The Process of Escape

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Myrna Rochelle Roberts, PhD

There was a woman who was given to her wealthy husband while she was still very young. The woman had many children with her brutally oppressive husband. The wife was seldom permitted to leave their house, instead she cultivated a wonderful and welcoming home for her family. Had the wife ventured out even a small amount, she would have seen her husband carousing other women just down the street or right around the corner. For every child the wife had, her husband had at least two others with different women.

When the woman was in her 20s, she could not imagine herself apart from her husband because he took care of most of her children, and some he cared for well. If you asked her, she would say, “I love all my husband's children and I treat all of them as if they were my own. Now, some of my kids love all their siblings; but some of my other kids are rowdy, independent thinkers. They don’t like their counterpart siblings and demonstrate their discontent well, particularly toward those who try to act like they are better”.

​When the woman was in her 30s, she had to admit to herself that the husband, while wealthy and powerful, was violent and oppressive, and he had an uncle who was abusing her children. Her husband seemed to acquiesce to his uncle, giving the nod to sacrificing her male children and some females as well.

​When the woman was in her 40s, the husband thought the wife was old, so she began to venture away from the home since the husband was no longer interested in her. Each time she left the house people would whisper things to her as if in awe. Socialites would tell her she was a beautiful queen and demand others to move from here to there so “this queen can sit in that chair”. Someone else might whisper, “Don’t you know, you have royal blood”!, rolling the “r” in royal.

Then one day someone uttered something to the wife that she had never considered, “you know, there are other husbands”. No. The wife had never heard of such a thing. Other husbands? It was a foreign concept to her.  The wife slowly began to understand that at this time ALL of the husband’s important deals required her and her children to fulfill.

Emancipation requires a war chest: 
At this point the woman starts to walk in a dream-like state as she collects data and finds out that her whole world knows this secret about her identity that she does not remember because she was too young when she left the safety of her parents. One might think that this news would liberate the woman. Perhaps some people can’t understand that the more the woman found out about the many back-room meetings and side bar deals hatched, leveraging the gifts of her and her children. . . The more she understood the shear enormity of HER accumulated wealth and knowledge that was REMARKABLY UNDERVALUED so that the husband and his uncle could be super rich, the angrier she became toward ALL the parties involved, [teeth clenched]. 

By the time the woman was in her 50s the world was just beginning to see her for who she really is and not what the husband and uncle said about her.  Society had begun to see the husband and the uncle as weird; but found the wife to be whole, mature, agile, and competent. To escape the abusive relationships the woman had grown accustomed to, she came to you with her escape plan. She presented you with her 4 options: 

1. Leave the husband far behind, get children to safety. Start life over.
2. Leave husband and find original family, knowing that she’d be in place of origin for about 5 minutes before she finds out who hated her enough to sell a child, and why
3. Stay with the husband and deal with his continued brutality. Keeping the family intact 
4. Extract what you can from the marriage in slow methodical ways. Let every day stand for itself but keep gaining knowledge, (money), and venturing out a lot, but stay under the husband’s radar.
5. choose your own option.

Think hard before you advise her. 

The story of the wife, her husband and his uncle is the quintessential situation African American people face today. Sold to a brutal husband for whom we bore many children. The brutal husband stood by and let his Uncle Sam slaughter our offspring without “just cause”.  The husband continually brings new children who think they are better than the first children. When we leave the country, people whisper and tell us of our greatness, but at home those who don’t enjoy our high standing sneer and try to unwelcome us in our own home. 

The power is now in the wife’s hands, to make the decisions for herself and her children – her family! The wife could genuinely love her husband. The wife is not voiceless or powerless. She’s got leverage, momentum, and velocity. She is rich, married to a rich husband.

Think about him for one second.  The husband is probably p-ing in his pants! He can’t afford to lose her, so he starts leveraging small amounts of power to her in weird places to keep her busy, away from where the real stash is. Lol he knows it’s going to be cheaper to keep her. Lol. Think about it.
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Sculptor by Zenos Frudakis, http://www.zenosfrudakis.com/freedom-sculpture

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