My wife endured an entire childhood of major trauma, and the day to day trauma that comes with extreme poverty and hunger. Father dead at 2 yrs old. Mother who functions at about an 8 year old level. Kidnapped twice when she was 5. Passed off to another family to work as a house slave at 6. Working at a roadside restaurant for hours before and after school from 8 to 13 yrs old. Being forced to glean leftovers for her own meals. Forced to fight her siblings, for the entertainment of drunken uncles, in order to obtain food whenever the children returned to the village to visit their mother. Swimming for her life when the river took the house out to sea. Bitten by a poisons snake and taken to a witch doctor who prayed in Visayan and Latin, then waited to see if she would die. Constant sexual harassment, starting at about 10. Violence, and the constant threat of violence. School authorities that did little. Church authorities that did nothing. The list goes on. All of her siblings have scars from getting caught in barbed wire, while trying to obtain food from relatives who
sell surplus to buy alcohol.
I can't believe her resilience. She's almost always in a good mood and greets every morning with a smile. She's kind to everyone.
She also has deep down fears that reflect her early life. Fear of alcoholics and their erratic behavior. Fear that I will be murdered by robbers or kidnappers. And a general fear of abandonment. Social anxiety if we go somewhere where she doesn't know anybody, can make it difficult to convince her to try new places. The world used to be a very scary place, where running out of food or money meant that she would be totally at the mercy of others. So, she has learned to play it safe. So safe that relatively harmless places and activities are avoided. It's getting better. I don't get angry about it because I know that these same fears were a matter of self-preservation just one year ago.
When we're making business
plans, sometimes very counterproductive fear-mongering crops up. What if we buy
land and we bought it off someone that didn't own it? What if someone steals everything? What if everyone is very jealous about the amount of money we have? And it goes on. Sometimes I have to make a rule. We're going to talk about something without a whole bunch of scary what ifs. She will agree to this, but five minutes later, say yes, but what if?
I've found that it really helps if I can find someone on YouTube or elsewhere who has been successful at anything similar. It's especially good if they talk about various missteps they made and how to avoid them. Bringing out all of the possible pitfalls and discussing the probability of each, seems to help put it in perspective. I've looked up murder rates and every financial scam we can think of. It may always take a little bit of salesmanship on my part , to get her to try new things, and live without fear.
There are certain things that I want to avoid because of well founded fears, based on things that are very likely to go wrong, if not planned for properly. I don't want to buy a place where there's any possibility of a storm surge engulfing the house. That was a pretty easy sell, since her childhood home washed away with her in it. I want to have some portion of land that is the top of a watershed no matter how small. Nova has drank enough bad
water, to know that that makes sense. A small portion of our house will be built like a fortress. This will protect us from a category 5 typhoon, but also from anyone who wants to force entry. It will have an escape tunnel, but it will also have a small arsenal, including homemade grenades and mustard gas or whatever the modern version of that is. Avoidance is always Nova's
answer to fear. I always plan to face the problem, and seriously up the ante if necessary.
We have many common interests and values. But we are like night and day when it comes to fear.