By Dr. Jeanne King, PhD.
This has been the most disturbing and most healing year of my life. Today is Thanksgiving and I’m drawn to the keyboard with an overwhelming appreciation of the blessings within, around and before me.
Why is it disturbing? Anyone can see what’s happening to humanity in the era in which we live. With people dying, losing their health, livelihoods and freedoms, it is crystal clear. The disintegration of the human race as we once knew it is apparent to anyone looking.
So, why in all this mess do I claim it is the most healing year in my entire life? Read on to discover why…
My Exile
In 1999, I fled my state to avoid an imminent forced, court-ordered medical intervention that I did not need and that would have only caused harm to my mental, psychological and physical health. And for nearly 20 years following I held some residual angst over my departure.
I knew at the time that I was clearly acting in my best interest and I believed in the interest of the people I brought into this world. However, there was this gnawing within (from time-to-time), hearing the voice of my youngest on the phone (four years after I left) pleading, “How can we get you back? We know you aren’t crazy. It will only take 30 days.”
My ex and his legal team sought to “butt f___” me, as they described it, threatening again and again, in our domestic violence divorce. Essentially, they plotted to use my own psychology profession to “destroy me” by parking me in a psychiatric hospital involuntarily and holding me in a psychiatric lockdown. (Interesting how pathological tyrants tell you how they are going to hurt you as they are plotting and or doing it.)
Their claim was that they needed me to retake a battery of psychological tests, generally administered out-patient, to prove my worthiness to have contact with the very people I birthed and raised, as the primary psychological parent, for nearly 16 years. Mind you, I had already taken all of these tests yielding results evidencing my complete mental and psychological health and wellbeing, as well as my parenting proficiencies.
The Perverted Agenda
Now it might be that they wanted my demise via psychiatric incarceration, as repeatedly threatened. This would have given them the authority to inject or administer whatever life altering and destructive psychotropic and electroshock “treatments” their hearts desired…leaving me as a mental vegetable.
This is common practice when high-profile narcissistic domestic abuse rears its ugly head in the public domain or in family court. It’s the reason we see so many domestic violence survivors institutionalized and or incarcerated. It silences the abuse by discrediting the abused.
Alternatively, it is also likely they realized I’d probably run out from under the jurisdiction of the state, thereby giving them the ability to put in the court record whatever they wished. As it turns out, the latter is exactly what happened. When I failed to fall pray to their ploy, that became their justification for the enhancement of other tyrannical actions that followed.*
Personal and Bodily Autonomy
Beginning June 2021, as I witnessed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide stand up for bodily autonomy, I realized that their inner calling was exactly as mine in 1999. These people were (and are) speaking out for the freedom to choose what they put into their bodies.
Their plea was no different than mine. People from all walks of life were walking off their jobs and leaving livelihoods that they had dedicated decades embracing. I, too, had left a 19 year magnificently satisfying livelihood that I was passionate about…all in the interest of bodily autonomy. And that’s a small part of it. I actually left every single aspect of my life including the people I loved in the interest of my personal bodily autonomy.
Your body is your temple. It’s the vessel that houses your soul. You are the Shepard and it is your Godly responsibly to take care of this vessel in the way you see fit. There is no right or wrong. There is personal choice, and your responsibility to exercise that choice in the service of your highest good.
When you lose the right to control what goes into your body, you are just like a farm animal. Without your bodily autonomy, you have nothing. You are a slave at the mercy of another’s agenda. You are a victim of a tyrannical force.
Where in you own life do you see the microcosm in the macrocosm? Where in your life can you feel the healing from such a parallel? Where in your life do you know peace though your vision of the bigger picture?
For more information on healing from domestic abuse, please join InnerSanctuaryOnline.org where I will show you the darkness and reveal the light in thousands of patients’ journeys toward health and wellbeing following an abusive relationship.
* The entire story is documented in All But My Soul: Abuse Beyond Control, 2001. Get your free digital copy and protect yourself.
© Dr Jeanne King — Domestic Violence Prevention and Intervention