The Reason #WhyIStayed Is Important.
{A leaking spirit by Rachel Reagan on 500px.com}
“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying. The only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert
She was young and pretty and pregnant.
It was somewhere during the mid 1940s — an era in which the primary function of women was to get dinner on the table or the kids to school on time. The law that allowed women to vote had only been put in place a mere 20 or so years before.
Domestic disputes were considered private.
There were no battered women shelters or advocacy programs. This was simply something one did not speak of to really anyone except maybe a close family member.
Maybe.
So when she was beaten — time and time again — and when she was screamed at and told her life was worth nothing, who could she have possibly told? Where could she have possibly gone? And while yes, there are always options, the stigma of living with an abuser back then was even greater than it is now.
Maybe you have seen the #WhyIStayed campaign on Twitter, Facebook or other social media. The campaign was born out of the recent video that was caught on an elevator security camera of Ray Rice and his girlfriend in an altercation that ended with him giving her a knockout punch and dragging her lifeless body off into the hallway.
And then, the most shocking part of this story is that she married him.
Why did she stay?
The conversation started. And as things go the way they do today, it spread through Twitter and Facebook — #WhyIStayed.
“Because I’d just made a lifelong commitment. Because I didn’t know what I had gotten myself into. Because I was scared.”
“Fear of losing everything that I had.”
“Because he told me if I left, no one would ever love me. He was wrong.”
“Because by the time I realized what was happening, I had no more friends and nowhere to go.”
This hashtag is something women are using to explain why they chose to stay in a relationship, regardless as to whether or not it served them.
Whether it be a physically abusive relationship or one that simply doesn’t fulfill us the way it should, why do we sometimes persevere down a path of soul annihilation and turmoil?
Why do people stay? Why do they choose to stay and fight in situations that only cut them off at the knees?
She stays because it seems normal. Because being in an environment day after day of being knocked down — either literally or figuratively — becomes as typical as peanut butter and jelly and morning coffee, so why should life be any different? Because admitting this happens is too hard, and even if she knows deep down inside something isn’t right, she tells herself it will be okay.
Because making a choice to put herself first can seems as unclear and unavoidable as the thickest fog on the darkest morning.
This is why that young, pretty pregnant woman was still there when she feared for her life one night. Her husband had threatened to kill her and she had locked herself in the bathroom. It was that night that he took his own life instead, freeing her from the cyclical confines of an everyday hell.
And the next day the dawn broke and she picked up the pieces and found her way back to normal — a new normal.
But this story has a happy twist.
She eventually met and married a man who respected her. She raised her two children and became an entrepreneur in an era when women typically didn’t succeed in business. She went on to have grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
She touched so many people’s lives with the quiet strength that she built from learning to survive and by being open to new possibilities.
She was the strongest woman I have ever known and I wear her wedding ring — her second wedding ring — to remind me of that strength.
This is why #WhyIStayed is important.
Awareness brings empowerment. With empowerment comes strength — the quiet graceful strength that knows when to stand back up. It’s easier to say than to do.
This isn’t a black and white world, and when we find ourselves in the thick of a situation, the lines between what we want and what we have, become even further blurred.
But it starts with a conversation — a seed of a choice.
“#WhyIStayed because I wanted my son to have a father. #WhyILeft because I wanted my son to have a mother.”
“#WhyIStayed I thought I had made my bed, I had to lie in it. #WhyILeft I figured out no one had to spend their life paying for a poor choice.”
“#WhyIStayed I was afraid of change. #WhyILeft I was afraid what would happen if I didn’t.”
*****
{Why Did You Stay? What made you leave?}
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