Hi, I'm Janet Mackie co-blogger on Not the Life:   I posted on Not The Life I Chose  months (years?) ago to tell you  I am writing a memoir. This is an up-date. I've learned a lot about myself and about sexual abuse in the process and I want to tell you about where the project is at this point.  ( The current working title: Treated Like a Girl, Stories of a Sex Offender's Wife, A Daughter's Life, A Mother's Voice Speaking Out)

from Janet Mackie: Author, Blogger, Activist, Ranter, and Writer and fellow traveler on Not the Life!

Back when I got up courage to start writing, I had no idea the amount of time actually completing my 85000-word memoir would take in hours away from blogging and posting, educating and bitching (and what’s left of the rest of my own too short life.) If you are thinking or writing out what's happening to you, I would recommend you start now, whether you write a memoir or journal, it takes time to get at the truth of your life.

I am now at the stage of 'final edits'  thank God.  I'm finally down to writing the Book Proposal and then a query letter to find an agent to locate a publisher willing to publish Treated Like a Girl, Stories of a Sex Offender's Wife, A Daughter's Life, A Mother's Voice Speaking Out.   

In the process,  I found out just how crazy-making it is to try to teach myself how to write a publishable book while at the same time discover and face me-myself-and-I and my feelings of regret and guilt in a memoir.  I  found a "history of incest" cycling down through my own family in the pile of letters and sepia photos. I remembered reasons for the whispered and silenced family stories I found in the Pandora's Box my father left to me at his funeral.

 I persevered because I thought if I somehow made sense of what happened to me and mine, if I connect the dots, the same cycle of child sexual abuse might  not continue to harm and silence more children, and grandchildren. Not only in my family but  in yours. So, in the end I persevered in spite of the pain because the pattern, the 'history' of abuse cycling down through my own family's relationships was a revelation that help  me and might even help others here on Not the Life make sense of what happened to them when the Police knocked on their door. 

Anyway, Treated Like a Girl is my story. The story,  I finally found the courage to write and speak about. In the process, I broke the chokehold of fear and shame and sexual abuse that silenced and blinded me, continued, and in the end, led to the sexual abuse of my own children and threatens future generations if we continue in to allow it to grow in toxic silence.

So, I hereby promise, this Memoir will be published come hell or high water sometime in 2017. It's my story but also the story of Family.  It traces a larger history of Incest, Gender Politics, and sex Phobia preventing  the examination and discussion of  how this all got started, of preventive measures, of Sex Offender Registry, of Family patterns, and the future of child safety if we continue to keep silent and apply old solutions that never worked to keep us and our children safe.  

Treated Like a Girl  is finally in what I think of as the last exhausting trimester of gestation! Soon there will actually BE proof of the blood sweat and tears it takes to BIRTH a BOOK  in the modern internet age, the Age of ZIKA and Irrational Justice Gone Mad. A book I was afraid to write but somehow did.

Please Stay tuned because ...Once  Treated Like a Girl, Stories of a Sex Offender's Wife, A Daughter's Life, A Mother's Voice Speaking Out sees the light of day I have another on the way.

My next book (tentatively titled Juvenile Sex Offenders: Rough Trip Trough the Justice System) is about early intervention and finding the way forward. Many (but certainly not all) little boys 'treated like a girl' and incested as children go on to molest others. Just as not all but many women, molested as children go on, as I did, to unknowingly marry men, strangely like our own fathers, thus setting up the cycle for our own children to experience the same harms as we experienced. 

Treated Like a Girl and  Tough Trip is are both about developing a prevention mind-set in order to save our own sex curious impulsive children some also labeled Juvenile Sex Offenders, JSO's from re-enacting the cycle in their own lives.  

Tough Trip tells personal stories told to me by Mothers who have, themselves, heard the knock on the door and experienced the aftermath of 'justice' with their own sons. Sons, once they are labeled and remanded to adult 'justice,'  they are  refused re-entry to our homes, run through a seriously flawed adult criminal justice system and forever denied redemption by Registries in today's society.  Often Child Victims (with mothers like the women who come for support and comfort to Not the Life) these youngsters are branded Moral Lepers (along with the husbands and fathers we wives and mothers  are concerned about...right along with the rest of the 850,000 others on America’s State Registries, their families too, experience the collateral damage we all know so well. )

Anyway:  Back to the topic of getting  Treated Like a Girl finished and published.  Women have posted on Not the Life have given me the courage to speak out as a mother and daughter and wife ...So stay tuned please and THANK YOU ALL for your courage in posting and providing support to me and to all the other women sharing their lives here on Not the Life...

Honoring one Mother's courage to speak out: Comparing our stories with theirs, and discovering pathways to protect the next generation of children that we love

 A History of a Pedophile's Wife by Eleanor Cowan is that rare memoir written from the perspective of a wife and mother with courage to speak out. This memoir is well worth reading. (the link to Eleanor Cowan's  web page/ blog is http://www.eleanorcowan.ca/contact.)

Eleanor Cowan's  memoir focuses on her traditional upbringing in a Catholic community in Canada. She recounts the lasting influence child sexual abuse had upon her early life, her choice of husband and, sadly, upon her children's fate. A History of a Pedophile's Wife is a personal story told with clarity and courage. It is a sadly familiar story many women on Not the Life, and perhaps making their own choice to  stay or go, will recognize:

"Bending his face to his knees, Stan wept. His shoulders shook. He told me I had stabbed him through the heart, that I was killing him, that I was merciless and vengeful. In the past, Stan's powerful emotional outbursts, especially his tears had convinced me that he was genuine. But this time I unraveled the bizarre twist that had confounded me for so long. I realized that Stan's feelings were, in fact, a hundred percent authentic, but they did not extend beyond himself. He wept with deep feeling only when his own safety was threatened.  Even as his tears fell, he blamed me. His predation was my fault. I dressed our daughter in flannelette nightgowns he found seductive. Mere seconds after I'd caught him molesting her, I was the guilty one. I should apologize," (pg 215 A History of a Pedophile's Wife) 

I found Eleanor Cowan's courageous memoir unique. It lights the path for many of us showing the steps she took in her own recovery from the effects of child sexual abuse inflicted first upon herself and subsequently inflicted by her husband, Stan, on Eleanor's daughter and son.

I highly recommend this insight-filled memoir to women, wives, and mothers like me, searching for shelter, solace and community here on Not the Life I Chose.  Please comment on Eleanor Cowan's memoir then add your own experience, strength, and hope on Not the Life. Do you know of similar books that have  helped you, books that might help the rest of us?   Take care,   Janet Mackie

There is a bigger issue here that needs discussion: PTSD Why women "freeze' Why mothers did not SEE what was happening to our children while we 'lived right there' Before the 'knock on the door" because... I'm not trying to politicize this but PTSD did not just 'happen' to many of us. We were told "just don't think about 'it.' and frozen since childhood, girls and boys are shamed and blamed and the toxic silence goes on to endanger the next generation of our children... They need us to dare to Speak Our Truth...how else protect all the boys and girls "treated like girls?" If we don't dare discuss this issue, who will?

The talk early this morning with my husband..Trump Trauma..

WARNING.. Graphic content...  

By Vetwife  

Sunday Oct 09, 2016 · 11:01 AM PDT

42 Comments (42 New)

 47

The Morning light truth..this morning.

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Donald Trump opened some wounds for so many women that it is 

staggering. We are now facing past traumas that we took as just “ the way 

it is”.  It is not the way it is nor should it ever have been.  I even realize I 

was so guarded, my adult son is not openly affectionate.  He does not hug 

me .  I should say, he does not initiate hugs...  He pats me on the shoulder 

or I have to hug first.  I am sorry for being so on guard that we lost that 

special bonding.

I have went into freeze mode more times than I can count but when I did 

respond after years of groping, pulling, violating me in various ways..

the man usually got a real hard lesson learned ( maybe),  I have gone damn 

near postal on a few that I did not freeze up on.  I have worked in hostile 

workplaces with men waiting for the opportunity to cop a feel as I have 

heard it put, rub up against me, unwanted hugs and downright raping and 

forcing in isolated situations.

 I walked into a pool room/game room for change on a cold Feb evening in 

Ga and a total stranger grabbed my butt and squeezed and I reached over to a 

table and beat him with a pool stick and proceeded to throw ashtrays at him.   

No man came to my defense but sipped their beer at the bar ( including my 

at the time present x husband)  I only went in there for change for the laundry

mat that was next door.   Someone called the police because I knocked him 

for a loop.  They actually arrested him for disorderly conduct and I didn’t 

even get questioned so someone told what happened…  That was in the 80’s.

   God knows in the 60’s and 70’s it was horrendous.   I walked out after the 

ashtray throwing and that was the only real time I remember snapping….

There was one other time but I froze too hard to do any self defense actually

… The other times too many to count.. I froze.

My husband listened to me this morning as I explained how this Trump thing

 has knocked me into near flashbacks.. Things ..little things I now remember 

that I had pushed aside..  He listened with horror searching his mind..

( I could tell) and asking me over and over had he done anything to ever hurt me and I said, I don’t think so...I thought and I said..No...no.    He had tears in his eyes and he said,

 this explains so very much of your body language when men are present..

He said as he listened so carefully, “This explains so much of rather being alone than in a crowd… This explains so much of your backing up in certain cases just like standing guard.   You were in combat guard mode… As a vet he said, I get it …  Every time someone even me unexpectingly reached out to you..you back away.   What we males have taken as personal rejection at times is pure and simple self preservation and an awareness of being on guard.  He said, “ All the pics of you with legs always crossed and most of the time full arm cross”.

 so many Pictures of you standing, with arms crossed and the leg cross at the ankles.   All subtle suggestions of a guarded position but so subtle, not easy to identify.  

 He said, I can’t even imagine having to live that way day after day after day.. I could only deal with war trauma in real time with actual assault for the period I was in the jungle and then the aftermath… You and just about every other woman has dealt with assault after assault for a lifetime.  I am so sorry.

I don’t know it ..I suspect  that you my dear...you more than likely have full blown PTSD.  I think it is time we men step up and become aware just how badly this has our wives, mothers, sisters and God forbid, our children left to deal with high blood pressure, nightmares and bad bad nightmares.  It is past time that men make men aware.   After 26 years you should have told me more.. I knew you were a battered wife… My God I never knew you had all this other crap hanging around in your head.

If you are dealing with what I call the Trump Trauma….I suggest you sit 

down and talk to your spouse, significant other, partner or anyone who you 

love and explain this, it will feel like a load has been lifted.  I have a 

wonderful husband of over 25 years now..and it took this long  to let down 

some walls ..to trust enough to say, Women, including me have been seriously damaged.  

What has Janet Mackie been up to lately? Trying to understand both sides and stop the cycle of abuse from cycling down into the next generations of children growing up abused and struggling on into adulthood...

I commit to blog at least once a month and to answering comments and questions as best I can in response to the community of women, wives, mothers, and adult children still in pain, people in search of  a community to support them in their quest to understand child sexual abuse and what happens afterwards...

I have kept my hand in by responding to comments on Not the Life and by adding a post at least once a month.  I have also been involved in finishing up my Memoir Sex offenders Wife a Daughter's Life, a Mother's Voice Breaking Silence. (I am on my way to my writers group this morning to finish the final edits before I try to find a publisher.) In the process of writing my memoir I have realized that not oly were my own children (and I molested) as chldren but that sexual abuse is a cycle that often does not begin with us.  (My own father was molested as was my husband but that is a long story too and part of the memoir that was hard to deal with since it's easy to just hate our molester without realizing this is a cycle of abuse and we not only need to recognize and hep the abused child in our own family but make certain the abuse stops with our own generation. Often we only think abuse "happens' to girls but while 1 in 4 girls report they were molested before they turened 18, 1 in 6 boys also report they too were molested and few of them report because boys as much (or more) than girls are shamed into silence which has far-reaching consequences for the future...the future of all our children.

One of the things I now realize is that we don't have to be forever victims and neither do our children whether they were molested by a father or family friend or by another child (perhaps) another child who is our own child.

I have come to believe that we need to provide immediate effective treatment for both sides in the equation of child sexual abuse if we are to stop this cycle from 'cycling on down into future generations of children because children who are traumatized when they are young ( some who are sexual abuse but struggle on into adulthood and then molest others when they reach adulthood.

Writing my memoir I realized that my own sexual abuse blinded me in many ways to seeing the abuse that was being perpetuated in my own marriage, It also blinded me to the membory of my  own brother's sexual abuse and how each has struggled (successfully) to avoid passing down their own abuse onto their own friends children and onto their own children. The did not but at a great cost to them selves and their subsequent marriages and families. Writing my memoir helped than understand their own lives and helped them understand and be successful in engaging in their own therapy issues.  My son as well as my daughter were molested and my other son has dodged the bullet only because his older brother knew what was happening and was vigilent in protecting his younger brother.

May of us are in recovery ourselves, have found happy lives in spite of what we experienced in our own marriages, We like Evie have gone on but I believe as Wives and Mother we have experience and knowledge which we mush share in supporting all the wives and mothers who find themselves in need of our support no matter what choices they make when confronted by the "Knock on the door"

For that reason I hope you will keep coming back to this community of women who ALL want to learn not only how to survive their own "Knock on the Door" but who as women and as mother ALL want to protect ALL our children with effective and early interventions which may help to stop the Cycle as it cycles down into harming fur=tur generations of children.

For all of these reasons I welcom Evie Back. For all of there reasons I too will continue to blog  about my own "Adventures in Recovery" About ways we can save all our children and future generations from this horrendous cycle of sexual abuse  I know it sounds like an impossible hope but as mothers and women tasked with the love and lives of children if not us then WHO? If not now, then WHEN?

So let us begin. Please, let us begin to join together in a community of women to end this endemic harm visited upon ALL our children. Janet Mackie

  

Wives of Sex Offenders - A Place to Share

Wives, girlfriends, partners, siblings, parents . . . whoever you are, if you have been shocked to learn that someone in your life is a sex offender, please share your story in the comments of this blog post. I also strongly encourage you to read at least one other person's story and give a supportive reply to them. 

Before you share your story please read these guidelines:

1. Be respectful to each other (and yourself!). There are many types of stories and many types of decisions made. 
2. Do not make excuses or try to explain the crimes committed. This is your story, not theirs. 
3. No victim shaming or blaming shall be tolerated.
4. Child abuse of any kind is detestable. If you don't agree with that statement please find another blog to share on. 

I am a warm, kind person, but if you can't follow my guidelines I will give one warning before coldly deleting your comments. Except there will be no warning for breaking #4. I hope you understand. 

Evie Pruett, where have you been?

I have been living a full and happy life. That's the biggest and best reason that I was away for so long. I have a life again and it is - get this - NORMAL. My daily complaints consist of trivial things like messy rooms and forgetting to pack lunch for work. I have been sleeping peacefully during the nights, which also really cut into my blogging time. This is some kind of dream come true, right?

I also have a not-so-great reason for disappearing. I became intimidated by my own blog. I realized that a lot of women were coming here for help. I wanted to help, so I made an effort . . . and then I chickened out (I've thought about it a lot and "chickened out" is the best way to put it). I could try to explain it more, but I don't want to waste any more time.

In short, I'm back. But what does that mean? Time is a scarce resource for me. This blog has to fit in my life somewhere after family, friends, work, after-school activities, and volunteering. I want to be upfront that I cannot be a consistent, predictable blogger. My goal is to be simply present. I will blog as I can. I will respond to comments as I can. In the long run, I want to modify the blog to give a better sense of community . . . but if I psych myself out with goals that are too big, I will disappear again.

So this is my modest start. I hope to talk to you all again soon.

"First, Be Good to Yourself" is wise advice especially when surviving "the police knock on the door"...Especially when Forgiving "him" is probably the last thing you had in mind! (from the Greater Good Science news letter/ website)

How Mindfulness Can Help Us Forgive Betrayal

By Kirra Dickinson  

According to a new study, mindful people are more likely to overcome the emotional turmoil and pain of infidelity.

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Is it possible to forgive infidelity and to overcome the emotional pain of betrayal?

It is, suggests a new study published in the journal Mindfulness—if you can feel some compassion for yourself.

The study—the first to examine the relationship between mindfulness and forgiveness of infidelity—surveyed 94 adults who had been cheated on by a partner. They reported on their levels of forgiveness, which involves feeling in control of their emotions, having a balanced view of the relationship (rather than vilifying their partner as wholly evil), and being ready to let go of anger and put the affair behind them. They also reported on their levels of unforgiveness—a separate measure that involves withdrawing from their partner, experiencing emotional upheaval, and desiring revenge.

By this definition, forgiveness is something we do for ourselves, to reduce our suffering; it doesn’t mean we condone the affair or even reconcile with the offender. In fact, over half of the participants in the study were no longer in a relationship with the cheating partner.

Ultimately, the study’s findings suggest that people who are more mindful tend to be more forgiving and less unforgiving—for certain aspects of mindfulness. In this study, mindfulness was broken down into five separate abilities:

• Observing your experience: your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions.
• Being able to describe that experience.
• Acting with awareness—deliberately and thoughtfully, rather than on autopilot.
• Being nonjudgmental of your experience.
• Being nonreactive to your experience, able to withhold immediate reactions (like lashing out).

Partners who had a greater ability to act with awareness—to be deliberate and thoughtful—were less likely to be stuck in a state of resentment. It was also important to withhold immediate reactions and to be nonjudgmental of yourself. In these ways, mindful victims of infidelity seemed to avoid getting consumed by negative emotions.

These results held even when controlling for factors that are known to influence forgiveness, including how severe the betrayal was, whether the partner was remorseful, and whether the victim was prone to empathy or anger.


So if mindfulness goes along with forgiveness, what might be the mechanism behind this link?

According to the researchers, self-compassion may play a significant role. Mindfulness is one of thethree aspects of self-compassion, which involves being kind to ourselves and feeling connected to others in the face of painful experiences. Those who practice self-compassion may ruminate less, experience less resentment, and exhibit higher emotional resilience. Although this study didn’t measure self-compassion, it’s possible that self-compassion was the path away from unforgiveness for these participants.

“Individuals higher in [self-compassion skills] may be willing to accept the turmoil and discomfort they are feeling without overidentification with these states and feel compassion for themselves going through this experience,” the researchers explain.

More on Resolution

Learn how to survive betrayal.

Discover how mindfulness makes romantic conflict less stressful.

How forgiving are you? Take the quiz.

So how might we cultivate mindfulness when faced with infidelity? Here are several tips to keep in mind when attempting to forgive:

• Allow yourself to feel any negative emotions that come up. Instead of fighting them, simply observe and sit with them. Understand that your negative emotions are not primarily coming from the event itself, but from the hurt feelings, thoughts, and physical upset that you are experiencing now.
• Alleviate your physical symptoms by practicing stress management to soothe your body’s fight-or-flight response. Consider taking a deep breath, or taking a walk.
• Make the decision to forgive, not only toward your partner, but importantly for yourself (if you feel this is relevant).
• View the situation from a different perspective and, slowly and in time, practice compassion towards your partner. Keep in mind that they could have been acting out from a similar place of pain and suffering. See him or her as vulnerable and human.

(These tips are adapted from two longer forgiveness practice, Nine Steps to Forgiveness and Eight Essentials When Forgiving.)

Ultimately, this study unearths some of the complexities surrounding how we view and manage our negative emotions. If mindfulness truly can help us cope with the great emotional pain of infidelity, it must be a powerful skill, indeed.