I Am Not the Vengeful Woman [slate.com]

@Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz posted:

Standing in the gap of abuse to healing is messy messy business.

I love that, Rebecca. I actually quoted you today.

I think forgiveness is a very loaded word for survivors. If, by "forgiveness," we mean not holding hatred in our hearts for someone who did us wrong, then, yes, I forgive. However, I don't forgive Harvey for his wrongdoing—firstly, he hasn't asked for forgiveness and secondly, I can't speak for all the other women (and men) he harmed.

I can want him held accountable and at the same time have compassion for whatever trauma he suffered that resulted in him becoming an abuser.

And I'm not sure I believe in justice—so many sexual assault cases don't make it to court. The Weinstein survivors not only had that unique and rare outcome, but we also saw him convicted. So there has to be something else for trauma victims because otherwise, we will be holding our breath for closure that never happens. Even then, I didn't get any great satisfaction seeing an old, sick man put in prison for the rest of his days. That doesn't lessen the trauma.

It goes back to understanding the River, as you and Carey have written, that takes babies and turns them into monsters. We have to use eliminate the social injustices and problems that fill that river with water and we have to provide safe, nurturing attachments for children to protect them from falling in, or to make sure they have a life raft if they do.

Thank you, Rebecca, Carey, and Jane for your thoughtful read and insightful comments. The PACESConnection community is always "home."

Lou

Standing in the gap of abuse to healing is messy messy business.

Thank you Lou for gently reminding us that there is a River of Cruelty, as Carey mentioned, and at some point Harvey himself was thrown in there.

I know many of us are not interested in punishment but rather in justice. A place where not only people who have suffered trauma at the hands of another heal and transform but also the person who is afflicting trauma onto others, heals and transforms.

While I recognize this to be a lofty hope, it truly is the only one the stops the flow of the River.

Thanks for writing this, Lou. It's very powerful and oh so true.

Dear Lou,

It’s no accident that your post popped up just as I finished my meditation on (drumroll) forgiveness.

I so appreciate your writing and your mindset. I don’t know that I could be so gracious. Yet I know I have benefited greatly in my life by forgiving people who visited violence and cruelty upon me or in my midst.

Among the most compelling and successful trainings I have done is one from Steve and Dorthy Halley in Topeka, KS. Their “River of Cruelty” booklet and training explain the need to go way upstream to the people who keep throwing the babies in the river, to help heal their trauma. The basis for this came when Dorthy, who has worked for decades with survivors of domestic violence, realized she was talking to the seventh woman to be traumatized by the same man. The aha was that she needed to be talking to another person, the man who’d “sent” her the six women prior to the revelatory seventh.

Dorthy and Steve help people get back to the root of cruelty they’ve experienced, and see how they have perpetuated it. They help people see how they likely have a “golden shadow”  (acknowledgment to Doris Lessing is given multiple times) and the importance of this protective, healing golden shadow person in their lives. They are also asked to remember times when they themselves have been a golden protective factor. It sounds way simple. And it is. And it is profoundly healing. Some mutual acquaintances of ours were with me when I went through this training almost two years ago. They will attest to its power. Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz, whom you may know in her work as @poverty’sedge was with me for that momentous weekend, and immediately took this work to teachers, creating a shortened training and delivering it the week starting following our weekend training. She has kept doing this work for two years, using the Halley’s River of Cruelty model and work to help teachers get grounded and be responsive instead of reactive, to be responsive instead of resentful, to be responsive and in their own bodies instead of blaming and shaming a disruptive child who is likely acting out of fear or a need to have someone pay healthy attention to him or her. Somehow humanity is shifted when we are able to recognize our own cruelty and see how it is a perpetuation of unforgiven or misunderstood cruelty by someone perpetuating an “original cruelty.”  

Perhaps it’s time to look into our all talking together about the need to forgive “others” and ourselves. The more we realize we are all one and forgiving myself means I can forgive someone else, forgiving another means I can forgive myself, the sooner we can all move toward healing and being truly present.

Thanks for writing this, and for all you do. And I’d love to know what happened to Weinstein that evoked this trauma passed on and on and on. Understanding leads to forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to understanding.  Forgiveness and understanding lead to our not perpetuating trauma.

Peace and thank you!

Carey