Growing up, my mother called me “defiant”. I was defiant in her mind because I dared challenge the wanton violence she perpetrated on the entire family. Instead of sitting back and taking it, or trying to appease and calm her, as my older siblings had suggested, I would look into her eyes and tell her that what she was doing was wrong, that hitting and name calling were wrong, even though it often meant another slap or kick. My mother was a very violent individual and with two younger sisters and my own intuition to protect, defiance was the only ethical option in my mind. 

Each of us seven children chose to handle the abuse in our own way for our own health. I do not fault them for their choices, but I will say this. By standing up to my mother and attempting to get my father to act in his capacity, I may have received more abuse than had I stood by,  however, the measure of the success of my actions in retrospect has not been by how she decided to treat me, for that was her decision and not mine (I was not violent with her), but how I was able to help change the course of our family’s history.

By deflecting some of her attention away from my younger sisters, I was able to spare them a great deal of pain. In addition, my carefully planned call to CPS when my youngest sister was fourteen had the effect of stopping the physical abuse altogether—not because CPS followed through on anything—but because the mere publicity of her actions was enough to make her feel accountable to someone.

I have also over the past several years been able to help open up the communication lines between the siblings. Conversations are still difficult about our childhoods, but we now use the word “abuse” and they are finally expressing interest in learning about my recovery.

Since leaving home, I have encountered other experiences where challenging injustice has been necessary.  Just as I had to work with my brothers and sisters as we were growing up to ensure justice and peace, I also must work with my friends and colleagues in many intersecting fields to do the same. I have found I have taken on a very similar role as I did in my family within the mental health community. I am seen, sometimes affectionately and sometimes with trepidation (as was so growing up), as a rebel, a radical...all words of the system that I hereby reclaim as positive. 

And defiant. My mother was using the term defiant in its most negative characterization, but her word choice suits me quite well in most of its aspects. I do challenge. I do dare. I do withstand. And I am bold. I am also many other things: I care very much about people, I am intelligent, I am creative, I am fiercely loyal to my friends. And just like everyone on this earth, I am working on many things, too, with the help of my friends and siblings who have their own unique gifts.  I am not perfect and I am also not “crazy”. 

I say all of this in this newsletter on exercising our rights, because I want to send the message that we have the right to be ourselves and the right to stand up for ourselves and those around us. As the poet Audre Lord once said, “Your silence will not protect you.”  Many advocacy trainers will talk about rights and responsibilities. When I do my advocacy trainings, I do not dwell on the responsibilities piece. Why? Because I have found over the years that people who have been through trauma, which is up to 80% of all individuals with mental health diagnoses, know all too well our responsibilities. They play over and over in our heads like a broken record; the guilt sets in and sometimes this actually makes us unable to take responsibility for the basics. The internalized guilt can even lead us to become angry and violent. My mother went to the confessional every week, her soul heavy, but was unable to change. Why? Because no one conveyed to her that she had the right to defy. To defy convention. She had been accepted into Columbia Medical School (a rare thing for a woman in the 60’s) and instead chose to move with my father’s career and begin having children. To defy the odds. She, too, came from a violent household.

Cycles of violence will not be stopped with silence and appeasement. These things may save us some grief, but in the end, they will increase our suffering and the suffering of those around us for years to come.  Cycles of violence will only be stopped with just and intelligent defiance.