Victim Mentality Freedom

VMP. I just learned a new acronym. I always love learning new acronyms. This one sounds like a venereal disease. Actually, it stands for “Victim Mentality Propaganda.”

Now, what’s interesting about this “condition” is that it connects the word “mentality” with “propaganda.” Of course, there are people who are perpetual victims, who blame the world for their problems and take no responsibility for their lives themselves.

But those who WERE victims and have moved beyond it, have a story to tell. That is not propaganda – that is the survivor’s story, the cautionary tale. That is what my memoir is.

Unfortunately VMP comes precariously close to “BVM” or “Blaming the Victim Mentality.” This acronym (I just made it up) came in response to a book called "Blaming the Victim" about women (primarily) who have experienced sexual abuse or domestic violence. It answers the question of “Why didn’t she just leave? No one was putting a gun to her head.” In some cases, there was a gun. In some cases, just the threat of a gun was enough.

I can recall many times in my cult when I was threatened with death, destruction or maiming if I were to leave. I was convinced the devil would take me if I left and yes, I took it very seriously. I was under the thrall of mind control.

It takes a great deal of courage (if not desperation) to finally leave any abusive situation. But psychological or spiritual abuse is the most challenging precisely because there IS no gun. One can argue that “it’s all in your head,” like the “gaslight effect.” (If you’ve never seen the movie “Gaslight,” I highly recommend it.) But that is the essence of mind control – that you think it is all in your mind when it is not. There are outside forces at work.

Healing is a process from victim to survivor to thriver. As a victim, I was stuck in my abusive situation. As a survivor, I excaped. As a thriver, I now live and share what I have learned through VMP -Victim Mentality Freedom. But I am ever mindful of those victims who are still caught in their desctructive webs of abuse and are trying to break free. I pray that my story (not propaganda) may assist them in some small way.

On Grieving

It’s been over six months since my mother died. The reality of it still hasn’t sunk in. We’ve foregone getting a Christmas tree this year, decorating the house instead with little reminders of her presence. We built her a memorial library, converting her last living quarters into a plush reading room. She was a writer and an editor of books so this somehow seemed fitting.

Mom was never a “touchy-feely” kind of person. She wasn’t one for hugs until she had grandchildren and then she held them for long periods in her arms. Her grandchildren softened her in a way her own children couldn’t.

As a child, I always sensed I was “in the way,” an impediment to her doing what she really wanted to do which was write. She preferred the solitude of her own room to the hubbub of children and family. I used to take that as rejection and sought out nurturing surrogate mothers wherever I went, especially in the cult.

In this holiday season, I sense her physical absence more acutely than ever. Even while she was slipping mentally (she had Alzheimer’s), I still looked forward to the times when she would reach out for me and hold me in her arms, tell me she loved me as she never had when I was young. She was more affectionate as an elderly person with dementia than she ever was as a young intellectual and career woman.

Still, she was fiercely loyal to her family and fought for us whenever we needed her. She stayed with her alcoholic husband and saw him through his illness to sobriety. She rescued me from a bad marriage and a destructive cult. She came out of hiding like a mother bear coming out of her cave to fight for her young. She wasn’t always present but she was “there.”

In a way now, she is still here. As I sit by the fire in the library we made for her, I am more assured of her presence and love than I ever was when she was alive. I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps spirit is more palpable than blood. This Christmas, it is enough for me to feel it. That’s all I ever wanted in the first place.