A Daily Dose of Women Helping Women

Other Comments :

I write about these shit experiences only in service of helping other women, myself even included. So many women are broken by patriarchal and misogynistic violence. Many of us leave with physical damage, even when there is not physical abuse. Emotional abuse damages the brain (as evidenced by recent brain scans of my shrunken amygdala) in addition to damaging your spirit. So it's my hope that we can take all forms of abuse of women seriously which starts with recognizing the patterns and signs of abusive behavior and sharing candidly our stories.

On the other side of abuse, on the outside of these relationships, many survivors can see the signs with crystal with clarity. I see it in hers - the minimization of cruelty hidden in jokes and in "sassy" comments. These are often just ways for men to take a piss out of women discretely, casually negging in order to destroy their self-esteem. We can see the boundary violations as what they are, blatant signs of lack of respect. The consent and sexual violations as a lack of respect or care for the autonomy and sanctity of women's bodies.

I share these stories , partially to cope, but really for women who are ashamed of what happened to them, or for women are wondering if what's happening is bad enough to leave. It is. If these people are intent on hurting you and cannot find it within themselves to regulate their harm, it's time to leave. If they enjoy causing you pain, it's time to leave.

I'm not judging anyone in this position. It is easy to be compromised by love and one-sided good intentions. I wish I'd been strong enough to leave. I wish I had believed what felt. I wish I would've trusted my intuition, and the pattern of behavior both towards me, and covert behavior towards women for the last 10 years. And then I could've realized I wasn't safe. I wish I didn't minimize destructive patterns in order to deal with my own cognitive dissonance about who that person was. But it's the natural action in a society that grooms women to tolerate mistreatment and abuse and make excuses for male behavior. Many times, the people who need to hear : "Believe Women" most is ourselves. Because in trying to see the good in someone who is actively harming us, we end up gaslighting ourselves out of believing what we are seeing, feeling and experiencing. So trust yourself. Trust your body. Trust your intuition. Trust the women around you and trust the woman within you. We're all safer if we believe and trust in one another.

Keeping Tabs