Lundy Bancroft's Blog, page 3

RETHINKING CHARM

As a society, we place a high value on charm; when we meet new people, we love it if they are very quickly smooth, funny, entertaining, and flattering. We are charmed when they seem immediately ready to jump into doing favors for us. We love confidence, lively story-telling, and a sharp personal appearance.

And it all can be bad news.

This is a hard pattern to overcome. We have been so heavily taught by our culture, by romantic stories, by television and movies, and by popular songs, to fall in love with charm that we are addicted to it. We run after it like children after the Pied Piper, thinking it will deeply meet our cravings. And it usually leads either nowhere -- which is okay, but disappointing -- or into harm.

It's not our fault that we got hooked on charm, given our societal training, but we need to get past it. Abusers tend to be charming. Sociopaths tend to be charming. People with personality disorders tend to be charming. Con artists tend to be charming. Users tend to be charming.

Is every charming person exploitative? No. But charm is not a good sign. We need to do a 180 degree turn in how we think about charm. Our current thinking is:

"Because you are so charming, I will need a mountain of bad experience to convince me that you are actually not a trustworthy person."

We need to switch this to its opposite:

"Because you are so charming, I will need a mountain of good experience to conclude that you are okay."

In other words, charm should count against the person in deciding whether to trust them, not for them. If we would practice this, we would often save ourselves from an abusive relationship, from people who steal our money, from bosses who turn out to be terrors, from nightmarish housemates, and from other situations of harm that we find ourselves sucked into.

Why is charm a warning sign? First of all, developing and maintaining a charming exterior takes a lot of work all the time. People who choose to put that much exaggerated effort into how they present themselves are often doing so because they have something to hide. They move through the world taking advantage of people, so they need to put that way of operating in a package that looks appealing or everyone would run away from them. Exploiters tend to be charmers.

Second, the other most common reason for people to be so focused on putting forth an exaggeratedly powerful positive image is that they deeply hate themselves (way beyond the typical kinds of self-esteem issues that we all struggle with). They are convinced, largely unconsciously, that anyone who saw who they really are would despise them and want nothing to do with them. And as a result they have developed a psychological condition known as a personality disorder. This self-hating charmer is not meaning to take advantage of people, but ends up doing so anyhow (for a complex set of reasons -- I'll write about personality disorder and how it works another time). If someone with a personality disorder plays a key role in your life, that can be as stressful as dealing with an abuser or a sociopath.

(By the way, sociopaths are considered to have a personality disorder, but I choose to put them in a somewhat separate category, because they know they're using people, and they just don't care.)

And people can have mixtures of these issues; for example, there are abusers who have personality disorders (although most don't even though they may seem like they do).

So what's the solution? Here are a few things we can do:

* Be wary of charmers. Keep one hand on your wallet. Listen carefully to your own inner voices and warnings, and get to know the person gradually, watching their behavior. Stop respecting and admiring charm.

* Look for a different set of qualities in people, instead of charm. Look for sincerity, dependability, good listening, and an ability to share the spotlight (not having to always be the center of attention). Look for an ability to take feedback and realize when they have made mistakes. Look for flexibility. Look for deep kindness over time (not just big generosity right now, which is part of charm). Look for a person who has successful relationships with (healthy) friends and relatives that have held up for many years. Look for substance.

* Look for people whose entertaining qualities are a little subtler. There are many people who are tremendous fun, have great senses of humor, or are quite uninhibited, but it doesn't all come pouring out at once the second you meet them.

* Look for people who aren't overly dramatic. The drama-junkie is entertaining at first, but will bring a lot of bad drama into your life that you don't need.

* Stop expecting romance right at the beginning of a dating relationship. Meaningful, satisfying romance takes a while to build. The guy who is instantly romantic is often a guy who can't really make friends with a woman or can't take women seriously as people. The most romantic first dates rarely seem to lead to the most romantic relationships.

There are so many great people in the world. But to find them, we sometimes have to change where we're looking. Some charming people turn out to be genuinely great, but so often they don't. Keep your eyes open and look for people who have something deeper and more genuine to offer.

CAN THE FAMILY COURT GET UP TO SPEED ON THE PAST FORTY YEARS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE RESEARCH?

Family courts across the continent are continuing to operate largely disconnected from the last four decades of research and clinical writing on incest perpetration, including the stories of survivors. The unfortunate result in many cases that I have researched is that court and court-appointed personnel are basing their decisions on myths and misconceptions that went out long ago, sometimes leading to disastrous results for children and their non-offending parents. Here are some of the key points that family courts are often missing (I use "he" for the suspected perpetrator and "she" for the alleged victim, since this is statistically the most common scenario):

* A child's relationship with a parent that is sexually abusing her will often have some positive (or at least positive appearing) aspects.

Courts in some cases stop looking carefully at evidence of sexual abuse by a father if they get reports that the child is sometimes happy to see him, is physically affectionate with him, or expresses interest in seeing him. The reality is that incest perpetrators typically develop a bond (though not a healthy one) with their victims through doing favors, giving positive attention, expressing love (and even describing the sexual abuse as proof of that love), and buying gifts. This is extremely confusing for the child and tends to leave her with powerful ambivalent feelings and adds to the difficulty she faces in making the hard decision of whether to disclose his behavior, and then whether to testify against him.

Furthermore, incest perpetrators do profound psychological damage to their victims without being horrible to them all the time. In fact, survivors say that the positive-appearing aspects of their relationships with their fathers made the emotional wounds in many ways deeper and harder to heal from.

I have been involved in a number of cases where court personnel acknowledged that the sexual abuse had occurred or had probably occurred, but then have gone on to state that the child's relationship with the father has some positive aspects, and therefore is very important to preserve in an extensive form. This conclusion does not follow from the research evidence regarding harm and is specifically contradicted by survivors' stories; contact between an incest perpetrator and a victim should occur only with highly-trained and vigilant supervision, and should stop any time the victim wishes it to or starts to show significant emotional deterioration following visits.

* It is common for a victim to recant disclosures of sexual abuse some time later, and even more so in cases where she has continued to have unsupervised contact with the suspected perpetrator.

Incest perpetrators are known to control and intimidate the victim in various ways following a disclosure; commonly reported tactics include threatening to harm the child or actually doing so, telling the child that he will go to jail if she doesn't recant, threatening to harm the mother, telling the child that she will never get to see him (the father) again if she doesn't recant, promising her purchases, vacations, or other rewards in return for recanting, and promising her that the abuse will stop in return for recanting. Obviously the more extensive access the suspected perpetrator has to the child through visitation, phone calls, texting, and email, or if the child is continuing to live with him, the greater the risk of a forced recantation.

* The suspected perpetrator will make angry, outraged, and hurt-sounding denials in close to 100% of cases. A correctly-accused perpetrator will be very difficult to distinguish by his public behavior, including his behavior at court, from one who is false accused. The perpetrator is often a respected and successful member of the community.

Courts have to rely on the evidence, not on how the suspect presents himself or what his public reputation is like.

* Incest perpetration is almost always surrounded by a other behaviors by the man that violate the child's boundaries in subtler, less overtly illegal, ways. These behaviors usually begin well before the outright sexual abuse begins, and then continue along side it.

Courts sometimes make the mistake of discounting evidence of boundary violations toward a child "because they don't rise to the level of sexual abuse." Such boundary violations need to be taken seriously always, but in a case where there are other indications of sexual abuse -- such as a child's disclosure, for example -- such lower level boundary violations should be treated as evidence pointing to the likelihood that the outright sexual abuse being disclosed did in fact take place.

* It is virtually unheard of for children younger than teenagers to make up reports of sexual abuse, and even in teenagers it is very rare.

Mistaken reports of sexual abuse do not come from children making them up. They come from one of the following sources: 1) A statement by the child that was misinterpreted by adults; 2) The child having been manipulated or intimidated into making the false allegation. Proper unbiased investigation makes it possible to find out if one of these two is functioning in a case.

* Most sexual abuse allegations that are brought to the attention of family courts are brought in good faith, not as a "tactic."

Every large-sample study that has been done has found that true reports of sexual abuse are substantially more common than mistaken ones even when they occur in the context of child custody litigation. Further, the research has found that even most mistaken allegations are brought in good faith, meaning that the parent heard a disclosure or witnessed behaviors that would have worried most responsible parents. And finally, the research shows that sexual abuse allegations that are deliberately false are made equally by fathers and mothers; there is no basis for the belief that women are especially likely to make a false sexual abuse report during litigation.

* Domestic violence perpetrators (specifically, men who batter women), have been found in study after study to commit a far higher rate of incest than non-battering men do.

You can read a review of many studies on the subject in Chapter 4 of my book The Batterer as Parent. When there is persuasive evidence of a history of domestic violence, courts should make sure to investigate sexual abuse disclosures, and reports of lower level (not illegal) boundary violations, by that father with even more care and diligence.

* When a child discloses sexual abuse to a parent (by anyone), the parent needs to believe the child and take every possible step to protect her.

It may seem odd that I have to say this, but it is regrettably common for mothers in family courts to be criticized for believing the child, particularly if other systems such as child protection or the family court have declared that they cannot find enough evidence to restrict the father's visitation. If a mother persists in believing her child, and tries to explain the different ways in which systems failed to make a properly thorough and unbiased investigation, she may have various negative labels attached to her by court personnel or may be threatened with having the child removed from her even if any other responsible parent in her position would also remain concerned, given the facts of the case.

Everything I wrote above remains true if the child making the disclosure is a boy, by the way.
It is my fervent hope that family courts across the continent will take rapid steps to get themselves in alignment with the research and with the published accounts of survivors. A tremendous number of lives are in the balance.

WAITING FOR A RULING ON WENDI G.'S CASE

I know a lot of people are dying to hear what's going on with Wendi G. and her children. The answer is we don't know yet. She had a hearing on January 10th and 12th with a lot of important testimony. She expects a ruling from Judge Hulsing in about two weeks. I will let you know the minute there is more news.

Thank you for keeping her and the children in your thoughts and prayers.

A POWERFUL KEY TO HEALING FROM TRAUMA

We are designed, deep down in our genetic structure, to heal naturally from emotional injury, including trauma. Amidst all of the focus on modern invention and discovery, we are missing the oldest, and for most people the most powerful, route to emotional wellness: deep crying.

Crying is the most misunderstood aspect of human experience. If we could get this one right, we could get everything else right; our failure to grasp how crying works is in many ways the core of the difficulties faced by our species.

I read a book a few years ago about crying that went on for chapters and chapters about what a mystery there is about why people cry. But there is no mystery about tears; they exist to make us well. From the time we are born until we grow as old as the ancients, we cry to relieve our pain. There is no more effective pain-killer on the earth, and that's what it's there for.

But crying does much more than make us feel better; it literally heals grief, and does so more deeply and powerfully, and in a way that is much longer lasting, than any other emotional healing approach we know about. Tears literally wash our grief away.

So why are we putting so much energy into trying not to cry, and to trying to stop each other from crying? Here are a few of the reasons:

• We confuse the pain (the grief, for example) with the healing of the pain. We think that when someone is crying, that's a sign of how much they are hurting. But it isn't. It's a sign that some of their hurt is getting out of them. We mistakenly believe that if we stop them from crying (by "cheering them up" for example, or by "getting their mind off of it"), that we have made them feel better. But we haven't. We've stopped their healing process, and left them with all the same pain they started with, which will come up to hurt them another day soon… So remember, the sadness is the pain, and the crying is the healing of that pain.

• We're afraid that people will feel sorry for us if we cry, and it doesn't feel good to have people feeling sorry for us… So stop feeling sorry for people who are crying, and just love and support them, and hope that people will learn to do the same for you.

• We believe that crying makes people weak. But it doesn't, it makes them strong, especially if they cry long and hard. (It's true that hours and hours, or years and years for that matter, of shallow, hesitant, lonely, weepy crying can sap your power. But deep, gut-wrenching, cleansing crying will leave you with more strength than you started with.)

• We don't cry long enough and hard enough to discover its benefits. If you cry only a little bit, keeping it shallow and short, which is what most people do, you'll come out thinking that crying doesn't really do much. But watch how babies and young children cry; they cry with every fiber of their being, their heart just pours with grief as if the world were ending. And then – if no one makes fun of them for it or treats them unkindly – they keep it going for quite a while. And finally, they get the cleansing of their pain that they needed, and they are in high spirits and high energy for a long time afterward! Why are we denying children a healing process that obviously works so well? Just watch and see what happens when you love a child while he or she cries, and let them – in fact encourage them – to cry as long and hard as they need to. You will see what I'm describing.

• We're afraid that we'll get ridiculed for crying. And tragically, that is sometimes exactly what happens.

A study years back found that 80% of women and 70% of men said that they felt better after a "good" cry – meaning a deep and extended one. You will not find it easy to unearth any other healing approach that is successful with three-quarters of the population. Participants in that study also described numerous additional benefits, including that they found that they could think more clearly after crying, that they were capable of finding solutions to problems that previously had seemed impossible to overcome, and that they felt more loving and understanding towards other people.

And we are born to do it. No one has to teach us how to cry. It's in our biological programming.

Rather than being seen as a sidelight in the healing of trauma, we should come to recognize deep crying as the key.

This is the first round of a series of posts I am going to write about crying. In the weeks ahead, I will be answering questions such as: 1) How come some days I can cry my pain out and other days I can't?, 2) But what if I'm one of those people who feel worse after crying, not better?, 3) How should I deal with my children's crying?, 4) What should I say when a friend starts to cry?, 5) Does crying have to be a lonely activity?, and 6) How can I bring more crying -- and more deep emotional healing in general -- into my life?

In the mean time, I would love to have people write in with stories of transformative experiences you have had through crying.

A JUDGE PULLS CUSTODY STRINGS BEHIND THE SCENES

Several glaring pieces of evidence indicate that Judge Jon Van Allsburg in Ottawa County, Michigan, is working in violation of court standards to influence the outcome of a case on which he is not the judge. The case involves his sister, Ann M., and has been covered before on this blog (see "Judge Hulsing Jails Mother Because Her Kids Refuse to See Their Father," November 11, 2011).

A few weeks ago Judge Hulsing wrote the following letter to the attorneys on Ann M.'s case: "I write to inform you of a comment that was made in my presence by a judicial colleague regarding a disputed fact in this case. The comment was, 'the kids want to see him [their father].' This comment was not solicited by me, or in response to any inquiry made by myself - as I made no inquiry. That comment was not considered, nor will it be considered, by the court in this case." The letter is not dated.

We can't know with certainty who the "judicial colleague" is that Judge Hulsing is referring to, but it is only reasonable to assume that it is Judge Van Allsburg, who happens to be Ann M.'s brother and has become an active campaigner against Ann M., speaking in favor of her ex-husband despite the children's statements to various witnesses that they are afraid of him.

I have obtained copies of numerous emails demonstrating Judge Van Allsburg's efforts to intervene in the case. An email he wrote to a relative on August 25, 2011 offers a crucial example: "I'm not surprised the kids are angry about the court ruling requiring parenting time - I don't think Ann would accept any other response from them, and they know it; therefore they're angry... Ann's anger and retaliation are the major issues at this point in the case. Doug's emotional instability and domestic violence are considered older history at this point..." From there he went on to explain what "the court has concluded" at this stage in the case. And at another point he writes, "Court employees with knowledge of this case already think Judge Hulsing is some kind of saint for the patience he's extended in this case."

There are several aspects of this email worth noting. First, Judge Van Allsburg is admitting that he is discussing the case with court employees, which appears to be an unethical effort to affect the case's outcome and strengthens the suspicion that he is the "judicial colleague" who spoke to Judge Hulsing. Ann M. has been requesting to have her case moved to a new jurisdiction because of her brother's efforts to affect the outcome of her case. With the combination of Judge Hulsing's letter and these emails by Judge Van Allsburg, there is plenty of reason to believe that there is inappropriate interference happening in the case. It isn't realistic (nor is it good ethical practice) for Judge Hulsing to claim that he won't be influenced by his colleague; Ann M.'s request for a change of venue should be granted.

Second, Judge Van Allsburg is acknowledging two major points:

1) That the father of Ann M.'s children's is a perpetrator of domestic violence, and
2) that the children are expressing their anger at being required to see him.

A mountain of research evidence has accumulated over the past twenty years showing how disturbing and harmful it is to kids to be subjected to violence towards their mothers by fathers or step-fathers. Many of these studies have also looked at the question of whether men who batter are more likely than other men to harm children directly, and the conclusion has always been yes. So it is both illogical and unscientific to conclude that these children's reluctance to visit unsupervised with their father is a product of poisoning by their mother. (And by the way, the email correspondence I obtained shows that other relatives don't share Judge Van Allsburg's conclusions at all.)

It is also important to mention that according to Ann, Judge Van Allsburg has not had contact with her two minor children -- the kids who are the subject of the litigation -- for over four years, so she does not understand how he could know what the children want. The fact that Ann's brother is siding with the alleged abuser is not at all uncommon in my experience; in fact, I wrote in considerable detail in my book Why Does He Do That? about why so many abusers succeed in recruiting one or more of the woman's relatives as allies.

Finally, I want to draw your attention to Judge Van Allsburg's statement that the court now considers the father's battering of Ann M. to be "older history." Regrettably, he may well be correct about this. Family courts commonly labor under the misconception that domestic violence perpetration has to be very recent to be relevant, despite all the research and clinical experience demonstrating that abusers do not change except through a long period of hard, serious work on themselves. The judiciary seems to be confusing domestic violence perpetration with a virus that will just go away over time. Note that in this case "the court" means Judge Hulsing, whose case this is currently; once again, Judge Van Allsburg is giving indications that he is in dialogue with Judge Hulsing about the case, since he is claiming to be reporting on Judge Hulsing's thinking.

Ann M.'s children are still refusing to see their father. She is therefore waiting in suspense to see if she is going to be jailed again, as a result of their entirely natural reactions to the serious and repeated violence that they say they have witnessed in the past.

Am I the Abusive One?

Living with an angry and controlling partner can become a twisted world where bad is good, down is up, and wrong is right. Many women over the years have said to me, "My partner tells me that I'm the one abusing him. He has said it so many times that I start to wonder if he's right. How do I know if it's him or me?"

We can look at some ways to answer that question, but first I would like you to read a few concepts, taking a deep breath after each one so that you can absorb it.

One: You are not responsible for his behavior. You do not make him do things. His actions are his own choice.

Breathe.

Two: You deserve to be treated well even when you make mistakes, and even if you make them a lot.

Breathe.

Three: Setting firm, clear limits for how your partner is allowed to treat you is not the same thing as controlling him, and should not be called control.

Breathe.

Four: Choosing to not always put your partner's needs ahead of your own does not constitute hurting him, wronging him, or being selfish. You have the right to give substantial priority to your own needs and desires.

Breathe.

Five: If you scream and yell once in a while that does not mean that you are crazy or abusive (though he may say so). It depends on whether you are yelling degrading things, whether your partner is intimidated by you, whether you are yelling to control him (versus yelling to resist his control), and many other factors.

Breathe.

These five concepts cover most of the situations where angry and controlling men try to turn the tables on their partners. If you work on digesting each point, he will have a much harder time convincing you that you are really the one with the problem.

But I haven't really answered your question yet. You may still wonder, "But what if he really isn't the destructive one, and I am? How would I know?" Here's how:

* He's kind to you most of the time, and he treats you reasonably decently even when he's mad or upset with you.

* He takes responsibility for his own actions, not frequently blaming them on you or on stress or other excuses. And he doesn't get scary.

* He has asked you repeatedly, and in a decent and thoughtful way (not in a stream of put-downs) to change specific behaviors of yours, and you seem to keep returning to doing those things he has asked you not to do.

* He has shown willingness to work on things you want him to work on, and has taken real steps regarding those issues (not just making promises).

If all of the above points are true then, okay, maybe you need to look at your treatment of him. But otherwise – and I'm willing to bet your situation falls into the "otherwise" category – your partner is doing what so many angry and controlling men do, which is turning things into their opposites in order to have even more weapons to hammer you with.


"I can be in a loving relationship with myself today, and trust my own wisdom and intuition. He is not going to sell me his view of what kind of person I am."

THE WENDI G. CASE: EVERYBODY SCRAMBLES TO COVER UP

The first and most important news: The children are scheduled to testify at a hearing on January 10th, but the father's attorney has filed papers requesting that the court prevent them from taking the stand. I have read this motion carefully. Bear in mind that the father has had the children in his custody since the middle of August, during which they have been permitted only supervised phone contact with their mother and one in-person visit of several hours, also supervised, over a span of three days in December. In other words the mother has had no chance to influence her children's testimony for nearly half a year, during which the father has had them 24/7 and has had ample opportunity to pressure them regarding their testimony. So why would he be the one trying to keep them off the stand?

The father is claiming in his filing that testifying would be too stressful for the children. I can't see how the stress of testifying could possibly be greater than the stress of not having the opportunity to tell the court the truth. If the child abuse allegations are true, the children would need to testify so that they can get to safety, and if they are untrue, the children would need to testify so that they can stop living in a swirl of controversy, tension, and suspicion. The only possible reason for keeping the children off the stand would be if the abuse allegations were frivolous, which they certainly are not; a specialized team of professionals at the Child Advocacy Center in Holland, Michigan did not find any reasons to disbelieve the children's statements following their interviews last summer. It is clearly urgent to establish what actually happened, and at this point there is no better way to do this than through the children's appearance on January 10th.

There are other people involved in this case who are creating the impression that they are scrambling to keep the facts buried. The police from the Crimes Against Children Unit of El Paso County, Colorado have filed motions, through their attorney and through the Colorado Springs City Attorney, to be allowed not to release their records and not to have their detectives deposed about their role in the investigation, claiming that their interest is to protect the children's privacy. In my 25 years of working in domestic violence I have never before heard of police attempting to shield their files and their personnel from a child sexual abuse court proceeding (or from any other type of court proceeding). The claim of protecting the children's privacy is frivolous; the judge can choose to seal records after they are reviewed by the lawyers and by the court if the children need that protection; in fact, the Colorado judge has reportedly already sealed one of the completed depositions on the case.

It seems much more likely, then, that what the police are out to protect is their own irresponsible or biased actions. This matter will be heard in court in Colorado on January 5th.

The children's current therapist in Colorado, who became their therapist at the father's suggestion, also filed a motion through her attorney to stop her deposition. However, the Colorado judge already denied her motion and ordered that deposition to go forward (but sealed it).

If the daughter's statements were misunderstood or were rehearsed, it would seem that the father and the professionals involved would all be eager to have that information come out, in order to prove his innocence. To be mistakenly accused of sexual abuse would be a horrible experience. So my concerns for these children's safety is increased when the father and these surrounding professionals are instead seeming eager to put a lid on information.

The Michigan judge who has been handling the family law proceedings, Judge Jon Hulsing, has important opportunities in the weeks ahead to do right by Wendi's children. He already made one important positive step, which was that he denied motions by the father to quash mother's subpoenas for depositions. (The professionals involved then filed their own motions to quash in Colorado, supported by the father, which I wrote about above).

Of concern, though, is that the Judge stated at the last hearing that he will not allow the transcript of the children's forensic interview last summer by the Child Advocacy Center to be entered as evidence, although no Michigan statute prevents the transcript from being entered. Judge Hulsing cited an Appeals Court case as his reason for blocking the transcript. I have read the case that appears to be the one he is referring to, and there is nothing in that ruling that would keep him from allowing the transcript in. That ruling does seem to give him permission (not obligation) to keep the transcript out if he chooses to, and if the children's version of events is adequately covered by other evidence that has been admitted, which so far it is clearly not. In other words, if Judge Hulsing were to both bar the transcript and bar the children from testifying, he would appear to be violating the very case law that he is citing to justify keeping the transcript out.

It is my hope that he will deny the motion to stop the children's testimony, and then revisit his mistaken decision to keep the transcripts of those earlier interviews out. (Those transcripts are important so that the children's statements at that time, when they were in their mother's care, can be compared to statements they make at trial after a long period in their father's care.)

HEALING AT SOLSTICE TIME

Today is the shortest day of the year. I want to wish everyone a Happy Solstice, and share a few reflections about this time of the year.

First of all, the December holidays are a notoriously difficult time for people who are lonely or who are in painful life circumstances. Because of my work, I especially think at this time of year about women who are involved with men who are tearing them down; and I think about the fact that those men may be dragging children into the pattern of selfish and cruel behavior as well. I also think of those mothers who have been pulled away from their children by an abusive man and by the courts. So if you are a woman living in this kind of atmosphere, please know that you are in my thoughts and I'm wishing all the best for you and your children.

Next, I want to draw our attention to the power of Solstice as a healing time of the year. The period when the days are short and the nights are long has traditionally been viewed as a time for reflection, rest, and renewal. The spirit turns inward and enters a dormant state, making space for deep changes and new growth to take place. The mind calms but does not stop working; in fact, moving below the surface, as in a dream, it may find solutions to problems that our more active, conscious, deliberate kind of thinking was not able to solve. Yes, energy slows somewhat at this time of year, but more importantly it changes forms and works in different ways.

This time of the year more than any other we speak of peace, of kindness, of everyone deserving to be well. During these weeks, a woman whose partner mistreats her may think to herself, "Do I really deserve to be talked to in these horrible ways? Is it really right for someone to be so mean to me? Don't I deserve kindness as much as anyone?"

One result of this inner shifting and reevaluating around Solstice is that a lot of women take significant relationship steps during the months of January. As the New Year comes in, and the darkness begins to ease, people feel ready to start on new initiatives, to take greater risks, and to reach for the life that they know they deserve.

So even for people who feel despair at this time of year, the potential for a hopeful turn of events is great. Our lives revolve around the sun, literally and figuratively.

Last, I will say a few words about history. The solstices (both winter and summer) used to be among the most revered times of the year spiritually. Women played a huge role in most cultures in shaping and carrying out the spiritual observances. But a few thousand years ago, as spiritual practices came to be more and more controlled by male-dominated religious institutions, women's spiritual leadership and spiritual vision were pushed more and more to the side. Now in much of the world the solstices are barely commemorated; and in some communities, it is considered ungodly even to celebrate the solstices. Pressuring people to remove nature-based observances from their spiritual practices was one of the ways in which women's power and insights were systematically undermined.

I see a close link between the individual woman who is trying to get her power back from an oppressive partner and the efforts of women in general to regain their full say in creating, defining, and carrying out our spiritual visions, beliefs, and ceremonies. Personal and spiritual empowerment are interwoven. So listen carefully at this time of year to what your inner voices are telling you on many levels, including about the spiritual truths that you hold most dear. To my male readers, I want to say that these next few weeks are an especially important time of the year for us to be respecting women's thinking and supporting their independent leadership.

I wish you all a Solstice of light, freedom, power, and kindness. The year ahead holds great promise.