Strong At The Heart

As a survivor of childhood abuse, do you ever find yourself accommodating obnoxious behavior? Putting up with crap you really needn’t? Do you trash yourself over it? Or do you give yourself a break?

My friend poet Molly Fisk wrote and performed a fine radio segment on Stockholm Syndrome in her experience as a survivor. (Her first book of poetry Listening to Winter is one of my favorites and has some great insights into survivor experience.) This is what she wrote:

Stockholm Syndrome, by Molly Fisk

So here’s the story. Last week I went out to dinner with some good friends. During the course of the meal, I said that an organization where I volunteer was going to have a sexual harrassment training. The man I was sitting beside also volunteers there, and without missing a beat he said, “I’ve always wanted to get sexually harassed, but no one ever chooses me!”

Now, this is a stupid thing to say. Anyone who thinks it would be fun to get sexually harrassed a) has probably never experienced any kind of harassment, and b) is probably not a woman. Because women know the score about sexual harassment. It was also a fairly hard thing for me to hear, since I was raped as a child, and rape is harassment in its extreme form.

The guy, like many guys before him, was responding to the word sexual, and discounting the word harrassment - making a kind of guy-like joke out of the thing. A different kind of man might have asked why we needed the training, or engaged me in talking about it more seriously.

What’s interesting to me, though, is not his reaction, but mine. I didn’t say, “Shut up, you bozo” in a friendly tone of voice. I didn’t get ticked off and give him the double-barrel-feminist-shotgun response, explaining, with dripping sarcasm, how offensive it was for him to say this, not to mention unkind. I didn’t admit that I was one of the women who had spent almost a year organizing the training.

I did this really weird thing: I laughed loudly and played along. I patted him on his knee and said in a sexy voice that if he ever wanted some sexual harrassment he should just let me know. Even as I was doing this, part of my brain was yelling in outrage, “Are you crazy?!!? What are you doing? You’re supposed to help stop assinine reactions like this, not foster them for God’s sake!”

It took me three days and one sleepless night to sort it out. He’s a big guy, my friend, and he was crowded in next to me in a booth. I wouldn’t have been able to get out if I had wanted to. He has a big-guy voice. I’d been having a hard day and was exhausted before we even sat down to eat. I think those factors greased the way so that I slipped into the prudent response of my childhood when a large man said anything, which was to agree, no matter what I thought, so I wouldn’t get hurt.

There’s a name for this: it’s called Stockholm Syndrome, after a Swedish bank robbery in 1973 when hostages were taken. It refers to the allegiance of victims to their perpetrators, when those perps have been in control for long enough and the violence or threat of violence has been great enough - the most famous example being Patty Hearst joining her kidnappers in the Symbionese Liberation Army and calling herself “Tanya.” It’s prevalent among child abuse survivors, battered women, and other victims of violent crimes, as well as prisoners of war.

Once I had figured out what was going on, I stopped beating myself up for being a jerk. I’m going to stop beating my friend up for being a jerk, too. People aren’t always careful about what they say, unless they’ve been taught that it matters.

Gentlemen, please consider this story your training in the fact that it matters. It really matters. Don’t be a bozo and crack jokes about it.

–

Molly’s essays can be heard at KVRM on Thursday nights at 6:55 pm, Pacific time, closing out the News Hour. (89.5 FM on your dial in much of Northern California) You can read them all and listen to many of them at her website.

I receive Molly’s essays via email, and you can, too, by writing her at molly@mollyfisk.com. Receiving these essays via e-mail is free, but I encourage you to support Molly’s writing with a $36 subscription for 2009; I do each year. More about this on her website listed above. Molly’s CD of radio essays, Using Your Turn Signal Promotes World Peace, is available at CD Baby.

I just stumbled on an excellent website with great resources for child advocates or for anyone concerned with child abuse/recovery/offender issues. Best Interests calls itself “a website for children’s advocates” and it certainly is a great place for people like CASA volunteers, therapists and social workers. Survivors, too, find news and useful information.

The books section is especially rich. Navigating through the subject heading toolbar on the left or the search engine will bring you to a wealth of good titles, mostly for adults. To my joy, I found an excellent page there on Strong at the Heart.

The links page is extensive and hard to use because there are so MANY links in alphabetical order and no way to jump forward or scan. But the subject tool bar works great.

The book pages link to Powell’s Books one of the last, great independent bookstores.

BTW, Cody’s Books, that great Berkeley, California, institution has just sunk under the waves. If you want to be able to open a book before you buy it, explore quirky or deliberately focused collections, and keep your local economy strong remember to walk in to your locally owned bookstore and spend some money there!

I can’t imagine life without my hometown bookstore, Northtown Books. The owner, Dante, tells me that he will be upgrading the web presence soon and include a searchable inventory and book ordering feature. In the mean time, he’s keeping a book blog that’s worth checking out.

Twenty three years ago I wrote my first children’s book about childhood sexual abuse, PROMISE NOT TO TELL. After it came out I received occasional heartfelt and touching letters, typed or handwritten, and forwarded to me by my editor in New York. Occasionally a therapist in my own area would call or stop me on the street to let me know she was using the book with a client or a children’s librarian would let me know it was being checked out. That was the way it happened then.

Now, having a website for STRONG AT THE HEART, I receive inquiries from all over. Kids who want to know how to get out of a bad situation. A young woman 7000 miles away who writes to me about finding the courage to go into therapy. A man in his 50’s amazed at and encouraged by seeing the faces of male survivors. Conference organizers who want me to speak at their event or do trainings for professionals. Other writers. Survivors with resources to suggest. Librarians asking for book referrals.
We have conversations. I hear how people’s lives change. We exchange ideas and experiences.  And I learn so much.

gift from within

A reader recommended a site that others may find helpful. Here’s the self-description from the organization:

Gift From Within, a nonprofit organization, is dedicated to those who suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), those at risk for PTSD, and those who care for traumatized individuals. We have articles written by authorities in the field, poetry and art gallery for trauma survivors, peer support network, coping and inspirational stories, a Q&A, videos, book reviews, list of retreats for survivors, global list of trauma survivor support groups, meditations, and other educational materials and resources.

Here’s something you might want to check out. A young filmmaker is producing a feature film that examines male experience of sexual abuse within the orthodox Jewish community.

I haven’t seen the film but have visited the website for Narrow Bridge http://www.narrowbridgefilm.com/. From his description and the website itself, the film appears to be about a religious young man in a new relationship who must come to terms with abuse by a trusted man in his childhood.

It’s been way too long since I posted here. What has absorbed me is my involvement in digital storytelling. This began as an invitation a year ago from Amy Hill of Silence Speaks to participate in a digital storytelling workshop.

Digital Storytelling gives ordinary people the skills to make short, personal QuickTime/DVD movies about their experience. What I find fascinating is seeing what people do when they have the power to communicate their inmost experience in video format without the mediation of editors, journalists, filmmakers, etc. The stories are incredibly moving and often reveal a great deal that gets lost in slicker productions.

Amy’s site, Silence Speaks, contains the stories of men and women, boys and girls, who are overcoming sexual, physical and emotional violence in their lives. The stories speak about facing racism, making it through foster care, being abandoned by family after reporting abuse. It’s heavy stuff, but also very inspiring. You might want to check it out.

home town

What I’ve done with it this spring is not abuse related. Working with a grassroots women’s health organization, another writer and I developed a program for cancer patients to help them tell their stories. We were fortunate in being granted the funds to bring the Center for Digital Storytelling to our small town for a three day workshop so that the participants could turn their written scripts into 3 minute movies.

If/when the stories go up on line, I’ll post a link for you here.

And, yes, what got me involved was my own cancer experience. I’m healthy now and very happy about it.

I just heard from Mindy, one of the Cybils organizers, about a new interactive book site for children’s and young adult literature.

And Strong at the Heart has its own page there.

At the Tandem Library Books site you can bring up four separate lists of recommended book in Texas state reading programs. (Strong at the Heart is on the Tayshas list for high school students.) Scroll down the column of book jackets and click to open a graphic that looks like a book with “pages” you can turn for a book description, author bio, and list of related books.

There’s even a way to rate the books you’ve read.

The books listed for the Tayshas include five I’ve written about on this blog and/or presented at literature conferences. Look for Sold by Patricia McCormick, Inexcusable by Chris Lynch, and Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin.

This is a fine way to learn about the latest and best books. And the different lists cover books for all ages.

The results are in. The Cybils—the blogosphere’s own children’s literature awards—have been announced.

Many of you know I was a judge on the nonfiction panel. We had five amazing books to choose from. Our discussion was deep and heartfelt. And in the end we all were happy to select Russell Freedman’s Freedom Walkers to receive this new award.

Here’s our description, as posted on the Cybils’ blog:

Non-Fiction, Middle Grade and Young Adult:
Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
by Russell Freedman
Holiday House
The story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott has been told many times by many different people and has almost become legend, but in Freedom Walkers, Russell Freedman is not sharing folklore or the iconic stories of civil rights heroes like Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks. This book tells how ordinary men, women and children planned and worked together to peaceably stand up against the injustice of the segregated transportation system—and won. Their heroism makes the reader ask, “Could I do this? Could I stand up to the threats? Could I walk to school every day for almost a year to make justice happen in my hometown?” Well-chosen historic photographs bring to life the American South of the 1950’s. The true story is gripping and well documented. This is a read-in-one-sitting kind of book, which will appeal to young teens up through adults.

Is this great book in your library yet? Check it out.

If you want to see a sweet film featuring a strong survivor, insight into the ways incest affects families through the generations, a sense of humor, and vibrant faith in the ability to face the pain of the past and heal, then check out Volver, by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar.

Penelope Cruz plays Raimunda, a smart, attractive, and hard working single mother who lives in the city with her pre teen daughter Paula (the utterly convincing Yohana Cobo). Cruz’s character is from a small, claustrophobic town where–apparently–both her parents died in a fire.

The story is set in motion when Paula’s stepfather, Paco, tries to assault her. The girl grabs a knife to defend herself and in the struggle, Paco is killed. When Raimunda finds out what happened, her mother instinct kicks in (although you wonder why she put up with the louse for so long). She reassures Paula and sets out to protect her daughter by disposing of Paco’s body.

where sweetness lies

It isn’t as ghoulish as it sounds, because the focus of the movie is a loving look at the strengths of these and other ordinary Spanish women, their sisters, neighbors and friends. Yes, they lie, they cheat a little here and there, but they are up against a world that would run them over. For all the hardship, there is also deep commitment and the willingness to help each other through life’s travails.
In Spanish, “volver” means to turn—and also to return. There are many turns and returns, from the spinning wind turbines in the background as the characters make the journey from city to small town to city again, to the return of Raimunda’s mother, to the replaying of family themes down through the generations.

spoiler alert

There is also a wholly satisfying scene in which Raimunda confronts her mother for not protecting her from incest as a child. It is so very human in the pain, the guilt, the anger, and the capacity to reconnect after long estrangement. If this is an issue for you, you gotta see these women struggle through it.

temporary cynsations home

Cynthia Smith’s wonderful blog on children’s and young adult books has temporarily moved to her husband’s site. You can still read her interviews and insightful comments on the field.

The dynamite interview she did with me about Strong at the Heart is still accessible in her archive.

Do you know anyone who was abused at summer camp? I do. Experiencing sexual assault as a child is bad enough. Imagine being away from home for the first time, surrounded by strangers, and then being abused. What a nightmare!

Camp Safety Project has a new web site with information for camp administrators about how to reduce abuse by counselors and other staff, resources on healing, a page for parents, and best of all a page of sample policies that any organization that deals with children would be wise to put into effect today.

standing together

And out of Phoenix, Arizona, there’s a new survivor site called The Apple Orchard. Four survivors who met in a support group are starting a new non-profit to support others in their healing and raise awareness in their community.

Their motto is “standing stronger together.” If you check out their site, give them a howdy and let them know what you think.

Another organization founded by a survivor and reaching out to help others heal is The Emma Center in Arcata, California. Paige Alisen, who founded the organization, is a whizz at fund raising and grant writing. Her organization provides professionally lead support groups, a lending library, individual support, counseling assistance and other services.  Paige’s dream is to start a retreat center for women where they can heal from trauma.

It is amazing the energy that is released when survivors heal, look around at our hurting world, and ask “So what can I do about it.”

Wednesday morning I grabbed a cup of tea, put a pile of books I hoped to talk about on my work table, and dialed in to Kathleen Brooks’ studio phone line.

A few minutes later we were launched into an hour long, intimate discussion about healing from abuse, role models, stereotypes of survivors, and the writing and publication of Strong at the Heart.

Our conversation was broadcast live on the Internet and is now archived at Kathleen’s Ethical Life site.

You can play the segments one at a time there. I had fun exploring her archive and listening to the voices of leaders in the child abuse prevention, treatment, and advocacy fields.  The site is a treasure trove.
As an interviewer, Kathleen has a gift for putting guests at ease. She asked questions that I’d never been asked before.

If you are curious about the stories behind this book, legal issues around publishing survivors’ stories, or the stereotypes that can stand in the way of healing, you might want to check it out.

pretty girl

For a thrilling YA read, with an unforgettable survivor/hero, be sure to pick up Laura Wiess’ Such a Pretty Girl.

No stereotypes here. Fifteen year old Meredith is a complex and determined teenager who is furious that the man who molested her—her own father—is out on parole instead of serving his full sentence. Not only that, but her clueless mother wants him back in their lives!

Meredith is the antithesis of a passive victim. She has more than her share of challenges, but she never gives up and she finds allies in her struggle to protect herself and other kids. There is lots of action, suspense and danger before the stunning climax (don’t try this one at home, kids). Definitely a thriller.