Author Archives: deleted-kh1FIPLe

by | July 26, 2011 · 10:05 am

Where the Heart Lies

I find a lot of times in the Blogosphere people are passing around a lot of Haterade. Though most of the comments left on my articles are positive and encouraging, I do get some nasty ones, every so often. Under my most recent article,  “Confronting My Rapist,”  one person wrote the following:

“This is a tremendous step in your life, and I applaud you for it. But lady, your grammar is horrible. Pronoun-an tecedent agreement errors, run-ons. You get paid to write? I wish I could write this poorly and get paid for it.”

There are so many things that are wrong here. First of all, there is the insensitivity factor. I wrote an article about confronting someone who raped me and this person has such little respect for people in general that he feels that a post about confronting my rapist is an appropriate place to air his grievances about my grammar. Obviously, he is trying to knock a survivor of rape, whom he has never met down a few pegs. (In case you were wondering) he didn’t succeed. I actually just rolled my eyes because people have said worse to me and I know that these types of comments are often the nature of the Blogosphere due to the blanket of anonymity one can easily hide behind.

What truly struck me about this was the insult itself. What he said is absolutely correct. I have horrible grammar. I cannot spell to save my life, and to be honest with you, I’m not even sure what an antecedent is. The run-ons, however, I consider my signature. He ends his small rant with, “I wish I could write this poorly and get paid for it.”

I don’t know what this individual does for a living or if he is successful or even happy. I do know that he is missing the point. Before I dropped out of art school, I had the most awful professor you could possibly imagine. He was a graduate student who was just out of college. He was extremely full of himself and a total jerk. One day he instructed our class to go out and “spend our parent’s money” on the most expensive paint brushes we could get our hands on— the ones that cost $18 each.

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by | July 21, 2011 · 3:28 pm

Speak Your Truth

My life truly began to change when I started to be completely honest. I started to write about and confront the things that I ignored for years. Publicly I published articles about dealing with sexual assault and healing on the web. The first time my article appeared on online, I felt naked. I started to cry and wondered if I had made a huge mistake. With each consecutive article, I felt equally exposed. This went on for about six months. Each time an article came out, I would cry. My boyfriend at the time asked me why I even bother to do it. He said that maybe I should just stop writing if it was this difficult for me to handle. Though it was difficult, I never considered stopping or quitting. Too many people wrote back to me saying that they felt very alone in their experience before reading my articles. Truth is before reading their comments, I felt very alone in the experience of surviving sexual assault as well.

For years I hid the truth about my life from everyone. I dodged reality and instead hid behind poor relationships, drinking, and substance abuse. No one understood why I was so messed up and always involved in something reckless. The addictions numbed the pain of rape. They also came to the forefront and caused immediate drama and issues that couldn’t be ignored. Perhaps they were the armor I hid the truth behind. With so much negativity going on because of my behavior, I had enough to worry about without delving into and exploring my past. Eventually I found out that you cannot hide the truth from others without also hiding it from yourself.

Denial can kill people. Until I spoke my truth and seeked professional help, the road I went down only got progressively worse. Addictions will kill you eventually. Suppressing trauma can cause unhappiness, depression, and serious illnesses.

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by | July 20, 2011 · 8:00 am

Confronting My Rapist on The Huffington Post

If you haven’t yet checked out my post, “Confronting My Rapist,” please follow the link and check it out on HuffPo. This is a must-read piece that I’m extremely proud of! I hope you appreciate it!

It takes a strong person to confront their rapist. Sometimes it is unavoidable. In cases of rape between family members or friends, you will undoubtedly see this person again. Other times people are forced to confront their rapists in the court of law in order to get the justice they seek. The majority of rapes go unreported (95% of sexual assault victims do not report the crime to the proper authorities).

I was so young when I was raped I thought I would be the one who got in trouble if I reported it. So I didn’t get the courage to speak up for a decade. By that time, any physical evidence that was left had faded. I spoke to police and counselors about reporting it but they told me it wouldn’t be an easy case to prove with only circumstantial evidence. Since there were two rapists involved, I thought maybe it was possible that one would rat the other out to save their own butts. It was a possibility, but nothing was for certain.

Click here to read the rest of this post.

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by | July 19, 2011 · 7:49 am

No One Can Save You

In the event that a Knight in Shining Armor arrives at your doorstep, tell him to get lost. Seriously.

Over the years, I have run into a few of these seemingly gallant fellows. They come riding in strong and confident on this beautiful white horse called Promises. Promises to love you, promises to protect you, and their main intention is to save you from yourself. Maybe you have a drinking problem or maybe it’s stress or psychological, whatever it is, it is clear that when he arrives, you are at a weakened state. That is where the promises come in.

Through all these promises, he is offers you a better life, if you would just get on the horse and ride into the sunset with him. It sounds like a great deal, what could go wrong? The answer to that is everything, everything could go wrong. For one, why does he want to take the time out of his life to devote so much effort to fixing yours? It seems like something a nice guy would do, right? Wrong. By buying into this man’s offer to fix your life and agreeing to get on the Promise that he is going to save you from the self inflicted pain you’ve been unable to save yourself from, you are giving up your self-control. He is not focusing his time and energy on your life out of kindness, he is doing this because his life is an even bigger mess than yours!

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by | July 18, 2011 · 10:31 am

Confronting My Rapist

It takes a strong person to confront their rapist. Sometimes it is unavoidable. In cases of rape between family members or close family friends, you will undoubtedly see this person again. Other times people are forced to confront their rapists in the court of law in order to get the justice they seek. The majority of rapes go unreported ( 95% of sexual assault victims do not report the crime to the proper authorities).

I was so young when I was raped I thought I would be the one who got in trouble if I reported it. So I didn’t get the courage to speak up for a decade. By that time, any physical evidence that was left had faded. I spoke to police and counselors about reporting it but they told me it wouldn’t be an easy case to prove with only circumstantial evidence. Since there were two rapists involved, I thought maybe it was possible that one would rat the other out to save their own butts. It was a possibility, but nothing was for certain.

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by | July 16, 2011 · 11:42 am

New Huffington Post Post

If you haven’t already, please check out my article, “Are You Your Own Worst Critic?”

Many of us consider ourselves to be our own worst critics and I used to think so, too. I was always so hard on myself to the point of perfectionism. Then one day I began to see things differently. I started to realize that other people’s opinions of me and what they thought I should be doing were so imbedded into my mind that their expectations became stronger than my own wants and needs. I inevitably realized that the self criticism that tortured my mind for years was not in response to my voice. In actuality, it was self-criticism and self-punishment for not living up to expectations of others. Slowly I began to eliminate their opinions.

If you have felt this type of guilt and thought this way, the truth is, you’re not really disappointing anyone through your actions. These people are only disappointed in you (when your actions differ from their vision of what you should be doing) because they are losing control of you. These are not friends, nor are they people you should be taking advice from.

Think back to the things you always beat yourself up over. Do you beat yourself up over failures that caused you disappointment or are you being hard on yourself for not living up to other people’s desires for who you are and who you should be? I guarantee that the majority of failures and things you hold against yourself belong to the latter category.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post feel free to share and comment!!

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by | July 14, 2011 · 11:48 am

I Am a Priority Not an Option

Believe it or not, even with the career success I’ve had thus far, my life is far from perfect. I am of course grateful for the opportunities I’ve gained and work hard every day to become better and better. Being human, however, I am infallible and I end up in really bad relationships a lot of the time.

I am a hopeless romantic, this might actually problem numero uno. When you think in Cinderella terms, the love at first sight and other promises many men are more than willing to deliver are taken to heart far too prematurely. Growing up with abuse and neglect I am forever searching for a person that I can rely on. It is not one sided. I would love the opportunity to be someone’s rock as well, to really step up to the challenge and be there for someone else selflessly.

Rape, domestic violence, abuse, I’ve been through it all, and I am an open book. I’m not hiding my life story nor am I brandishing it without request. I feel that good can come out of the bad things that happened to me. I believe sharing my story is one way to validate these traumatic experiences while helping others heal.

Like many of the artistic and literary predecessors before me, I am neurotic. Yup, just a little bit. This doesn’t translate well into relationships, well that’s according to the people I’ve dated. I’m not sure if I believe them, however. For one, my friends haven’t left me yet despite my anxiety and neurosis. If I was truly that bad, I’m sure they wouldn’t have stuck around this long.  Secondly, I have many good qualities that certainly outweigh the bad ones. I am loving, compassionate, kind, I will do anything to help.

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by | July 12, 2011 · 10:04 am

Are You Your Own Worst Critic?

Many of us consider ourselves our own worst critics, and I used to think so, too. I was always so hard on myself to the point of perfectionism. Then one day I smoked salvia, no joke, and began to see things differently. I started to realize that other people’s opinions of me and what they thought I should be doing were so imbedded into my mind that their expectations became stronger than my own wants and needs. I inevitably realized that the self criticism which tortured my mind for years was not in response to my voice, but in actuality was self-criticism and self-punishment for not living up to expectations of others. Slowly I began to eliminate their opinions.

If you have felt this type of guilt, and thought this way, the truth is, you’re not really disappointing anyone through your actions. These people are only disappointed in you (when your actions differ from their vision of what you should be doing) because they are losing control of you. These are not friends, nor are they people you should be taking advice from.

Think back to the things you always beat yourself up over. Do you beat yourself up over failures that caused you disappointment or are you being hard on yourself for not living up to other people’s desires for who you are and who you should be? I guarantee that the majority of failures and things you hold against yourself belong to the latter category.

You know who you truly are and who you want to be. Don’t let other people muddle your thoughts. Speak your truth and people of substance will appreciate your wisdom. We are not on this Earth to regurgitate what others expect us to regurgitate. When we do this, we lose our identity and certainly cheat everyone out of what we truly have to offer.

“Why die a copy when you were born an original?”

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by | July 11, 2011 · 8:00 am

Don’t Forget Who You Are

Me a loooong time ago!

As a child, I remember being fairly different from everybody else. I was the only kid in school with a tie-dyed backpack– probably the only kid in school who wanted a tie-dye backpack- and believe me, I got made fun of for it. As time went on and I grew up, the fundamental person inside never changed, though I often lost track of who I was. We are all like a jigsaw puzzle; a box full of unique pieces that only together can make up the whole . Often times, we encounter the wrong people. Like careless school children they mess with the puzzle, jamming the pieces together, carelessly tossing them around, before throwing them back in the box. Over time, pieces end up missing. First only a few pieces are gone, but the more careless people who we allow to mess with the puzzle, the more pieces disappear. Inevitably, if you have absolutely no discretion with your puzzle, you will end up with no pieces and an empty box.

About a month ago, I realized my puzzle was missing some pieces. I, of course was not the one who made the discovery, but a friend pointed it out. Parts of my identity were missing; they’d been stripped away by my last relationship. I didn’t realize I was just a pawn in his game of complacency. I was too innocent or too naive to notice. When my ex told me I was naturally beautiful and didn’t need to wear make-up, I believed him. What a nice compliment, right? Wrong, my friend pointed out it was part of his plan to get no one else to look at me. She had a point. Never before dating him had I dressed so casually. I explained to her why.

For one, he never got dressed up to go out with me. In fact, he might’ve picked his clothes up off the floor for all I know. After a few times of him arriving to pick me up dressed so incredibly down, I began to feel uncomfortable because I was over dressed. I wore beautiful scarves and jewelry, always bright colors, with make-up to match. I began to resent the fact that he didn’t try one bit to impress me, sometimes not even bothering to iron his clothes. So I began dressing casually, jeans, t-shirt, little jewelry, if any. “This isn’t the Hayley I know,” my friend said. “For the last six months, you have been dressing like you just rolled out of bed.” I again disagreed with her and explained why I had little desire to look good for someone who could care less about looking good for me.

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by | July 7, 2011 · 10:11 pm

It’s a Good Day for Chickens

I’m a vegetarian, not vegan, which means I still eat eggs and dairy. However, I don’t eat much of either because of the horrible condition the majority of both cows and chickens are kept in. Most chickens live in tiny cages stacked on on top of another. Their excrement falls through the cage onto the chickens below. They are kept in these cages so long without exercising that their feet often begin to grow around the bars. Not to mention the factory farmers often cut off their beaks!! Don’t get me started about cows…At many of these factory farms, the cows are kept pregnant year round in order to for farmers to get the most product out of them. Imagine being pregnant 24/7 for several years? How agonizing. Today the Humane Society reached an agreement with the United Egg Producers to improve the living condition of chickens. Together they will try to pass this legislation that will inevitably improve the lives of over 280 million chickens each year!

According to the Humane Society of the United States, the provisions the UEP will be working together to implement through federal legislation include:

  • Require a moratorium at the end of 2011 on new construction of unenrichable battery cages — small, cramped, cages that nearly immobilize more than 90 percent of laying hens today — and the nationwide elimination of barren battery cages through a phase-out period;
  • Require phased in construction of new hen housing systems that provide hens nearly double the amount of space they’re currently provided;
  • Require environmental enrichments so birds can engage in important natural behaviors currently denied to them in barren cages, such as perches, nesting boxes, and scratching areas;
  • Mandate labeling on all egg cartons nationwide to inform consumers of the method used to produce the eggs, such as “eggs from caged hens” or “eggs from cage-free hens”;
  • Prohibit forced molting through starvation — an inhumane practice that is inflicted on tens of millions of hens each year and which involves withholding all food from birds for up to two weeks in order to manipulate the laying cycle;
  • Prohibit excessive ammonia levels in henhouses — a common problem in the industry that is harmful to both hens and egg industry workers;
  • Require standards for euthanasia of hens; and
  • Prohibit the sale of eggs and egg products nationwide that don’t meet these above requirements.
    This is really great news, but these provisions are not the law yet! So please  fill out this form in support of humane living conditions for laying hens. It will only take a minute to fill out, it doesn’t cost anything to do, and you will help improve the lives of millions of innocent chickens if this legislation passes.
    Animals cannot speak for themselves. Their lives often rest solely in the hands of the humans around them. They have no voice. We are their voice. Please sign.

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