Today I saw a post on a friend's facebook feed regarding abuse and how it translates to the story of Cinderella. It's a wonderfully encapsulated feeling about the cycle of abuse, and in finding love in spite of that abuse (for reference, here ).

While I love that she clarifies what it is like to grow up abused and to deal with how to find love and in fact how to be a kind and caring person in spite of these things, the post is definitely directed at women/girls. This is totally appropriate, given that a disproportianate amount of abuse falls on girls and women (frequently abused girls become abused women, because that's how their relationships are modelled). I support her view of Cinderella as a story of how to overcome abuse.

That being said I can speak from a male child who suffered abuse. She is right on the money about how it warps you and can turn you cold inside. It makes you not trust love. It isn't that you can't love, and that you dont understand love. You do; it's an intrinsincly human trait. But it makes you distrust love. An abused person is almost always abused by someone close in the family (most often a parent), in other words someone they are taught from a very small age to love.

So when a parent tells you that they love you, and cherish you, and then they abuse you it sends a very mixed message. It says that love is pain, and that those that love you will always hurt you. Additionally (and this is more problematic in later life), it teaches the abused that to love is to hurt. It teaches the abused that you must hurt the ones you love, and that pain and love are intrinsicly tied together. It has taken me a long time and a lot of heartache to extricate those two and understand that things I learned as a small child are fundamentally wrong. It took having my own children and choosing the other path, the one where love is comfort, not pain.

One of the more uncomfortable moments for me was when I talked to my oldest about my abuse (only passingly, but I didn't shy away from it). I realized that the shame was not mine; I did nothing wrong and I knew I could (and should) speak honestly about it. I told my first grade aged daughter how her Grandma had hit me and yelled at me a lot when I was little. She wanted to know why, so I explained that she was very sad, scared and that her heart hurt, and that she didn't know how to deal with that. She understood as much as she could, knowing that sometimes when she is mad or frustrated she just wants to hit something or someone, but she kept asking 'but she loved you didn't she?'. I just replied that she did, but sometimes if you are hurt too much, inside, it just makes you a bit crazy, and not in a good way. (we sometimes tell her jokingly that you are crazy, to which she makes a silly face and clowns us extensively)

I only ask that you remember the little boys who are abused as well. Children are sacred, boy or girl. Don't let them suffer. And if you were abused, please for all that is good in this world, choose better, for all of us.