I do hope this is changing. I'm not sure if I'll leave this tweet up because it still feels humiliating, but in my single mom days, I was a sales rep in the call accounting industry. We sold software that recorded all calls. We were warned all our calls were recorded & so

Should have been protected by that very software. I was not. The executive structure, the industry was SO crude. My biggest client ended up with its main customer hiring a consultant. The first time I talked with this consultant his first words after his name was,

"You sound like a girl (42) who *likes to be tied up and gagged.*" I needed the job. My boss wanted the clients I had built. I had to keep my mouth shut. Subsequent calls were worse. I knew it was abuse. I knew I was "lucky " to have my job. I knew it was almost paying the bills

I knew I was very good at my job and I knew it was because of working hard. My boss said i was just lucky and pretty, not anything to do with performance. That, too, was something we women in different industries where we were rare knew we had to tolerate if we could not

afford to lose a job or sue and lose a job. I seriously considered it. Surely the recordings would be proof enough, but the calls could also be deleted at will (not mine). I finally left that job and took a better one, though it did not all go away. I wanted to say everything

I had stored up, the many I could have used, but another thing I had been taught by other women was to never burn your bridges because the stories could be flipped at any time by a future employer looking for past references. And so I left quietly and the foul owner spent

45 pointless minutes trying to convince me to stay. I knew I was greatly underpaid. I knew I had singlehandedly made a floundering acquisition highly profitable and alone put us at #2 in another industry and was under-compensated, unrecognized and hit on relentlessly. I was

terrified about moving to another job, another industry higher stress, still 20% less in salary than the men in the same position, but I took that next job. I fervently hoped women behind me were no longer undergoing such treatment, but sadly #churchtoo #MeToo says otherwise.

#achurchcalledtov gives me hope for the future for environments that denigrates neither sex & allows both to flourish. & please someone tell me if this is the kind of thing that should not be said outside of a therapist's office, because I just barely have the courage to say this

Something I had not considered until these tweets is: my body collapsed with many things wrong, accumulated trauma, in 2009, could no longer keep up with the stress of my job and have been home since. In the weeks and months after as I saw doctor after doctor, I finally had time

to consider my life as a whole. To look at the many layers of abuse over decades and see a bigger picture of me, a brave woman, a survivor. With a good husband. And months later in 2010, I was finally ready to start talking back, to start privately addressing my church,

to start calling out wrong doings. To label what had happened too many times, even where I should have been safe, even from someone who had used his mantle of authority in a way that helped set me up for further "learned helplessness." It is not all his fault. I've been abused

in other ways. But he missed the opportunity to build into me in a safe way, the way of Christ. He could have helped cause healing rather than deep damage and shame. I'm not that woman anymore. I can still be hurt. I can still be shocked. But I believe in me now. I won't let that

be taken away from me. I still choose to believe the best in others but now I run things by trusted friends and my adored husband if my gut is giving little twinges. Sadly that often means delete and block. Yet, there are so many good people out there! End of rant