Saturday, October 29, 2011

Safe Haven – Week #22 GBE2

Tornado Shelter - another safe haven

Safe havens exist everywhere and are different things to different people. Some are actual places where someone can go to be safe and feel protected. Battered women’s shelters, homeless shelters, even foster homes, can be safe havens for many. There are also designated safe havens for women who don’t want their infants and for children who feel threatened walking home from school.

For others, they imagine escaping into alcohol or drugs as a safe haven from the realities they can’t face sober; regardless of how wrong they might be, they feel better when chemically enhanced.

Some of us have music or books or even writing – a place we can go that affords us shelter from whatever events around us are a threat or too stressful. As a child, I escaped into books – I lived vicariously through the lives of the books’ characters, often as the hero, which was quite the opposite of how I felt in reality. I honestly feel that those books saved what sanity I retained since my mother didn’t really understand how affected I was by my father. I could live a “normal” life through books that I wasn’t living in our home.
Even psychological problems may become involuntary safe havens for some. Think of those with multiple personality disorders – how often is it that we learn of the traumatic issues in their lives that these personalities were able to help them escape. In some ways like me with my books, they became heroes, infants, controlling personalities dominating some aspect of their lives with the personalities they couldn’t themselves bring into being as the situation warranted.

The most extreme and ultimate safe haven is death – we all either know someone or know OF someone who has chosen death rather than deal with the pains they were experiencing in life.

No matter what, we have all experienced one safe haven or another – mothers’ arms, grandma’s house, under the covers or the bed in our rooms, or church; wherever we have been able to feel secure and comfortable and protected from the evils of the world, real or imagined. I think everyone could use such a place in their lives.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Jo said...

It is sad to know that there are those who are so lost they do not have any place that they feel safe. Nicely done.

October 29, 2011 at 11:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You're right, we all need to have a place where we feel safe. Hopefully, it is within ourselves, but even when that's not the case, somewhere or someone to provide a sense of security is a blessing.

I got a little shiver when you mentioned death as a safe haven because yes, we probably all know someone who has made that choice. You did a wonderful job here.

October 30, 2011 at 1:08 AM  

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