Finding Our Voice, Sharing Our Vision
Ending Violence Against Women and Children
The abuse in my life did not start with me. I believe it started with my great grandmother. I remember how her
vacant eyes somehow frightened me. Though she seemed to observe everything that went on, her face remained
expressionless.
My mother told me stories of the molestation she endured at the hands of her
step-grandfather. My mother was not his only victim. My great grandmother had two daughters. Both married violent
men. My mother told a story once of her father beating her mother with his fists and her mother biting him on the
chest in self defense. My mother still has a bump on her nose where her aunt’s husband had broken it with his fist.
World Wars I and II affected the course of our family history, I believe. Both of my grandfather's returned from WWII drunk. My maternal
grandfather never sobered up; my paternal grandfather gave me a lecture about drinking when I was 18, some years after he had quit drinking.
When I was born, I believe my mother had intentions of breaking the cycle, but did not know what a non-violent
home would look like. She beat my brother and me out of ignorance, and neglected us due to her own mental illness.
My mother was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic when she was a teenager, but refused to
acknowledge the limits this placed on her abilities to function normally.
When I was 3, my parents separated. My father put my mother in a local boarding home, left me with his sister,
left my brother with his parents, and disappeared for over 6 years.
When I was 5, their divorce was final and my mother remarried. My mother went through the courts to regain
physical custody of my brother and I. We were returned to her before school started that year.
My stepfather's family was ravaged with alcoholism. Out of the eleven children in this family, seven became alcoholics themselves
and three of the other four married alcoholics. Only the youngest sister avoided addictions and marriage all together,
only because she suffered two brain tumors- one that left her blind; one that took her life.
This dynamic made for harsh lessons in
my youth. I remember when my stepgrandmother passed away. After her funeral, four of my stepdad's siblings went to a bar. They returned to the
house totally smashed. One of his brothers was driving and cussing to get his daughter and girlfriend out of the house. The older sisters called
police to stop him from driving and potentially hurting his daughter.
My stepfather was
very controlling and intimidating then. My brother bore the brunt of his drunken rage. I was too afraid to step out of line.
I hid all my faults from the world. I had to be perfect. My brother once called me the "good child."
Home life then was not all bad. There were some good times mixed in with the bad. I think the most peaceful years
were between my 8th and 10th birthdays. My fondest childhood memories centered around holiday times with my
stepfather's family. He was number four of eleven kids. We participated in their yearly get-together's on
Christmas Eve that included a big meal and a gift exchange.
But then, out of the blue, my father returned and wanted to be a part of
our lives again, and the jealous parental tug of war began.
My father had remarried into perversion and violence. His second wife and her brothers owned him and used him for
all they could milk out of him. I can’t begin to describe what we saw and heard in his home. The sexual perversion
was enough to make even the strongest sick. The violence included one person being dragged across the floor by her
hair and verbal bashing beyond anything I had ever heard before.
There were all manner of addicts in and out of my Dad's house for the first three years after he remarried. I remember these two men, one was the
brother-in-law and the other was a niece's boyfriend. Both men were red, swollen round butterballs with blood shot eyes and raspy voices. The
brother-in-law beat his son in public and muttered profanities under his breath every where he went. He later went to prison for raping his daughter.
The niece's boyfriend was the violent sort. It took five police officers to restrain him in my Dad's front yard one summer. I don't remember what
he was arrested for, but I remember the commotion in the front yard.
Home life became even more tumultuous and strained as the years went by, especially after my brother started stealing beer out of the fridge
and cigarettes out of my mother's purse. I complained of an awful smell that came from his room, but my parents never suspected my brother was
using drugs. (My brother later admitted to smoking pot in his room.)
When I was about 12, I made a personal vow that I was never going be like that, whatever 'that' was. I was going to be
more peaceful and successful…but breaking these chains was not that simple.
On the good side, I worked really hard at my schoolwork, and won the favor of my school teachers. They believed in my academic
abilities and placed me in the Advanced Placement programs that normally educated the more affluent children. I was
the only impoverished child in classrooms with privileged children.
My friends, on the other hand, were the social outcasts. My best friend from 2nd grade through high school was
the “fat funny smelling farm girl.”
My brother and I went to church with her family on a regular basis. We
were pretty much accepted members of their family before her older brother, John, and I were an item.
I was 13 when John approached me. I liked the attention. No one told John to leave the little girls alone.
It was like they assumed we would pair eventually. My mother learned of the relationship a year after the fact
and tried to end it by isolating me from all my old social networks. Her actions only provoked rebellion.
At the same time, my brother's addictions became more obvious, but no one understood the signs. I remember the day he beat his head against a
wall so long that he had a bump on his head the following morning. When I was 15, my brother hit my stepdad back and ran away from home. He ended up
living with our grandparents in another town, so I didn't see him for almost a year.
I became very depressed after my brother left. I stopped participating in my usual activities and didn't socialize much. I wrote in a diary
all the thoughts that I had around dying and death. The summer before my 16th birthday, I swallowed a package of Sudafed tablets thinking that
this was going to be quick way out. Instead, I was tortured with the consequences. The hallucinations, racing heart and sounds freaked me out. I vowed
to never do that again. To this day, my mother does not know about this attempt on my life.
After this experience, I vowed to rebel to the point that I was turned loose. I started seeing John again, against my mother's wishes. I ran away
from home and went to live with my Dad. I believed all the promises that John made to make my life a better place to be.
John said he was going to one day own his father’s poultry farm and turn
it into a crop farm, build me a castle and we would live happily ever after. I thought John would be the close
knit family man, like his family appeared to be. I thought he would be the one person in my life who had no sexually perverted
animosities. I never expected him to be abusive. We married when I was 17 and still in high school, and then… John
put the Prince Charming mask in a drawer next to his unfinished high school diploma.
Then the conditioning began, but it was not so much John that did the conditioning. His family took care of
that. I was being trained to be the submissive farmer’s wife. They all said I didn’t need an education. It was
John’s job to pay the bills.
They predicted that I would quit school and were not very supportive of my decision to continue. Fortunately
for me, the school bus system made it possible for me to attend classes. I finished high school, just to prove them
wrong, and graduated in the top 25 of my class.
I tried a number of times to get a college education over the next eleven years, but either there was no
transportation from the farm or wherever I was or there was no money or both. No one supported my educational
goals. In their world, a woman was to be ignorant and compliant.
Then, one by one, the children were born and John's demise progressed. After the first child was born, John’s
porn addiction and temper tantrums became visible to the rest of the world. My presence was controlled with scare
tactics and guilt trips.
Money was controlled by John. Transportation was controlled with clunkers only John could operate. Food was
often scarce unless it came in the form of food stamps. Living conditions were controlled with the poverty and
John’s destructive behaviors.
John was continually between jobs and we moved back and forth- from the farm to town back to the farm. I had
to negotiate with bill collectors, and ration money to meet our basic needs. I learned to take the heat for
John’s behavior and cover for him. It was impossible for me to work due to the lack of transportation, child care,
work experience, education, etc.
Between August of '95 and November of '98, we lived near my brother in Wisconsin. I really believe my brother provided a
buffer between John's rage and me at times during the years we were there. Even so, the real violence began out there. My suicidal
depression began again out there as well.
In '98, we moved back to the farm one last time, into a dilapidated mobile home that had survived the ’96 flood.
Algae grew on the outside of the mobile home, including the windows. The walls inside had separated and warped. The ceiling hung down.
Toilet had to be flushed with a bucket. The furnace didn’t work. The carpet was caked with mud that no vacuum
cleaner would ever pick up. There were fleas, flies, mice, and cockroaches.
The abuse I endured at John’s hands primarily were scare tactics and a perpetual rage, but also included mind
games, neglect, a brief stint with hitting, pinching, pulling my hair and pushing that ended with a 4th degree assault
charge, and a deliberate poverty…in the end, it was like living with a Nazi soldier who raided the house daily at
10 AM looking for those who refused to hail his leader. John tore the door off its hinges and threw it down the
hall. He beat the walls and shouted from one end to the other. He beat the kids. He threw furniture out the front
door. John beat the dog and tortured a cat in front of the kids.
I believe most of John's rage was due to the abuse he endured with his own father. John's father
was an obsessive compulsive control freak who wanted better than perfection from everyone, but himself.
He had the ability severely insult someone with just a few words. It started with stupid and worthless, and just
went from there. I kept my kids away from him as much as I could because he was so cruel to them. I remember one day
when my oldest had gotten into something and I had her tell grandpa what she had done. He raked his hands back and forth
across her ears and gritted his teeth as he did it. I was in shock at his violence. I never trusted him with the
children again.
After the assault charge and my vow to leave him, John held us hostage on this farm 12 miles out of
town. His friends and family were his gatekeepers. I had no access to medical care, nor did the kids. I had no way
off the farm. I felt hopeless and believed we were going to die.
The minister of the church that had done so much to prevent me from escaping in the past suddenly decided
it was time for me to leave. He blamed our condition on John’s porn addiction. He found someone within the church
to find resources for me and convinced John’s parents to look the other way. A DV survivor within the church found
an organization that helped battered women who found shelter for me. Once I was able to make contact with this
organization, we (a pregnant mother and three children) fled like refugees with no money and
only the hope that we would never have to go back.
Once inside their van, it was like the war was over. We could see the dust settling and the ruins that remained
behind the dust.
People have this misconception that once the bad guy is gone, everything returns to normal. Define
normal. I spent the next ten months just trying to learn how to live again. I had lived in squalor with
only survival in mind. I didn’t know how to take care of myself; let alone take care of the kids. Those that worked
with us knew that they were dealing with severely traumatized people, but did not understand what we needed.
I used a ground up analogy, but no one truly understood what that meant. No one could tell me how to parent
traumatized kids. Programs that could help my children and me were not available. Even now, the jury is still out in
defining the impact violence has on families in the long term and what is needed to repair that damage.
I pushed forward anyway. I started college that September. I struggled to balance four kids, full time classes
and all the judgment of people around me.
I allowed myself to get involved with another man during my second term in college. He was also a college student,
and made me think he was on the right path for himself also.
All the signs of a bad relationship were there. Quick involvement- I was pregnant with number five right away. He
led me to believe he was infertile and then denied doing so after I came up pregnant.
He wanted control of my other children and demanded to be an automatic authority figure in their lives. He interfered
with my ability to manage my children and insulted me when I didn't handle them way he wanted me to. This man is the author
of guilt trips, mind games and circular arguments designed to make me look crazy. He often claimed how emotionally
unstable I am. Who wouldn't be with this kind of mind war?
I tried a number of times to end the relationship, but he just wouldn't let me be. I moved out of his house before
the baby was born. Then when I got a house, he helped me move in and moved himself in at the same time.
It took almost a whole year to get him to move out of my house. I tried to make the relationship work, in spite of my
misgivings. He was never physically violent with me, but was a little too hands on with my kids. He would not respect
my rights to live my life the way I wanted to and parent my children in a manner different than he wanted me to.
He refused to comprehend how the traumas from the past affected all of us in the long term. He refused to
understand my daughter's diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder and what was needed to help her. All of her
problems, according to him, were my fault for bad parenting.
It took my father's intervention to make him move away from me.
In spite of all my hardships, I finished my Associate’s Degree in June of 2004, with a focus on Social Sciences.
I am the only person in my family with a college degree and am represented in the National Dean’s list for
2005-2006. I now work as the Development Director for Voices Set Free and
Oregon Voices United. It is still my primary
goal to break the chains of my past and help others do the same with me.
In spite of the successes, my life is not so perfect. I still struggle to live and take care of myself. It
is still a struggle to keep a roof over my head and the lights turned on. I would describe my life as a roller
coaster ride in a car with a broken wheel. I am the broken wheel.
I haven't always made the best of decisions, but when compared to what I came from is a far cry from what I could
have done. My children have never lived in foster care and we have never slept on the streets. They have not gone
hungry. God's grace has kept us from permanent destruction.
However, my children are not normal, well adjusted people. My oldest daughter has tried to
destroy herself with pure rebellion. She ran away from home in late January and was found two weeks later in a hotel room with a 31 year old man.
Her UA came up positive for meth and cocaine, though she denies voluntary use. She was recently sent to an in-patient treatment program
and is making some good strides in improvement.
My oldest son was diagnosed with ADHD during his third grade year. Medications help, but
he still carries on his father’s legacy of rage at times, though he is improving as well with the help of play therapy.
I am still
learning to parent broken children and two others who are not broken but following the leader. I am still
frustrated by a system that refuses to acknowledge how trauma, violence, and addiction continues through each generational
cycle and has not done enough of the right things to break those cycles.
