The O'Raven Chronicles!: An open letter to people on listening;

Today I had an experience that has become far too common for my sense of rightness. I have finally had enough and must speak out. I was having a private conversation with another adult today and three teenagers decided to not only intrude on our conversation but proceeded to try and tell me how wrong I was because like so many other young people; these three truly believed they know everything there is to know. It was a conversation about parenting, and more specifically about physical correction. By physical correction I mean spanking and slapping. Now let me preface this by saying I am a survivor of true child abuse. I mean actual beatings and the occasional attempted murder, as well as surviving mental and emotional abuse, spiritual abuse, and later on being tormented at school. I have to say tormented because bullying is such a gross understatement for what I endured. So these three kids first of all felt it was alright to intrude on the conversation between adults. Now remember this was not even a public discussion going on. Me and the woman who were talking were whispering quietly to ourselves. As a survivor of real abuse it makes me beyond angry and physically nauseous to hear people saying that spanking and slapping when a wayward child is absolutely out of hand, abuse. That is not abuse. It is not even close to abuse. One of these three teens actually had the gall to explain that he took a psych class and that spanking was “lazy parenting”. I shared that it some cases that might be true but it was far from being a universal truth. One of the problems I have encountered with these entitled younger generations is that they will believe anything told to them from a book, or in a classroom just because someone is called “an expert” or a professor and has a piece of paper called a degree, and has a string of all but meaningless letters behind their name. These things do not impress me. I don’t fall for every bit of propaganda that someone tells me just because they say it in the front of a classroom, or in a text book. I am impressed by real world life experience, and by true intelligence.

Young people if you read this please really try and hear and understand what I am telling you! Don’t believe everything you are told. Question everything. Research everything. And by research I don’t just mean in a book. I mean go find people with real world experience, preferably older people and speak with them. Learn from them. And please understand this because it is one of life’s greatest truths! Just because something works for you or is true for you, does NOT make it true or right or good for everyone else on this planet. Sometimes your opinion and your truth is just that….your opinion and your truth. That does not make it a universal truth. It does not mean that everyone has to agree with you. Not everyone is ever going to agree with you all the time about everything.

I would also like to say this…Don’t speak for other people and on their behalf if they have not asked you to. I as an adult survivor of actual child abuse do not appreciate you trying to speak on my behalf.

I was explaining the differences between the abuse I suffered at the hands of my sperm-donor and the loving spanking I received from my grandparents when I was little. Now my grandparents did not doll out physical punishment constantly. It was a rare and serious occasion when it happened. Each and every time it happened, I can honestly say with no reservation that it was because I really deserved it. I explained how different it was from the real abuse I endured and tried to explain the various nuances. I was of course cut off. I was dismissed and again metaphorically spit upon.

The idea that these children believed that they had the right to speak over me, to speak for me, to even attempt to talk on behalf when they did not live my life or any life but their own really got under my skin. I mean I was so angry that had a very little boy who is very sweet and sensitive not been there, I probably would have gotten up and dished out some much needed back-handings. I mean really…who the f*ck did these little entitled arrogant know it all narcissistic brats think they there speaking for me, and just who did they think they were talking to?!

When I was little there were things that were just not done and the world was a better place in many ways. Children did not jump in on the conversations of adults. It just was not done. And a person did not just jump in on private conversations. The fact that these young people did not know this and had never been taught that made me angry at the idiots who raised them. I don’t care how well intentioned someone is, there are certain things that are just not acceptable behavior. When your behavior is hurting other people it needs to stop. Sadly these young people don’t understand that sometimes children who start acting a fool in certain situations need to be physically corrected. A spank or a slap carried out in the appropriate manner is not abuse, and nor is it lazy parenting. It is loving and just. It is meant to sting, to get the child’s attention, to warn the child, to cause some physical discomfort or even a little pain so that the child understands that it did something very wrong and that society will not tolerate behavior like that. Now we have a nation of whiney brats. Many of them are writing books, teaching in university class rooms, and working in positions of power in the government. Many of them run social services and they are going around telling people that physical discipline is abuse. Again as a survivor of actual child abuse this is an absolute insult and diminishment of what I lived through and experienced. This has created a nation where people when they don’t get their way will in mass take to the streets, disrupt society like the brats they are, destroy people’s business and livelihoods, and murder people and authority figures like cops.

We have created a nation where these people think they have he right to murder people if they don’t get their way. Let that sink in folks. This is what happens when you give every kid a trophy just for participation. This is what happens when they are not disciplined. This is what happens when people are not taught better. This is what happens with policies like “no child left behind”.

I went on to try and explain to these people that time outs and removing a kind from the situation doesn’t always work. I wanted to add that it was not always appropriate. Because removing a child sometimes teaches them that you have a right to leave every single situation you don’t like instead of facing it head on. I wanted to add that allowing the child to get away with everything with no real consequences of any kind teaches the child that can do whatever it wants. I wanted to say sometimes that kind of parenting is not only stupid but down right dangerous. These idiots out in the world writing their psychology books are part of the systemic problem we have now. These people were mocking what I lived through and didn’t even begin to understand that on a basic level or in any real way.

I was told by these young people that there are things besides time outs. Things like giving the child a set of options and choices. I tried to explain that when I was little that style of parenting would not have worked on or with me. They would not hear me. When I was little if an adult had said go to your room, or time out, or removed me from the situation or given me choices; I would have laughed at their idiocy. Oh really you want me to go to my room, well my bedroom was like going to Disneyland. Let’s go. Oh you want me to have a time out to, where I can sit there and think about how stupid you are. Fine by me, I will sit and simmer in my anger towards you. Oh you want to remove me from the situation, well great…thanks for giving me exactly what I wanted…so kind of you. Oh you want to give me choices and options. Ok I choose to say f*ck you and all your options and choices and decide my own. These are the things that would have gone through my head when I was little at this no REAL consequences style of free-for-all parenting when I was little. That crap would not have worked with me. I said to these young people, if this is working with your child that is fantastic and God bless go to, but it doesn’t work with every child. It would not have worked on me at all. To paint all children, all parents, all families, and all situations with the same brush and say everyone is exactly the same and is going to respond the same to the same things is not only stupidity but utterly dangerous and what’s more is that it is wicked and wrong to do so.

They corrected my obvious errors and said that how dare I raise my voice to them and disagree with them. Oh yes how dare I. Well I dare. How dare they try and say that one size parenting fits all. How dare they say that I don’t know my own life or what happened to me, and that it is they and not I who are entitled to opinions about my life and my experiences.

My tormentors in school were for the most part entitled brats whose wealthy parents who were educated in class rooms which called spanking bad and lazy. These entitled brats learned that they had no consequences to their bad doings. In turn they learned that it was ok to treat people however you want to. They learned that other people didn’t matter. They learned it was ok to torment people. They learned it was ok to try and destroy that person and their very soul. I used to look at my tormentors and think, you were never spanked as a child which is why you don’t know this is wrong.

These same type of people were sitting in front of me and explaining to me that because of what they read in books, and learned in their collage classrooms that I was wrong and they were the only right ones. They told me that my life experience in the real world was wrong. They acted as if I was telling them how to raise their children. Yes these babies have babies. Another consequence of not having parents who taught them better. People always say that scripture says spare the rod and spoil and the child. While the saying itself is true, that is not what scripture itself says. Scripture actually says that those who spare the rod despises the child’s soul. That is because it was universally understood that children who are not taught how to behave, how to think for themselves and be able to reason out what is correct and right and good and just grow up to be very bad people indeed. They grow up to be people who are spoiled. People who have turned rotten like food years past its sell by date with putrid colored fuzz growing on it in abandoned refrigerators left in abandoned houses or ally ways.

I tried to explain to these young people that I was so happy for them that they got lucky with a little boy who was so very good natured and sweet even if he was not perfect, that they could get away with that style of parenting with him. I believe that they got blessed indeed. Though I don’t know what he will be like when he is a teenager because of what he is being taught and also what he is not being taught. I hope he turns out well and good. I was met with the comments that it was not being blessed but the fact they took to time to go through these “proper” “parenting” techniques with him.

Again I was dismissed as if I as a human being was nothing. They metaphorically spit on me…spit venom on me, and slapped me over and over again. This happened because their schools which they have been brainwashed to believe no matter what told them that it was ok to treat other people that way. This happened because their own parents never taught them that treating a fellow human being this way was alright. My grandparents who had to raise me from the time I was 12 on, were called by these people lazy parents. When there are no two people in the entire world less lazy than these people are close to being saints. I really wanted to slap them after they said that.

When they finally left our house in a huff like we are the ones who did something wrong I was left with all this rage and un-rest and this horrible energy in our house. It had been a spiritual and emotional and mental war unleashed on us, and visited upon us from these people. These people who don’t have the first clue about life itself. These atheistic people who don’t believe in God and show it with their sad lives, and their ignorance. These people who assaulted me and left me wounded and bleeding metaphorically speaking. I spoke up for myself but not loud enough and not firmly enough because I was trying to protect the smallest child in the room.

So as I write these words and post them, I am taking my power back and finding the healing that I need. People, just because something is your opinion doesn’t make it true. It doesn’t make it a universal rule that every can or should live by. And especially when you are young, don’t be deceived into believing that you are better or know more than those who have lived longer than you have been alive. In our society we have made grave error in dismissing the wisdom of our elders. We were wrong to just brush them aside as if they don’t matter. We were wrong not to protect them and care for them properly.

It is not alright to go around treating people badly. At some pointed during this horrible day it was explained to me that slapping an adult was assault and slapping a child was not in my opinion. What I never got the chance to say was that, the fact we have created a society where slapping an adult is actually called an assault is repugnant and wrong. They told this to someone who has in the past been beaten, stolen from, strangled, stabbed, had guns held on them, and been scorned, threatened, and assaulted on every level. The fact people think slapping someone is in any way similar to an assault is exactly part of the huge problem with our society.When I was young people did not act in mass in the horrible way they do now. So to me the proof is in the pudding. You can quote all the studies that you want to and it doesn't matter a hill of beans if the studies are shown by action and by history to be wrong.

In some ways we are getting better, but in other ways we are getting so so so much worse.

I hold on to the hope that one day sanity and reason will reign again.

After these people left my house I used what little strength and energy I had left to cleanse my home and pray over it. I called other people to pray for cleansing, love, light, and peace as well. I did not have the energy left to fully cleanse my house the way it truly needed it at that point to get all the evil residue from those people out of my abode. They sucked a lot of my energy out like little vampires. What’s worse is that I as an energy worker should not have let it happen. I should not have allowed that kind of behavior to go on unchallenged in my own house. I did it however for the sake of a small child. I took comfort from that. I will do more cleansing work tomorrow.

I had to start writing this before bed and get it all out of me. I needed to put this out in the world to try and start helping people understand. What you do and say has real life affects on other people. What you say, think, and do matters. How you treat people matters. It all has real life consequences, even if you are not the one who always has to pay for them.

People please start treating your fellow man better, with more compassion and more respect and stop just DISMISSING other people. Just because you don’t agree with them doesn’t make them wrong or you right. Sometimes it is not even about being right or wrong. Sometimes it is just about listening and bearing witness. Sometimes it is about trying to walk in someone else’s shoes. Sometimes it is about making other people feel like they have truly been heard. Sometimes that is the only thing that will make us all better people and truly heal our world.

Please remember that sometimes you don’t know it all and you don’t have to talk. You just have to be there with an open heart and an open mind and with sacredness and love and compassion and empathy…you just and only have to listen!

Thank you if you have taken the time to read through this entire thing. Thank you if you have taken the time to listen.

Listen to God

Listen to Nature

Listen to yourself

Listen to your friends and loved ones

                                                               Listen to other people,

                                                and not just the sound of your own voice