Quote:
Originally Posted by lizardlady
When he was alive we lived where I did business. I had a barnfull of horses plus house pets to worry about. The one time I left over night I was scared silly what he might do while I was gone. How was I supposed to support myself if I wasn't there to run my business? My critters are my children. It would have been more than I could handle if he did something to one of them. His parents knew what was happening, but could not emotionally accept it.
A question for those of you who did not hit back or leave - when I read comments from those who did hit back, called the police, threw his butt out I feel like I wasn't strong enough. I'm not saying that anyone here has said that about me. I'm saying that's my perception. I feel like, once again I was a failure.
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((Liz)),
When you were growing up you were not only hit/spanked but you were also verbally abused by your mother. You were sent a message of being unworthy and undeserving, something that a child experiencing may accept as an adult as well unknowingly.
You were in a situation where you had responsibilities of taking care of animals you worked with and loved like your own children too (I felt the same about my horses/animals too). I am sure you thought a great deal about it and decided to brave the abuse in order to have your animals safe and have your business. That is not a "weak" decision, nor does it mean you are in any way a failure either. Also, I have noticed that you have a very strong "nurturing" instinct as well so you were loyal to your horses and animals and willing to work around the abuse, also you had to do that growing up as well, something you had to learn to do and even accept as "your normal" and to be expected.
If a horse is trained to ride western and someone slaps a dressage saddle on it and just expects it to know how to do dressage, is the horse a failure if it doesn't understand "how"? You know that a horse will carry itself very differently in western verses dressage too. And a horse has to be slowly worked and develop a lot of muscle and be very light on the front end to do dressage verses being more heavy on the front and low in western style riding. Well, human beings are the same way really, we depend on our parents to teach us so much and we begin to learn "how to be" from them as our "trainers".
When looking back on a situation as you are discribing, it's very important to consider "what you knew" at the time, before thinking about being some kind of failure. A horse can be trained very poorly, end up leaning and unbalanced because of a rider that rode it consistently unbalanced. That doesn't mean the "horse" is a failure or that someone can't finally work with it and teach it to be more balanced, but it does take time. I am using this as an example because when looking back on your own experience, it is just so important to be "forgiving of self" in whatever you simply did not know how to do any differently, and consider the bravery in what you did do too.
