Unlovable: The ballad of Bethenny Frankel

Once again, an episode of Bethenny Ever After is inspiring a post. Why can’t I quit you, Bethenny?

Tonight, we found Bethenny in the middle of a lot of chaos. She’s doing a complete remodel of an apartment, busy being a Skinny Girl mogul, raising her toddler, and struggling with the terrible twos of marriage. So, take away the fame and fortune and she’s just about every mom I know — constantly juggling half a dozen (or more) things and holding herself up to an impossible standard of perfection!

But it’s when Bethenny breaks down in her counselor’s office that things get real. Bethenny has been going through a rough patch in her marriage to Jason Hoppy. In the scene with her counselor, Bethenny talks about being “damaged and broken” and that, essentially, she believes that her husband was unlucky to fall in love with her. And this is when the conversation turns to the core of the problem: Bethenny believes she is unlovable.

Unfortunately, Bethenny is not alone in this belief.

Look at all the books (hello, Eat, Pray, Love) and movies dedicated to the search for joy and liberation from misery! Oprah has practically built a cottage industry and dedicated her career to finding and delivering the tools to drill down into yourself to find that pain. For any number of reasons, a lot of people walk around with this invisible burden. I wrestled with this for most of my life and only in recent years have found a freedom from it. It is an almost unbearable prison. And it feels impossible to break free. As Bethenny’s counselor says to her, living that way is isolating and you will be miserable.

To believe that you do not deserve love or that you are somehow unworthy of love is a terrible way to go through life! And the truth is, it will destroy you and everything you want in life, if you let it.

For a very long time — perhaps as long as I can remember — I lived with this soul-crushing feeling inside me. I believed I was never worthy of anything good. If I got good grades, it was a fluke. If I got the job, it was because they could pay me less (because I’m a woman). If I won an award, it was a mistake. And worse, yet, I believed that if anything good happened to me, then there would be an equal and often disproportionate response from the universe to cancel it out.

Sound familiar?

So, this goes for the relationships in our lives, too. If I am unworthy of anything good happening to me, then I certainly don’t deserve the love that someone is offering me — be it in friendship, in family, or in romance.

Why do we torture ourselves like that?!

For me, it came from a pretty toxic combination of factors from my childhood. I was sexually abused. I was estranged (abandoned) from my father for almost 10 years. And my mother routinely told me how she wished I had never been born (including telling me that she wished she’d had an abortion). Add in intermittent poverty, transience, and various other mitigating factors and it was like taking a molotov cocktail to the heart! No wonder I felt completely and utterly UNLOVABLE!

It’s hard enough when you have survived sexual violence. But even if I take that away… even the daily realities of poverty can be pretty grim at times. When you see the casual wealth of those around you at Christmas and go home to a stark experience at home, you start to question why your lot is so different. As a child, the answer seemed simple: It must be different for me because I don’t deserve those things. That life is not meant for me.

So with that kind of seed firmly rooted in my consciousness by adulthood, you can see why I had a kind of whole-life panic attack as I parked my four-door sedan in the garage of my brand-new home in suburbia at the age of 27. I had a successful and promising career. I was (and still am) enjoying a wonderful marriage to my high school sweetheart.

It was like that Talking Heads song, “This is not my beautiful house… This is not my beautiful life… How did I get here?”

But the truth is I worked hard to have the success I’ve enjoyed. When life offered me opportunities — like a college internship at a magazine dedicated to rodeos and the RV lifestyle, or cutting my journalist teeth in numerous other non-glamorous gigs — I took them. I put myself through school working as a maid/nanny and a host of other jobs. And mine was the generation that broke the cycle of teen pregnancy (and went to college) in my family.

So why didn’t I feel like I deserved the spoils of my hard-earned life? Why did I feel like any second the brute squad was going to bust down my door and drag me back to The Black Abyss? It must be because I didn’t deserve it, right? It must be that I was unlovable.

And now we’re back to Bethenny — on top of the world with a beautiful baby, the husband, the luxurious penthouse apartment in New York City, million-dollar deals, best-selling books, legions of fans…

I know there will be some who mock her admission of being unlovable as neurotic or even narcissistic. How could someone who is so successful really believe that about herself? But for all of us who know all too well the quiet hell of The Black Abyss, it’s like she’s found our letters and read each one out loud. When it comes to The Black Abyss, the more success you have the more you feel like your guts are being ripped apart. It’s like throwing a hand grenade on an open wound.

And it’s this vicious, almost-addictive (in a masochistic kind of way) cycle. We drive ourselves to exhaustion to be perfect. We drive ourselves crazy with ambition and long hours to be the best at what we do. We are driven to outrun the past and to prove to ourselves that we don’t have to live in the dark times any more. And then, after so much hard work we get recognition — raises, awards, accolades, whatever — and that recognition nearly kills us. Because if we get praise for our efforts, then the brute squad is going to come and take it all away. Because we don’t deserve it. … And, repeat.

I’m not saying we should all walk around like arrogant pricks and act entitled to the world. What I’m talking about is that internal, deep sense of self that is either floating like a butterfly in the joys of your life or stinging you like a bee to remind you that you are unworthy.

It breaks my heart when Bethenny says she’s damaged or that her husband is unlucky to love her. As much as it hurt me all those years to feel like I did not deserve the love that people gave me, now it hurts me to see so many people have that same struggle. It took me 10 years of marriage before I believed that it was possible for anyone, let alone my husband, to feel unconditional love for me. Ten years! In fact, when people would compliment my husband or marriage, I used to say, “He’s better than I deserve.” How sad is that?

I didn’t get to the other side of the abyss overnight. And it wasn’t easy.

One thing I do know from my own journey is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. But a good place to start is to give yourself permission to love yourself. Whatever the catalyst was that made you think you are unlovable, try to see it as just that — a seed. Maybe it grew into a tree. Maybe it grew into a forest. So what? Burn the whole damn forest down if you have to. That forest isn’t who you are! That experience does not define you! One of the most healing things I ever did for myself was allowing myself to feel angry about being sexually abused. I gave myself permission to not forgive my abuser. And yet, in that act, somehow I felt more at peace than ever before. (And, interestingly, I started feeling less and less anger after that.) It might not make sense to someone else. But the process doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else but you. Do what you need to do to free yourself. No matter how painful the event or experience, it was only a catalyst. And maybe at that time you were ill-equipped to process it or let it go or move on from it. The day I stopped waiting for the person who hurt me to change or apologize or even acknowledge what they’d done, was when I finally understood what acceptance meant. And it was liberating.

Today, this moment, can be a new catalyst. A catalyst to change your life for the better. Maybe anger or fear or even hurt has been all you’ve ever known. Stepping outside of that can seem scary. Believe me, I know! Sometimes the most radical, brave thing we can do is to dare to have hope or to indulge the luxury of imagining a life of unconditional love.

But it’s like that scene in The Hurricane; maybe it’s time try something new on for size. Maybe hate/anger/fear only get you so far. Maybe it’s time to try love on.

(PS: If you like this post, stay tuned. These themes and more are in the book I’m working on and a part of a new workshop I’m developing to inspire people to hope after trauma.)

Let’s go bowling!

The Sin City Sirens bowling team for the National Network of Abortion Funds bowl-a-thon will be playing Sunday (April 15) at 1pm at the South Point Bowling alley! Sign up for the team here!

Don’t have time to sign up online? Just show up with a donation and join in the fun! The important thing is to raise funds for this good cause and have a good time!

We’ve raised $290 so far! Thank you to all those who have donated! Please help us reach our goal of $500!

WHO: The Sin City Sirens bowling team

DATE: Sunday, April 15

TIME: 1pm

WHERE: South Point Casino bowling alley (I-15 at Silverado Ranch)

 

WHY: This is a chance to provide access to women all over the country who struggle to come up with the basic fees for the procedure — which can range from $450 to $3000 — and then sometimes just can’t quite cover all the other added costs. Child care, time off work, gas money to drive to the clinic which can sometimes be in another state, hotel (if there’s a waiting period), additional fees for additional procedures (like transvaginal ultrasounds)… the list goes on and on.

And all you AFAN AIDS Walk walkers… Consider this your chill after-party! Re-hydrate after the fun outside and throw a few strikes to work those arms (it’s cross-training!). And let’s not forget that some women with HIV/AIDS choose or need to terminate their pregnancies because of risks to their health or the fetus.

It’s easy to see why we need the Abortion Funds network! They fill the gaps and help women — often already mothers — who just need that extra bit to break through those roadblocks!

Get by with a little help from our allies

*TRIGGER WARNING FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE*

Earlier today I participated in a tweet chat about sexual violence and the #IDidNotReport campaign with my Fem2.0 colleagues. It was a great and lively discussion that dealt with a spectrum of issues related to sexual violence — from workplace harassment to sexual abuse to rape. When you get down to it, there’s a lot to drill into when we talk about sexual violence.

One of the issues that was raised was how to be an ally to survivors. How do people create safe spaces? How do those who will become the support system for a survivor start making that first supportive step?

This is an important question and one I have faced every time I tell someone my story. Every time it is the first time someone is learning that I am a survivor of sexual abuse, it is an experience that can be hard to predict. Will this person offer me solace? Will they explode with rage? Will they shut down, unable to process what I’ve told them? Or worst of all, will they decide to not believe me? It is not an exaggeration to say that I have to anticipate any range of reactions every time I tell someone my story.

Every single time. And I’m not alone.

I would guess that this is an experience shared by most survivors of sexual violence. And depending on where you are in the healing continuum — from raw wound to just managing to shedding the layers of shame and anger — just the anticipation of a bad experience sharing your story is enough to keep you silent.

And silence is the evil twin of sexual violence. Physical wounds will heal. But the shame of silence can crush you like the sands of an hourglass slowly burying you alive.

I don’t have all the answers but here are some hard-earned truths I’ve learned:

• First and most important of all, Start by Believing. If someone comes to you and tells you about an experience they have had, don’t hesitate. Believe them. It is the single most powerful thing you can do to help them.
• Don’t re-victimize them by forcing them to re-live their experience so that you can hear the story of what happened. You may be curious. You may even have questions. But you do not deserve their story. The story is irrelevant. The story proves nothing. Truth is what matters. The truth is, they are telling you they were victimized and experienced a terrible trauma. The fact that they are trusting you with that truth is what matters. That is enough.
• Don’t make the victim have to take care of you. I find this a lot. More than I like, to tell you the truth. Often when I tell people that I am a survivor, the first reaction is some mixture of shock and dismay. Nobody likes to think about sexual abuse, rape, or other forms of sexual violence. It’s horrible. It’s a ninth circle of hell. Why would you want to find out that someone you know has lived through that? That’s bad news! I get that. Unfortunately, some people are so aggrieved by the news that it becomes more about me comforting them and walking them through their reaction than about me and why I told them (because why would I just tell someone that for no reason?). One time the person I told broke down crying uncontrollably and sat down and rocked gently back and forth. That is a more extreme example. But I think you get what I’m saying. If I have decided to share such a painful truth with you, please remember that I’m still in the room after I do so.
• Don’t make the survivor responsible for your discomfort. This goes with the previous tip, but is important enough to warrant it’s own bullet point. Sexual violence is evil. I know it will make you uncomfortable. But just because it makes you uncomfortable does not make it okay for you to passive-aggressively try to silence me. When you ask a survivor to not talk about such things or just “let that go for tonight” or similar such sentiments, what you’re really saying is that YOU can’t handle that information. But the fact that you can’t handle the truth (sorry, I had to go there) is not an excuse to re-shame the survivor. It’s okay for you to have your feelings and take time to process whatever you need to. But if that is the case, own it and don’t put that back on the survivor. That’s your stuff, not theirs.
• Remember that the process of healing is not a straight line. Healing from the trauma of sexual violence can take years. And there will be set-backs. You will see your loved one have progress and then suffer from a trigger and fall back into old patterns or seem to lose ground in their journey. This happens. It’s important to follow their lead. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just be patient and offer encouragement, support, and hope. If you feel frustrated, believe me, the survivor is way more frustrated than you are.
• Each survivor is different. Some people can’t even say the word “rape.” Some people, like me, prefer the term survivor — because fuck you, I’m no victim.  But for years I could not say the words, “I was molested” out loud. Not even when I was all alone. I could not form the words in my mouth, even though it was true. I could not stomach to hear the sounds in my ears. But everyone experiences their trauma differently. One day before class, one of my friends in college just casually told me about how she was date raped in high school. She just said it like we were talking about a TV show or the news. She said it while bending over to tie her shoe on a bright and sunny spring morning with birds singing in the trees. Just like that.
• You don’t have to be their sole support system. This is hard to remember sometimes when your friend is calling you crying at 3 am or your spouse keeps waking up drenched in sweat from the night terrors. You love this person. You care about what is happening to them. You want to be a part of the solution. You want to ease their pain. And that is wonderful! That is so important! That is a gift that a survivor can never repay. But you are also a human being with needs and a limited supply of comfort to spare. If you are getting tapped out, I highly recommend, indeed, encourage you, to seek your own support system. And to seek out resources in your community, online, at the bookstore, on iTunes… wherever, that you can offer your loved one to give them more outlets and more tools for their journey. Counseling is a godsend. I highly recommend it. I can honestly say that when I was deep in trauma that the counselors that I went to saved my life. And probably my marriage.
• You can’t change the world, but small acts of safe-space building can make a huge difference. Do you have a friend who always makes offensive rape jokes (Oh, my phone company is raping me each month!)? Is there a hot new movie out that you know has a graphic scene depicting sexual violence that could be a trigger for the survivor in your life? When I went to see The Watchmen I had to leave the movie theater when they showed the attempted rape scene, even though I knew it was coming. I’ve seen other scenes of sexual violence in movies and on TV before and since and did not have the same visceral, triggering feeling. I suddenly felt hot all over and that I was going to throw up. Images from my past flooded my mind. I don’t know why, but that scene just cut me deep. When I got to the bathroom I found it hard to collect myself and wept in a stall until I felt better. One of the things that was a comfort to me was the simple knowledge that if I needed to, my husband would leave that theater immediately and never make me feel a moment of guilt. You can be that person for somebody. And even just knowing you are willing to create a safe space for someone can sometimes be just as good as actually doing it.
• Speak up for survivors! Be a voice for change in your community. Lobby for legislation that helps survivors. Vote out politicians who trade away sexual violence prevention programs in budget negotiations like some kind of worthless bargaining chip. The community at large doesn’t know what they are asking when they demand that survivors be the only credible lobbyists for change. It’s so hard to be open and speak publicly about sexual violence. You can do a lot to support those who do speak out.  But also those who are too afraid to do so. Because surviving takes more courage than you know.

If you want more information about sexual violence or are in need of support services, please check out RAINN and their 24-hour, national hotline.

Cross-posted on The Sin City Siren and Fem2.0.

Only 8 more days to send a message to the UFC!

Have you signed the UFC petition, yet? You only have 8 more days until it closes! Then I will be delivering it to the UFC headquarters in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness month in April. This is a chance to have your voice be heard that rape jokes and hate speech are NOT funny. Ever!

Need the backstory? Check out the UFC Campaign page with all the details — from Penn State jokes during live press conferences to prison rape jokes by UFC President Dana White!

Now that the petition is coming to an end, it’s time to deliver it! Come out on April 3 — which just happens to be national Sexual Assault Awareness Day of Action — and we’ll deliver the petition to UFC headquarters and rally for change in our community here in Las Vegas! There are already some great organizations who are coming out for the cause, with more being added all the time. Check back soon for all the details!

Celebrate two years of ACA at Planned Parenthood

This International Women’s Day, let’s connect and inspire girls!

Happy International Women’s Day!

What, you didn’t know it was International Women’s Day? Wait, you did know that March is Women’s History Month, right?

Okay, okay. Maybe International Women’s Day is not at the top of your annual holiday calendar. But there’s good reason to be thinking about this 101-year-old tradition. So what is IWD?

IWD provides a common day for globally recognising and applauding women’s achievements as well as for observing and highlighting gender inequalities and issues. But not just on IWD, but all year round, many organizations and individuals work tirelessly to support gender equality through a multitude of initiatives, causes and actions.

Sounds good, right? Of course, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Here in America, we are in the middle of the thrashing vortex that is the War on Women (cue: Rush Limbaugh, et al). But compared to what women in many developing countries are dealing with on a day-to-day basis just to survive, it makes us look like a bunch of whiny, privileged assholes.

Yesterday, during a #sheparty tweet chat hosted by the Women’s Media Center, people from across the world (yes, I was tweeted by someone in Germany — in German — luckily that’s the language I took in college) talked about what the issues are facing women around the world and what we can do about it. In particular, there was a focus on how to connect with girls and raise up their voices.

And that’s a great question: How do we connect and inspire girls? I want to hear from you!

Here are some IWD posts to get your idea machine cranking:

• A Letter of Love from Men by Michael Kaufman
• Women Who Inspire from Huffington Post UK
• Looking at connecting girls in Africa by allAfrica
• Dia Internacianal de la Mujer by DA Morales at Tuscon Citizen
• Care.org IWD page

And there’s this video, which even with its little ad at the end is still a pretty nifty highlight reel of some amazing accomplishments by women:

Cross-posted on The Sin City Siren.

Walking wounded

You just never know when you’ll get a blast from the past.

This morning I had an interesting request in my in-box. A PR guy asked to friend me on one of my social networks. Now, on it’s face, this isn’t that remarkable. I spent almost a decade in the trenches as a reporter before embarking on my new life as a blogger here and on my syndicated site The Sin City Siren. So either way, the PR folks find me. But this particular PR guy and I have some professional history.

Back in the day, I did a story and several follow-ups about a controversial piece of real estate here in the valley. There were environmental concerns; political concerns; a deep history of the site…and on and on. The initial story was the culmination of about five years of research, interviews, time with experts, and all the blood, sweat, and tears of investigative journalism that lines the cat box a week later. But this story I wrote, well, I’m guessing it made for a bad day for this PR guy involved. His client, among many other businesses mentioned in the piece, didn’t really come off looking that great.

Eh, that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes, right?

Well, in my experience the answer is mostly yes. Most of the time even when their interests aren’t shown in a great light, most PR folks know this is just how it goes sometimes. And I had worked with this guy before and knew him to be professional and well-respected. He was a nice guy. So, I expected a phone call with some light, obligatory complaining. (It’s his job to stick up for his client, after all.) I did not expect a phone call where he ended up shouting at me and “banning” me from access to his client for any future interviews. Wow! Really?! To say this was a gross over-reaction is, well, putting it mildly. There really wasn’t any reason to get that bent out of shape. The story was printed. I was rolling on to new assignments. It’s over. Let it go.

I left my last journalism job five years ago. So I’m guessing it’s been at least that long, if not longer, since I’ve talked with this guy. And the last interactions I had with him were just an escalation of his anger about my coverage of his client in subsequent follow-up articles. So, you can see why I was feeling a bit confused and amused this morning when I found his friend request in my in-box.

Now, I’m not so naive to think that friend requests in this age of social media always mean actual friendship. In fact, you often have to assume that they may come with strings or baggage of various degrees, especially when it comes to professional contacts and colleagues. Most likely, this person is just beefing up his contacts. Or perhaps he’s gearing up for some campaign or media blitz and wants to have a lot of media contacts getting his updates. Who knows? I certainly don’t. I haven’t seen or talked to this guy in years! I’d like to think that in the case of this PR contact, that time has nullified any anger he felt about the stories I wrote. I was doing my job. He was doing his job. No worries.

But this request did get me thinking about the idea of old wounds. How long does it take to heal old slights? Does time really heal all wounds?

We all have things in our past that are more messy and less easy to forgive. What if it took PR guy five years to forgive me for what he perceived as personal attacks on his client? What if he’s been carrying around a grudge long after I was out of the business and long after my stories are even on anyone’s radar? I’m not saying he was. (For the record, my guess is he was glad to see me leave journalism and didn’t give me a second thought after that.) But I’m using this scenario as an example of the kinds of grudges and wounds we all hold on to. If it can take years for someone to forgive a perceived slight at work, how long can it take to forgive the big stuff that shakes us to our very core? Of course, the answer to that is a variable. It depends on the person and the damage (real or imagined).

Just because the PR guy scenario tickled me, I put something on my facebook about it with some quip about whether or not time does heal all wounds. I was surprised to see two fairly serious responses. And neither one held a half-full outlook. Now, two people is not a lot and I would never suggest that it is representational of all people. But it did get me thinking that there are a lot more of us walking around with invisible emotional wounds than we realize. Maybe I just get so busy in my own life and my own problems that I forget to lift my head and notice what it is those around me are trying to conceal. Really, we are all concealing lots of things — from a dissatisfaction with our appearance to deep childhood trauma to wishing we were brave enough to take the leap on what scares us.

Because I write about a lot of emotional things, people often feel comfortable confiding in me. One of my posts last week brought up a lot of things for a lot of people, as I learned from so many messages, emails, and conversations. My wish when I talk about painful issues like sexual abuse, is that it is cathartic and helpful for others. And that I can share the hope that we all have an innate ability to not only survive, but walk through our pain and get to the other side where we can experience a wealth of positive emotions that we deserve to have in our lives. But I also understand that everyone has their own road to travel. It takes what it takes to get there. And those wounds don’t always heal completely. Even for myself, there are aspects about my childhood that still trouble me.

We all have wounds. And we all have to walk through life with them. Or do we?

Perhaps we should try and have more compassion for others and for ourselves. I’ve written before about how I struggle with forgiving myself even the smallest things. And that is certainly a part of the journey toward healing old wounds. Yes, we often have to consider if we want to forgive others, too. But I am beginning to think that is a smaller part than the forgiveness and care we must first give ourselves. After all, how can we forgive others if we never forgive ourselves? As a survivor of sexual abuse, one of the biggest parts of my healing journey was to finally forgive myself for being a victim. It wasn’t my fault that I was vulnerable, powerless, and a child. But I was still angry with myself and I couldn’t move on until I forgave myself the weaknesses that I had in that situation.

But we also have to think about whether or not it is worthy of our time to keep hanging on to old wounds. In my opinion, some things just aren’t worth it. Like my scenario with PR guy. Why bother being mad after all this time? What does it help? And what does it hurt in yourself to keep holding on to old things like that? But it’s worth considering about the bigger stuff, too. How long do we maintain a wound? How long do we keep it fresh and full of rage, frustration, sadness, and depression? Because I think there comes a point in our own healing journey when we have to decide, enough is enough, even on the big stuff. After all, once the trauma ends, who is it really that is doing the upkeep on the old wounds? Long after the abuser has left the building, it turns out to be none other than ourselves. It becomes familiar and almost a crutch.

At the same time, I’m not saying that just because time has gone by that means that old hurts should just magically go away. And I’m certainly not saying that the only reason why old wounds still hurt us is because we let them. It’s far more complicated than that, of course. When someone has hurt you deeply, that takes time to heal, if it ever can. And it takes work — sometimes a lot of work — to process everything that needs to be processed in order to move on from an old wound. Sometimes we need to learn new things. Sometimes we need to meet new people or trusted advisers to guide us through what needs to happen. Sometimes we need action from the other person or people. Sometimes we need to grow. Sometimes it really just takes time.

All I know is, we need to try and stop wasting time on grudges or old wounds that don’t really warrant it. Aren’t we all busy enough? Don’t we have enough to think about? And in the meantime, I think we could all do with more compassion toward one another. After all, you never know if the person you are talking to has some deep wounds they are working through. (Believe me, judging from some of the emails I get, you’d be surprised how well some people hide their pain.)

Maybe we could all take a cue from PR guy: Extend the olive branch, whether it’s to someone else or just ourselves. We deserve it.

TMF: Different rules for girls

Let’s take a look at a couple of toddler shirts I found on a recent shopping trip to Old Navy for this installment of TMF: Tired Marketing FAIL!

First we have a shirt in the boys section:

Then we have a shirt from the girl’s section:

Notice anything? I mean, besides the pink and blue gender-coding? Just like in past TMFs, we see that the “boy” shirt is all about action and having an autonomous identity while the “girl” shirt is all about being an object, which in this case means making sure to be “Daddy’s little Treasure.” Now, I think it’s wonderful if fathers and daughters have warm and loving relationships. But I hope my daughter wants more out of life than to ONLY aspire to be the apple of her father’s eye. And I don’t know if we can get more overt about the difference in how we treat boys and girls than making shirts that proudly proclaim that rules don’t apply to a boy.

And before I go I wanted to share this pic, sent in by my friend (and reader) Barbara:

Have you spotted at TMF? Send ‘em my way and maybe I’ll be posting yours up soon!

The hard side of love

On tonight’s episode of Bethenny Ever After… Bethenny Frankel, the reality TV star and cocktail mogul with a razor wit and a soft underbelly, breaks down while talking about her daughter:

I want her to be soft and sweet and nice — and not hard and a survivor like me.

And now I’m crying. And I’m not alone.

As I’ve written before, I am a survivor of sexual abuse as well as a childhood marked by alcoholics, absent parent(s), poverty, and social-skill handicapping transience (because how do you learn the rules of adolescence, girlhood, and young adulthood when you don’t even have the same friends more than one year at time?). And my transition into motherhood and the transformations it has brought in my life have been rich, profound, and at times core-shaking. It took me a long time to want to get on this ride at all, and now that I’m here it’s truly full of surprises! Case in point: All the ways that being a mother has been so joyful, so frustrating, so revealing, so challenging, so exhausting, so cathartic, so heartbreaking, so inspiring, and so deeply healing. Indeed, loving my daughter and being loved by her has been one of the most healing and miraculous experiences of my life. She is joy personified.

So, as a survivor who has worked through my own share of pain, I empathize with Bethenny’s sentiment. I don’t want my daughter to have the kind of experiences in her life that would require her to become a hardened survivor, like me. I want to protect her from those kinds of experiences. And I want to destroy all those who would try to bring those into her life.

When you are a survivor — of sexual violence, domestic violence, poverty… whatever — how do you begin to channel all your rough edges and the resilience and strength it took you to survive into the softness of love? How do you speak with truth and conviction and not seem hard, jaded, or even broken? How do you encourage your own child’s light to shine when no one ever did that for you?

Like Bethenny, I struggle with this. I worry about being too hard around my daughter. I worry that I don’t show her enough love, affection, attention, and praise because I did not experience that. There is no well to draw from for me. There is no example to follow. And no matter how far away from the trauma I get, by virtue of it happening to me in my formative years, there are certain scars that will never fade. For instance, I may learn how to mitigate my survivalist need to plan for any “worst case scenario,” but I probably won’t ever be able to turn it off or even take a vacation from it. That instinct protected me from the dangers that I could avoid. That instinct probably saved my life more than once. And that instinct — which I know comes off as pessimistic or even overly critical at times, despite my best efforts to be transparent in my pragmatism — is part of the very core of who I am. It’s just my nature to always have a Plan B in my back pocket for when things go wrong. Because I’ve lived through some wrong times.

In a lot of ways, I have tried to flip the script on what remains in your life as a survivor. Sure, there are some difficult things to overcome and that process of healing can take years. But, there are some things about being a survivor that you can turn into assets. I am a fighter. I am fiercely loyal. I am resilient — no matter how deeply you wound me, I heal. I am resourceful. And I know how to use anger as a powerful motivator. Being a survivor is rooted in a deep strength. After all, that’s how you survive!

But there’s no denying that strength comes at a cost — especially if you are a woman. I am not the person you call when you want to watch a chick-flick. I don’t like going shopping with other people. I don’t have the patience for a four-hour conversation about which beige you are going to paint your living room. I always have to give myself a pep talk when I wear an outfit that shows a lot of cleavage (because I’m uncomfortable with being a sexual object, even in passing). I don’t cook. And, yes, in my younger days I started more than one bar fight by throwing the first punch (or can of beer).

So I know how hard being a survivor can make you. And, if we’re being honest, it can be easy to just stay in that place. To stay cocooned in that hard shell. I know; I did for a long time. It kind of feels like bullshit to leave it behind. After all that hardness did for you — it helped you fucking survive! And then you come out the other side and the whole world asks you to change. Can you just mellow out a little? Can you soften the edges? Can you try opening up a bit? Can you fall into gender norms more? Can you be nicer? Can you just be less of a bitch, please?! And for a lot of us, this is just too much to take. We throw our hands up and storm off, clutching the hardness all the closer, like a warm coat on a blustery day. No, you can’t take my jacket, asshole. I might need it! And I don’t appreciate you bagging on it! When you’ve come out the other side of trauma and can live free as a survivor, it almost feels like another assault that the world doesn’t give you some kind of respect for that. Yeah, I’m hard. But I had to be, damn it! Yeah, I might make you uncomfortable sometimes, but this is who I had to become to survive. If the worst thing you have to deal with is my hardness, then you don’t know pain. Get over it.

I lived like that for a long time. And I suspect that Bethenny has, too. But I think she has had some recent experiences that are not unlike my own. For one, we both became mothers later in life than the norm. (Our daughters were born only weeks apart.) And, we both have had to find our equilibrium in marriages to men who are from a life made up of experiences and family wholly different from our own. (I know there are rumors of her having marriage woes, but for the benefit of what I’m about to say, I’m going to ignore that for now.) Before I met my now-husband, I didn’t know anyone whose parents were happily married to their original spouse. I didn’t know families that ate “family dinner.” And I definitely did not know how to handle being welcomed into a family that seemed alien (in a good way) to everything I had ever known.

During last season’s finale of Bethenny Ever After…, I remember her saying something about how she had gotten everything she ever wanted and then asking, “Who gets everything they ever wanted?” Like, Holy crap! Now what?!

And I totally get that because, I too feel like I’ve gotten everything I ever wanted. During those nine years that I survived sexual abuse, I would often pray to God (even though my family was not religious and did not go to church). I just started doing it because once I was finally alone in my bedroom and whatever horrors were over for the day, I needed to feel like there was something good in the universe. I needed to feel like I was not alone, in a good way. I would pray for lots of things, some important and some trivial.

But I would always, always pray for two things: that I would one day have a home that was safe and comfortable with no threat of homelessness or danger; and that God would bring someone into my life who loved me, unconditionally. When I was 14 and praying for these things, they were painfully desired and fairly abstract concepts because I did not know what either one felt like. When I was sending up that prayer, I think in my mind I thought I was praying for my father to come back into my life and rescue me. Or perhaps, that once I left home for college I would be so successful that I would be able to afford to provide a safe place for myself and find love on my own terms. I certainly did not think that what would happen was that I would meet a boy when I was 15 that would later become my husband and with whom (after almost 15 years of marriage) I share a safe home filled with unconditional, honest love between us and with our daughter. And somewhere in there I got a college degree and built a nice career for myself, too, among other things.

My life might not be as lavish as Bethenny Frankel’s — no multi-million-dollar liquor deals in my household — but I think I understand the kind of shell-shock she felt last year when you could sort of hear the panic behind the joy when she tearfully talked about getting everything she ever wanted. Because as a survivor, there’s always a sense that nothing good lasts. And that, deep down, you don’t deserve good things in your life. (I mean, what was all that trauma about, if it wasn’t because somehow you deserved it — right?)

And now you have a beautiful baby daughter. A child who is everything wonderful in the world. A baby who adores you unconditionally. And it’s profound. And it scares you.

I don’t want my daughter to be hard like me, either, Bethenny. And I absolutely don’t want her to be a survivor. Strong? Yes! Because she had to become strong to survive? Hell, no!

But I’m a bit hung up on a part of the sentiment that Bethenny puts out there. She doesn’t just want to protect her daughter from being hard and a survivor. She wants her daughter to be sweet and nice, too. And that’s where I disagree. I want my daughter to be a bad ass — in a good way. I want her to be whip-smart, fierce, brave, adventurous, creative, strong, and happy. So, so happy. I want her to be a good person with good values. But she doesn’t have to be “sweet” unless that’s her natural personality.

After thinking about it, I’ve decided that maybe what Bethenny means by soft is love itself. We think of hard as being the opposite of soft. And that, at least a little bit, strength is the opposite of loving. Here’s where I challenge Bethenny and all the other survivors out there to create a new script about what it means to be hard and what it means to be loving. Because I think being loving — open, unconditional, honest love — takes a lot more courage than being hard. It seems easy to stay in the hard shell. But it’s so limiting. And in truth, when we push through the hard shell, that’s when we bust through the last vestiges of trauma. Because just like our capacity to endure and survive, our capacity to love has been inside us all along. And what I have found is that I feel 10x stronger as a loving person then when I was in my shell.

I may never be able to give up the comfort of a back-up plan or ever feel comfortable at “girly” functions because being a survivor is always going to be a part of the fabric of my being. But I also know that I have a loving side. And what I pray for now is that my daughter is happy, healthy, smart and knows she is loved beyond measure. And if my prayer track-record is any indication, I’m going to get everything I ask for, and then some.

Tell Hallmark to stop stealing from local LGBT greeting card company Teazled!

Folks, we need to step up and help one of our own. LGBTQ greeting card company Teazled, which was founded by a fantastic lesbian couple and is based right here in Las Vegas, is in a fight over intellectual property and copyright infringement with the megalith Hallmark. (Full disclosure: The couple go to my church.)

Teazled is not only an amazing little mom-and-mom company, but it represents a cultural shift and an acceptance of LGBTQ individuals. Because, as it turns out, Hallmark doesn’t always “have a card for that,” as the saying goes. But it’s time there were cards for all individuals and families! Enter: Teazled.

“We created Teazled to fill the need for greeting cards for the LGBT community,” Dina says on the video below.

So, it was not only a surprise, but painful to watch as Hallmark launched a “Tell Them” campaign this month. You see, Teazled’s tagline — which was copyrighted in 2011 — is that exact phrase: Tell Them. So far, a cease and desist order has been ignored. But just because they don’t want to acknowledge their wrong-doing, doesn’t make it right. And let’s face it, if the situation were reversed and a little start-up greeting card company was using copyrighted property of Hallmark, ignoring the situation would not be an option.

Want more reasons to support this cause?

• This is a locally owned company. How many times do we Las Vegans bitch that all we have are mass-corporate chain stores and no variety? Here’s your chance to support a business that is right here!
• Supporting Teazled supports local artists. They do all the art and writing here!
• An LGBTQ-owned business needs your help.
• This business is woman-owned.
• The owners are Christians who are active in their faith.
• You can stick it to the 1%!
• Your purchase of Teazled products and support benefit a small business!
• You can stick it to Hallmark, who maybe didn’t have the right card for you because of narrow, hetero-normative, sexist, [fill-in-the-blank] reasons.

Teazled is a special company owned by two really amazing women who started this company — their dream — with money they’d saved from hard work and their 401Ks. They contribute to the community and their church. They are raising their family here. And they work toward equality for all people. In short, these are good people. And they deserve our support.

So, here’s what you can do:

• Check out #TellHallmark and express your reasons for supporting Teazled and encouraging Hallmark to do the right thing.
• Follow Teazled on Facebook and Twitter.
• Post the following on your Facebook/Twitter feeds and on Hallmark’s feed: #TellHallmark trademark infringement is NOT a warm greeting.
• Most of all: BUY PRODUCTS FROM TEAZLED!

*Image used with permission from Teazled.