{"id":7411,"date":"2019-05-08T10:57:11","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T08:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/?p=7411"},"modified":"2019-05-08T14:42:09","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T12:42:09","slug":"day-of-the-broomstick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/day-of-the-broomstick\/","title":{"rendered":"game of guilt: the day of the broom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What is day\nof the \u201ebroom\u201c? It is the day I understood a little more about life, mistakes\nand most of all \u201cthe game of guilt\u201d. When I was 9 years old I was sexually\nabused by a member of my family. Since then and although it should have been the\nother way round I felt guilty and ashamed of who I was. My mother made a taboo\nout of the matter so that again I believed that somehow it had to be \u201cmy fault\u201d\nfor I loved my family and naturally my family loved me back. Later as an adult\nI often found myself in situations (private and jobwise) where people pointed\nat me when I had made a mistake or even didn\u2019t make a mistake but they were just\nin a bad mood and lavished their aggression on me. Because part of me was still\nbelieving that again \u201cI couldn\u2019t be right\u201d I didn\u2019t stand up for myself. As a\nconsequence I was the ideal victim or \u201ceasy prey\u201d for all those who didn\u2019t\naddress their inner anger in the exact situations but used this \u201cgame of guilt\u201d\nto make somebody else take \u201ctheir inner trash\u201d away. This was so until the day\nof the broom. It was an ordinary day, I got up early took the dog for a walk\nand prepared for work. Right before leaving I opened the door of my flat and\nfound a broom, my dustpan full of dirt together with my handbrush and a letter\nfrom my neighbour above. First, my heart sank: It was Friday I had a full\nworkday ahead of me and I needed all my strengths to get through the day\nteaching my pupils-who were also exhausted from a week full of exams. I knew\nthat if I read my neighbour\u2019s letter now, it would \u201coccupy\u201d my thoughts and\nmake me more stressed out. So against my inner feeling to \u201csolve everything on\nthe spot\u201d, I left for school without reading the letter. Everything went fine\nuntil after lunchbreak: I was standing in front of my students when my mobile\nphone rang. I was afraid that something was wrong with my parents. I picked up\nthe call and it was the dogwalker, who took my assistance dog Kalle for a walk\nwhen I had long working days. Kalle had run away after a fight with another dog\nand he had crossed the street several times. He finally got scared and ran back\nto the dog walker so that he was safe and on the leash again. The dogwalker\nhowever, wasn\u2019t willing to go on taking Kalle for a walk with the other dogs. I\nfelt my energy draining and told him, that I would call him back right after\nschool. When I finally came back home, I still found the broom etc. in front of\nmy door. Kalle greeted me joyfully and at the moment I knew that I could\nneither persuade the dogwalker to take &nbsp;Kalle back on &nbsp;nor solve the &nbsp;\u201cneighbour &nbsp;problem\u201d because I was so irritated after a\nlong workday. It was a beautiful day and it was the first time I decided not to\n\u201ctake on\u201d instantly on the things other people \u201cthrew\u201d at me and to write a\njustifying&nbsp; \u201cletter back\u201d, but to \u201chold\non\u201d and get a break before acting. So I took Kalle and put his leash on the hook\non my bike and we rode to the nearby lakes. It took us an hour to get there and\non the way back Kalle stayed in his red dog trailer for a rest and I drove us\nback safely. My anger was gone and so I read my neighbour\u2019s letter. It said\nthat she was disgusted of the way the stairs looked and that even after the\ncleaning woman had cleaned everything it was soon dirty again. Sighing I cleaned\nthe stairs in our appartment facility of the dirt that I, my dog and the 4\nother dogs and the dogwalker had left there. I knew I needed this evening to\nrest so I wrote the dogwalker I needed to \u201csleep over things\u201d and found out\nthat he was also relieved to think things over. Before I fell asleep next to my\nexhausted \u201crunaway dog\u201d I wondered why my neighbour didn\u2019t talk to me this\nmorning instead of putting \u201cup a stage\u201d in front of my doorstep. Why, I\nwondered, did she \u201cpick\u201d me for this and none of the other dog owners in the\nhouse? Somewhere in my subconscious there was a painful insight that these\nsituations kept repeating themselves because deep inside me and before anyone\nelse could accuse me of having done something wrong it was me who did just\nthat. It was a Monday when I finally met my neighbour and asked her, why she\nhadn\u2019t come to see me that morning. I tried to explain to her that there were 5\ndogs in the house, that I often cleaned up behind Kalle but that the dogwalker\nwould come to pick the dogs up when I was at school and leave behind him a\ntrail of dirt from his way through the recreation area. She tried to interrupt\nme several times always repeating what she had written in her letter. I told\nher that I would talk to the other dog owners and maybe we could \u201cshare the\nadditional cleaning\u201d. When she finally left for work and the front door began\nclosing behind her she shouted in my direction: \u201c-<em>I want my broom back!!!\u201d.<\/em> At that moment I understood that\nyes-there was a problem about cleanliness but that also my neighbour had a\nproblem by not talking to me or the others involved. When I looked at the broom\nthat was still standing next to my door, I suddenly realised that it was not me\nwho had put it there and that it was none of my responsibility to \u201cbring it\nback\u201d. So I left it standing next to my door and my neighbour hasn\u2019t yet come\nto \u201cpick it up\u201d. That day-the day of the broom- I understood that even though\nthere was \u201ca grain of truth\u201d in the critique I was still alright the way I was.\nAlso, I made a vow: Never again in my life would I let myself be used as the\n\u201ctrashcan\u201d for other people\u2019s aggressions. I talked to my other neighbour who\nhad three dogs and we agreed to share the cleaning of the stairs among\nourselves. I also told the dogwalker who had decided to take Kalle back under\nthe condition that he remained on a long towing-line during his walks. He\npromised to clean up after himself. When I see my \u201cbroom- neighbour\u201d again, I\ngreet her politely because it is not she who \u201cis the problem\u201d. The problem was\nthat I had not been nice to myself in the past and that the harsh critique of\nothers had often added to my \u201cself-made misery\u201d. The broom however, is still\nstanding next to my door like a proud \u201cmonument\u201d of the inner change I have\nundergone. This is a story I wanted to share with you, dear reader. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<table class=\"wp-block-table\"><tbody><tr><td><\/td><td><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is day of the \u201ebroom\u201c? It is the day I understood a little more about life, mistakes and most of all \u201cthe game of guilt\u201d. When I was 9 years old I was sexually abused by a member of my family. Since then and although it should have been the other way round I [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7415,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,7,10,19,20,16],"class_list":["post-7411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein","tag-be-more-resilient","tag-overcome-burnout","tag-overcome-depression","tag-overcome-guilt","tag-overcome-shame","tag-overcome-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7411"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7414,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7411\/revisions\/7414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wiedergeborene.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}