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I use an analogy of guns and dogs to illustrate that fear itself is painful. When someone's big scary dog runs up to me barking and the owner tells me, "Oh, he won't bite," I want to respond, "Oh yeah, and this gun I'm holding to your head isn't loaded either. Feel better?"

Ruby

posted 3 years, 1 month ago
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I would love to snitch on my brother, publicly or privately, as after twenty years of DUIs he still drives drunk. But he lives in Minnesota and I do not know how to do this. Sometimes family members even get in the car while he's drunk because no one back home knows how to say no and no one wants to cause a fuss.
To me he is a tragedy waiting to happen and it will probably not be his life he takes but that of another party.
Since I pointed this out on my last visit and asked the family to help him, most of my family back home no longer speaks to me. That would mean facing their own addictions.
If you have any ideas on how to let someone in authority know, I would be grateful. I have nothing to lose, but some stranger(s) and family in Minnesota surely have their lives on the line.
I can understand why someone would want to be anonymous after my experience, but I also think it would be easy to use this system to harass people.
Why do so many things end up being a matter of law rather than community? I wish there were more ways to reach out to families in trouble, but I also know that my family would not respond to anything less than legislation.
My usual Libra/Gemini/ambivalent/ambidextrous/biped/bisexual/bifocaled/bicyclist reply: on the other hand. . . let's find a balance. Can anyone tell me what that looks like?

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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This is a tricky issue. I was married to a fundamentalist macrobiotic man who did not believe in medical care for my postpartum depression. Neither did he want to participate in birth control or help with the childrearing. I had enough strength to leave after two kids, but when I heard about the woman who drowned all her kids serval years back I felt compassion as she too was not allowed by her husband to choose birth control or medication. My ex is not a religious person but came from an abusive family, as I did, and wanted to please his brother. He did not research any of our decisions but relied on his brother's approval. I was raised by a controlling father.
You would not think that this family was fundamentalist or abusive in any way if you went to a gathering; they repartee about Miles Davis, Cole Porter, Buddhism, and sustainability. My ex and his brothers are leaders in the Green Movement.
Could you have legislated for me to not be controlled by him or for him to not be controlled by his brother? I think not. I think that people who follow such movements are afraid and if we do not address sexism and abuse in the culture it will not matter what laws you make or how you shame the parents.
It's so easy to say what someone "should" do when we have not walked in their shoes.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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