29. August 2010 by Belinda Geiger.

A few years ago while we were in Chicago, my husband drove us by my childhood home - my goodness, the neighborhood had become shrunken. The houses were jammed together. Where were the wonderful big yards I remembered? The sidewalk was so close to the street!

The entire front of the building had changed. The whole block had a new face. I bemoaned the loss of those wonderful (seventeen, exactly) wide stairs up to the second floor, which had been the main floor of the building. Our apartment was another (seventeen, exactly) much narrower stairs up to the third floor. I wondered where the stairs had gone. They must be hidden inside somewhere.

On summer nights, our moms would bring their squeaky clean children outside, in freshly laundered pajamas, for an hour or so of chasing fireflies, while they lounged outside on the stairs visiting with neighbors. I will never forget the sounds and smells of summer nights in Chicago. And fireflies. Those years are so magical in my memory.

As we drove by, and around the block, only the view of the alley was the same - the stairs up to the third floor, the laundry hanging on wires on the back porches. It had seemed so big, so expansive then. It looked much like a row of doll houses now.

It was many years later that I learned how poor we were then. How every penny counted and was counted again. Children know love, and hugs, and cookies and milk and simple pleasures. As dysfunctional as my parents’ marriage was, they never (but once) fought in front of us.

These are the things I regret. The brutality my dear little girls witnessed in our battered environment. I thought they had been protected from the worst of it, until they told me we had to leave before he killed me. It seems to me that one can not keep secrets from children. They know. They sense things.

Poor is one thing. Living in a war zone in another.

Give them love and cookies. Keep them safe. Let them love their childhood. If you are living in a war zone, they know. If you are afraid to leave, ask yourself the price they will pay if you stay.

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25. August 2010 by Belinda Geiger.

Being recycled means, to me, being torn down to the very molecules of your being and reshaped into another life, a life with a different purpose. Reinvented, repaired, renewed and recycled. That’s me. The bag lady.

Coming back to life, bit by bit, I felt a little like a jigsaw puzzle, or maybe Frankenstein’s monster. Some parts were okay, and functioning well, and some parts of me were still paralyzed. Some of the edge pieces were still missing.

I celebrated small victories each time some part of me was replaced by a renewed, better functioning part. My fingers learned to type again. My brain started to come out of the fog and actually process information again. I thank the universe every day for my family. They came out of nowhere, like the cavalry, and helped me find work, buy a car, feed my children and begin this new life.

My self-esteem seemed only to come on-line after many months of struggle. Where was that young woman hiding, the one with all of those opinions, and “tough-cookie” attitude? She was somewhere behind me, out of sight, just out of reach. I wanted her back. But the ugly truth was that I had to move forward without her. She was long gone.

My generation was the first in our history that grew up knowing that our entire world could be blown apart by some crazy with his finger on a button. It was a time of “no tomorrow” – nothing really mattered because, after all, tomorrow may never come. We took our chances, made rash decisions, and never looked back. The fact that I had lived past thirty was a total amazement. Every new day the sun would arrive and shine on the world just like it was supposed to and I was lost in a hell of my own making.

Why hadn’t I bet on myself, instead of against myself? Why had I thrown away twelve years of my life on a man I had never loved, just because marrying him seemed like a good idea at the time? Why had I stayed so long? What was wrong with me? Many women were burning their bras, declaring their independence and going to work. I was just learning to put one foot in front of the other again.

Self-confidence took a long time, and it seemed that it was something I could only feel about myself through my work. Bringing home a paycheck and taking care of my daughters made me feel good about myself.

My personal life was a shambles. I kept getting into relationships that were not good for me, or my daughters. I kept looking for someone who could save us, and kept finding men who needed me to support them, or wanted to take over my life. No thanks. Finally, self-respect came fumbling into place and I realized that nobody could, or would, save us, but me.

So, if you are in the process of being recycled, or renewed, I send you my love. As difficult as it is, it is worth it in the end.

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18. August 2010 by Belinda Geiger.

I have a basket of sea shells. Each one has a memory. Each little rock and each beautiful multicolored shell are a piece of eternity that a child pulled up out of the surf and added to the basket.

I found funny faces made of clay, by the hands of my children, who are no longer children. And one large “conk” shell, of the kind that you hold to your ear and hear the ocean. Wonder where that came from?

Snail shells (without the snails), hard, bony cavities that no longer hold living beings. Who did they belong to? What sea creature lived in this twisted shell that is so beautiful now? Where did this beautiful pink come from? Why are some sandy colored and some brilliant?

There is a beach near San Pedro where the surf comes up into the tide and ebbs and flows with the rocks on the shore. If you listen, you can hear the rocks singing with the tide. It is my favorite beach, anywhere. Singing Rocks, how amazing is that? There are fabulously intricate tide pools near the rocky beach where school children come on field trips.

Nothing is as beautiful to me as the song of the rocks and the waves on that little stretch of beach. Sunset, sunrise, the pull of the moon on the Earth… Nothing. . . the singing rocks are my all time favorite.

Leave me alone here, please, I am listening to the rocks and the tide sing a beautiful song to the universe. Where else should I be?

I wish you colorful memories, and PEACE, and singing rocks, wherever you are.

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15. August 2010 by Belinda Geiger.

I am a member of SafeHorizon.com, a New York based group for the battered, abused and victims of rape.

Below is a comment I just sent to a young woman who said she had recently gone back to her abuser, and is now suffering controlling, emotional abuse. I’m sure she feels even more trapped now, that she escaped once and ended up going back.

I wanted to share this with you. Those of us who are successful in getting away and making a new life do, in my opinion, owe it to those who are still struggling to keep up their spirits and help however we can.

Dear ______

Please do not be ashamed of going back. So many women do, and it’s so terribly hard to start over from nothing. And the promises, the dreams, the hope for the future, are so compelling.

I hope with all my heart that all is well with you and your family. I am happy to do whatever I can, short of giving advice. The Safe Horizon staff and HotLine are excellent and wonderful professionals who give concise, helpful advice. I am not qualified to do that.

I hope you will keep believing (or begin to believe) that you are a worthwhile human being and you deserve the best life you can make for yourself. We are not all born with the good sense to stay out of trouble. But that doesn’t mean we have to atone for it the rest of our lives.

As you speak of controlling, and emotional abuse, I am drawn back to my past. I had both sides of that coin: emotional and physical abuse. The emotional abuse was much more difficult to deal with. Once you are convinced that you are not worth the dirt on his shoes, what else can he do to you? A few beatings don’t matter so much after that. Except, my dear friend, they mattered to my sweet innocent little girls. They were afraid he would kill me, and they would be left with him.

If you are happy, God bless you. If you are afraid and/or worried, please, get some professional help. Call the HelpLine. Call anybody. Don’t be afraid one minute more. The hardest part is making the decision. After you have decided to Never Go Back, the rest is just whatever you have to do to stay alive. Not such a hard choice, if it’s the only choice you have.

Please, take my love with you on your journey. Every battered woman is my sister and my friend.
I will always listen. Always.

Today is my son’s birthday. I will always miss the little boy who was only mine for a moment in time.

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13. August 2010 by Belinda Geiger.

I may be the last woman on the planet to read this book, but I can not help commenting on it. It is not a book I will forget. The vivid textures of this story are haunting and pleasing at the same time. Imagine a time when all of the women of a household went into the red tent to celebrate the new moon and have their monthly sorrows together. There must have been such laughter and joy at spending a few days each month separated from their lives as quiet, dutiful wives and daughters. They bore their children in this tent, surrounded by their sisters and mothers. Their womanhood was celebrated together. Grandmothers and mothers bringing the children of their daughters into the world.

How much love was shared then? How separated we all are now.

I am so lucky to have sisters. I love them dearly. But it took leaving home, growing up, and growing wiser for us to truly appreciate one another. Our mother kept us informed, aware of each other, as we raised our children and went our separate ways, but when we lost our mother, we found our sisters. I still miss my mother. She was also a woman without a voice of her own. I still wish she could see my wonderful grandchildren, but i find the best of her in my sisters. The love she was unable to express, the hugs she did not know how to give, these my sisters and I give to each other. I hope she is a peace now.

In many ways we grew up distant from each other, in a household with “old fashioned” parents, no expressions of love, no encouragement, only demands and direction, there was no unity, no real feeling of belonging.

I have wondered so many times what led me, as a young woman, to men who were abusive and demanding. Why I never thought enough of myself to demand the treatment I felt I deserved. Or, to find a man who loved me the way I wanted to be loved. It took me many years, and many mistakes to find that. Which is why I spend time now, writing to you, who may not have come up the same way in life, but may have ended up with the same problems.

If you have made a terrible mistake, or even just a really bad one, and you are being beaten, or hit, or hurt, or treated worse than you could ever have imagined, I implore you to believe that there is a better future for you, and your children, ahead. It seems to me, that for some headstrong women like myself, in order to appreciate a truly good man, we must have suffered at the hands of a truly bad one. I do not wish that on anyone, but I do wish that if that is where you are right now, you will find a way to get away and start your life again.

There is help, and hope, now. There is information. There are places for women and their children, and even their pets(!) to go. When I was a battered wife, there was only my father, telling me that I made my bed and I should be content to lie in it. I hope you will not despair, I hope you will not stay until it is too late. There are many resources on this site, and many you can find on your own. Look for them. Save your life, and the lives of your children, and build a better future, for all of you.

Amazon’s link to the author of The Red Tent, Anita Diamant

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