A Bit of Self-Care
I am so glad I gave myself permission to be late on posts or to skip one now and then. My lateness is explained by my cat’s behavior. Since I am still a bit hysterical, I made an even bigger decision.
After messing up part of the last post’s ritual dates section, I decided I would give myself a break from all that formatting. You can find the Satanic and Nazi calendars on the “2022 Ritual Calendar” page, as well as links to most major holidays described on the blog.
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Would anybody be willing to make the 2023 ritual calendar? You work off the 2022 one. Replace the dates of the full moon. Delete the 2022 eclipses and add the 2023 ones. Change the dates of the moveable holidays, like Thanksgiving and Easter. If you aren’t sure of some of the dates, look them up anyway. Make notes about anything you think might be wrong. Then I will send it on to somebody else to proofread and check the dates.
I would be very grateful – I have been doing this since 1999.
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If you haven’t gotten the October issue of the GrassRoots newsletter and would like to see it, write https://grassroots-ra-mc-collective.org/contact-us/ to subscribe.
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Cats- Bah, Humbug
Spencer, my new cat, is now in hiding. He is a Turkish Van, gorgeous like Baker but terrified of his new surroundings. I had him confined to my bedroom so he could get used to a small part of the house and have a safe place to return to when he started going out.
He slipped out when I was leaving the room, and I spent the weekend wandering around looking for him and crying. His previous owner even came and spent two hours meowing. Her husband crawled around on hands and knees looking under furniture and checking behind boxes of stuff. No cat.
On Sunday, I put food out in every room, and he ate the food in the office! I heard him meow in the middle of the night, so I came and gave him seconds. He had eaten the food in the office but hadn’t scoped out the other rooms. At least now I know he is alive and somewhere in the office.
Last night, he again meowed for seconds in the middle of the night. When I went to give it to him, he had not gotten all the way to his hiding place. I could hear him rustling the boxes under the coffee table in the office. Now I know where he is, or at least where he was last night.
Believe me, I looked there at least five times. Rick, his previous owner’s husband, took out every box and looked through them all. Spencer was, obviously, not found.
I am starting to calm down and trust he will come out someday. Somewhere, deep down, he knows I am a nice person who feeds him and brushes him and pets him where he likes it.
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Documentation to Increase the Safety of Survivors
Ellen Lacter has described in great detail how to create a “Safety Packet.” You can read the whole article here: https://endritualabuse.org/evidence-packets-increase-safety/
The basic idea is to describe your experiences in detail, naming names, and distribute this document to trusted people with instructions that it should be opened on your death and distributed to law enforcement and the media.
The people who have received the documentation should be given extra copies to distribute to other safe people so that the abusers cannot locate all the copies. And you should say, in public, that you have done this and that the shit will hit the fan if you are killed or disappear.
When you read the article, I imagine you will be overwhelmed by the amount of information you are being asked to put in this document. I imagine that working on it will stir up all your “don’t tell” programming. For me, it wasn’t the don’t the ‘don’t tell” programming that arose. It was the “I’m incompetent and worthless” programming. Either way, working on it will be emotional and challenging.
I did this once, a long time ago. I printed out a short version of what Ellen suggested and distributed it. Today, you can put it on a thumb drive – so much easier!
Here is a summary of what is in the safety packet. It doesn’t include everything, or I would have just posted Ellen’s article in full.
1. A summary of what is in the packet and how to use it.
2. A list of the kinds of evidence in the packet.
3. A list of what the abusers might do to kill or “disappear” you.
4. A list of the people who have been given the packet
5. Instructions to those people
6. A witnessed authorization to open the packet upon your death and instructions for distributing the information contained in it to law enforcement and the media.
7. Evidence, such as descriptions of the abuse, recent harassment, reports to law enforcement, and medical records. A list of the abusers, with names, descriptions, and locations of the abuses. A list of victims, alive or dead, and potential victims, with descriptions and photos.
8. A video recording of yourself answering these questions.
What individuals or groups of individuals do you believe want you dead?
Why would these parties want you dead?
Can anyone support or corroborate that these parties have harmed you?
What methods do you believe these parties use to murder or disappear people?
Do you believe there have been any previous attempts on your life? If so, describe the suspected assailants and methods used.
Are you suicidal?
Why do you want to live?
Under what circumstances would you ever suicide?
Do you abuse life-threatening substances?
Do you have lethal weapons or substances in your home?
Do you drive safely? What is your record of traffic accidents and violations?
Do you have any desire to flee your current home and support persons?
My guess is that some of you are feeling overwhelmed just reading a summary of what to include in the safety packet. I know I am.
I believe you can do it. I believe you can pick the least difficult thing to do and give it a try. Then, when you finish it, give yourself a hug and a reward and celebrate your achievement in your own special way. Rest a bit, and then find the second least difficult thing to do.
I think it would be worthwhile to distribute it before you have finished because the process will be very time-consuming. Looking back over the summary of the safety packet contents, I would choose 4, 5, 6, and 8 to include before distributing it.
But don’t let yourself forget that there is more to do. Remember that you followed your plan of doing progressively harder things, and you have achieved your goal. You have gotten stronger by taking small step after small step. And a huge leap by making the video! Just reading over what else there is to be done has desensitized you quite a bit.
Use the same approach of leaving the hardest things for last. For example, write down the names of your abusers and pick the one you are least afraid of. Then, start filling in the information, again, starting with the easiest item and working up. There is no harm in leaving a mark like ???? or an emoji by an item you may want to skip for now and return to later.
I’ll share what I tell myself when the perfectionistic part takes over. “It’s better to do a half-assed job than no job at all.”
I’m not kidding. It’s true.
Ritual Abuse 