Continuing On

I left you last with a quote regarding victims and creators. I feel this is one of the most powerful analogies I have found in my search for understanding the empowerment of women.

Part of becoming empowered, "to promote the self-actualization or influence of", is to decide against victimization and choose creation. You cannot always stop a situation which will result in your victimization, but you can stop the victimization from continuing beyond the act or circumstances. You can choose to create, to focus on where you want to be, what you want to come of the situation and how you can take back you, entering into empowerment.

You have to stop the victimization, walk away, get out of the darkness of defeat and find the light of strength. It is within all of us, but what we choose to do with it is where victims and creators separate. Victims stay in the situation, feeling powerless to change anything, or are sometimes just too weakened and have no will to do anything other than survive. Creators don't want to survive, they want to live.

Another story from my life which led me further down the path to womanhood and away from staying in the victim pool.

I attended a business school shortly after Amnesty was born in order to get some sort of job skills in order to raise my child. I was not going to depend on welfare, or a man. Both of which would have led me right back to victimization. To being dependent on outside sources which may or may not take care of the both of us.

After the end of my year at school, I found a decent job in Washington, D.C. and started my adult life of work and raising my child. Well, unfortunately the job was not enough to cover the great expense of my small family and I had to find a way to supplement my income. Now comes the victim. Feeling as though there was not much that I could do, because of lack of skill or education a friend led me to what would be my new life for the next four years. She introduced my to "dancing" and I became a stripper. I guess I was lucky that I had the ability, but I had no idea what I was getting into.

I felt as though I was right back in my childhood, with drugs and alcohol surrounding. Yet, I kept on going. Telling myself that I was doing it in order to give Am the life I did not have. It did not take long for me to realize that in this business, there is no you. There is a character that you play and there is no one who cares about the person behind the character. Those men wanted nothing except a face and a body in front of them. Soon enough I was lost in it. I was simply a face and a body. I was no longer Tracy, intelligent, strong, loving.... Just a face and a body.

For the second time in my life I stayed away from the drugs, and for the first time away from the prostitution. I went to work, made my money and went home loathing every cent, as well as myself. The funny part is I did nothing to change it. I just stayed stagnant, hating every part of it, including me. I fell into a depression I could not get out from under and I just continued to sink.

As I have said before, I have been blessed with many people in my life who eventually get me back to the right place and it was here, again, those people entered my life. My friends saw the change in me and started to call me out on it, knowing I would then begin to think and would follow with action. Sure enough it worked. I already knew I hated this profession, that it was not even close to who I truly was and I was ready to stop the craziness. I pulled myself up once again, found my strength, and realized my potential.

I slowly began to make changes working less at the club and soon found a perfectly good job waiting tables which I could do on the weekends, while I continued my office work. It took longer to stop feeling sorry for myself and find the woman who was still there, just a little buried.

I began to see a therapist and she was able to show me that the job did not make me another person, I chose to become another person. Aaahaa... Another very important lesson in empowerment. Things do not make you, you make you. It took some time, but I finally got back on the road and instead of taking the bad with me, I took the lessons learned from the bad and began to create again. I chose to use my mistakes in the positive, not to put myself down because I fell, but to praise myself because I got up.

Falling is not the problem, refusing to get up is!

References:
Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster Online. Retrieved November 27, 2007, Web Site: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empowerment