It’s hard for me to write the story about being in an abusive relationship. Not because it’s hard for me to talk about it, though sometimes it is. Not because I’m still carrying shame and self-doubt or because I might trigger my own trauma responses, though I am and I might. It’s because writing about being a male survivor of intimate partner abuse, especially when your abuser … [Read more...]
Yeah, I’m a Victim: Reclaiming My Truth and Healing After Rape
Content note: This article contains discussions of rape and physical, childhood, and sexual abuse. In 2016, on a radical feminist Facebook page for survivors of abuse, someone posted the question, “Do you identity as a victim or survivor?” As the thread progressed over the following weeks, people provided very heartfelt and nuanced responses. The discussion came up at a time … [Read more...]
You’re Not Responsible: How To Unlearn the Guilt Inflicted By Parental Abuse
Content note: This article discusses sexual, physical, and emotional abuse at length. Victims of childhood abuse, rape survivors, and victims of domestic abuse are really good at one thing: feeling guilty. We can feel guilty about everything, particularly things that aren’t our responsibility. Survivors are taught to feel responsible for the actions of perpetrators and, as a … [Read more...]
4 Tools I Use To Replace Self-Harm with Radical Self-Love
Content note: This article contains in-depth descriptions of self-harm and discussions of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. The first time I saw the film American Beauty, one scene stood out to me. Annette Bening stood in the living room of a home she was trying to sell. She assertively closed the vertical blinds, turned around, and started to cry. She then slapped her … [Read more...]
Intergenerational Trauma: Indigenous Resilience in the Face of Abuse
This article was originally published on Residential School Magazine under its original title "Let Me Tell You About Inter-Generational Trauma" and is republished with permission. **Content note: this article contains discussions of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and violence as well as suicide.** My grandmother was placed in residential school at the age of 6. For … [Read more...]
Living Inside the Contradictions: My Father’s Love and My Father’s Abuse
I've been thinking a lot lately about the polarized extremes that show up in our public discourse. It's nearly impossible to find a comment thread on the Internet in which people do not feel compelled to take only one position on an issue and to reject any contradiction, any paradox, any additional truths that might illuminate the issue in a more complex way. Perhaps we humans … [Read more...]
How I Learned My Abusive Father Is Not a Monster — Just a Rather Sad and Complicated Person
I've always been comically atrocious at mini-golf, and at other sports that require finesse in hand-eye coordination and the action of aiming a ball into a hole, hoop, or goal. Captain J's Mini-Golf Course is a particularly malicious 18-hole booby trap perched on the tip of Lake Superior, and is where I have some of the best memories of my father. Us laughing as I sink my fifth … [Read more...]

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