Category: abuse

Image description: a light purple background with a dark purple DV awareness ribbon “Help a DV victim fight back” with a photo of Katy

Help a DV Victim Fight Back

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

If you’ve known me for really any length of time, it’s quite likely that you’ve heard me talk about my best friend Katy.

We had a class together in our sophomore year of college. I remember thinking how cool she was and how much I wanted to be her friend.

Cut to senior year, and I’d succeeded! We lived together on campus, having regular dance parties, supporting each other through the swine flu, and helping each other stay awake during all-nighters.

Through heavy depression, transitioning, and cutting contact with my abusive mother, she has always been there for me.

And she’s been going through it over the last year.

She’s had to flee the home she owns for her safety, spending money both on trying to keep the home her ex is squatting in and keeping herself safe. It’s been unsustainable for a long time, but especially now after 409 days.

Breaking free from abusers is one of the hardest things someone can do, and it shouldn’t have to cost everything she has and more.

Please join me in uplifting Katy, whether that’s offering in-kind support, sharing her story, or donating to her GoFundMe campaign. Every share & donation, no matter how big or small, makes a difference in helping her rebuild her life and continue the legal fight against her ex.

Because everyone should be able to break free from the cycle of abuse and rebuild a life filled with safety, dignity, and hope — but especially someone who has done so much to help others going through abuse and domestic violence.

 

Sept 2024 update

Since fleeing her home on July 20, 2023, she has spent well over $100,000 trying to stay safe while also fighting litigation brought by her abuser. Her credit cards are maxed out, and she is very nearly at the point of bankruptcy because of this man.

This is a woman has worked as both a domestic violence and sexual violence victim advocate — and a college Title IX coordinator. She does amazing work every single day in higher ed policy around discrimination, opportunities for first-gen students, poverty, and more. She even spoke at SXSW this year on climate change and education.

But, 13 months of fighting is a lot.

Katy’s household bills, including mortgage, are due on September 1st, and she already had no idea how late she would be paying that (~$1800).

She is currently at a meditation retreat for some much-needed rest. I was hoping that she would be able to process some feelings while there and find some healing. But, she checked her email just before disconnecting for the weekend just to see her new legal bill — $4,000 due ASAP.

Ideally, she needs ~$6,000 by the end of this long weekend.

She is so close to the finish line, but needs our help.

 

What you’ll get in return

I am also offering free coaching to anyone who donates to help Katy.

If you upload a screenshot to my coaching interest form — available from this page — I will provide you with free coaching on any of these topics:

  • Brainstorming and Ideation
  • Identity-Related Coaching
  • Neurodivergent Coaching
  • Disability Doula / Coaching
  • Coaching for Partners
  • Relationship, Sex, and Intimacy Coaching
  • Communication Skills (especially in relationships)
  • Patient Advocacy
  • Planning to speak to children about disability and/or sexuality

 

Katy’s GFM link

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-a-dv-survivors-journey-to-freedom

 

Can’t help out financially?

That’s okay! You can still help! One thing that helps immensely is getting more eyes on this GoFundMe. If you can comment on or share posts that I’ve made (linked below) — or even make your own posts on social media sites — it would really mean a lot.

Here are a few of mine that you can feel free to share:

Thank you so much for considering helping her out.

All my best,
Grayson

Allowing Ourselves to Feel Our Feelings

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

A few years ago – when I was still doing talk therapy – I brought T with me a couple of times. I felt like there was tension we needed to talk out, and I was right. It just wasn’t the tension I was expecting.

TW for abuse, shitty parenting, emotional incest, self-harm

dark blue background with teal bubbles and white text: Allowing Ourselves to Feel Our Feelings - and teal text: Chronic Sex; on right, photo of a white person covering their mouth

Growing up, I’ve always been that person who tries to cheer everyone up. It’s a habit that developed early in life. Living between two combative abusers, I learned very quickly that they were less likely to cause harm if they were happy. Naturally, then, anytime they were sad or upset, I would do my darnedest to cheer them up.

It’s a large part of why I’m such a sticker around rules, too. If rules are followed, rule-makers don’t harm us, right? (Of course, the political activist in me shudders at that sentence and wants to vomit, but it is what it is I guess?)

Of course, that also meant hiding a lot of my own feelings for the ‘benefit’ of others. For a long time, I had two moods – happy and brooding. When I was happy, I would dance to the latest radio pop and hip-hop songs. When I wasn’t, I listened to a lot of Linkin Park and the beginnings of screamo.

It’s hard to find healthy coping mechanisms in a space full of harm. When I got out and away from my family, I still had to deal with a lot of abuse. It wasn’t until four years ago when I cut contact with my mother that I actually was able to start healing.

The euphoria of that separation, of cutting off codependency and emotional incest, combined with getting married was something I was able to ride for a long time. As they always do, though, that high wore off. I began to realize that I wasn’t as healed as I thought. That’s when I started therapy which helped for a little while.

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Emotional Incest Has Long-Lasting Effects

Posted on by Grayson Schultz

TW: emotional incest, childhood emotional abuse, harmful parental relationships, sexual assault

 

photo of a person with a skirt walking away from the camera on a road; green circle overlay with white text: Emotional Incest Has Long-Lasting Effects - Chronic Sex

When I was a little girl, my mom told me it was us against the world. That alone would’ve been fine if she didn’t rely on me for so much. From the time I was three or four onward, I had to consciously carry her emotionally. I became the parent that not only I needed, but she needed, too.

a young Kirsten stands outside in a colorful early 90s outfit

This is called emotional incest. I became essentially my mother’s keeper – not only her parent but the equivalent to her partner. When she started dating, I would have conflicting feelings about whomever she was seeing. Any teenager would have, but it was different. There was a layer of mothering where I worried about her choices – especially since she wanted to share sexual details I didn’t need to know – but also some jealousy. Of course, my feelings became even more complicated when one of her boyfriends sexually assaulted me… and she stayed with him for almost a year afterward.

My teenage years were horrible because of it. I was struggling to gain my independence at a time everyone does, but it was much harder. The fights were more intense, more hurtful. I was so enmeshed with my mother that I couldn’t be myself. When I was in college, I had to get a job behind her back because she feared what the emotional and financial independence would cause. In both high school and college, she would threaten my friends and force them to leave over her embarassment of mishearing song lyrics. She’d call my boyfriends and chew them out in hours-long conversations.

Then again, she gave me her wedding planning book from the 80s when I was 15 and got a new boyfriend. She simulatneously kept pushing me to marry him while forbidding me to see him. Sometimes it was pushing me to be intimate with him and ask me questions about it while forbidding me to have sex.

It was bad. Really bad.

Continue reading “Emotional Incest Has Long-Lasting Effects” →