Personal Essay by S.R. Cyr with Book Review of Nothing But My Voice by Donna Buiso

I wanted someone who had actually experienced what this book talks about to review this book.  Ms. Cyr was happy to do so and I thank her for taking the time.

S. R. Cyr has been a social justice as well as a child safety advocate since the birth of her first child in 1996.  

Ms. Cyr’s volunteer work as an advocate led her to obtain her BA in ‘Women and Gender Studies’ in 2013. Ms. Cyr’s ten-year plus experience – in and out of family court - has re-directed her advocacy toward promoting community education on the effects of childhood trauma and has inspired her to become an active proponent of ‘trauma sensitize’ learning environments as well as medial environments.

Are You Brave Enough To Listen? by S. R. Cyr

I belong to a tribe of warriors that no one from outside that tribe will ever talk about. I know their names – and they know mine - but we’ve never met face- to-face.

This tribe I speak of consists of female warriors. However, my tribe are not just female warriors, but, female warriors denied “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Our kinship validates our existence as we walk invisible amongst you.

You may wonder what brought us strangers together. Why would hundreds -possibly thousands of women - band together  and support each other?

Here is my answer: we are united in the fact that through no fault of our own, we have been left with nothing but our voice. We have been left childless, financially disabled, heart-broken, hopeless, shell-shocked, numb, disabled with PTSD, and alone. We speak but no one hears us. We cry but no one wipes out tears. We scream but our screams go unheard. We go through the motions of life but we feel as if we are in quicksand.

Some well-intentioned people attempt to comfort us with assurance that everything will be just fine, but, it never is.

Imagine being deprived of an active role in the nurturing, loving, and fostering of a young child into young adulthood? Assuring us all will be ‘fine’ is a cue that you are not truly listening.

How can one mourn the death of a relationship that people insist has opportunity to be?? If I could ask the well-meaning people one thing, it would be this: please, stop telling me that my children will “come back.” Because truth-be-told, there is a good chance they may not.

And, even if they did, they will not be the children I once knew: trauma has a way of changing people for life.

Let me introduce you to the newest member of my tribe; her name is Donna Buiso. She – like me-  through several years of family court procedures – was stripped of all parental rights.

I purchased Ms. Busio’s memoir hoping to find the answer to the question that every mother deprived of time spent with children wants to know: do the children ever come back? Do the children deprived of their biological mother ever come to really know their mother??

If you want to find out that answer, I highly recommend purchasing Donna’s book.

As so poignantly written within the forward of Donna Buiso’s book, Nothing But MyVoice, “This is a book that requires action. Action to change and rectify a system that allows the continued unconscionable abuse of mothers. These injustices must be corrected for the sake of all emotionally abused mothers, their emotionally abused children, and for the welfare of society at large {David P. Hayes, Ph.D.}.”

Donna Busio’s depiction of her life with an emotionally abusive ex-husband can be triggering for anyone who has lived this kind of hell.

Psychological warfare is the only way to describe what it is like to co-parent with an abusive ex-partner. Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public often forget that emotional, verbal, financial, and judicial abuse fall within the spectrum of domestic abuse.

Imagine being court ordered to stand back and watch your own child suffer at the hands of a person who uses verbal, emotional and psychological tactics to get their adults needs met? Adults who choose to file for sole custody and refuse to allow your child to be with you: imagine?

I bought Ms. Busio’s book because I was also stripped of parental rights, decision making power, and a visitation schedule. I was court ordered to sit back and watch as my teens were raised in a home environment that – in my opinion- lacked supervision, compassion, and authentic love.

I had to endure phone calls, emails, and text messages from my teenage daughter asking me, “where is dad taking me?”

I later found out that one of her father’s tactics for controlling her behavior was to threaten her with being “dropped off somewhere” because he could no longer “handle her.” When she begged and pleaded to live with me- her mother that raised her the first12 years of her life-  her dad would respond, “anywhere but with your mother.”

Even today, as I re-count these events, I go numb. Admittedly, as I read Donna Buiso’s depiction of her own children’s torture, I was triggered.

I cannot fathom how a human – especially an adult- could be so cruel toward a child.

How can any human – parent or probate judge- deny a child their biological mother?

Donna ends her book with the words, “My voice is my strength. It’s all I have left. I will continue to use it, not just for myself but for the children and for all of the mothers who find themselves fighting to protect their family in court.”   

Ms. Buiso has spoken. And so has hundreds and thousands of other mothers throughout the US as we warriors write incessantly to our local and national political leaders as well as to major network television studios.

We warriors have been left with nothing but our voices. For decades now, we have proven to be beyond brave for articulating our pain.

What remains to be seen is this: Are you brave enough to listen?