How To Move Forward as a Culture – Away from Abuse Towards Love

Moving away from abuse towards love, that’s a topic close to my heart. I’m so happy that you are with me today, as today’s topic is an SIGNIFICANT topic for so many of us, as we are seeing in social media. It’s a topic that obviously needed to be addressed, and I’m so pleased about the state of affairs, because that which has been in the dark for so long has been finally brought to light, although in a strange way. Join love and relationship coach Heather Hundhausen when she shares in her Feminine Friday Me Time talk more about how you can move away from abuse and towards love.

I don’t want to get on a soap box about politics, but I will say that it’s an interesting time we are living in, when the head of the country is bringing such SHADOWY issues INTO THE LIGHT with, what it seems is, LACK of conscious awareness… But I digress… let’s get into this meaty material, because it’s significant, important, and something that gets to be brought into the light.

I named my company BEAUTIFULLY AUTHENTIC, because I truly believe that when we are in our authentic selves, that’s where we shine. That’s where we are beautiful. When we are vulnerable and exposed, that’s where love happens. And it starts internally.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Today’s topic is #MeToo

In a moment, I am going to get into HOW WE CAN MOVE FORWARD AS A CULTURE away from abuse, and towards love.

I am going to share from a place of CREATING. This is the basic information that I share in my workshops and in my coaching sessions with couples. The FIRST thing that is needed for a relationship to work, is SAFETY and TRUST, which I will get to in a moment. Let’s first talk about our CULTURE, and WHAT IS SEXUAL ABUSE, and our SHAME CULTURE.

In a patriarchal culture of abuse and objectification as the NORM, it is nearly impossible for a woman to be herself. At 20 years old, I cut off all of my hair, wore combat books and men’s jeans and looked like I could kick your ass. I purposefully pulled all of my BADASSNESS out and put it in the front of me, to let men know that NO, I was not available for objectifying. I was one of those women that if you cat called, you’d get a middle finger. This protection came from a HISTORY of being objectified in my own family.

Let’s talk sexual abuse here for a minute. I read a book once called Courage to Heal, which was a book about many women who had been sexually abused in one way or another. The book started out with a checklist. If you’ve been sexually abused… you may experience 1,2,3,4,5…etc… I couldn’t believe that I was checking all of the boxes. When the hell had I been sexually abused?
Then I read more and more of the book. Sexual abuse isn’t just non-consenting sex.

In my family, I was afraid of the remarks and comments my own father, grandfather and uncles would make about my body. My father would show me off in public as if I was his girlfriend, and he wouldn’t correct strangers when they would assume we were dating. Is this sexual abuse? I didn’t think so… but 20 years of it on a daily basis pointed my answers of the sexual abuse questionnaire as YES.

I’m finding that women are afraid to write #metoo for various reasons. Some women don’t feel that their cajoling and harassment was enough to consider “abuse.”

Here’s the deal. If you don’t like it, if it feels bad/wrong, it’s abuse. If it’s about your body, your sexuality, whether verbal or physical, it’s abuse.

I work with coaching clients who struggle with this in their relationships. “Oh, he only yells at me sometimes, but the rest of the time he’s amazing!” If you are saying that, you are in an abusive relationship.

Now, here’s the tricky part. We teach people how to treat us. So… it also means you need work on your boundaries. I say it’s TRICKY, because I would never want to blame the VICTIM, and, at the same time, I work with women all day long, teaching them boundaries, and having their relationships shift in powerful ways. When you hold your boundaries with an abuser, usually, you will see the abuse go WAY UP… which is actually a good thing, because then you know who you are dealing with, and you can get out of the relationship.

Photo by Jake Davies on Unsplash

We live in a CULTURE OF SHAME. We aren’t allowed to have sex until we are married, we aren’t allowed to walk the streets naked, or publicly display our affections, yet, in advertising and media, there are half naked kissing people trying to sell us stuff? They are using the taboo against us! The cultural norm is “you can’t have it” yet, it’s spread all over stuff you can have if you purchase it? (Then of course, you get the stuff, but no naked public kissing, lol)

We don’t feel good enough about ourselves; so we work harder to get more, and end up feeling not good enough, like a failure, and like we will never have what we want. The only naked bodies we ever see are sickly humans in advertisements, who have had plastic surgery, and have been photoshopped? Then we compare our bodies to this. The mentality is “women’s bodies are for sale.” We try to compete with these bodies, yet, then we hide them, for fear of them being seen, objectified, and taken advantage of?

It’s a crazy cycle.

Photo by Shifaaz shamoon on Unsplash

Moving Away From Abuse Towards Love: All Men are the Same …

I have friends that I tease with about men. We think that every man just wants to screw us. We literally all think that. And when we share it in our group, we laugh so hard hearing the other ones say it. But think about it… You probably think it too… that guy just wants to screw me. It’s the mentality!

Then, you bring all of that into a LOVE relationship.

So, you take all of the women who have written #meToo in their status. GOBS of them. And, I am loving the responses from men stepping up too. Admitting that they’ve been abused, or that they’ve been an abuser. It’s wonderful to see how everyone is taking responsibility for the role that they’ve played in this. It’s beautiful to see the HOPE this is coming out of this movement.

Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash

What I have to say about HOW WE CAN MOVE AWAY FROM ABUSE TOWARDS LOVE AS A CULTURE: 

Trust Yourself To Trust Others

Learn to trust yourself again. Many rapes and abuses have happened because we allowed ourselves to get into situations with people we thought we could trust, and then we found out, they were not respectful of us. This experience CEMENTS A BELIEF in us that PEOPLE CANT BE TRUSTED. Allow yourself to work with this belief. Allow yourself to CHANGE this belief by looking for how it isn’t always true. The brain is tricky. It’s trying to protect us. We have one bad experience like this, and POOF that’s it. Never again do we feel trust or safe. We have to retrain our brains that not everyone is like that. That THIS is a new experience. That THIS is a new person. That we CAN TRUST ourselves to know if this is someone worth TRUSTING.

Create SAFETY In Your Relationships

Whether you were abused or your partner was, start talking about it. SHARE SHARE SHARE. The more you share, the less shame you have. SHAME HATES ITS NAME. If you SHARE – you are being vulnerable, and you might even get messy, and that’s something someone can fall in love with. IF that person USES IT AGAINST YOU – BE WISE ENOUGH TO NOT TRUST THEM AGAIN!

Photo by Aidan Kahng on Unsplash

Create A NEST In Your Relationship

Moving away from abuse towards love includes creating a NEST in your relationship with your intimate partner.

• Ask for a nest to be created for you.
• Ask your partner to nurture you if you’ve been abused.
• Nurture your partner if they’re been abused.
• Have sympathy, empathy, and compassion for a lover who has been abused in any way.

Your love partner is a HUGE opportunity for healing and growth. As a couple you get to learn how to RELATE to each other by LISTENING, not by protecting yourself from them. If you feel like you need to protect yourself from your partner, than something is off and you get to get support or help from someone. I work with couples on this and would love to be the one to support your healing.

EXAMPLE OF A NEST

At the end of the day, I’ve had a bad day, or Mike has had a bad day, and we know we can come into the arms of our partner. We can share vulnerably everything that’s NOT working, and know that our partner will just receive by listening, and respond by holding. I did this recently. I cried and talked about all of my insecurities. He just let me talk.

When I heard myself, I was able to pick myself back up and see what I was saying that I didn’t really believe. I could hear myself because he was there just simply being a mirror. I felt loved, heard, seen and better just knowing someone was there to be in that messy stuff with me.

Photo by Roman Kraft from unsplash

Let Down Your Walls

With your partner, let down your walls.

When we form this BELIEF to NOT TRUST, we screw ourselves NOW. We keep love out. That makes no sense.

We are abusing ourselves again and again.

You want to let go of your past abuse?

Let your protections down, forgive yourself, and let your trusted partner IN so you can experience love, trust, and intimacy.

Don’t deny yourself some of the most beautiful experiences of life because you had OTHER experiences that taught you to shut down.

I work with women on how to OPEN, if you are interested in learning how to do this, please contact me. I want you to experience LOVE penetrating those deep pains so you can heal.

Let Love In

This is what you really want.

You want to be OPEN TO RECEIVING LOVE.

This is a process and a journey and a commitment to healing, but it’s yours for the taking.

• Get yourself a good coach or therapist who knows how to teach you to love yourself and to let others love you.
• Don’t deny yourself the love you want.
• Learn to open, trust, surrender, and let down the walls.

I recently asked a coaching client what his life would be like if he totally opened his walls, and loved his woman completely, and she 100% received him and loved him back? This question had him realize his own limitations about where he needed to open and let love in. I want to ask you the same question.

What would it be like if you totally opened your walls, and loved your partner completely, and your partner 100% received you and loved you back? Are you ready for that?

Who wants to work on this tangibly and make peace happen in their life?

HOMEWORK:

• Write down what beliefs you have decided to believe from these experiences you’ve had with abuse, harassment and objectification.
• After you’ve written down what you believe about the world, read it again and decide if this is what you want to believe about yourself, men, and the world?
• If you’d like to believe something different, write it down.
• If you’d like to believe that men are loving, kind, generous, protect us, nurture us, provide for us and adore us, write that down.
• Then start looking for how they are those things that you want them to be. You will surprise yourself!

Of course, if you’re wanting more information on moving away from abuse towards love and how exactly to do this right now, you can work with me one on one. I DO BODY MIND THERAPY with people who are holding too much tightness in their bodies. You can experience it locally through touch, or remotely through visualization and hypnosis. I can show you how to let go, let those old emotional blocks come up and out, and how to love yourself again so you can be free. For a free breakthrough session, reach out to me HERE

PS: Join our Facebook Beautifully Authentic group to connect with other like minded and heart centered women!

I am creating workshops over the summer to teach self love, and will be offering an on-line workshop in a few months, so stay tuned!

I appreciate you!! THANK YOU for joining me!