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May 2nd is the sell date on my home. What is, Is. And what will be is rapidly approaching. Though I am and will forever be in exile of my HOME, I am at peace.
I know how men in exile feed on dreams. ~Aeschylus~
Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance. ~Richard von Weizsaecker~
Only the misfortune of exile can provide the in-depth understanding and the overview into the realities of the world. ~Stefan Zweig~
Our lives teach us who we are. ~Salman Rushdie~
Memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.” ~Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children~
“Exile is a dream of a glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution: Elba, not St Helena. It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back. The exile is a ball hurled high into the air. ” ~Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses~
“Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.” ~Salman Rushdie~
“So Oz finally became home; the imagined world became the actual world, as it does for us all, because the truth is that once we have left our childhood places and started out to make our own lives, armed only with what we have and are, we understand that the real secret of the ruby slippers is not that “there’s no place like home,” but rather that there is no longer such a place as home: except, of course, for the homes we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz, which is anywhere and everywhere, except the place from which we began. In the place from which I began, after all, I watched the film from the child’s – Dorothy’s point of view. I experienced, with her, the frustration of being brushed aside by Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, busy with their dull grown-up counting. Like all adults, they couldn’t focus on what was really important to Dorothy: namely, the threat to Toto. I ran away with Dorothy and then ran back. Even the shock of discovering that the Wizard was a humbug was a shock I felt as a child, a shock to the child’s faith in adults. Perhaps, too, I felt something deeper, something I couldn’t articulate; perhaps some half-formed suspicion about grown-ups was being confirmed. Now, as I look at the movie again, I have become the fallible adult. Now I am a member of the tribe of imperfect parents who cannot listen to their children’s voices. I, who no longer have a father, have become a father instead, and now it is my fate to be unable to satisfy the longings of a child. This is the last and most terrible lesson of the film: that there is one final, unexpected rite of passage. In the end, ceasing to be children, we all become magicians without magic, exposed conjurers, with only our simply humanity to get us through. We are the humbugs now.” ― Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002
As always, There’s no place like home, but I’ve come to learn that i’d rather be in a permanent state of exile than a permanent prisoner in my own home.
Lilywhitewash
Why Lily White
Image via Wikipedia
The term Lily White has a long and ugly past as it applies to American history and its culture.
Specifically, the term Lily-White Movement, as defined by Wikipedia, was an anti-civil-rights movement within the Republican Party in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement was a response to the political and socioeconomic gains made by African-Americans following the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which eliminated slavery. Black leaders gained increasing influence in the party by organizing blacks as an important voting bloc. Conservative white groups attempted to eliminate this influence and recover white voters who had defected to the Democratic Party.
“The lily white movement is one of the darkest and underexamined eras of US Republicanism.”
This movement is largely credited with driving blacks out of the Republican party during the early 20th century, setting the stage for their eventual support of the Democrats.
In essence, the movements goal was to suppress the votes (or in my opinion, the VOICE and Validity) of Black Americans.
As I began to speak up and speak out about a problem that touches far to many lives I realized pretty quickly that most people didn’t want to hear about the reality of the problem. It almost seemed as though the words I spoke offended a falsely innocent view of american culture and the violence that is going on in american children’s lives at the hands of adults, usually the adults that are closest to them.
A few definitions from around the web:
Defined by Double-Tongued.org
1.) Lilywhite
n. a person without a police record; someone who does not trigger suspicions; a clean-skin.
This particular definition is the one that solidified my decision to use the term as the Pseudonym I would blog under. I started blogging specifically because the subject of Childhood Sexual Abuse, a subject that has recently and violently thrust itself into mine and my family’s life, was one that seemed to offend the public so much so that even as a victim/survivor, speaking about any aspect of the issue is highly frowned upon publicly. As I understood it, if I wanted to speak up, if I wanted to talk about this issue, it would have to be done privately and somewhat UNDER THE RADAR, so to speak.
The bottom line is, MY VOICE WON’T BE SILENCED. I WON’T CONFORM AND SHUT UP. But like many things, sometimes the best approach is one that is the least abrasive, for the moment at least.
I have quoted Dr. King many times before on this blog. Here are some that have resonated with me:
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
TheFreeDictionary.com
2.) lil·y-white (l
l
-hw
t
, -w
t
)
Adj. 1. lily-white – restricted to whites only; “under segregation there were even white restrooms and white drinking fountains”; “a lily-white movement which would expel Negroes from the organization”
white
segregated, unintegrated – separated or isolated from others or a main group; “a segregated school system”; “a segregated neighborhood”
2. lily-white – of a pure white color.
achromatic, neutral – having no hue; “neutral colors like black or white
Yourdictionary.com
3.) lily-white
adjective
white as a lily
innocent and pure; unsullied: often used sarcastically
practicing discrimination against, or segregation of, nonwhites, esp. blacks
White Washing or White Washed has a specific meaning as well and I found would be appropriate to be included into the Pseudonym.
To white wash something would be To conceal or gloss over (wrongdoing, for example).
The biggest problem with CSA is the refusal of adults to acknowledge that there is a problem at all.
This post is a work in progress and may be revised…
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Posted in Abuse, Blah Blah Blah Blog, Change: not just something that makes your hands stink anymore, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Coming to terms..., Commentary on My Cohort, csa, FEARS, More than 6 word memoirs, mothers of csa victims, Mothers of Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, PEERS, Sexual Abuse, Six Word Memoirs, TEARS, The Bad, Things that make me cry, Uncategorized
Tagged Abuse, African American, Child abuse, Child sexual abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Civil rights movement, Democratic Party, Democrats, History, King, Lily White, Lily-White Movement, LilyWhite, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King Day, Perception, Personal strength, Posttraumatic stress disorder, Psychological trauma, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Republican, Republican Party, Republicans, Sexual abuse, Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, United States