Lori Finnila  

Show Notes

• Archived Blog Post

  Date / Time: 10/12/2009 1:37 AM UTC

  Best Of Us??!!
  

  We all have had at least one thing that we have wanted to do or do for ourselves. This is what I want people to still feel and to try to reach out for. I know when you look in the mirror and all you see is swelling or old wounds or just that you don't look good anymore that you feel will go against you the rest of your life and that there is no turning back in your self-esteem due to this, there is. I have looked as bad as you can. I will put some of my worst pictures of me in here and my best. My worst can even just be from the stress of the emotional abuse and the toll it takes on your body. Just being afraid and waiting again to possibly be hit or scared, knowing that your abuser is out there or that you have to deal with them on a daily basis as they pick the kids up can do just as much toll on you as being beaten daily. You relive it and wait for and expect it. It never goes away. But we do find a way to get angry and fight back inside. I am by no means asking a woman to put herself at risk and provoke an already angry man who is still hitting you. I know what that feels like. And I know how it feels to have to wait it out until a better time,sometimes for the kids, sometimes for yourself, to come.

  I feel that if we can make ourselves look the best that we can look to start and we look in that mirror and start seeing someone that we like how we look and feel that hope shines inside of us and that it is the start to liking ourselves again and seeing possibilities for the future. And yes we will get the bad compliments from the abuser when the kids are picked up. The abusive behavior is still there. But this time the look on our face will be of a stronger harder woman who is now amplified with herself to fight this off and to try and build that shield between you and your abuser. After a while you won't even notice the negative intentions coming your way when he has to stop by for whatever reason.

  I do a little more for myself where when I'm not so physically exhausted from it all I get up and work on myself, whether it's writing, singing, or working on my blog or my radio shows.  I'll always do something for myself and not let someone ruin that for me.  I want other women to know who feel helpless and that they just have to live like this, in a man's world, and I know there are good men out there, but predominantly we are at the lower level in life and probably always will be, I want them to know I know how it feels. And that I am there too. My heart goes out to anyone else who feels that they have to give up there life completely for this situation.

  I think what I am saying is you can do something to make yourself feel better. The looks thing is just what I do and have tried to do to help me make that first step. It might not be the same with you. It could be that class that you've waited your whole life to take. And if it's a degree don't look at it as one chunk that has to be done now. The time or money may not be there. Just starting out with a class at night or during the day is still a start to make you feel good and productive about yourself to start feeling that inner confidence that brings us physical and emotional strength.

  I started out by talking to very many people feeling that I wouldn't get a good reaction yet I found the opposite. I had been so entrapped in my own world and assuming the response completely that I would get that I wasn't hearing the support from my friends and other people that were out there but just did not know all along what had been going on in my life. I started to not only get words of support from them but from outsiders at forums and blogs. I got in retouch with a lot of my old friends some new which brought my confidence back to an all new high. I had no idea that we had support systems such as this to make sure everyone's day was going well and just would touch in to see how everyone was doing. There was not a day that went by that I was not being responded to. I was a person now, again, and realized I always was. I was now for sure and that's what mattered. Whether or not I was before that didn't matter now.  

  I starting saving all my emails of my admissions of pain and the loving responses. It made me feel rich and want to continue to open up. I felt I had a whole sea of words, text, and information that I needed to see, rethink and feel and to bounce off of me and others to see their reaction. I got less and less scared to express and open up about my experiences and things that may have even sounded crazy that happened in my life afraid for the response that I would get seeing as I had gotten some negative responses from other situations from being around the wrong people previously.

  I decided that this must have happened to someone else too. Truth was very important and powerful. I had no way to get the word out seeing as I had to mediate my own work but I was going to get it down on paper. And take it from there.  It was insecurities that got me into trouble before and now it was the flip side of this, the fight in me that seemed to bring me to the toll of my destruction but I was to do it different this time.  With deep words and sincerity and sympathy enough to throw around for all. How do you give advice on this when you have seemed to have done all the wrong things to have it all happen to you again? I did not know. But I wanted to at least get the word out, and if someone was in remission so to speak to this horrible situation but sitting idle and letting their life go by feeling that this was all that was there for them for the rest of their life, those were the ones I wanted to reach.

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  • abuse
  • domestic violence
  • self-help
  • women empowerment
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