S:1 | E:5 "Without Justice, There Can Be No Love"

Summary

In this conversation, Sirona West shares her journey of empowerment, self-love, and compassion through the lens of her personal experiences. She discusses the challenges of navigating family dynamics, custody issues, and the impact of domestic violence on her life and her children's lives. The conversation emphasizes the importance of healing, justice, and the role of love in parenting.

Takeaways

Sirona emphasizes the importance of self-love and compassion.
Navigating family dynamics can be incredibly challenging.
The impact of addiction on relationships is profound.
Seeking safety is a crucial step in escaping domestic violence.
Messages from Spirit Guides can provide direction in difficult times.
The journey to safety can involve significant sacrifices.
Love and justice are intertwined in parenting.
Healing is essential to break the cycle of trauma.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Divine FemiNest Gathering
02:18 Personal Struggles and Family Dynamics
05:51 Legal Challenges and Custody Issues
09:31 Escaping Domestic Violence
17:12 Journey to New Beginnings and Reflections
24:19 Closing Thoughts and Call to Action
25:33 Invitation to the Divine Feminist Gathering
26:25 Outro

Links:

Save your spot for The Divine FemiNest Gathering - October 6, 2024:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-divine-feminesttm-gathering-tickets-1026188867527

Transcript

Welcome back, beautiful beings. I am so grateful to be here with you today. I am recording in a very open space, so it's going to be a little echoey and you may hear some background noise. And that's how we're going to roll today. So thank you for being here. I am so excited to say that the first Divine FemiNest Gathering was absolutely beautiful. Such an amazing co -creation with the beautiful people that showed up for that experience. And if you would like to join us for the next one in Santa Monica, California, that is happening on October 6th from 12 to 4 pm.

So you can find the information for that gathering. in the show notes and on my website and Instagram. So let's get into this episode. It's been a really interesting day. I'm working on this, working through this. This is the second time that I'm recording. And what I ended up doing, my process for this episode, was to actually write what I want to convey. There is something happening where this particular piece of the story, there are so many difficult things to articulate in all the stories that I'm telling.

But this part in particular was something that I really needed to figure out how to get across. And you'll understand why when you hear the content. So just another reminder, this has a bunch of sensitive information, a bunch of really...intense content and so it may be something that you want to listen to with your headphones on or make sure your kids are not around So we're going to go ahead and get started and then I will be reading something at the end after I share this story.

So let's get into, we got to take our deep breath. All right, so let's take a deep breath together and just get grounded and centered and come into presence first, okay? So deep breath in through the nose. Yeah, that feels good. Do that a few more times if you like. So in the last episode, I left off where I had moved myself and my kids into an apartment in Austin, Texas. I didn't allow my wife to move in with us as her addiction was becoming even more difficult to deal with.

The drinking was constant and even more severe than it had been for most of our marriage. It had become yet another situation we needed to escape from. But she did know where we moved and was at the apartment complex a couple of times with us as I was working to get us moved in. But I wouldn't let her into the apartment. So I'll come back to this in a moment.

Soon after we moved in, I received an email letting me know that the kid's father had gone back to court in South Texas and filed for full custody of the kids. I was no longer working with my lawyer at that time because she hadn't done much to help me over the last several years. 

And so I consulted with a new lawyer who told me that their dad had filed in a county that no longer had jurisdiction because none of the parties lived there. So he didn't live there and we didn't live there. So I decided that I was not going to attend this hearing because then I would have to give up our location. I felt trapped and had no good plan except to hide my kids as long as I could. 

Meanwhile, my wife went to live with her family which was also back in South Texas. And we didn't communicate much over the next six months, but we did speak a few times and I spoke to a few of her friends as well. Communication with her family has always been strained, but I knew she was hospitalized, diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, and she was told that she didn't have long to live.

For several weeks, she wasn't very coherent, but eventually she was released and she stayed with her mom and then with her grandmother for a short period of time and Her family was making plans for her funeral So when I would speak to her she would tell me that she didn't feel that her family wanted her to live anymore and That they made her feel like it would be easier if they didn't have to care for her. 

I was bracing myself to receive the news that she had passed and wondering what I would do in the event that we needed to go to her funeral with all that was going on. I felt guilty for not being able to take care of her in this stage in her life. I felt like it was my responsibility and that I had abandoned her. But I continue to live in this state of fear as I created the best life in a bubble for the kids that I could. 

Since it was COVID time, it was easy to homeschool them because they were already set up with their computers to have virtual classes. And we made the best of the conveniences that the apartment complex had to offer. There was a nice clubhouse and a pool, a dog park, and enough space for us to get out without really leaving much.

So they would ride their scooters and skateboards in the parking lot and we'd take long walks to nature spots together and just make memories the best that we could. But I wasn't working at the time and the money that I had was beginning to run out. I was looking for solutions, but I had no idea how to create what I needed while trying to take care of these responsibilities - which also included two dogs that I don't think I've mentioned so far. 

So as I'm worrying about and feeling guilty about my wife, I'm also receiving more and more information from the kids about the nature of abuse with their father. The reports just continued. And one night around 11 p we had such a traumatic experience with this that I called the police to make a report right then. 

So four officers showed up at our apartment. I told them the story of what we had been going through. I explained why I wasn't following our custody order and told them that I needed to add these new allegations to what had already been reported. They were very concerned and brought in a counselor for me to speak with. She wasn't allowed to legally speak with the kids at the time.

But the officer said they would add this information to the investigation that had begun in San Antonio. So they documented that the kids were well taken care of and that they felt safe and they wanted to stay with me. The kids thought that was pretty cool to have so many kind adults in uniform in their home at once. They felt protected. They felt like someone cared.

After this instance, I cautiously drove the kids back to San Antonio at the request of the original CPS investigator so that he could take photos of the kids to prove they were not missing and they were healthy and well. He told me in the parking lot as I got them into their car seats that even though the investigation ended up the way it did, that he would never be personally responsible for sending them back to their father. And he sent us on our way back to Austin. 

So the hearing that happened in South Texas without me resulted in the kid's father gaining full custody of them. And once that happened, I knew that it was only a matter of time before we had to figure something else out. I knew that it wasn't legal. That the county he went to court in didn't have jurisdiction, but that I didn't have the power in that moment to fight this decision. I was scared. 

I knew that my position was worse than before because now I didn't have legal custody of my own kids. Legally, he had custody, but physically I did. So in telling this story, I can only speak about one thing at a time, you know. 

I share it as a sequence of events, but it's more like all of these things were happening at once in and out of one another. All of this and the things I have yet to share happened in a six month period, the first half of 2021. So I can't remember the exact moment when the stalking began, but at some point I started to get that familiar feeling.

I could feel that we were being watched and followed by several different people and it got scary. Different things began happening like whenever I would check my mail, the door to my mailbox would already be open. I'd lock it and it would happen again. So I'm not gonna go into more detail about these strange occurrences right now, but I started receiving messages from my guides about going somewhere else.

I knew I couldn't go to stay with my family in Tennessee because that would be the first place he would look for us. So over the next few weeks, I began to move very carefully. I set up a camera inside the apartment so that I could take the dogs out without having to take all the kids and I'd still be able to keep an eye on them.

And this was actually a little bit entertaining because each time one of them would stand in front of the camera and use the voice function to ask me unnecessary questions like whose turn it was to pick a TV show. And I'd be like, dudes, I'm going to be back in five minutes. So the guidance and the signs began pointing me to New York.

I kept hearing that I would receive help there. The laws were different and more favorable for families trying to escape domestic violence. I wasn't sure if this is something I could really pull off because it felt like the furthest place I could go. And I had no idea what that would actually look like. But I just continued to trust and take one step at a time. 

I went to a domestic violence agency and asked them for help and they were able to provide me with a document that would allow me to break my lease legally. And they also gave me a bunch of gas cards so that I could save money on gas on the trip. They didn't know the amounts that were on the cards because they had been donated, but I was very grateful.

I planned to give myself a couple of weeks before leaving to get organized and figure out what to do with all of our things. And I had been speaking to Priscilla and she didn't want to be with her family anymore. She felt alone and scared and she was so sick. She had never had a good relationship with them in all the time that I knew her. So I really felt bad that she was in this position despite all the pain we had already gone through.

I felt that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I left her to die in Texas. So I told her that I was going to leave and that if she hurried, she could go with us. So she said she was coming. I took the document from the domestic violence agency to the leasing office and asked the leasing manager to please not tell anyone that we were leaving.

She promised and said that her sister had been through a similar situation and she wouldn't put us at risk. The next day I woke up to an email from the kid's father telling me that if I plan to flee the state, he would have me charged with kidnapping and I'd be arrested. So I knew we had to get out of there much faster than I planned. I called the neighbor who had a daughter that my kids would play with and swim with.

And we had become friends and they were the closest thing to family that we had close by. I told her what was going on and that I needed to leave immediately. I asked her if she would please clean out the apartment, sell what she didn't want and keep what she wanted and she reluctantly agreed. She couldn't believe this was happening. However, she had been through a similar situation with her daughter's father and understood the fear I was living in.

So I began to pack up what we could take, which wasn't much, and waited until it was dark and shuffled the kids to the car. And we met Priscilla in a nearby parking lot and a police officer came and seemed to be watching us while we were transferring her things into the car. It was really strange. And she was so weak, I had no idea how she had driven herself over four hours to get there.

She could barely stand without help. She was so orange. It was difficult to look at her, but she was calm and the kids were very happy to see her. We all finally got settled in our seats, including Luna. I had already found another home for Stella because I couldn't care for her and she just didn't have a good quality of life being such a big dog in our small space.

And we went off into the night. The journey to New York was full of challenges and obstacles. We attempted to stay in a hotel a couple of times, but we were being followed and had a scary moment where we were aggressively confronted in a hotel parking lot by a private investigator. And I also had very little money to spend on hotels.

So we lived in the car for the week as we made our way to New York. And when we finally arrived, we went to the YWCA and they helped us find a shelter to go to. We ended up in a small town with lots of woods and lived there for several months with other families. It was a very interesting time. And I'm going to have to stop here and pick this story back up in the next episode. 

But to end this episode, I would like to read from a book called All About Love by bell hooks. I'm gonna read several paragraphs from chapter two, which is called Justice, Childhood, Love, Lessons. And I really want you to be open to hearing these ideas.

This opens up a beautiful conversation for all of us to consider and to continue in our communities. And I do hope that you will, and I would love to hear your thoughts on it as well. So you can send me a DM on Instagram. all my information is in the show notes. 

So she begins this chapter two with a quote by Judith Vorst. And it says, severe separations in early life leave emotional scars on the brain because they assault the essential human connection. The parent -child bond, which teaches us that we are lovable. The parent -child bond, which teaches us how to love. We cannot be whole human beings. Indeed, we may find it hard to be human without the sustenance of this first attachment.

We like to imagine that most children will be born into homes where they will be loved. But love will not be present if the grownups who parent do not know how to love. Although lots of children are raised in homes where they are given some degree of care, love may not be sustained or even present. Adults across lines of class, race, and gender indict the family.

Their testimony conveys world of childhood where love was lacking, where chaos, neglect, abuse, and coercion reigned supreme. In her recent book, Raised in Captivity, Why Does America Fail Its Children, Lucia Hodgson documents the reality of lovelessness in lives of a huge majority of children in the United States. Every day, thousands of children in our culture are verbally and physically abused, starved, tortured, and murdered. 

They are the true victims of intimate terrorism in that they have no collective voice and no rights. They remain the property of parenting adults to do with as they will. There can be no love without justice. Until we live in a culture that not only respects but also upholds basic civil rights for children, most children will not know love. In our culture, the private family dwelling is the one institutionalized sphere of power that can easily be autocratic and fascistic. 

As absolute rulers, parents can usually decide without any intervention what is best for their children. If children's rights are taken away in any domestic household, they have no legal recourse. Unlike women who can organize to protest sexist domination, demanding both equal rights and justice, children can only rely on well -meaning adults to assist them if they are being exploited and oppressed in the home.

One of the most important social myths we must debunk if we are to become a more loving culture is the one that teaches parents that abuse and neglect can coexist with love. Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.

Yet parents do this all the time in our culture. Children are told that they are loved even though they are being abused. It is a testimony to the failure of loving practice that abuse is happening in the first place. In a society like ours where children are denied full civil rights, it is absolutely crucial that parenting adults learn how to offer loving discipline. Setting boundaries and teaching children how to set boundaries for themselves prior to misbehavior is an essential part of loving parenting. 

When parents start out disciplining children by using punishment, this becomes a pattern children respond to. Loving parents work hard to discipline without punishment. This does not mean that they never punish, only that when they do punish, they choose punishments like timeouts or taking away of privileges. They focus on teaching children how to be self -disciplining and how to take responsibility for their actions. 

Since the vast majority of us were raised in households where punishment was deemed the primary, if not the only way to teach discipline. The fact that discipline can be taught without punishment surprises many people. One of the simplest ways children learn discipline is by learning how to be orderly in daily life, to clean up any messes they make. Just teaching a child to take responsibility for placing toys in the appropriate place after playtime is one way to teach responsibility and self -discipline.

Learning to clean up the mess made during playtime helps a child learn to be responsible, and they can learn from this practical act how to cope with emotional mess. Until we begin to see loving parenting in all walks of life in our culture, many people will continue to believe we can only teach discipline through punishment, and that harsh punishment is an acceptable way to relate to children. 

Because children can innately offer affection or respond to affectionate care by returning it, it is often assumed that they know how to love and therefore do not need to learn the art of loving. While the will to love is present in very young children, they still need guidance in the ways of love. Grown -ups provide this guidance. Love is as love does, and it is our responsibility to give children love. 

When we love children, we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights, that we respect and uphold their rights. Without justice, there can be no love.

So I leave you with that. I thank you for holding the space, for listening to this difficult journey that we have walked and for being open to being part of the conversation, part of the solution as we go forward in families in this country. It's time for us to take off the masks. It's time for us to take responsibility for our own healing so that we don't continue to perpetuate this.

May you navigate this eclipse season with as much ease and grace as possible. But it is certainly time for things to be revealed. It is time for truth and it is time for justice. I will see you in the next episode. Remember to take your deep breaths. Namaste. Goodbye.

Before you go, I want to invite you once more to the Divine Feminist Gathering, happening October 6th from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. in Santa Monica on the beach. This is an inclusive gathering for all genders aimed to balance our energies through empowerment, self-love, and compassion. So we will begin by reading You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay.

Then we will do individual Akashic records readings followed by a healing circle. So I hope you will join us to save your spot. click the link in the show notes. You can also get that information on my website, sironawest.com and through my Instagram at sironawestauthor. This is a free event. So invite your friends and I hope to see you there.