1. The connection being established 2. Commitment established 3. Easiest and most believable ruse established 4. Isolation achieved 5. Stronghold that best fits established 6. Establish abuse cycle 7. Repeat, thereby reinforce, the cycle Of course, we’re NOT laying out the perpetrator’s path/pattern without laying out the path for the Black woman to GET OUT. That’s what we’ll spend the remainder of 2022 doing. Here’s that roadmap: 1. How to find the easiest way out 2. How to avoid the hoover vacuum 3. DVAM - the many places of support for the victim AND the survivor 4. How to broaden support 5. How to NOT repeat the cycle Why are we doing this? We know in order to change the narrative for the Black woman, you have to kill the myths she’s up against. In slaughtering those, you lay out a path for her to receive the help she needs with the compassion she deserves. Let’s start with the first part of the pattern laid by the perpetrator against the Black woman: he establishes the connection. Because Black women are taught at a young age that our job is to serve…”fix your brothers’ plates”...”take their coats for them”...”wash that out for them so they can use that”...If you’re a Black woman, you heard that often as a girl. What that taught you was that it was your job to serve and take care of the Black male. You saw respected women elders you knew and loved doing exactly what they were teaching you to do. That normalized it in your mind. OR You grew up in a church-going household, like me, like most of us as Black women. The religion most practiced by the Black culture is Christianity. Most likely the church you went to believed in the Bible as its spiritual guidance in written form. You heard many verses like 1 Corinthians 11:3, “the head of the woman is man”4 own husbands”5 ; and Ephesians 5:22, “wives submit to your ; and even 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, “... women should keep silent in the churches…they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission… if there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home”6. You heard first ladies say similar things and watched these same ladies hold their tongues while their husbands spoke, even if their husbands weren’t nearly as eloquent or intelligent. A-L-T-Y 17
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