Don’t Shove Me in the Victim Box

Hello poppets,

How the dickens are we?

If you follow me on social media you will know that last week was a

Now riot may sound a little extreme but it will tie in to what I am going to say later.

Last year I decided to quit my main job which meant I had to create some little side projects (coming out soon!) so I could support and fund my work here at littlestlady.com. At the start of this year and after making some good progress with my side projects I decided to delve deep into the realms of my inbox and see what was on offer in terms of starting to share the story of this little lady again.

There with a glowing light around it sat an email header that instantly said to me ‘YOU NEED TO OPEN THIS’ I honestly couldn’t believe my luck and that was before I had even opened it.

There sat an email from a pretty big magazine company in the UK. They explained that they loved my work, especially that I was talking about something different and expressed that we don’t hear enough about the recovery side of things. As you can imagine for me it was one thing seeing that name sat in my inbox but another that they supported my work and story. To be honest I didn’t initally think ‘this is too good to be true’ I was just beyond thrilled that such a company had reached out to me and in such a way.

I was given a name and was told that in a few weeks time someone would contact me. I expressed my gratitude and that I was looking forward to hearing from them but didn’t sign off straight away. Something that I always do when contacted by anyone from magazines to online articles is express that I wont detail my abuse. That of course I expect it to be mentioned but I wont post articles naming and shaming my abusers or solely talking about my abuse. It wasn’t that it bothers me, but more..

See not only am I at a place in my life where I cannot connect to that life but in fact me shaming my abusers would only put me in the same box as those cruddy human beings and I ain’t’ joining in on that. The reason you guys know about my abuse is that it shows where my story started.

They said OF COURSE! and in capital letters which should have raised suspicions. Instead i entrusted in this whole process and that this was going to be a major thing for me, us and the work I do here. It would be a way for me to raise the voice of recovery and its possibilities on such a huge scale.

I have a terrible habit of checking my phone when I wake up (which I am slowly trying to cut out doing) but due to the excitement of this potential article and the time difference between the UK and NZ I knew what would be sat in my inbox.

I scrolled through my inbox and AHA! there it was. When I opened it and viewed my interview questions

Literally. I felt a shift in my whole body. A heavy weight and a feeling of ‘I should have known’. If you don’t follow me on social media; I would like to present you with those very interview questions.

Yeah. I mean, even reading them again I dont know what to say. Though I shared some of them on social media with you guys there was actually more questions than that and they went on to ask even further into my abuse and even more shockingly to me “So where was your dad when this happened?”

Isn’t it. The whole thing just turns my stomach. I guess not only because its so invasive and normally people wouldn’t dream of asking those sorts of questions but most importantly I cannot imagine the feeling of how readers would be left after reading an article like that.

I guess it’s that age old thing of relating which i’ve spoke to you guys about before. Relating to something is important but that feeling is so temporary and doesn’t move people forwards in life. Yes we can say “Oh that person was abused too!” but aren’t we at a place in life now where the majority know that such awful things are happening in the world?

When I shared those questions the response from most was just straight shock. That not only someone and a reporter could invade someones privacy like that but be quite so brash about it. It’s sad for me to say that I have to turn down so many opportunities like this one. SO many. In fact it is so normal to talk about abuse and abuse survivors in that way. We expect those that have gone through such a thing to want to ridicule their abusers and fire shots at them and we encourage that behaviour.

To me if I was ridiculing them it would come from a place of hurt and harm and thats what i’m teaching people to heal from. To let the justice system deal with that part of things but keep our heads and our hearts free of hate.

Coming back to that word of ‘riot’ at the beginning the more I go along this journey the more I realise that recovering and healing is a rebellious act. We are suppose to be hateful. We are suppose to be struggling after abuse. We are suppose to be addicted to some substance or lashing out at the world as a result. Anything different from that we just don’t understand.

In true Littlest Lady style and after taking some time out to process everything I decided to email them back merely in the hope to raise some awareness of the harm that can be done by encouraging hate and because I believe strongly in education over ignorance or sending hurtful words back in retaliation.

Sadly, days later I received yet another email from another magazine asking to feature my story. I expected straight away that they had been led to me due to the initial magazine wanting to work with me and I was right. I explained that I would not be talking about any details of my abuse and would only share the recovery side of things and with that received no reply.

It’s hard. It really is and my weeks been filled with plenty of Jackass and puppy cuddles. Ive sat processing my emotions from those of annoyance to realisation that we just dont know how to talk about these topics in any other way.