Not only is there an elephant in the room, there’s a gorilla and several raptors. I’m thinking of selling the house.

Do I know something I can’t say that inhibits friendship? Yes. Some of the effects, and secondary effects, of my friend’s autism on our friendship, and therefore on all my friendships. People who aren’t familiar with autism or Asperger’s don’t understand why I maintain this friendship. This friend isn’t wired to recognize how some of his wiring prevents some kinds of sharing that, of course, he doesn’t recognize.

It is difficult to take the abuse and intolerance by “open minded” people for being a supporter and believer in the policies of George W. Bush. I support President Bush because I have experienced the same condemnations and hostilities when I have tried to intervene between bullies and innocents. I understand his purpose in eliminating some of the most violent and heinous state leaders in World History and liberating 50 million people. Lesson #1 The first lesson came when I was 10. The nun became enraged with a boy in our class who couldn’t find his paper in his desk. She marched to the back of the class, where he was seated, grabbed his desk by it’s legs and shook it upside down. We watched as an avalanche of books and papers fell out to the ground while he huddled against the back wall. Then she threw the desk at him on top of the pile where it slid off in his direction and we all cowered along with him from her rage and violence. Before she even reached the front of the room, marching forcefully with her habit cloth snapping behind her, I had raised my hand. She turned around and then hesitated before she called on me. I said to her in front of the whole class: “I don’t think what you did to Kenneth was right!” There was a long pause….. She replied: “Talk to me after class.” After class I sat in a chair at the side of her desk, and laid out my argument that her behavior was inappropriate. I explained that I had a brother who was brain damaged who had the same organization problems and learning problems as Kenneth. After working with Kenneth as his assigned tutor, I thought he might have some of those same problems. I remember crying when I talked about my brother and how frustrated he would get in school, and how he would get HUGE red F’s on his papers like Kenneth. I said: “I don’t think he can help it.” This nun looked at me and said: “You need to keep your personal problems at home.” And then she complained to my parents about me, the straight-A student, that I was giving her problems. I was the problem. Lesson#2 My best friend and her children were being physically abused by her husband. I visited her in another city and saw the holes he had punched in the walls, and heard the truamatic stories from the children. I went to various of her family members and to her husband’s family’s friends who lived nearby to enlist their support while we got her help - and I was labeled the problem. I was the one blowing things out of proportion, and I was the one making things WORSE - according to them. In fact, things got much, much worse because I did help her mobilize to get out - and everyone, including her, started to freak out - AT ME!! Again, I was the focus of the problem, and the point was made that if only I had not gotten invovled things wouldn’t have gotten as bad as they did when the father tried to kidnap the children away from her. People made the point that even though she was being abused and the children “allegedly” sexually abused, that it was worse now that everyone had high legal bills and the father was becoming more threatening and out of control and was being deprived of his children. All the chaos was MOSTLY MY fault - according to the critics. See how it works? Perps and their Passive Enablers LOVE to blame the whistleblower and the rescuer that changes the status quo. Subsequently my friend has told me over and over how grateful she is to me, and how she was slightly insane and struggling with PTSD while we all went through that time together. But I learned a HUGE lesson: People resent having to make sacrifices when someone else blows the whistle and changes the status quo. People would rather ignore bullies than get involved to protect innocent life - (and this is most important) - those same people RESENT anyone else getting involved because it highlights their own cowardice and laziness, and forces them to confront very uncomfortable realities. So I deeply admire Pres. Bush for holding Saddam accountable for his failure to comply with the ceasefire -and do what he had committed to do, while violating 15 UN resolutions. Saddam was a genocidal, mass-murdering monster who admired Adolph Hilter. Saddam tried to assassinate Pres. Bush senior. And Saddam ordered the state execution of hundreds of thousands of completely innocent people through a vast Extermination Program in which pregnant women, fathers, mothers and children were bussed into the desert, executed and bulldozed into mass graves. 180,000 execution victims by one of the most evil men to ever live in human history. I am profoundly grateful to Pres. Bush for doing that which - as I so well know - makes one very, very unpopular. Unfortunately saying so, often makes me very unpopular as well, but I am proud of that elephant in the room.

It seems that in most situations there is always an elephant in the room. Such is life and life’s gory/interesting little details. We make room for elephants out of respect, fear, denial, uncertainty and probably that old “golden rule” thing! I love it when the elephant is spotted. Depending on the situation, it is then that the work begins or s—t hits the fan. Ain’t life grand? Raye on the Central Coast

Sheila I love your poems because they are one thing when you read them silently and take on a whole new life when you read them out loud. Then they are really - Dangerous.

Yup. ‘My father died, I buried him yesterday, and today the doctor called to tell me I had cancer’…that was Sept 17, 2007.

When is it correct to spill-the-beans about an abusive situation in a family or in a child’s life - Yes, it forces a crisis in which the only tools the victim and the perpetrator have is to shrink further into the reactive behavior they know which deepens the abuse - Unless you can be there to protect and assist those in crisis, I believe we are taking control of the situation in a way that keeps the victims from finding their personal power. Often part of the power, as sick as it seems to most of us, the victim takes power in controlling their feelings, and they think they can control some of their experience. Take that control away and they have nothing. You have to be there for them and they have to trust you - if you have taken it upon yourself to go public with their pain then there is little reason for the victim to trust you. I know - my life story is the elephant in the middle of the room that even my kids do not want to hear about - I do know how easy it was for society to blame me, my sister and my mother - I do know how easy it is for even the best of folks in groups like Al-Anon or ACOA to judge and decide what I should have done or what I should have realized. The thing that I find few understand that for most kids, regardless what the abuse they do not want to be ripped from their parents - if they are given the opportunity to make the choice after they have alternatives offered to them from a trusted caregiver then they given the power to choose rather than be re-victimized by those who take their power away exactly like their abuser took away their power. I think spilling-the-beans is part a concern for others but part is to feel a hero that prompts us to make the announcement so that all will see or recognize the elephant - I think we need to ask ourselves how much of our own ego is involved or, are we truly willing to do all that is necessary so the victim is empowered to make their best choice.

I agree however, when the mother does not know and if the child is past the age of 7 then she should be in control of how and when she tells the mother - it is traumatic for both - it is too easy not to be believed - part of the perpetrator’s sickness is controlling the secret and the thrill of secretly plotting the action – knowing where all the family members are, when they will be occupied and for how long. A woman often cannot imagine the man she sleeps with could betray her and her daughter - the damage of an outsider taking over, forcing a solution can retraumatize the victim so that they remain in a stuck position for years. Both the child and the mother are victims and a caring friend will support and help the child receive assistance so that the child can be empowered to tell with firm support for whatever the mother’s reaction. Many girls and women become suicidal when they finally tell their mother. This is not a time to play hero unless you can be a trustworthy friend. Enough of society’s wrath exploited by Child Welfare Services, who rip families apart because we are outraged. Outrage needs to become compassion that builds trust that will support empowerment for the victims.