WOMAN, DETERMINED
Creative Works & Advocacy
Little Rebellions, Big Impact
This afternoon I received a message with a picture. It was from a friend and survivor I’ve been coaching as she establishes her own household. It hasn’t been long since she left her abuser, so every inch of change and progress is a small victory.
Remember that scene in Sleeping with the Enemy, when Julia Roberts goes into the kitchen of her new home, then opens the cabinets and pushes around the canned goods and knocks over food boxes until every one of them is cattywampus? It’s because she’s realized she doesn’t live with her controlling abuser anymore. He isn’t around to demand things done his way. So she chooses her way, and has a moment of dawning, meaningful liberation.
That’s something like what today’s survivor did. Then she sent me photographic evidence of it.
“What a triumph!” she said. “A small symbol of freedom from bullshit control and rules!”
And I told her, “We’ll call it a Little Rebellion.”
Dear readers, we are conditioned through abuse to do everything someone else’s way, and you know as well as I do, there is punishment of some sort when we don’t.
So, in our survivor journey, breaking those patterns by CHOOSING OUR OWN WAY gives us our power back, bit by bit, and manifests the path toward healing.
Tell us about one of your Little Rebellions.
WOMAN, DETERMINED 