“[Rick Springer] rose to prominence as an anti-nuclear activist. For a decade, Rick’s anger made my home a place of fear, but his reputation as an activist and pacifist was never affected by this legacy of abuse,” writes roseandersen
Rick Springer. Photo: Provided. One morning, when I was 15 years old, my stepfather threw a chair at me. It missed my head and crashed into the wall as he berated me for failing to clean up after my breakfast. My stepfather’s name was Rick Springer, and in the ’90s, he rose to prominence as an anti-nuclear activist.
For years, I worried that if I spoke up, Rick’s supporters would come after me or my family. But the #MeToo movement has helped me see that the only person who is served by silence is the abuser. After Rick moved in, he started teaching us his rules. We weren’t supposed to raise our voices because it was considered “violent.” Sarah and I needed to learn to talk to him with respect, so Rick read to us from handouts on nonviolent communication, a method developed in the ’60s that stressed the language of compassion rather than that of domination. The main tenets of nonviolent communication are the vulnerable expression of one’s own feelings and needs coupled with empathetic listening.
Rick suffered from depression and spoke often of suicide. He used to say he wished he could take a pill and disappear from everyone’s memory. On and off, he attended AA, tried family counseling, and joined a men’s group where guys beat drums around a firepit and talked about masculinity. These attempts at emotional growth were cyclical: My mother would leave him, he would come back with a promise to get help, he would revert to old behavior, and the cycle would begin again.
I was angry with my mom for allowing this man into our home. Once, I threw a drawer of silverware at her in a rage. She tried to protect us and take on the brunt of his anger. Like many people who love an alcoholic, she cleaned up his messes, justified his sickness, and wallowed in denial. Recently, I asked my mother if Rick was ever violent; she paused and said, “It was an act of violence when he drove drunk with you and Sarah.
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