Archive for January 31, 2010

Living in the Margins

January 31, 2010 Rachel Belonging, Community, Disabilities, Marginalization

Jenn Power is a typically abled woman who lives with disabled people in an intentional community called L’Arche Cape Breton. She and her husband are the parents of twin boys with Down Syndrome. A week or so ago, I was reading her blog, Possibilities, when I came upon a post about some harsh words directed at her on the New York Times blog Motherlode. Apparently, this community leader and loving mother had committed the unpardonable sin of saying out loud that she would not want to cure her sons of Down Syndrome. I was especially struck by these words:

“I know that my position is a minority one. When you throw your lot in with marginalized people, you get marginalized. I understand that.”

Reading these words set off a wave of new realizations about my autism, my relationship with Bob, our ongoing struggles, and new possibilities for our lives.

Many of us autistic folk have talked and written about living on the margins, observing group dynamics, and deciding how to act. That feeling of living on the margins has always felt so precarious to me. I’ve always felt as though I were balancing on a fence post, living in perpetual fear of falling over backward.

So today, instead of thinking about “living on the margins,” I started thinking about “living in the margins.” The more I thought about it, the more I experienced a greater sense of spaciousness. All things being equal, I’d prefer to be able to come and go from the margins to the center and back again, but all things are not equal. In this society, I have a disability called autism, and I live in the margins of the culture all the time.

Because I’m also white, American, middle-class, and well-educated, the margins I live in are quite a bit wider and more elastic than the margins in which others live. In other words, I don’t for a minute believe that being autistic erases all other privilege, nor do I believe that my privilege can ever erase my marginalization. If anything, being autistic and otherwise privileged creates an odd kind of self-perpetuating expectation. I often think that, given my privilege, I should be “higher functioning.” I should be much more “normal.” I should feel a greater sense of “belonging.” I should be able to figure out how to live somewhere other than in the margins.

But of course, I can’t. That’s what being disabled is all about in the world as presently constituted.

Ever since Bob and I made our relationship known eight years ago, I have felt progressively marginalized. The first attempt to marginalize me took a very tangible form: one person on the synagogue board of directors suggested that Bob should leave me, and that I should leave the community entirely. The response of the other board members? Silence. While Bob did not leave me, we did leave the synagogue community, because when people saw us together, they spoke with Bob and ignored me completely. The same kinds of things happened in the larger community.

Virtually all of us on the spectrum have had that feeling of being hidden in plain sight, but until recently, I had never thought of it as an experience of marginalization. Instead, for years, after every outing, Bob and I would have long, tedious, upsetting discussions about how he got all the attention, about the ways in which people were ignoring me, about the fact that he didn’t step in and make it stop, and about how powerless and angry I felt. Because we couldn’t define what was going on in terms that made any sense, these discussions were exhausting and unproductive. We just kept having the same argument, over and over.

After I read Jenn’s piece, Bob and I had a long talk about marginalization, and suddenly, I realized why I had been so angry. I realized that Bob had never consciously given up his privilege of being “normal” and joined me in being marginalized. Not that I wish being marginalized on him or on anyone else, mind you, but do we really have another choice? After all, as Jenn said, “When you throw your lot in with marginalized people, you get marginalized.” Isn’t that what happens to parents of autistic children? To the family members of autistic adults? How many neuro-typical people want to befriend them, or listen to them talk about their loved ones? Not many.

Although Bob is quite wonderful, I’m tired of seeing him as the de facto prototype of “normal.” Some time ago, he said that it is hard to go out with me because I have to block sound, and he doesn’t like having to talk loudly in order for me to hear him. I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the impasse in which that leaves us, but I hadn’t been able to figure out how to get past it. Finally, in the midst of our discussion about marginalization, I blurted out words to the effect that if I’m going to feel human, he really needs to come into my world and stand next to me. Maybe, when we go out walking or to a restaurant, we don’t talk at all. Or maybe he talks loudly and feels a bit conspicuous. I don’t know. But uncovering my ears out in public really can’t be part of the plan, and I can’t stay home all the time, either.

For both our sakes, I don’t want Bob by my side 24/7, but our lives are becoming increasingly separate, and it bothers me. In the course of our conversation, he said that he’s willing to drop a lot of activities in the outside world, start from scratch here at home, put our relationship first, navigate the world together, and see what possibilities flow from there.

To get ourselves started, we did something simple: we went grocery shopping together. Part of our agreement was that “together” was the operative word. If I’m alone at the grocery store, it’s challenging, but I stay completely focused on getting my shopping done, and it works. However, when I’m with Bob, I’m more open, and if someone else comes in and starts talking to Bob, I feel very disoriented in an already challenging situation. So, if someone were to come over to talk, we agreed that Bob could say whatever he needed to say in order to keep his focus on me. In fact, I gave him permission to say just about anything about me he pleased: that I’m disabled, autistic, dazed, confused, weird, and undeniably odd. I don’t care. It just doesn’t matter to me anymore.

Fortunately, no one came up to Bob and wanted to talk, so we got our shopping done easily and had a very good time of it. Even lugging the groceries home was fun!

As we’ve gone through this process, Bob has realized that his ongoing resistance to standing in the margins with me derives from the fact that the only time he’s ever focused on being with a disabled partner, she was dying. Part of him hasn’t wanted to accept that I’m disabled because, when the thought arises, his mind goes to a very sad, scared place. But I’m not dying. On the contrary: I’m fighting like mad to feel part of the world, to feel that my life is meaningful, to feel less afraid and more powerful. I’m fighting to widen the margins in which I live, for myself and for other people.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

7 comments

Making Friends with My Eccentricity

January 24, 2010 Rachel Aging, Belonging, Friendship, Happiness, Spectrum Pride

I went to New York City with Bob for three days last week, and I made a new friend. I know you already know one another (fairly well, in fact), but you’ve never been formally introduced. Kindly forgive the social faux pas, which I will now graciously remedy:

Blog readers, meet My Eccentricity. My Eccentricity, meet my blog readers. My Eccentricity has been around for awhile (as long as I can remember, in fact), but we’ve only recently become close friends. It’s amazing what a trip to New York City will do for you.

And how did I happen to end up in New York City for three days when I frequently quail at the prospect of going grocery shopping in our quaint little New England backwater? It was love. Of course! Read on.

The Incentive: I was tired of being away from Bob for three days every other week. He was tired of being away from me for three days every other week. Spending time with his dad is an imperative for Bob, so the idea of cutting back on these visits never occurred to either of us. The only way to get more time together was for me to get in the car and go to New York City.

The Drive to New York City: It had been about a year and a half since Bob and I had made the four-hour drive to New York together, and I had missed those times. It’s always been great to go for a long drive and have time to talk, joke, and just be together. So, although the drive was completely overstimulating to my poor Aspie nervous system, I made it to the hotel without getting a migraine. The fact that we took the Merritt Parkway, on which no trucks are allowed, went a long way toward keeping my stress at a reasonable level.

The Hotel: The room was nice, the employees were friendly, and best of all, I didn’t leave the place from the moment we checked in until the moment we checked out. Now, it may seem that going to Manhattan and staying indoors was a waste of time, but I assure you, it was not. The sensory minefield of the drive was sufficient for a first outing, thank you, so I decided to make the best of my time at the hotel. I finished incorporating all the review comments into my book, I caught up on my ASL homework, and I made great strides on a sweater I’m knitting for Bob. Plus, the hotel had an awesome fitness room, and I was the only person in it for over two hours. I actually found a way to have solitude in New York City! I should write a book.

And did I mention that Tuesday was our seventh wedding anniversary? It was! So, we ordered in dinner from room service, chose a movie to watch, and…that’s as much as I’m going to say.

The Impact of the World at Large: During the time that we were in New York, the people of Massachusetts made a terribly asinine an ill-advised decision and decided to honor the memory of Ted Kennedy by electing a man who ran on a platform of derailing healthcare reform in the Senate. And what was worse: Every time I went onto the Comcast website to retrieve my email, I had to see a headline about it. Arghh. So, although I knew that I couldn’t cure the insanity overturn the will of the people of Massachusetts, I could do a couple of things to make myself feel better: a) go on a news fast and b) install a desktop email client so that I never have to use Comcast webmail again EVER. I did both. More on how I dealt with the healthcare debacle later on.

The Drive Back to Vermont: After three days, we were very ready to go home. So, while Bob walked to the parking garage to get the car, I ensconced myself on a sofa in the hotel lobby—a sofa that was so big that when I sat all the way back, my feet dangled over the edge of the cushions. I felt like a little kid in a room full of grownups—kind of how I feel all the time, except that this time, I felt very cute. The lobby also got noisy, so it was a relief to get in the car and head back to our quiet lives in Vermont. We left in sunlight and arrived home just as it was getting dark.

My Healthcare Reform Rant: By the time we got home, I was a wee bit very much on the overstimulated side. I was talking a blue streak, bouncing off the walls, unpacking like it was the last thing I’d ever do, and feeling really, really happy and energetic for the first time in a long time. I hadn’t been depressed exactly, but protecting myself from the possibility of overload had left me feeling isolated, and the trip to New York had made me feel like part of the world again. I finally realized (duh) that I don’t have to conform to anything (duh) except the laws of wherever I happen to be (duh), and that I can indulge my eccentricity any old way I please (duh), especially (duh) in the comfort of my own home.

So, because I was royally pissed off by the whole disaster in Massachusetts, I decided to expend some of my rather impressive store of nervous energy by indulging in the following rant:

“What the HELL were people thinking? How can they NOT know how badly this country needs healthcare reform? Are they crazy? What the hell happened?

Oh, I know. They let children vote in Massachusetts. Children. Well, actually, people of legal age with the mental acuity and social consciousness of children.

But wait. That’s an insult to little kids. In fact, I can’t compare these people to anyone, because they’re being so mind-numbingly ridiculous that any comparison to any other group of people would be unfair. I mean, how do you describe people who think that if they get sick, their insurance company is going to cover the costs? And not raise their premiums? Hahahahahahahaha! What planet are these people on?

And how the HELL did Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat end up in the hands of a person whose only aim in life (apart from looking perpetually young) is to derail healthcare reform? I mean, do people have ANY respect for Ted Kennedy’s legacy, for the way he supported the working person, for the passion he felt about healthcare reform? HELLO? ANYONE? Holy shit. I hope they issue an alert for the area around Arlington National Cemetery, because right now, Ted Kennedy is SPINNING in his grave at such a high velocity that his burial place is sure to become the epicenter of a MASSIVE EARTHQUAKE. Maybe then, all those folks in Congress will WAKE UP to the need for universal health care.

But wait! They already have universal health care. Paid for by the US government! Oh. My. God. It’s socialized healthcare. For Republicans. Can the hypocrisy get any worse?

Yes, it can. The Democrats in Massachusetts can blame everyone and everything for their defeat, but last time I looked, Martha Coakley, the freakin’ attorney general of the state, never even ran a freakin’ campaign. What was she THINKING? That the ghost of Ted Kennedy was going to anoint her the Senator from Massachusetts?

Martha, honey. It doesn’t work like that. DUH!! How can you be the attorney general of the state and NOT KNOW THAT???”

I felt better.

The Day After: I went to work at the thrift store. I was friendly. I made conversation. I extended myself. I brought home a quilt to repair. I was still pretty buzzed.

The Day After That: Bob and I discussed how much fun I am when I’m feeling energetic and inspired. And why people with autism so often get diagnosed as bi-polar. And how I really am fine the way I am, however I’m feeling. And that I don’t need to ask the world’s permission to be myself.

And Now? No crash and burn. At all. Just some tiredness and a sense of relaxation. Amazing, eh?

That’s what happens when I go out into the world and stop worrying about what people think of me.

© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

9 comments

Struggling with Internalized Disabilism

January 16, 2010 Rachel Ableism, Disabilities, Spectrum Pride

The first time I heard the term disabilism, I winced and rolled my eyes. It’s not that I’m against the use of “-ism”s to describe bigotry. There’s enough bigotry in the world to justify a whole dictionary full of “-ism”s. My problem was more basic: I didn’t believe that disabilism existed. After all, who hates disabled people?

Duh.

Because I live in a culture that teaches fear and loathing of difference, I’ve imbibed all the poison the society has to offer—racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, you name it. Knowing that I’ve internalized all of this hatred and fear, I’ve spent the better part of my adult life trying to root out as much as I can, secure in the knowledge that I will never fully succeed.

Until I had to deal with the fact that I am a disabled person, it had never occurred to me that I had any kind of bigotry against disabled people at all. In fact, I have a very vivid memory of the day in Berkeley that a young man in a wheelchair called me over and asked me to drain his urine bag into the street. I was happy to do it, and he seemed to have no self-consciousness about it at all. Perhaps he sensed my innocence and knew that I would be nice. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s one of my best memories.

But why would I remember that moment? Well, it made me feel good about myself. It made me feel helpful. It made me feel compassionate. Okay. Are any of those feelings a problem? It depends on what lies beneath them. For me, they were based on a subtext of “Oh, this poor man has to actually ask a stranger to empty his urine bag. On a public street.” The fact that he was gracious, self-respecting, and without shame does not take away from the fact that I thought of him with pity, and I that I felt lucky that I wasn’t him.

If you asked me what I felt when I saw a person in a wheelchair, I’d inevitably say, “Oh, that must be so hard for him.” Or if you asked me about a person who was Deaf, I’d probably say, “Oh, it must be awful not to be able to hear Beethoven.” It didn’t matter what the situation. I felt sorry for people who weren’t able-bodied in the way that our society defines it. Of course, I never thought I was being bigoted, because one of my best friends was in a wheelchair, and as we all know, if one of your best friends is….well, you know.

What does it mean to feel sorry for disabled people? What does it mean that I was glad not to be one of them? What does it mean that my first thought wasn’t about the person, but about how hard, how limited, how sad, how embarrassing, how terrible that person’s life must be? Is that really bigotry?

I think it is. My reactions were based on a stereotype of what a disabled person must be feeling, of what a disabled person must be thinking, and of what a disabled person’s life must be like. What’s missing from all of these moments is something as necessary to human existence as clean air and water. It’s called respect. Respect and pity do not go hand in hand. Respect and feeling sorry for someone do not go hand in hand. Respect and thanking God you’re not like that poor schmuck over there do not go hand in hand. Respect only goes hand in hand with full acceptance, with encouragement, with love for the individual, and with justice. Respect powers life forward. It doesn’t leave it hanging in mid-air while you wring your hands and think, “Oh, I’m so glad I’m not you.”

When I check out my attitude toward myself, I nearly choke on what a toxin disabilism really is. Lately, I’ve finally given in and begun using the “disabled” label to describe myself, as in “I am disabled in the culture in which I live, because the culture does not cultivate my strengths, support my needs, or respect my existence. And just for the record, being disabled does not mean that I’m disordered, broken, or impaired.” Why go through all of these words? Why explain it? Why be so defensive? Why not just say “I’m disabled” and get over it? Why do I feel saying that I’m disabled is “giving in” to some sort of adversary?

Because  in some of the deepest places in my being, those places in which the light of rationality and the balm of compassion have not yet entered, I think I’m pathetic. I feel ashamed. I feel broken. I’m one of those people over there: the ones who are always too loud, or walk funny, or talk funny, or look funny, or drool, or make weird sounds, or don’t get what’s going on. They’re the people I used to feel sorry for all those years when I thought I was being compassionate and accepting and helpful. Now I am one of them. Oh. My. God. Now I have to cross the line and say, “Yes, I’ve faked it really well all my life, and now, the facade is gone, and I am who I’ve always been.” I’ve always been autistic. I’ve always been disabled. I’ve always faked my way through everything and wondered why I hated myself so badly in the process.

When the culture tells you that being disabled means that your life isn’t worth as much as the next person’s life, that message tends to engender self hatred. When people talk about a cure for autism, what they’re really saying is that somehow, if you took away the autism, you’d get a person whose life was actually worth something. Well, excuse me, but the last time I looked, I’m the only one who can decide whether my life is worth something. I live in a world that makes it hard for me to believe sometimes, but that doesn’t make it so. Not by a long shot.

As I write these words, I’m aware that I’m making a major shift. I’ve gone from feeling dispirited about everything I can’t do to simply looking at the internalized, cultural messages that impede my ability to feel worthy of love and respect. I call that progress. In fact, in the life of this disabled person, it’s a major leap forward.

© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

12 comments

Some Thoughts on Autism and Bullying

January 11, 2010 Rachel Aging, Bullying, Childhood, Communication, Spectrum Pride

In my last post, I discussed my commitment to move ahead with my life in the knowledge that I have no extended family. That reality is still very clear to me, and I got a very vivid reminder of it last night.

As you might have noticed, I have a rather large extended (former) family, with many, many cousins. At this moment, I’m turning my attention to a cousin I’ll call Boris. I haven’t seen Boris in 30 years or more. I never knew her well, but over time, a couple of people in the family made remarks to the effect that she might have been abused as a child. As cousin Ralph might point out, I have no way of knowing one way or the other. Boris herself has never said anything about it. If she did, I would believe her, but we’re never going to get anywhere close to that conversation.

Read on for details.

After I had scattered the ashes of my hope for an extended family, my conscience started to bother me about Boris. What if she were another survivor? What if she thinks she’s the only one? It didn’t feel right to simply go away without saying something to her, but what should I say? I stewed on it for awhile, and I finally realized that all I needed to do was to give her my contact information, in case she ever wanted to get in touch with me. (Please stop groaning.) So, I sent her a message that was as benign and as neutral as I could possibly make it:

“Hi, I’m your cousin…I now go by my Hebrew name of Rachel, and I’m married. If you ever want to contact me, you can reach me at rachel.vermont@comcast.net.

I hope that all is well with you.
Rachel”

I knew that the family lie had made it to the outermost reaches of my (former) family, so I knew it was entirely possible that the lie had made it to her door. I felt good in my heart for having done the ethical thing, and that was all that mattered to me. And so, I was prepared for her to ignore me, or to simply say “Fuck off.”

But no. Nothing is that easy in my (former) family. I’ll paraphrase Boris’ response. She said:

1. She doesn’t have a cousin anymore.
2. Her losing me as a cousin was my choice.
3. I have to live with my choice, so go to hell.
4. If I ever contacted her or any member of her family again, she would seek out a civil harassment restraining order.

I will never have to get all “Aspie-and-wordy” again to describe the toxic nature of my original family system. You have the whole family dynamic in a nutshell, right here: shunning, blaming, distortions, lack of compassion, and unprovoked threats. There it is. All on a platter, along with my head.

And why? Because I offered someone I barely know my email address and said I hoped she was well.

Okey dokey.

So, then I got to talking with Bob and with a good Aspie friend of mine about this latest turn of events, and I suddenly realized that I was being bullied. Moi, bullied? I thought. Moi, with a blue belt in karate? Moi, with 25 years of therapy under my belt? Moi, the mama bear who has been known to risk reputation and throw social graces to the wind on behalf of her (now nearly grown) little cub? Yes, I’m afraid so.

And then, I thought, wow, that’s exactly what happened with my parents and with my brother. They bullied me. My father bullied me with physical pain, with unwanted touch, and with threats of harm. My mother bullied me with lies, ridicule, and manipulation. My brother once pinned me to a car because I disagreed with something he said, and he shunned me when I broke contact with my parents. And then there was Uncle Sylvia, and our disastrous conversation of three years ago, in which he ridiculed me for asking for love and compassion over what I had suffered. And come to think of it, every single family member who has heard the lies about me and believed them has been bullying me with their silence and their rejection ever since. It’s absolutely amazing to finally realize it.

All this bullying, all directed at me. Innocent, good-hearted, clueless, Aspie me. But why? I have a few ideas. (Feel free to add your own).

1. I walk into every room thinking that people are all set to receive love, attention, and goodness from me. I just have to be clear and non-threatening, and we’ll all get along, right? What could be simpler? Ha ha. It’s not bad to want to be loving and attentive, but the expression “pearls before swine” keeps coming to mind.

2. I am very childlike. I have a kind of innocence that all the abuse in the world has never been able to take away from me. So, I figure that people feel powerful bullying an innocent person. Or something. I have no idea. It’s just a guess.

3. For much of my life, I tried so eagerly, so earnestly, and so innocently to figure out the rules and play by them that people began to see me as defenseless. And, as a kid, I was defenseless, just as any other kid. But for me, there was an extra element of defenselessness, because little autistic me could not understand lying, cruelty, social rules, and social hierarchies. I just kept trying to make sense of them and be everyone’s friend. That made me more than a little vulnerable.

4. Despite my once-unquenchable desire to figure out the rules, fit in, and be normal, I have always been the Achilles heel of the family. Why? I’m an Aspie. I speak the truth. I break illusions. As such, I am the person who is the ever-present reminder that the family ain’t nearly as perfect as everyone would like to pretend it is.

5. I am the person who left the bullies behind. A dysfunctional family system cannot tolerate people leaving just on account of they’d rather not be bullied.

So, I reach out to someone genetically related to me, on the off chance that she might need it, just to feel that I’ve done the right thing, and the whole family system comes roaring right at me.

God, I’m having a serious autism moment. The gig has been up for a long time, and I’m the last to know.

Comments and hugs both appreciated.

© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

9 comments

Cycles of Return: Staying Out of the Victim Place

January 7, 2010 Rachel Childhood, Communication, Spiritual Beliefs

On more than one occasion, friends and loved ones have shared with me the following definition of insanity:

Insanity is the process of doing the same thing, over and over, while hoping for a different result.

Personally, I think that’s a fine definition of insanity, so I’ve been looking at my recent debacle with my cousin Ralph and trying to decide whether my behavior meets the criteria. Certainly, after countless disastrous interactions with my original family members, my willingness to toddle over to my father’s side of the gene pool, hoping for a civil and productive conversation, might seem a little, well, nuts. But was it?

I don’t think so. I’ve begun looking at the disaster with cousin Ralph in a more spiritual way, using the Jewish idea of teshuva, which means “return.” Generally, we talk about doing teshuva when we’ve done something wrong; we acknowledge the wrong, we make amends, and we pledge not to repeat the mistake when the same situation arises again. If we can do those things, then we have returned, both to our original pure selves and to a state of harmony with others.

So I’ve been thinking: Why was I creating another cycle of return to the same place with my original family? What had I done wrong before, and what was I trying to do right in this interaction with Ralph?

My last less-than-ideal contact with a family member had taken place about three years ago. I contacted my uncle Sylvia (not his real name), hoping to reconnect. I was unsure of how or when to bring up the abuse, but I figured I’d find an appropriate moment. Unfortunately, as soon as Sylvia got my first email, he did an Internet search on my name and found a post I’d written about being an abuse survivor. As a result, the proverbial shit had hit the proverbial fan before we’d even begun.

At first, Sylvia questioned the idea that my parents could ever, ever have abused me, but a short time later told me that I had taken revenge on them by breaking contact. Revenge for what? I asked. For stuff that didn’t happen? No matter how many times I told him that I was interested only in my own survival, and that revenge had never been part of the equation, he couldn’t hear it. With each iteration, he got nastier. By the end, I pretty much broke down in a mass of tears and self-hatred, waved a white flag, and ended the interaction feeling like a victim. Again.

This time around, with cousin Ralph, a similar dynamic occurred, although to her credit, cousin Ralph did not get nasty with me in the way that uncle Sylvia had. However, the same mind-boggling question-the-abuse/acknowledge-the-abuse contradiction was there, expressed in emails containing such statements as “I have no basis on which to believe you” and “I had no idea you came from such a dysfunctional family.”

Excuse me for a moment while my head stops spinning.

There was also quite a bit of, shall we say, lying regarding the family photos. In one of her first emails, cousin Ralph had said that she had “many more” photos to send after the initial batch. In one of her last emails, however, she said that she’d just “scoured” the family albums and, well, gosh darn it, she just couldn’t find any more photos. Sorry! So sorry!

I hate it when people lie. I’d rather they just said, “Get the fuck out of my face.” That I could understand. Lying perplexes me. My Aspie brain just can’t quite believe that it’s happening. Why lie when you can just come out and say something? (That was a rhetorical question.)

Anyway, at some point in the interaction with cousin Ralph, I finally realized that I had to give up on having an extended family. I mean, I really, really had to give it up. And so, my friends, I must inform you that, during the past week, I made the difficult decision to remove from life support my brain-dead hope of ever having an extended family of people who share my DNA. (Services were private; in lieu of flowers, please make a donation to the charity of your choice.) After the cremation and scattering of the ashes, I was feeling very sad, so Bob wrote me the following beautiful email while he was in New York:

Hi love — Thinking more about Ralph’s e-mail, it seems to me that your decision to move on with your life as if there is no family is the right one. No matter what Ralph may or may not be willing to do in terms of a potential relationship with you, her email is simply another “missed opportunity” for people in your family to reach out to you in a loving, compassionate, understanding way. Whatever her reasons were for responding in the limited way that she did are her reasons, and have little if nothing to do with you. And hasn’t this been the problem all along? That no one has considered how you must feel about any and all of this?

And to me, that’s the real tragedy, and the source of the sadness I’ve been feeling lately about the absence of real family in your life. It underscores what you’ve been saying for all these years — that you’re a good person, that you’ve done nothing wrong, and that you deserve better from your family.

Sad to say, those are all good reasons to say goodbye to them. To close the door and move on down the road. The line from a Mary Black song goes something like, “We’ll never see what lies ahead if we’re always looking back.”

As I re-read these words last night, it came to me: I must end the interaction with Ralph with dignity. I cannot end it feeling powerless and screwed over. If I do, I’m just a victim again, just as I was in my interaction with uncle Sylvia, and just as I was in childhood. I must stay out of the victim place.

Sometimes, that’s hard for Aspies, because the world can feel like such a hurtful and incomprehensible place. But I can’t be a victim in this world. My innocence, my trustworthiness, and my truth-telling are some of my best qualities, and just because people occasionally take advantage of them doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with me. So, with all these thoughts in mind, I gathered myself together and wrote the following email:

Dear Ralph,

A few days ago, I wrote that if you believed what I said about my childhood, you should write to me, but that if you didn’t, you should continue your silence. When you responded by saying that you didn’t have any basis for believing me or not, I should have stopped our communication right there.

I don’t have any physical evidence that proves anything I say, so if evidence is what you need, I’m afraid I can’t offer any. I have no medical records or reliable witnesses, no police reports or other testimony. All I have is my own truth, my own integrity, and an abundance of other people who believe me. Some of these people have never met me in person, and some haven’t seen me in over 30 years, and yet, they still believe me, and they still express compassion and support for me. And why not? What do they have to lose? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

That’s what I need in my life. That’s what I’ve been trying to say.

Let’s end our communication here and wish each other well.

All the best,
Rachel

Now to me, that’s teshuva. I’ve gone through another cycle of the family craziness, and this time, I’ve come out sane. I’ve returned to my true self—not a victim, and not even a survivor, but simply a whole, decent, self-respecting human being.

© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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I’ve Got Those “Unbelieved Abuse Survivor” Blues

January 4, 2010 Rachel Childhood, Communication

Before I launch into this post, I want to make it clear that my cousin Ralph knew me as a child and made the initial contact with me a few weeks back. I had written to a different cousin, one who had never met me and had not spent any time with my parents. He felt safe. Unfortunately, he had no genealogical information, so he passed on my email address to Ralph—without my permission. God forbid anyone in this family should have boundaries. Anyway, once she had my email address, she offered to send pictures, and her brother offered to send genealogical information. As you know, the process stopped cold a week or so ago.

A couple of days ago, I wrote a letter to cousin Ralph about the abuse I had experienced as a child. I agonized over writing the letter, and I did it for one reason and for one reason only: to speak my truth in the face of the lies that have circulated throughout the family for nearly 20 years. In various emails, cousin Ralph had hinted at wanting more information, so there was a context for proceeding.

Here is the letter I sent her:

Dear Ralph,

In several of the emails you sent, you seemed to want to know why I had become estranged from my parents. The story circulating around the family is untrue, so I will tell you what happened:

1. My father physically abused me from the time I was 4 years old until I was 19. The abuse stopped when I left for the west coast in 1978.

2. My father sexually abused me from the time I was 11 until I was 17. The abuse stopped only when I began sleeping at my best friend’s house during my senior year of high school, 1975-1976.

3. My mother was aware of all of the abuse and never stopped it.

4. As an adult, when I tried to talk with my parents about what had happened, my mother told me that the physical abuse was all my fault, and that the sexual abuse had never occurred. My father acknowledged that he had been wrong to beat me when I was four years old, but that he had done no wrong otherwise.

5. Because of my parents’ denial of what had happened, I felt very unsafe around them and became physically ill whenever I had contact with them.

In 1991, when I was 33, I wrote my parents a letter. I told them not to contact me, that I needed time away from them in order to heal, and that I would let them know when I was ready for further contact. In response to my letter, my parents told my brother, my aunts, and my uncles that I had threatened to call the police and accuse them of abuse if they ever tried to contact me.

I never made such a threat. Ever.

Everyone believed my parents. I lost my entire family. My brother, my aunts, and my uncles all knew me to be a good, caring, and honest person and yet, they never contacted me again. Why they believed the story my parents told, without ever asking me what had happened, is beyond my ability to comprehend.

If my Aunt Fred had been alive, she would have called me to find out what was going on. She was a loving person, no matter what the situation. But she had been gone for almost two years.

I have done the hard work of healing my life. I have a wonderful husband and a beautiful daughter. I have forgiven my parents, and I bear no fault for what they did to me. If you believe me and want to have a mutually respectful relationship, feel free to email me. If you don’t believe me, you need do nothing but continue your silence.

Rachel

And Ralph’s response? Let me summarize what was in it:

a) lots of words about how hard this was for her
b) lots of words about how she’ll never know whether my “allegations” are true or not

And now, let me summarize what was not in the email:

a) any belief in the truth of what I had written
b) any loving or comforting words

So here’s what I wrote to Ralph in my response:

Dear Ralph,

Your message makes me very sad. When my parents told a story defaming me, everyone in the family who heard it believed it unconditionally. They believed my parents without ever talking to me, and they shunned me. My uncle Sylvia (my mother’s brother) told me all about it when I contacted him a few years ago. He said that he didn’t want anything to do with me, even after I told him about the abuse. He said he couldn’t imagine my father abusing me–as though abusers look or sound different from the general run of humanity.

Everyone believed my parents when they lied, but when I speak the truth, no one in the family believes me or has any comforting words to say. You say you have no way of knowing whether what I am saying is true. Why would I say such painful things if they weren’t true? What possible motive could I have?

If you can’t believe what I’m telling you, then we have no basis on which to continue a correspondence. I was looking for photos and genealogical information as a way of feeling that I had something remotely akin to a family. I was excited about all the photographs you were going to send me, and I don’t understand why you stopped.

But I was really fooling myself. I don’t have a family. That is my parents’ legacy to me.

Rachel

I’m done with the family business, and I’ve left on my own terms.

I have never felt so alone. I have never felt so sad. And I have never felt such immense relief.

© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg

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