The Art of Victim Shaming

by | Oct 2, 2022 | 0 comments

Date From : 2015-01-01
Date To: 2022-09-30
Location: Melbourne to Proseerpine and back

When I thought the worst was over, and I had triumphed from the most cruellest of scenarios, I inwardly conversed with myself and agreed, that it doesn’t get much worse than that, I had been tested on the rawest of survival skills, and came out alive, changed forever, but alive !

If I can survive that, I can survive anything….

But I was to be tested again, by a far more formidable emotional weather event, that if there was a unit of measurement to grade it, this would be the worst storm in history, and literally off the charts..

When you think you are home safe, and you’re actually not !

When someone else, who has been degraded, used, made mistakes, ironically most likely due to the same medication, that was at the root cause of my change in life direction, uses my set of circumstances, to use an excuse for theirs !

Despite me having literally zero contact with them for the previous 4 or 5 years, each Christmas spent with newly met friends, on the street, with the Salvos, or in one case, semi-adopted by a beautiful Indigenous family in Proserpine, Far North QLD, after residing in an apartment at a deserted luxury resort with the no airconditioning over the hottest and most humid parts of the tropical summer. Christmas was laid out, but like all functional families, we had our chores too. It was my job to cook the meat, and bring it to the house, from the apartment, 45Km on a country road, into town, and just past the other side.

Unlike the Anglo Saxon upbringing I was accustomed to, I was in a culture where it was expected to give your elders respect, and thanks, not a mild assumed, but expected ! And for misbehaviour, there was the lore (spelt correctly), a hand me down set of punishments fit for any crime, and governed by the elders.

I learnt that when someone in their culture “lost the marbles”, they had a word for it, and it was “womba”, or “womby”, that bloke gone womby, I remember them saying.

They were actually referring to their son and cousin who seemed to have developed some type of schizophrenia or phsychosis of sorts, and I expect his daily exposure to marijuana (his choice, not his families), was an escape. The thing is, in their way, they accepted him for who he was.

One time, in the back shed, I literally walked in on him, having a conversation with his friends, who didn’t exist, he was not  ashamed, or embarrassed, his family had accepted him, he had a home ad was safe, he had no reason to be ashamed. Aunty Marie, the indigenous elder who invited me to her family lunch, has passed now, but I too will always be having conversations with her too. It was for her, that this litle unit, was so functional.

For some reason, unknown to me and probably her, we bonded and had respect for each other. I had respect for the way she was loved by her family, and the way she loved hers, and her wider family and the community at large. She provided a place for her grandson, when he needed it most, and allowed him to be womby in his most womby ways, with gentle encouragement to be friendly. Our connections were through mutual acquaintances, Chris,  Ken Peters-Dodd and PEter Santos, all indigenous, ELders, or on their way to becoming one and all with their own personality and nuances that make them unique.

Need to expand on how this differed to my re-engagement back to family, or rather lack thereof,

How I was victim shamed, so as to make others look better, or my circumstances created for the detriment of others.  How I was told that because of what I had been through, there was a conspiracy to bring a family member into disfavour. Of course this wasnt true, the world runs on goodness, and not retribution.

Remind me to talk about

https://www.facebook.com/austindigenousart

https://www.facebook.com/ken.petersdodd

First Nation Warriors: Proud and Strong