When you grow up around others that would rather live in victim status rather than surviving their past you easily take on the role of an enabler. You become the one to try daily to empower them to be the best they can be regardless of their past. It is easy to watch yourself cover for these people for their behaviors instead of expecting them to overcome. You think you are doing what is right and what you are supposed to do but unfortunately it can be deadly to an addict for example. Enablers will cover for those they believe can’t defend themselves and in the process they empower them to get worse and worse and not learn to survive. It’s like the saying, ” Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” If you see yourself enabling those around you then you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself are you really helping them or hurting them? You could be LOVING THEM TO DEATH!
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Happy Early Thanksgiving Everyone! I am very thankful to have been given the opportunity to give my guidance and advice every week through this blog and that you all come back to check in. I truly hope you all enjoy the posts as much as I enjoy writing and producing them. Every post comes from my heart and is intended to help at least one person in some way. I look forward to continuing the expansion of this project and continuing to help people. Enjoy your day of giving thanks and remember you don’t need to wait for this day every year to look around you and see how you can make small impacts in your life and those around you. Every day is a day of giving thanks for being alive and for having another day to work to become the best person you can be. THANK YOU for the support these last 2 years and I hope I mean as much to each of you as you do to me. HUGS
When I think of Tough Love, I tend to wonder how can you be tough on someone you truly love? It isn’t easy to not want to help those you care about and watch them struggle when you have the means to help. How do you help them without actually enabling them?
Think about our kids and how we tend to want the best for them. If we continuously give to them without any expectations they aren’t able to learn how to fend for themselves. Now if we decide to teach them how to achieve their own goals we then give them the tools they need to succeed in life away from us. As parents we learned that we aren’t perfect ourselves but we want to give to our children what we didn’t have. In doing this there are times that we actually hurt them more than help them. If you can honestly say you have guided your children and given them the proper tools and they still choose the wrong path then it is definitely time to step back and let them figure things out for themselves. However, if you have only expected them to grow up and not shown by example how are they truly supposed to learn. Children are followers until they are shown how to be leaders. By first showing unconditional love, they still know they are loved when you are forced to implement tough love.
This same philosophy goes for those around us. If we continue to tell them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear, how are they going to grow and better themselves when they are perpetuating the same behaviors over and over. Tough love isn’t easy but again when your friends and family know you love them unconditionally, they will know you only say what you say out of the kindness of your heart.
Just remember that in order to implement Tough Love, you first have to show Unconditional Love. Otherwise you are just being selfish and controlling and that doesn’t teach anyone anything positive in the end.
Thanksgiving…A Day for “Giving Thanks” for all we are given to be truly thankful for. This special day is set aside once a year for us to make sure that we take some time to really remember all that we have to be thankful for even if we try to do it throughout the year. This one day where we spend time with those we love and reach out to those we aren’t able to physically be with.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge the things I am thankful for:
- My family and friends are first: I have surrounded myself with some amazing people. Some have been with me for my entire life and some only a short time but I feel as though I have known them forever. We choose the people we involve ourselves with. If you have people in your life the bring you down and carry only negativity with them you need to look at yourself and wonder what is the positive things about these people that keeps you keeping in touch with them. There must be a reason you choose to continue to have these people have a hold on you. Maybe it is that you are there to show them that there are good things in the world and they need to find their positives. You may also not be allowing yourself to let go of the negatives in your life completely yet, if this is the case you truly need to think how damaging that energy is to you.
- My career and passions: I am thankful for the gift that I have been given to be “The Fixer”. I love being able to go in to an assignment fix the problem someone has and then move on to the next assignment. I love my writing and my photography for the gifts it allows me to give to others and in return to myself. I am so thankful to have found a balance in my life when it comes to these things in my life. I truly hope that my writing and the pictures I share are a gift to others and that they can help a few to find the positives and beauty in the world they may have missed until that moment.
There are so many things I am thankful for and I would just bore you in time writing about them all so I will spare you all. Just remember that you all have something to offer to this world and you need to find it and be thankful for it, whatever that gift may be. I treasure my friendships be they in person or online, I am truly blessed to have been given the opportunity to meet some amazing people and to learn more and more about them and in return more about myself and who it is I am to become. Open your minds to all the possibilities and truly be THANKFUL for all you are given. HUGS to you my friends!! Happy Thanksgiving to you all!! ~Vix~
While sitting in a Senior High School Class listening to a couple guest speakers talk about their son being molested by their babysitter, I had an unusual feeling of understanding come over me that I somehow knew the pain and confusion this child must have been feeling. Feeling that no one understood what you were dealing with and the deep ache to rid yourself of an unknown secret. I really didn’t know why I had these feelings, but I sat in that classroom almost in tears and amazement on how these people were talking so freely about this traumatic event in their son’s life. Luckily this was the last real class I had that day because I was not able to focus on anything but the words these people talked about and how they were very clear that this is not the “Victims” fault that these people do these things. They also explained that if we knew anyone who had or was being hurt by someone we needed to speak up and not allow them to continue to make that person or yourself the victim any longer.
I walked around in a fog most of the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. I had trouble going to sleep that night with strange thoughts running through my head. Once I finally fell asleep I was restless and the next thing I knew I awoke screaming, “NO! STOP! YOU’RE HURTING ME!” The memories came flooding back to a horrible night in my life that I had somehow blocked from my subconscious. It was now back and I was never going to forget it again.
I had been molested with inappropriate touching and actions by a man close to our family. He made threats that I would be hurt or that my family wouldn’t believe me if I were to even tell them. This went on for several years and I just allowed this man to treat me like my feelings meant nothing. At age 12, I finally got the courage to stand up to this man and tell him “NO” and that I wouldn’t allow him to treat me like that ever again.
I thought that everything was going to stop and that I had finally been able to take control until I went to sleep that night. I awoke to the most excruciating pain and my head being forced into a pillow. I was on my stomach and I couldn’t move and at times could barely breathe while this grown man raped me and said horrible words to me while shoving my head further in the pillow so I couldn’t scream. I must have blacked out because I don’t remember anything after that.
From that day forward I was a different young lady. I went from being very outgoing and high spirited, to a tomboy and guarded. I wore clothing that didn’t flatter me as to not attract males. I became just one of the guys in my group of friends and started pushing those who were close to me away so that I couldn’t be hurt like that again. I didn’t speak of that night because I just remembered him telling me that no one was going to believe me. I eventually completely blocked it from my memory as a way to protect myself. I also felt there must have been something I had done to deserve this and that maybe I done something to encourage him. He made me a victim and by allowing that I empowered him.
This all came back to me 5 years later, yes I blocked this horrible event out of my memory for 5 years and all it did was tear me up from the inside and created insecurities and depression that I could not truly understand. I had thoughts of suicide and the feeling of just being completely alone and misunderstood. Once this all came back to me I decided I would never keep silent about it again. I pulled myself together and wrote it all down in an anonymous letter to the class, we had a drop box that was in the room that we could put questions in and the class would give their opinions and advice. I didn’t hold anything back in that letter, well nothing but my name of course. I asked if they could help me to determine what I needed to do next to overcome this and how I could stop from being this victim and now take control of my life, once again.
When I got to school that morning I dropped the letter in the box while no one was in the class and proceeded with my school day feeling a bit of the burden I had carried so long, lifted from me. When I arrived to class that afternoon the teacher was standing at the front of the class with his stool and asked everyone to please take their seats. I knew what was about to happen. We all sat down and he sat on his stool and proceeded to tell the class that he had something very serious to read to them and that their help was very important. I gathered all the strength I had in me and listened to the words read back to me that I had written that morning. It all truly became reality at that moment. There was no going back.
After the teacher read the letter he looked to the class for their words of wisdom and guidance. I continued to not show signs that the letter was from me and I even asked and answered questions. These students were so helpful and they didn’t even know that the person who wrote those words was me. We discussed how this is something that is history and by continuing to allow it to fester was only hurting me and holding me back from my future. They talked about how this is not something I did or could have stopped. We discussed that my taking a stand was a good thing even though it caused this to escalate. This was the man’s burden to bare not mine.
After class let out I walked up to the front of the class to talk to the teacher as I did every day. He looked at me and asked me how I thought he and the class had done with the letter. I responded, “You did great!” He said, “You think so?” I looked him in the eyes and said, “It helped a lot!” His eyes changed and started to fill with tears. “I didn’t know,” he said, with the tears starting to flow. I looked at him and said, “I know that is why you helped so much.” If he would have known it was me he may have not been so open about his responses. He gave me a hug and for the first time in many years felt the warmth in another person’s hugs without being scared.
I will leave this story with this for now and will continue with stories that came from me deciding that I was not going to continue to be the victim of this man and that I would never be silent about it again. All being silent did was hurt me and the negativity of the secret was like a cancer in me and was just spreading and once I refused to allow it anymore my life changed. I won’t tell you it was always perfect after that day but it was the strength that I pulled from and continue to pull from today when things get rough.
In closing, don’t read this post and pity me for what happened in my past. My past is my foundation and what made me the strong independent person I am today. I want to share this story so that maybe I can reach others that are going through, or have gone through, similar times. Maybe, just maybe, you can see that you are not alone and you too can find the strength to be “THE VICTIM NO MORE”.
~Vix~