I know who I am. It’s true that sometimes I respond from fear. It’s also true that sometimes I am not acting out of fear. I don’t “give” people power over me. I cannot control whether people have ulterior motives or the extent they will go to achieve that power. I can control whether I take it inside of me.

I cannot protect my children from harm, protect threats to their physical and mental health, with fear inside me. Fear disables me, as that fear’s intention. I cannot protect my children or guide them out of coercion or threats or fear while I myself and disabled by both. Plus, it makes me a picture perfect version to fit the lies IF I let fear win.

No one should attempt to frame a domestic violence or sexual assault victim or imprison them on false pretenses. No one should lie about the mental health of someone with PTSD or panic disorder to erode their support system or silence them from speaking up for their rights. No one should contact others on behalf of a disabled person to claim they are faking a disability or using it for wrongdoing.

I cannot control that state employees, educators, and police have ignored my pleas for help.

What I can do is remember my integrity, dignity, balance, meditation, prayer, and who I am deep down—that part of me cannot be touched if I am mindful not to let it be eroded by fear.

I’ve been threatened with jail since February 2024. I’ve been declared a flight risk on an approved flight out of the country. I’ve received threats from someone to come into my home and throw away my belongings. My deadbolt has been busted, and my cameras have been turned away after I took action to protect myself from these threats. I’ve had someone file for full custody of my children anticipating my being homeless. I’ve had to move twice because people keep spreading untrue things about me to get others to harass me. I have a landlord on camera unannounced banging on my door to scare me during a work meeting.

I’ve been called “not credible” because of lies someone else tells to keep me in this situation.

Those lies cannot touch who I am inside unless I let them.

Last night, I dreamed someone came to me and asked for my help. It was a person who has put me through all this.

In my dream, they guilted me for not supporting them and doing for them what they needed to do for themselves. They attacked me as I told them “no.” I explained that they had harmed me while I was going through stage three cancer and now wanted my sympathy because they feared their own colonoscopy. “Will you really turn your back on me? What if I do have cancer?”

They simultaneously berated me for being heartless while mocking me for acting like what I went through was such a scare for me, the same way they did in regard to sexual assault. They asked for my medical records to prove what I was saying was true and accused me of making it up.

In my dream, I remembered that I owe zero explanation with my “no.” No, I won’t go through this anymore. No, I won’t help someone harm me because they say need to be exonerated to be okay. No, I won’t be mentally or spiritually imprisoned so someone else can be set free. These weren’t my actions. They aren’t my amends to make.

What I said in my dream is true in life. My motives may be misconstrued, but my speaking up for myself is not intended to harm another. Simply, my “no” means just that — no, without emotion or fanfare.

I have tried all the ways that lawyers, doctors, therapists, psychiatrists, and authorities have advised me to resolve this. Little by little, fear has crept in. Fear and I do not coexist well in my broken body. Fear and my brain come out like bitter bile. Fear and my words spill over, and I begin to sound pushy or entitled to my human rights.

When my voice trembles in fear and terror, others may hear it as anger. But I get to speak for myself. I am not angry, bitter, and do not wish harm. I seek only justice and our freedom.

I forget that freedom is an internal job. Toni Morrison taught me that in Beloved.

Some people believe that abuse is a gift given to those who don’t deserve sympathy or mercy. They tell their victims that they are lucky to be loved because they are otherwise ugly and undeserving. When people speak about being abused, I hope you can take this thought and know it’s the logic abusers use to keep victims from support systems – to keep victims from becoming survivors. I hope that you, reader, can understand that staring in horror at an abuse survivor validates that logic, albeit unintentionally, causing survivor’s to unbecome.

I have been told that more flies are caught with honey. Honey was poisonous to me, and when I put it in my mouth, my jaws spit it out. When I was a child, my grandparents taught me that the world finds a woman who spits to be vile. They were right.

My upcoming week is focused on being in song and living in spirituality and prayer. In song and prayers, I feel, safely. If you pray, please pray that my children and I have the strength to weather this. If you send thoughts to the universe, ask it to reveal truth and justice and freedom. If you live in gratitude, send some for the days when we are able to use positive coping skills while living in crisis.

It wasn’t easy being a woman who survived by hiding what was going on behind closed doors. It isn’t easy being a woman who is opens the door to show what is happening in the steeple. Life is not easiness; life is ease. We are all human, and some of us are fighting to be full human beings. I choose ease instead of indignance so that I can access human dignity, grace, compassion, forgiveness, hope, love, and friendship. I betray myself when I allow him to control me with his invisible powers or his flying monkeys or his trampling my peace of mind.

Previously, being broken down was a method of imprisoning, entrapping, and framing me. Today, breaking down is a method of breaking through. This weekend, I will release the pain and harm, a little here and a little there, as I walk forward and out of the fog of abuse.

History tells me this will not be the last stand for him. His story about me will be heard again in a court of law on 9/20/24. Please pray for me, my children, my abuser, his attorney, mine, law enforcement, and my support system—that as I walk forward, I remember to be an example or that the work of peace and justice can shine through me instead of the darkness within which I hid for so long.

I will keep moving forward, no longer frozen in fear, no longer watching my back. It does not serve me or anyone else for me to watch in dread, horror, terror, or anticipation.

If you know anyone in a domestic violence situation, please encourage them to do the same as they walk away and back into themselves after being hijacked by inhumane treatment.

On my mirror now for five years, the words of Benjamin Franklin have been my mantra to continue walking through the door out of gaslighting, manipulation, and malfeasance: “Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”

May the sunlight continue to be a powerful force and focal point to guide people like myself through the cold chill that situations like this send down our spines or may it warm our voices as they shiver wet from tears. Until next time, thank you, friends, for allowing me to be human and humane—to the people who harm us, but especially to my children, family, friends, and myself.