It is distressing to see how much of this remains true for me, twenty years after I wrote these comments back in Izmir. But I have learned a little bit, at least, from the experience.
“This coworker told me that mentally i am still back in the US trying to please my very toxic family. (No surprise there given that I am essentially an orphan, and have been since I was 15, but even before that, I was certainly already an emotional orphan...) Particularly emotional manipulation -the connection, the love and affection İ want so desperately will not from them no matter what i do. Even though we all try to be civil and friendly toward each other now we all know that the truth is that there is no acceptance and there is no trust or connection, despite the empassioned pleas of love -parents who do not protect are worthless, (yup, Dad...) and parents who manipulate are worse than worthless (mom ). Yes, İ need to let go of this anger, but am İ afraid that in letting go of the anger İ will simply make way for more need and weakness. My anger and my pride has kept me alive (only because I had no other more apropriate tools, nor the necessary support…), though it is no longer the appropriate tool to use (never was, but it was all I had at the time...). İt is so hard to let go of. Trust is the hardest thing to develop, for if İ cannot trust my own family, who can İ trust. But it ls clear that they cannot be trusted. So İ am truely on my own. I have always known this, but why do i continue to struggle with this? Why can one email or one phone call cause so much pain? (Because she knows what buttons to push since, as M. said, she installed them…) How do İ leave those things in the past and live for my own future, one in which İ am relaxed and happy and not afraid of what may come -loneliness, abandonment, homelessness, estrangement, lack of respect. İnteresting that İ so desperately want respect … Our values are not the same and neither are our goals -this situation sucks the life out while only the Aegean gives it back (but so much better than the cats who cross the Bosphorus mewing and scratching as they go). İ see people here with smiles and familes and wish for my own but it is not to be -right now.”
Well, I can see that I kept holding out hope for building a family for myself while not understanding that my unusally traumatic childhood (ritual abuse is pretty unsual even for the large country which is the United States, and people who have survived it have not generally been able to avoid hospitalization, which I have avoided once or twice only by the skin of my teeth) background makes it nearly impossible for the majority of people to understand, let alone identify with me, so that makes building a family very difficult. One reason that we need vastly improved access to mental health care in the United States. Also yet another reason that my great aunt Sr. Felix Manzilla became a nun, I suspect. And her trauma was not so very different, given, unfortunately, that at the time, many well educated Negro notables were being lynched, and those murders were always counted as suicides if possible, so of course she was told this, since the Order certainly could not have afforded to take on the consequences of recognizing the truth at the time.
May we become able to change our times, for the better so that we can Do Better for all of us in this world.
–Nia, fka Shira,
ShiraDest publications,
S. D. Antonia Jones, Mphil
members, but once I returned as an immigrant with a job, whether it was living in Turkey, or in Bath as a PhD student, or in the Yucatan peninsula teaching English, again, I was, as here in Portugal, seen as a somewhat odd older foreign single woman, and avoided, even when I attended services regularly. Likewise in Montreal while I looked for work, attended services, and went to book club meetings regularly, as well a a particular restaurant, all in an effort to become a regular in several places, speaking the local language(s), the smokers are driving me insane with the lack of sleep, and the insistence at work on speaking English is exasperating given the glaring attempts to get free English practice and lessons out of me by, nearly everyone, just ast back in Turkey, and in Mexico, and in France. And being called an unrealistic Utopian, but here in Portugal that word has been replaced with Communist, by two of my former coworkers from Latin America. Conservatives with enough money to have learned English and secured work visas to come to Europe, so, people with privilege relative to those around them. I am the only one from a rich country working there, making me the only person there without a well to do family back home who paved my way to get here. 
And I keep somehow being scheduled for back to back night shift work for weeks on end with bizarre evening shifts in between and then sudden day shifts with one day per week in every four off, so I never seem to get two days in a row together in order to get enough rest but one or twice per month, and this schedule has already resulted in my being sent to the hospital by more than one doctor, which is a downward slope to illness. So I was not being told wrongly, twenty years ago, about northern Europe being better for me. But I still pine for the Aegean. 
for standing in this gap for all women.
he narrates these words, in English with Greek subtitles, a woman puts on makeup and a wig, then goes out to the street. Then begins a beautiful song, full of what sounds like longing. And sadness for the way this world treats the most vulnerable in our midst, as we close our eyes and continue to refuse the housing, basic food, health care and education that would prevent this on-going outrage in the first place, as Dr. King noted when he said that compassion is not flipping a coin to a beggar, but coming to see that the edifice which produces beggars, and we all know what happens to a woman when she is reduced to begging, is changed. To change our global edifice, we probably need to boycott a lot of things that we are accustomed to in favor of using public services and demanding more and better public services, at least for a start. This is why Phase I of Project Do Better begins with several key public services that would help absolutely every protect the human rights of all of us, especially abuse survivors. Read more about The Project and download the free manifesto for your community to edit and use as a 60 year plan to coordinate with other folks working to end homelessness, end hunger, and dovetail with the BLM and Prison Abolition movements for a kinder, safer, and more hope filled world for all of us, in the menu above this post on the ShiraDest website. 
East…
Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better 