Tag Archives: women

comfort

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You know how you walk into a hot shower and the water envelops you and every muscle in your body relaxes?  You just exhale and you are covered in comfort and softness and just a silent moment of peace?

I got a message on my facebook from somebody I met once who made a big, sweet impression on me.  She commented about a blog post of mine, that I have permission to share.

“Hi FB! You may not remember me – we met at a party at xxxx’s house a couple years ago, and I thought you were lovely, funny and all-around awesome. You and your boyf had recently started dating, I think, and I am so happy to hear that you’re still together all this time later! I’m not much of a Facebooker, but I log in occasionally and I’ve read some of your Feisty Boots posts – what an amazing journey you’re on. Thank you for sharing it with us and being “out” about the cult abuse; you’re brave to confront the long-term effects of their conditioning and I think, ultimately, the blog will be a large part of your healing. After all, in writing it, you’re doing what they told you NEVER to do: telling the truth in public and saying it loud. Regarding the most recent post about losing your job: honey, fuck ‘em. I’m a therapist, and I’m here to tell you that PTSD will NOT rule your life forever. Keep doing exactly what you’re doing; sooner than you imagine, PTSD will revert to being just one chapter in the book of your life, not the whole book. The circumstances that caused the PTSD will always be part of your history, but the acute PTSD symptoms will recede. Until then, be as patient and gentle with yourself as you would with a frightened child. You WERE that frightened child, and since no one protected her or stood up for her when she needed it, it’s HER fear you’re feeling now. Feel it. Notice that it passes – kind of like a seizure, no? You don’t die of it. And you won’t have PTSD-induced panic attacks forever. Remind Little FB that she’s safe now; the worst is over. Only the aftershocks remain. But while you’re in this acute phase, it’s OK to avoid the things that trigger you. If you knew a little girl who was deathly afraid of churches, would you make her enter 30 of them? ‘Course not. You and the little girl inside you deserve that same kindness and understanding. Talented as you are, you’ll find other work – that’s not going to be a big issue. And I do hope you find a good therapist, someone who’s worked with trauma survivors and can help you manage the anxiety symptoms. Are there survivor websites or online communities you’ve connected with? Sometimes they can be a good source of referrals. Meantime, please know I’m thinking of you and sending long-distance hugs… xoxo”

In a cold time of uncertainty, this response made me feel held, loved and hopeful.  Thank you sweetheart.

Universal Call Out

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The first time was at a mixer a few months ago.  I was talking to a brilliant, charming man in a fez.  How could you not love a guy in a fez? It was a great conversation.  I would wear a fez, but my head is far too round and giant.  He told me what he did and it was awesome.  I told him what I did, “How can that be your passion?”  He wasn’t rude, he was genuine.  I was side-swiped.  I did what I did, like Rumpelstiltskin I told him that it was.  I stomped my straw of a lie and smiled pretty and tried to sell him gold.  I felt like I had sullied what had been one minute a go a true, real, human experience.  Curses.  Gross.

Hi, I’m Feisty Boots.  I am here on this planet to use my life experiences as a means of illumination against spiritual abuse in the world.  I write and speak so that people who have been hurt by leaders and family who have claimed that their abusive power came from a divine source don’t feel alone.  I believe that the unheard victim can get back on the wheel of abuse and become an abuser and I want to do what I can to stop that cycle.  I have seen the foulest of human nature and been told that it is the love of god and having broken free from that.  I write out those experiences and that process so that others in similar situations can take heart.

That’s a scary thing to say out loud.  Wish I had the guts that day.  Yesterday I met with two people for business and ended up talking about this anyway.  They were far more interested in this.

A woman with experience is in my life and she has some great ideas, I think I will start a step at a time.  Let’s see if I can work this transition.

Confronting Sexism in the family

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Gender is a funny thing, kids get conditioned about what girls are “capable of” and what boys are “capable of” so early.  They are put in their tiny boxes and then many of these people after they have been conditioned spend their lives trying to bust out of these boxes.  Some are harmed by people who don’t even know that they are in a box, but the box people are angry that you aren’t in your place.  Get in your box!!!

My 6 year old nephew is one of my favorite people in the world.  In many ways he is the embodyment of my inner child.  This kid is nuts.  This kid is perfect.  He told me that girls can be ninjas.  I said that’s awesome!

In my brain, I saw a potential teaching moment… It was like “The more you know” rainbow streaked across my brain.  And I thought since we were talking about girl ninjas and normally that is a male dominated industry I thought (in my brilliance) to ask him.  “Is there anything a girl can’t be?”

He seriously puzzled till his puzzler was sore.

Yes, he finally answered.

I was surprised, and fully ready to explain gender equality, etc.

“What?” I asked.

“Vampires.  Girls can’t be vampires.”

“Why can’t girls be vampires?”

“Cause they don’t exists, Suzi, duh.

pwnd. Sometimes you can expect something so much that you ignore the obvious.  Girls can be anything in the world except something that doesn’t exsist.  DUH.

base

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My oldest nephew has reminded me about “base”.  Nothing can get you at “base”.  Base is perhaps the most important thing.  And I’m really glad that in play, kids have something to run to where all of the scariness stops and they are control.  When they are on base, they stop the world and process the chase, the overstimulation of the craziness and then when its time to go again they re-enter the game.

The sufferer of ptsd (I’m trying not to capitalize it, I think that’s great advice.  Thanks, A!) frequently feels chased.  I’ve got a thing or twelve on my emotional plate right now.  I have about 4 family relationships I am working on right now.  We still don’t have our stuff from the pirates and that is winding down, I hope we may have our stuff by Christmas.  My new job is great and not easy.

E and I continually work to connect to be “base”.  It is so good.  It’s really hard right now.  The pirates have our bed.  This weekend in a hotel was the first time we’ve slept together in a bed since 9/25.  And we are working so hard to keep our emotional connection sweet.  I’m really lucky, because the air mattresses and other sleeping arrangements have led us both to a lot of back pain through this ordeal and it’s not getting us down.  We’re just taking care of each other.

After a really hard week, A texts me….  She simply says, “I bet you look beautiful and your hair smells like strawberries”.   I laugh because she was close, 3000 miles away and my hair smelled like pumpkins.  My best friend is the master of sweet understatement, she can say better in 9 words what I was trying to tell you in 1,200.  And she smells like caramel, but she doesn’t have to put stuff in her hair to create a scent like I do.  A is “base”.  A is bass to my melody.

I am “base”.  I keep the motion and the flow in my life.  I swim the channel of shadows toward the light.  I love and forgive and connect and sting when I harm people and get pissed off when I have to do the right things and it’s hard.  I try to stop when I can’t and I try to go when I should.  And I learn from my little wild guru nephew about base and safe and stop.

good ol boys

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The South is fantastic and weird.  It is so beautiful here.  I work with about 38 guys and two other girls.  I am very grateful that my experience has trained me for environments like this.  Especially since my professional environments have been high in vitamin estrogen since I left corporate IT.

It’s interesting to talk to the other two women, they are at that place where they don’t know if they can trust women in the workplace.  I am modeling trustworthiness to them.  I am modeling good will, because I remember when I was there.

I have been confronted toe to toe about my knowledge and experience by the alpha male, in public.  I think he regrets that.  He thought this California girl would be a push over.  He thought that having his guys around would intimidate me.  But I am so grateful for my experience in public confrontation (thanks cult!!).  In public speaking, in business, in everything.  I had one hell of a tit for his tat.  And he has 20 years of experience in this technical industry, but when I pulled my 16 years of technical experience together and shot back.  His guys started to back down and walk away. Hit the bully once, big, publicly and with humor not anger (like he had).  Now he minds his own business and I got cred.

I wasn’t going to come out as bisexual because I am trying to practice personal boundaries and I didn’t want people all up in my business.  And I didn’t want the whispers and chortling of being a bi-chick among dudes.  I didn’t want that to be the only thing they remembered about me.  I at least wanted my 90 day probation to be overwith.  But I messed up the “pronoun game”.  And said she when talking about my ex, instead of letting them assume he.  It was only in front of my manager.  After that he had a vacation planned and he came back and it’s not an issue.  Except that he told me he’s too ugly to be gay.

Politically correct doesn’t really happen here and that is actually extremely refreshing to me.  Because they don’t care if you walk away if you don’t want to hear it.  And I do feel perfectly comfortable walking away.  I love that they’ve only known me at this age.  Everyone else has known me as a younger me, and people don’t see me as especially  young here.  That’s really liberating.

Everyone is mostly awesome and sweet.  Lots of Southern charm.  I love it.

know what sucks

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My mom was here for 9 days and although I love her dearly, it was so hard. She’s been gone almost 2 weeks and I am still taking the big panic attack drugs. I can’t calm down. E touches me and I jump.

My brain isn’t a safe place to be. I cry at the drop of a hat. And I haven’t allowed myself to blog because I’m scared it will hurt her feelings.

But this is mine. And I have to be here. I have a flag.

Please don’t drop a hat.

No means No

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Facebook is funny.  A while ago, I saw a picture of my ex-wife.  We don’t talk or get along right now and I don’t know if I should have hope that we will.  Time will tell.

This picture was amazing.  She was beaming ear to ear and she looked so happy.  I smiled.  When you are breaking each other’s hearts and breaking up, you don’t see a lot of smiles and I hadn’t seen her smile in what seems forever.  It doesn’t happen around me and I have to accept that.  But it’s beautiful.

She was standing in front of a VW Bus.  Apparently, she bought it after we broke up.  I had told her that if she bought a VW Bus that I would leave her.  I’ve had nothing but miserable experiences associated with them: from car accidents to getting my head puked on.  They are stuffed with horse hair and they smell like horses.  I hate them.   She sucked it up and went without.

There were things I wanted, that she said no to.  I sucked it up and went without.

Seeing that picture of her was amazing, because she was standing in front of a big, bright shiny YES.  And her smile said, YES.  And I cried because I stared at that picture of her in her shiny moment of yes and thought about 12 years of NO.  When she and I had denied each other various things, moments and events because of our fear.

I was packing for the move last night and I had an item that I bought a long time ago that used to represent hope.  But it had been denied so many times, that I threw it away because I realized that now it represented rejection to me.  A symbol is a symbol, the hope is in me.  I don’t need to carry an albatross.  It was not an actual albatross.

We’re both engaged now.  I am so much happier.  I am practicing YES all of the time: to me, my new partner, my path, my potential, my healing, my art.  E and I say a lot of yes and we have a good plan, but that plan generally leaves room for whatever then next most awesome thing is.

I hope she’s also getting YES and giving herself yes.  I hope that smile isn’t just for the camera and is there a lot, because it’s beautiful.  I’m glad she got that bus.  And I’m glad that I’ve finally learned that it’s just a thing.  Just a thing and it’s far more important to make your partner feel heard and loved.  It was so much easier for us to react on our fear and shut the other one down.

That isn’t and can’t be my life anymore.  I am cultivating an expansive YES.  And that is really scary sometimes.

ever since June 3rd

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I’ve had an email in my inbox that I’m terrified to read.  Turns out I’m not the only one who writes about the pain of the church.  One of the other people wrote their story and emailed it to me.  And I’m totally gonna read it.  But I’m scared.

I guess, I feel that their pain will be more real if I read it.  Maybe, it’s easier to think that it’s easier to contain if I’m the only one talking.  Maybe it’s cause I’m a Leo.

A double click will keep my commitment.  I feel like such a hypocrite, publishing tomes of my memories and not being able to read theirs.  But when I was showering, I thought about something else.  It’s bigger than me.  I think that reading their story will make mine times two. And open an exponential door into a monstrous house of pain.

If I hurt this much and they hurt this much – and there were 40 families.  That’s just too much.  It’s too big.  I feel like it’s opening the front cover of a really big book.

I also feel like this whole thing is a mystery.  I hear so many stories about how the church ended, how it crumbled.  But I don’t know 100% because I’m the one who walked away.  I got disowned by my family and excommunicated, yes I engineered it.  And yes that played a big part in exposing a lot of the BS going on.  But I’ve learned there were so many other factors at play.

So, after walking away from rubble it’s scary to walk back in and excavate and see what really went down and what the damage was.

But, dang I feel like a hypocrite for not being able to read that email.

outside talking to the outside looking inside

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Recently, I had a phone conversation with somebody who is the best friend of one of the people from the church.  (You found my blog online.  Now you are in it… Hope you don’t mind…)

But she’s been friends with the woman from the church since before the church.  And she knew all of these things that had happened.  She knew people, names, had socialized with some of us.  She knew my mom.  I heard what it was like for her to be the best friend of someone in a cult.

How scary, it must have been for her.  She walked a delicate balance because she didn’t want to drive her friend away.  She was a delicate anchor.

It made me think of the person I met before I left the church who told me that what I was experiencing might be abuse.  She was very gentle.  She knew that if she came at me passionately that I was freak out and shut down and run away.  I am forever grateful for her intuition that helped me find a way out of the church.

It was amazing to hear her talk about it.  Validating in a lot of ways, because what happened was so weird.  And sometimes it feels like a bizarre dream that took up the first half of my life and haunts the second half.  She talked about the cult de sac where so many people from the church lived and how some realtor listed it as hot property because it always sold so fast.  They didn’t know all of the demand was driven  by a cult trying to buy into the same area, and that once the church was gone the demand dried up as the families dispersed.

She talked about one of the women in the church, who has a very special place in my heart.  But she saw a completely opposite side of her.  And of course she would.  Because she doesn’t know that that woman was my very first dance teacher when I was five years old and she’s the one that gave me the keys to my soul’s freedom.  She was also my brother’s first art teacher and although the Army crushed my brother’s arm, he’s still an amazing artist.

There was anger in her voice and that made sense too.  The same anger that is in the voice of a lot of my friends.  The anger of “WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO SOMEONE I LOVE”.

It was a good talk.  It was a hard talk.  I was proud of myself because when it got too triggery, I set a boundery and we moved on.  That for me is progress.   But, it really opened my eyes to the damage of the church.  The friends and family that were cut off from loved ones because of this cult.  Because of the spiritual abuse and the forced isolation.

I still have so much trouble reaching out to my blood family, because I see them as a them and not a me.  I am trying so hard to change that in me.  That and something called ambivalent attachment disorder, which is something you get when the people who are supposed to keep you safe do so only some of the time so it’s not reliable.

OMG TMI

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“Really, Suzi?  Wow.”

I’ve heard it a million times.

TMI!!!

I thought of this when I was blogging yesterday about what do you tell a client about PTSD.  What do you have to tell a client or a boss about a trauma, a disorder or a mental illness?  I don’t know.  Mine makes me kinda flippy outty and tactless and times.  There’s the crying.  People kind of notice.  There’s the good days where I’m not triggered.  Or the OK days where I can bottle it down into a nice little coal in my gullet.

But gullet coals aside…  Why the oversharing?  Why the saying too much?  It’s been hard on relationships because I’ll be out to dinner and the start a relationship with…”so the other day in bed…”  Keeping it classy.

So, I was thinking about it, and talking (too much jk) about it.  And then I went to therapy and danced and screamed about it, and it hit me.  Not literally.   But the cult maintained control over us by brainwashing us into over-confessing everything.  We were trained to tell every thought and every feeling, or we would feel awful-nauseous.  If we ever saw someone from the church and had a bad thought about them and didn’t tell them, it was a sin and we had to tell them before the next communion or it was like the sin was locked in forever.

By making us a self policing congregation it really cut down on enforcement.  Which is actually good business automation practice if you think about it-but back to the cult…

So, I am in pain if I allow myself privacy.  I feel like I am lying to you if I know something that I haven’t told you.  It’s misery.  And if you confess before something gets found out the punishment is somewhat lessened.  There is a constant paranoia scan in my head that is looking for wrongs committed…

So, this over-confessing still makes sense.  I’ve adapted it a little.  In the past few years, Ive been more jokey about it so that I can still make sure that I’ve said everything but in a jokey way so that I don’t get looked at like I’m a martian all the time.

I’m practicing privacy now.  Which is one of the reasons I’ve been so silent on the blog.  I’ve been evaluating again: what do I want to say?  Why do I want to say it?  What do I want to get out of this?

And so I don’t know that I know what I want.  But I know I have more to say.  And this is my forum.