Welcome to Healing Out Loud

a long overdue introductory newsletter

Hi, I’m Sarah, and this is the long overdue introductory newsletter for Healing Out Loud.

Why Healing Out Loud?

The short answer comes from a quote you’ve probably seen it before. Its origin is unknown, but it’s commonly associated with TWLOHA. It goes, “Heal out loud, because we almost lost you in the silence.”

My life has been turbulent, and for a long time I was in a pattern of going from one abusive relationship to the next. Most recently, a relationship that lasted nearly a decade and included a 6 year marriage.

There’s a lot I could write about that experience, some I’ve already shared, and I’m sure more will come as I process the trauma and navigate this new season of my life.

I didn't have the language to describe my abuse for a long time. I am autistic, and in my mind, abuse had to be intentional and malicious in order to be abuse. Eventually I realized that if you explain over and over how someone is hurting you and they don’t bother to stop, their inaction is intentional. They care more about themself than they do about the harm they’re inflicting. I didn’t know terms like weaponized incompetence, household inequity, domestic/invisible load, unpaid labor, etc. I didn’t know that exploiting people in these areas was a form of power and control.

My ex husband and his family were very Fundamentalist, and also very toxic for many reasons. That coupled with the Fundamentalist teachings I had already absorbed from growing up Christian in the South and in a deeply patriarchal society, led to a deep level of internalized misogyny that I am still working through. I thought I was being a good wife by cooking, cleaning, doing all the parenting, life admin, emotional labor, etc. I laughed at jokes about men being incapable of grocery shopping without calling home 15 times or being able to load a dishwasher. I excused the sloppiness because that’s just how men are, right? And you know women, they’re oversensitive and need to accept that men are just different than we are. Mens brains are waffles, women are spaghetti, men are from mars, women are from Venus. Bullshit.

I no longer have Meta Accounts, but I’m grateful for groups like Bridging the Gap, The Bar for Men is so Low It’s a Tavern in Hades and its sister support group, and for the publication Liberating Motherhood by Zawn Villines. I learned so much, and felt so validated finally thought yes, this is what I’m trying to describe!

I started consuming more feminist content, learning more about abuse, desperately searching for a new way to explain to my ex husband how he was hurting me so that he’d stop. I finally accepted that would never happen, and I left. Thank God.

When I had first separated from my abuser, I had no idea how I would move forward. I had no idea how to get through it. The pain was all consuming, and as I’d a stay at home mom for several years, no one was jumping at hiring me, and anything that did lead to an offer was so little money it wouldn’t even cover our basic living expenses, let alone daycare.

I spent a lot of days crying on the kitchen floor, picking myself back up, and getting back to business. I leaned on the stories of other women who had walked this impossible road before me, and they gave me hope. Now, I want to pay that kindness forward.

So many women (and AFAB people) have stories similar to mine, but talking about it is discouraged. Victims aren’t believed, we’re blamed, we’re judged or shamed, and we’re threatened. But we have to have these hard conversations. They are integral to understanding these systems that oppress us— patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, etc. — so we can dismantle them. Knowledge truly is power.

Writing has been integral to my healing, and so has sharing it. One of the biggest ways my abuser robbed me of my power was by taking my voice. He has his version of the narrative, and it will always paint me as the villain. That’s fine. I know what he did to me. He can spin it however he wants, but I’m taking my voice back. I’m telling my story, because if I don’t get this rot out of me, it will fester and consume me.

I share my writing for personal reasons, but also because if I can help someone else feel seen along the way, that's all l want. I can’t reach back through time and tell myself, Hey, we’re going to be okay. One step at a time. We’ll figure it out. We can do this. It will be better on the other side— don’t believe him.

But I can tell you. If you are starting out, take it one step at a time. It is so easy to get lost in the details, the in between, the impossibility of getting from here to all the way over there. It has helped me to focus only on the next right thing. The path will reveal itself to you. You will find your way forward.

I will leave you with this quote said by Galadriel in Fellowship of the Ring.

“Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them.”

I don’t know what my path is yet. I don’t know how I will make it where I need to be, but I know that I’ll get there, one way or another.

Love and healing to you all. 🩵

Love,

Sarah