Before I Knew……

July 10, 2018: 

Reflections on how my “trying” to manage a power and sex abuse experience in my life (circa 1990) through filing an Ethics Complaint against my former psychiatrist mentor, Martin G. Groder, M.D. is changing certain ways of my being in the world, greatly enhancing my ability to self-define.

Before I knew how to effectively challenge the dark side, I had, at least, learned how to leave it.  Leave the Dark Side in others, that is. But still there was the Dark Side of me that was, paradoxically, the leave-taker. 

People do not, generally, give ample respect to warrior aspects manifest in passive or passive-aggressive ways. However the Dark Side Warrior employed in this manner can be no less lethal than its more aggressive counterpoint while its more Compassionate counterpart is as loving and devoted as is Mama Bear to her cubs.

I wrote the piece below "before I knew" of the situation that led to the filing of my Ethics Complaint. Today, however, I am reviewing this article, adding some updated perspectives, especially on the Cost Of The Quiet, the self-protection mode of leave-taking I had typically used, up until the past decade or so as my main mode of personal defense.

I want to contemplate this aspect -- leave-taking/withdrawal from others rather than giving voice, authentically, to who and what one is, what is experienced and what is felt -- and add to what I have written here. 

This former method of self-protection pales for me, especially these days, as I come up against the obstacles placed in front of me, pursuing my Ethics Complaint with the ITAA, the International Transactional Analysis Association. Throughout this ordeal, almost from the very start, I have constantly encountered what I perceive to be one sabotage of my well-being and justice after another through the various forms of their resistance to handling my grievance.

However, not even once did I consider turning away. Instead I have been a true Compassionate Warrior Woman all the way, my Self my greatest Beloved in this instance.

Yahoo! This situation warrants careful review and consideration, all on the way to me celebrating me!

While I pursue this contemplation of mine, have a happy day. It is beautiful out here, today, on the mountain although a bit humid.)

Original article begins below.

Before I knew how to effectively challenge the dark side, I had, at least, learned how to leave it.  

By that time I could go a good bit farther than my little bike could have taken me. In that I found my saving grace. But leaving, rather than staying to fight, had its costs and its consequences.  Yet, perhaps, asserting my freedom to leave a culture behind, built on the foundations of darkness, is the first lesson I learned from Watergate. 

I am reflecting on that today, as I look out my office window at the chickadees frolicking on my window screen, playing their aerial games on and around the bird feeder, swinging just beyond, sunshine on leaves turning from green to gold in the distance.

Tranquility and peace must also have come, eventually, of my leaving behind a culture that was pulling me into my own Dark Side to cope with it. 

But my introduction to peace and tranquility, as an alternative lifestyle to the darkness my D.C. fast track ways were drawing me into, came a long time later. I, definitely, had to grow into that state through immense discipline and determination. But I had pledged to not sink in, ever again, into my own darkness. Not if I could help it!

I had made a start and if it was tempting me, I needed to, at least, reach out for the many safeguards against further falls I had created  to protect me, to help me turn back from my shadow self.

This, of course, is the “power with” path I had not known, at all, in an earlier time. The way one must go when the personal “power to” and the “power within” cease to be enough. This way, of course, is a life-long practice; the staying out of one’s own personal darkness; the dark side is always there, in the not far off distance, beckonging for your return.

The battle, however, is well worth the effort, if you know what I mean!

(My recognition of the power it takes to hold off the darkness and the enormity of the just rewards, I believe, is much of what I heard in the story I introduced in my article “On The Magic of Storytelling." I will look forward to sharing more of the story I heard that day in what, I believe, will be New Horizons first submission to our StoryCorps/Official New Horizons Small "Zones Of Peace" Storytelling Collection.

Wherever the "power of the one,” or the collective can win against the Dark Side, there is cause to celebrate!)

Yesterday, as I struggled to find my way out of the personal dark spaces the Harvey Weinstein scandal has uprooted in me, I was fighting, once again, to find my way through to the Light. Definitely the path ahead was for the better though I don’t always feel better yet. As many others do, also, I hope for a new world order, at least in my own backyard for starters. But I don’t know it yet, so there is still fear and doubt.

You see, although, I am now far away from the drama of the Hollywood's present expedition to find the slimmest glimmer of Light in all that darkness, #Metoo is very much present in my daily life. For darkness drains Light and the battle to regain the latter, the Light, is hard won. 

Personally, what is now happening in Hollywood that is spreading, thanks to the beautiful Goddess presence of many women throughout our country, has pushed me to write long overdue letters to my children regarding the sexual abuse I experienced within our family and the family secrets, collusions and conspiracies that had, to date, kept me silent. 

Struggling, as I was yesterday, to find the Light, while still feeling despair over what has occurred over many years, I found these words of Native American wisdom by Jamie Sams in her book that I have long cherished , The Sacred Path --

"The shadow side of self, which inhibits growth, is constantly forced to die. These deaths occur on a daily basis, whether they be our fears, our doubts..., our self importance. ….Every death of a part of the shadow announces the birth of a new...gift… Each victory over a part of self that does not Walk in Beauty is a rebirth in itself."

There is so much I know now about the Dark Side of society and politics. I had only opened my new eyes that day in the recovery room when my prophecy helped me begin, for the first time, taking what would become, over the years, a studied look at it, guided by something and from someplace on high I had never known before that changed the course of my life forever after.

So now I know a few choice things I am here to share: 1. I know how and why presidents (other politicians, Hollywood producers, doctors, lawyers, rabbis, husbands, fathers etc. etc.) can lie and manipulate – and – many people not only believe them, but enable them; 2. I know how to get out of this blindness trap for myself; 3. I know how to guide other people to surmount that trap too; and 4. I know how to keep myself distant from the darkness.

But I still don’t quite yet know how to always come out of the darkness of others unscathed, as people who wish to do harm usually mean to do it!

One thing gives me hope, however. The same as it is now doing for countless other women. 

I know, now, that I am not completely alone, bearing the many burdens power and sexual abuse and the collusions, conspiracies and the enabling of these that are imposed on women. 

Perhaps there may even be new ways in the future to not only fight these off, but more and more people, including men, to take care to believe women and protect our rights!

For this, I join in with many with prayers, hoping, that perhaps there will be, sometime, in the not too distant future, a safer, more loving, caring culture within which to live and raise our children, especially our girls.

#Metoo