Learning to Change, Reel to Real
by Nancy Bennett

In our old family movies there is a tape of me. I am riding around and around our circle driveway, never moving out of the well worn trademarks carved by my sisters. Today, like the little girl I was in the film riding a bike for the first time, I still have things to learn. Life can be an angry repetitive ride if you allow it to be.

The cycle of abuse and disharmony started with my Grandmother's stepbrother

We know now that an abusive childhood can lead to an abusive marriage and so the picture spins, reel to reel. There is no ending, unless a conscious effort is made to replace old patterns.

I remember growing up wishing that I had been lost by my real family and that someday they would come and find me. Living in my family was at best like getting a hesitant hug or a lukewarm handshake from a noncommittal relative. At worst it was walking along with your head down and your shoulders shrugged forward so no one would notice your femininity. My father spent his days making sure our life was hell. My mother spent her days dizzy with pills trying to forget. Despite the violence and fear, day to day we all survived somehow. We knew no other way for the circle hadn't started there. The beginning was rooted in the history of my family. The cycle of abuse and disharmony started with my Grandmother's stepbrother. From the age of four and onward he would lay her over the wooden chest by the front window and rape her from behind.

In those days marriage was the only escape for a young woman and she escaped from one abuser to another. Her bitterness grew when she saw her own daughter choose a man who was just as bad as her brother had been.

Father, they say, was hurt too, but we never knew. Our Grandparents died when we were young and our relatives from his side stayed away. I remember being sent with my father to work, doing deliveries in his truck to outlying farms. I was one of five children and we all took our turn. It was my mother's way of ensuring he didn't drink. I think he partially blamed us for it and got his revenge as sadistically as he could. I know I always tried to please him and I know I was always sure I was never good enough.

Apprendre à changer, de fond en comble
par Nancy Bennett

Une enfance marquée par des mauvais traitements peut mener à un mariage empreint de brutalités, et ainsi de suite. Mon père faisait en sorte, jour après jour, que notre vie soit infernale. Ma mère passait ses journées abrutie par les comprimés qu'elle avalait pour essayer d'oublier...Nous avons survécu, au quotidien. Nous ne connaissions rien d'autre, car le cycle n'avait pas commencé avec nous. Il avait commencé avec le frère par remariage de ma grand-mère qui, dès que celle-ci eut quatre ans et pendant des années par la suit, la couchait sur la commode devant la fenêtre et la sodomisait.

L'éducation, comme me l'a dit ma soeur, a été la bouée de sauvetage. Avec deux tenues de rechange et très peu d'argent, elle prit le chemin de l'université pour apprendre à enseigner. Comme elle avait treize ans de plus que moi, elle m'apprit à lire et à écrire, et pendant un temps les livres et l'écriture furent ma seule consolation. Mais ma vie prit un tournant pour le pire. J'épousai un homme violent, eut deux filles. Quand sa violence commença à se manifester contre elles, je compris qu'il était temps de mettre fin au cycle infernal.

Rompre est extrêmement difficile. Je ne savais pas si je faisais bien, jusqu'à ce que quelque chose de magique se produise. Je recommençai à lire. Je lus des livres sur la violence dans les familles et sur la façon dont le cycle se perpétue partagé mes connaissances avec ma mère qui, elle aussi, a commencé à faire le bilan de sa vie, pour tenter de rompre les habitudes et de m'en libérer,

Je sais aujourd'hui que si1e film est mauvais, on a le droit de quitter la salle, même en milieu de projection. Je sens que l'avenir de ma famille et le mien est prometteur.


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