Guest Blogger: I Burned The Toast by Melissa from Paths From My Soul

Every Friday we feature a guest blogger, sharing a story, perspective or opinion. If you’d like to be a guest blogger, contact us to get involved.

“What did you do today?” the lady at the end of the table asked.

I smiled broadly and exclaimed, “I burned the toast!”

I looked around the table at the blank, confused faces. I was still beaming. I’d made a HUGE step today and I knew it was a big deal. I knew that once I explained, they would be smiling as well.

“Let me explain. This morning I was rushing to get ready for college. I had to get both the kids dressed, fed and to daycare. My books were still out from where I’d fell asleep the night before studying. And I still wasn’t dressed yet. I popped some cheese toast into the toaster oven and ran to get dressed. Only, I forgot about the toast. I didn’t realize I’d put it in until the awful smell of burned cheese reached me in the bathroom. I ran into the kitchen and pulled open the toaster oven door. Instantly, that old familiar fear took over me. I frantically rushed to open the doors and windows, hoping to make the smell disappear. I grabbed the hot burned toast with my bare hands in an attempt to get it outside before it was seen. I jerked open the fridge door so fast while trying to get more cheese that all the contents in the door fell onto the floor. I couldn’t breath. I couldn’t think. I had to fix it before HE came into the room. I felt something on my arm and jumped backward. Standing there was my 4-year-old son

‘It’s OK Mommy. It’s OK,’ he said. He was so calm, so peaceful. I was confused. Why wasn’t my son scared? Then, instantly, I understood. HE wasn’t there! We were safe!!

I looked around at the children and my apartment. Our home. A place HE didn’t know about! I laughed out loud and grabbed both my children to me as tears streamed down my face. It really was OK!! I wasn’t going to get in trouble for burning the toast. I wouldn’t be hit, kicked, cursed, or raped. It was OK!”

As I finished telling the events of my morning, I looked around the faces at that table and saw their smiles. These women understood. Many of them were still living in the Battered Women’s Shelter. Some of us had gotten our own homes. All of us knew what it was like to be beaten for something as small and insignificant as burning the toast. That’s why we were all here, sitting around the table at the Domestic Violence Support Group.

I’d like to say that I never ended up in a “bad” relationship again, but that would be far from the truth. I spent years on my own, single mom of two kids, and happy. Hard times came and I got depressed. I ended up in another abusive relationship. Although I decided really quick  that it was over, he didn’t agree.  It was a long, scary road but the children and I finally got away. I wasn’t even in my mid 30s yet but there I was… divorced twice, restraining orders against both ex-husbands (not to mention the one against husband number 2′s mistress). I was a single mom of three children now, instead of the two I raised alone before. I wasn’t sure of anything. I didn’t even know what to do next.

That was a while back. I’m still not quite in my mid 30s, but definitely closer. I am now happily married. I have three gorgeous children. I can leave the dishes in the sink overnight, and even go days or weeks without shaving my legs and not fear. I can sleep late if I choose, wear what I want, and visit with my friends. I can receive phone calls and go out to eat. I can buy the children the clothes and shoes they need and even get them things they don’t need. I can go to bed when I choose. I can cook what I want and not stress if it didn’t come out perfect. I can stay in the shower as long as I want to! I can spend all day at my aunt’s home getting my hair done. I can attend church and pray WITH my husband. I can sleep at night without fearing hands around my throat or violent rapes.  I can say, “No” and it be respected. I am ME and that’s OK.

Marriage isn’t easy after having been in two violent ones. I learned in domestic violence counseling to protect myself and to never open myself up unless I was 100 percent sure of the man I was with. Yet, when you’ve lived with an abuser, you are never 100 percent sure of anything afterward. My husband and I are learning that trust means you are not 100 percent sure, but you believe anyway. I’m learning that God loves me just as I am, and that He doesn’t see me as “damaged goods.” I think JJ Heller says it best in her song “What Love Really Means” when God says, “I will love you for you, not for what you have done or what you will become, I will love you for you, I will give you the love, the love that you never knew.” I’m learning not only to forgive others, but to accept God’s love so that I can truly love others.

Life isn’t always easy when you’ve survived hell on earth at the hands of another. But it sure is fabulous when you know that, day or night, regardless of hour… you can burn the toast, and it’s OK.

Guest Blogger: What Do You Want to Be? by Brook from Redhead Reverie

Every Friday we feature a guest blogger, sharing a story, perspective or opinion. If you’d like to be a guest blogger, contact us to get involved.

“Do you want to be a victim or a survivor,” my therapist asked me.

I couldn’t answer her.

This was my fourth suicide attempt. This time it was BAD. ER doctors, stomach pumping, a two-day stint in ICU, and a week stint in the psych ward kind of bad. I guess that’s what happens when you down half a bottle of your anti-depressants with a Captain Morgan chaser.

How the hell did I get here?

I met a guy and after a whirlwind romance we moved in with each other. Everything was great I thought I was in love and this was it “the one”.

Then it happened.

“You’re a fucking bitch.”

I stood there like a deer in headlights. Was he talking to me?

Then he said it again and laughed. “Oh, I’m just kidding, can’t you take a joke.”

Really…I was speechless. The warning alarm kept sounding in my head, but I ignored it.

For a while life was good. He would say how lucky he was that he found me, and we would talk about getting married. But then out of the blue I’d hear “Stop eating your cereal like that you sound like a pig.”

As the months passed I spent my time walking on eggshells wondering what in the world would set him off. One day it could be that I wore too much make-up. “You look like a whore with that shit on your face.” The next he would be sweet as sugar talking about buying rings and spending the rest of our lives together.

“Whore”

“White trash”

“Fucking Bitch”

Words I began to hear on a daily basis.

To him I was a verbal punching bag. And while no one could see the bruises, they were there on the inside.

I was in a constant state of fear and self-loathing. My formally healthy 120 pound frame dwindled to 90 pounds, I cried at the drop of a hat and became needy and co-dependent. Everything I never wanted to be, in essence I was a victim. The only way to find relief was to find a way out. “The boyfriend” had isolated me from all my friends, so I didn’t have a support system to turn to. Instead, I decided I’d just “end it”.

And that’s what led me to this moment.

I sat in that office that I knew so well. In the yellow gingham overstuffed chair, which was more comfortable than the couch and closer to the Kleenex. And with tears streaming down my face I said “Survivor.”

Brook is a spunky redhead who shares her views on life, love, kids and the world via her blog Readhead Reverie. She never sugar coats it and never acts like she’s perfect, because truthfully wouldn’t that be so FREAKING BORING.

Guest Blogger: The Survival Gene by Andygirl

Every Friday we feature a guest blogger, sharing a story, perspective or opinion. If you’d like to be a guest blogger, contact us to get involved.

When I think of survivors, I think of the women in my life.

The human imperative is survival, but it seems to me that women posses a extra survival gene, something that makes it harder for us to give up or give in, and keeps us pushing those around us to survive. We love to a fault and we support until it breaks us and yet we still keep going. We are beaten down, raped, and diseased, but we still laugh and love and exude ineffable grace.

My grandmother was a survivor. When her family was near poverty and her abusive husband was drunk and out of work yet again, she’d work several jobs just to feed her four children. She’d just keep going no matter what. She lived that way even after my grandfather died. If one body part would fail, she’d get it replaced and keep on going. She wasn’t the warmest of women, but she did what she needed to do.

My aunt was a survivor. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, they gave her a couple of years to live at the most. She was determined to live until her daughter turned 12 and so she lived another 7 years, all the time working and putting money away so her daughter could go to college. She fought the hardest of any woman I’ve ever known. After a divorce, a mastectomy and chemo and the loss of her hair, she never lost her generous spirit or hope.

My biological mother was a survivor. I imagine her making the decision to give up a baby, deciding between providing for one child and keeping a second. The story goes that, a single woman newly divorced or possibly separated, she’d just gotten a job, finally gone off welfare, and put my 2 year old sister in daycare. She chose to give up her baby so that all three of us could live better lives. I imagine how brave she must have been.

My friend is a survivor. She’ll never know quite how strong she is. Her childhood dominated by her father’s mental illness. Her adolescence dominated by her mother’s physical illness. Her early twenties the loss of her mother and then her brother. She has experienced unspeakable loss even after and she has done it in relative privacy, holding strong and keeping her hurt tucked deep away. She does what she needs to do and still manages to laugh and love.

I am a survivor. I survived my mother. I survived her physical abuses and her endless narcissism, addiction, and emotional cruelty which seeped into my being. I survived sexual assault as a teen, when my boyfriend gave up cajoling and attempted to force me to have sex. I have survived a toxic man who moved into my home without asking, who manipulated a ring onto my finger, and who beat me with his words. Who told me he hated me and convinced me I was the hateful and controlling one. I have survived the suicide of a boyfriend and the deaths of friends and family. I have survived betrayals and personal demons. I have survived hunger. I have survived self-destructive behavior.

I have survived to be become a happy, strong, independent woman.

Andygirl is a writer poet, blogger, photographer, queer, dirty liberal, and crazy cat lady. She’s a California girl turned NorthWesterner and she’s got the valley girl accent and flannel shirts to prove it. When she’s not dominating the Portland karaoke scene, she spends her time reading too many books and making Star Wars references that her roommate doesn’t understand. Read, Tweet, Facestalk.

The Diet Industry: A Gateway Drug. by Kensington

Alex asked me to write something that has to do with body image for the Blogger Body Calendar’s wonderful website that I’ve been enjoying. She’s the bomb, so I am happy to oblige. A few months ago, I jotted down a topic with the intention to write about it, but I never fleshed it out.

Here we go a’fleshing.

We’re all familiar with the term “gateway drug”. Professionals warn the public and parents warn their children that cigarettes, alcohol or marijuana can be “gateway drugs” – a portal to hardcore drugs and a life less than well-lived. You know what I think is a “gateway drug”? The Culture of the Diet Industry. Not a pre-cursor to actual drugs, mind you, but rather one of the first things that can come up in the life of an impressionable, young mind, especially when self image and body image are being experimented with and developed.

I’m not slamming diets themselves. Like many other products and services out there, some are great, some are ok, some are terrible. Most of them are not meant for someone with an eating disorder. But the Culture of the Diet Industry is similar to the intimidating presence of a pusher in a school yard, complete with the, “I’ve got something you don’t even know you need” promise that can both frighten and intrigue a teenager or adolescent.

Parents want to be able to be aware of landmines like addictive substances, and be there just when their child needs them. Be there to step in and say, “This is dangerous for these reasons. If you get involved in this now, you will find it harder and harder to step away. You will start to lose yourself”. Parents want to be able to say, “This is what my experience with this was like, and what I learned from it” or “I never tried it, but I know many lives it has compromised or ruined”.

What makes this such a challenge when the “gateway drug” is the Culture of the Diet Industry is that we don’t think of it that way. The quickest way for risk to make its way into a home is when the parents are unaware the risk is there, or don’t recognize it as a risk at all. I read a lot of articles related to eating disorders as part of my job. More and more, the articles pile up with new stats, data and polls, showing that as a society even pre-schoolers are starting to think they’re fat and need to go on a diet.

Bad body image often begins at home. It may be solely as a reaction to stress or pressure a child or teenager is feeling. It may be the kid is growing up in a house where detesting your body and always wanting to change it is the norm. What a difference it would make if parents decided to be more mindful of the frightening number of times their child sees ads for diet plans before they’re even ten years old. Ads that taunt, “Everyone is doing it!”. What a difference it would make if parents made it clear diets are for certain people, but there is no reason for the entire nation to be dieting. What a difference it would make if parents made a conscious effort to mute commercials when diet ads come on, and stop referring to the size of their behind, or anyone else’s.

When our children are allowed to see diets as just something most people do, it becomes a gateway drug. Only instead of it leading to something out of a PSA on television, it can lead to bad body image. To poor self-esteem. To self-hatred. To diet obsession. To disordered eating. To eating disorders. To a lifetime of thinking that the key to happiness lies in just giving Jenny a call. It normalizes the idea that everyone is on a diet and everyone should be on a diet, regardless of age, ethnicity, gender or, for that matter, actual body size.

How interesting it would be to see a PSA addressing the Culture of the Diet Industry. An ad encouraging parents to say to their kids, “This is dangerous for these reasons. If you get involved in this now, you will find it harder and harder to step away. You will start to lose yourself”, or This is what my experience with this was like, and what I learned from it” or “I never tried it, but I know many lives it has compromised or ruined”.

In this case, the smaller number being better is perhaps best reflected this way: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Kensington is the Administrator for Something Fishy Website on Eating Disorders. In her free time, she enjoys theatre, music, critters and waiting for Batman to return her calls.

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