"If you make a hard bed, you have to lay in it." - Hazel Moran, "The Burning Bed"
Last Halloween I wrote about some creepy stories in our little town. One of them was the true story of The Burning Bed, told in a non-fiction book by Faith McNultie, then a 1984 TV movie with Farrah Fawcett playing housewife Francine Hughes right here in Dansville, population 429. (We were not living here at the time of the tragedy or the movie.)
Thirteen can be an unlucky number, and it certainly was for Francine's ex-husband Mickey Hughes that night in March 1977. Francine told her kids to get their coats on and get in the car, and then with a good douse of gasoline burned down the house around her sleeping husband who had abused her for thirteen years. The movie showed that he beat her and beat her and beat her. When she left the burning house, she drove straight to the Sheriff's office and turned herself in, screaming, "I did it, I did it, I did it!" Ms. Hughes was tried here in Lansing and found not guilty by a jury of her peers by reason of insanity. Women's advocates called it self defense.
Our local newspaper has done an extensive feature called Unmasking the Violence on the story of Francine Hughes 25 years after "The Burning Bed" TV movie and how it affected legislation on domestic abuse because it got national attention. It is quite interesting to see how this case shaped definitions and policies on domestic abuse, if you go to that link. It is also interesting to read the section "Read about the Case" and then "Listen to their Stories" and see that some of the locals did not find the movie very accurate. Mickey's friends claim she let him have it too when fights broke out. There are very good video interviews with townspeople who knew the couple.
The world learned later that Farrah Fawcett, in a photo above from the movie in which she played the abused Francine Hughes, was herself beaten repeatedly by her actor husband Ryan O'Neal, who took out his anger on at least one of his sons too apparently. I was going to look for an image of her after the time he shoved her to the pavement and post it, but I decided not to. It's disturbing enough to see the image of her in make-up to look battered.
Oh it's such a painful topic. A person has a lot of anger, and it gets triggered by someone in the house, or some stress, and they take it out on someone close. I'm sorry if this stirs up painful memories or feelings for you.
So ok, anger exists. We all feel it sometimes. Why deny it? There are some things we really should be angry about. Others, not so much. When I feel the latter, I try to talk to myself. Slow down. Stop.
THIS HAS HELPED ME SINCE I READ IT RECENTLY.
See your anger as donkeys galloping along. You want so badly to hop on and take a ride. It would be delicious fun, such a good romp of anger! What if you just let the donkeys run on by? I have tried this, and it makes me smile. (I got this from Osho.)
SOMETIMES THIS HELPS.
If you're angry, just be angry, don't be angry with someone. Go be alone with it. G.I. Gurdjieff's father told him if he was insulted, don't react immediately in anger. Wait twenty-four hours, and then respond. Gurdjieff said that never did he have to respond, because by the next day the anger was gone. If you're alone with your anger, let it go to the cosmos. Osho said:
Remember, it is just like a dirty river falling into the ocean: the ocean will purify it. Whenever your anger, your hate, your sexuality, moves into the cosmos, into the ocean--it purifies it. If a dirty river falls into another river, then the other river also becomes dirty. When you are angry with someone, you are throwing your dirt at him. Then he will also throw his at you and this will become a mutual dirtying process.
I'VE BEEN DOING THIS SINCE THE KIDS WERE LITTLE. I WAS ILL EQUIPPED TO BE A MOTHER, THEN SOMEONE TAUGHT ME THIS. IT HELPED.
Change your belief about something. If you have a negative reaction, such as anger, it is in you, not someone else. First you have to ask yourself if you want to be angry. If not, maybe there is some way of thinking inside you that could change so that you won't get angry next time. If someone cuts in front of you in a line of traffic, and you become angry, ask yourself, What do I believe about this? "I have the right to this bit of space on the road, no one should take that from me." If you changed your belief to something else, such as: "Others may drive as they will, I will adjust accordingly," then would you be angry if it happened again?
It takes practice. Change doesn't happen overnight. Do you learn to play the piano in one day? Don't feel bad if you don't learn to conquer your anger in one day either.
I'm not promoting sainthood. And I'm not your nanny. I also recognize that some of us have ongoing conflict with people and circumstances we can't remove from our lives. I'm just saying. We are human, we have emotional responses to a tough world. But maybe putting our dirt onto someone else is not the best way to make things better. I'm talking to myself first and foremost.
Follow this link for help for abused and battered women, including state resources. If you are not in the U.S., please google domestic violence help in your area.
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