Healing the trauma

     Waking from a nap, my thought was first a remembering of when I was in my early 20's and I had been sideswiped by another car on my way to work. I "didn't want" to go to work and "so, had my excuse" and called in. I never showed up at that job again. We live in a culture that lauds getting up after the worst of hardships and pushing one's self to earn their worth, their right to exist. The greater the trauma, the greater the hero. No wants to go to work (except for those who love what they get paid to do), so not going wanting to go to work is socially acceptable. Being able to take reclaiming time, healing time, is not. I hear all the time; "I'm sick as a dog and I still have to go to work". My response is always; "Just because a bunch of people have cancer; it doesn't mean I have to have it".
     By the time of the sideswipe of my car, I was so desensitized to my own trauma, so conditioned to "suck it up and be responsible", so perpetually depressed, so perpetually anxious, so fraught with PTSD, a car accident was hardly a blip on the radar I was willing to acknowledge. There wasn't the slightest occurrence in me that was able to give myself permission to acknowledge that it was traumatic.
     In my late thirties a young woman flirted with my fiance and was really mean to me. I asked her why. She said she had been raped, so she's mean to people. I told her how I had been raped twice and yet still was never that mean to people. There's the opposite spectrum I never wanted to fall into in her; using trauma as an excuse for justifying everything one does. I felt guilty about any act of self defense I ever "slipped" and allowed myself to express, even piercing words to get an attacker off me. By the time that young woman treated me mean "because she had been raped"; I had already gone through a period of time involved in right wing American politics where the right to self defense is unalienable and the second amendment to be protected. The old west was full of heroic men who would have shot anyone who had "fondled" their daughters with their eyes as the school staff had sexualized my daughter with their body shaming.
     Unlike most "leftists" rampaging about women's rights; I do not abhor violence. I understand why it exists.  I had asked what Osho's quote about a man of silence meant, what it would feel like to feel such peace, to be a pool of silence. My inner self had answered me and continues to add to it. I was no longer a punching bag absorbing everyone else's trauma being projected as meanness nor was I projecting my own meanly. I understood why they projected it, while not allowing it to hit me. I had found peace with existing in a traumatic world. My healing, however, was no where near complete, as this incident with my daughter is showing.
     Taking a stand for her is taking a stand for myself as we never go through these things alone as inherently empathetic beings. The note on my door requesting one not knock is empowering and protecting all three of us. My son is the least able to process this and put it all together within himself. He's been absorbing the energy of the perverts in his classroom where he's a boy and to boys, being bad to girls is cool. He'd defend his sister, but his sister isn't in his class where hurting her would be cool. He's expressed upset at all the fighting at his little blue table where he sits and works with other little boys. He raises his voice that they stop fighting. They don't heed it. I see his feelings of powerlessness and self hatred. He's "one of them", one of the boys and has times of trying to be "one of the boys", to be cool. How horrid to think the only role models and peers for feeling good about one's self is cruelty. He struggles with loving himself constantly.
     People have complained about my children spending so much time playing Minecraft and watching YouTube. Screw them. Tiny Turtle and Little Kelly, Dan TDM; they're far cooler and nicer than anyone in our environment typically. My children can get their social skills from them if they have to. I won't agree with everything these characters do, however they are not inherently mean or sexist. There isn't much name calling. Tiny Turtle and Little Kelly protect each other and give generously to one another, see that the needs of each are met. They laugh and play and craft and adventure and entertain together. If my children's socialization looks like that; I am a blessed woman.
    With this incident concerning my daughter; I have left the path of my forebears more completely. The inter-generational cycles of abuse and victimhood, the parents that stand by allowing their spouses to violate their own children. I pull those around me up in my wake or they choose to retreat deeper into that hell behind the walls of transformational fires. Fire came and I danced with it. I absorbed it and increased my own light, the lights of my children, the light of my friend and neighbor. I walked the hard line, I stood in it. I brought greater peace with me to the other side. On that point Osho is wrong; withdrawal is not only ever escapist. Yes, it is death. I t is the going inward to die to  the disturbed self and be resurrected to a greater degree the living self. It is the phoenix becoming ash before it rises from them. It is the lotus seed in the mud, the deep, thick darkness before it pushes through and blossoms. We retreated after self defense and we emerge with more peace, an expanded pool of silence.
    The good news is also: my children aren't in the state of repression of their own self awareness and sensitive nature as I was, nor am I. My children won't be going back to school for the same reason they're petitioning for laws that don't require victims to face their perpetrators in courtrooms. I know what it's like to go back to a job after complaining of sexual harassment; the remarks, undermining, death threats and attempts to cause me physical injury only increased. I quit that job with no further notice and told them I would not be attending the exit interview. I told them if they with held my last paycheck until I did attend an exit interview, they'd be sued. I did get my last check rather quickly. Which means I'll probably have to leave this town even if I don't get kicked out of our apartment for not sending my children to school.  You can take a stand, but they will make you pay for it if they can.