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Post by arietty on Aug 16, 2010 22:54:13 GMT -5
I had a friend who secretly got an IUD after her husband told her he would throw her out on the street if she ever used birth control. She had 7 kids at the time. She had been told she was quite likely to die if she had another pregnancy, as it was she was incredibly debilitated by each one. She had a sympathetic friend smuggle her out to the doctor under the pretense of going shopping. Depo Provera would also be good because it's just a shot, once it's in your system that's it, nothing to hide. But YES to Tess, sooooo hard to do anything like that with a posse of kids in tow. Homeschooling makes that kind of thing particularly difficult. When you cannot go anywhere or even make a phone call without kids RIGHT THERE it really limits a woman who may be trying to figure out how to make a break for it. And you end up so socially isolated, it's so easy to have no one to ask for any kind of help And your older kids may well blather about how you went to the doctor or whatever. Still I would like to encourage anyone who feels they absolutely cannot have any more but are prevented from using Birth Control and not ready or willing at this point to leave to look into these (I know, scary) options. The phone book will have hotlines for women in crisis, any one of these can be a starting point to finding out how to get a Depo Provera shot. This could give someone the breathing and thinking space to decide what to do if you are in an oppressive situation, always harder if you get pregnant regularly. Tess thanks for sharing your story with us. You are brave
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Post by rosa on Aug 16, 2010 23:22:43 GMT -5
The logistics are totally hard But I do see, when I do volunteer work, women who work miracles to get themselves help - we don't see how they do it but women show up at the library having found a half and hour or an hour of time to see the volunteer lawyer, or at the settlement house to get a health care referral. (Of course, at both those places you can have your children along, if you can keep them with you...but then that's all those kids knowing what you're doing.) The number of children is a barrier but it seems to me that the homeschooling/home churching is an even worse one - women whose kids go places like school, sunday school, choir, etc have a lot more opportunity to make the time and connections they need to get help.
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Post by rosiegirl on Aug 16, 2010 23:36:36 GMT -5
Thank you Tess, for answering that. I was really confused on that; here, I believe, you can have a lawyer take care of someone continually harassing you "legally." Have you considered moving to another state, or is that too much?
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Post by krwordgazer on Aug 17, 2010 0:14:55 GMT -5
Tess, you're an incredible writer with a terrific sense of story. I love the way you begin with the climax, and how you're going to give us all the details as it goes along. Your dramatic timing within the segment itself is also amazing. Your ex-husband is unbelievable. My thoughts are with you and your kids for continuing healing from the horrible tyranny you endured.
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Post by tapati on Aug 17, 2010 6:58:40 GMT -5
Yes the homeschooling combined with lots of kids makes it incredibly difficult to slip away to the doctor.
The only thing I can think of is that if one knows other homeschool moms, maybe institute a one-day-a-month trade where each of you takes all the kids for a half day and schools them together to give each other time to run errands. Have it in place for awhile before using it to run a "secret" errand.
It reminds me of stories I've heard from women who worked at Planned Parenthood about how sisters/cousins/friends ended up sneaking to get their birth control or abortion and each thought the other would judge them if they knew. Perhaps there are more QF moms who secretly can't admit that they--and their body--are just DONE.
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Post by denelian on Aug 17, 2010 21:13:46 GMT -5
::*CHEER*::
this bit, right here, has catapulted you into my "She's my HERO" category: "In other news, on that day, membership in the world’s one true Biblical Christian church, headed by Nathaniel Willoughby, Esquire, P. C. (a limited liability corporation) saw its membership decline by a stunning 86%."
that was just **THE** perfect end to this opening story. it was breathtaking, beautiful snark.
all that aside - your story reminds me, too well, of the reason i found this forum/website - my best friend, with her incredibly abusive rapist husband [and yeah, it took me THREE YEARS to convince her that when he said "roll over and let me do "X-thing-that-hurts-and-humiliates-you", or i'm going to FORCE you to do it and worse" that was RAPE. because she was raised with a very patriarichial fundy view, she KNEW what he demanded was "sin" but also KNEW that if she didn't do what he demanded it was sin. letting him do it was sin, him forcing her to do it was still sin, and somehow preventing him from doing it was sin...] they were about to start having kids. and i panicked! he was ALREADY threating to kill her, me, her family, whenever she wouldn't do EXACTLY as he pleased - now they were going to have children!
that's what sent me [franticly] searching the web, finding No Longer Qivering - and the site is what finally gave me the VOCABULARY to get thru to her
i hope you are well, and your kids are too! i feel so bad for them, as well as you - i hope they take the right lessons from all of this. i send GoodThoughts to you and yours.
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Post by nikita on Aug 18, 2010 0:32:48 GMT -5
::*CHEER*:: this bit, right here, has catapulted you into my "She's my HERO" category: "In other news, on that day, membership in the world’s one true Biblical Christian church, headed by Nathaniel Willoughby, Esquire, P. C. (a limited liability corporation) saw its membership decline by a stunning 86%." that was just **THE** perfect end to this opening story. it was breathtaking, beautiful snark. First, I loved that line too. I felt weird applauding it because it was such a horrible day in Tess' life so cheering her humor in that line seemed insensitive (' Your tale of unmitigated horror and loss had me cheering!') But it was a great line, I have to say it. So expressive a writer. So we are here applauding your style and how clever you are, and not in any way taking away from the stark misery and horror of the situation being referenced. The second thing is that it is really a quandary conservative sexuality puts women in, isn't it? Submit, but not to that, but you have to obey, but that would be sin, but that would be rebellion... Argh!! There is another aspect of this that gets overlooked too, though. Now I didn't and don't believe anything is 'sin' within marriage (this is the situation we are speaking about so I feel that this qualification applies here), but there is always the worry that your husband privately thinks it is 'sin' and will think less of you for anything that isn't very vanilla-conservative. It's like there is no way for women to win in this sexual equation when those morals are either stated or implied within their cultures/churches/families. 'He wants to do X and I don't mind/want to also, but if I do agree to do X will he secretly think I'm a whore?' How many women get stuck in that loop do you think? I think too many, and no one talks about it. Men who have no baggage in this area certainly exist, thank goodness, but I think in religious families this is more prevalent than anyone ever talks about. Your friend is fortunate to have you. But yeah, the vocabulary is important, as is a compassionate understanding of the worldview involved. Simply telling someone that their religion is evil or ridiculous or whatever is going to get walls drawn up and rigidity set in tight. Much better to reason from within the religion, showing how what is abusive is not part and parcel but is actually abuse may be what is needed to break through and get actual help for the woman involved. I myself moved one woman in my cult secretly out of her husband's house three times but she kept going back because he played her every time using scriptures and his interpretations to bully her into submission. I spoke the right language and was still in the cult but she couldn't make the leap with him talking in her other ear that way. He thought regular beatings were a-okay with God. Another one of my friends married a complete nut who simply decided words meant whatever he decided they meant and if she didn't fall into line with his new meaning then she was in sin and rebellion and he would predetermine that the result was that she had actually decided to leave him and that he was under no obligation to God in that situation so he would just walk away from the marriage and all the sin would be hers for the resulting divorce. Did you get all that? No, neither did anyone else. But I watched her shaking and in tears while she tried to understand his reasoning and obey him and nothing I could do (I spent hours at a time with bibles open (after negotiating the exact correct version, of course!) just trying to get him to let her leave the house with me for an hour or two) and I could never get her to reject his irrational reasoning and demands. We were nineteen at the time, and they disappeared one day and I never saw or heard from either of them again. We'd been best friends from sixteen up to that time and she was a bright intelligent girl with a wicked sense of humor. But the last time I saw her she was shaking and in tears trying desperately to understand the complete nonsense this controlling asshole was feeding her and she was just broken. That was one of the worst. It's so hard to break through it all and get them away.
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Post by defendantrising on Aug 18, 2010 11:53:20 GMT -5
Nate is that kind of "complete nut" as will become clearer later on in the narrative. He reserves the right to define truth and reality depending on what suits him. He is also a consummate gaslighter. The mindf**k is his best tool, and his greatest strength is that he is ironclad CERTAIN that he is right. He never doubts, not even for a second, that he has God in his right hip pocket. Ever. That kind of confidence can be pretty convincing when a man never quits undermining your own confidence, not even for one waking hour.
Glad to see some snark fans. There will be other moments of humor among the horror, when you won't know whether to laugh or cry, because I've come to believe that black humor is really the only rational response when looking back on some of the crazy-making things that he did and said. When I started to see the whole thing as some kind of joke and Nate as a buffoon and fraud whom no sane woman would love, that's when I mustered the strength to escape.
I would not even know how to begin to rescue a woman in a situation like mine. You aren't just talking in one ear while her husband talks in the other, he is talking INSIDE HER HEAD, accusing, blaming, shaming. When I think about how many MONTHS it took to stop hearing Nate's voice in my head I get goosebumps. The brainwashing was extensive and severe, and he knew how to keep inside my brain with letters, emails, phone calls, proxies (my own children, ideally), and later, legal battery.
The man could talk an anaconda out of a tree, too. The comparison with Patrick Bergen's character in "Sleeping With The Enemy" is dead on. Nate has a way of talking that just fries people's circuits and gets them to comply.
In theory, a bunch of homeschooling moms could trade off childcare and take secret clinic visits to help God out with that womb-shutting thing, however, we were always trying to be more submissive-than-thou, so I don't know who would have mustered up the courage to suggest such a thing. I was part of the school of thought that every homeschooling mom should be an island; women who gathered with other women even for homeschooling stuff were gadabouts and busybodies who needed to get their cans back in the kitchen. And my ex never actually let me form friendships. He would pick fights with pastors and "home church" while he shopped for a more congenial church.
Tess
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Post by defendantrising on Aug 18, 2010 12:02:38 GMT -5
'He wants to do X and I don't mind/want to also, but if I do agree to do X will he secretly think I'm a whore?' How many women get stuck in that loop do you think? I think too many, and no one talks about it. Oh, don't even get me started. This whole madonna-whore complex is so rampant in the QF/P movement. Be a wholesome little pregnant prairie muffin with no makeup while I go download the T&A of the hour. But there will be more of this--much more--in my story.
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Post by tapati on Aug 18, 2010 13:10:29 GMT -5
Of course I wasn't suggesting sharing the nature of the errand, just the concept that, wow, wouldn't it be great and much more efficient if once a month we could run around quickly without kids in tow and get all of our errands done? I would press the efficiency of it. More time for homemaking once those pesky time consuming errands are out of the way, that sort of thing.
Of course the more abusive QF guys would try to prevent friendships.
I'm just trying to think how women in the life, maybe reading this, could get an ounce of private time to do something about their fertility when they just feel like enough blessings are enough, another pregnancy could kill them.
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Post by journey on Aug 18, 2010 14:32:17 GMT -5
This was a wonderful blog post and I look forward to hearing more. I really relate with what it is like to have a husband who can talk talk talk his way into getting you to see that you are wrong and he is right....and has the ability to do that to others, too.
Glad you got out...and glad you were able to recover from his voice inside of your head. I can relate to that, too. It takes a lot of time and effort, the fine art of getting your mind back from their control, even long after you've escaped them.
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Post by amaranth on Aug 25, 2010 14:10:20 GMT -5
Whoa.
I'm a fiction writer. One of my constant jobs is taking a character and saying, "Okay, what's the worst possible situation I could put this person in, and how will they react?" Conflict makes good fiction.
But then I come here, and I read stories like this. I think I was struck by this one because it was written in the kind of snarky voice I associate with the sort of fiction I read. It's exactly the sort of scene that would work really well in a novel.
Except that this really happened to a living breathing human being. That simple fact really hit me. It should be just fiction, but it's not. It's real. This stuff really happens. I think that I, as a writer, have become very good at distancing myself from the sort of hell I have to put my characters through in order to tell a good story. This story was a sorely needed reality check for me.
Thank you.
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Post by madame on Aug 26, 2010 5:32:14 GMT -5
This was a wonderful blog post and I look forward to hearing more. I really relate with what it is like to have a husband who can talk talk talk his way into getting you to see that you are wrong and he is right....and has the ability to do that to others, too. Glad you got out...and glad you were able to recover from his voice inside of your head. I can relate to that, too. It takes a lot of time and effort, the fine art of getting your mind back from their control, even long after you've escaped them. I can relate, to an extent. My husband can do that, but I have realized that I can stand up against it, and I do. It's a different story with my FIL, who is very much like Tess's husband.
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