Synkroniciti is delighted to welcome Berlin-based writer Nancy Chapple with her essay “Inculcation,” which explores how some male partners gaslight women, indoctrinating them with the belief that their personal growth and autonomy are secondary to their functions as wife and/or mother. Society often backs these men, failing to recognize women as individuals who need to realize themselves.
While helping a friend put away props from a recent dance performance, Nancy is stunned when this friend admits she is being selfish by performing when her four-year-old needs his mother.
“We were not holding a conversation. As a matter of fact, Joanne wasn’t even thinking out loud. She was repeating phrases her husband had said to her: scolding, impatient phrases he had deployed so that her behavior would conform to his wish for a smoothly functioning home. In his absence—on that weekend he was visiting his parents with their son—she was slipping into his role of “educating” her.
I recognize this because I’ve been in the same situation.”
Nancy is extremely vulnerable and open as she tells us about her relationship with Harald, which lasted nine years, and how it impacted her identity.
“Outwardly I was a go-getter, an enterprising American abroad, educated as a classical musician, with a fair command of the German language. But because of the unacknowledged emotional chaos within me, I was susceptible to Harald.”
Harald made her feel small, ashamed and inadequate. Thankfully, she came to understand his abusive behavior and left but not before he had severely diminished her confidence and enjoyment of life. “Inculcation” is an attempt to reach other women in similar situations before it’s too late, to tell them they are not alone and they don’t need to put up with the undeserved shame and guilt heaped upon them. Nancy speaks in a refreshing, healing, and liberating way about female sexuality, which remains taboo in much of modern society. The result is both courageous and world-changing.
Read “Inculcation” in Synkroniciti’s “Identity” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Nancy Chapple is a Berlin-based American who in her 38 years in Europe has worked as a translator and interpreter, classical pianist, and co-director of a small international business. She has recently published memoir at Caustic Frolic, BULL lit mag, and Under the Sun, op-eds in the Seattle Times, and a spoken word and piano essay on Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues in the Decadent Review. In the 2010s, she created and performed two one-woman shows: memoir interwoven with live piano renderings. She has also published essays in German at Berliner Gazette, and Hard, a volume of short creative nonfiction pieces (“tiny truths”) in 2013. Her creative endeavors are presented at www.aptwords.ink.