Art image: Coyote Invents Himself, from Rick Bartow’s exhibition, Things You Know But Can’t Explain
When you grow up as a scapegoat, you’re made to question your own mind, your own experiences.
You’re gaslighted when you’re mistreated.
People say huh? Why do you need an apology? Just stop being angry and forgive!
I would love to quote Vera Hart MD PHD from her Substack, “Withdraw your respect”
Society Confuses Power with TRUTH
Behind closed doors, the power of the family or the nonprofit takes another shape
- Gaslighting
- Withholding
- Triangulating
- Redefining your reality
- Shaming your boundaries
They think anger must be dangerous and calm must be clarity
But it is not, actually. Anger is clarity.
The predator is often calm, because they’re not the one bleeding
Their clarity is not wisdom. It’s strategy.
Their confidence is not care, it’s control.
Your chaos, or collapse? Your anxiety? It’s not weakness. It’s the body’s wisdom when truth has been violated.
- If your truth was erased
- If your mind was manipulated
- If your emotions were used against you,
Withdraw your respect.
Not out of hate. But out of sacred protection for your truth.
Stop believing their opinion of you still matters
Sop waiting for them to “come around”
Stop giving weight to the silence, stories or justifications they offer.
Because here’s the truth that most survivors are never told
You cannot rebuild yourself by seeking recognition from the person who dismantled it.
And this goes for abuse apologists as well
“But the nonprofit sector is so integral and we have to keep supporting it!”
“haha we all wish we could make more here, but it’s just not possible”
“It takes two to tango-”
These are not neutral statements
These are weapons disguised as empathy
When someone chooses the comfort of the abuser’s reputation over the truth of your pain, they have chosen power over reality.
Withdraw your respect.
You don’t owe anything to those who watched you suffer and asked you to smile anyway
They chose comfort over truth.”
Betrayal by your family becomes the norm. Betrayal by the nonprofit sector becomes the norm.
You don’t have to forgive them. But remember the pain they gave you. And know that it was better to notice it, and stay with the pain, than go back to sleep and get hurt again and ask “why am I hurting?”
People expect you to just keep taking it, to value the appearance of harmony over the reality of dysfunction.
You grow to question yourself. You ask yourself, Am I crazy? Is this really happening?
And as you sit on the floor again, crying and looking back over journal entries, you realize it’s happened over and over again for much of your life.
And that no one here is going to stop it. It’s the most lonely feeling in the world.
It’s a dead end.
You start to ask yourself, how do I break out of this?
How do I find people who will live in reality with me?
You start to break out of the dead end.
You start to understand that you’re not the problem for naming the problem.
And you start to ask yourself, if I can’t escape, how can I subvert this? How can I go against the norm of abuse, and walk backwards out of the door?
You can be a trickster, and change from the scapegoat to the coyote!
They try to hold you back, tell you you’re wrong and bad for wanting to escape, but once you DO escape, it’s so much less lonely, even when you’re alone. You’re free.
Trickster spirits, like walking backwards down the street
Tricksters are who we need right now
Because tricksters do what you least expect them to.
I saw that trickster energy and ran around with it for awhile
For years I did trickster things.
- I ran away from home.
- I majored in poetry and gender studies, instead of medical school like my family wanted
- I leaped into different countries
- I lived in Thailand for a time.
- I worked on telling the truth as much as I could, and found allies
- I volunteered at a mobile health clinic in Jakarta, despite having no medical knowledge
- I joined and left a cult where some of the folks believed in Ramtha, in Osho, in vast conspiracies.
- I learned Indonesian, in Korea
- I decided to start teaching and fundraising even though no one in my family did that and I didn’t know people who did that.
- I decided to help someone start a nonprofit.
- I started my own business, failed and started again until I got it right.
Who are tricksters?
Bayo Akomolafe writes of Tricksters:
Tricksters are stewards of queer hope, coaxing us away from safe grounds to the monstrous ambiguities of being more fully present.
The disturbing mist in the way.
The comedic is not merely about laughter, it’s about accounting for the awkward.
Acknowledging limitations.
Thwarting the tried and true.
Perverting the obvious.
So, when
- things start to get irresistibly funny;
- what was once serious and absolutely certain becomes a caricature of itself;
- what feels true is spoken from the mouths of jesters and ‘lies’ becloud the wisdom of the wise;
- when the sentences of the normal start to sound like gibberish;
- when the righteous spear tips of fundamentalism become the blood-stained claws of unbridled hate;
- when differences become weaponized territories;
- when nuance is sacrificed at the guillotine of political convenience; and,
- when ‘reason’ itself bends over backwards to touch his own private parts, look for cracks in the pillars.
Look for the trickster: run to the safety of trouble.
A happy chuckle precedes the lightning bolt that kindles the fire – for those whom the gods wish to kill, they first make mad – with ecstasy.”
Does any of this sound familiar-From a national US perspective?
My whole life, I ran to the safety of trouble.
I looked when other people shut their eyes and didn’t want to see.
I didn’t have a choice. Witnessing was the focal point, even if i couldn’t stop the abuse yet.
Then once I grew up and got out, I saw the same situations happening, more scapegoating, even in work contexts, until I got free of that as well.
Now I’m dedicated to saying what I notice. Asking you if you notice it too. And if you do, what next? What now?
Because doing nothing is out of the question.
We already have seen what doing nothing will do.
Why am I bringing this up now?
Why do you think?
Abusive systems and structures are much like abusive family dynamics. It’s not an exact match, but you can see the same players, doing the same tired dance.
- The Abuser who no one holds accountable.
- The Enablers, who insist that everything is fine, and just go along with it.
- The Enforcers, who blindly do what the Abuser says.
- The Scapegoats, the rebels, the activists who shout about the problem and get rejected or booted out
You can also vote with your feet, as I reminded someone this week. You can also just leave. And that is its own power, knowing that you don’t have to fix this, you can just go.
James Baldwin left. He didn’t have to fix the racism in America, even if he kept writing about it.
Nina Simone left. She didn’t want to fix this problem of America either.
If you’re thinking of leaving, you’re not alone. There are a lot of dead ends here.
But some people can’t or won’t leave. Some people want to stay. And if that’s true for you, here are some resources that can help you stay safe.
- The Sentinel Intelligence – news that mainstream news does not report on, such as how to survive if an electrical grid goes down, or other natural disasters happen in your area. Of late, I’ve been taking her advice and starting a community garden so we’ll know how to grow food, if necessary. It’s a lot harder than it looks! I am learning a lot. And I’m always trying new things and remembering my experiments. There will be a lot of things to experiment with!
- Threat Model – more news that the mainstream does not report on, such as the latest COVID numbers, how to stay safe, and bird flu and measles numbers as well. If the CDC can’t report on it, trust Threat Model to do the job and do it well.
- Reasons to be Cheerful.World. I love this one. When I get tired of doomscrolling this one is so fun.