***Trigger Warning: Discussion includes sexual violence***
In early 1977 when I was 21 years old, I was followed into a building and attacked with a knife. I was raped. It is hard to express the rent in your soul when something like that happens. And yet it is a common trauma in our patriarchal world, used as a weapon of war and, in general, to control women’s bodies. When I think of Israeli women being raped even as they were murdered, I don’t even know how to process that level of evil. As for myself, I was an easy mark as victim because I had been groomed to be meek by childhood abuse.
Afterwards, I went to a support group. I found the women there to be so angry that I couldn’t continue. Perhaps they reflected my own anger I couldn’t express although in retrospect I think there was more. That anger was so hot and intense it felt like a web of emotion that if I had allowed it to draw me in, I would have been trapped. (Note: this was not only a very long time ago, but I doubt that my experience is/was reflective of support groups like this in general. Support groups can be tremendously important in healing). The boy – and I say boy because he was easily as young as I was – was of an obvious racial category. I will call that group xyz to keep that part anonymous.
Many years later one of my adult children asked me if I hated all xyz’s after the experience I had been through. The thought had never occurred to me. I started to do a self-assessment to see why I hadn’t headed in that direction.
I remember when I was looking through a police headshot book specifically of the xyz racial group, I pointed to an xyz male who resembled the person who raped me. The officer asked loudly so anyone close by could hear, “should we go pick him up?” I was horrified. He only resembled the person. Yet based on my description of “he sorta looked like this” they were ready to go out and arrest someone. I quickly said no, it wasn’t a close enough match. The book must have had 20-30 headshots per page. I could barely see the distinctions of the faces anymore. One thing I was crystal clear on, however, was that I didn’t want someone else, especially someone unconnected, to suffer just because I was.
In the fall of 1977, about 8 or 9 months after this occurred, and through a complicated series of events I only marginally remember, I found myself working for a tutoring agency. There was only one employee. A priest named Father Ted Jasinski. I was his trainee. He had me tutoring many ethnic groups of high school kids and drop-outs that included xyz’s. What I didn’t understand at the time was that he was showing me by his own example what it means to be in a state of open heartedness. By spending my days with xyz’s and others I was getting to know about lives lived differently than my own. The kids in my groups were each facing their own traumatic challenges. In what was likely the oddest pairing was a group that included a pimp (Johnny) and “his girls” He brought them in to earn their GED (high school equivalency diploma). Here I was as a sexually traumatized young adult, and I was teaching a group seeking to survive their own sexual traumas coupled with other traumas of poverty. I learned about that so intimately, it became easy to see human beings as their entire selves, not as their separate aspects.
When I look at conflicts around our world, there are s0 many nasty conflicts including Israel and Gaza. In this country, antisemitism and islamophobia are playing out in the most vile and harmful rhetoric which too often translates to violence. In this country, we are still battling issues left over from the revolutionary and civil wars. In the Middle East we can still see the scars from not only WW II but all the way back to biblical times. That’s a heavy burden for all of us to carry.
A former teacher of mine said something very profound that has stuck with me. He noted that with all the hate against “others” in the world, the tragic circumstance is that when a baby is born it’s as if we are saying, “welcome to earth precious little one. Here are the people you need to hate.”
The key to my healing has been to keep an open heart. And to that I attribute the year I spent with Father Ted. It took me a long time to find that healing pathway for myself, but he planted the seeds for when I was ready. He taught me about basic humanity. He taught me what unconditional love means. He taught me what’s possible.
I want to honor Father Ted who taught me these lessons. He disappeared from my life in 1978, after only a year. In 2021, some people who had heard of him found me because they were looking for him. It turns out I am the only one of two living people they could find who knew him personally.
For that I feel a grave responsibility to share his lessons.
I don’t know how someone keeps an open heart in the midst of violence and deep hatred, kidnapping, and mass death. I don’t even know if it is possible for the average person. But I do know this, giving into a bitter angry heart becomes the loss of our shared humanity. And we lose our own self as well.
It is fair to say it is basic human emotion to struggle to keep our hearts open in the throes of trauma. That is why we need to protect those kernels of love in anyway we can. That will eventually be the key to finding the pathway of healing. Our own healing also leaves a legacy for our precious little ones, born out of love, so they don’t have to carry the burden of historical hate.
The lesson I learned is that even when our hearts are broken, or especially when, to guard those seeds of love within us. Our hearts carry those seeds and to lose those is to lose the most precious gift of all. The growth from that seed will not only be beautiful, but it will also affect everyone in our world because it will be the product of love. That is the only route to change ourselves and our world without rampant and ugly violence overtaking everything.
I see this lesson appear in the bible. Different translations are below because each one highlights a different aspect of this teaching.
Proverbs 4:23
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
(King James)
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
(New International Version)
Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
(New Living Translation)
Enfold your heart in lovingkindness, for it is the wellspring of your life.
(my own translation)
* * *
This is what Father Ted taught me. I believe that everyone needs a Father Ted in their lives!
Final Note: I write in more detail about my experience with Father Ted and with the student from my classroom, Johnny, who was so much more than a pimp, in my biography Desperately Seeking Persephone. The book is available on Kindle on Amazon, but the Amazon site is “mucking” with me and right now it is not available as paperback in the US for direct sale. It can be purchased on Amazon from a 3rd party vendor or directly on Barnes and Noble here. I am in the process of re-issuing the book under my own imprint – FlowerHeartProductions. It will be substantially the same book but with a different cover.
Discover more from Feminism and Religion
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Feminism and Religion 
Thank your sharing. Your story is medicine that the world needs, especially now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Carolyn, I love your turn of the phrase. “Medicine that the world needs.” Just beautiful.
LikeLike
Love this essay, Janet! Am reading a YA novel right now (one of my favorite genres) titled WOVEN IN MOONLIGHT by Isabel Ibanez. One of the main themes is empathy–getting to know your “enemy” or even those who are different from you fans those sparks of love we all (probably) have deep within our hearts. Sorry about all the difficulty you’re having with your book! I’m determined to find it and read it ;-)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Esther. Sounds like an interesting book by Ibanez. Love the concept of “sparks of love.”
And thank you re: my book. I just ordered the proof so hopefully I can get that up next week. It is the same as the old one – just a different color cover, a different subtitle and I did change the name of one chapter.
LikeLike
Janet this is such a critically important post and a challenge to us all – – thank you with all my heart…
.”When I think of Israeli women being raped even as they were murdered, I don’t even know how to process that level of evil”.
I find that I can’t process what is happening now everywhere on a global level.
I feel overwhelmed and yet I KNOW that the only way through is to keep an open (if wary) heart even when I can’t imagine a positive outcome.
This morning I wrote a FB post about my bridge – that bridge has survived every flood this year and its enduring presence is a constant reminder that no matter how I feel I must stay open to creating bridges to the other side (s). Maybe it’s the intent that matters; I don’t know. Regarding my post – the picture of the bridge was ‘accidentally’ replaced by a photo I took of my passionflower whose tendrils made a perfect spiral in mid center! The Spiral Way….
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Spiral Way is the way of the heart – yes?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh totally, great way to put it “the spiral way is the way of the heart.” Bridges and spirals – truly the keys!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for your support Sara. Are you talking about a picture mix-up here on FAR? Let’s take that part of it to email.
LikeLike
Gosh not sure what you mean Janet – that was a FB post I wrote this morning – sorry for the confusion – such a moving post – so many honest and compassionate responses YAY FAR – YAY JANET!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reading you’re experience brought tears to my eyes.
My Mother was kidnapped and raped when she was 19. I found out when I told her I was raped when I was 13. She cried and said “It happened to me too!” I didn’t let her know until I was 17.
So many of us with these stories. Thankyou for sharing your story. I hold space in my heart that this happened to you.
I agree with keeping an open heart. Compassion and not generalizing people. I was raped by “xyz” and went through years of therapy and gained clarity. Clarity that it’s not the group to blame or discern, it’s each individual as a human being. I think sharing these stories perhaps helps to heal our own hearts. Thankyou Janet.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh Michelle, I am so sorry to hear your own story and that of your mothers involves rape. It is just ubiquitous in this world. That is the hallmark of what patriarchy is. Women are usable and disposable. Carrying it for 4 years alone feels like a special kind of horror.
I agree that sharing our stories is indeed a way to heal. Perhaps that is why I write about my experience so much. I find it easier than talking about it. Somehow talking has a vibration that is more painful.
Thank you for sharing the space in your own heart for my healing. I hold space in mine for you and your mother.
Here’s to healing all of our hearts!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Janet, for sharing your story and also for sharing Fr. Ted with us. I am in awe of you and all the others who have shared their stories in posts and comments here at FAR. I am thinking back to my own teen years, some half-a-century ago, when this kind of open discussion about abuse and violence against women and honesty about how it affects us and we can heal from may not have happened. We have come so far in so many ways since then, however much the world hasn’t changed in other ways. I think all of us, maybe especially those who grew up in the times we did, and certainly especially those who survived abuse, were groomed; most of us were all taught to be “nice,” to not create conflict or “make a fuss.” We have come so far in that way, too. But I especially want to note how important it is that you mention and acknowledge Fr. Ted. So often just the right person comes along at just the right moment, like a miracle, and we can forget to acknowledge them if they then pass out of our lives. I really appreciate hearing being reminded to think about and be grateful to all those people. And I, too, am sorry to hear about your problems with your book! I have read it and I loved it! I hope it is available to lots and lots of people soon!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you Carolyn, I know what you mean about the importance of shared stories and how so many of us have been “shut up” by shame. I call it the “damaged goods” concept as if we become damaged by the violence we had no agency over. It took me a long time to get over that. Can’t even say for sure I have reached total healing on that point.
I am so delighted I can honor Fr. Ted publicly. He taught me so much but it took me something like 40 years to realize just how much.
And thanks re: my book. I feel like it has had to take its own little jaunt through the Underworld. I guess you don’t just write about Persephone without a little bit of pushback from that Underworld energy.
LikeLike
Dear Janet, when I read your story closely, I could see that you were already a person of integrity even before you met Father Ted. Even at such a young age, you had misgivings about what the authorities were asking of you. I admire that in someone as young as you were at the time. Your decision to accept Father Ted’s teachings and the integration you speak of now reminds me of Victor Frankl’s integrity of spirit. Thank you for being such an inspiration.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Terry for highlighting that I had done that with the authorities. I hadn’t thought too much about it and it does feel like it informed events that were to come.
I remember loving Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning but it has to be 20 years since I’ve read it. Maybe time to dust it off and re-read. Thanks again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for this, Janet. Such good advice to keep trying to keep our hearts open. I didn’t know until I was an adult that my mother was likely the result of a rape. Her mother was only 15 when she was conceived. My children, my sister, and I wouldn’t be here if that hadn’t happened, but the trauma gets passed down and must be addressed. I’m glad you had Father Ted in your life.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Wow, complicated family history. I hope you, your children, your sisters have been able to heal that family trauma. It is in our bones, is it not? Thank you for sharing this piece of your family with us.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, it is in our bones….
LikeLiked by 1 person
I guess we are all xyzs to somebody sometimes, so it is great to be able to have compassion and hope for the best for all–some of it even turns out well! Good for you for trying to stay loving and not bring unhappiness upon others who might not even have been the harm-doer.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well there it is in a nutshell, Donnalee. “We are all xyzs to somebody.” Would that we all could appreciate that. Thanks for the comment.
LikeLiked by 1 person