Just Sunday morning I woke up to three national news stories of rape.
Air_Force_trainer_gets_4_years_for_raping_trainee
Ohio_to_consider_charges_against_others_in_rape
Indian_police_arrest_5_over_Swiss_tourists_rape
It is not because rape is more prevalent. It is because girls and women, wrapped in their communities, are coming forward. Saying this is not OK. The community support is what makes a difference. It is most difficult for a woman to break the silence alone.
When someone you love is in pain, you look for ways to be helpful.
When we love someone so much, it seems harder to see them hurting than to feel hurt ourselves. I find this especially true with my children. I’d gladly take their pain away even if it means I’d feel it stronger. In a way, I am feeling it because I love them but I don’t stay here because besides it doesn’t help them much.
Guilt.
It plagues us all. It makes us feel embarrassed, humiliated, undeserving, unworthy and small. Guilt feels worse than awful which immobilizes us so we get stuck in this miserable place.
We all make mistakes and bad choices sometimes. Mostly it is accidental and unintentional. Or the lesser of two evils. This does not make you a bad person. Not in the least. It means you are human.
Guilt, if not used to restore, and then let go, can only contaminate.
Every two minutes someone in the US is sexually assaulted. Every two minutes. That’s twenty people in the time it took me to write this post. Nineteen of them are women. (With childhood sexual abuse, victim’s gender ratio is 3 girls to 1 boy.)
Rape and sexual abuse are hard things to talk about because of fear and shame. But silence just makes fear and shame more rampant. I believe by not talking about them–our opposition of abusers and support of survivors–we are perpetuating the problem. Sexual abuse thrives in silence. Rape thrives in silence.
There are three ways to start the day:
“This day is going to be awful.”
“This day is going to be great.”
and
“I don’t know what today’s going to be like and what it may mean.”
Beginning with a beginner’s mind is a method taught in Zen Buddhism. It is meant to strip the meanings our monkey minds put on everything that happens to us. Did you ever notice that we tend to jump to conclusions? And these conclusions make a huge difference in how we feel and how we act. Continue Reading →
