trauma - poisons - healing

i've just been reading this quite beautiful article: Dark Medicines: On Seeing Patients with Bad Habits. 

i've been thinking about being a domestic violence support worker as being a healer. about me having been a healer and having ended up quite broken from the work. about what i need to heal. i've been reading blogs by creative holistic herby healer types, mainly queer, all in the US as is often the way with these things (who are you, european ones?)

kirsten hale

dori midnight 

i've got some work supporting another gendered violence organisation to deal with vicarious trauma / burnout / compassion fatigue among their staff. and just trying to come up with the workshop is bringing up what i know nowadays are my own trauma symptoms.laurie perlman has some things to say about vicarious transformation - how healers can and must transform through trauma. the work will always change us so we must find our own ways to ground ourselves and stay connected in our own transformations. it sounds like a nice way to frame it. she's right. but how to stay on this healthier path?

i wish there was a culture of even thinking about supporting survivors as being healing work. and a culture of supporting us as healers. i wish it wasn't wildly far out for me to be seeking wisdom from holistic practitioners to bring back to this normie voluntary sector work. i wish all my colleagues weren't broken and we could support each other. i wish we could talk about how dwelling in violence and trauma seeps into us and what we need to do about it.

Community accountability bookmarks

Love the idea of pods that the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective are using

The Toolkit developed by Creative Interventions

Community Accountability: Emerging Movements to Transform Violence, a special issue of Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict & World Order critically examines grassroots efforts, cultural interventions, and theoretical questions regarding community-based strategies to address gendered violence.  This collection encapsulates a decade of local and national initiatives led by or inspired by allied social movements that reflect the complexities of integrating the theory and practice of community accountability.

This roundtable: The Fictions & Futures of Transformative Justice is just gorgeous. 

Closer to home, the Salvage Collective 

Dangerous Conversations

new & exciting 'zine project - 'Dangerous Conversations'
email: dangerousconversations(at)riseup(dot)net
deadline for contributions to issue one: March 2011

Dangerous Conversations is a project born out of the struggle to end systems of domination. Our involvement in movements described as anarchist, activist, horizontalist, and so on has been at times inspiring and at other times disillusioning and frustrating. This zine is not aimed at Anarchists
or Activists but at anyone who struggles against the many forms of domination that blight our lives: ableism, ageism, authority, capitalism, civilisation, caste and class systems, heteronormativity, islamaphobia, male privilege, speciesism, transphobia, white supremacy (and others that are
still unrecognised).

Dangerous Conversations is intended as an intervention in business as usual. We hope to collect texts and viewpoints that challenge the status quo in a way that, rather than (or perhaps as well as) provoking hostility, provoke constructive responses and discussion. We hope that, as much as possible,
the zine becomes a place to converse and to deepen affinity. By showing solidarity with others who also see the struggle as their own struggle, evenwhen we differ on the details, we can become stronger as a movement. Ours is a strength that comes through diversity and empathy for different viewpoints
rather than the imposition of dogma and distrust.

These conversations are dangerous to oppressors because they threaten their privilege. They sometimes seem dangerous to us too because they threaten our own privilege. Because of this, they are important conversations to have.

This first issue (‘What next?’) is to be a collection of different viewpoints on where this struggle should go next. We are inviting a range of contributors who we think have interesting and sometimes conflicting ideas on how we should proceed.

We hope that readers will want to respond to and involve themselves in the project by contributing to this conversation in whatever way seems appropriate. There are no guidelines for what is and isn’t appropriate way to express yourself here. Submissions for future publication, participation
in the editorial collective, criticism and ideas are all very welcome.

- via Race Revolt

cuts are violence

"Women’s Aid, Refuge and independent providers of domestic violence services – all are facing ‘inevitable’ funding cuts, ‘efficiency’ measures, amalgamation and closure. Services that support, empower and protect thousands of families and single women will shut down. Thousands of workers in our sector will lose their jobs in 2011. [...]

Abandoning survivors of abuse and other vulnerable people to the “Big Society” having bailed out banks and cosied up to corporate tax-dodgers is violence that will impact our society for generations. [...]

As survivors and supporters we are face to face with abuse on a daily basis and understand all too well how abusers operate. We have a responsibility to speak out and describe the abusive attitudes of the people behind the cuts programme, and the violence that is enacted in it. [...]

We know full well the links between abuse and homelessness, abuse and poverty, abuse and unemployment, abuse and mental illness. And we know that this cuts programme re-enacts and reinforces abusive structural social injustice. We are acutely aware that these cuts will compound this interlinked violence and make it much harder for the most vulnerable people to become free. [...]

As providers of, and workers within, gendered violence services – how can we respond to this crisis and act not merely to defend our salary structures, but as if stopping abuse in our communities is our absolute priority? 

Are we going to bicker between women’s services over our share of the crumbs and step on one another to stay in business? Are we going to unite as women’s services to gain a larger share of the crumbs at the expense of perhaps asylum seekers’ services, or homeless men’s services? Or are we going to challenge the system that attempts to divide and rule us in this way? [...]


Those anti-violence services that survive or are created in this cataclysmic upheaval face a disturbing ‘race neutral’ and ‘gender neutral’ future in which existing specialist services with decades of experience are ‘streamlined’ i.e. closed, in the name of ‘efficiency’. We are facing the end of specialist “Black and Minority Ethnic” services and specialist women’s services, a future in which provision “by Black women for Black women” and “by women for women” are anachronisms, because “we’re all in this together” [...]

As survivors and supporters we know the need to look for the crux of power in each situation. We are all too familiar with abusers’ use of an ultimate threat to hold over their victim: If you leave you’ll lose your home / No one else would want you / I could kill you… We have to assess whether there is any truth in the threat, and if so what we stand to risk in our effort to be free.

What is the ultimate, most terrifying, threat that the state holds over us? No more funding. So we must reckon with this possibility and face it head on. How can we support the people around us who are experiencing domestic and sexual violence, potentially in the absence of funding? We have done it before: Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis were started by women who reached out to support one another. Before there were refuges, women offered each other their spare rooms. Faced with a decimation of services, do we need to begin this grassroots work once more? Is this idea shocking, frightening?"

- Cuts Are Violence

eco-colonialism

"Corporations and governments are not being lax in the face of peak oil. No way. They are busy extending their paradigms of abuse into ecosystems across the globe. Maybe it is this: that the end of cheap energy spells the end of cheap power. So cheap energy must be pursued at all costs. Those costs, of course, include land grabbing, land poisoning, destruction of communities, destruction of ecosystems:

"The results are the expansion of forest monocultures in poor countries, the occupation and degradation of territories and productive lands, the installation of industrial plants in the South, the worsening of living conditions and quality of life in occupied territories, the violation of rights, particularly serious impacts on women and excluded population groups, concentration of power in corporations which control the right to property and technologies, as well as the risk of contamination to a degree which cannot be predicted. …It is very well-known, the companies of the cellulose sector and paper install their plantations in the countries of the South, where besides having the mentioned conditions – low costs and big quantities – the environmental, social and labor legislations are lax and they allow the violation of multiple environmental rights and of the communities. …[R]esearch on new raw materials for fuels, primarily cellulosic ethanol and genetically modified trees is carried out by universities or research institutes in industrialized countries and is funded by multinationals forest and/or energy, a situation which is repeated with the development of technologies, marketing and other stages of the chain. Thus replicates and maintains the colonialist model in terms of energy, technology and economics that has characterized North-South relations.”

An added layer of disgusting interest is that this is done under the banner of saving the planet. It is renewable. It is sustainable. It is a carbon sink. All these things are, of course, untrue. The pivotal sleight of hand in this process of deception is the expansion of the definition of the word ‘forest’. More forest is a good thing, right? Everyone knows that. Except that under the definitions of various international climate agreements and accords, eucalyptus plantations are now ‘forests’. As are jatropha plantations. As are palm oil plantations. As are pine plantations. What I wish everyone did know is that these monocultures are not forests.

[...]

There are complex international carbon trading schemes to support this abuse. In Britain, taxpayer’s money goes to subsidise the building of building biomass power plants because they are classed as “renewable” energy producers. This biomass will not come from the diverse, scenic oakwoods of this privileged island. Oh no. It will come from industrial plantations.

This is all neocolonialism with an environmental twist. It is eco-colonialism."

-A Country Punk

walking in the opposite direction

saw this on =Anarcha='s tumblr:

"I sometimes visualize the ongoing cycle of racism as a moving walkway at the airport. Active racist behavior is equivalent to walking fast on the conveyor belt. The person engaged in active racist behavior has identified with the ideology of White supremacy and is moving with it. Passive racist behavior is equivalent to standing still on the walkway. No overt effort is being made, but the conveyor belt moves the bystanders along to the same destination as those who are actively walking. Some of the bystanders may feel the motion of the conveyor belt, see the active racist ahead of them, and choose to turn around, unwilling to go to the same destination as the White supremacists. But unless they are walking actively in the opposite direction at a speed faster than the conveyor belt - unless they are actively antiracist - they will find themselves carried along with the others."

— Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D., Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race

 

standing still on the walkway: inaction/passivity in the face of racism and all abuse = being swept along with the momentum that is taking you to further success, acceptance, approval, social captial. these are a few of the priveleges we have to actively walk away from in order to fight against racism and other interlinked abuses. reminds me of the quote from mai'a that i put up before:

"stopping the abuse means stopping the abuser.  and the abuser is popular.  so you wont be." 

"at least you're not going through this in the community "

-is my quote of the day from the 'professionals meeting' on a mental ward i went to today. oh my god. i really had intended to stop getting paid to be around this kind of shit, but i went back for some no-strings-attached shifts, didn't i, because it's less stressful than working somewhere unfamiliar, and before i know it i'm covering everyone's sick leave (and *everyone* is sick), including having to go outside of the office and try to look less frayed and more professional. 

so, well... these wards aren't the worst places in the world these days. they are just like slightly roomier and cleaner halls of residences. there was a greenhouse with december-wizened tomato plants in the courtyard - (i really truly believe in plants&soil as a potential lifeline of mental health, so that was good). the managers and consultants seemed genuinely to be trying to take an empowering approach. only one worker at the meeting, out of about eight of us, was acting like this woman was the biggest pain in the arse ever (i really don't understand professionals who get exasperated with clients who are not actually abusing them or causing them to have to work overtime - we get paid the same either way, right? what does it matter if this woman returns to her partner "after all our hard work"? it's not like you actually care about her, evidently), and who was saying things like (repeatedly) "she needs to be boundaried". no one challenged her on it, but at least the ward manager and the consultant had the decency to wince a bit. all the rest of the staff got it when i pushed the focus of the meeting towards giving the woman as much control as possible, regardless if she ends up returning to her partner. i guess the new labour years really did do some good in funding awareness-raising around domestic violence - and less coercive practice in mental health.

that said... the woman had said how shit she felt going through christmas in the hospital while she waits for a refuge place and dealing with grieving for her relationship and harassment threats and mind games from her ex. and the worker said "at least you're not going through this in the community." which i guess is mental health service -speak for any where outside the hospital ward.

the worker who said it was the most focussed and engaged with the woman we were actually there for, and had known her the longest. and it just seemed so amazing to me that even this worker who was doing relatively awesome holistic woman-centered work couldn't imagine a better way, a better community, or a better place for this woman to be than on a locked ward.

and there was more that was wrong with the meeting. so much subtle coercion glazed with the right, 'patient-centred' words. like the consultant (who was the most patient-centred consultant i've dealt with) told her that she was "giving him [her ex partner] mixed messages by replying to his manipulative texts when the relationship is over". later the consultant gave her totally mixed messages by saying she wasn't to pick up his calls but "texting is understandable" and then implying that she wasn't to have any contact with him at all. just loads of stuff like that, subtle erasures of her equal personhood to the professionals around her who are holding all the power.

i fantasised about recording the meeting and being able to use it in some kind of training session where everyone had to identify the parts of the transcript where the woman was being silenced, put in a catch 22, pathologised and/or subject to the same framework of abuse that occurred within her relationship. highlighter pens at the ready! but the trouble is, these people (with the exception of the pain in the arse woman) are already highly trained and as right-on as it's possible for those of us working within such a coercive system to be. this was the nicest one of these meetings i've ever been to. i could continue to attend these things and fight little battles and try to defend one woman at a time in one meeting at a time, to the inadequate best of my ability. but is that not 'giving them an aspirin to lick', when the system putting these women in these situations needs to end. and the communities to replace these hierarchical institutions need to be built.

"They [many doctors within concentration camps] would hide them [sick inmates] from the selection officers who were going to kill them. They would do this to protect the inmate for that day. They would put them to bed, you know. They would actually do everything—if they were in pain, they would give them aspirin to lick. They would do what they could to help, except for the most important thing of all, which is they wouldn’t question the existence of the entire death camp itself. So they would find themselves working within the rules, however they could, to try to improve conditions marginally. And in retrospect, of course, that’s just not sufficient."

-guess who?

can we get real with children

i'm slightly heartbroken after reading this guardian article, 'a year in the life of a foster parent', because... it's something i really wanted to do. want to do. i did know it was that bad. i could tell from the stories i hear at work, the parents i meet and the social workers i meet, that it is that bad. that the system really is that much the opposite of child-centred, that social workers really are that offensive, that judges really are that clueless, that children really are that screwed-over. i knew that if i foster children that i will be powerless in a system that dumps children with me, then with someone else, and never asks them what they need. i knew i could ask them what they need, but i'd be powerless to give it to them.

i guess i'd been telling myself that i only know about the domestic violence cases, and these are only a small amount of all the reasons children are taken into foster care. i told myself that in the other cases, the right decisions might be being made.

the article includes four year old twins who have been removed from their parents due to concerns for their safety. they are placed in foster care, with regular visits to see their parents (it's not made clear whether the visits are supervised and/or overnight, etc). the twins tell the foster carer that they have been severely physically and sexually abused and that they never want to see their parents again. you might expect this to be the end of their contact with their parents, particuarly in this era of hysteria and ultra-caution around childhood sexual abuse paedophilia, right? i've imagined myself as a foster parent, getting disclosures like this and - of course - being able to say "those people will never do that to you again" etc etc. and being able to keep that promise. i don't know what i was thinking. the twins are interviewed and a bureaucratic, police and courts process takes many weeks. then it is decided that they are too young to make decisions about whether they see their parents, and (in a glorious and very typical example of kafkaesque contradictaryness of social care and the CPS) that they are also too traumatised to give evidence in court. therefore no court, therefore no end to their contact with their parents.

and what sticks in my head is - did anyone explain anything to the children? it seems like the foster mother really wanted to, and was traumatised by her powerlessness to protect them. but what could she actually say that was true? not "you are safe now", not "you don't have to go through that again", not "it's good that you've told me this because now i can help you"...

i know fuck all about children or parenting, but it just seems blindingly obvious that they need to be told what is happening to them, and if in doubt about what has happened to them, asking seems to be a good option. whenever i have heard about 'suspected sexual abuse' cases, asking the child concerned has not factored at all. what happens is: abuse is suspected, child is hauled in for medical examination (as if bruises/injuries have anything to do with 90% of sexual abuse!!), evidence is given to police who give it to CPS, CPS decide whether the evidence is over 50% likely to prevail in court... while this is happening (which takes up to a year) the child cannot be given counselling/therapy because it could prejudice them giving evidence in court. when that process is all over (and obviously out of the tiny number that go to court only a tiny number convict the abuser), counselling/therapy is usually conviently forgotten by social care as it is too expensive. when i have argued for play therapy for my clients' children i get the "oh you know, the waiting lists are really long", as if it's not worth getting the children onto the waiting lists at all. and if they do ever get to the top of the waiting list they get like 6 weeks!

all of which is a painful reminder that this society is not interested in protecting children from sexual abuse. and especially not in supporting children and adults who have survived sexual abuse. it's interested in busting paedophile rings, sure, but that focus is on criminalising the wrong kinds of sex, not in articulating what abuse it, and stopping it.

and my final question would be, out of the people i love who were abused by their families, how many of them would rather have gone through the social care (and courts) system, rather than staying with their families?

sometimes i think about

how the concept of rape within marriage did not exist in english and welsh law until 1991.

"Marriage gave conjugal rights to a spouse, [...] a spouse could not legally revoke consent to sexual intercourse, and if there was consent there was no rape."

the implications of this just boggle my mind. imagine signing over your body like that. so in my parents' marriage.. in all our parents' marriages... i think this is such a terrifying illustration of how the possibility of abuse is silenced, in our culture, thus creating fertile conditions for abuse. i've been thinking about how one of the most important safeguards against abuse is to acknowledge that it happens, it can happen, it probably will happen where someone has power over another. in fact it can only not happen where one person has more power, if the powerfuler (yep, i'm needing more words, help please) person works actively not not misuse their power.

so for centuries women entered into marriages, and people who loved them watched them do so, usually in the total absence of any discussion about whether they would be raped (or otherwise abused), and what they could do if they were. well i'm sure this is still the case. you could call this trust. i'd call it silencing.

it is not safe to not acknowledge the existence and possibilities of power, how it can change, and how it can be used... i was joking with another polyamorous friend recently about pre-nups. i was saying that in any situation involving serious commitment and investment of any kind between me and a group of people, or an individual - i want and need agreements about what will happen if... things change. against the silencing of the possibility (likelihood) of abuse, manipulation, and less dramatically, to create conditions that mean people can leave if they need to. this is not anti-trust, or anti-love (i'm big into trust and love!), but a safeguard against any of us screwing one another over in an unknown future, as people shift, and as power shifts.

and i was asked at a workshop about this stuff what advice i'd give to groups to safeguard against abuse and manipulation - both as in domestic abuse within a community, and lunatics trying to stir and manipulate a scene - and my answer is prenups. like, before you set up, agree what you'll do if someone behaves abusively. define abusively. research how to tell where the power lies in situations where it's not obvious. know where to go for support, know how to support each other. know that this stuff will happen, in any group of people. if you are ready, you are more likely to be able to defeat it before it destroys your group. and read "Why Misogynists Make Great Informants".

...but, marriage? really? can't you think of something more fun? less horrendous? like Mattilda says,

 "Many straight people know that marriage is outdated, tacky and oppressive -- and any queer who grew up in or around marriage should remember this well. Marriage still exists as a central site of anti-woman, anti-child and anti-queer violence, and a key institution through which the wealth and property of upper class (white) families is preserved. If gay marriage proponents wanted real progress, they'd be fighting for the abolition of marriage (duh), and universal access to the services that marriage can sometimes help procure: housing, healthcare, citizenship, tax breaks, and inheritance rights."*

nah, gleeful, leaping queers are my idea of ceremony:



* It was hell whittling this incredible article down to a short quote - read the whole thing!

the abuser is popular

"in order for you to support communities and individuals, you have to work to stop the abuse that is holding them under water.  and stopping the abuse means stopping the abuser.  and the abuser is popular.  so you wont be."

mai'a, at Outlaw Midwives, in a post called "you have to choose a side. its a war. either you are with life, or you are with the forces of genocide". please read the whole thing!

on 'powerlessness'

i used the word 'powerless' in my last post, and then wrote a massive footnote, which i think should be a post in itself!
--------------------------------
* i hope it's clear that i don't mean to say that survivors of abuse, or mums whose children have been removed , or women who've been criminalised (or two of these things or all three) are powerless. i don't want to speak for anyone. and i am so full of respect for all the ways in which people in these situations find and use their own powers, and reclaim their powers. i want to find ways to talk about 'powerlessness', while recognising it is never total.

is there a word for power-squished-ness? as in - a way to say that someone has tried to eliminate or drastically reduce another's power - and that this has not been total (unless the person is killed*) but squashed, reduced, hurt...? i like the word squashed as it suggests the ability to bounce/grow/unfurl back. does this make sense? please comment if you can think of a word that means having had your power reduced, but not permanently.

serious power-squashed-ness has to be one of the worst feelings it's possible to experience. maybe it's the worst form of psychological pain. to the extent that generally, no matter what they have been through, people will not admit to having felt it. and - this is hard to talk about - i see this resulting in some women who've been through abuse, kind of denying that their partner ultimately had control. women say 'i gave as good as i got' because this is less painful than dwelling on how squashed their power may have been, even while he sustained injuries, or was poisoned, or was deeply unhappy, or said he felt afraid, or sometimes did as he was told, or negotiated in certain instances.

of course it's not up to me what women who've been through abuse want to talk about, and how anyone understands and describes their own experiences! but in terms of understanding domestic abuse as a pattern, understanding why and how it happens in order to minimise it, i think it is so important to find ways to talk about the intricacies of the power, and how where a woman is experiencing control and violence from a partner and taking control and perpetrating violence against him: of the stories i have heard this is very rarely a case of 'she gives as good as she gets', given the context of, for example, how men are generally able to be financially and housing-wise independent of their ex/partner and child/ren, while the reverse is generally not true. or the context of how men are more likely to make realistic threats to kill a partner, and (on some level) know they are more likely to get away with doing so, while the reverse is not true. and connected to both of these things, the context of how women are likely to be living in a much higher level of fear - of serious injury, death, homelessness, being sectioned, losing contact with their children by being deemed an unfit mother and so on - than men. to me, these kinds of factors bestow so much more power to men, that it is only in exceptional circumstances that women can give as good as they get. i certainly don't believe that it's impossible, i'm just itchy for real, clear, ways to talk about this stuff. i want to find ways of talking about and honouring how people surviving abuse can be powerful, and powersquashed, at the same time.

hmm. any ideas?

* footnote to the footnote: and i don't believe that people who haven't survived, people who've died as a result of abuse were powerless, of course not.

* another footnote: by tagging this 'collusion' and 'myths and excuses' i don't mean to imply that survivors are guilty of collusion, or stupidly taken in by, or propagating, myths and excuses by talking about their powerfulness! i use the tags to find my own way around my thoughts on here. what i mean is more that we all in this culture collude with abuse when we drift along not questioning the myths and excuses about abuse that are provided by the culture, which is an abusive culture.

society supports

i just read this, at Flip Flopping Joy:

"I was too wild, too out of control. And rather than find a way to *refine* my own personal style–that is, be the same big, wild, out of control person in a way that didn’t cross or step on other people’s boundaries–I tried to make myself smaller. Society *supported* me making myself smaller. Society *supported* me “controlling myself” through self abuse and shame rather than refining myself through love and consideration and compassion. Society supported me hurting myself–through the normalization of hurt. Through the normalization of hurting *me*."

and it reminded me of the last group. i was trying to guide the group through a list of reasons why abuse happens - reasons that members felt were true, as well as the myths and lies that we hear all the time. so that we could sort truths from lies, because understanding why it happens (because an abuser decides that the benefits of behaving that way outweigh other considerations) is key to being able to see it and stay away from it.

so i had a section on the flipchart(!) for 'ways that society supports abuse'. and people didn't get it. someone thought i meant, like women's aid. and i said yes women's aid support women who are abused but i mean - do you think there are ways that the way that society is set up, helps abuse to happen. and then someone said that their friends had said 'he doesn't mean it, he really loves you' - and of course that was a totally relevant comment. but what i was going for was like - when the police turn up and he says you're the crazy violent one and they arrest you because they're 'not trained' (to put it politely). but no one said stuff like that and because time was short i had to just validate the stuff they were saying rather than nitpick towards my own our-culture-is-fucked agenda. sigh.

but - how do we talk about it? is it necessary to talk about it? it's good to have that part in that exercise when i'm doing 'awareness sessions' with professionals. especially cos i get to make them feel guilty about colluding with abuse, ha, and maybe they'll think a bit harder about it. but if women who've come for a 'healthy relationships' course don't find it relevant to talk that way, well...

but it upsets me how much the women, on this course in particular, internalise the blame for the abuse, and their responses to the abuse. there may be more to it than this, but i connect this to the fact that most or all of these women are on probation, have court coming up, have had their children taken into 'care', have been criminalised. these women have had to learn to play the game of the powers that be. some of them were criminalised for their responses to the abuse they've been through. and those that came to the attention of social 'care' had their children removed for reasons connected to the abuse. and so i imagine these women have learned that if they display any anger at the way they have been treated - by individual abusers, or by social care, the criminal justice system, etc, they are knocked back much further by social care and the criminal justice system. and you can't live with that sense of injustice when you need to get your children back, or you need to act sane in a court room. you have to put it out of your mind, or drop it as just untrue.

and meanwhile individual abusers, social care and the criminal justice system, continue to propagate the notion of women being to blame for abuse, and/or choosing abusive man, and/or that an act of retaliation is at least as 'evil' as years of systematic abuse. these are the explanations offered to these women for the situations they're in. and it sure must be easier to believe that you yourself are bad, than to acknowledge the way society is engineered to make you powerless.*

one woman spoke of having called the police one time, when they arrived her partner told them she was in the shower, then she and her partner walked out of the house and past the parked police car, she with a swollen freshly-bruised face, and the police officer looked her straight in the eye and did nothing. and you know in the group i can validate that that is a terrible thing, that she was let down and betrayed (while meanwhile my cofacilitator remains expressionless, in that 'well it's just her story' way). and other women rolled their eyes in sympathy. and the woman herself said "i thought that was terrible; it was disgusting." but in that charity which has been co-opted by Probation, it's not the place to recognise and name the fact that the police help abuse to happen. everyone will have to deal with police in the coming weeks and months. the officers will be not unfriendly. it doesn't help to abhor them when you're just trying to get your children back. so these women absorb and absorb this 'normalisation of hurting themselves' and i can't figure out how much i'm colluding with this process vs how much i'm rightfully working within the boundaries of what they can cope with.

* see next post for extended footnote about my use of this word!

we always hurt the ones we love the most

heard that again this week.

no, we hurt the most the ones we can get away with hurting.

women in prison

"Taking the most hurt people out of society and punishing them in order to teach them how to live within society is, at best, futile. Whatever else a prisoner knows, she knows everything there is to know about punishment because that is exactly what she has grown up with. Whether it is childhood sexual abuse, indifference, neglect; punishment is most familiar to her."

Chris Tchaikovsky - Former prisoner and founder of Women in Prison

what will you do with your wellness?

well it wasn't all that dramatic really, quitting work, i'll be going back as an occasional fill-in worker, and i did this for the first time yesterday. mmph. it's weird, seeing the job after 10 weeks away.

it seemed so hectic, although i only saw two 'clients'. one was the ideal, heartwarming, afternoon session. she had had some support from us before, she was now ready to leave. she had her information, she had her plan. we talked it through, though she had it all sorted and didn't need me to validate it. i wished her luck and off she went. i sighed inside, feeling lucky to be able to come back and get paid to do this, thinking ah... this is a nice job.

the second was a woman i've talked to before on the phone. things are better for her now than then. she has been through extreme and prolonged abuse and is very traumatised. in some ways she's kind of 'difficult to work with' because of the trauma. if she's not happy with the service she goes on about it. she's trying to get her needs met after a childhood, and a decade in adulthood, of having her needs obliterated. when she first came yesterday, and was angry about the service, i was alarmed for my safety for about the third time in all the years i've worked for the service. i realised i'd forgotten to unlock the other door to the room that i'm supposed to use to get out if necessary - the same thing had happened once before and i'd been trapped in the same room with an angry client shouting in my face.

but she soon calmed down and i realised i'd overreacted, i guess i'm out of practice having been away. she stayed and talked for ages. she mentioned that another service in the town had just been in touch again, many months after their first phonecall, and she'd had to tell her story all over again, to yet another professional. i remembered, though i didn't feel i should tell the woman, that the service had said they couldn't visit her until they had done their risk assessment, due to this woman having mental health issues. and i thought how totally the other service would be freaking out now, as she's standing up in room with only one unlocked door, being angry, and i'm a lone worker. the other service would not only have unlocked the damn door, they would send two workers at once, and they haven't even agreed to meet the woman yet due to feeling she's a risk to them and need to do some massive form over the phone to see whether she's too crazy. and in the mean time who works with these crazy women? they are 'crazy' because that's what happens when you are abused, abuse is a crazy thing to happen. it's so important to work with the crazy women! and very few people are really very mad if you listen and try to see where they're coming from and what they need. anyway, i'm glad my service hasn't got itself together yet to the extent that it excludes 'crazy' women. i mean, if i told my manager about this session, she'd want to 'put in place measures for workers' protection' but she's not got around to it, thank goodness.

i really enjoyed the session and i felt good that the woman was staying and finding it useful and that i had the knowledge to refer her to services and groups and books and other things that can help her. she didn't want to access mental health services for PTSD in case she was misdiagnosed and pathologised and i thought this was very wise. i feel desperate for women i work with who are so traumatised to access support for this but it is now impossible without sending them for a general mental health assessment - this freaks me out for exactly the reason this woman was wary of it. people act all kinds of crazy following trauma, and can then get diagnosed with all kinds of disorders, when maybe all they need is acknowledgement that they've been abused, support to safely remember what's happened, for the opposite of the traumatising things to start happening (for example, for their needs to start being met), and support to understand their 'crazy' symptoms as normal and natural responses to abuse so they are less overwhelming. (hey, read especially Judith Herman and perhaps also Dorothy Rowe if yr interested in this stuff)

so yeah and then last night after work i didn't know what to do with myself. i was carrying trauma, already, after only one proper session at work. i feel better this morning, writing, and maybe if i could make myself debrief religiously every time i might not get fucked up. dammit, i love this work. and i know i have a lot to give. but last night i was fighting with myself thinking it's fucking you up, you're traumatised by proxy. and then i was thinking well the understandable thing to do would be to stop doing this work. but then it really does feel like it's my role in life, it's what i do, it's what i'm good at, it's what i've studied and am fascinated by, i can't stop now. and anyway, what right do i have to hole myself up away from trauma? as someone who has been through no seriously traumatising experiences, and a very low amount of the regular, in-society traumas, who carries a huge amount of non-traumatised privilege, i am protecting myself from trauma at the expense of more traumatised people, because i can, and this is as unacceptable as protecting any other kind of privilege.

if i open up my energy to people and support them in the healthiest possible way (which i'm committed to figuring out) then this goes a tiny way to redistributing trauma. i haven't seen this talked about before but it's very imporant to me. we challenge our right to comfort at others' expense, but often defend our decision to turn one's back on trauma and traumatised people - i haven't seen a discussion of privilege in the discourse around supporting. of course i'm not arguing that i should go out and try to get myself mentally scarred for the sake of it. no, what i mean is - if i can be useful with the extra energy that i don't have to spend dealing with nightmares, flashbacks, anger, panic attacks and so on, then i should be! what am i going to do with my wellness? how can i use my wellness most usefully, and maximise it, in order to maximise the wellness of others?

mai'a on safer spaces

many things that mai'a writes float around my head and become such important reference points for me, and i want to find ways to share my thoughts about them, link to them here and talk with my friends about them, but mostly their significance and relevance is still filtering slowly through my brain.

i love nothing better than a systematic analysis of what needs to happen for abuse not to happen, and i'll be coming back to this one. here are some snippets:

"life is not safe.  people hurt each other.  we have a choice. to either support our own and others’ abusive behaviour or words, or to nurture respectful relations.

safety is an illusion.  what is real is what we do.  do we act out fear?  or do we act out respect?

[...] 

4. intentions. your intentions matter. yes. to you.  and they should. to you. the rest of us. dont give a fuck.

[...]

if you are fucking up a lot, like over and over again, and hurting people, then i got to wonder:

a. either you really do intend to hurt people or,

b. dont care if you hurt people or,

c. are not able to see that your intentions and your effects are not lining up very well..."

read the whole thing, really, you should

couldn't write

i'm trying to lift myself back into writing.
this isn't burnout, i've sorted out my working situation so i work the right amount now. no, this is horror and grief.
all of the why am i doing this when people are being killed actually trying to counteract abuse, oppression, imprisonment, starvation. (they are going again: many of the surviving activists are going to try again to reach gaza by boat. this blows my mind and, for some reason, makes me cry more)
have you followed what's happened, in the raid on the flotilla and afterwards? i've been focussing on that rather than the oil spill because a mind can only take so much, plus it more directly relates to what i'm trying to understand.
all my friends say they're going a little mad. but we say things to one another to keep each other on track. and then we take each other swimming in waterfalls (3 waterfalls! in four days this weekend, i am lucky)

meanwhile, a fucking counsellor totally screwed over some of my 'clients', making them believe they were to blame for the abuse, pathologising them, and partially undoing about a year of my work in a group. meanwhile my friends continue to wrangle with controlling people in their personal lives (my personal life is for now free of these types, touch wood). meanwhile i despair of ever getting together a concise analysis of ALL THIS STUFF that people can understand and apply to help undermine the power of abusers and oppressors. but stopping writing isn't going to help, is it.

meanwhile, i found out this thing. have you heard of plants called 'nitrogen fixers?' they are plants like beans, peas, clover and things. i knew that they were nitrogen fixers and that this is a good thing. but what i didn't know was that they get the nitrogen out of the air. ideas about land being regenerated are one of the things keeping me sane these days and someday when i'm less sad maybe i can write about how this all links in to ideas of community healing etc, and i have a friend who has written about these links and other people do too. but anyway, if you have a rubbish bit of land which has been stripped of nutrients for one reason or another, i knew that nitrogen fixing plants were one of the things needed to help it sort itself out. but i thought that these plants just somehow made existing nitrogen in the soil usable for other plants. but no! they get it out of the air and make it usable for other plants and creatures! these things help me so much because they show that land just does what it needs to heal. 'wasteland' fills up with 'weeds' and these weeds are bringing to that soil what it needs. and then they die down and rot and the soil becomes richer and other plants can grow. i might write about this stuff more, especially in times of desperation, i'm all for spreading information that might help other people stay saner too.

ending child detention

things i've had my head in the sand about, #1/1000 000. i haven't written about any Yarl's Wood or other detention centre stuff as i'm at a loss to explain why i'm not chained to the gate, or Doing Something in some way, about it.

so the new government has pledged to end detention of children subject to immigration control. it was pointed out to me at a workshop by Black Women's Rape Action Project & Women Against Rape about yarl's wood at the anarchafeminist conference in manchester, that this of course means that children will be released from detention, often into the 'care' system, while mothers continue to be imprisoned.

splitting up families in this way is, of course, horrifying, especially in the guise of a 'doing good' election promise. however an alternative way to 'end child detention' was used in scotland, where they had pledged to end the practice immediately, and therefore needed to get those kids across the border asap:

"Sehar [Shebaz] and her baby girl were incarcerated in Dungavel on the same day that the new coalition government told us that child detention would end – and end immediately in Scotland – whereupon Sehar was summarily removed from Scottish soil and driven down to Yarl’s Wood  Detention Centre to be locked up there instead. [...]

Sehar was instrumental in ensuring that the letter to Nick Clegg http://www.paih.org/letter-yarlswood-to-nickclegg.pdf was seen by the outside world. She was then swiftly separated from the other families and prevented from communicating with anyone else." (from a statement by Positive Action in Housing)

Then, on the 22nd may, Sehar and her daughter were deported, flown to Pakistan.

"Sehar is the victim of well-documented domestic violence here in the UK. Her escape from her husband is extremely likely to incur retributive violence soon after she sets foot in Pakistan. Her life and her baby’s life are at risk.

Damian Green, immigration minister, has refused to give Sehar compassionate leave to remain despite receiving copies of police reports and letters from Blackburn Women’s Aid supporting her claims of domestic violence."

last week a Pakistani 'service user' told me she'd heard that Sehar had already been killed. this woman has also told me several rumours that turned out not to be true, but that's not to say this isn't true.

Positive Action in Housing's statement continues:

"We are now concerned about the remaining eleven Yarl’s Wood families, four of whom are on hunger strike. We also remain concerned about exactly what the new government means when they say they will end child detention. Will families be able to claim asylum without fear of being separated and children being taken into care while parents are locked up? After the latest debacle about ending child detention, we have to be cautious about exactly what the politicians mean when they come out and say these things. At present, it means Scottish asylum families being driven straight away hundreds of miles away form their communities and sources of support to the controversial Yarl’s Wood facility which even the Chief Inspector of Prisons has branded as unsuitable for children. Let us not forget that UKBA themselves admitted that FAMILIES DO NOT ABSCOND.
 
In the spirit of the new government’s commitment to end child detention, Positive Action in Housing is calling on the government to release with immediate effect all remaining Yarls Wood families back to their communities so that their children can return to a normal life and schools and so that the asylum claims of their parents can be properly investigated in a humane and civilised way – this is the least recompense we could give as a society for the inhumane way we have treated these families."

eleven families. i mean, it just doesn't make sense to me even according to the obscene logic of the home office. why put a tiny number of people, so unsystematically, through such hell (not that i think the 250+ other people at yarl's wood should be there either..)? perhaps they are testing whether they can get away with it. i read an offhand comment by a guardian journalist who had spoken with women in yarl's wood that the phonecalls are cut off every few minutes as a matter of procedure. so that it's that much harder for them to keep in touch with lawyers, supporters, family (their children, once they are separated!).. i just...

shining the cold light of evolutionary psychology

oh fuck off.

no, he's doing it because it brings him rewards, and because he can.

and refering your adult daughter for a mental health assessment to cure her of her abusive marriage? jesus christ, that's terrifying.

'evolutionary psychologist' (how can you argue with that, after all?) empowers mother to take control of her daughter, as the solution to the fact she is controlled. aaargh

love, again

i finished reading the first half of Endgame. i was folding down the page-corners each time he wrote something relevant to this blog, and now the whole damn thing is folded. my 'jensen' tag stands to get embarassingly large, but what can you do? this guy is doing all my work for me - so much of the stuff i wanted to do with this blog about linking up abuses and oppressions and looking for the universal truths and functions of it, reading this book has saved me years. *and* in volume two, my friend who is half a book ahead of me tells me, he talks to lundy bancroft!! like, i was getting all ready to tie jensen in with bancroft on this blog and then dreaming of emailing jensen to tell him how he's so nearly there but just needs to talk to this perpetrators-expert dude bancroft, but they're way ahead of me. oh to be a geeking-out fly on the wall. sigh.

anyhow, what was playing on my mind, as i read the last few pages, was to do with love. i've written before a bit about how love and passion are policed, pathologised, occasionally criminalised, including by 'well meaning' social workers and the like (do i need to keep on with the well-meaning disclaimer? can i start saying something less polite soon?). the weight of this was brought back to me as i was finishing up volume one and came across paragraphs like this:

"...Everything the culture taught me: how to submit, how not to make waves, how to fear authority, how to fear perceiving my submission as submission, how to fear my feelings, how to fear perceiving the killing of those I love [he's not just talking about people] as the killing of those I love (or perhaps I should say the killing of those I would love had I not been taught to fear love too), how to fear stopping by any means necessary those who are killing those I love..."

this all struck home with me, hard, how much i fear taking action against abuse, oppression, destruction, how the state of fear is infinitely more comfortable, and how i deal with that by loving less. numbing, depression, caring less, shutting down my love to only those closest to me, or only those things and people i can immediately see. and then - what does it mean? how can i love those closest to me without loving the other people, the other things?

"we are only free, when we are supporting the freedom of others"

(my biggest internet crush of the moment is all for Mai'a)

which is one side of things. but also, how hard is it to love in the face of that policing and pathologising? i was thinking - the women i work with often love with their all (others are numb and shut-down, but that's a different story, and a reason why there can't be a one-size fits all approach to DV work right). but the social workers - they can't afford to love, and empathise. they can't really know what it is, or how could they do that work? i wonder what their definition of love must be, and what it's got to do with (their own) 'good' families and ownership and 'security' and hoarding. they are probably really having no fun. i mean, i don't have a lot of time for the oppressors-as-wounded worldview but then sometimes -. what can you say?

i was also thinking about how i have to hide from my colleagues and people 'in the sector' (!) just how much i love my job, or rather, my work. it's not ok to be passionate about it. the management could pathologise me as 'driven' and starting looking for 'boundary issues' i might have. i was too driven when i was twenty, but i work damn hard on my boundaries and have figured them out over the years, at least within the framework of the voluntary sector (if i ever start doing the grassroots work i dream of, i think those must be somehow different boundaries to figure out).

i made some personal mistakes along the way, though i'm pretty sure my 'clients' were not impacted. like for example she didn't know it, but i did fall in love with one woman, not in that way, but in the example she showed me of mothering and of courage and awesomeness. when things went wrong for her i cried and cried - but of course she doesn't know this. then she made things right for herself. i 'should' have had stronger boundaries and not empathised so much. i got in a mess for a weekend. my managers never found out either, thank god. and.. well, what's wrong with caring that much, once in a while?

well, it was agonising... when you (allow yourself to) love something, pain is going to be part of it. so - i allow myself to love some things - a certain amount, and then draw lines, and exclude some things, and love some things abstractly. like the gulf of mexico. women i work who are eligible for benefits in the uk or who have enough income have more choices and options open to them if they are being abused. it's safe enough to empathise with their troubles, to try and figure it out with them. the gulf of mexico, on the other hand... and women with no recourse to public funds. many agencies switch off on hearing those words. it's too much, a stretch of empathy too far. i won't switch off. but i know there is something happening to my heart as the situation becomes bleaker for my longest-term 'client' with no recourse. i can feel myself starting to shut down as i can't bear to think of all the implications of her lack of options. it's safer not to love or care 'too much', to be A Professional. which, of course, entails not fighting as hard for what she needs. which is why we have all been professionalised - offered privileges in return for leaving behind the people we were trying to work with. at risk of losing these privileges, we then fear caring, loving and fighting.

No. it's becoming so clear how much it being not-ok-to-love is so much a part of how oppression functions. this kind of work has to be driven by love, and feeling and acknowledging pain has to be part of it. as supporters, we have to find ways of supporting each other in this. 

i love the groups, the women's support groups, i love the many moments every week where i can see amazing change happening, i love the women i work with. i want the crushing structures that make people feel mental for feeling highs and lows, or who lock people away and/or take away their children for loving, to end. and even more, i want the systems to end that make it impossible, too frightening, to love people (and places, and seabirds). and, jensen would say, what am i going to do about it?