The Pandemic Has Not Been A Sabbatical, But Valuable Time To Reflect
Where have I been? What have I been thinking about?
Hello, subscribers and readers. I’ve been sitting loose to this blog since the pandemic settled in. I had work to do creating pandemic resources, offering workshops and being a panelist for pandemic related events to support communities of faith and their leaders. It was difficult work, but I completed the creative work that I discerned was mine to do. I do follow-up and workshops as requested. With this transition happening I want to re-connect with the mission I have had with this site and begin discerning new directions.
During these pandemic months it was good to continue connecting with my blog readers in personal conversations about their lives. Thank you for this trust and for understanding I was less available than usual.This spring I turned 65. It is a time to consider what to pick up and what to lay down. So that, again, is about asking what is my work to do? What best serves the women who still want to know what I am thinking, asking, naming about the abuse we have endured. After over four decades of a treatment industry that offers no data on successful outcomes of its expensive therapies and recovery centers, what are the real options we have to consider?
I have been divorced ten years this coming week. The ultimate dday of recognition was in September 2009. As I look back I am aware that when the worst was happening and C-PTSD overtook my whole life like black mould, I lost any ability to imagine a future of anything but more loss, humiliation, and isolation. When I hear that same grief and fear in other women, I truly understand. I made so many mistakes, just like you. But most of those were predicated by the lies I did not know. Reframing reality without his lies provided the facts I needed to make the best decisions for my life. Those same facts pulled back the curtain on the wizard spinning the nobs of a therapeutic calamity. Along with a small army of brave women, we simply refused to shut up and refused to go away. This was some of the most important work in all my ministry life. For me, this was and remains justice ministry in line with gospel imperatives that reject misogyny in its individual and systemic life.
There is nothing easy about partner recovery—except the absence of daily overt and covert abuse! And you only get that if you step away. But that absence is what makes recovery possible even when it’s difficult. It’s never again as bad as what he did to you and your children. Never. And when life feels good, it usually IS good, because it’s real.
Most women I talk to haven’t really grasped that their current state of devastation will lessen once he does not have daily access to control, use and harm them both covertly and overtly. Just being away from his daily presence will lighten your spirit. You see and enjoy beauty. You parent without the constant distraction of confusion about him. You notice yourself differently—with less self-criticism. You, again, have the capacity to make a rational decision about your relationship that expresses your core values, and model those values to your children.
For me, every scrap of courage and effort it took to stand up for truth, trust that my life mattered even in its diminished state, do the critical thinking about the treatment industry and its theories and practitioners, as well as rigorous research and reflection on spiritual practices and theology—these are all things of faith that sustained me and led me. They still do. They inform this ministry of justice for women. They live out compassionate understanding, believing you and believing IN you. But they do not set out any requirement that you share my faith or practice spiritual life the way I do.
Right now, I don’t think I’m finished speaking on this topic of justice for women in a relationship with a CASRD man (Compulsive-Abusive Sexual Relational Disordered man—Dr. Omar Minwalla’s name for them). I’ve covered a lot of ground since I started this blog. But a page is turning; a new chapter waits to be written. It’s time.
Where are we going next? How will it be different? How will it be the same?
We’ll just have to see how that goes. This time away doing trauma work from a different launch pad and for a larger group has been great chance to step back and take another look at all of it.
Meanwhile, your story is still safe here.
With you,
Diane.