I was at my relatives house the other night. We were all hanging out, and this girl, I’ll call her Shiela to maintain her privacy, realized that she had a message on her phone and was freaking that it was her father.

Now, her father is abusive, and she hangs out at my cousins a LOT because she feels safe there.

They mean well, but the mother isn’t equipped to handle other people’s drama like that. She wants to assist her, but has no other solid advice other than to stay away from Shiela’s father.

To her credit, they did call the cops on him one time, but apparently the father is good at pulling snow jobs on people and getting them to think he hasn’t done anything wrong - a lier basicly.

Lately he’s been using drugs really heavy and the level of violence has escalated. So my cousin didn’t want Shiela to go home.

That is pretty logical. I mean if she has somewhere safe to stay, why not stay there right? Only my cousin is worried that she will get cited by the police for kidnapping or something like that, so she’s only adding to the drama!

So this girl is hovering around the house in high tension, freaking out, calling her Aunt (only telling part of the story) to ask what she should do, etc….

Well, all this is just really getting to me. It’s frustrating to see them all freaked out when there is something specific they can do to limit the destruction or harm!!!

So I talked to her, asked questions, provided some LEGAL answers, self protection answers, and some VERY basic training. She was VERY interested.

She also brought up her concerns and questions about wondering if it was allowed because she is Christian, and we cleared that up very easily and quickly.

If you would like to know what steps I had her take for her situation, just start your back stage pass. I’ll detail exactly what I told her and what I taught her.

A few hours later, her father called. Instead of avoiding his call and acting scared, asking “What should I do? Should I answer or talk to him?” like she had earlier in the evening… She simply answered the phone.

He must have said something to the effect of where are you and what are you doing? She told him that she was staying at my cousin’s home.

He was confused.

So she repeated herself, more forcefully this time, and clarified that she meant all night.

There was no coaching from me. I had finished talking to her, we had all finished talking about it.

She was all on her own here, and her behaviour was DRAMATICALLY different.

He was angry of course, but he must have known she meant it (It was probably all a shock to him.), because he just hung up on her, and he didn’t call again that night, or try to come by and get her or anything.

It was wonderful to see her transformation into a confident, young woman who knew she had options to protect herself.  It was like night and day from only 2 hours earlier!

All she needed — All most women need in dangerous situations like that, is someone to teach them their options.

She was confident. Unafraid. Feeling like she could DO something for herself about the whole thing –even if he did lie to the cops. She knew what to do about it!

And that is what this site is ALL ABOUT!

Women learning to take care of themselves in a crazy world of violent crime, trauma, and abuse.

Are you going to do so as well?

Eldra McCracken

http://www.beautifulwarriorwomen.com

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Last Modified: Monday, May 19th, 2008 @ 20:34

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