He wasn’t Harvey Weinstein, but I was Assaulted by my Boss

He wasn’t Harvey Weinstein, but I was completely unprepared when my supervisor tried to sleep with me. I was in my early 20s when I moved to LA to become a movie star. I met many people who wanted to help me make it in the business; most of those offers came with a price. A Midwest girl with strong moral values, I had heard of the “casting couch” long before I made the trek West. These offers, although uncomfortable and off-putting, did not catch me off guard; I had been warned.

            After a few years waiting tables and trying to break into the entertainment industry, I decided it was more important to have a regular paycheck and my electric bill paid. I got a job in an office doing customer service. It was a small company, and it didn’t take long for me to be promoted to become the trade show and education coordinator for the company. This required my inexperienced self to travel extensively, most often alone, but sometimes with senior sales force as support for the trade show.

            One show I attended was at a hotel in Las Vegas. I went, accompanied by the VP of Sales. Summer in Las Vegas is sweltering; I spent the day setting up, crawling on the floor of the convention center, opening boxes and putting the booth together. It was dirty, sweaty, and exhausting. The VP, John*, came in at the end of the day, told me where I should make changes to the displays, then left for the evening.

            The next morning, I arrived at the trade show floor, hair done, makeup on, wearing a suit and heels. John met me at the booth, expressed our sales goals, then proceeded to head outside for a smoke. I worked the floor for a few hours alone. He came back with a client, Steven*, and they spent the afternoon shooting the breeze in the only two chairs in the booth. I stood and wrote orders while they sat and chatted. After 10 hours, the show ended, and John and Steven invited me to dinner with them. I was exhausted, but starving, so accepted. We ate, and shared a couple bottles of wine. Steven left to find his business partners. John and I had dessert and finished the wine, before I announced I had to go to bed and get some rest. John offered to walk me to my room, since it had been a long day.

            I was uncomfortable with the offer, but he was close friends with the owners of my company and had known them for over 15 years. I accepted, feeling dread, but forced it down; I knew this man could change my career. As we walked, we talked about the show and the day’s sales. I felt like I was impressing him with my knowledge of our customer base and sales numbers. Then he made a comment about the outfit I had worn the day before, to set up in the Las Vegas heat. He told me I should wear my shorts and tank top to the show floor the next day, instead of my suit. Feeling as if there was no other response, I laughed it off, and tried to change the subject.

            We arrived at my room, and I opened the door, thanking John for walking me up and trying to close the door. John was the same age as my father, over 6 feet tall, and proud of his exploits in his heyday on the college football field. He stepped into the doorway; I couldn’t retreat into my room. He looked past me, and tried to push his way in.

I told him, “You have to leave.” His response was to grab the back of my head and kiss me. I remember trying to pull away, while at the same time thinking, I can’t piss this guy off, I’ll never get a promotion. I honestly had no idea what to do at that moment. I let him kiss me and felt his hands move down my body. I stepped back, horrified, but didn’t shut the door, just stared at him. I knew this was the moment of truth, but I didn’t know what to do. This was the “casting couch”, and I could feel my career stalling. I placed both of my hands on his chest and shoved him backwards out of the doorway. He looked at me, slightly drunk and confused.

I told him again, “You have to leave.” This time he seemed to hear me and backed out. I locked the door and flipped the safety latch, my hands shaking so badly I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to stop. I went to bed, but I didn’t sleep all night.

The next morning, I went back to work; John was in the booth waiting for me. I didn’t know what to say. He immediately began discussing the sales numbers from the day before, no mention of the incident. Steven came to the booth, and the two of them sat down in their seats, behind me, watching every move I made for the rest of the day. I have never felt so exposed in my life. I spent the day trying not to cry.

Our encounter was never discussed. Several months later, John made an offhand comment about being “inappropriate”, but I had already been passed over for a promotion to lead our sales team in the East Coast market—his market. I left the company shortly afterwards, to work at a female-driven non-profit, where I felt safe.  

This happened over 15 years ago, and I still think about it during every new encounter I have with a male supervisor. I often wonder how many of my male coworkers re-examine their words and actions in every single encounter they have in their professional lives. I never hesitate to compliment female coworkers, but I don’t extend that same courtesy to male coworkers, for fear of being misconstrued. I no longer travel for work. How many men have adjusted their entire career path to protect their safety? It is time to put the Harvey Weinsteins of the world to the same scrutiny women have always had to face. 

Thank you, Donald

I want to thank you, personally, for winning the election. No, I’m not being facetious, I really do want to thank you, on many levels. I did not vote for you. Oh, no, I’m one of those “nasty women” who thought experience and dedication were worth the office, but now I’m here to thank you.

            I want to thank you first, for showing me the true meaning of Privilege. I never felt threatened in my life by my government, my neighbors, my civil servants before you ran for the highest office in the country. I know I’m a woman, and that my work isn’t worth being paid equal to a man, but I was willing to look the other way on that one. I mean, I’m lucky I can go out and get a job, considering it was looked down upon if my Grandma had wanted to. I have never been racially profiled. I never got stopped and had to have my car inspected with the excuse of a burnt out taillight because of the color of my skin. I have never been harassed over what God I choose to worship. I’ve never had to defend my faith to someone who had no interest in learning about it, only to belittle and disparage it based on a small percentage of radicals. I was safely ensconced within my bubble of middle-class white suburbia, and then you came along.

            I had the luxury of being apolitical. Sure, I voted--once every 4 years—

and even then, I really only paid attention to the Presidential race. I never vetted my Senators, my Representatives. I kind of followed along party lines and just went with the flow. Local positions? I didn’t pay any attention, they didn’t seem to matter to me.  How big of an impact could they make?

            Doubt began to seep in when you secured the Republican nomination, but I was sure that common sense would prevail. Surely the masses would see that a reality TV personality was not a qualified candidate. I know that Reagan was an actor, but he had at least held a public office for years before being elected. You had no experience and a lot of money, but you claimed not to be of the establishment. Surely, voters would recognize that a business tycoon was the epitome of the establishment, even if he wasn’t a party pawn. Surely, it was obvious.

            November 8 came, as it got closer, I realized that I was making a mistake. Voting wasn’t enough. I was proud of Hillary, and the obstacles she overcame to get to the point she did. She was as cutthroat as any politician, but I didn’t fault her for her flaws, we all have them. My mistake was thinking that voting was enough. As I watched election results flood in for the first time in my entire life, I realized I should have worked for it. I work for everything else in my life, I need to work for my government, too.

            This is why I want to thank you, Donald. I want to thank you for bursting my bubble. I want to thank you for shaking my world. I want to thank you for showing me that being a passive supporter of the status quo is unacceptable. I had hope when you took that oath, the things you promised were like so many other campaign promises; chaff in the wind. I thought that maybe life would continue as uneventfully as it always has. These first days of your term have proven me wrong.

            Thank you, Mr. Trump, for showing me that there is a fire burning inside me for my country. Thank you for showing me that there is a passion for politics that I didn’t know existed. I have a lot to learn, civics class was a long time ago, but I am committed to educating myself. There are marches to go on, petitions that need to be signed, groups with more experience and knowledge than I have that need volunteers.

            You have destroyed my rose-colored glasses, and I once again thank you. You have united my sisters and brothers to rise up against injustice and moral bankruptcy. It is no longer acceptable to sit in the back seat and enjoy the view. I will no longer wait for someone else to take up the yoke and pound the pavement. It may start small, like phone calls to Senators, but it will grow. The marches and protests will continue, and they will get bigger and bigger. I know you can appreciate that, you like all things that are big, like your buildings. The resistance will take seed and will grow larger than your tallest skyscraper. Only this one will not have your name on it, it will have mine: America. We can agree on one thing; we need to make America great again, and we will do it by getting your dirty hands off of it.

I Am the Phoenix

            When you find out he cheated, your first instinct is to fight back. To reclaim your territory and re-establish the life you’ve built. Even though you’ve imagined leaving for years, and told yourself that if he cheated, that would be the one thing that would drive you away. But, when you find out that he’s betrayed you, your first reaction is to think, “I can get him to come back to me and this family won’t be broken.”

            In my case, fortunately, that feeling didn’t last long. I let him go with no further fight and never looked back. I am worth more than what he was willing to give me. I deserve to be with a person who thinks I am amazing and is not threatened by what I have to offer. I deserve to be with a man who loves how much I adore my child and thinks it’s something to be celebrated. I deserve to be with a person who wants to see me improve and remake my life into something I’ve always felt like it should be. I deserve to be put on a pedestal.

            I was a broken person. I was beaten down. I had poured every last ounce of my being into my marriage. I kept giving and giving and giving, it was still not enough. He wanted more. He wanted me to be his strength, but he didn’t give me any in return. I chose to abandon ship. I was on the sinking Titanic, and chose to find a lifeboat instead of go down with the ship. I knew that the best chance of survival was as far away from his wreckage as I could possibly get, so I ran away and took my baby with me.

            Leaving saved my life. Leaving saved my boy. It is not the answer for everyone, but it was my answer. Leaving gave me strength. Leaving gave me hope. Leaving gave me a purpose. Leaving gave me the ability to become the person I forgot that I was. Leaving helped me to remember the woman that I was raised to be. Leaving was a beginning.

            I would not wish being cheated on to any person, friend or foe. It is destabilizing, being told you’re not good enough in not so many words, and can shake you to your core. It can make you doubt yourself and everything you stand for. It can gut you in the most visceral way. I couldn’t have imagined what it would do to me before it happened and I wouldn’t want anyone else to have to go through it. I recognize this didn’t happen in a vacuum. I recognize that I take some of the responsibility for the devolution of my marriage. I don’t hate him for his choice.  But, I do recognize the cowardly road he took to remove himself from the situation. I recognize the weakness that drove him into her arms. I recognize that healthy relationships take hard work and we both stopped putting that work into our marriage. I will, however, argue, that I was putting that work in long after he stopped contributing.

            You want to scream when the ultimate betrayal is uncovered. You want to shout, and punch someone, protest, and rebel. For me, it shook me from the complacency that I had created for myself. I knew that our life was not the one that we had aspired to when we were young and idealistic, but I thought we would be OK. What a gift it was to not be OK.

            Discovering that I had to start over was the best thing that could happen to me. Realizing that I had to grow and adapt was a blessing I didn’t count on. Getting away from the toxic situation I lived in day in and day out bestowed a perspective that I hadn’t realized that I needed. Meeting someone who respects and encourages me, and accepts me for who and what I am has been life-changing. Remembering the girl I used to be and the woman I aspired to be has been invaluable. It has not been easy, it has not been natural, but it has woken me from the coma that I inhabited for so many years. I have rediscovered my fire and tapped into my purpose. Recalling what it means to stand on my own and strive for a better future has given me the strength to pursue dreams that I forgot existed. After years of being someone else, I have rediscovered myself and, for that, I am eternally grateful. I have fought back against my situation, and found that I can prevail. I am the Phoenix, rising from the ashes of the life I thought I deserved, and ascending into the life that I can create. I have been victim to the deepest betrayal a person can experience, and I have prevailed. No, not simply prevailed, but I have conquered. My road stretches into the wood, but I am no longer afraid to take that overgrown path. It is time. I thank that betrayal, and the fight it reignited in my soul. My eyes glow with the fire that had smoldered into embers, the flames now leap from my soul. I sit in my lifeboat, and continue to paddle it to shore. The closer I get, the more distant a memory is the wreckage I leave behind me. I can read the map that guides me, and I follow it to the golden shore of my dreams. 

New Year's Un-Resolutions

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions as a rule. I tend to make myself a slew of promises, feel guilty when I don’t follow through on them, and then abandon them sometime in February (who am I kidding, I don’t usually even make it that long)!

            However, I am also an eternal optimist. I love the idea of starting fresh and improving myself and the world around me. I can’t entirely disregard the tradition, but I can’t justify writing myself a list of tasks for the year ahead. That being said, I’m going to write a list of un-resolutions that I hope to valiantly attempt to incorporate into my life. These are my aspirations for the year, hopefully to improve myself and become happier, healthier, and more in touch with my family. I choose not to make them as a promise, but as a hope and desire to make them a part of my everyday life, a desire to improve myself permanently and not just for a few months.

1)    Be Healthier. Rather than pledging to lose 20 pounds or eliminate carbs, I want to be more mindful of my overall health and well-being. I want to eat better, get more quality sleep and exercise more. I hope this will make me more rested, even-tempered, give me more energy, and if it has the added bonus of losing a few extra pounds, great!

2)    Take joy from the Little Things. It is easy to get caught up in all the demands of life. I tend to get overwhelmed with responsibilities and spend too much time trying to check items off of an imaginary list. This year, I want to make a conscious effort to slow down and notice the feel of spring rain on my skin, the scent of the flowers in my flower bed, savor the hugs of those I love, listen more and indulge the art of conversation without rushing through it to the next item on my list.

3)    Spend Quality Time with my family. My son is only going to be young once. I would like to try to remember to get down on the floor and play games, look beyond the mess, enjoy the insights he chooses to share with me, and indulge the childhood whims he imagines—within reason, of course.

4)    Disconnect from Social Media more often. Rather than compare my life to others through a screen, I would like to make time to get coffee with a friend, or take a walk in the woods. The amount of time and energy I spend online could be channeled into more productive and fulfilling activities that feed my soul.

5)    Read more. There are so many books I want to read, I need to spend more time with my to-be-read pile and less time watching TV.

6)    Write more. I never write enough. If I cut back on social media time and TV watching time, I’ll have much more free time to dedicate to writing. I need to devote more time to it, because I always feel better after I’ve completed a piece, whether it’s short or long, so I need to make an effort to spend more time on it.

I will have to start small. This list is not something I can accomplish all at once, but hopefully, over time, with small changes, I can improve myself and my life for the long-term. It’s a grand plan, it may not be something I can accomplish, but I intend to give it a shot and see how it affects my daily life and relationships. 

Optimist or Fool?

            I’ve been beaten and bruised, battered and buffeted by the wind. I’ve chosen the path across rugged terrain over and over instead of the paved path. Each time I choose, I stumble. I fall and skin my knees, scrape my palms, break my nails, bruise my soul. And then I get up. I continue on my path. I don’t look for the paved road, I wander down the overgrown, wild trail.

            Does this make me an optimist? Does this mean that even in the most difficult situations I look for the good? Am I continually believing in the challenge in the hopes that it will lead me to the place I want to be? Is this the key, do I just look for the good and disregard the bad?

            OR…am I choosing to be blind? Am I deliberately looking beyond what is common sense in the hopes that there is something else? Is my faith misplaced? 

It's Not Something I Talk About

            It caught me off guard. He knew that I was vulnerable, we had talked about it before. But, when he shoved me to the floor, I still never expected it. We had been drinking Jack Daniels all day and were both pushing one another’s buttons. We were shouting so loud the neighbors were yelling at us to shut the fuck up. And then he pushed me down. I wasn’t hurt, but I was petrified. I ran to the spare room and locked the door. He came and spoke softly to me, apologizing over and over, so I opened it and we passed out for the night.

            I thought that was it. But, it really wasn’t. He didn’t shove me again, but he scared me regularly. He was a big guy, and he would use his size to intimidate me. We would “wrestle” and I would be covered with bruises after, but it was always a “game”. When I would complain that he was hurting me, he would tell me I was a pussy. “We’re just goofing around, I’m not trying to hurt you.”

            Eventually, I believed him. I was an educated woman, from a stable family with a good job. That kind of stuff wouldn’t happen to me.

            I started to get him back. When he would get in the mood to “play”, I would pinch him hard on his inner bicep. I knew that it would hurt and leave a mark. Once he was put on blood thinners, it was easy to bruise him and feel like I had gotten him back. But he was never afraid. I was always scared that when he wrestled, he would go too far and break one of my bones.

            He thought it was funny to try to make me flinch away from him. He didn’t even have to touch me, I would pull away and then get punched in the arm, “two for flinching!” He always made it seem like a joke, it wasn’t until I was far away from the relationship that I realized I was always terrified. The man who was supposed to keep me safe from harm and make me feel secure just kept me on edge.

            For fifteen years, I thought that it was no big deal, he was just a rough person who didn’t understand boundaries, but then he did it again. We had been at a family reunion, our marriage was on the rocks, and we had fought the entire way home. I spent the several hour drive with my body pressed against the passenger side door because he was so incensed I didn’t know what he would do. Once home, while our son was playing in the other room, I went into the bedroom to continue the argument. He was lying on the bed and we started yelling. I don’t remember him moving, but he had me by the hair and all I could see was his eyes. They were black. They were chilling. I tried to pull away, and wrenched my neck, smashing my head into the wall. I heard my son’s little voice, “Mommy?”

            He released me and I grabbed my baby. “If you come anywhere near us, I will call the cops.” I don’t know if I really would have; he got up and left the house without a word, slamming the door behind him and knocking our family portrait off the wall. I put our child to bed and slept on the couch. I didn’t know if I could leave. I knew that I had to, but didn’t know how.

            A few days later, the opportunity presented itself and I took our son and moved to my parents’ house. I didn’t tell anyone what happened. It took a few months before I was able to face it, but I filed for divorce.

            I was with him just shy of fifteen years, and he only hit me twice. For almost fifteen years, I lived under a cloud of foreboding, scared of what he might do to me. If he enjoyed hurting me for fun, what could he do if he wasn’t playing? I’m lucky that I never found out.

Love

            I don’t usually do this. I keep God in my life, but quietly. Sunday’s gospel, though, was the story of the Good Samaritan; and it got me thinking about the things going on in the news lately. I think everyone knows the story, but the crux of it is: A guy gets jumped on the street and robbed. A Priest walks past, and crosses to the other side. A Very Important Person walks past, and crosses to the other side. A foreigner-someone of a different ethnicity and race than the injured person- stops, cares for his wounds, takes him to an inn and pays for his room, with promises to return and pay any remainder due on the bill.

            And there’s the moral. The guy who was different, the guy who was visiting from out of town, the guy for whom it was most inconvenient to stop, is the one who went out of his way to help. He spent his own money, his valuable time, risked the same fate happening to him as a foreigner, to help someone in need.

            There it is. How often do we notice the person beaten in the gutter? More often; do we stop? No matter your religious affiliation, all creeds endorse compassion and generosity. However, we don’t, as a society, take the time to see the argument from the other side. We’re so busy aligning with a hashtag that we don’t stop to think about the greater good. I don’t think there’s hope for us as a civilization until we can see each other beyond the hashtags. Supporting one movement shouldn’t-and doesn’t-mean that you don’t support another movement. It means that you have compassion for another person’s circumstance that may or may not be different from yours. I can stand with the oppressed and discriminated against in #blacklivesmatter while still believing that there are altruistic souls who sacrifice to keep us safe and stand with #bluelivesmatter. I won’t negate their need to be represented by screaming that we all matter, because if we all believed that, none of those hashtags would exist!

            If you’re a Christian, you preach Love. Not for some, but for all. Jesus spent an awful lot of his short time with sinners and outcasts. No religious manuscript, that I’m aware of, preaches “eliminate all people who are in any way different from yourself”. If that were the case, we’d each be alone on this earth, because as far as I can tell, each one of us is a special snowflake, contrary to Tyler Durden’s philosophies. Gandhi said that no culture can live that attempts to be exclusive. We can’t weed out the “different” and expect to survive as a race. He also said that it is easy to be friendly to your friends, but to make friends with your enemies is the heartbeat of true religion. Basically, open your eyes and your mind, and you may learn something new. A difference of opinion doesn’t have to mean the discussion is over. And, most importantly, a discussion doesn’t have to end with all parties agreeing-it just has to end without the parties trying to kill each other. When did we forget that?