A black heart shadow

I sat in the bathtub tonight to soak out all the tension in my body. I could feel my shoulders creep into my ears and my rib cage squeeze my inner organs. Always a bad sign. I added a grape fruit for cleansing and baking soda for detoxing. Essential oils of lavender, geranium and lemongrass lingered in the air's moist heat as I slipped under the water. I rolled the litany through my mind: I shall not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that leads to total obliteration. . . The candle flickered casting shadows of itself like a dancers mirroring themselves on the wall across the bathroom. I watched the surface of the water to see if there was anything to scry upon.

I could hear my Dad's movie playing in the next room. He watches parts of one until it is over while he is doing his nightly exercise routine. Avatar has been playing the last couple of days. I wasn't really paying attention to it until something jarred me: "We will tell the sky people, they cannot come and take what they want!" My focus suddenly shifted in that moment from the surface of the water to the shadows floating over me, and then I saw it. A tiny black heart floating over my torso. It crossed me a few times about the same place my Uhane would be in my etheric body: the place where confidence dwells. The place where resolve forms and solidifies.

I am still processing that moment, but it sure does seem like a small piece of magic dancing in my bath. I have much to plan, much to think about, and much to do, but the night grows thin and the clock runs mercilessly forward.

Mushroom Dreams

I feel like I should have mushrooms growing on me. After all mushrooms, eat away the dying decayed parts left after the life of a thing has left. My far away eyes have seen them while I dream. Great, glowing crowns and caps feeding on the rot of my long decayed marriage. I hope when they are done with their necrotic feast that life is revealed beneath. A glowing one. One that is absent of abuse and silent fear. I still can't see a vision of that life. I am still muddling through daily things: Get up, check the email for job apps hoping for a response to one, drink coffee, shower. . . banish the shadow in my mind's eye. He gets a little farther away, that shadow, but he's like a stubborn poltergeist clinging to this side of the realms determined to terrify the living. I still have thoughts of 'I can't believe I loved him, how stupid of me.' I try to remind myself that loving someone is a gift to be able to give and that trust is a blessing to give as well; the fact he betrayed those things is on him, not me. It doesn't always work on the PTSD monster and that one is a wicked, ugly beast, more so than the shadow.

I feel like I should weigh in on the Santa Barbara massacre of women. I have had to be careful with that subject, it hits close to home. My ex was talking about getting a gun before all of this blew up and I wonder now about what could have happened, what still could happen if he actually has one unbeknownst to me. (Since he has everything he wants, including an order for me to be a piggy bank, he won't do anything most likely. Can't kill the piggy bank you know. ) It is breath stealing for me to see out in the open such misogynistic views and self entitlement to something that is a sacred gift from one person to another. Demands for it, in fact, like the female gender owes every male what he wants right now with no expectation of having to give anything in return. It enrages me actually. I have never expected in all of my adult life that a man would simply give me a sexual encounter simply because I wanted it and thought I deserved it, not even from my husband. To have a whole class of males who think women should drop everything they are doing right now and surrender their bodies to them because they want it would reduce us to nothing more than chattel. A thing. Property. Haven't women come farther in the mind's eye of men than simply something to use and discard when we no longer fit their lives? What does this mean for my daughter? What happens to her when she says no and some male decides that her 'no' is irrelevant? Her father has already weighed in on what he thinks about that by how he has treated her mother, so of course, I have fears about that. Will he blame her should something horrible happen? Most likely. The dark ages for women, it seems, never left. it was only glossed over with pretty paint and dainty chains placed on us so we wouldn't notice the underlying leer much less vocalize the fear of the silent threat of death when we say NO.

There are men out there like Joss Whedon, who makes a point to write characters of strong women who will kick your ass if you look at them wrong, but does he know how hard it is for a woman who has had everything about her femininity betrayed and ground into the earth to rise and try to be Zoe, or Buffy, or River??? Does he realize how wicked and undermining PTSD is? Does he realize that for sufferers of PTSD just making it through a PTSD day without jumping off a bridge is a good one? Then there is Wil Wheaton, who may know a bit of the PTSD thing as he has bouts of depression. He champions us as well by speaking out about rape culture and stands up for geek girls everywhere. Then, of course, there is Sir Patrick Stewart who does things like stand out in the open with signs and openly advocates the halt of violence against women. I can't imagine how that small child inside of him still feels about what his father did to his mother and him.

They are just three of many men who come immediately to mind who do not view us as toys to be used and tossed and I am grateful to them. I tell myself on PTSD days that these are shining examples of masculinity in the public eye cheering women on, but the one I have in front of me the most these days is my own father who is learning how to handle the PTSD ( it's as difficult to watch as it is to endure, I am learning.) Some days, the only thing he can do is toss chocolate at me from a safe distance and tell me he loves me. I am grateful for that too, he has not ducked his head and run for the hills. He reminds me that society isn't all ill, but most of it is in need of serious change. The one change he continually advocates: leave. He's right. It's always the only answer to correct a society gone awry: leave. Jump on the next space ship and head for that colony. Would someone please build that space ship and colony dammit??? I'll work on the gardens and herbal medicine team. . . witches are useful you know;).

These women in Santa Barbara did nothing more than breathe and they were killed for it. One of them may have said no once on the insistence that Elliot get a personality that looked something human like. Women can insist all they want to be treated as something sacred as a human, but until more men scorn those other men immediately around them who treat women like a target, this issue cannot heal. This is not just a women's issue. It a men's issue. Men, it's time to really use that 'man card' for the reason it was given to you. No one can take it away from you, but you sure as hexes surrender it every time you let your buddies mow over a woman who may as well be your daughter, mother, wife, girlfriend, sister, lover, niece, grandma, best friend.

One day I'll get my Zoe, River, Buffy back, but for now, the mushrooms are working on eating away the rotten parts. Who knows, maybe some of the fun ones will grow.

Past the Black

A couple of months before all of my tea cups got dumped on the floor, one of my guides came to me with a terribly worried expression on his face that made me feel a dread like I had never experienced. He told me I had to hang onto myself. This had to be done. This was going to hurt like nothing before. Ice grew around my heart and made me wish that the heart attack I had earlier in the year had taken me, but I nodded and gritted my teeth as he wrapped me in a cocoon of kelp. He promised me he would be with me the entire time and that he would take me to where I needed to go and back himself. He didn't promise me I would be okay or come out unscathed, in fact, with a frightened undertone to his voice, he told me he didn't how how this would come out. With a tether of kelp attached to me tied and bound we delved deep into the ocean and as we went I heard a snatch of a song.

Take me down to the river bend
Take me down to the fighting end
Wash the poison from off my skin
Show me how to be whole again

Fly me up on a silver wing
Past the black where the sirens sing
Warm me up in a nova's glow
And drop me down to the dream below

We had gone so deep neither of us could see and we were still diving. I could feel his fear and mine. I remember blacking out before the experience was over.

Months passed. Tea cups had been shattered in my life and left on the floor in countless shards. No word, no visit, no anything from my guide. I felt alone and betrayed. I had been going to acupuncture, counseling, and doing meditations to help myself. Still no visit, no word, not even a sign in the mundane world. It happened there in the middle of an acupuncture session. My guide showed up while I was trying to assist the process of healing myself. I found myself in a dark part of the ocean deep barely able to see anything. He was there and shredding through my cocoon calling me by my mundane name! Hearing a guide call me like that was something I had never experienced before. It was alarming. He looked alarmed as well. He kept asking if I was okay and I remember not being able to respond. We just looked at each other for a moment, both of us alarmed. He determined I was not well enough to be swimming on my own so he attached a tether before he started to bring me closer to surface. I remember seeing light through the water finally and feeling like maybe the blackness could end before my acupuncturist walked in to start the process of removing the needles in my body. I was relieved to see my guide. I felt for the first time like not everything about me had been lost in this process.

This weekend I was on the road back to Tucson. On the back of a truck was an encircled logo of a fish tail surfacing above the water. I think I was just waved at. The signs around me are starting to come back for me to read. I now know beyond the blackness of the ocean's abyss that I was never alone. He kept true to his word. Maybe the poison is finally starting to wash away from me. 

Dana Scully Hair

http://jojokersina.deviantart.com/art/Dana-Scully-5-Blended-11202217

I woke this morning to a strangeness. An internal voice I recognize as spirit reminded me that right before I got married to my ex. I had cut my hair. Short. I suddenly went from having hair that fell the length of my back to looking like Dana Scully. Upon hearing that message, I was reminded of a study that was done during the Vietnam conflict. The special forces during this time recruited talented scouts with abilities to track at the level of supernatural, recruited some of them, and cut their hair. Failure after failure occurred after the scout's hair was cut and the special forces want to know why. When asked, the recruits sited that they could not sense the enemy any longer. Test were done with a new set of recruits who were allowed to keep their hair and successes in the field remained the same with these men as they were pre-recruitment. There is much ado about this study and many who just want to blow it off as a woo story. Here's mine:

When I met my ex, he had long beautiful hair that would make any woman green with envy. I was fine with it, I had my own long hair. I worked a couple of jobs at the time to make ends meet; I was a single mother. One of those jobs was reading cards in a metaphysical shop. I found my ex at the time to be funny and sensitive and even a bit shy. I could sense there was something underneath the shyness, but didn't poke too hard. I thought it rude to invade someone's mind space and decided that if he wanted it revealed he would reveal it. Eventually he did and I was shocked at the story that unfolded and I decided that, in spite of my misgivings, it was too preposterous to be a lie and ignored the alarm going off in my head as me being paranoid after my experience with the relationship before.

Eventually, he asked me to marry him and I obviously said yes. One morning before we were to be married, I woke up with my long braided hair wrapped around my throat and the end tucked under my husband-to-be's shoulder falling off the bed. I just about strangled myself with my own hair and decided: that's it, it gets whacked! I came home looking like Dana Scully. My husband-to-be was shocked, he thought I was only going to take off a little bit. I didn't notice at first that my intuition had slipped away from me a little. I had been so busy at the time with pre-wedding last minute things that I didn't have time to read the cards as I usually did and by the time I got back into the reading habit, any association with the hair whacking and intuitiveness had been lost. I noticed that there things in the cards I couldn't see any more. I thought maybe it was due to the new mother zombie mode and let it go.

As my hair began to grow out over the months and years that followed the things that I previously missed in the cards came back. I attributed that phenomenon with my meditation rituals and the return to practice with my cards re-establishing my energetic exercises to work with my native intuition. All the time my hair had been growing back silently, my intuition came back with it. Still, no correlation between the two sprang to mind. As the years passed, I began to sense there was something deeply wrong with our relationship, but I could not put my finger on it. Much later I visited friends who warned me I had hidden enemies. Indeed I did and they had years of head start on my and it explained the feeling of fear and dread I had been fighting off for years thinking it was paranoia. ( my ex did a great job of keeping me spun around so I wouldn't realize it was him and his crew)

While I had decided after my hair whacking the first time, I was not EVER going to do it again, my husband at the time cut and grew his hair back several times and the thing that I noticed each time is that when the hair was cut short, he was cold and distant and his temper more volatile. He and my eldest son ( his stepson) would argue more frequently and more heatedly. He grew insensitive and selfish even. That corresponds with these statements made in the study I read years later:

"Cutting of hair is a contributing factor to unawareness of environmental distress in local ecosystems. It is also a contributing factor to insensitivity in relationships of all kinds. It contributes to sexual frustration. " 

I have always been an experience is king kind of girl so when I re-read the study this morning and thought about all the times my husband had long hair, then short hair. It made more sense to me. I do not propose that all of my husband's unacceptable behavior is attributed to his hair length, not at all, but it may have been one of those things that elevated the levels of cruelty when he started keeping his hair short. I know my short hair diminished my intuitive levels. I had to work harder to keep the feelers out, but I have to admit that it made me sharper having short hair because I did have to work harder. I just never made the connection that I may have severed away my psychic radar system. Guess I'm not doing that again. I think, maybe there is definitely something to this study on hair length and it being an important part of our intuitive awareness radar. There are other spiritual communities that

http://themindunleashed.org/2013/11/the-relation-between-long-hair.html

have similar beliefs about long hair. I have experiences that agree with both study and spiritual communities and I have more trust in my experiences these days over what any study or debunker has to say.

I wish I could remember what the title of the book I found the study in originally. It was a book about secret government studies done. Later I re-read the study on line and remembered reading it in that book. I would prefer to be able to site the information accurately to you from a good source but all I can find right now are varying blogs and what not. (ugh) If I run across the book in the library, I'll be sure to come back here and cite it here in an annotated footnote sort of thing. 

Old and New teacups with a dash of Crossed Keys

The sun is still clinging to the hemline of the horizon and it stretches thinner as if to taunt me by saying: not yet. .  . The wind has died down from its furious pacing across the yard and if all holds the way it is now, I may be able to set up out doors in the back to be under the moon light for Her Sacred Fires Rite tonight.

I have been reading the Crossed Keys by Michael Cecchetelli. I find it interesting in  he manner that he shares some of his personal experiences with the Black Dragon Grimoire. As I was reading the evocations, I began to wonder several things about the original author of that grimoire including if the person was a priest to begin with and, if not, was this person disguising the dialogue within a Christian frame in hopes of not appearing to be a heretic. I also began to wonder about the origin of these 'demons'. As it turns out the 'demons' may not be what we think they are. Even in King Solomon's day that which we know as angels were called demons. I suspect some of them are probably divinities from cultures long passed and have been labeled as demons for the simple reason of not bowing to Christian-dom. The more I read and re read what was presented to me, the more I began to think upon my own native divinities within Feri and why would I want to add to a roster of beings (as though they were something to collect) when I have perfectly good connections of my own to call upon. I don't. As much as respect the work and praxis of the magicians presented here in this book, I don't think it's my cup of tea. . . (where's my old cup anyway?)

I have started to delve into parts of my tradition I have not thought to sink into before and I have The Crossed Keys to thank for that. I already have a connection to Gods and Goddesses and have only chanted their names with little thought of really connecting to them and creating a working relationship with them. I have always been the one to remember to say please and thank you and even yes sir/ ma'am, but these particular divinities always seemed distant to me upon evocation for ritual. While reading the Crossed Keys, I felt pulled, hard toward them even as I was fascinated with the praxis in hand. So with that in mind, for the next twelve weeks I will be working with each one in turn to begin individual introductions and personal dialogue. I have a wealth of connections and I should be cultivating and nurturing those instead of creating new ones as working with the Black Dragon Grimoire would demand I do.

I begin with Ashtaroth. She is a Phoenician Goddess also associated with Inanna and Ishtar as being one and the same on just about every different site I visit. I also see many Christian sites who call her  a demon, but that wouldn't be any new thing from them. She is a love and war goddess. However, there is more to her than love and war. She is a teacher of the liberal sciences, she also seems to have an affinity for groves, trees, the woods. She has been called a stellar Goddess and a bringer of visions and prophetic dreams. I come from a tradition that values personal experiences so reading was not enough for me. I went and built an altar for her in the West, put out my gazing mirror and made offerings of perfumed oil, sourdough bread, and a liquor. I wrote her an evocation and called upon her in the afternoon after meditating upon her in the morning. I shouldn't have been shocked by actually making contact with her, but there was something in me that was. Maybe it's just the recent stresses of my mundane life speaking. My PTSD makes me believe all sorts of crazy things like: maybe I have been abandoned by my gods. It was a good beginning this rite. Is she Inanna and Astarte and Ishtar??? I don't know, maybe. What I do know, is that I did dream something that was not the usual of late and it didn't make me afraid.    

While I am looking for employment, I keep my little etsy shop going and keep busy with other things on top of trying to decipher legal speak. . . the law really should be something that is readily accessible AND easily understood by lay people, but it's not. So needless to say, I am turned upside down and twisted into pretzel knots trying to read it while trying to keep the panic attacks to a minimum which means more breaks than I really want. Still I over do it and some times end up in full blown anxiety attack mode. It's getting better though. With the acupuncture treatments counseling and some of the coping skills I have been acquiring, I am really seeing improvement from a few months ago. I still need to be reminded to take my homeopathic remedies because there are times when I don't catch the precursors myself.

I will be okay, eventually.

Well the wind is up again. I can hear it whip by my window. . . so the rite is indoors tonight. 

My New Crown of Horns

   I am trying to keep busy and my chin up. The more I feel stuck and betrayed by both system ( family court) and the person I believed loved me, the thicker the atmosphere becomes around making it hard for me to feel as though I can move forward. How is it in a community property state that a woman married to a man 13 years gets nothing? My ex husband has managed to get exactly what he wanted for quite some time I am guessing. Me gone and all the rewards that we earned together. He built the life he has now on my back and is now dancing on the grave he dug for me with his girlfriend trying to be our children's mother. The system does not work. . . in fact I think all the "crazy people" who claim that it is not only broken, but corrupt, I am starting to think that they may be the only sane ones around any more.

I made a grave error here. I remained silent about what was happening to me. It was the silence that did me in. It's amazing to me how during the marriage and separation how he went right down the abuser check list including trying to have me psychologically evaluated because, in his opinion, I have an undiagnosed mental illness when in fact it was his behavior that pushed everything to the limits of sanity. What I have learned is that all the psychological, emotional, and even sexual abuses he meted out without feeling he has done anything wrong whittles down to one fine poin: I may be dealing with a psychopath. Yup, that's right I spent the last fourteen years with a man who is potentially truly evil and I spent the entire time trying to figure out what it was I was doing wrong. Turns out that sometimes. . . it's really not you.

So how do you deal with a psychopath? The truth is no one should deal with them. Period. You should walk away, however I am cornered into the next 12 years or so ( our youngest is 7) with dealing with him. I fear the destruction he will bring to that child's mind and soul over the course of that time. I see the bullying behavior start in him. I see that my ex husband is beginning to treat our daughter with the cold shoulder because she refuses to bend to his favor. She's 14 and she sees the pattern that started with her older brother, rolled off to me, and now has fallen squarely on her. I see that our youngest is being groomed to be our daughter's co abuser. All the signs are there, yet even the children's counselor won't listen to me. While the counselor had a full face to face conversation with my husband, he made no move to contact me. I had to call him up and have him call me back to talk with me and even so he tried to fireside chat with me with no notes about our children's case in front of him and then had the audacity to tell me that my husband has a long laundry list on me and completely blew me off . . . of course he does! It's what abusers do. It's called institutional grooming. That and the counselor feels beholden to my ex because guess who is paying him?

Which one is Nalaya??? O_o???

There are things I need to do to move forward: get employment, get a car, heal. . . my levels of trust in humanity are at an all time low. My trust in my ability to get things done are pretty much swirling as well, but that's exactly how my abuser wants me to feel. If he can't have me exactly the way he wants me no one else can so he has tried to destroy me. What??? He thought I was a Stepford wife. . . or he could make me be one???? Hrm. I guess in some twisted sick manner it's a good thing that he felt pushed like this. .  . he does after all complain to our daughter that "it's all my fault, I made him do this." What am I the devil???

That's right. People of Odd hear ye, hear ye! The Devil has arrived with glistening horns to take her throne in Hell! I just love the quip I saw out of Robin Artisson awhile back ago on Facebook. A woman told him there was a special place in Hell for him. He answered: " It's called a throne." Well, I guess now I get to take my special place betwixt Heaven and Hell and live up to the horns my ex has crowned me with. May he have night terrors from now to kingdom come! Whenever that is. Maybe if I do my hair right I can show them off better.

http://kanamm.deviantart.com/art/Maleficent-434711164

What happened???

Trigger warning: domestic abuse






Where to begin on this is difficult to say. I can hardly believe that this is my life. Witches don't like admitting bad things happen to them because they tend to think that this isn't supposed to happen to me. . . I'm a witch. My oath mother reminded me that just because you are a potent witch does not mean bad things are not going to happen to you. It just means that you will have help enduring and dealing out the cards when that time comes.

Well you got it. Something terrible happened to me. I was warned even. I remember my first warning came right after I was married. I had a reading done at Vision Quest and the reader abruptly stopped and said: Your guides do not like your husband AT ALL! I was shocked and bewildered. How could my guides wait to tell me this after I was married . . . I decided that what ever was to come was to come. My next warning came to me in the shower as my sister was divorcing her abusive husband. I got this flash of an image and a very clear resonant voice that told me he would turn against me. I decided that I was being paranoid because of what I had seen my sister have to survive. There were other warnings I received. . . some from friends who knew my husband before I did, one from an employer who asked if I was returning to work because I was looking for a new husband. My mother warned me when we sold the car in my name that I was being isolated, I had no previous evidence that he was domestically abusive. Our relationship at that point was good. I was warned again after I told my mother that the house we just bought was only in his name. He had sprung that one one me at the last minute after I asked why I wasn't signing with him. We had a big fight in the car about it on the way back to the apartment we had already given our 30 day notice to. He had me sign a paper that said I had no interest in the house, if I didn't sign it, the house would go into foreclosure because the loan would fall through. My sister told me to get a go bag together and start taking notes. Even as I clawed and scraped to keep our marriage together I never imagined that it was as bad as it was until I was removed from the situation and could step back to see what had manifested. SO this is what has been going on:

On September 11, 20012 my husband came home and jerked me out of my sleep. He held me down and as I struggled to get away from him he had his way with me and then went to sleep without a word as I cried. The next day I was furious. I went to my neighbors house in tears and when he asked what happened I couldn't tell him. I couldn't believe it had happened. I was afraid, ashamed, and was left wondering what I did to deserve that sort of treatment. I watched an episode of Twilight Zone with him and went home. I called my Mother and asked her to come pick me and the kids up and then later in the after noon after trying several times to pack bags for me and the kids I had talked myself out of it and convinced myself that it was all a terrible mistake. I was wrong. . . I should have kept packing. My husband made no admission to any wrong doing and to this day denies he committed evil against me. Everyone around me knew something was terribly wrong.

The next year dragged on. I became sick at the drop of a hat and, in fact, two weeks after my husband raped me, I had a heart attack sitting in my neighbor's living room. I walked home that night, no ambulance called, no understanding of what had just happened. You see, women experience heart attacks differently than men. The next morning I decided I didn't get to ignore what had happened and started looking up the symptoms of what I experienced. After discovering it was a heart attack I made a doctor's appointment. My husband took me. I now realize he went with me to be certain I didn't report being raped.

During the next year that I tried to 'fix' what couldn't be fixed. I endured my husband threatening me at the stupidest things. I was in the car with him one evening and on the news flash blurb there was a mention of yet another child who died in a hot car because a parent left the child in the car. I remember saying I didn't understand why people do that and my husband's mood suddenly shifted on me. His tone frighteningly menacing. He told me he would end me if I ever did anything like that. There were several different occasions he threatened me in this manner. It was all I will end you, I will make your life hell and I will destroy you. It was shocking and frightening. I didn't know what was happening with my husband. I began to think maybe this was his writing partner's influence. She had always given me a grave sense of dread any time she came over.

I began to oscillate between deep despair and anger. I had no idea what was happening to me. I couldn't make it stop. I meditated, I did reiki on myself, but I still couldn't bring myself to tell anyone what had happened to me. Everyone around me knew something had happened. I began to not be able to eat and the chronic pain aspect of my fibromyalgia became increasingly difficult to handle. I dropped 30 pounds in about a month and a half. I went from 120 lbs to 90. When my mood would swing I would ask out loud what was wrong with me and my husband responded with a cold: I think you are done. Done???? Done with what, but by this time I was afraid of what he would do. His mood had been cold and sinister at the time. I was suffering from battered woman syndrome and PTSD unbeknownst to me at the time. On September 11, 2013. . . Oya showed up. It wasn't until much later that I would understand why. I think her presence may have saved my life. She showed up because not only was my life in danger, I was willing to handle everyone else's sexual assault but my own.

The day I was served with divorce papers my husband had cut me off from the world. He disconnected my cell phone. I received one final text from a friend who had a weird feeling and thought she should see if I was okay and the next thing I knew my phone wasn't working. I tried to get online and discovered that the server name had been changed to "connect so I can hack you" and the password changed. I thought that it was the work of someone else. I had no idea it was my husband. I managed to get a hold of my oath mother and friend who took my to my husband's place of work to get some billing information from his laptop so I could fix the mess. He was not there. I had this sinking feeling. I was wondering on the trip home if I had caught him in an affair. Not long after I got back to the house, I was served divorce papers by a man in a white ball cap. I was reminded of the horrific short films my husband and his partner made about killing his wife and my oath mother told me to pack what I could and get out. We waited for the children to come home. The school buses came and left. No children of mine got off. The papers said he was asking for everything. . . the kids the house, the car; our things all of them he was demanding. ( and the courts gave all of those things to him in spite of the fact this is a community property state.) I stared at the floor wondering if it was even real as I called my mom and told her where I would be. She picked me up a couple hours later and brought me to Tucson. I sat in the passenger seat in utter disbelief. My husband was my enemy. After Thanksgiving, I was served with an order of protection at my parent's home in Tucson. My husband claimed that he was afraid I was going to commit an act of domestic violence against him.

It wouldn't be until December 13th that I would see my children. My husband had taken them out of school and sequestered them at his girl friend's house the day he had me served. I was December 31st when I discovered for true that my husband had been having an affair with his writing partner since 2009. My sister pointed out all the signs and I thought I had died inside. It wouldn't be until January 4th that my daughter would tell me that she had been spying on my for the last two years via text for her father. She related to me how he had told her I was the reason she was being bullied at school and how he told her he was afraid I was going to kill him and hurt her and her little brother. He told her I was an alcoholic, a drug addict and mentally unstable. He told her that I was going to accuse him of sexual harassment. She sat there in tears, afraid I was mad at her and that the divorce was her fault. January 4th was also the first time I got to have my children stay with me. To this day I only see my children twice a month for the weekend.

I am still fighting for my children. . . they should not be with a man who performs psychological, emotional, and sexual abuses. I fear what he will do to our daughter. He is already trying to emotionally manipulate her. He has tried to turn our children against me. I feel like there is so much that I have left out of this horror story including the injustices within the family court system. I know I haven't talked about the shell game he played with our money and the assets he's hidden, and the things he has told other people about me. He left me with no resources for a lawyer while his girlfriend paid for his and she plays mom to our kids. It's like he sold not only his soul to her, but our children as well. I am still trying to find a lawyer who can help me. I have rattled all the chains and all that is left are people who expect payment. .  not that I blame them. Everyone has bills to pay, but a woman with no job and no money can't afford to pay a lawyer for the proper defense in court. . . just like he planned.

You see not only do abusers never stop. . . most of them plan their attacks. My husband sees himself on the brink of success and he can't afford to take the woman he abused along with him. It would ruin his image and it's all about image. I am continuing my counseling and I am getting acupuncture treatment for the PTSD. I am slowly recovering. I am working toward vindication.

I asked my mother what the purpose of all those warnings were if a domestically abused woman in the moment doesn't believe them. She told me that sometimes a thing must take its course and the warnings are to soften the blow so you can survive. She would know, she's psychic herself and has tried to shift things over her life's experience. But mostly the effect was to soften the harshness to come. I survived this, but now I want to thrive with my children at my side. They shouldn't have to live with an abuser.

I don't share this for pity. I share this as an illustration that Domestic Violence can hide in any home. Be aware of the signs. . . seriously. I am not going to post them here because I know that making you do the work will make you remember better. It's like when I was a kid and I asked how to spell something. Dad would tell me to go look it up. After I did, I remembered it better a whole lot better. So go; get on google, bing, aol whatever it takes and type in " signs of domestic abuse" "Symptoms of a psychopath" go now. . .  flee fly flo! It could be your sister, mother, daughter you are saving!