broken goddess

He had always teased her about being a goddess. There was truth in the teasing—she was a most remarkable person. Her spiritual depth, her capacity to share her heart openly without losing it, and to give love without being consumed in the giving, her fierce intensity, her unselfish loyalty, her playful irreverence, all conspired to give her an aura and charm that truly seemed superhuman.

But on Friday, they had had a conversation over lunch that left him distressed and limp, wondering again at what brutal force of will is required for the human soul to survive whole and well. Three days before, she had heard first hand from a young neighbor of the domestic abuse she was being subjected to at the hand of her mother's partner. She could not simply turn away and “mind her own business”—she was too intensely alive and true to her own integrity for that. She had agonized over what to do. He had encouraged her in her conviction, and had been present when she made her first phone calls to report the situation to the authorities.

The system had failed from the beginning, with the girl and her family utterly traumatized, but not protected or healed. Tensions in the neighborhood were running high. The perpetrator of the abuse, and his wife, who had blinded herself to it all along, seemed to suspect that their neighbor was in some way involved in the whistle-blowing. They appeared not to know the extent of her involvement though, and uncertainty and veiled suspicions and the uneasy feeling that the abuser could at any moment turn his violent temper in her direction hung thick in the air. She had spent two days in turmoil over the girl and her plight, and the potential danger to which she had subjected herself.

Their lunch-time talk came fresh in the midst of this ordeal, which had left her feeling vulnerable and exposed and unable to protect herself from the consequences of following her conscience.

Over many months, they had discussed the physical, emotional, and economic hazards and biases and prejudices and vulnerability that stalk a single woman, but now, against the backdrop of this present circumstance, it was all magnified and intense and raw. He saw in her a weariness and distress that he had not understood before. It bordered on despair, and it tore at his heart to see it. She talked of the dangers of being a woman alone. She talked of the pressure to have a man, just to gain safety and security and status. And he smelled the horrible specter of impotence and deprecation and even prostitution that wafted up in putrid fumes from this pressure. He wondered how many women had lost their souls to it. And he realized again why she meant so much to him. It was her strength and faith and will to persevere, to be true to herself even in the face of this dark thing that draped itself over her experience that moved him most.