Why is talking about “refusing to be the victim” as a family essential? Sometimes, we do not realize that we are victims in different circumstances. In this episode of Reclamation, the Reclas: Tonya, Justin, and Neva talk about the importance of family for someone to break the chains of victimhood, self-empowerment, and creating boundaries. Neva shares her childhood experience with a family friend that awakened her to manage herself out from being a victim. The Reclas emphasize the power of love and how it can help a person take charge in a situation to decide whether to be a victim or not. Join Tonya, Justin, and Neva in today’s episode to know more about how they refuse to be victims.
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Reclamation show. I am Neva Lee, and I’m with…
Today we’re going to be talking all about “refuse to be the victim.” Why are we talking about refusing to be the victim and why is it so important to talk about it as a family? The main idea of the show is going to be based on something I experienced when I was younger. We had a family friend who I met when I was two and he started to be a little touchy with me, not a little, he was touchy with me. It resulted in some consequences and some great experiences for me. I was able to walk through discovering who I was in refusing to be the victim. I’ve written poems about it and how you don’t have to sit in victimhood. Something we were able to walk through as a family is how to not be a victim together.
I was able to learn from both my parents what I can do to not let experiences of trauma come up or not say, even though legally, maybe I am a victim, it’s… I don’t need to identify as that. That’s not what I need to build my identity around because there’s so much more than what happens. Today, we’re going to be talking all about that, about how to walk through that victimhood mindset and hit the victim in the face, but then hug it out afterward and how to walk through that as a family. So, mom, I’m going to pass it onto you because you wrote your book, “WAR: Watch, Assess, React,” and it’s all about living in the pink and how to… I think the biggest part of the book is how to not be a victim and how to manage situations where maybe you would consider yourself one. So I’m going to pass it on to you to share how you manage not being the victim.
That’s great. I love this topic and first of all, beautiful, beautiful. You nailed it, baby. That was brilliant because this has been such a walk for a few years with our family. Seeing just like with everything else, how it’s going to look for us, how we’re going to navigate it together. We don’t always know exactly how to do things, but we do know that we always come from love. When we can find that central component, everything kind of makes sense. Walking through a situation with your young daughter of one, where she’s been quote on quote “violated”, I mean, definitely violated, but mostly it was the trust that she held with somebody that was so devastatingly violated. That was the hardest thing for us to contend with. I talk about it in my book because the awareness that I went through is that I had to reconcile my own childhood situation with an adult situation that I had, excuse me, as an agent. I’m being raped by one of my team members on a surveillance mission.
What I was able to realize in that whole process was that a mindset that I held is what allowed me to be engaging in circumstances where that persona was front and center. This is a real touchy situation because certainly the person whose trust has been violated is never to blame for the other person’s actions and we would never suggest that. However, there is a component that we can look at within ourselves to say, “okay, what am I going to carry forward in this? How am I going to perceive this? What do I think this says about me?” That’s really where that victim piece comes into play.
If we’re not talking to our young people, to the young people inside of us and saying, “Hey, wait, there’s a difference between saying I can empower myself to create boundaries and to be intelligent,” you mentioned, live in the pink, to stay in awareness in situations, to be gauging as you said. I’m sure we’ll talk about this after the break. You had enough sensory preceptors open and enough intuition honed that you saw it coming a mile away. Right? So, even though you were walking through it a little bit, even as a very, very young person, to have that level of awareness gave you a choice. Which, most of us never got to experience and that’s a big part of what goes into the conversation of not being a victim.
Yeah, I agree, and I love how you mentioned being able to assess situations. Something I think is a great example is when I was younger, I would be outside playing or something and I’d see a car and it would be six blocks away, and I would see it. I don’t know if that’s possible and I would come running inside. I was like, oh my gosh, there’s a car outside. What should I do? You were like, there could be a person standing three inches in front of you and you would have time to run away.
Well, maybe not three inches, but yeah.
That’s an over-exaggeration. I don’t know if that’s possible, but you could try. Before anything even happened, I could walk inside casually before anything happened. I was like, “oh, maybe I’m overreacting a bit.” That’s something I really took to heart with this situation.
It’s not… I call it “the situation” a lot because it’s just a situation, you know? It’s just a little thing that happened. As I said, I didn’t have to base my identity around being a victim. So before we get into the break, Dad, what do you have to say about all of this? I think something you’re really great at is how to manage your power in situations. So in the sense of not being a victim, how do you manage your power in situations where something has happened that would make you think you’re a victim?
I was just going to give this voice, I mean, make no mistake about it. It’s been a journey as a family and the Dad, the protector, right? The thought, “I want to kill somebody,” did come forward.
That was a real thing folk.
It was a real thing.
Well, she has two parents trained in lethal force.
Yeah, and quickly move through it, because I know for myself, the best thing I could do for you Neva is to model how not to be a victim to that. Because in that mindset, wanting to get angry, wanting to do something to the person, just imprisons me to the situation right? Now, I’m a victim of it. So the best thing I did and could do for you in that was to not hold that, was to release that. So that seed didn’t get planted in you as “Oh, you’re a victim.” Because obviously, I’m a victim because my Dad just went and beat the crap out of something, right?
Obviously.
It never happened.
And I need a dad to do that and…
Do that and you don’t, right? You don’t. You were more than capable of managing yourself. So for me, it became a real pivotal opportunity of what am I going to do here as your father? Am I going to set an example that allows you and gives you permission to be a victim? Or…
Make someone else the victim.
Exactly or make somebody else the victim now. Or am I going to step through it and remember to come from love and transmute it and then use that to walk through it together as a family? So you can stay solid in who you are. That’s really what I see this experience has done. It showed you how to manage your boundaries. It was an experience. I think there’s a lot of women that go through that in life. You talk about that in your book.
A lot of people go through that.
A lot of people go through that in life. Again, it kind of goes back to, we expect our kids to… Now they’re 18, we expect them to find those boundaries. You get the entire way along the way. It’s been one little victim mindset after another little victim mindset, after another little victim mindset. We, and I know me especially, had to actively choose to stay in the container of love to see it for the gift that it was, so you could walk through it and not identify as a victim.
Yeah, I agree. The biggest thing I think we all kind of learned from the situation is if you’re in a situation where you are maybe deciding whether or not you want to be a victim or not. It’s something I walked through is to just love first. Even when it seems really hard and you want to punch somebody in the face and trust me, I wanted to. The biggest thing you can do is love first and love harder. Even when it seems really hard to. I think that’s the answer to everything. So we’re going to go to break folks. This is awesome stuff. We’ve been talking about, “refuse to be the victim” on the Reclamation show. Go to superpowerexperts.com. Check out all of our other amazing podcasts and join us on this journey. We’ll be right back after the break.
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