Keeping the real peace

So, we've just gotten through the time of year during which family gathers and celebrates the warmth of the season. And most of the time, hopefully, that season is truly warm, and not a hot mess.

I think it can easily be said that every family has its dysfunction. Most of the time, we are all doing our level best just to "keep the peace" and go along. It's kind of what's expected from mature adults. Sometimes everyone walks away from the holidays unscathed, sometimes not so much.

Life in general is an awful lot like that, and usually, the dysfunctions and challenges we face with family and friends leave us with one simple choice: do we just go along, or do we choose to be who we are at the risk of upsetting the apple cart?

I grew up, as most of us did, in a household where the expectation was to keep your head down and not make waves. While I could arguably say that my household carried these ideals to an extreme, they aren't uncommon expectations. We're all expected to behave ourselves and not make trouble, and most of the time, I'm pretty sure that's a noble pursuit, or else we would all be in the midst of a lot of turmoil most of the time.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I think that some of us have spent so much time bending over backwards to avoid conflict with everyone else, that we tend to lose ourselves, and I'm not so sure that's fair or even as beneficial to the greater good as we are raised to believe.

I face this issue every holiday season, and I usually start thinking about it by the end of September. Since commercially we seem to nearly skip over Thanksgiving and go straight to Christmas, it's pretty hard to avoid thinking about the inevitable sooner and sooner every year.

My mom and I haven't spoken in almost four years, and I have a handful of relatives whom I work very hard to simply avoid for reasons that are deeply important to me. My break with my mother stems from the realization that, unfortunately, she just has a very toxic effect on me and has a habit of being very self-centered and vicious. It's difficult. As for my aunt and her children, I find it very difficult to be around them, because it usually means that I am witnessing them suck my grandmother completely dry.

It makes November and December especially difficult. Riding the "high horse" isn't something I do to intentionally make things hard or out of fun. I've had to find myself "in the saddle" because, sadly, I have tended to want to believe that I can "fix" things, and I am always proven even more sadly to be wrong. It took a great deal of my adult life to understand that you can't fix people, they have to want to fix themselves, and most of the time, they don't see anything wrong with how they behave, so why would they change a thing?

And since I can't stop trying to right the wrongs, I have often found that I allow myself to be harmed in the wake of those wrongs. I finally decided that I valued myself more than I valued the peace that came from just going along. It's actually quite hard to put yourself first. I feel guilty about it every year, because it means that I don't spend the holidays with anyone in my family, however limited they may be. I'm not loud or obstinate about it. I'm quiet and evasive. I haven't found a better way. This year has been no different.

As the birth of our daughter quickly approaches, I fear that all of this will become even more challenging. I have no doubt that our lack of contact hasn't managed to prevent my mother from knowing that my husband and I have relocated, and that we have a baby on the way. It would be nearly impossible for me to conceal these things forever. The question already has been raised whether I really intend not to talk to her about Willow. The truth is, she has been so toxic and hurtful, that I don't intend to talk to her about anything, least of all the precious little human that I would gleefully do anything to protect.

But it isn't really fair. All of this strife and avoidance means that I won't be able to as freely share our daughter with my grandmother, who was such an important part of my own childhood. I won't feel secure just dropping her off to spend a weekend playing in the kitchen or getting into mischief with the woman who would happily stop to pick up every box turtle between my home in the city and her house in the country. It makes me sad. And understandably, she doesn't understand the reasons why I stay away, and why I became so protective of myself. Until you've been very, very harmed by someone you trusted and loved, it's an impossible thing to relate to.

This year has been a very different one for me. I started off deeply and emotionally "in the red." Months of being battered and bruised by loss and turmoil led into more months of being battered and bruised by loss and turmoil. I've talked about it, but it bears repeating. I became the kind of person that not too many people wanted to be around. I lacked the wherewithal to find my own sense of grace many times. And without always realizing it, I was hurtful. It hasn't changed anything about the relationships I harmed, but the only pride I take away from this time period is that I take responsibility for who I was and I accept, though with sadness, the bad feelings I cannot change.

I like to think that's the difference between those of us who are toxic for a time, and those of us who can never see themselves through anyone else's eyes and are toxic at their core. I never expected anyone to shift or be different on my account during my toxic time, I was just too consumed in my own storm to find a way out.

Since realizing that there are people who have the ability to cause me immense damage, it has always been my choice whether to put myself in their paths or not. I've never been the person to be avoided, and I've never been in a position to observe when someone else is choosing how to get out of the line of fire. I understood why I had to "leap" out of harm's way, but until I recently saw someone else I love very much make a similar "leap," I didn't really understand what that sometimes means.

On the one hand, it means you just aren't willing to accept being abused by someone else, even if making that decision isn't the most comfortable choice for everyone else around. But I think there's a more important meaning--I think it also means that you have reached the point where being true to who you really are is more valuable to you than promoting a false peace. I realize it's not a fair price for everyone else in the mix to pay, but as someone who has been faced with that price for so many years, the person choosing is the only one who can say whether it's worth it or not.

I can't make the choice for my grandma that my aunt and her sons not continue to take advantage of her. I have to respect that she aids and abets their poor life skills and inability to support themselves, but I can choose whether I want to witness it or not, or have my child be a witness to it. I can't make my mom understand that being around her is exactly what I would want to do if she wasn't fixated on making herself the center of attention through hurtful and terrible actions that she can't ever take back, but I can choose not to allow myself and the family I am making to be the victims of what she has to offer.

They aren't easy choices. Life frequently doesn't give us easy choices.

I am fortunate. Though still a very tumultuous time, my own storms started to abate halfway through this year, and it is my great hope that all of the happy things that have presented themselves as the clouds finally cleared hold a lot of promise for the next year. Whatever the case may be, there is one thing I do know: out of all of the hard time, the peace that's returned to my life isn't the false kind. It isn't the kind that comes from people around me compromising themselves to accommodate me and my lashing out. It's the kind of peace that comes from having a handful of people who loved and understood that I wasn't going to be in that horrible place forever, and that I needed them all the more. It's the kind of peace that comes from owning who you are at every moment, no matter how terrible you may sometimes become when you find yourself in dire straits. It's the kind that comes from understanding that some people needed to protect themselves from me, and respecting that, even though it's hard.

So, while I believe that peace is a worthwhile pursuit, I suppose I can only accept the real thing. And sometimes the realest peace is the peace that comes from choosing what's right for oneself, over what appears to be right to everyone else.

It's time to begin, for real

So, there's no question I should be doing something else this morning. As we embark on our second move in just over three months' time, and Christmas looms, the next several days promise to be incredibly busy. I should be bubble wrapping something even as we speak, or at least putting something into a box. But as cable and the Internet will also be going away for the next couple of days, I thought I would take a little time this morning to put some words into a box.

While in general, this year has been a tumultuous one for my family and me, we find ourselves ending on some high notes, to be sure. Life gave us an "opportunity" to relocate and restart in a way that may not have been very welcome, but sometimes positive change doesn't come in a beautifully wrapped box with a ribbon that is too pretty to pull apart.

We started the year in "the winter of our discontent" to be sure. It's not as if 2013 was the beginning of hard times for the Blanchards, but I think we would both say that our faith in everything around us, except perhaps each other, was at an all time low. Things, especially hopes and dreams, seemed to be coming to an end left and right. I don't think we were always cognizant of how powerful the overwhelming sense of hopelessness had become in our everyday lives.

With the sadness of losses we could not calculate, failures we could not face, and unraveled relationships we could not rebuild, I never imagined that there was any hope of anything new coming our way. But almost six months ago today, I was proven wrong.

I had most certainly given up hope that there would be a little Blanchard to run around our home, but when we least expected it, or would have thought it a fantastic time, hope shifted. We were three weeks into Jeph's desperate job search, I was getting ready to start a new work situation, and our future was anything but certain. I guess that's when things could begin again.

Probably one of the few "angelic" moments in her little life.

In spite of the timing, and all of the crazy things that had happened, and were still happening, when I realized a baby was on the way, I somehow knew everything else would be all right. Suddenly, every sense of fear and uncertainty I had was erased. I do understand that I should have been scared shitless, but we had lost and given up so much, I guess there was just part of me that understood nothing was really up to us any more and we just had to go where life was taking us.

When dramatic things are happening, and redetermining your path, you don't always have time to understand or process them. We relocated three hours south of where we were at the beginning of September, and have found ourselves in one of the quietest places in existence. We have both been very used to a lot of noise. I assumed that I would have major adjustment issues--after all, for much of the last decade and a half, I have been a "runner" and "escape artist" when it comes to life, and now I live someplace that I finally don't feel like running or escaping from (and let's face it, during this pregnancy, I have hardly physically felt like running or escaping were plausible options most of the time).

Toward the beginning of our third month here, we finally started to feel like we should settle in, and we found a place to put down some roots. As we worked to buy our home, to start the process of furnishing it and making it a place we would be able to have company and raise our daughter, it started to occur to me that it was a very different feeling than I had experienced before. We had bought a home before; we had bought furniture before; and we had thought about the future, but not in any realistic or concrete way. When I look back at the last time we did these things, it's almost as if we were "playing at it."

As we circulated in and out of furniture stores, sitting on sofas and debating the merits of this or that purchase, all the sudden, I felt like we were just starting our lives together. That's a weird feeling to have at nearly forty-two, especially given the fact that we have spent the last twenty-one years together. This is hardly a "new" relationship. But as we have chosen every stick of furniture, as we have considered paint colors, and even whether or not to put a rug beneath our first real dining room table, a new relationship is exactly what we have.

Every part of our existence is indescribably new.

As a stay at home house Frau, I have a lot of time to think and reflect. I've probably spent more time thinking about this than I should, because occasionally I feel flashes of guilt about where we are--not in the sense that we are in a bad place, but that we were so busy doing other things that we never got to feel this newness in our lives before now. Maybe all of our running, traveling and doing had very little to do with how long it took us to get here, and this is just the natural order of things for us. We have always been odd by comparison to those around us. We have always approached our path very differently than everyone else our age. We have always done things our own way. People have frequently looked at our lives through green lenses, not realizing that we were looking at things through a kaleidoscope, not really knowing what direction we were going or what color we would see next.

There are more than a few things to be said for certainty and stability. I think we ran and escaped because we were afraid to make the wrong choices. That's probably the number one reason why we waited precariously long to have our daughter--leaving it to the nearly impossible last second. What if we got it all wrong? The fall out wouldn't just be on us--it would be on her.

In the last few months, as I have had time to be pregnant, and I have had time to think, I have become more acutely aware of my mortality than any time in my life. I am safer and more secure than I have ever been, and yet I am finally becoming aware that the thread has two ends. I think about our daughter and worry about being there for her for enough of her future to give her everything she needs. I worry about having enough of her myself. In one moment, I have not felt so young and new in forever, in the next moment, I have never been more aware of my age and its limitations.

Always before, I worried that choosing to have a child for the sake of having a child was a selfish thing to do just because you were trying to stick to a timeline. Now, I worry that choosing to wait until there was no time to waste was equally selfish.

What I expect to be norm.

Through technology, we have had the ability to see our daughter multiple times in the last several months. I already have memorized the shape of her eyelids, her lips and her nose. I love her grumpy expression as much as I love her serene sleeping face. And I assume when she looks at me for the first time, every new and old fear I have will be put in perspective. It's not for me to decide how she will view this new start in life that her father and I have made. It is for her father and I to love her everyday without thinking about how long we will have with her, and to hope that when she looks back on the time, she will think whatever that time has been, it was all well spent.

Ordinary Love--U2

Sometimes things have to get real hard to become real simple

So, in recent years, a lot of people have started to talk about things like "simplifying their lives" and "and getting back to basics." I've come to assume they mean things like downsizing homes, offloading responsibilities, cooking foods from scratch or only wearing earth tones. I never really thought about what these things might mean to me.

I haven't made it a secret that the last few years in the Blanchard household have been kind of tough, and that a lot of unpleasant, and unexpected things have happened. We certainly haven't been the only ones, but when you're in the thick of it, you frequently walk through your existence with blinders on. You can only take on so much, and when your plate is full of your own stuff, you start to be very choosy about the stuff from other people you can deal with, even if you care about them very much.

I would completely own that I reached a point where I was so overwhelmed by the complications and pain in my own life, that I found myself no longer able to fit anything else on my plate. I know that I lost friends as a result. It's not something I'm proud of, and I have found myself thinking about it more than a little bit lately. It's hard to reach out to people who are done reaching back. And in some ways, I have come to realize that these losses are the collateral damage of a war I was neither equipped to fight, nor successful at. Sometimes, things just can't be repaired.

A few months ago, I left a job I had been doing for fifteen years. I had been wanting to leave for a long while, but would never give myself permission. It brought a lot of unhappiness to my family. I had worked very hard, and I had been raised to believe that if I just did a really good job and worked very hard that I could achieve anything. That was naive, and it perpetuated a deep feeling of resentment when that belief was proven wrong. It was difficult to accept that in many situations, relationships are more important than values and work.

As the months that preceded my departure leveled more personal disappointments, my professional disappointments were also more difficult to ignore. My husband found himself looking for a job in a different location, and I found myself expecting a child and not even remotely interested in looking for the same work in a different place. I no longer believed that I could give what the work deserved, and I knew that many days, I was barely floating along. It's hard to accept a sense of failure in yourself, no matter how real or unreal that failure appears to others.

We ended up moving to a place where I know one or two people, but I spend most of my time at home with our dog. I have a handful of dear friends and a couple of family members who check in on me regularly. Until this move, I was used to talking to people all day long. It wasn't always easy. I'm an introvert by nature.

In the few months since our move, however, there is one person I see more often than ever, and whom I miss more whenever he isn't around--my husband. I knew that with his traditional schedule and with my very non-traditional schedule that we didn't spend much time together over the last fifteen years. For a great many of those years, I found myself to be a "runner," always looking for something to do and someplace to go. I found it very difficult to be satisfied idling. In retrospect, I think it's because in my free time, I was alone with myself, and I wasn't really happy in my own company.

When our lives truly reached the point of unraveling at the beginning of the summer, something in me finally realized I had no choice but to just let go. It was really hard at times. I'm not the kind of person who likes to admit that I can't change certain things--especially the minds of people who came to believe that I wasn't worth salvaging. What I didn't understand was that like any time that happens in life, there would be people who remembered, or learned who I was at my core and they would find something in me worth valuing no matter how hostile and "feral" I had become.

And even if there hadn't been anyone else, there was always Jeph. He came to be the only person who knew who I always was. He became the only person who accepted me at every single moment--broken heart and all. It was probably because (even though he wouldn't use the same words) his heart was broken too.

When we moved away from so many things and people we knew, I had no idea how I would adjust to being at home by myself so much of the time. Of course, there was the relief that I had finally allowed myself the decision to let go of something giant in my life that wasn't really working, but what would it be like to just hang out everyday? It is surprisingly simple.

A few weeks into this "experiment," Jeph came home from work and in one of the worst weeks of my pregnancy, I broke down. It would probably amuse most people to know that this break down was over food--specifically not being able to eat it, and getting sick cleaning up after it. I know he thought it was something more. He looked at me very pointedly and asked if I was really okay being here by myself so much of the time. Without reservation, I told him I was.

Other than knowing myself well enough to know how truly introverted I am, I also have come to know that the reason I am okay is because through some weird stroke of fate (or strokes, given all of the pot holes in life's road that we have come across), I finally have everything I ever needed.

No, I don't have an income, and I am slowly, but surely scraping the bottom of what I earned in the last weeks of my work. I may get out of the house once a week. I hear from a couple of people just about every week, usually via Facebook or text. And the only person I see everyday is Jeph.

But all of that is okay, especially the last thing--I get to see Jeph everyday. It seems that while everything else in my life seemed to sort of unravel, we are the one thing that became stronger. And in the months ahead, when I will be at home with our new daughter, and be even less able to get out and about, that one face I see everyday will quite simply and basically be even more important--if that's even possible.

Wild Honey--U2

Fifty years on: Losing Kennedy, and the looming regeneration of an icon

So this week happens to be the 50th anniversary week of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, as well as the 50th anniversary special celebrating that great British icon, Doctor Who.

As I have been watching multiple different television events commemorating the death of Kennedy, it has occurred to me that we still care about this tragic loss because of a common thread the late president shares with Who--hope and another chance.

For non-Whovians, that statement may come completely out of left field, but it wouldn't be the first time I associated two seemingly unrelated things with each other. After all, Facebook tells me that I use my left and right brain equally, and who am I to argue with the sound statistical data of such an important data mine field? I figure the equal usage of both sides of my brain gives me license to say just about anything with great authority.

Like many, I have always found myself fascinated by the almost Shakespearean history of the Kennedy family. Over the years, I'm sure I have watched dozens of programs poring over the so-called conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination, and who hasn't seen the Abraham Zapruder film of the event a hundred times?

This year feels a little different. I don't know if it's because I am expecting our daughter in just a few short months, but I suspect that has something to do with it. I've seen images of Jackie following the death of her husband hundreds of times. But this year, she looks different to me. This year, I see her as a person and not an icon. This year, I see her as a wife and a mother who has just had her entire world ripped away from her. And I think that's part of the reason why we still care about this loss fifty years later.

The Kennedys are an iconic and powerful American family, but John and Jackie, along with their children, were also a young family. They brought something new and fresh to the American table. John and Bobby were making strides towards increased civil rights. The Kennedy administration was profoundly interested in moving America forward in the realms of technology and innovation. And who could argue with the fresh faced beauty that Jackie brought to the White House? These people were young, interesting, progressive and beautiful.

In so many ways, they represented a bright new start. Now, it goes without saying that the perfection everyone saw didn't match up with the reality. President Kennedy was deeply flawed, both morally and physically. He was a well-known womanizer and the injuries he sustained during his military service left him in chronic pain and at times nearly debilitated. But in spite of the flaws, a nation wanted to believe in the light that he and his family projected. The destruction of that young family was a loss of innocence. And isn't the loss of innocence through destruction always the hardest loss to reconcile?

When I see the deep and unabashed sorrow present in Jackie's eyes, I see a pain that cannot be reconciled. The nation may have lost a president and an image, but she lost so much more. She held her husband in her lap as their future together slipped away. And as much as I love my own husband, I know that those moments, a part of her slipped away too.

And how does all of this associate with a fictional television character? That's a valid question.

Clearly, I wasn't around fifty years ago. While I am fascinated by the Kennedy legacy and assassination, my perceptions and thoughts about the Kennedys are truly from second and third hand accounts by the talking heads of television. There's a certain level of detachment that will always be present between myself and that 50-year-old tragedy.

As the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who approaches, it occurs to me that this Christmas is also fast approaching, and this year's Doctor Who special will usher in a new incarnation of the Doctor. I will admit to being a complete Janie Come Lately to this television franchise. The current Doctor has been my first Doctor, and you never forget your first Doctor. I was heartbroken when I lost Amy and Rory Pond. I know it will be even harder to lose Eleven.

If it's so hard to lose a fictional character like a companion or a Doctor, why latch on so hard in the first place? Hope and another chance. When the Doctor regenerates, we get a chance to experience a new hope and maybe even a new path for our universe. Every new Doctor is a new version of someone we have come to view as infinite possibility. This 900-year-old man lords over time and shows us that as linear as it seems to most of us, we have the ability to step out of line and see it from many different moments and spaces.

Who shows us that we cannot count on hope and our futures being hard and steadfastly tangible things. These things are more "wibbly wobbly."

And that is the reality of the Kennedy legacy as well. Hope and the light can be stolen at a moment's notice. We never know when our lives will be swept away. Some of us will be ripped away by violence. Some of us may be washed away by the waters of a devastating storm. While most of us will simply fade like distant stars over time.

It's hard to accept any loss, but those we experience without warning always seem to be the most unjust and irreconcilable. The senselessness of these losses often prevents us from being able to see the real picture, and to be able to focus on what was really there to lose in the first place. In the course of the last few days, someone speaking of the Kennedy tragedy made a very profound statement. I didn't know I was going to write about it at the time, so I don't recall who made the statement or the exact wording, but in a nutshell, they made the observation that we have spent so much of the last fifty years caught up in the idea of conspiracy theories and getting to the bottom of what really happened that terrible day in November, that we forget to focus on what we actually lost. We forget to focus on who Kennedy was, and the meaning and value of his presidency. Essentially, we have let a man or men--whatever you believe about the assassination--not only to kill a president, but to steal our ability to truly see him.

After fifty years, maybe it's time for us all to regenerate.

Saving yourself saves those around you.

So, I have been honored with an opportunity to do something new this week. I've been asked to speak to a group of people who are in the midst of some of the greatest struggles of their lives. Many of them are recovering from difficult chapters in their lives, in which they suffered abuse at the hands of someone they loved and trusted. Others are fighting the demons of substance abuse.

When I was initially asked to speak, I was taken aback. I wish I didn't know so much about domestic violence and abuse, but at the same time, when I thought of things from a superficial standpoint, I didn't think I knew anything about what folks coming out of substance abuse might be going through. How could I make a difference for people with such varied backgrounds?

The thing that kept coming back to me from my own experience was the fact that the central figure in any abusive or toxic situation is very rarely the only person being affected by the situation. I know that was the case for my sister and me. But while you're in the situation as the central figure, it's often pretty difficult for you to comprehend the level at which others are being affected, and it's often difficult to understand that just because you walk away, a part of what happened will always be with you and with those around you who are being impacted.

I usually don't have to work that hard to get through a day without dwelling on the past. Time has a way of putting enough distance between you and all the bad, that you can have long periods of time in which the past doesn't really find its way to your surface. And sometimes you forget that you weren't alone. I know that I've done that. I just didn't really think about it until this past weekend.

My younger sister came to visit with my nephew. I hadn't seen her in a long while. Inevitably when she visits, we end up talking about our mom, and often, we end up talking about many things from our childhood.

My sister is nine years younger than me. The most vivid memory I have of her in relation to the fighting in our household was the moment my stepfather laid her on the kitchen table so he could go after my mom. She was probably about six months old at the time. I remember her tiny form kicking and flailing on the table, and I was terrified she would fall off. To this day, I am dumbfounded at the sight of my infant sister on that table. I grabbed her, and we sought sanctuary together in my room. Over the years, that became a common pattern--the two of us holed up in my room together, praying to whatever might exist that this wouldn't be the time he actually killed her--or us.

After sixteen years, my mom had finally had enough. Sadly, it wasn't until my step-father tried to harm someone outside of our family. I guess somehow the threat to everyone in our household just wasn't quite enough incentive for us to leave or for her to get him out of the house.

Until this past weekend, it never occurred to me how much my sister was impacted by everything that happened in our house. I've been living my life and struggling through my own stuff--just like most of us do. She currently lives in the last house we all lived in together. She talked about the fear she has of the back end of that house, and the memories she has of him coming down the hallway while fighting with our mom. For me, all of the bad resides in the front of the house--probably because that's the area of the house where I suffered the most personal abuse. I'm fortunate that I will never have to set foot back in that house again, but my sister is within those walls every single day.

It really made me think.

Domestic violence is a horrible thing. When you hear or read about it, people often talk about "breaking the cycle." It seems like domestic violence is a history that many future generations find themselves doomed to repeat.  

My mom didn't marry this monster because she wanted to put herself or her children in jeopardy. She didn't marry him because he was the great love of her life either. She married him because she didn't think she could do better, and because she didn't think she could make it on her own. In retrospect, I'm sure that she regrets her choices. As is common in the cycle, it wasn't destined to be her only bad choice, and sadly, though I can recognize many things I can't blame her for within the cycle, many of her other choices have strained our relationship so greatly that we don't talk.

My mom bruises easily, and it was pretty frequent that she had to dress to cover bruises, or lie about the source of black eyes. I think many people knew the truth. And one of the greatest paradoxes is that my mom could see that others in similar situations should try to get away, but she couldn't see a way to do so herself. The fear of financial disaster and insecurity was so great, it was beyond her to consider that maybe being poor and scrambling to somehow get by was safer than the threat we lived under everyday. And unlike today, there were no safe havens. If you had no family or friends to take you in, you were basically screwed. The shelters and assistance available today are limited, and the organizations offering help often are financially challenged in ways that stretch the word "creative" to the max. My mom may have been too proud to seek the help of a shelter or organization like the one I will speak at this week, but because there was no place, all I can do is wonder.

When I think of those trapped within the cycle of domestic abuse or substance abuse, the easiest comparison that comes to my mind to help others understand what the situation is like, is what it must be like to be a smoker addicted to nicotine.

No one just decides one day that they want to smoke because of the harmful physical effects that smoking can have on the body. They also don't choose to smoke because they want to have their habit potentially harm those close to them through exposure to their second hand smoke. There's usually some other underlying social reason that those of us who don't smoke often can't relate to.

Smoking leads to many different physical ailments. The most obvious one being lung cancer. When you start talking about lung cancer, you have to realize that the conversation doesn't stop with lung cancer. It's invasive and it often spreads to other very important organ systems in the body--systems the body relies on for survival just as much as the lungs.

But even without the big 'C,' smoking is damaging. If you ever see a picture of healthy lungs, they are a nice shade of light pink with a smooth texture. Smoker's lungs frequently are gray, or even black and often have a mottled texture. I think many people are still under the false impression that if you stop smoking, the damage to your lungs heals and they return to normal. The reality is that much of the damage that occurs is permanent.

It's the ultimate Debbie Downer of situations. If quitting isn't going completely heal you, and if there's a chance that you will always be at risk for serious illness, what's the point of stopping? The bright side is that quitting smoking will improve your health and your life. You will breathe easier. You likely will be sick less often. If you decide to run a marathon, you are probably more likely to be able to do so without coughing up one of those damaged lungs. The sooner you make the choice to quit, the less damage you have done to yourself and to those around you.

People who don't smoke, and have never smoked, often offer smokers advice and encouragement to stop. Without meaning to, they can come across as being somewhat critical of those who find the prospect of quitting to be so challenging that they often have tried to quit multiple times.

Domestic violence and toxic relationships with substances are a lot like that.

Unless you live alone on an island, every bad situation in your life radiates beyond yourself. Just like lung cancer, what you do to yourself impacts those around you who are important to you. They could be your children. They could be friends or extended family.

The longer you are in the situation, the greater the damage to yourself and those around you. And while recovering from, and surviving these situations can help you heal, there are parts of you, and parts of those around you that will always be damaged.

People are often critical of those who find themselves trapped in such struggles. They often express difficulty understanding why a woman stays in a violent relationship. They think it's easy to check into substance abuse programs and overcome addiction. After all, surely these people know the harm they are causing to themselves and others.

But it's not simple. The first time my mom tried to leave was probably a year after she married my stepfather. She didn't have her own car and we didn't have a phone at the time. She dragged me in the rain in my pajamas across the street from our trailer park to a phone booth to call my grandma to come and get us. My grandma turned her down. We talked about leaving thousands of time throughout the years, but there was never a way. She didn't try again until the night I tried to run away my freshman year in college. I think seeing me desperate enough to jump out of a moving car may have caught her attention. Unfortunately, we ended up going back just a few days later. I don't have any experience with substance abuse, so all I can do is imagine that the struggle is similar.

People are quick to offer their opinions and advice about what people in such situations should do, but not many of them are quick to offer their help or any real support. It's maddening. If it was easy to do, I promise, those women would leave, and those who are addicted would break free too.

Most of the time, people in these situations have to struggle on their own. No one can make the choice for them.

But just like with smoking, if you find your way out of the darkness of domestic violence or substance abuse, you will feel better and your life will improve. It won't happen overnight, and some things are always going to be harder. Some things are going to quickly transport you to places you thought you'd left behind. But many parts of you will heal. You will breathe more easily. You will be able to do things you couldn't do before.

And you won't be alone. Everyone touched by your situation will get to come along with you.

Reporting rape and abuse: Inside the perpetual victimization

So, in the last week or so, I have been reading many of the Facebook posts about the plight of a young woman in Maryville, Missouri, who claims to have been sexually assaulted and left outside in sub-freezing temperatures, after sneaking out of her home, drinking and exchanging flirtatious phone texts with a boy from school.

What has struck me most about these posts are the comments by people who have either failed to read the entire story and understand what appears to have happened, and by those who are simply so filled with vitriol against women who come forward after being raped or sexually abused that they can't wait to say the most horrible and shocking things.

It makes me very sad. It makes me worry that the world is a terrible place in which to bring up a daughter. It makes me worry about my own unborn girl and the things she might face in her lifetime.

A small handful of people know the truth of what happened to Daisy Coleman on a cold January night in 2012. When I first heard the history of her case on Kansas City's Public Radio station a year or so ago, I was horrified for this girl and her family. There seemed to be more than adequate proof that something happened to her. It didn't make sense that the case against those she accused was dropped. She never even got a day in court.

People who fail to read or thoroughly understand the history of this case are quick to ask why the Coleman family has just come forward nearly two years later. Sadly, that's just the kind of ignorance the snapshot Internet perpetuates. Few people take time to carefully read information on the Internet, so they often overlook key bits of information. This isn't a new story. It's sad that people say things without any knowledge, but that's not a new story either.

The older story that bothers me most though are all of the people who say that she must be lying, that she is probably just angry at the boys involved and trying to get back at them, or that her mother should have been keeping a better eye on her or this wouldn't have happened to her. It's the same old mentality that follows so many sexually related assaults and abuse cases: somehow the victim is to blame for what has happened to her. It's not surprising that many of these naysayers are men, but it's shocking to me how many are actually women.

Whenever you read anything about sexual assault or sexual abuse, one statistic is so commonly thrown around, that I'm not even going to try to credit it with a source: one in three women are sexually assaulted or abused in their lifetime. Sometimes that statistic reads as one in three women report it, other times it reads just as one in three women are victims. Either way, that's one-third.

If one-third of men were sexually assaulted or abused, I think there would be more public outcry. And I doubt that they would so frequently be blamed. After all, they are not the "weaker sex."

I don't really know what happened to Daisy Coleman and her friend the night she ended up on the porch of her house for several hours in below freezing temperatures. Reports say that she and a friend had been secretly drinking in her room without her mother's knowledge and that she had been exchanging texts with the boy she alleges to have assaulted her. She and her friend agreed to sneak out of the house to hang out with him and his friends. One of his friends recorded part of the sexual encounter between Daisy and the boy on his cell phone.

A lot of people commenting on this ongoing story bring up the drinking, the lack of parental supervision and Daisy's appearance in photos. Many people are saying that she was drunk and confused and doesn't remember saying "yes." Many are saying that her mother should have been watching her more closely and that even if Daisy was assaulted, it was her mom's fault for not supervising her better. Others, disproportionately men, bring up the the number of false accusations made--again, this must mean that Daisy and her friend are lying. They talk about how bitter and angry she looks in photos--obviously this makes her a liar.

Under age drinking is a huge problem, but it is not exclusively the problem of women or girls who allege that they have been assaulted or abused. Under age drinking leads to many potentially dangerous things. But under age drinking is not an open invitation to being taken advantage of. The thing that the folks who feel Daisy was just asking to be taken advantage of because she didn't have the good sense not to drink are overlooking is that not only did this guy have sex with her--consensual or not--she was left outside in the freezing cold afterwards like something he was finished using. If we forget the possibility that Daisy didn't consent to the sexual encounter, can we at least agree to the inhumanity of leaving someone behind like a piece of garbage? If he was such an upstanding and decent young man, what mental break caused him to leave a 14-year-old girl out in the cold like that? If everything was on the up and up, wouldn't he have tried to get her into the house?

Every one of the folks who thinks Daisy's mom should have been watching her more closely has to be able to swear that they never got away with doing anything that their parents don't know about. I defy anyone to either claim that kind of perfection in themselves, or that kind of hawkish protectiveness in their parents. And even if her mom's supervision was lax, how does that equate to an invitation to take advantage of her daughter? That equation doesn't even make common sense. That's like saying "you weren't doing your job, so your daughter deserved to have her life devastated. Those are just the breaks."

As for the number of alleged victims who make false reports, I tried to research the percentage. Reports on the Internet vary from 2-8 percent of these accusations being false. It's a much harder statistic to pin down, but nowhere did I see a number over 8 percent. Lies of any kind are damaging, but when one-third of women are victims of sexual assault or abuse, I think that 33 percent trumps 8 percent as a valid rape or abuse defense for perpetrators.

As for how Daisy looks in photos these days.... People who have been assaulted or abused are bitter and angry. For anyone who has suffered such an act, the pain doesn't go away when the act is over.

I grew up in a violent home. My young single mother was afraid she couldn't take care of me on her own financially, and she married a batterer. I lived in fear of our lives for the entire sixteen years of their marriage. There was an unpredictable force in our home with easy access to guns. But hands around a throat, bulging temporal veins and fists were a pretty good source of influence as well. For about four years of that sixteen-year marriage, the unpredictable force fixated on me and I became a source of his escape and pleasure. This kind of abuse is different than a rape on multiple levels, but the feelings associated with it are the same.

While it was happening, I didn't tell anyone. I didn't try to fight. I didn't try to protest. I didn't care about myself. I was trying to protect two other lives in my house. Guns; hands around throats; bulging temporal veins; fists--these were all enough to prevent me from trying to help myself. My mom worked outside of the home, and was gone during the hours of the day that he was home. She wasn't watching me. She knew something wasn't right, but she didn't know what. Every time she tried to get to the bottom of the situation, there were the guns, the hands, the veins and the fists. The control he exerted over my life made me want to run away and escape. I wasn't even allowed to actively participate in school activities. I took opportunities to sneak away and do things without his knowledge. Inevitably, I got caught at many of these things--none of which happened to be drinking or any such outrageous things. And then, there were all of those deterrents. I didn't think I was asking for more abuse because I wanted to go roller skating with a boy, but according to so many ignorant people who think somehow sneaking around invites harm, I probably earned more abuse. I didn't stand a chance.

When he was finally gone from our lives, the overwhelming sense of relief I felt was akin to euphoria. As soon as I was free, I knew I was free to do the right thing--to try and make sure that he wouldn't be able to perpetuate these acts against my younger sister, or anyone else. We reported the crimes (because they were crimes), and we pursued justice.

As everything began to come to light, I lost a huge chunk of my family who just couldn't believe me, because I was now "damaged." My aunt actually said that she wasn't surprised about what had happened to me, because as a child I had always treated every guy she dated like a jungle gym--as if to say that somehow I put off a vibe that I was "available" for these kinds of acts. In a courtroom, I was forced to recount everything that had happened to me and the time frame. I stumbled over dates when my step-father's attorney was cross-examining me. He seized on this stumble, which rattled me even more than I was already rattled. I was 20 years old, and coming out a psychological internment camp. Things had been happening for so long, I could barely keep track of dates. Because every material possession I had was under his watchful eye, and was subject to search and seizure, it never occurred to me to keep a diary or log of events. Dates didn't matter. I didn't matter. I only set down onto paper the events of the preceding years the day I decided that instead of going to my college freshman English class I was going to drive off a cliff instead.

The relief I felt at being able to finally let go of the pain was soon replaced with the bitterness and anger that I had suffered this abuse for years and was now being subjected to ignorance and hate from people who were supposed to care about what happened to me.

Rape and sexual abuse are acts perpetrated by individuals who need to feel power over their victims. It's not about sexual pleasure, unless they get that from the power they feel. When that control was removed, I colored my short blond hair nearly purple. I wore clothes that were more in line with what most women my age were wearing--I showed a little skin. I lost the forty to fifty pounds I had gained my first year in college when my fear of dying had been at its highest. I probably did look kind of bitter and pissed most of the time--because after being abused for years, the rest of the world seemed to want to join in. It did make me bitter. It did make me angry. I defy the normal person not to feel and look the same way. But then people who have had these acts perpetrated against them often aren't "normal" anymore.

I don't know what really happened to Daisy Coleman and her younger friend. The only people who do know for sure are the people who were there. But I know how such acts shatter you and splinter you into pieces you don't know if you can ever put back together. I know about the frustration of looking for justice and being slapped in the face, either because the events are hard to put together in your broken mind, because what happened to you wasn't quite bad enough, or because the statute of limitations on the crimes had run out. I know the frustration of looking for peace and hoping for understanding from family, friends, and law enforcement, and meeting with cold shoulders and ignorant unkindness.

The thing about the attention this two-year-old case is now receiving that scares me the most is the impact it may have on victims. When victims observe the attacks on the character of these young women and these families, they might think twice before seeking the justice and healing they need for themselves to simply survive. Who wants to be raped and abused, and then be metaphorically be raped and abused again? The pain of the acts are horrible enough. The pain of reliving them when necessary to file reports and testify in court is challenging to be sure. But the pain of being doubted, disrespected, blamed and sometimes publicly reviled is almost as bad or worse than the original crime. 

In a few short months, I will be the mother of a little girl. She will probably bump her head on the coffee table while I am distracted fixing dinner. She will probably ask to do things I won't give her permission to do, and will try to get away with them from time to time. She will probably make mistakes like drinking before she's 21. But even when all of those things happen, she will never ask for or deserve to be sexually assaulted or abused by anyone. My heart would break if she somehow became "one in three," but if she ever does, her father and I will cry on every mountain top for the justice and dignity that every human, regardless of gender, deserves.

Nobody asks to be raped or abused. Nobody.

Why Miley Cyrus is "man's best friend."

So, most people are probably watching the virtual cat fight playing out between Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor with mild amusement and the normal rubber neck interest of watching a train wreck. There are certainly many more important things going on in the world besides the swipes these two women have been taking at each other via the Internet and Twitter. After all, there's a government shut down in America, there's a tropical storm brewing in the Gulf Coast, and the usual strife and mayhem that plays out in violent regions throughout the rest of the world doesn't rest. What could possibly be important about Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor?

Even so, I found myself thinking about them this morning and was unable to stop.

Probably around twelve years ago, I had the opportunity to see Sinead O'Connor perform live during a Lilith Fair. She wasn't the artist I was going to see, but she was the artist that left me with the most lasting impression. Up until that point, I hadn't really given her much thought. Sure, "Nothing Compares 2 U" was one of the most powerful ballads ever performed by a woman, but it essentially made her a "one hit wonder" in the States and little more. I was a freshman in college when she appeared on Saturday Night Live, and had the audacity to tear a picture of the Pope in half during her performance. I was caught up in a lot of my own problems at the time, and admittedly, I really didn't understand her message, and paid it little mind. That said, when she, in all of her diminutive stature belted out the lyrics of "Fire On Babylon" on the stage at Lilith Fair, everything clicked into place for me--just like a key in a lock.

I really can't say anything about how Miley Cyrus has moved me, because I really don't know how she has managed to "move" anyone--not even an infant after a bottle of formula.

But the reason I couldn't stop thinking of this "tiff" between these two women has nothing to do with what I think of their personal talents, or lack thereof, it's about the tug-of-war that plays out among women in our society as a whole.

Sinead O'Connor ripped a photo of Pope John Paul II in half on Saturday Night Live as a protest against the prevalence of abuse within the Catholic Church. She did this about a decade before victims began to come forward in droves, and the magnitude of the issue was no longer a secret the Church could keep.

I think that's important. And nothing against PJPII personally, but I think it was the right thing for someone to do.

When I think of Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor, I think not just of two different women, but two different types of women. They come from two very different sources of power, and as a woman, I find myself thinking of what those sources of power mean.

In 2002, my husband and I took a trip to Ireland and found ourselves staying at a castle where "Tristan and Isolde" was being filmed. It was very exciting for us. I knew nothing of the story, and found myself wanting to learn more as I anxiously awaited the release of the film here in the States. I found myself reading a series of books by Rosalind Miles, and aside from the superficial story of the tragic romance, I found myself caught up in her underlying theme of women as a source of spiritual and political power.

As a woman who had often felt pretty powerless, the idea of the feminine as the seat of power in society was more than a little intriguing and attractive to me. I wanted to know more. A friend of mine was more well acquainted with these ideals and recommended "Women Who Run With the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, which explores women as the seat of power in multiple archetypal settings within various cultures and societies.

Long adrift in the world of spirituality, I felt I'd found a little corner of home. I found myself interested in learning more about Celtic mysticism and paganism, not because I shunned Christianity or patriarchal religions at the time, but because these other paths offered a warm embrace to a woman who needed to take back power she had never had.

Several years ago, another friend recommended the book "The Goddess vs. the Alphabet: The Conflict Between the Word and the Image," by Leonard Shlain. At the time, I read it because my friend was a published author and I wanted to seem smart and like I could keep up with the conversation. I wasn't that smart, and that conversation ended long ago, but Shlain's message still haunts me, and it was his message that kept me thinking about Miley Cyrus and Sinead O'Connor this morning.

In this work, Shlain also examines the history of women as the seat of power. As the source of life and the promise of the human species' continued existence, women were traditionally, and naturally in positions of power over men. With the introduction and predominance of written language, there was an essentially tectonic shift between the roles of women and men in Western society. The masculine embraced the word, and the feminine became the foul, unwashed and unclean. The feminine required the masculine to guide and dominate. And dominate they did.

As a lover of the written word and language, this concept was a startling and heartbreaking revelation to me. But when I looked around me in my personal life and the wider world, my heartbreak did not make the concept any less valid. Sometimes the truth hurts.

And that is why I was thinking of Miley and Sinead this morning.

In the millenia that have passed since the introduction of written language, and since the shift of power, women in most cultures that have embraced language have become dominated by men. Our marriages, our bodies, our childbearing, our livelihoods, and in many cases our very existences have become primarily dependent upon the whims of men.

We need to take more than a sideways glance out the gods we create.

I grew up in a home of violence and abuse, as did my mother before me. The "man of the house" was entitled to whatever he wished to take. Any objection or protest resulted in further abuse and domination.

I think that's why I always found myself searching for a spiritual home, but could never feel secure in one that was so heavily dominated by the masculine. I'd never been able to identify a sense of love or safety in a father's hand, whether in corporeal form or spiritual. And so many years after the fact, that's why Sinead O'Connor tearing that photo of the Pope is so important to me, and why Miley Cyrus' photo should be torn right along side it. She is the very representation of the "father."

You see, at close to the same age as Miley Cyrus, Sinead O'Connor shaved her head too, not to shock, but to take away the power of men. She shaved her head to thwart men from using her as a sexual object for financial or exploitative gain. She wore clothes. She sold herself, not on the merits of her nearly naked body, but on the merits of her powerful voice. And when she told the truth, she was shunned and outcast for it.

Miley Cyrus represents, for me, the lie. She represents the lie that women can only take back their feminine power by thrusting their half naked bodies to the world. She represents the lie that you can't be understated, intelligent and talented if you want to be successful. Sadly, more times that not, the Cyrus lie wins--but only for a time. I say only for a time, because there are a string of shriveled up, used up, half naked women along side the road of power and success that thought the only way to get where they wanted to go was to be quirky, half-witted and "likable" (i.e. non-threatening, non-thinking). It has, at times, been a hard lesson for me to learn, but there are many ways to define success. For me, it has become defined not by position, not by financial gain or fortune, but by being able to look at myself in the mirror and not feel the need to blacken the eyes of the person staring back. All because I wasn't willing to be something other than who I really am for all of those other lies. That has value to me.

Sadly, as women, many of us are fine with all that the "Cyrus lie" perpetuates, as long as we don't perceive ourselves to be challenged or harmed by it ourselves. But what we fail to realize is that we are all harmed by it. Many of us see the quiet, deep thinkers among our peers as the enemy, choosing instead to keep falling into the same power trap. We fail to support each other during difficult times, because it's easier than meeting real challenges and burrowing deep inside our own spirits. We judge each other for falling down in a society that has quite frankly pushed us down to prevent us from tearing pictures of the Pope.

When those of us who strive to reclaim ourselves and our place, make the mistake of reaching out to those of us in plastic underwear and with little sense of self, we are ridiculed and maligned.

The writing may not be clear on the wall for many of us. The power of the plastic pants may be the shiny thing of a society that believes it's easier to keep women low if they are held up as the dirty and used shells of a drunken weekend. But as a woman who prefers the company of wolves, I know that in 20 years, I will remember the banshee wail of "Fire on Babylon" long after plastic pants girl is done "just being Miley," whomever that actually is.

Fire On Babylon--Sinead O'Connor