just a little respect

I was just reading the blog of a gal who came out of a Quiverfull family and was struck by something she said on the subject of respect. She wrote about the transcript of a television program that documented the lives of 'surrendered wives'. In once scene, a young daughter was told that the reason the house was cleaned and delicious meals prepared - indeed, the reason for anything and everything they did - was to honour the father, to be a blessing to him. Not because of anything he'd done, not because of the wonderful man he was, but purely because of his position as 'king of the house'.

I remember carrying on this charade with my own children. I would go to lengths to work with the kids to prepare nice things to please their Daddy, to do things that he would like. And he was not a nice daddy. I'd make excuses for the fact that he picked and shouted constantly at the kids and was generally miserable, immature, demanding and unreasonable. I'd tell the kids they needed to respect their father and would not allow them to canvass his bad behaviour. I taught them to deny and excuse their father's faults, not as a kind sort of bearing with another human's imperfections, but as a deluded attempt to build him into some sort of worthwhile man just by pretending that he was already there. I realise how insane that sounds now, but it's a much more common strategy than a right-thinking person outside of partriarchal fundamentalism might imagine.

My ex-husband was and, frankly, still is not a particularly worthwhile human being. He is unintelligent, weak, petty, self-centred, dishonest, underhanded, manipulative and mean. I lied to myself about this for years, in part because I was embarrassed to have chosen such a loser to be my partner for life. But eventually, the harm that he was doing to me and my children overwhelmed even my powerful capacity for self-delusion; the cupboard door squeaked open and we all ran out together.

I heard sermons on submission of wives and respect for husbands many, many times. I would leave with renewed hope in my heart that a good, submissive woman could make a half decent marriage even with a man like the one I was lumbered with...but I couldn't sustain my cheer for long.

A few times over the years my then-husband and I made it to a counsellor. I remember one Christian minister - a woman - explaining that respect was positional.  Police officers, she reminded, wear a badge which is the symbol of the State's authority apportioned to them, and so we obey them, regardless of what kind of men they may be in their personal lives. It doesn't matter if I am a better person, or smarter, or know more than the police officer, they are in a position of authority and subsequently my role is to obey without question.

While I agree that we need to respect laws and the authority of the keepers of the same, the analogy falls down in one important regard: Public servants who wield power over citizens also function within systems that are designed to hold them accountable for their actions. Our judicial system has flaws and often fails but theoretically, an officer who abused his power or used it to serve himself instead of the public good would be publicly disciplined and stripped of those powers so he could not abuse them again.

But accountability is completely absent from the fundamentalist submission-cult equation. The men, and in particular married ones, are ordained by God to wield unbridled power, unchecked and unobserved by those outside the family. Indeed, the better he appears to have his wife and children under his thumb, the more kudos he will earn in the church setting. Bullying and domination are valued as expressions of manly, biblical strength. His character is never called into question. Although *plenty* of sermons are preached on the inherent sinfulness of man, no one thinks to ask whether any particular sinner is effectively overcoming his nature and so behaving properly in the relationships most prone to abuse. The husband and father is not trained or equipped to rule, and yet he is given free reign without the need to account to any superior. Even when his subordinates go public with a complaint, the blame is laid at *their* feet. If they were any good at submitting, things wouldn't be in such a mess. I mean, how can a man be expected to lead if the rabble God gave him won't follow?

On our domestic front, the any-failure-is-your-failure belief system meant that I was obliged to respect my husband - not just act right but genuinely generate an attitude of respect - or I'd be sinning and in danger of judgement. I needed to respect him - and obey him - because of the position that God had put him in, that is, in authority over me. I was to do this whether or not he treated me and the kids appropriately, whether he was right about an issue, and whether he was capable of having a single, intelligent idea and carrying it out. The less I questioned, the more I swallowed, the closer to a Biblical ideal I would become. I'd be a Proverbs 31 woman such as our brand of Christianity understood her to be.

As I've mentioned, my ex- is not an easy man to respect. Indeed, once I started to really think about it, I could think of only one thing he did that deserved honour and that was working hard to earn a living. And, don't get me wrong, I don't undervalue the fact that we were well provided for. It's just that it's not enough. You also have to be some kind of decent human being if you want the people you are providing for to genuinely love and respect you.

Towards the end, when I dared to whisper the truth as I was just beginning to see it, I received more of the same kind of bad advice. For 20 years, I never criticised my husband openly. Finally, realising truth might be the one thing that could save my kids mental health as well as my own, I confided in an older Christian woman, respected as a counsellor in the church, telling her what an average evening in our home looked like: how my ex-husband would behave and what a misery he'd make of every moment he was with us. I explained that I wanted to please God but was at a loss as to know how to do that in my situation. I asked her to tell me how our evenings should look if I was getting it right. How should I walk it? Exactly what should I *do*? She told me that, whatever happened, I must not point out that my ex- was was shouting at the kids when it was *he* who had the behaviour problem, but that I must respect him and insist the children to do the same.

That counsellor was so disturbed by some of the things I was telling her about my then-husband that at one point she said, "Whoa! Slow down! It sounds like you are suggesting that marrying your husband was (gulp) *a mistake*." I replied that, in fact, I was not any longer afraid to go even to *that* deep, dark place. She wrung her hands, speechless at my heresy and pale with worry.

I was too polite to that woman. Was marrying that man a mistake? Well, pardon my crudeness but, um, doh! That imposter, pretending to be wise woman and qualified to impart biblical truth, was just another cog in the machine that works to keep that truth at bay and women and children under the miserable control of wicked men.

Even our pastor at the time, a man who I still love and respect more than any Christian leader I ever knew (although, let's face that's not saying much), participated in perpetuating our misery. Right at the end of my marriage, my ex- called the pastor in to straighten out our troubled teenage son. I listened to my ex- lambast our lad for 10 minutes. Then, asking JC to leave the room for a minute, with fear and trembling, I stated that the problem was not with our boy at all but with his father who was a person such as I have described above.

My ex- frankly admitted that there was no untruth in any of my statements, that he was indeed the person that I had described, but that he found it so difficult to lead as he lacked confidence and I was so tricky to manage. The pastor rightly noted that he hadn't really expected to be opening such a messy can of worms that night. Suddenly, his cute little marriage relationship survey form didn't seem so helpful. He left us promising to pray and consider what was to be done next. What was done next - indeed, all that was done - was that the following Sunday, he handed me a yellow envelope containing two articles warning of the destructive nature of wifely bitterness and husband-directed anger. That was the extent of his support. And boy, was I pissed.

I realise that that pastor was probably just well out of his depth as others had been before him. And my marriage and the lies I told myself, my kids and the world about it were not that pastor's doing - our mess was not his fault. But, he remains culpable for failing to shed any real light on our situation when the privileged opportunity to do so arose. Had I taken his advice, we'd still be there, playing a soul-destroying submission game with that horrible, horrible man.

To be fair I need to add that shortly after that encounter with the pastor I had coffee with another, younger woman leader in our church who listened to my very brief explanation of our domestic situation and bluntly said, 'Doesn't sound fixable. You should consider getting out.' I wasn't even able to think in terms of a possible divorce at that point - her words genuinely shocked me. But that extreme good sense, and from a Christian too, eventually seeped into my brain and was one of the factors that empowered me, finally, to act. I feel grateful to her still. I hope she can cope with the knowledge that she was influential in my ending my marriage and leading my children to freedom and a much, much happier life.

***

A lovely friend of mine, who grew up in the daughter of a fundamentalist minister - a very, very sick man and a violent sexual abuser - surprised me some years ago by announcing that she didn't care who she offended, her children were not to call anyone 'Mr' or 'Mrs', or, heaven forbid, 'Pastor'. She said that she wasn't going to assist anyone in gaining her children's respect and that if they wanted it, they could damn well earn it.

Her motivation was to abuse-proof her children. She was determined that no one would ever be able to trick her children into participating in their own abuse by waving some certificate of authority under their noses and demanding respect on that account.

I just wonder how many children could have been spared the horrors of abuse at the hand of the wicked men - and sometimes women - in their lives if we all taught our kids to practice similar small but sensible acts of psychological self-protection.

crushing daisies - ways in which patriarchal fundamentalism harms its children #4

I've had the privileged opportunity to talk to the kids of some of my old fundy friends recently and hear about some others. Their stories share some common threads and I learned a whole lot from listening to them. Here are some brief notes on that:

• Kids leaving fundamentalism face some special challenges. Unlike most of their fleeing mothers they have no frame of reference to help them build a life in a world filled with ordinary folk. That capacity to harken back to our pre-fundy lives is probably one of the reasons that we as mothers were so slow to realise how damaging sheltering our children was: we understood the world and knew we would be able to re-engage at any time. Some of us lost sight of the fact that this was not true for our kids. 
• All the young people I've spoken to say they continue to struggle relating socially to peers into their late teens and twenties. They say it takes a long time to begin to feel 'normal' and lose that fear of a generalised evil they believe lurks in the world outside their homes. Even once their own experience has shown them that this was not wholly true, vestigial worry remains. Further, the guilt and self-hatred that some of them endure make developing normal relationships difficult. And often they are competent conversing with adults but just don't know how to do small talk with kids their age. These are crippling disabilities for a young adult.
• I'm saddened to hear that more than one of the girls has suffered from eating disorders as my own daughter K has. The lovely young woman I spoke with today told me that restricting her eating was her way of gaining control in a life that was micro-managed by her mother, and in which she suffered dreadful abuse at the hand of her father. When my daughter was being treated for her ED in an adolescent mental health unit, she commented that Pentecostal kids were significantly over-represented on the ward. I'd be interested in looking into that further.
• These girls who have fled fundamentalism with its strict modesty regulations seem to take a very special delight in girly things like glam shoes and pretty dresses. On so many levels patriarchal fundamentalism tells children that the things they think and feel are wrong and must be suppressed. It's a joy, but a little bit sad too, to see these gorgeous gals enjoying indulging their tastes without guilt.
• Growing up is hard anytime you do it but it's extra tough on kids who were kept 'young' and so had to make the journey in late adolescence - and often in a time of significant family upheaval. It's a testament to their resilience that they are growing into such lovely young adults. One young man told me that when he and his family left fundamentalism, they all threw a lot of babies out with the bathwater. He told me that, over time, he realised that he wanted to dust off some of those values and add them to the growing entity that is the adult he is choosing to become. He agreed with me that being a grown up and feeling equipped to make those kinds of decisions all by yourself is a very nice thing to be.

So that's some thoughts on the kids. But growing up is also hard - perhaps harder in some ways - for the middle-aged women who leave marriages and controlling church situations unused to navigating the myriad options available to them once rules are not a given. Some of us enjoy a brief revisiting of our teenage rebellious years. I suppose it's only natural to take some time to try out new freedoms and practice making discriminating choices.

One of the themes I've noted when hearing stories of child survivors of fundamentalism is that not every woman leaves in search of Integrity. I've heard about mothers who have ended their marriages and made moves to build new lives but who haven't really left behind a lot of the fundy baggage that caused them and their kids so much harm. Sadly, I've learned that more than one mother persistently refuses to canvas the possibility that they may be in some ways culpable for their children's suffering. They don't want to discuss it or they argue that things were not the way their child remembers. This causes their children a great deal of grief.

I empathise with the sorrow of those women but I am not able to sympathetise with their self-protective self-centredness. I understand that it is a frightening and distressing prospect to face the dreadful truth that some of your efforts to show your kids you love them more than breathing were misguided and have left them with scars. But our kids' recovery and growth seems to be linked to our own willingness to honestly accept that which is ours to own.

In my view, our children need us to be absolutely truthful in this regard. They need us to do some thinking about our mistakes, to approach them unbidden, to tell them they we understand how our beliefs and actions have harmed them, and to ask their forgiveness. More than once. And we need to be open to our kids approaching us with another bucketful of hurt, and another, and another. They need to know that we love them and we get it and that we are sad too. We need to let them tell the truth about how angry they have been, that even though they love us such a lot, they feel a need to say just how hurt they were by our mistakes.

I don't mean that we all move in to a perpetual Beat Up Mum Camp - we also need to know what is *not* ours to own. And as one of the young men I spoke to told me, 'I'm an adult now. My past has defined me to this point...but now I'm making decisions for myself, growing myself into the person I want to be.' At some point kids need to take responsibility for making the best of what they've been given. I just think that a mother's persistent refusal to allow them to revisit the past or to ask us to validate their feelings about it may actually inhibit their progress toward adulthood. And we don't have the right to do that, no matter how deeply it hurts to revisit our culpability in their suffering.

We mothers need to man up and hear what our kids need us to hear. I sincerely believe that every time we refuse to face a truth, every time we stick our fingers in our ears or manipulate our children into feeling that they should consider our sorrow ahead of their need to address issues from the past, we say 'No'  to growth. And that is a very dangerous thing to do. I believe we shrink a little bit each time we refuse the opportunity to take another baby step toward Integrity. I believe we need to embrace the pain that honesty brings us, to learn to love the agony of growth, to value Truth above all things.

There is no excuse for going easy on ourselves in this. Our children's healthy futures may depend on our opening our hearts to share in the truth as they see it. And the big payout is: every time we squeak open the door to those dark places, a shard of light rushes in and frightens away one of our own demons. And we find that we were wrong: the worst thing that can happen today is *not* that someone will confront us with something dreadful we may have done, but that, when that moment came, we didn't grab it with both hands.

manipulation by any other name

As I've admitted before, I never did do very well in the submission stakes. This is not surprising considering who I am and to whom I was married. Submitting - which in QF circles means to willingly place yourself under the God-given authority your husband in every way - more or less necessitates there being something of a reasonable height to look up to and get under. My former husband, C, although he has some good qualities, was and is a particularly weak and and vacillating man. Trying to submit to C was like trying to squeeze my entire body into a dollshouse and call it comfy.

But call it comfy I did. At least in public. And while I admit I didn't manage to pull submission off very well at all, considering how low I had to crawl to properly locate myself 'under' him, my efforts to submit to my husband were pretty heroic at times. Still I came in for a fair bit of criticism for not looking or not sounding as submissive as I ought.

This brings me to a particularly distressing and frankly, in my view, nauseating aspect of the QF doctrine of submission. While some of the men I knew in QF families were domineering bullies, a good number of them were weak-kneed ninnies like my husband. Except they were the only ones who didn't seem to know it. This was because their clever and seemingly super-submissive wives concealed that inconvenient truth from them. These women managed to run the show while contriving to trick their men into believing that they were in fact in charge.

Consider the following interaction between one sweet wife and her lazy whimp of a husband. J had all the submission boxes ticked: floral frocks, long hair, heaps of kids, homeschooling, husband 'working' from home.... While I suppose she may have considered us friends, she often made her disappointment in my failure at Christian wifely submission plain with disapproving looks and sometimes helpful suggestions for my improvement. 

At the time this particular incident occurred we were enjoying our post-home church afternoon tea on the verandah of J's country acreage (tick, tick). As usual, the men were sitting at one table and the women at another. This was the usual arrangement but I don't recall it was done by explicit rule but rather a general consensus. The women talked about homeschooling and kids, the men about doctrine and work. 

J's children were making themselves unpleasant a short distance away from where we adults were sitting. I could see J was uncomfortable with her kids' behaviour but didn't want to 'usurp' her husband's authority by doing anything about it. At least, she wanted to take the opportunity of making both herself and hubby look good in front of us all. Several times she cast a slightly irritated glance in the direction of her children and then more pointedly at her husband before she hit on the perfect solution. Summoning a sickly tone reminiscent of 50s sit-com housewives, here what she said:

"R, would you mind using your big, strong man's voice and correcting our children? I think they need their Daddy to do that right now."

I almost gagged on my brownie.

This is how submission is done in many QF households. It isn't OK to say, 'Honey, how's about you get off your lazy duff and man up for a change?' but it's fine to 'motivate' your man to do whatever you want by using clever brain-circumventing, ego-massaging manipulation strategies. And if you have a good bucketful of QF cred because of the box-ticking mentioned above, nobody minds a smidge. If she wears a floral frock and talks so sweet she couldn't secretly be (gasp) a manipulative, underhanded bitch, could she?

I have had conversations with QF women about their in-good-conscience use of these techniques many times. I would point out that I was working hard to find ways to respect my husband - and that wasn't easy. Treating him as though he were an idiot would not have been a good strategy for me - even if he liked it a lot. 

And as a young woman, my eyes opening to the power of my own sexuality, I made a decision that I would never, never use tricks of that sort to manipulate a man I cared about - or ones I didn't either. I don't know anyone I despise so greatly that my conscience wouldn't prick me if I patronised them in this way. Manipulation and integrity don't live on the same planet and I don't any longer want to live where we pretend they do. Integrity is too important to trade it off for domestic peace and fundamentalist kudos.

But nonsense like J's is widespread in the QF and patriarchal Christian communities - at least it is in the ones with which I have been associated. In her book "Created to be his Helpmeet", Debi Pearl described several instances when she not only tolerated her husbands infantile tantrums but 'learned how to win', that is, got back into his good books by tempting him with goodies like sex. (I hope I'm remembering this right. I'd go check my copy of Mrs Pearl's book but the kids and I had a Pearl-shredding party a while back. Felt gooood.)

Val Stares, one of the long-time leaders of conservative women's magazine Above Rubies in Australia once told a story at a women's group I attended. Val's husband does not identify himself as a Christian - at least, he didn't then. Val said that once, as she was looking out her kitchen window while he mowed the lawn, she watched as her husband ran over and destroyed a seedling tree that was precious to her. An uncharacteristically unsubmissive ejaculation along the lines of 'Oh, no! Not the ornamental cherry...' escaped Val's lips. Hearing this, her husband pitched a fit stomping and kicking angrily. Poor old him.

While Val is a gorgeous and intelligent woman and while I think the moral of this story was intended to be 'Let him be. Don't criticise' I still don't get it. How could anybody think that anyone benefits from encouraging the man of the house to behave like an three-year-old? That just leads to nowhere good: the women have to put up with and justify a whole heap of moronic behaviours and the kids nearly go mad trying to learn how to be healthy adults while buying in to far-fetched excuses for their father's immaturity. The man himself probably gets the rawest deal - he just stops growing. And what is a life without growth?

Worst of all, bang goes everybody's integrity. The whole family is forced to perform all manner of intellectual and emotional contortions in order to accommodate their own hypocrisy and self-deceit. Trying to live with a growing disparity between your inner and outer identities is a dangerous route. Aye, thar be madness, mateys.

QF patriarchal Christianity such as I have seen it practiced does not value truth and it does not value women. It harms children...and it harms men. It trades integrity for a floral-frocked lie and then tut-tuts at those who don't toe the line as though it has a monopoly on moral high ground. It disgusts me.

My heart breaks for all those women who still believe QF's sales pitch as I once did but I'm saddest for the children growing up inside QF who are unable to develop a healthy, honest sense of self while simultaneously being forced to deny the bleeding obvious and perpetually pretend it is not so. I'm devoting my energies to helping my own darlings walk away from the lie and towards freedom and wholeness. 

what she feared most came upon her

GUEST POST by L


“What you have feared over all those years has come upon you (divorce). You can wallow in it and become a sour and bitter old woman or you can do something about it.” …T


…imagine being 17 with a heart full of hope for the future; a heart that longs for love, a life-long love, embodying security, happiness and a bunch of kids; a happy, satisfying future with a man who would be your best friend, your soul-mate, your most loyal supporter; someone you felt completely safe and at-ease with; someone with whom to share your heart...Lay beside that hope a fearful heart; one scarred by the divorce of parents at the age of 12; one that lacked confidence; one that was certain in her deepest being that no man would ever love her enough to stay the distance in that hoped-for dream.

 This describes me as a just-17-year-old. I was a rather rebellious teen, dabbling in smoking, binge-drinking, some drug use and sneaking out at night. My mum sent me to live with my dad when she had had enough. This meant moving from a small country town where I knew almost everyone and had been at school with many of my friends since pre-school, to a city where I knew only my dad and his new wife and her young kids.
Looking back my dad did a good job, helping me get my first job, in a bank, and offering any support I needed. His wife actually tried hard too, although I’m pretty sure she would rather I wasn’t there.


After a few months I chucked my job and went on the dole, found the ‘pay’ too low, so found another one selling door-to-door. Enter my supervisor, T. He was attractive, confident and rather exotic to my small-town experience with a foreign accent and foreign ways. He asked me out on my first day and I moved in with him a week later, much to my dad’s disappointment and my step-mother’s rage.


We moved to another city and our first few months seemed ideal. I was well on my path to future happiness. A little brusqueness now and then didn’t dampen my zeal; I just determined to be the nicest I could be. The brusqueness eventually exploded into a 2 hour angry rant about my untidiness, etc. I objected, hating conflict, which led to more arguments and the conclusion that we needed help if this relationship was going to work.
T’s mother had just visited from overseas and she was a ‘born-again’ Christian and, even though they didn’t speak English in their conversations I could tell she was a huge influence on his thinking. We decided to ‘try’ church and, after seeing a newspaper article about a local surfing minister we visited that church and were in hook, line and sinker.


Our church/faith journey was probably typical of the times. We started in a fairly liberal church, got swept up in the charismatic movement, went to Bible College and moved on to a Pentecostal church. Next came Mary Pride and the search for a church/denomination that ‘actually practiced what the Bible taught’, like head-coverings and women not speaking in church. This led us, of course to the Plain churches, and we females were promptly uglified and our heads covered. This journey was over a period of about 13 years. Along with this, of course came wifely submission and, as I had come to the conclusion that being a better wife and trying harder in everything I did would hold T’s anger at bay, an attitude of submission to the head of the home seemed an essential component of my survival.


By this stage we had 6 children. T’s role seemed to be to make sure everyone did what he wanted, how he wanted and when he wanted (with the right attitude of course), and to make sure he was disturbed as little as possible. So I tried harder. I was home-schooling, home-baking, home-haircutting, producing home-made clothes and penny-pinching to the nth degree. T was working a few hours a week and read books the rest of the time.


Having children didn’t disturb T’s lifestyle unduly. He didn’t play with them, fix their bikes or do anything much of what they wanted, but he did enjoy displaying well-behaved and hospitable children to guests. He very rarely attended to a baby at night and on the few occasions he did the baby and I regretted it. He was very impatient and expected babies to sleep at night. Any sports and family outings were things of his choosing. If things didn’t go his way he would sulk, chuck tantrums, boycott situations or humiliate people. I was always the mediator and the one who smoothed things over.


He was a master of manipulation, such that I always thought any trouble was caused by me and my incompetence. Behind closed doors he criticized most things I did, saying I he could do it better. In front of others he praised me as the perfect wife. The problem was that he was nice often enough for me to convince myself that the good times were frequent and the bad minimal, when actually it was the other way around. I clung to the hope that things would get better and made excuses for him to the children. We all walked on eggshells and I tried even harder.


I was so entrenched in the idea that marriage was for life; that I needed to be faithful. It never crossed my mind that there was an alternative to the way I was living. It was my job to make this work. The problem was that I was enabling his abuse by co-operating with it. His bad behavior always had the desired effect and I would usually apologise for whatever had set him off. I thought I was being obedient to God and that all the suffering would cause inner growth. I am sure it was God that gave me the inner strength to endure his behavior without going crazy.


His specialty was still the long, angry lectures, so much so that I feared getting in the car with him because then there was no way to escape. He would keep me up at night until the ‘problem’ was solved to his satisfaction even if I was sick or had been up to babies or toddlers a few times. Now he had begun to extend his tantrum chucking to ‘leaving’ me. He would pack his bags, sit the children down and tell them that he and I didn’t get on so he was going to live somewhere else. He was aware of my fear of being abandoned, of being a single parent just like my mother. He would leave for a few hours and then come back. This, of course was very painful and confusing for the children.


It was also the beginning of T’s downfall. When I turned 40 something began to stir inside of me. I couldn’t have named it then, but I know that is when it started. An embryonic self-assurance was conceived. Funnily enough it was T himself that watered it. He had become very interested in self-improvement books and loved to ‘share’ his latest read. Also he had come to rely on me heavily for all sorts of practical things (managing a house of 10 home-schooled kids and helping to run a business). I slowly became aware of my competence.


He started a university course, mainly so he didn’t have to work and because of his difficulties with written English I would edit his assignments and discuss them with him. He would go away at times for a week long course and I realized I liked it when he wasn’t there. We all relaxed and enjoyed ourselves. This made me feel a bit guilty and I tried to squash the thought but it welled up, seemingly of its own accord.


For some obscure reason T suggested I do a uni course, too. I was suspicious that he thought it would make him look good – a wife with all the above-mentioned skills AND working on a uni degree. It goes without saying that he strongly influenced the course I chose. He had no idea where this would lead to eventually. I jumped at the chance with excitement and was amazed that I could do it, and get good marks. Being flung into the world of uni students was an eye-opener after being closeted away for 15 years, but I enjoyed their company and was fascinated by their outlandish topics of conversation.


As my confidence in myself grew so did the murmurings of the older kids at home. Dad was difficult, unfair, unkind, mean to little kids, he expected everyone to always agree with his point of view. I found I now had to start to face up to this and agree that it was true. We started to use the word ‘abusive’ out of his hearing, which was a very scary thing to verbalise. We knew what effect it would have on him if he even heard a whisper of it. I carefully approached him about some of our complaints. He didn’t like it, of course and I think he began to see he was losing his grip on us. He said he would be nicer; his behavior got worse.


Things went on like this for about 2 years. I got braver and he got more cunning and more determined in his manipulation. My staunch friend, Dragonfly, was an amazing support through all this. Kind and strong and always sensible, I know I would have crumbled without her support. T ‘left’ me a couple more times not realizing that his threat was a bit like a child threatening to tidy his room if his mum didn’t let him have his way. “Yes!” I would say on the inside, “And don’t come back!”


The next step was like a miracle unfolding before my eyes. The day of our long-planned family holiday arrived. He chucked a tantrum on the first morning and it was the final straw for me. He threatened to leave and go home and I made no effort to talk him out of it. I was sorely tempted, but something inside me said, “No, enough.” The kids and I relaxed and stayed out the week without him, happy campers at last. I lay awake at night planning my next move, but not sure if I could pull it off.


When we got home I told him I was too tired to talk (totally out of character as I would give in to what he wanted ALWAYS) and went to bed. The next morning I told him my plans. He spent the whole day stomping around the house, packing his things and every now and then trying to talk me into changing my mind. It was like a switch had flipped inside me and I refused to be drawn in. I spent most of the day ignoring him.


By the evening he had been drinking and getting angrier and angrier. He phoned the adult children and said ‘goodbye’, then set about staging a suicide attempt. Two of the adult kids called the police who took him away for the night. It was the chance I needed, so the next day I refused to let him come back.


We are now living out my plan. The kids and I packed the house up, had a huge garage sale, found a house and moved 6 hours drive away from him. The kids are in school, I am doing a teaching degree at uni and we are learning to be normal. He has tried many times to talk me into reconciliation both nicely and nastily, but I take the advice of one of my girls, “Don’t go and talk to him, Mum. He always changes your mind.”


When difficult things happen I am tempted to fall apart, and I usually have a cry. But these tears have gone from 4 hour, heart wrenching sobs down to half our weeps. There is a surge of positive energy, like a fountain, inside of me that urges me on and reminds me to keep on going. Give it a name if you like. It could be the Girl Cell, it could be Jesus-in-me, it could be just my own inner strength, but one thing I am certain of…


…what I feared most has come upon me….and I embrace it with joy and excitement!