Extra: Interview with Karen McAndless-Davis

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to a very, very special edition of Retelling the Bible Podcast. As you've already noticed, it did not start out normally with a reading of scripture and a few comments, nor are we telling a story today, not doing something very special. I am interviewing someone who matters a great deal to me, someone I love, my sister. And my sister is someone who lives out on the west coast of Canada, so we don't get to see one another too often, but I really respect the work that she does and the people that she helps. And I wanted to connect with her, especially today, because she and her partner are just about to launch a podcast. And it's a podcast that I think would be very interesting to many of my listeners that might help to take some of the things you pick up from my podcast and work out how to apply them in the real world. So without further ado, I would like to introduce my sister, Karen McCannless Davis, and welcome her to this podcast. - Hi, Karen. - Hi, thank you, Scott. Thank you so much for having me. This is, I'm very excited about this, actually. This is very cool. - Okay. Maybe could I get you to, well, first of all, tell people a little bit about what you do, what brought you and your writing partner to write this book that now is the germ of a podcast, so. - Yeah, yeah, so my co-author and I, my co-author is Jill Corey. We wrote the book, When Love Hurts, originally in 2000. It's in its third edition now. And it's a book for women who have experienced abuse from an intimate partner. The reason we wrote the book to begin with is that we realize that women were having a very hard time getting helpful, accurate information. I think probably most people think that we know a lot in our society about violence against women and how to respond, and that actually isn't true. There's a lot of myths, stereotypes, unhelpful ideas that actually keep women really trapped in various ways. So that was the motivation for writing the book. It's been out there for a long time. It's doing very well in the world. We also run groups for women who've experienced abuse and that's a very life-changing experience for women. And this move to make the podcast was really to just amplify this message even more because we are constantly hearing how women are looking for help, turning to people who should be helpful and not getting help and sometimes getting dangerous advice, sometimes getting advice that keeps them in that relationship and just working harder and harder. So the motivation for the podcast is really to get that word out to an even wider audience. And when does the podcast launch? And. Yeah, today. Today is the day. So it's really fun that we're doing the interview today. Yeah, November 25th, because it is the international day for the elimination of violence against women. So it's a day when the whole world hopefully is tuning in and thinking about this a little bit more. And you know, Scott, I want to say right off the bat that any time I talk about violence or abuse against women, I know that listeners immediately think, well, what about, like, what about men? Don't they get abused also? Everybody does that all the time. And so just to say this right off the top, this is gonna be the focus of our conversation today. We've got a data focus on it. The podcast is focused on it also. What we're gonna talk about today happens to one in three Canadian women. And that is a startling statistic. And so it's worthy of our focus and attention. But we actually don't focus on it very much as a society. It's kind of this silent underground issue. One in eight Canadian women get breast cancer in the course of their lifetime. And as you know, Scott, I'm a breast cancer survivor. I feel like we talk a lot more about breast cancer than we do about violence against women, which is good. It's good that we talk about it. And we run for the cure and various things. And so we have actually great responses to breast cancer in Canada now. I would say from my own personal experience that I was very well cared for. But this issue we're really kind of silent about because there is a gender element to it. And so it actually can make us uncomfortable. So just to say that off the top. But that we are gonna actually focus on women's experiences of violence and abuse. We know abuse can happen in any relationship when one person has more power than the other person and they choose to use that power in a harmful way. But this is worthy of our focus for this time. Yeah. Yes. I wasn't going to ask that question. Maybe because I knew that that's what your answer would be. I mean, obviously, yes. And I understand in any relationship, abuse definitely can happen. And I've been with people of every gender who have experienced abuse in a relationship. But yeah, the statistics are clear. And like you say, we don't pay enough attention to it. Probably because of that deep discomfort we have on so many levels. But yeah, yeah. So. Yeah. I sort of thought a great connection between us to talk about the work you're doing and what you want to accomplish is in my work on this podcast in particular, I love to tell stories and especially tell stories from maybe an unusual point of view or from the point of view of a character often forgotten. And of course, again and again, that has often turned out to be the women of the Bible whose story-- they didn't get to tell the stories. The stories were often told for them. And just that opportunity to see it through their eyes, like I-- I-- one story that totally transformed me. It was the story of Solomon and these two prostitutes who come to him with one of their children dead, roaming together. And one of the children has died and they come with the other one. And once I first of all gave them names, because of course they're unnamed in the story. And I began to see the story from their point of view. They were presumably sex workers, but they were the ones taking care of the king's troops. And they're living in a situation where they don't have adequate housing. They don't have adequate food to feed their children. One of them has died, which is probably an effect of the marginal existence that they were living. And anyways, I eventually came to the conclusion and lots of people have disagreed with me that what Solomon does in that story is he sort of tries to man-splain their situation rather than take responsibility for the fact that there are people, basically in his employ, who are living in poverty. And he doesn't want to deal with that. And so he turns it into, let's blame one of you for what went wrong here, got a thing. You know? - Blame shifting, yes. - Blame shifting. So anyways, that being said, these are probably the blame shifting, the gas lighting, which again and again, we see in these biblical stories too of men forcing their interpretation of events on the women in their lives. So unfortunately, because the Bible's a very human book about human beings, we see these kinds of abuse stories, again and again in the Bible. And overwhelmingly, as in real life, it seems to be the women who were extremely powerless in that society. - Yeah. - So I guess what I'm saying is I tell these stories maybe as a way to validate people's experiences to say what you are feeling, it's okay that you're feeling that or you shouldn't feel bad for being hurt in a relationship that we're angry or whatever you're feeling in a relationship that's supposed to be loving. And so I try to validate that. But where I often feel inadequate is, I can't necessarily say, okay now, what do you do with that? How do you get out of that situation or how do you change that situation or what do you do about it? So that's one reason why I would like to point people your way. But could you just give maybe a little brief, you know, what are the steps or the ways in which you help people move through that process? Yeah, yeah. I think there's two kind of key ideas. One is support and the other would be information. And whether women move through the when love hurts book or whether they listen to the podcast or whether they go on our website which has a lot of a lot a lot of resources and articles and things, it's gathering information about what abuse really is because because one of the myths in society is that, you know, abuse is really just physical abuse and the other types of abuse don't really matter. And that is not women's lived experience at all. I've been supporting women for over 25 years. I can only think of one woman who would say that physical abuse was the worst thing she experienced because she has an ongoing disability of having a siren and going off in her head from the brain damage that he imposed on her. So she would say the physical abuse was the worst thing because it's ongoing. But other women would point to the financial devastation he caused or another woman might point to the social isolation that she became incredibly isolated or they might point to how he actively sabotaged her relationship with her children as the most devastating thing. So there are many, many different types of abuse in our book. We talk about 12 different types of abuse and we'll we'll put a link to that that people could take a look at at those different types of abuse. So getting information, like, so what is happening to you and then how is it affecting you? This is the other thing that most people don't realize. Like if I asked sort of the the average person, you know, how do you think abuse impacts a woman? They might say, well, you know, it might wear on her self-esteem or something like that. But if we ask women, how has the abuse impacted them? They create a very long list. A lot of health issues, you know, I developed IBS. I have heart palpitations. I have panic attacks. I can't sleep. I've developed an eating disorder. My relationship with my kids is not how I would want it to be. I'm bankrupt. I've lost my home. I've lost my church. Like they would have a very, very long list. It actually impacts every aspect of a woman's life. So knowing like what abuse is, how is it actually impacting you? And that that impact piece is often really validating for women because they think that they're just having these reactions like depression or whatever because they're somehow not strong enough as opposed to what we say really clearly is these are normal human reactions to oppression, terror, control, you know, the what being trapped, these things like you're just having a normal human reaction. And then just having the support to do whatever is best for her at that time. Again, one of the one of the myths would be, well, the woman the woman should leave or she should just leave. But we've seen over the last 15 to 20 years a real shift in family court. So that now the norm is that at separation really regardless truly regardless of what he did to the woman during the relationship, he's going to get 50% custody and abusers always go for that. Even if they never did any parenting, which you know like they're in a nutshell, they're profoundly self-centered people and parenting requires that you not be self-centered, that you get up and clean the bar, fit the middle of the night or you know whatever, all those things. So often they don't do any parenting before separation, but at separation they insist on this 50/50 custody to hurt the woman and to avoid paying child support. And so women now that wasn't always true when I started doing this work a long time ago. If the woman could prove that she'd been the primary caregiver before separation, she'd be the primary caregiver after separation. But abusive men basically found themselves online and worked together to lobby the courts for a different reality. So women know now, if I separate, he's going to have the children 50% of the time and I know they're not safe with him. I see that every day, that they're not safe. So there's no simple she should just leave. So women are sometimes choosing to stay, to try to minimize harm to their children, to be there to intercede, to get between kind of things. Sometimes women are choosing to leave because they feel, in my experience, they always make the decision based on what they think is best for their children. So sometimes they leave because they're like, I can't have him, I can't have them witnessing him treating me this way. It's appalling, I can't have that. So they choose to do what they think or they hope will be best for their children at the time. So as a support person, this is true for me, as a counselor, it would be true for any of your listeners who might be in a position to support family or friends. We don't have an agenda. We're not trying to get women to do anything, like we're not trying to get them to leave, we're not trying to get them to stay, we're not, we're not trying to get them to fix the relationship because they can't. Like, if abuse is what's happening, then he's 100% responsible for that and only he can choose to change that, right? In a marriage relationship, when abuse isn't happening, both people can bring about change. But in the context of abuse, there's nothing she can do that's going to change it. And women try everything. They try to be more accommodating. They try to put up more boundaries, which is often a very unsafe thing to do. They try, they read a lot of self-help books. They go for a lot of counseling. They try to change him, but his abuse is the problem. I think the other thing about not sort of dictating what women should do is, again, one of the common myths is that, well, if she just separates, then the problem is over. And if she separates, that doesn't stop him from being abusive, right? The problem is his abuse. So the separation doesn't stop that. So he will continue to abuse through any point of contact, which will be the children, it'll be the courts, it'll be the selling of the house, all of those kinds of things. So it doesn't stop the abuse. Wow, yeah. So that's something, yeah, that accompanying with. And, you know, a little phrase I sometimes use is it, it's really, really hard, really, really hard to live with a man who's abusive. It's really, really, really hard to leave a man who's abusive. It's the most dangerous time, of course, when women leave in terms of being killed or seriously injured. So women just deserve good support, whatever they might be doing at the time. And what they really don't deserve is judgment. The women I work with are the most amazing, most remarkable, most resilient, most incredible parents. There's actually some research that was done out here in BC, that women who are experiencing abuse are actually more attuned as parents to their children's needs, which actually makes sense, right? Because if everything's okay in the household and everybody's safe and everybody's happy and nobody's sick, you can be somewhat relaxed, right? But if some danger is going on in the household, you're going to be pretty tuned in to what's going on. So they're actually quite amazing mothers, really trying to minimize the harm, but they can't stop the harm. Wow. Yeah. So that's a great way to understand your ministry is to accompany people on a very, very difficult, very often painful journey, but people deserve to be accompanied. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to turn to my challenge to you. So I sent you a challenge. One of the stories that I've done on my podcast that I'm going to broke my heart several times to tell the story and to read it because it is just it is really a horrible story of abuse. And yet one that if you go and read commentaries and all kinds of places, it's supposed to be this wonderful story of love. But if you start reading it from the point of view of the woman, that ain't love. No. So anyways, it's the story of Gomer. So it's my episode was Gomer's Mee-2 Moment, which was made back at the height of the Mee-2 Movement. But I challenge you to listen to it and baby tell me how would you help Gomer, given the place where she is and the society she lives in. What would you do for her? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And thank you for sending me that story. And as you know, Scott, I went to seminary. I know my Bible pretty well. I did not know this story and it is a horrifying story in so many ways. I of course would want to meet Gomer where she is and I would be respectful that she is the expert on her own life. That's an important principle in all of this. You know, if listeners pause and think for a moment, like of course they are the expert on their own life. Nobody knows more about them than they do. But somehow when we come to abuse, often people step in and start acting like the expert in the woman's life and that is really not okay to do. I have learned, if I ever think, oh this woman should just, whatever, like if I ever think there's a simple solution, I know I haven't heard enough of the story and I need to keep listening. So I'm going to meet Gomer where she is in all the complexity of her story with kindness and affirmation for all her strengths and all those things. And then over time, I would imagine we would touch on some things. We would name some of the different abuse that she experienced in your telling. She experiences, I think maybe in the Bible as well, actually. She experiences a lot of what we would call social abuse. She goes around and tells a lot of lies about her and totally destroys any credibility or respect or anything she would have in her society, which is a very common tactic. Something that people don't realize that abusers particularly post-separation go around and actively sabotage the woman's relationship with family and friends. Sometimes until they're all alone as Gomer really ends up being. I would look at the spiritual abuse that she experiences. His use of, you know, this is what me and God think of you. And so often Christian men who are abusive and abuse happens at the same rate in Christian homes as non-Christian homes. So often Christian men use spiritual abuse and they use God against the woman. And they quote scripture at the woman and they say, this is what me and God think about you. It's so devastating. It's so terrible. It's a hard piece to recover from. The emotional abuse she experienced, the the worthlessness with which she treats her, the attacks on her personhood. Of course, the sexual assault, which also happens, you know, and here's a little stat that I think it's very painful, but it's good for us to know that if a man physically abuses his partner, 67% of the time he will also rape her. So rape is happening in marriage, a lot more or committed relationships, a lot more than we would be aware of. And in my experience, women don't tell me those stories until I know them really well. But when I'm supporting a woman and I'm seeing a high level of fear, I just sort of think, maybe there's a sexual assault here. It's painfully, it's really quite common. And consent, in the context of abuse, consent sort of becomes meaningless. That, because women will say, if I say no to his advances, he'll give me the silent treatment or he'll refuse to pick the kids up from school and leave them deserted or whatever. So like consent is not really a reality in those kind of relationships. So just the oppression that she experiences, his superiority, like men who are abusive whole beliefs about themselves, that they are superior to their partners, that they're more important than their partners, that they're entitled to have all their needs met and their partner is not entitled to have needs. And you see all of this in the way that treats his person, his wife, sorry. And one phrase you use that stood out for me is that he uses his wife as an object lesson, which is appalling, she is a human being. And I would say that's generally true of abusers, is that not necessarily that they use them as object lessons, but they use them as objects. They're not really people. They're there to serve his purposes, to serve his needs, to make him feel better about himself, all those kinds of things, but their actual personhood is not recognized. So I would imagine over weeks, not one conversation, but many conversations. Oh, yes, it's a jerk. Yes. Yes, we talk about the ways that she's been shunned and that social abuse. And you know, one of the things I was so struck by, Scott, as I listen to this story, is that like if Gomer was actually talking to me, she would just fit in with all my clients. Like these are stories I hear, right? Including sometimes the husband is a pastor and he's using that platform in damaging ways or he's a leader in the big unity in one way or another and he's using that. So you know, this is a really old story and yet the tactics are actually the same. Yeah. So I don't know if I named this, but the sabotaging the mother child relationship. Like that's a very common tactic and I would say for most women, that's one of the most horrendous things that anyone can do is to sabotage their relationship. You know, because for any of us as parents, our kids are hearts walking around out there. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I mean, I think the story is even sadder than I thought now, but it's, yeah. Anyways, I think that's about an almost a half an hour. So maybe we should leave it there. I am going to say, well, go listen to the story of Gomer again to my listeners, but also go and listen to the podcast and it is, when Love Hurts is the name of the podcast. Yes, yeah. When Love Hurts podcast and we'll put, we'll definitely put a link in the show notes to that. We'll put the link in the show notes and some other resources and the way to take care of his website and links to the book, whatever. But yeah, so we wish you well. And I'm going to try and get this special episode out soon. Anyway, so that people can find your podcast and so it launched just this morning. Have you seen your stats yet or I haven't looked at that yet. No, I don't know. But I watched today and the first two episodes are up today and then one up, we have it all recorded. One episode's coming out every week until all eight are out and this is season one and we already have funding for season two. So there will be a second. Awesome. Which is okay. Yeah. And to seeing it, it may be sending a few extra listeners your way. That would be great. Thank you so much for this time, Scott. I really appreciate it. Okay. And all God's blessings and what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. That is it for this special episode of Retelling the Bible. Thanks to my special guest and sister Karen and thanks to you for listening. The theme music for the podcast is adab by Kevin McLeod. It is licensed in the creative commons and can be found at incompetect.com. You can contact me on Blue Sky at Retelling the Bible and on the Facebook page Retelling the Bible. You can connect with Karen's work at whenlovehurtz.ca or follow the links in the show notes which have been posted at Retelling the Bible dot WordPress dot com. This is Retelling the Bible and as always I am your storyteller W. Scott McCandless. All try and do my best to edit. If you start swearing I will edit it out. Yes. I'm not going to swear. No, come on. I can guarantee. Oh. Somehow we didn't learn that in our house very well growing up. No. No.