EQI Home | Emotional Intelligence

I saw this woman on the bus this morning. For the whole 10 minutes or so I was standing there she had this same expression on her face. I wondered "What if you had a mother that looked like this?" Maybe she was just having a bad day, but what if she wasn't? What if this was her usual look?

What if a child or teenager had to look at the face of a woman like this for 18 years or so? What effect might it have? And if this woman's face reflects her feelings, and her beliefs about life and children, as I suspect it does, then I would feel very sorry for any child who was forced to live with her. Although I am hesitant to label this woman as emotionally abusive, just by this one picture, I will say that in my experience I have seen this kind of face before and such woman definitely are emotionally abusive. They are closed minded, usually very religious, very strict, cold and uncompassionate. It actually hurts me to look at this picture and think what damage she could do or might have already done to a sensitive child or teenager. I'm sure that if my intuition about her is correct, then she herself was emotionally abused and perhaps abused in other ways, but this does not justify giving such a person legal control over anyone society calls "her" child or children. This picture really affects me, and while I know that I can't read too much into it without more facts, it still says a lot. At least to me. I know that I felt uncomfortable standing near her. She really looks like she came from the past. In the time when it was acceptable to punish children violently. In fact now she seems like the kind of person who would be at a "witch" trial and would stare with ths same expression as the "witch" was sentence do burn, or was actually burning to death in front of her. Please don't write to me and tell me that I am not being fair to her, etc. I know that this was just a few moments, but it really affects me for the feelings and memories she brings up in me.

S. Hein
Transylvania, Romania
August 14, 2008

- Larger image below