Thursday, February 24, 2011

The Prevalence of Sexual Abuse and The Protections Afforded Me...Would that All Mothers and Fathers

Maven Huggins
I have just been reading all the contributions to the hour, mostly by Tricia Trotman Maraj and not shocked, just sad and stunted to see the extent to which abuse is normal life. For A LOT of people. One in three US women have been sexually assaulted. IF that is the rate so high up north, any idea what the rate is here in Trinidad and Tobago.. And the more i think I know, I seem to sense and learn it is worse. It sickens me but not in a cliche way...just a listlessness...I left the page and came back to write one thing and now two.

Growing up, and after I grew up, My father always said, he never left our family and home, despite me wanting my mother to leave him, but she was mad in love with my father...but they were dysfunctional, should have never been married, and married because i was born to them---but my mother did not need to do that...my grandfather told her that...but the love the love that we do not know what is love...anyway...the point: is that my father said he never left us for he did not want anyone to come into and interfere with us: me and my brother. I share that, not knowing how truthful it was, for my father is far more selfish and diabolical than that nice reading statement. but i also know we are vastly complex creatures...and i do believe for what ever the motivation, that was some protection i was afforded. my father did not leave me to the vagaries and vagrants that may have come along. my father did not interfere with me either. So for some odd reason, i have been spared that experience. i extend grace to others who were not so protected

But what i really came to tell you that shocked me is that when my cousin/.sister had her children, two girls, my Aunt.Mother had refused to let her husband take care of those children if their mother was not around. She let up a little in recent years, they are now 7 and 8; but what was shocking is that my AuntMother told me my Grandmother had never let my Grandfather take care of his children and girlchildren. And reportedly, my grandmother said "she not leaving any of her girlchildren with no man, not even their father"/ I was shocked. I come from a good home. Good family. Good people. Father who took care of us/all. a strict but loving man, feared by some, loving by others...but these are the people who i was born to. And I was never interfered with but was held as a preferred child by all.. i am not exaggerating...my family members still say to me in middle life how special i have been accorded and treated my whole life...so how can my grandmother have that kind of thought...but that is the point... They dont make mothers and women like my grandmother...who was protecting for what was not needed...that is when incidents will stop happening. i wish my life and story could be salve but it dont work that way. i feel deeply sad for the extent to which we make and corrupt destroy each other and nothing i do can change what others will choose. no law is going to correct that. and all i think is pawpaw cant bear breadfruit; and pawpaw dont stop to think whether not to sprout seeds.. There is need for a Balm from Gilead in the Gully


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