abigailmacewan.com

What about now?

Pleasure is possible

I've chosen this painting as my avatar not only because of I’ve been a huge fan of D.G. Rossetti since uni, but because Jane Morris’ huge frizzy mop resembles my own. A quick google search will reveal photos of the real pre-raphaelite beauty looking pretty darn ‘ordinary’, which is how I would describe my own appearance, though like Rosse

How I transitioned from church girl to tantric masseuse is the stuff of my book Lovebomb : a memoir, yet to be published.

If anyone wishes to imagine what I really look like, a look at Rossetti’s Morris-inspired paintings in concert with photos of the real Jane Burden will provide an approximate not too far off the mark. The open book, open window and lush green setting of the painting are also a perfect reflection of my love of books, beauty and the natural world.

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Pleasure is possible

I've chosen this luscious painting to illustrate an aspect of my life which was never allowed while I was with my partner: the time and luxury to prepare food that I like. The sumptuous variety and colour of the table before the merchant’s wife really resonates with me in terms of the new freedoms that have come with leaving my partner.

After all, abused wives don’t get to cook what they want. They are terrible cooks. Their food either tastes like shit or elicits derisive laughter. Even when I was first married, when all should have been happiness and joy, my attempts at gourmet meals: chicken with couscous in a lovely white wine, peanut sauce, home-made pizza with spinach and bacon and a hint of nutmeg (long before such things were ‘trending’) or even roast chicken (something I’d done dozens of times, being the daughter of poultry farmers) got standardly dissed and rejected for Kraft dinners made with double the cheese sauce (cheese loaf really once it congealed in the fridge) and those lovely little fat-laden sausages called grillems on a bun (to his credit garnished with five-year-old Balderson and red onion).

Thus I retreated to years of nibbling on sausage ‘bums’ and the ends of buns, to crumbs of aged cheddar and onion dripping with barbecue sauce left-over on the children’s plates when they were done, lest I eat too much of the salty, fat-laden sausages themselves after consoling myself with crackers and cookies all day. This was how I self-soothed after all the unnatural demands of my husband; all the unwanted sex with strangers and all the herculean blow jobs he’d demand of me in the bedroom before his almighty porn, till all I could think about was the next little treat I’d pop into my mouth to stave off the ugliness, the next social tea biscuit with glass of diet coke, or soda crackers with butter and thinly-sliced baldy on top.

In seeking to preserve a flat stomach for ‘working,’ I went without nourishing food for years. No more! It has taken me eight years to normalize; to move from spoonsful of peanut butter downed desperately in the middle of lonely nights, to actual real food. After finally getting my snacking under control (only this year, eight years after leaving him), I prepare what intrigues me each day in the interest of my ongoing health.

I go all out. A quiche with smoked gouda, stir-fries with grated ginger and oyster sauce, vegan sweet potato patties with a dip of Greek yogurt, siracha and honey. Pan-seared cod with homemade tapenade.

I peruse recipes like my ex perused porn, only without my hand down my pants and a lock on the bedroom door to prevent the kids from entering. Yay for basic freedoms and yay for health!

What are your own particular methods of coping? Are they healthy, and if not, in what ways could they change in order to be more nourishing to your body or spirit?

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Colour and Pageantry: two more elements forbidden to abused women.

Abused partners don’t get to d

Living spaces are re-claimed

Friendships are restored

Colour and Pageantry: two more elements forbidden to abused women.

Abused partners don’t get to decorate their homes the way the want to. Though it’s a well-known fact that women are natural nesters, they must constantly sublimate such inclinations in light of the desires of their husbands: for grow-ops and boudoirs-turned movie-theaters; for never-ending shelving units and ash-trays and litter-boxes for the multitudinous stray cats that an abuser will take in in order to demonstrate to the world that he is not a complete asshole; that his wife’s bruises and cowerings are somehow balanced out by this easy kindness to homeless animals; this solicitous care for poor, desperate strays that will never argue with him, never express a mind of their own and only ever demonstrate the most basic emotions of gratitude and loyalty.

Even if an abuser deigns to help his partner paint a room in need of touch-up, that room will descend to chaos for no other reason than its new value in the mind of the abused. The abuser knows it is precious, therefor it is more vulnerable than it was before: to thrown coffee cups, to fists against walls, to dents in doors and thrown remotes; the final condition of the house swept clean so much worse than its condition before.

Though I can post neither photos of my real home, nor of my new work-space (a veritable Shangri-La; an indoor zen garden), I can substitute these pics to represent the beauty that can be sought; the creativity that can be exercised outside the tyranny of an abuser.

Please feel free to share your own stories!

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Friendships are restored

I’ve chosen this beautiful well-known painting to represent the thing most glaringly missing from the life of an abused woman and the most powerful piece of arsenal at her disposal in escaping an abusive partnership:

female friendship.

Not to say that I have, in any way, successfully revived any of my own oldest relationships. Many wer

female friendship.

Not to say that I have, in any way, successfully revived any of my own oldest relationships. Many were simply too thoroughly destroyed to ever be resuscitated; too cruelly dismembered to ever be put back together again, though a certain hope is engendered by the above painting: of sisterly joy, beauty and the shared rites of passage we survivors so often missed.

In search of such a phenomenon, and having received much help through local women’s advocacy groups, I’ve currently enrolled myself in volunteer training wherein my intimate knowledge of the intersection of woman abuse and prostitution, lived experience of child apprehension and the difficulties of leaving with children may finally be put to some use.

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