For Battered Women, Transition to Happier Traditions

Thanksgiving Day, 1992, in the Women’s Transitional Living Center at an undisclosed location in North County.

If they venture back into their memories, some can recall Thanksgiving the way it was meant to be.

Thank you, Lord, for providing for us the past year, and bless us in the year ahead.

But ask them to talk about Thanksgivings of the very recent past, during those years when they were battered wives, and reflections on a holiday become reflections of a day just like any other. And that means it was a day when they stood a good chance of being struck or verbally abused.

“A lot of times, we wouldn’t even celebrate Thanksgiving,” Helen said. “It would just pass. We didn’t do anything special for five years (the length of her marriage). We usually ended up arguing. The year I was pregnant with my first child, I ended up eating turkey by myself. I was cooking dinner and he was sleeping and I said it was ready, but he didn’t want to eat it. He wanted to sleep. It was my first turkey dinner and it turned out pretty good, but I ended up eating it by myself anyway. The next Thanksgiving was the same--me and my daughter ended up eating by ourselves.”

Helen and three other women, ranging in age from 22 to 44, are sitting around a sofa talking about the holiday. They are among the 12 women and 24 children currently at the center, all there to escape domestic violence and to begin reconstructing their lives. The women asked that their real names not be used.

Yes, they can all recall happier times, but their story this Thanksgiving is not about hopelessness or painful longing. It’s about rebirth and renewed hope and, at least for this year, redefining family.

“I come from a large family, 14 kids, and it was traditional for us to all get together the Friday after Thanksgiving,” Alice said. “No matter how far apart we were, we all came to my mother’s house and had a big meal and caught up with what everybody was doing. It’s kind of sad because I won’t be there and I haven’t been there for a few years. I miss my sons (one in college, the other working) because normally I’d be cooking a big meal, from baking the bread to baking the sweets.”

But during her 10-year relationship that she recently fled with just “the clothes on my back,” holiday meals would degenerate--like other meals--if her preparation schedule didn’t suit her husband.

Sherry also grew up in a traditional home. “I’d look forward to going to the kitchen and helping Dad prepare Thanksgiving dinner. During Christmas, the kids would look forward to turning the house upside down looking for gifts my parents had stashed somewhere.”

That changed during her marriage. “I used to get excited (for her child), but his father had become so overbearing that I would buy gifts for (her son), but his father would go sell them for his drug habit or Lord knows what.”

None of the women said they got reprieves from the violence just because a holiday had rolled around. To the contrary, Emma said, holidays were worse because her husband used them as excuses to drink more heavily. She remembers being beaten on at least one Thanksgiving and said her husband’s tirades cost them the company of both friends and relatives. Instead of being an extravaganza, Thanksgiving Day turned the house into an isolated encampment of fear.

I left the four women in the early afternoon, wishing them a happy holiday. I passed the kitchen where several women labored over the turkey, roast beef and ham and the other trimmings of a typical Thanksgiving dinner. Their kids romped in other parts of the shelter, and I couldn’t help lamenting about youngsters spending a holiday in a hiding place for fear of their fathers.

Yet, what was that business about redefining family?

If the day is about giving thanks and laughing and eating with people you care about, then these women and their kids had a wonderful family celebration Thursday.

Maybe they slightly altered the prayer:

Thank you, Lord, for directing us to this place, and give us strength to face what lies ahead.

“It felt good last night when a lot of the women got together in the kitchen and started cooking the Thanksgiving meal,” Alice said. “That reminded me of being at home (years ago). I was used to having a lot of people being in the kitchen, so that was fun. I have a new family, the people here, because we all have something in common and everyone is loving and caring. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that this is what tradition will be for me now. I’ll think about this next year at Thanksgiving.”

“We were doing more talking and laughing than anything,” Sherry said.

How long has it been since you talked and laughed while making dinner in the kitchen? I asked Sherry.

“It’s been a while,” she said, softly, seemingly stopped short just thinking how long it actually has been. “It’s been a while. It’s been a long time. It feels good to just . . . “

“To just laugh,” Helen said.

“Yeah,” Sherry said, “to just laugh again.”