Susan Omilian Attorney and Activist Part 1

0:00 Hi, this is Rachel on recovery. We're here with Susan Omilian, and she's going to tell us a little bit about U2 0:05 herself. Oh, hi there. I'm Susan O'millionillion. I'm an attorney. I've also been working for the last 50 years, I'd say, in the Violence Against Women movement. I'm also an author. I have a number of books that I have written over a number of years, actually hand. I do a lot of work now in helping women move on from domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, victim to survivor, to thriver. And that's what my books are about. And I'm also a motivational speaker on those topics and the topics that I think are important to help us eliminate eradicate in some way deal with 1s the epidemic pandemic of violence against women in our society. U1 0:56 Okay. How did you get into law? Well, it's one of those stories, like when I was a little girl, 2s I was raised in the 1950s, so women were not in the law. There was no lawyers. There were no women lawyers. I didn't know any women lawyers. I had never had any idea why I wanted to. But I used to read. I'm a very voracious reader, and I used to go to the library and read books, and I started reading, I guess you'd call them courtroom dramas. And I decided that was something that I wanted to do. I had no idea how to do that. U2 1:32 I grew up blue collar. My family didn't have money to even send me to college. I had scholarships. So at some point, I decided that I wanted to become a journalist more than anything because I was a writer. So in working as a journalist and reporter, doing public relations, I realized as a reporter that I like the idea of writing about people and things, but. 1s I didn't. I wanted to do more than be objective about it. That in the journalism rules. You had to be objective, show both sides of an issue. And I realized that I wanted to be more of an advocate. So I sort of came back to the idea in my mid 20s that maybe I could go to law school there. At that point, there were women who were entering law school. Not a whole lot. I think the the law school class I entered in 1970, something was about a third women. Today, it's probably very different. Much, many more women, maybe even majority women. And so I started to pursue that. And the same time, I had become interested in women's rights law, there weren't a lot of attorneys who were doing that because there weren't a lot of women attorneys. And so that's what I really wanted to do. So through my career as a lawyer, although I don't currently practice law, that's really how it shaped a childhood idea. And then I guess the time came for when I could see myself becoming a lawyer and pursuing it as a career as a woman. Okay, U1 3:07 what got you into abuse law? U2 3:10 Well, that's another interesting story. Many people wonder about that. I wonder about that sometimes. I think, as I said, I was interested in the mostly in the 70s with the women's movement, which started talking about discrimination, sex discrimination, that's kind of law I wanted to practice. I am not a survivor of any kind of abuse in my life, either as a child or as adult. So I didn't really come at it as wanting to address something that happened to me. But many of my friends and family wondered about that. Maybe there was something that went on that you didn't tell us, but it wasn't but I began to realize that's something that was interest to me. So I started actually I 1s co founded a sexual assault crisis service actually when I was before law school and became a victim advocate there. Just became fascinated by the fact that there was so little advocacy, there were so much few people that understood it, and there were women who were just caught in these really difficult situation at the time. It was still, and it still is very hard to prosecute a sexual assault crime. So the women really needed support and there wasn't funding for it. We sort of put together some ideas, and then when I left law school, I went to work for a legal aid program. And I think I was pretty clear they were doing divorce work for women who didn't have the money to get a divorce. And then it became clear in the very short period of time that I was working there as an attorney that many of the women had been in abusive relationships. And at that time, we barely had words for it. We barely had a word called domestic violence. And we had just in the community I was working at legal aid, they had just opened up the domestic violence shelter. So the community was really new to this whole thing, and the judges were in the court system. So I started to work on helping women who were coming out of domestic violence situations, probably in the shelters, and helping them get divorced and dealing with restraining orders and whatever. So that sort of went from there to then starting to work on more policy level. I began to work at a women's public interest law firm. I started doing lobbying, started changing some laws around domestic violence, and then. 2s What happened to me about 20 years ago now, long after I had done this work for many years, was that my my 19 year old niece Maggie was killed by her ex boyfriend on a college campus in in Michigan, which is where I'm originally from. And so suddenly, you know, you asked me the question, like, why did I get into law and why do I do this? Suddenly, there's maybe this happens to some people, all people. I don't know. It's kind of a moment that you get to and then you realize, oh, that's why everything did came to this moment. So with Maggie's death in 99, suddenly I realized that's why I'd been working in this field and that's why I wanted to 1s continue to work in this field and to realize now that every family has a possibility. Because somehow I thought my family was somehow exempt from being touched by domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence. In Maggie's case. And because the man who killed my niece killed himself, there was not the kind of revenge or the avenging or getting somehow making something good come out of this in the criminal justice system, which was probably a good thing, because it's very difficult to be a survivor of homicide in that system. But I decided to do some other work that began to move not only on my journey, but to help other women take the journey beyond being abused. So I do victim to survivor to thriver. So it all sort of came together in a way that in some ways, I never wanted Maggie need to die. But because of that, I could see the pieces all coming together. And that's really where U1 7:30 I am today. 2s Okay, tell us about the books that you have written. U2 7:36 So, as I said, when my niece was murdered, I started to do some work. Maggie. If I couldn't save Maggie. And Maggie didn't have a chance to move on after she realized she was being abused. He had never physically assaulted her before he killed her. So not that she wasn't smart enough to realized that he was not somebody she U1 7:59 wanted to be with, U2 8:00 which is why she left him. But there was no physical violence, no bruises, no scars. So that if she couldn't move on, then I wanted to help other women move on. So I put together this workshop. But I really didn't know what I was doing because, remember, I'm an attorney, not a social worker or a therapist. But I wanted to help women start to take that journey. And I developed materials that allowed women to move into what I call the Thriver Zone, which is actually the name of three of my books, the three nonfiction books that I've written. And as you know, I've always been a writer, I've been a journalist, and before Maggie was written, I have written and still actually do write legal books on sexual harassment law and sex discrimination law. But these books I wanted to put together the material that I had developed through doing a two day workshop for women. This is a piece that's missing in our system. So we help to get women out, which is a really good goal. We didn't have that U1 9:08 possibility 30, 40, 50 years U2 9:10 ago. But not just to get them out and getting them to be survivors, not victims anymore, but to move them on to another place and to really begin to have them fulfill their dreams. Go back to school, get a better job, really start to work on things they couldn't do or didn't have the confidence to do when they were in the abusive relationship or coming through the cris of a sexual assault. So my books are workbooks, actually. And there's three of them. Thriver Zone. Entering the Thriver Zone is the first book and then staying in the Thriver Zone and then living in the Thriver Zone So I try to document the motivational model that I use. And it's a workbook. So you can fill in. The writing prompts. And it really helps you to start setting a new vision for your life coming out of abuse and also setting new goals for yourself and how you can accomplish that. And then the other series of books that I've written are loosely based on my niece's story. I didn't want to write a memoir that seemed too hard or to write about her 2s in in real life or true crime or whatever you call those kind of books. But I decided to write a novel loosely based. And I wanted it's actually a three book novel now. I always wanted to write a novel. That was the other thing I wanted to do when I was a kid. I wanted to write a novel. And so I wrote a novel loosely based on Maggie's story, change all the names and the characters, showing how a woman has something difficult and bad happen to her and how she moves on to not only survive and 1s think. And I also try to portray in the novels some of the details and information people need around what are the warning signs of domestic violence situation, what are some of the ways you're going to feel, what are some of the ways people around you are going to help you or not be able to help you. And so people could maybe learn. I think people learn by stories, sometimes more than by reading a brochure. And for lots of people, I think, although we're doing better, I think educating people today certainly. 1s Back when I first started, this was not true. And even in Maggie's case, about the warning signs and that particularly physical violence does not have to be the only sign of a domestic violence situation. It really does include emotional abuse, psychological abuse, financial abuse, which is something else I've been working on recently. Really expanding people's mind through a novel is really what I was trying to do. But I've always been a writer, so it was inevitable that I would put this down in writing. But those are the three books that I have, and they're available on my website, which is Thriverzone.com. Okay. U1 12:09 Yes. Tell us about Thriver U2 12:10 Zone. Well, it's something that not many people sort of understand initially. Although I think one of the things 1s I could describe it as is that it's as simple as we do know a lot of people, and this is certainly true in coming out of COVID out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Of bad things that happened to people or things that happen to people that shouldn't happen to them or they don't expect it to happen. Whether it's abuse or people 2s having cancer or a disease or dying from COVID And then there's this energy that seems to come out of it for the people who survive. Survivors of homicide are the people whose loved ones or friends or people that they know. Family members who have been killed usually in a homicide, may not be a violent homicide, but many and those survivors decide in their honor they're going to do something really good. So something good coming from something bad. And that's kind of like the hero's journey. We admire people 1s and trying to understand how difficult that is at the same time, how important it is to see. 1s What what could come from that today? There's actually some research on this, and there's a word for it which is post trauma growth. So, yes, in a trauma, you're going to be traumatized. And many people describe that as PTSD, post traumatic syndrome. But there's also the possibility from that experience. So, for example, although I didn't want my niece to die, I didn't want her die the way she died, and I didn't want this to happen to her as it happened to many other women, violence against women. But because of that, I found this work that I probably wouldn't have done. I probably wouldn't have gotten to this place in terms of what I thought was important in my life. So that kind of growth is what I think we're talking about, and that people can rise from the ashes and even bad things. And people do admire that. We tend to admire people like that. I don't know if I could have done that, is what we usually say. And so I think that's what I'm sort of working on, but specifically working with women who've come through abuse. And in many cases, when you've come through an abusive situation or come out of the crisis of a sexual assault, that person who's harmed you has not only physically harmed you, but has also emotionally taken away your confidence, puts you in a state of terror that you think has touched all parts of you, and you'll never recover from it. And so what I sort of teach and I learn more from the women that I work with sometimes in my own experience. But there's a part of you that's been untouched by all that's ever happened to you, and that part can still survive and thrive, which is the word I use to be a productive individual. And in fact, we have examples of that all over the place. But when it happens to us, we always think, at least initially, that we won't be able to make that journey. But it is a journey, and we're all on this journey. So the question is whether you're going to take the journey all the way through and then get to that place where you thought you could do something that you did something you thought you couldn't do. Women I've worked with through my two day workshop, which is where the material came from, from my books, have done amazing things. They started singing again. They're back to school. They're CEOs of organizations. They have started their own business. They have began to see some of the dreams they had where they want to live, how they want to live, and then certainly be examples for their children. Because in many cases, and I have worked with offenders, male domestic violence offenders. If you ask the men who are arrested for domestic violence, in most cases, they will tell you that they witness domestic violence as children. And so it's inevitable that or at least there's I don't know, there's statistics on this, but there's a possibility that someone who witnesses domestic violence as a child will either become a perpetrator themselves as an adult or a victim themselves as an dope. And that's just kind of role modeling. 2s If that's all you see in your life, then that's how you respond to these things. So that's really the journey I was on, and I wanted to help other women take that journey too. U1 16:54 Have you ever read much of Dr. Anna U2 16:56 Salter? I don't think so. I would recommend U1 17:00 salter. Yeah, I have an episode with her. I recommend it, and she's done a lot on abuse, more with child abuse and but U2 17:11 okay, that's probably why that's not one of my areas of expertise. Although a lot of the women I work with, if you ask them their trauma history, it will include some kind of childhood abuse or adolescent abuse. And so it's perpetrated through all the way through your life. And 2s that's why when they come to me and I tell them there's a part of them that's been on Touch file, what's ever happened to them that they're kind of, like, taken aback by that? Like, oh, I thought everything. This has been going on for years and years and years, and it's kind of a cumulative, U1 17:47 it's a cycle. Yeah, it's a cycle. And if you can't break that cycle, which is not easy to do, particularly for many of us whose childhoods when I was growing up, this is not even a conversation, let alone a topic. I'm sure it was going on, but nobody had words for it. If you had words for it, 2s there was not this urgency to it. And today there's more urgency to it. But we still don't have enough services out there, and we still haven't really figured out exactly how to identify the trauma. And sometimes recently, there's been more evidence that the trauma is actually in your body. The Body Keeps Score is the book by one of the researchers on trauma. And for example, for many of the women who come through domestic violence, if they have been strangled or there's been some kind of head injury, that trauma that head injury will continue in their life long after U2 18:49 the trauma has been. So we're still understanding and getting more medical and psychological information about how this. Yeah, U1 19:00 because the A score really does tell it U2 19:02 all. Yes. The adverse childhood experiences. And like I said, when I was working with offenders, their A scores were, like, not just in terms of what they witnessed violence, but the other kinds of factors that are considered. And for many people, one of the things that have been explored about offenders, particularly domestic violence offenders, is whether attachment disorder, how they attach to their family of origin, U1 19:31 to their parents as children, has an impact or has a ramification in future relationships that tend to be abusive or not necessarily as loving as they could be. So there's lots of pieces that are being explored. And also, I think the other piece, like, I was talking about post trauma growth that's really been a new, recent piece of research, like, oh, my God, that's right. There is something that you can move on because for many people, particularly the women I have met who are my age or even older, that they felt their life was U2 20:06 set by the violence and nothing was going to they weren't strong enough, they weren't smart enough enough to move on. And when they realize that, that's really a huge moment for U1 20:20 them. Yeah, I can understand that. That's. 2s It can be very debilitating, especially for the previous generations. My mother was like that in a lot of ways. Well, we didn't even have words for it back. 2s Many women when I met when I was doing consciousness raising groups, which was in the early 70s, we started realizing, I think the feminist word for it, the motto was personal is political. Oh, that happened to you, too? Oh, I thought that was just me. I thought, because I didn't make him dinner and that's why he hit me. And then we started to have more collective words for it and also started to get a better sense of why, as one of the authors, Lundy Bancroft, says, why do men do this? Why do some people in our society do that? And to pull that apart some more was really a huge not that we figured it all out, but it was a huge different question that was being asked U2 21:20 instead of Why does she stay? The question is, Why does he do this? And why can't we solve this problem in our society? Yes, I think a lot of times we're asking the wrong questions. U1 21:32 Tell us about the seven steps to Survivor. Okay, so 1s I put together as part of my workshop, and my first book has the whole thing entering the Thriver Zone a Seven Step Guide to Thriving After Abuse. So in my own process of coming out of dealing with the death of my niece and why this happened to her, my guilt and horror and wanting to do something good, I started to realize that I started taking some steps. And when I realized how specific they were, I thought, well, I should write those down. Maybe this is a good thing, because I was on my own journey, and it wasn't maybe as traumatic or as singular as having experienced it myself, but it was quite horrific to imagine how this happened to my niece and why it happened and why there weren't people who were there to help her. But anyways, so I started working on this process, and I started to figure out exactly how I had started to move. And the first step that I realized is see your journey. So a lot of us don't realize we're on a journey that particularly women who've been victimized their whole life, they think the journey is Survivor. I mean, it's victim to Survivor. And then they come back around and be victimized again. And so they would say to me things like, I'm a really good Survivor. I can survive anything. I'm like, well, that's great, but let's see if we could do more than just survive. Let's see if we can use the energy from that victimization to move on and do something more. And when I send to them that the journey is victim to Survivor, to thriver, and I use, like, a fairy tale or children's story because as kids, we learn that there is a happy ending. We learn that 4s the engine that could does get to the top of the hill. So we know this story. So see your journey is really important that you can see that there's more than just surviving and then how you can do that. And then the second step is to quiet the negative voice in your head, which has usually been fed by the abuser. You're stupid. No one's going to ever love you. You got to stay with me. You're not enough. You're not confident. You're not smart enough. You can't start a business. And so I have a technique to quiet down that voice and to realize that it's just a voice that's saying something to you that fight intent. And that bringing out the happy person inside is the third step. And remember I talked about the part of you that's been untouched. That's where I get women to in my workshop and also in my books to begin to feel that part of them, the part that's been untouched, the happy person inside, the little kid inside of them that really is okay and feels good. And then connecting that person, that positive energy, which is step number four, get positive energy and then set a new vision for your life. Step five. So what do you want to do? What were some dreams that would been deferred? You want to go back to school, you want to start your own business. You want to just feel like you can get through a vacation with your kids. And that's a really good goal because that will make you feel positive. And then overcoming your fears. What's holding you back from doing that is step number six. So for me, it's limiting beliefs about myself. I had a limiting belief when I first started doing, becoming a guest on podcasts that I could do a podcast. 2s Could I talk for that time? Would they be interested in me? And so I've had to say to myself, you know what, I think I can do that. And what's that? Fear. Fear of failure. I mean, it's hard to fail on a podcast. Perhaps maybe I could, maybe I would just get silent and then not say anything. I don't know. But you know what I mean. So what's that fear? And is it something you can overcome? Now, there is one fear that we talk about that you really have to be conscious of, and that's physical safety. So if I'm going to go jump off a bridge, I got to think about that first and that might hold me back. I might say it's not really that safe for me to go jump on a bungee off that bridge, but I could still do it. I could figure out how to deal with that fear. But most of our fears are thoughts, not things. In the past, I failed at something. And so when I try something new today, I remember that I failed last time. Now I have this thought that I can't do it the second time, but it's only a thought. So we're trying to get people to see they can move beyond. And then finally, the 7th step is to set new goals and really bring up the goals. Like, I've always wanted to be a lawyer. I always wanted to go back to school. I always wanted to move and live in a different part of the country. So how do we set those goals? And so those seven steps get women start moving. And what I call this is a motivational model. Not that they're not motivated to make their life better, but they're stuck somewhere. Their negative voice is too loud. Their positive voice isn't strong enough. They don't see their journey, and they don't believe that they can vision a new life. So really trying to. It's not something I made up, but I think for people that have come through difficult times in their life, somewhere along the line, one of these things, the negative voice or the fear comes up and they get stuck there the rest of their lives and may or may not be able to pull out. So that's really how I've thought about it. So I want to say that no one else has thought of seven steps, but they're not like new. It's just sort of putting them together in a way that particularly people, women who've come through abuse could really see U2 27:18 that one of those steps or one or more of those steps could really help them move on. U1 27:23 Okay. 1s Um, what what are the seven steps to thriving? U2 27:28 So so the what I just described is the process of moving from Survivor to thriver. So I think for many people, they they have the 2s in the seven steps that I've put together, there's one that doesn't sort of work for them, so they get stuck in Survivor. So the full seven step is really taking you to thriving. To me, thriving means you get to step number seven, and you're really working your goals, and not just small goals, but goals that get to larger goals. So sometimes a larger goal is to start your own business, and this first step is to 1s go on the Internet and see what businesses are out there and how they're different than what I want to do or to go to a lawyer and get your business set up. So thanks for tuning in to Rachel Recovery. We will be back next week with Susan O'MEAL and tell the rest of her story. If you have any questions, reach out to Rachelandrecovery.com. Follow us on your favorite social media platform or U1 28:32 podcast platform, and always subscribe to us on YouTube. Thank you.