Sheltering in place as a choice

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I wrote about safety back in 2015. The focus was on protecting yourself from attacks by the cult. Here are the entries:

Safety on the Inside: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/safety-on-the-inside/
This entry also talks about creating inner safety. If the Abuse is Ongoing: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/if-the-abuse-is-ongoing/
Safety Issues: Email: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/safety-issues-email/
Safety Issues: Cars: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/safety-issues-cars/
Safety Issues: Documentation: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/safety-issues-documentation/
Personal Safety – Your Home: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2015/10/10/personal-safety-your-home/

Not much of what I wrote five years ago is outdated, except that the Minnesota Police Department’s site isn’t nearly as useful. The information I offered in 2015 is still valid, but the coronavirus has changed our circumstances a lot. We can’t count on keeping our jobs, staying healthy, having decent medical insurance if we do get sick, or seeing our friends again any time soon. The outside world looks pretty shaky and unpredictable.

We can’t count on finding safety outside ourselves, not that we ever really could.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot thee days, and I feel that safety is created inside me. I look at the situation, assess it as best I can, and plot my course. Safety comes from trusting my own judgment. The “me” that is me is solid, smart, loyal, moral, kind. In a word, trustworthy.

Basically, I think that all steps toward safety begin on the inside, no matter what the outside conditions. I come back to the time when I started to try and leave the cult and my family because I had few skills at that age, and I had not tested myself. I did not know whether I would crumble or forge ahead despite setbacks.

I had to be able to conceptualize safety and to imagine that some people lead a life where they are not hurt by others, either physically or emotionally. Then I had to make the jump to… “I deserve to live that way. I want to live that way. It may be possible for me to get to live that way.”

This presumes that I had some way of learning about the world outside of my family and abusers. If you have never heard of France, you cannot imagine learning to speak French or visiting France. It isn’t even a word in your vocabulary.

I did know people who treated me well. They snuck in under my abusers’ radar and gave me a glimpse of other possibilities. I had a nanny until I was four who I loved dearly. She was kind and did not change into an evil person. A couple of teachers at school liked me. When I learned to read, I was fascinated by other people’s lives, real or made-up. I remember many long hours daydreaming that, like Mogli, I was raised by a wolf pack. Unlike Mogli, I did not return to my own kind.

The seed of safety and freedom had been planted, and nobody could take it away from me. I knew what I wanted; the only question was, can I get it? And how?

It’s tempting to believe that all the barriers to getting what you want are external. I couldn’t wait to be twenty-one when I would be legally free of my parents and could do what I wanted. I thought my ideal life would start when I stopped interacting with them. Looking back, being unrealistic about how easy it would be to lead a new, independent life was a huge gift. It gave me hope, and the hope kept me alive.

Back then, I didn’t know was that getting away is a process, not an event. There was no one moment when I was free. I tried to get out but was pulled back by threats, guilt-trips, or post-hypnotic suggestions. (I like to call programming post-hypnotic suggestion – it sounds much less formidable.) I did not know when I was finally free, any more than I knew that the last time I tried to stop smoking was truly the last, that it wasn’t going to be another failed attempt.

In healthy families, parents prepare their children to live independently. They teach them how to do laundry, how to manage finances, how to make friends. They let them practice leaving home in age-appropriate ways. First, it is a play date, then a sleepover. If children can leave, knowing they will come back to safe, loving parents, they naturally pick up life skills. But I had no safety to return to, and my parents had little interest in teaching me how to get along without them. Why would they want to relinquish control over their children, when their whole lives were centered around power and control?

So when I did make the break, I had lots and lots of stuff to learn. I entered college not knowing how to do laundry, and my cooking consisted of Jello and instant coffee. I had not been allowed to work and, without my own money, I could not buy my own clothes. I was an awkward, badly dressed outsider with zero social skills. I did not get my first job until I was twenty.

But I had that dream, and I kept on learning the things my parents should have taught me years before. It wasn’t smooth sailing, but I learned a lot as I went along and, more important, I never gain up for very long.

I never made a complete break from my parents. We were very distant, which I think suited them as much as it suited me. They did not control me, and I gave them very little thought because I was just too busy with my shiny new life. It took their deaths to make the separation complete.

All those years devoted to creating safety and freedom and – do I dare say it? – happiness have made me trust myself to do it once again. Yes, I feel under house arrest. Yes, it gives me flashbacks at times. Yes, I have cabin fever to the max. And yes, I am scared to go out now.

But I know, if I can escape a Satanic cult, I can handle this. t I am choosing to stay home and protect myself. I feel in control. I am not in control of the pandemic and the devastation it is causing, and I am not in control of my reactions to the situation, but I am in control of my behavior and my intent.

And so, cooped up in my apartment, I am safe and free.

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Upcoming Holidays

July
7/4 Independence Day
7/4 Full moon
7/4-5 Penumbral lunar eclipse. The moon will turn a shade darker during the maximum phase, visible in North and South America, and Africa. Most penumbral lunar eclipses cannot easily be distinguished from a usual full moon. See https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2020-july-5
7/25 St. James’ Day/Festival of the Horned God

August
8/1 Lammas/Lughnasadh
8/3 Full moon
8/15 Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
8/24 St. Bartholomew’s Day

September
9/1 Full moon
9/5 – 9/7 Feast of the Beast/Marriage of the Beast
9/7 Labor Day (United States)
9/22 Fall Equinox
9/29 Michaelmas/Feast of Archangel Michael and of all Angels

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups
7/30 Tisha B’Av (Day of Mourning)
7/29 Hitler proclaimed leader of the Nazi party

(NOTE: Not all groups meet on Jewish holidays. Some groups also mark Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, Halloween, the solstices and the equinoxes.)

Tag: Sheltering in place as a choice

Finding Safety in These Chaotic Times

Upcoming Holidays

Upcoming Holidays

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