It’s that time of year again….holiday time….Labor Day, Sukkot, Columbus Day, Halloween, day of the dead, thanksgiving, hanukkah, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and day….(have I missed any?…)
I, myself, am an autumn baby – having fallen to this planet mid-October…..so add to the above, a birthday…
My mother celebrated her birthday in November, as do both of my grown sons….any one of their birthdays could fall on thanksgiving, depending on the year….
For many years I reveled in the deliciousness of the holidays – making almost all the decorations for the various celebrations, and definitely hand-making every gift given for Christmas (and birthday, anniversary, wedding, new baby) – throughout the year…
And then there was the food – all homemade- and even homemade Kahlua, cranberry cordial, baileys Irish cream….
And the setting of the table with seasonal dishes and decorations, and even napkin folding to suit the various themes….
Get the picture?…
I was a holiday slut…..I loved the holidays…
Until I learned, in 2002, Christmas has nothing to do with Christ….and the early Christians in this country didn’t celebrate Christmas..
And indeed, there are passages in the bible which seem to proscribe against the “Christmas” tree….such as in Jeremiah 10…..
And Jesus never said – throw me a birthday party every year on December 25th” (first, it’s not when he was born….with the snow in Bethlehem on the ground at the time of his birth, it was far too cold for sheep to be in the meadows….second, his birthday can be calculated based on the birth of his cousin, John the Baptist…that calculation puts christ’s birth about the time of the Jewish holiday, sukkot….it’s very possible Mary and Joseph were attending sukkot, which would explain why they were traveling when mary was heavy with child….sukkot is important to the Jewish people…Caesar knew this, and used that opportunity to decree tax collection then, as the Jews were likely traveling for sukkot anyway, and more likely to make the effort to pay their taxes)…and third, no mention of anyone giving him a party, or having one for him is made….
Further, Jesus was a Jew!….in the new testament, there is reference to him being at the feast of lights, which is hanukkah….
Having always thought if I was going to be a Christian, I ought to do as Jesus did, I wholeheartedly embraced my new understanding that christmas actually has nothing to do with Christianity….
As soon as the new understanding had taken hold, I purged all of my “christmas” stuff – everything…as well as all my other holiday paraphernalia….it was expunged and set on the curb for the sanitation crews to haul away…a lifetime of handmade decorations and other items, as well as lots of store bought dishes, linens, clothes, etc just.thrown.away, as I didn’t want to profit off any of the “idols”…
I never celebrated Christmas, Easter, New Years, Halloween again…and, I never looked back…To this day, I’ve never missed “doing” those holidays…in fact, I discovered what a slave I’d been to all the decorating and fixing food and attendant duties I’d heaped on myself….
The one holiday I did keep was thanksgiving…after all, we are to be thankful, aren’t we?…indeed we are…and I still had some lessons to learn around that….
I continued to celebrate thanksgiving from 2003 onward…then, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004…I kept things as close to routine as possible, and looked forward to thanksgiving to be creative with preparing food and some decorating…that thanksgiving came and went…in 2005, I finished my radiation treatments, and was attempting to heal from the toxic overload of chemo and radiation….
As I was attempting to heal from that ordeal, the relationship with my then spouse began to be far more difficult than it had been previously – and it had been plenty difficult prior to that!…I was at a point where I felt I was attempting to just keep my head above water, and every time I came up for air, he was there pushing my head under the water again…
I’d long struggled with severe fibromyalgia – the worst case my allopathic physicians had ever seen…I’d dealt with horrendous gastrointestinal problems for years, even undergoing a surgery to correct one of them – which actually failed to work…and that is when I had my death experience…a story for another time!…
I went on to develop severe hip, back, shoulder and neck pain unrelated to the FMS…my pain was so severe, i couldn’t stand it…no amount of narcotics or NSAIDs or other treatments helped…I was exhausted from living 24/7 in such pain…all the allopaths offered was more drugs or different drugs or telling me to do more exercise…..
i’ve recently discovered there are schools of thought where it is believed fibromyalgia is caused by muscle tension brought about by repressed anger secondary to living with an abusive spouse or being a caregiver to a person at their end of life and having to put your life on hold to do so….the excess adrenaline produced in dealing with these types of situations causes a build up of lactic acid….(read the article here -http://holisticlivingtips.com/2015/07/08/the-cure-to-fibromyalgia-your-doctor-doesnt-want-you-to-know/ )….further, upper back pain and lower back pain can be related to feeling lack of emotional support, and shoulder pain associated with feeling overburdened….pain in the neck can be literally, someone in your life is a pain in the neck!…(read more at http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/studies-find-body-pain-correlates-with-spiritual-emotional-pain)….
Thanksgiving of 2005 was approaching and I was too exhausted from the pain I was in to care much about celebrating it….my then-spouse and I were invited to the home of some acquaintances of ours, and I planned on taking a very simple appetizer…
the morning of thanksgiving dawned and I awoke early with terrible neck pain…I could not stand it…I managed to drive myself to the hospital to beg for someone to find an answer to my neck pain….(I will say, by this time, I was labeled as a drug seeking individual)….this day at the emergency room, I was offered an injection of some narcotic…they were sorry, that was all they could do….I declined and walked out of the e.r., and sat in my van….dressed in my bathrobe and pajamas….
As I was sitting there sobbing in frustration and pain and having no understanding of why I could not find an answer to rid myself of this pain, a security guard from the hospital came to my door…I was frightened by his approach, and drove away….he followed me, and at the point I drove off hospital property, he stopped…..I was driving aimlessly, as I didn’t know what to do…I was in severe pain and didn’t want to go home….finally, a few blocks away, I pulled over in a random neighborhood to gather my thoughts and see what my options were….as I sat there a police cruiser arrived (that nice security man at the hospital had seen fit to call them)…the police were the last people I wanted to deal with, tho unfortunately I was less informed than I am now and I began a dialogue with them…
It turns out I’d been reported as driving erratically (I hadn’t been, and they hadn’t witnessed any erratic driving), and were told I was drug seeking…
I was told to open the door and get out of the van as they were going to take me to the jail….I’d done nothing wrong, so I was refused….finally, they jimmied the door open and pulled me out of the van, cuffing me in a violent manner, not paying attention to my informing them I’d had a mastectomy and injury to my left arm could result In something called lymphedema….
I was shoved into the back of the police cruiser and hauled down to the local jail, where my then-spouse was called (I was a grown woman, not a wayward child) and yet they called the very person I told them not to call)…and again, I was a grown woman and they couldn’t charge me with anything…what need was there to call anyone?….Belleville, Illinois is quite a patriarchal-mentality town, tho…
I spent the entire day in the holding cell of the jail…I couldn’t imagine what hell I would pay at home if I were actually arrested…it was going to be bad enough to take the s*** I was going to receive for inconveniencing and embarrassing my then-spouse just for being at the jail and “stalling”…I kept telling the police if I’d done anything they could charge me with to arrest me….I also expressed I was in terrible pain and I was crying and sobbing all day from the pain…I was debased by being made fun of over the pain and being told “everyone” said I was a drug addict and just looking for narcotics and the pain was all in my head read – I was a hypochondriac, looking for drugs)….of course, my then husband was always telling me to go take a pill to calm down, and to call the doctor for a refill if I was “low” – (typically on a Thursday or a Friday), and was always pushing me to drink, because he wanted a drinking buddy to keep up with him – this when I was on prescription drugs which specifically stated alcohol was contraindicated….
Throughout the day, I was told I could go home with my spouse…I repeatedly informed them I was afraid of him…I was afraid he would yell at me or make fun of me…I was further ridiculed and told they (the police) were “sure” he wasn’t going to make fun of me…
At the end of the long day, it was “decided” by police, my spouse could take me to the nearest large town, St. Louis, to be evaluated by the psych unit….
On the way there, I said, to my spouse, Keith, “I’m not crazy…I don’t need to go there…take me home”….
So, we went home…not much was said between he and I on the subject, though I later learned he was telling everyone about me being in jail – and none of the people he told ever got my perspective on the ordeal…I was so perfectly embarrassed over the whole situation – tho reading my writings now, I don’t see anything for me to be embarrassed about….
So, what I learned is, it would have been far better to have been arrested and put in jail, either then or any of the other times I’d called the police because of my violent spouse and been threatened with arrest myself…I’m certain I’d have been seen by a psychiatrist…and if not, by that time I was at least able to express a little of “my side” of the story, whereby the story of the provocations and violence and fear I lived with constantly would have come out more fully….(which is why Keith didn’t want me to be arrested, or be interviewed any more by psychiatrists)…quite possibly someone from the local domestic violence shelter would have been called in…I don’t l know….though, at least I’d begun to talk, and telling our own story is what no abuser wants to happen…
Yes, in retrospect, it would have been better to let myself be arrested – except they had nothing to arrest me for!….and I was afraid…I was afraid of the increased ammunition Keith would have to injure me with when I finally got home…I was afraid of the system, of what would happen to me in jail at the hands of other detainees, the police and or the courts…I could not think clearly enough then to understand quite possibly, being arrested could have been the beginning of my leaving the abusive partner I lived with….
As it turned out, it took until June of the following year, after have a long conversation with my then-husband’s first wife, to understand the danger I was in and to do something about it…
Which brings us to the present….now, I don’t “do” thanksgiving….first, every day is thanksgiving and a way of life for me – an attitude of gratitude, not limited to one day of the year….
Second, I became aware of the real story behind that first thanksgiving, and I refuse to have anything to do with a holiday which was an attempted decimation of an entire race of people, the attempted decimation which continues today….
this time of year can be fraught with all sorts of emotional challenges for me….most times I have relatively smooth sailing…this year, it’s been more difficult, as I’ve dealt with some situations which remind me of those I was in those many years ago, coming from those I least expected it from…it’s also been a really good exercise in setting boundaries and taking care of myself emotionally…
My sons’ birthday time this year has been difficult…I’ve felt frustration and loss of hope they’ll ever understand the circumstances we were all living in which were manipulated to drive wedges between us…I don’t know they’ll ever understand domestic violence by proxy, or that abuse of a mother *is* child abuse…I also know it’s difficult for me, as an adult, to wrap my head around the entire situation…they were mere babes, less than six and two, when the wedges were first planted…(fortunately, I have a very good source of support, and truly admire the wisdom, honestly and courage of Lundy Bancroft, author of “why does he do that” and “when dad hurts mom”, in being a voice in the wilderness amidst all the confusion about domestic violence)….
So, I continue to send my love to my sons in any way I can…and, I know they will be fine….they are my sons, after all – and I know who I am…
I am able to apply what I’ve learned about situations which seem “bad” on the surface, may actually have “good” in them, and to release fear over anything that happens in my life…and to know, with absolute certainty, when one door closes, another opens…
It’s been a very long road, and I still have a long way to go…
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