While Gabor Mate in his new book, The Myth of Normal (https://drgabormate.com/), explicitly forgives parents who inflict their trauma on their own children, I am not so forgiving. I think our fundamental obligation as human beings is to develop self-consciousness and energy enough not to inflict our damage on a future generation. It is our responsibility to end the cycle of violence, whether in the family, in the business or the organization, and in society at large.
I find my passion and purpose in identifying abuse when I see it, hear it, and feel it, and in calling it out, even when my voice is relatively powerless, and the world stumbles on unilluminated and unchanged. Due to the person I was born to be and the circumstances which shaped me, my meaning is in resistance to oppression, when the bigger people stomp on the littler people, whether the stomping is physical, verbal, sexual, or emotional. And abuse is more prevalent and more jarring than any peaceable corner or calm walk in the woods.
I write the story of my hurting and my recovery to affirm my own life and my own value, and to say in any fashion I can, to the selfish, the greedy, the stupid, and the brutal: your behavior is unacceptable. I trained in this vocation very early in my childhood and throughout my teens as my parents and my teachers, and then as religion, medicine, and government inflicted on me unconscionable punishments because I did not submit and obey, I did not share their values, I determined that my individuality was more important than making them feel good, safe, and decent. I am exceedingly happy that they have not succeeded in killing me, and though they sickened and deterred me, I will not fail in my mission.
To breathe, to think, to feel. To suffer and to gain wisdom and experience. Life for some is not a battle. Life for some is not an arena of adversaries. But circumstances and temperament trained me to fight, and even in my relatively privileged position in the universe, I have known trouble and struggle. Every day, I learn and get stronger. Every day, I sharpen my weapons. Behind me, a mountainous land. Before me, further peaks to climb.
