One of the first lessons I learned when I first began to get out of my abusive marriage is how to advocate for myself—a hard lesson for a woman who spent her entire life believing that self-advocacy was evil. I now see that when God doesn’t rescue you from your bad marriage, it’s because He wants to do something so much better in your life. He wants you to get strong enough to rescue yourself.
I believe this kind of self-advocacy is a necessary adulting skill that we all need to acquire as part of the growing up process—for our own sake and also for the sake of our children after us. We can’t pass that skill on if we aren’t able to model it ourselves.
We want our children to grow up taking responsibility for themselves, making decisions without fear, and moving forward with hope and purpose in spite of the obstacles and challenges they will face. They can’t do that (and neither can we) if they aren’t able to advocate for themselves.
So what do we need to do to begin advocating for ourselves?
In this episode, you’ll learn how to take responsibility for yourself, make decisions without fear, and move forward with hope and purpose in spite of obstacles and challenges.
This podcast is an audio reproduction of this article HERE.
Watch the YouTube video of this podcast episode HERE.
The Comments
K
Such a timely topic for me … as I sit writing to a pastor who knows our situation, has agreed that it is abusive (he actually called my h an anti-Christ) … and has then sat and helped my abusive spouse to “load his gun” so to speak. He has been textbook “what NOT to do” in an abusive situation for 20 months now, while I’ve been questioning his handling of the situation and trying desperately to give him information. (Loved the Mend Project sheet for pastors that you linked to.) Now I’m writing for me and I’m also writing for the one who comes after me. Hard, full of facts and quotes from the pastor’s writing. It feels pretty aggressive (not my thing) but there comes a time when you have to do it – you just have to.
Thank you for being there and posting this when it was “my time” …