Courage Faces Fear
I posted the following photo and text on Facebook on Novemeber 22, 2015. There was more I wanted to say, and MLK Day seems a perfect time…
“Ten years before this photo was taken I was beaten by a MAN so badly that it left me temporarily paralyzed from the neck down. BECAUSE OF THE TRAUMA, I BEGAN TO FEAR AND HATE ALL MEN.
But ALL men did not brutalize me. As my body slowly healed I told my fractured spirit, “ALL MEN DID NOT DO THIS TO YOU.” I repeated it, like a mantra, and thought of the men in my life who were loving and kind – my Father, my Brothers, my Buddies from back home.
I could have EASILY lived in HATRED and FEAR of ALL MEN for the past forty years. But I chose to keep my heart open. I CHOSE NOT TO FEAR AND HATE ALL MEN FOR THE CRUELTY OF ONE. PEOPLE, I BEG YOU NOT TO FEAR AND HATE ALL MUSLIMS FOR THE HORRENDOUS DEEDS OF A FEW RADICAL EXTREMISTS. You, and the World, will be better for it. – Eve Littlepage #SurvivorNotVictim #EndRacism”
Martin Luther King Day, Monday, January 18, 2016,
A slew of challenges in the past two years has kept me off social media for a long spell. Just as I was ready to poke my head out, Paris and Beirut were attacked. The crushing horror and heartache of it, and the entire world situation, made me want to crawl back into seclusion. But I had to say something to the surge in Islama-phobia and about racism in general, which I had so hoped, coming of age in the 60s, we would be far passed by now.
The Facebook post was all I could manage, at the time. So today, on Marin Luther King Jr. Day, I wish to expand this a little to explain where I was coming from. You could substitute Black Man, Mexican, or any other group you see as ‘other’ for ‘Muslim.’ What I was trying to get across in my post, but was too upset to articulate it at the time, is that I feel we are going through a form of ‘Group Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,’ and I know a thing or two about PTSD.
Having survived domestic abuse as a young woman, and a pretty horrific fall in 2006 that sent me hurtling down a dark staircase and crushed both of my wrists, I have had to deal not only with physical trauma, but also heightened fears of men, the dark, stairs, and a generalized terror that the ground might go out from under me at any time (natural, I’m told, for falls like mine).
It took focused, intentional work to overcome my phobias, but the reward has been to live without my fears taking the lead. I had to face those fears head-on to not let them control me. (It’s ongoing work; overcoming fears can be a bit like playing Whack-a-Mole!). After my abuse incident I had to coach myself back to sanity. It would have been amazing to have a counselor and some medical help, but forty years ago the resources for women who had been abused were scarce. I had the good fortune to work with a wonderful psychotherapist after my stairfall, and I can be in the dark again without my chest feeling like it will explode, and climb stairs without my knees buckling in panic.
Hatred – whether it’s for a person whose skin is different than yours, or for spiders, or for the dark, or clowns – it all comes from Fear. Prejudice comes from Fear. Martin Luther King Jr. knew this, and he knew that it took something that doesn’t always come easily to us, Courage, to overcome it. In Strength to Love he wrote, “Courage faces fear and thereby masters it.”
And so my little post was not, and is not, an invitation to argue the pros and cons of taking in refugees, or discuss the anti-infidel rhetoric of the Q’uran; or discuss immigration reform, but rather an invitation for us all to look into our own hearts and have the courage to face our fears, overcome them, master them, and grow in the Spirit of Universal Love.
With courage we can move our dreams of peace, justice, and equality into reality. xx-Eve
