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Thu 07/17/2008
Sad Way of Seeing
Topic: Making Decisions
A victim attending SNAP this year said to me: "I already know everything I need to know. I don't want to know more." It was a strong reminder that this attitude isn't just in professionals who are unable to learn from people with more experience in looking at the complex issues. It's also there with a lot of victims. One of the ditches. It's vital that we all continue looking outside the box at EVERY issue in our lives. To see the shadow and the spots where we need to make improvement. When we believe we have "all that we need to know" about anything and aren't looking toward sources that challenge us, then we arrive where there truly is no hope. Learning and growing is a life-long commitment. One we must renew each day, whatever we are doing. The absence of this desire is to join the stagnation of the average person.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Wed 07/16/2008
Finding the Courage to Talk about the Spiritual Transformation
Topic: spirituality
It's a well-known fact with those of us who do this work.....victims and wounded messengers who have acted as advocates can become thrivers. Yet doing so inevitably requires one to have experienced the depths of despair at the inadequacy of their old "faith." They have come to a new spiritual maturity that transcends the need for institutions in the maintainance of that faith. Some choose to stay attached to institutions that show their own immaturity and self-serving traits, while also demonstrating a great capacity for serving others and slowly learning (in some situations) to do a better job at dealing with their own demons. Or they may choose to stay in order to be a "thorn in the flesh" and to have a voice that can still be heard bouncing off the walls, even if the message isn't discernible to most. Thomas Doyle captured this phenomenon so well. He was the speaker with whom I most identified. Doyle is a priest and canon lawyer who sounded a clarion call in the Catholic Church, just as I did in Southern Baptists, more than 20 years ago. He's written and spoken volumes about the abuse in Catholic circles. Some might think he has retained his old faith. Not so! He has kept important portions of it, however, as he has matured. Not the old theology, but some of the meaning that can be gleaned from gems that are still ringing truer than ever--like the need to be a follower in speaking truth, the need to have a deep relationship with God as we understand God to be. He spoke so eloquently and boldly the words that would be heresy to most people of any faith group except for the most liberal. I spoke to him briefly and later dialogued by e-mail, telling him that it was ironic that he and I had come to the exact same conclusions, from very divergent backgrounds! That's the beauty in this work. That's the community that is built, even though we come to the same place from very different paths. We meet as voices with clearer visions, working toward developing clearer ones.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 9:16 AM CDT
Tue 07/15/2008
Removing the Sword
Topic: coping
The most practical speaker at SNAP this year may have been Angela Shelton, a comedian, model, and filmmaker who is also an incest survivor. She spoke from her heart, sometimes had us laughing, even as every person in the room somehow identified with the "sword of trauma" that has been inflicted from the shock that abusers and colluders have placed through the very core of so many. For the majority of people at SNAP, that core would be synonymous with the "soul." Angela talked about the process of removing the sword. How it causes one to experience more pain and suffering the longer it stays and how the sword also causes pain and suffering for others as long as it remains embedded. She also showed the reality that so many have difficulty even imagining. The reality that, by confronting the trauma, doing the grief work, and finding ways to resolve the pain through the internal work of removing the sword, one can be freed from the entanglement with it, find healing for the wound. So that the unthinkable can occur. The illustrations that had been flashed across the large screen, always showing the sword embedded or being pulled out of oneself, were suddenly transformed into a person who was empowered because the sword was now useful. The sword, in other words, had become a tool. Not a tool that would be used to destroy others or attack others in anger or offensive behavior, but one that would become proactive at impacting the world in ways that the individual is capable of doing. Angela talked of exchanging the sword for tools that do not sabottage one's happiness nor treat others as enemies. Yet, instead, as a means for transforming ourselves and the world. Through the arts. Or perhaps just through healthy conversation as we seek to create communities that are healthier and safer. Communities that are full of soul.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Mon 07/14/2008
In Chicago
Topic: spirituality
Today, I'm returning from Chicago, where I've spent the weekend with a dear friend who has done a tremendous job of advocacy in a church there a few years ago. Along with another dear friend who is travelling with me and attending the same conference--the annual international conference of SNAP. I'll be back with a new vein of writing tomorrow. For much of this conference is about spirituality in spite of the trauma of abuse and collusion with it, dished out by people of the "faith" community. That I sometimes refer to as "the fear community." As always, conferences like this are more inspirational because of the people I meet who are attending. Even more than the inspiring speakers. See you tomorrow.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Updated: Mon 07/14/2008 10:48 PM CDT
Sun 07/13/2008
Preferring the Desert
Topic: spirituality
In the early years of my own struggle to get free from ties that bound me, I kept thinking that I'd left but would very much prefer to get out of the "desert" and go back to "Egypt" at times, where things were predictable for me. Economically, socially, psychologically, and spiritually. Not stable, but predictable. There's a big difference. Sometimes we think things are stable when they are only predictable. Having predictability isn't the same as having health and strength. Keep moving forward. Toward the unpredictable. If that's what you need to do in order to be healthy and strong.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Sat 07/12/2008
Songs that Respond
Topic: music
I guess the mother bird with new babies, in the little house on my porch, wasn't feeling much like singing one afternoon last week. Suddenly she found a reason! It came as a surprise to me and to the teenage boy on my piano bench, a student of mine who plays reasonably well now. So that I really look forward to what he's going to do each week instead of wonder, as with beginning students who come unprepared to lessons, if I can endure the torture! The piece took him into the upper registry of the keyboard (where sounds of birds or music boxes can easily be achieved by a skilled pianist). He was delighting me, when I suddenly realized that I wasn't the only one who was jubilant! Yes, the mother bird seemed to have gathered friends to see her babies. I glanced out. Then immediately called attention to Brian, who had finished his first playing of the assigned piece. We smiled as the mother seemed to be teaching her babies to sing! Just for a minute or less before their song stopped as quickly as it had started. Brian began playing again. Only when he reached the second movement of the piece--up in the higher registry--that the outdoor chirping began and increased in volume until it matched the intensity of music that the fingers on the piano were managing to achieve! We had so much fun, repeating the exercise of waiting and stimulating the song several times before deciding to invest our time on another part of the lesson. Forever, I hope I'll remember the little birds. They didn't seem to care what the source of the music was. They recognized it as being something they wanted to join, and found a way to fit right in--inspiring me to remember that sometimes I'd do better to imitate the birds.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Fri 07/11/2008
Bird Songs in the Morning
Topic: music
This morning, when I awoke about daybreak, there was only one bird calling in the woods near my window. A woods that's filled with birds. That bird called and called, getting no answer for at least a half hour. Just now, I heard some chattering. And a few minutes earlier I heard chirping that I deduct came from the little bird house on my front porch, where chickadees have made a home for the babies that will soon move to the trees nearby. In my way of thinking, these creatures have little to sing about. Yet they don't need a lot. That's the key, I'm certain. That's why they sing their greatest anthems right after big storms. For it's just the storms that are large enough to even alarm humans inside of the protection of strong houses, that heighten the fears of self-sufficient birds. Self-sufficient because they know that they can be content with so little. What teachers! If only I have ears to listen. To their songs AND to their wisdom.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Thu 07/10/2008
A Different Perspective on a Little Mouse
Topic: Making Changes
About that little mouse in my kitchen Sunday morning, the one that freaked me out, and got my husband up to clear the kitchen floor so I could finish cooking breakfast...... Haley (age 6) and Kellyn (4) were quite concerned when they found the beloved creature out on the patio, where Grandpa had him trapped until he could "take care" of him. Seems these little girls wanted to play with him, as they have with the little white mice at school. Their father (my quick-thinking son, of course) rallied to explain to me why they were in love with this wiggly varmint that had sent me flying in terror. Explaining that very quickly just before he explained to his daughters why this mouse wasn't the same as the little white mice they'd befriended. All because of where he'd been and what diseases he might be carrying. Not a logical explanation to 4-year-old Kellyn, she still wanted to feed him. And when our backs were turned, the mouse managed to somehow escape. Though not before their father re-captured the suspect and placed him in a safe place for Grandpa to "take care" of after our little visitors were on the road, headed home. So maybe it's not some archetypal message. Maybe it's more about how we acculturate our kids with things that harmless and delightful, while undertaking the tricky task of teaching them when those same things (or creatures or people) aren't harmless under certain circumstances. All while allaying the fears of someone as illogical as I am, sometimes unable to distinguish the difference between a little mouse and a monster. All for reasons I still do not understand.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 12:01 AM CDT
Wed 07/09/2008
Freaking Out
Topic: Making Changes
I can't explain what I did Sunday morning. Maybe you can. As far as I can figure out, my gut reaction came with me as my first cells were forming. I don't remember anyone teaching me to be instinctively freaked out by the little creature that I almost stepped on with bare feet, while cooking a batch of pancakes. In our country cottage, mice are not strangers. Though, fortunately, they come around a lot less than they did when we bought to place. Ron had even warned me that he thought there was one behind the frig that he was working on catching. I forget quickly these days, especially when I'm preoccupied with cooking pancakes. I don't remember ever before making the exact screeching sound that came out of my mouth as I bounded out of the kitchen, into the dining room, with pancake turner waving. Only the little rabbits, bounding across our yard, can bounce on their hind feet like that! All because of a relatively harmless little mouse who would be much more endangered than me, if I stepped on him. Maybe much bigger creatures, who looked like mice, really did endanger my ancestoral grandmothers, generations ago. Just as they have instinctively taught me to respect some institutions without questioning, teaching through attitudes that came down to me without even much speaking, it's possible that they also passed down this archetypal tendency to be as petrified at the site of a mouse as the little rabbit who thinks he has seen a monster when he sees one of my grandchildren trying to get near him because they love him so. Hard to say.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 6:12 AM CDT
Tue 07/08/2008
Blaming the Seed
Topic: spirituality
My husband Ron shared with me, just this morning, what he is preparing in a sermon. I'm going to take it to a place that is applicable for this blog. He said that we can't blame the seed if it falls in the wrong place--like stony ground. That really took me to a much deeper place than I've ever gone in the "blaming the victim" or "shooting the messenger" concepts. When we talk about concepts, we are always talking about something even more difficult for hearers than telling an awful story or sharing facts about a person. It's the concepts that must be confronted in order to really make change. Most people stay on the surface, just talking about the issue of concern at best. Or the story. Or the people involved. When you start challenging ideas that prop up oppression (and that's what abuse is really about, along with a lot of other phenomenon that lead to the abuse of groups).....when we start challenging the ideas, then we REALLY have trouble. It helps to understand, however, that it is not really the facts or the story or the people that are the problem. Those are the surface problems that people do not accept. It's the bigger ideas that must be challenged, the ideas that make most people run for the hills. The problems that, I'm convinced, some resistant people know well in advance must be challenged before we even suggest that they might. So ideas get shot to bits. In the process, so do the hearts and minds and souls of people. Unless those "sowers" remember that it's the seed that isn't the problem. Yet IS the problem that upsets people so much. When that gets straightened out in the mind of the messengers, then they wear a bullet-proof vest. And can go on sowing and smiling and speaking, with heads so far above the clouds that the bullets hardly even sting the skin! After all, seeds don't cry. Nor feel pain.
Posted by Dee Ann Miller
at 7:25 AM CDT
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