, and the fallout of that relationship’s collapse. By the time all the boulders of my last years in Minnesota finally stopped thundering down the mountainside, I had crash-landed in Colorado in ashes.
But these two little journal entries and the final one about this subject…I remember now. I had forgotten this. I'd buried it in its own Tupperware container like I had buried swathes of 1992. Hid it from myself where it wouldn’t plague me day after day, but now I remember. Again.
This issue sprang up right after I joined the SCA, and it was like a torch laid against one of the rickety support beams that held up my life.
I haven’t really thought about this thing with Marlene and her violent boyfriend Theo in a quarter-century. On the sporadic occasions when I was inspired to grab this little journal and scribble in it, I never went back to read previous entries. By the time I finally did, I’d already been struck with Traumatic Brain Injury. Dain Bramage prevented me from fully incorporating these incidents into my long-term memories of college, so time and again over the past twenty-one years I have “rediscovered” this journal, been dumbfounded as I remembered the Theo Fiasco--
Only to forget it the next morning.
It’s fascinating, this entire memoir project. Every time I start combing through my journals and my old writing from certain time periods, I find so many missing pieces. Sometimes I'm gifted with a glorious epiphany, because it’s the first time I’m reading these things. Other times it's a bomb that obliterates who I thought I (or someone else) was.
Whenever it’s not the first time I’ve “discovered” one of these things, once the initial emotional dust of the returned memory settles, it’s like I can see the info file of a photo that’s been duplicated. I can tell it’s not the original. If I’ve read an entry more than once, it contains the layers of each consecutive time I’ve remembered and then forgotten the next morning.
But every time I transform one of these lost memories into a scene or a post for this blog, it gets stored in my brain in a completely different way. I don’t forget these lost episodes of my life once I’ve written them and then edited them enough to feel comfortable posting them. I’m actually starting to remember who I am.
And how other people have been with me.
Dang, I can only imagine who I would be and the ways I would have been inspired to protect myself if I’d never lost some of my most significant and traumatic memories. Or at least if I’d gone back and re-read these things, then been able to remember them.
What different decisions would I have made if I’d had more than my niggling gut feelings and a gazillion renditions of, “You’re paranoid, you’re insane, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re seeing things, you’re hypersensitive, you take it too personally…” instead of the legit evidence of examples from my past that motherfuckers have done to me and people I know.
Like this one.
I met Marlene through the SCA and we became instant chums. I introduced her to belly dance; she introduced me to energy, meditation, and intentional visualization. She didn’t call it chakra healing, but I understand now that's what she was teaching me. (9) She was surprised at my natural knack for these woo-woo things. I fell in love with it, and she fell in love with dance.
Here’s the thing about an abused woman who’d already been studying things like meditation and chakras for years. When she then learns how to draw the symbols of Eternal Life with some of her most potent power centers—her pelvis, chest and spine—it can change her rapidly, if she lets it. It can heal and transform her on the most intrinsic, subtle levels. Often she has no idea that it’s happening until it has already gained momentum.
Like it did with Marlene.
It had happened to me, too. It took mere weeks for belly dance to start working its magic.
For an abuser, this is a bad thing to have happen to your housemaid/whipping girl/pinned down cum-dumpster.
It’s especially bad when a trapped battering victim is taught this way of dancing by a recovering doormat, ex-punching bag, abuse survivor who is learning how to make armor, weapons, shields—and who is learning how to use them. Extra-bad bonus if this idealistic, intrepid dancer is already a fire sign with a mouth on her to match her stubborn, rebellious streak. Extra-extra bad bonus if she’s still young and dumb enough to believe that all you have to do is believe.
In yourself.
In prayers to God.
In the people who love you.
In the power of intentional thought and mind-over-matter.
In faerie tale happy endings where monsters are slain and Twue Wuv conquers all.
A dancer-friend like this will be likely to convince you that, NO, you damn well did not deserve what he did to you. And NO, you did not "earn it" because you dropped the frying pan of scrambled eggs when he scared the holy living crap out of you by barreling into the house, hacked off at his boss. She’ll be likely to tell you all about the wonderful things you do deserve. If she’s a wordsmith who can paint pictures of fantastical “what if” lives you’ve never let yourself dream about, you might even be convinced that you should—no, that you could change your stars.
And that can be very dangerous for both of you. (1-8)
Abusers of my friends don’t like me very much. A few of them have hated me. Marlene’s abuser decided that if I didn’t back the fuck off and stop putting revolutionary ideas into his girl’s head, he would do something about it.
Because what could we do about it?
It’s a travesty of a shame that, even though we lived in Duluth, we’d never heard of the Duluth Model. (4) If we had, perhaps something could have been done. Perhaps not. Either way, we had no idea that an internationally renowned center for domestic violence lived in our own back yard, and so the only resources we knew about were the homeless shelter and the police department.
Police had proven themselves useless for this situation, and potentially more dangerous than silence.
You know, unless we were dead. Then…maybe they could do something. Something about finding out who’d made us into corpses.
Maybe?
A lot of wilderness up there in northern Minnesota, and Lake Superior is very deep.
Marlene had already gone to the cops and asked if they could help her. Sure. She could file a restraining order against Theo and really piss him off. (3) Or she could wait until the next time he beat the holy living hell out of her, and she could press charges. And then what? Hope his buddies didn’t get him out on bail?
He had a lot of buddies and they were all just like him. They had already lied for him that time the cops got called by the neighbors, so nothing had happened to 6’7” lumberjack-built biker gang leader Theo, the live-in boyfriend of 5’2” sweet-mouse Marlene. Even if she could ever get him convicted against their lies and the “he-said-she-said” lack of proof? What, she could pray that he’d be put away in prison long enough to forget about her when he got out?
Hahahahahahaha.
Plus, even if he was in prison, he could still get her and everyone she loved. Remember all those buddies?
And anyway, usually he didn’t beat the holy living hell out of her. He was smart like that. The stuff he did to her didn’t tend to leave many bruises. Plus, she could usually placate him enough to prevent that. (Remember fawning?) She could also usually convince him that she was a willing subject of being pinned down against various unyielding surfaces as he rammed his dick into her until he squirted. If he was nice, he used the bed. If she wasn’t nice enough in return, he noticed that she knew full well he was chronically raping her.
That usually didn’t go over very well.
So if Marlene wasn’t willing to grab her six-year-old, give up her scholarship, quit college, never speak to her family again, abandon her sister who was trapped in a similar situation with one of Theo’s buddies—the sister wasn’t willing to leave with a newborn—and go into hiding…
Yeah.
Marlene did leave him one night. It was shortly before I went to my first SCA event. She had really wanted to go with me and Maghnuis--had wanted to go to events for the past year, but Theo had always said no. That never stopped her from dreaming about it or from sneaking to meetings at the on-campus group. Of course, those meetings had stopped with Hal’s death because none of us had the wherewithal to pick up his mantle.
But Marlene and I kept hanging out just the two of us. So it was that when she grabbed Matty and bolted from the house one night while Theo was gone, she wound up at my apartment. She didn’t know where else to go. I didn't know where else to send her except the police department, which she refused to do, so they spent the night huddled up with me.
That’s when Theo started threatening my life, like he'd long been threatening Marlene's and her son’s and her sister’s and her nephew’s and her estranged parents up north and…
And she went back.
She left again.
Went to the homeless shelter. But she didn’t tell them enough about what he was doing. She didn’t receive enough help to get her fully out. Only out of that house, because she didn’t have it in her to leave her sister.
Theo hunted Marlene down on campus after class one day and reminded her of all the people he would kill if she didn't scuttle back to her proper place beneath him. He also reminded her of all the awful things he and his buddies would do to them first—all the things he would make her watch, and if she was very lucky and begged him very nicely, by the end of it he might kill her, too. He was a bit of a wordsmith himself.
She went back.
(1-8)
January 12, 1996
Happy fuckin’ New Year. So many evil, horrible thoughts I don’t dare convey even on paper in my private journal. She’s done it again. Walked out. She’ll go back to him now. The guys are trying to follow. Won’t work. She’ll just be stubborn. Why does the law protect that bastard? Why does it hurt her?
Now Stan’s pissed and scared. I’m pissed and scared. Gee, what a fun life she lives. I wish I could take her away. I wish I could show her what life can be. But now I’m scared, too. Yet I can’t turn my back on her and Matty. So many people have done that already because it's too dangerous to be around them. I can’t hurt them like that. He’s only six, but already so angry and so much in need of love. As is she. I can’t take it away. I do love them.
But there is nothing we can do. She’ll never be able to PROVE Theo’s done anything. Innocent until proven guilty. False witnesses. Sneaky bastard. I don’t come to hate easily, but I’m close. I only won’t because I know that’s what Theo and all his type were put here for. For chaos, fear and hate.
This night was supposed to be fun - an escape. But now…
Now she’s hurt and running away from the people trying to help her and putting up those fucking defenses. What can I do? My hands are tied. Whose aren’t except Theo’s?
God, please intervene! I need help! I need help so desperately! I’m afraid of what will happen. I don’t want to die or be raped or lose anyone I love. He’s even started threatening my family now. And what that motherfucker said. Wants to “add me to his collection.”
I AM NOT AN OBJECT.
ON FEEBLE-BRAINED WH😱RES OPENING OUR MOUTHS:
WE ARE NOT YOUR OBJECTS:
So, yeah.
I kinda felt like I needed to learn how to fight. Just a little. Not that any level of badassery would have mattered much if Theo had ever caught me off guard, especially if he was with his buddies.
My whole life growing up, we used to hear horror stories about “big, bad biker gangs” prowling the fringes of the north woods, doing atrocious things to people. It was said that you could never escape once you fell in with them.
You know how we shouldn’t believe everything we hear about generalized stereotypes? Well, Theo and his buddies wrote the manual for theirs.
Apparently the SCA had their own versions, so at the big wars all we young, lone girls were warned over and over that there were certain camps and certain paths that we should avoid if we wanted to remain un-raped. We were warned that, even though the Society was “one big family,” every family had its black sheep, so we should never go to the porto-privies alone in the middle of the night.
Okay, great. So I didn’t.
Even so, I slept in a tent with no locks between me and any Satyr or Theo skulking around out there. For my first two events, I camped with Maghnuis in his tent because I was trying to save money for my own, but after the Satyr Incident, I didn’t even feel comfortable with that. I was terrified that Maghnuis' invoice for driving me to the event, sharing a tent, and chaperoning the newb would come due at any moment. Such thoughts felt irrational, because Maghnuis had never been anything but kind.
Didn’t matter. With all the rape and death threats that were hurled at me that summer…I didn’t know how to trust anybody except my parents, a few long-proven friends, and that most cherished man who was 2000 miles away.
Even when I was at home on the third floor behind the safety of my dead-bolted apartment door, I was still alone, and certain pissed off gangsters knew that. Like Satyr, they also knew where I lived. Theo had a habit of stalking Marlene at random times when she had permission to leave the house. (Yeah. Permission. For a twenty-four-year-old mother of a six-year-old child.)
So night after day after night, I couldn’t stop envisioning gargantuan, barrel-chested Theo kicking my door in with his steel-toed boots. Night terrors were constant. I’d had to move my bed from that cursed corner where Satyr had boxed me in. Over and over, I would bolt up after being attacked by the dreamtime bogeymen that Theo and his buddies had become.
Those nightmares were sometimes circular. I would dream of being awakened by my door getting kicked in, bolt off the bed, try to hide in the closet, get found-dragged-beaten-raped, and then they would—
I would wake at the moment of death. Pant and shake. Huddle and quake in the slanted, slotted rectangle of light from the streetlamp outside. Shiver at the eerie wafting of the tree silhouettes on the blinds.
Eventually, I’d lie back down and stare at the ceiling.
Eventually, I would drift off, but just as I was falling asleep—BOOM! The door would get booted in. I would break the window and try to escape down the tree, only to be dragged back in, beaten, raped, and then they would—
Over and over, all night long.
And yet, I didn’t think to make a big deal about this to my family and especially not to any authorities. There was nothing that could be done to protect me if I’d told anyone. Nobody had actually DONE anything to me. Theo's threats hadn't even been made to my face, but I knew how real they were. I was convinced that involving the police when he was “only” making threats would clinch the descent into physical violence upon me and mine, whereas being silent and terrified kept it at only “maybe.”
Beginning to see a theme with that?
Plus, this stuff didn’t seem like anything terribly out of the ordinary. Marlene and her sister had it way worse. So did my best friend from high school. So did other girls I knew. The TV showed us how common violence against women was every single day. Shit, we never needed TV to tell us that. All we had to do was breathe.
For me, it had barely been half a year since the last time an irate male had threatened my life--again, for standing up for a girl who had been my friend in high school. It had been less than three years since I’d been thrown across a room. I was simply under the impression that intimidation, violence, and rape and/or death threats were how a great many males handled their issues with strong-willed, independent, “mouthy bitches” like me.
And no: not all males. I knew that even then. My badass black belt fiancé was the epitome of only using violence when necessary for self-defense. He was so good at the mental aspects of it that he never needed to use his physical skills. But he was on the west coast, he was never coming back to live in Minnesota, and the last thing I wanted was to drop out of college and flee across the country with no degree.
What I didn’t understand about all those nightmares was that some of it was actually memory. Scraps I kept trying to turn right-side-up and piece together like a puzzle. Shards of shattered mirror with gaping black holes where the missing pieces once were. Those gouging flashes and my cushioned reality flickered back to me every night, wrapped in the spiderwebs of dreamland.
I kept shoving those old demons back in their Tupperware box. I also shoved the memories of Theo's threats into their own box so I could go on with my days. I had college classes. I had work. I had a second job. I had dance gigs to perform. And I really, really wanted to explore this wooded wonderland of history, art, tournaments, and magic I'd discovered in the Society for Creative Anachronism.
So my wise psyche buried Theo’s box in a separate corner from what had happened with my freshman year boyfriend and when I was toddler. No sense accidentally stumbling upon one box, only to trip over the dirt-covered corner of another and go opening that shit up. My coping mechanisms are protective like that. Sneaky. Always considering worst-case scenarios and concocting plans accordingly. They rig pitfalls and boobytraps in case I get too close to a landmine. Strategically, one landmine is not guaranteed to explode all the others. (10)
Mine didn't. Probably the best thing, really. It would have been too much to take all at once.
As such, for the past twenty-five years, I have only remembered that this Theo Fiasco was going on simultaneously with the Satyr Incident and my discovery of the SCA for brief moments, whenever I would stumble across that journal.
Until now.
After puking out all these words on the page and editing them, the incident is now carved into accessible memory.
I have no idea if I ever told Kyle about Satyr and Theo. If I did tell him, I don’t remember how detailed I got about my terror. My language while speaking about my worst traumas tended to be very...selective in those days. Plus, I had been afraid that my fiancé would be angry with me about the parts I had played in what happened, especially with Satyr. I was wracked with terrible guilt about that one, convinced that it was all my fault.
I had also been afraid Kyle would tell me that I was going to have to figure it out on my own. I was afraid to hear that I wasn't important enough for him to drop everything and come rescue me.
I was equally afraid that he would.
That would have been the worst thing he could have done in the long run. If Kyle had abandoned his life in California to come pet and hug his damsel whenever she woke from a bad dream, it would have destroyed everything he had worked so hard to do. Being back in Minnesota would have destroyed him, and that would have ultimately destroyed me.
To have known that he had annihilated his dreams because I couldn't handle my shit? No way.
At best, he could have helped me pack up and move out to California with him. Unfortunately, I had been steadfastly shoving something else to the fringes of my mind for the past year.
What I didn't realize--more like I refused to accept--was that my connection with Kyle was disintegrating. It had been disintegrating since the moment I visited him in California the previous spring. That was the first time I’d ever seen the Los Angeles area. It took me half a car ride from LAX to his house in Pasadena to realize that I reviled that place.
But he was gaining momentum there. It was exactly where he needed to be. He had his own destiny and his eyes were firmly fixed upon it. Mine were fixed upon this misty idea of a future with him, but I could only hold on across that distance for so long without reciprocal energy coming back to meet me across those miles.
There was no video chat in those days. There was no texting. Even phone calls were so expensive that we could only manage a few per year, and he wasn't a writer. He sent me music and artwork instead, to which I clung. Each one breathed a little bit of life back into my hopes, but after I visited him, the tenor of his mixtape and especially the words he recorded between songs changed.
Maybe his life had overwhelmed him. Maybe he had started having feelings for somebody else. Maybe he had also figured out what I knew deep in my guts--that the hourglass of our relationship was running out of sand. Whatever it was, instead of the certainty that had once flooded his loving sentiments, it became more like, “You do your thing and I’ll do mine and perhaps it’ll work out for us to be together.”
Perhaps.
I didn't want to hear that. I tried not notice it. I had no idea what to do about it. I loved him so fiercely, so I just kept holding on--and I kept fucking it up.
Not only was I desperately lonely, I didn’t understand how angry I was with him that California had never been up for negotiation. He was NOT coming back to Minnesota. Ever. So if we were going to be together, I would have to come to him. Period.
I knew it was irrational to be angry with him for putting his dreams before me. It was unfair to even consider asking him to reprioritize when I was the one who had encouraged him to follow his heart to begin with. It was unwise for two people so young to flip-flop priorities from Mine to Ours. I knew that.
Didn’t stop me from being hurt and angry. I didn’t want him to leave California. I didn’t want him to bail on a single dream. I just wanted to be able to be with him without having to be in LA, but that was not possible and I was furious about that.
I tried to stop myself from feeling what I felt. Being that angry...well, it wasn't his fault. He hadn't done anything wrong, but I didn't yet understand that you can be furious at a situation without having someone to blame. So I chastised myself for being immature and selfish, and that threw a monkey wrench into everything.
On top of that, I discovered the SCA, had a dear friend die the next month, got menaced with rape twice in a week, and had my life threatened for months. That put a crack in the watertight bulkheads that stood between my conscious mind and all those Tupperware boxes filled with my most violent repressed memories. The Titanic had sprung a leak, only nobody wanted to admit that we'd bumped an iceberg. We did not haul out the boats. We did not send up flares. We just kept chugging on at full speed, wearing all our finery and dining beneath crystal chandeliers while the water quietly seeped in below decks.
Only one message was sent up from the lower levels. Since I hadn’t yet learned how to protect myself, my subconscious kept insisting that, if I could get someone tall, male, and strong devotedly snorting beside me in bed all night, I should probably get on that, no matter the cost.
I understand all that now in a way I didn’t back then. I was running so scared in twelve different directions that I couldn’t understand anything competently.
Doesn’t change what happened. Doesn’t make it right. There were so many factors that went into the decisions I made—more like blundered and knee-jerked into them. Only now do I see more clearly and compassionately why I broke everything with Kyle in such an awful way. And it was awful. It's one of the lowest moments of my life.
The first times I ever looked into my own eyes and admitted--yeah--that was me, I did that...it's one of the hardest things I've ever done. Remember those Supertraits? Remember trustworthiness and conscientiousness? To have stumbled so far off the path of my deepest codes of honor...it came closer to killing me than Theo ever did.
It takes a lot of circumnavigation, gradual spiraling, and garish clown dances of distraction to be capable of opening up this box. It's even harder to look at than 1992, because in the tale of me and Kyle, I am the villain--desperate and fanged, blindly grabbing whatever I can to keep from bleeding out on the trail of good intentions.
But I finally started to be able to sleep through the night without bolting up in terror for my unviolated orifices and my un-snuffed life.
Go me.
I'm not the person to ask for advice about this subject. These people are.
Remember that online activity can be tracked, so make sure you are in a safe place to click on these links before you do:
—National Domestic Violence Hotline
1-800-799-SAFE (7233) TTY 1-800 - 787-3224
—RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) - Including the National Sexual Assault Hotline 800-656-HOPE
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
--UP NEXT: CLOVEN FRUIT - Dodging Devils in the Pale Moonlight
--THE NAVIGATION TABLE OF CONTENTS
OUR NEXT STINKY LINKY RABBIT HOLE
1) Some Thoughts on Leaving An Abusive Relationship
—Leaving an abusive relationship
—Ideas on making a personalized safety plan from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
—Another safety plan from Haven: Live Without Fear
2) "Why Don't You Just Leave?"
--Why people stay in abusive relationships - It's not as simple as walking away
--11 Reasons why people in abusive relationships can't "just leave"
-- Coercive Control & Psychological Abuse
3) Restraining/Protective Orders
--Paper Tigers: Why restraining orders are no guarantee of safety. Abusers often ignore them and violations rarely have consequences
--Did you know your phone has a PANIC Emergency Button?
4) The Duluth Model - Domestic Violence Intervention Programs
The Duluth Model offers a method for communities to coordinate their responses to domestic violence. It is an inter‐agency approach that brings justice, human service, and community interventions together around the primary goal of protecting victims from ongoing abuse. It is internationally recognized for its achievements and successes.
--It is also criticized as ineffective
5) Death Threats, Stalking & Harassment
--Criminal penalties for murder threats
--Do online death threats count as free speech?
--Do social media death threats count as real threats or just venting?
--The relentless deluge of threats & harassment for female political candidates...
--...And if you speak out about sexism in the gaming world...
--...And so many other places - Brianna Wu appalled at the FBI's GamerGate "investigative" report
--...Or have the audacity to lose a game in sports
6) Rape Threats:
—Toxic Twitter: women's experience with rape and death threats
—Random Rape Threat Generator (RRTG) - Disarming the personalized terror invoked by the online Rape Threat by showing just how overused, common, and uninventive they actually are. Because this tactic is not a technology problem. It’s an interpersonal problem that has nothing to do with the person receiving the threat.
—What the RRTG tells us about online misogyny
—A conversation: “Is threatening to rape someone illegal?”
7) "Why Didn’t You Tell Someone You Were Raped?"
—Barriers to Reporting Sexual Assault for Women and Men
—5 Reasons why someone might not tell anyone
—Sexual Assault Reporting: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
8) Boundaries, Instincts, Self-Defense
—Another one of the best books I’ve ever read - The Gift of Fear - Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence by Gavin DeBecker
—Why your boundaries are not welcome in an abusive relationship
—Setting healthy boundaries after an abusive relationship
—A full episode on Oprah with Gavin DeBecker
9) Opening the Chakras, as explained by my favorite TV show ever.
10) The Traumatized Mindset & C-PTSD
—Complex PTSD - how prolonged and repeated childhood trauma rewires the nervous system and manifests in personality, self-esteem, and behaviors
—8 Signs You Might Be Traumatized
—How Trauma & Dissociation interrupt the ability to form memories
—One of the best books I have ever read in my life: The Body Keeps the Score - Brain, Mind & Body in the Healing of Trauma
—Don't want to read the book? Here's the basic premise of what trauma does to the body and why talking about it, even in therapy, so often doesn't solve the problems: Short Version. Or Long Version by the author himself
—A few of the myriad healing techniques discussed in the book: EMDR, Yoga, Mindfulness & Support Network. These are only a few the book covers.
—EMDR: The technique that has given me the most success, both for immediate single-incident trauma (my big car wreck) and for C-PTSD.
11) The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. A book/course on unblocking your routes to creativity and health. This book changed my life.
**It should be noted that I’ve never had an SCA friend named Marlene with a biker boyfriend named Theo. I’ve also never been threatened with rape by a guy nicknamed Satyr. That makes this tale a work of fiction.
Based on the pieces of my life that aren’t.