Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everybody. This 2020 Thanksgiving is obviously a little different than other years. Possibly some of you aren’t able to be directly with your family due to social distancing and staying safe and healthy.

The concept of Thanksgiving makes me appreciate more than ever those that I love, those that have shown me love, my great family members and, you know, those who have shown kindness. This very much for me does not include my father, Mike Rinder, who assaulted and battered my mother and caused her damage for life. He refuses to accept any responsibility for what he did to my mother, on top of everything. And meanwhile my mother is living a life of pain, really for the rest of her life. She’s never going to have the full use of her arm. She’s never going to be fully recovered from the violent assault, the domestic abuse, all caused by Mike Rinder. And that is something I really don’t want to give thanks for. That's really the only thing I can’t give thanks for this Thanksgiving.

Destruction of our family, our family values and caring for each other is Mike Rinder, and always has been Mike Rinder. His entire livelihood depends on, on attacking his family, telling lies and destroying everything that I live for, everything I believe in, everything my mom lives for and believes in and holds dear. And his son—everything he lives for and believes in. And his brother and everybody else in our family, he works to destroy every single day, meaning Mike Rinder. That harassment, abuse and mental and physical pain he has levelled is just something I cannot give thanks for.

Of course it’s more important than ever at this time to be vigilant, be aware of domestic violence and take action where you know of it or you see it—whether it be your household or another's—this is the time to speak up about that and to do something about it. We’ve been in stay at home and lockdown for a good part of the year. And the domestic violence statistics have gone up. Let’s put an end to that violence. This is the time of year when we want love in the families and celebration of families. Lots of love to go around.

For all of the families that don't have a memory of abuse, like mine of watching my father, Mike Rinder, maul my mother, they absolutely have something to be thankful for. I do hope those loving families are having a very wonderful Thanksgiving together and celebrating the family unit, as best they can during this trying time.

I give thanks this year to all those who have supported me from around the world and all of the support I've received from people that I don't know—from as far away as Africa—that also want to raise awareness against domestic violence and to make this a better world.

I give thanks for that encouragement to keep on going and to stand up and tell the truth about what happened in my family with my father Mike Rinder.

And, of course, I give thanks to every single person in my close knit family—not including Mike Rinder. I love them all. I have family members from Melbourne, Australia to New York, New York and even in Switzerland. I absolutely give thanks to them this Thanksgiving and forever more. And I wish all the best for everybody else as well.

Again, for all of my supporters who I consider basically part of my family in that way, thank you very much and Happy Thanksgiving to you.

Taryn

Make life worth giving thanks for.

End domestic violence.

Pain

Today the topic I want to go over is pain. Now I don’t know about you but for sure, for me, if I’m watching a movie or something and there’s pain—someone’s getting punched, something like that—I can’t deal with it. I have to turn it off. You know, we all know pain is unpleasant. It’s not fun. And naturally human beings don’t like it.

In the case of my family, Mike Rinder is synonymous with pain. And I can tell you all the reasons why:

• My mom: she was attacked by him and physically injured. The physical pain of a much larger man with a lot of force and pressure put on my mom’s body was from Mike Rinder. And while doing this, he broke her shoulder which, of course, having a broken bone in your body is painful. And then the gouged flesh. And the continued pain, after that, of the operation, the physical therapy, all the things that happened because of that broken shoulder. It’s pain for life. And my mother is crippled for life because of Mike Rinder.

• Then you have my brother, who went through life threatening cancer, years of surgery and radiation, chemo. And so he had that pain and on top of that he had, at the same time his father, Mike Rinder, not only attacking his family but also then domestically abusing the mother of his children, in other words, hurting my brother’s mom. So my brother had that pain too.

• The next example of Mike Rinder equaling pain in my family and being synonymous with pain is with my grandmother. This was Mike’s mom, and she was a fabulous woman. But she went to her grave, honestly, tormented and in anguish about Michael as she used to call him. I mean every letter, every e-mail was Michael, Michael, Michael. And a key thing that she told me and very much communicated to me was the anguish at seeing that her own son turned into this horrible man that attacks his family and spreads hate and lies about his own children. And that was just so against the way her and my grandfather were. And that was pain. I mean, if you’ve ever seen pain, that was pain.

• My uncle, which is Mike Rinder’s brother, Andrew, is another example of pain. Living his whole life as his brother obviously they were together. And the latest pain, and this was physical pain, was when we went to go, my mother, Andrew, Mike’s brother, and I went to go see Mike Rinder and try to reconcile as a family. But when we went there, the pain that he then inflicted on my uncle was to almost break his finger. And, you know, he absolutely had no qualms about hurting his brother. Yes, it was my mother, whose shoulder he broke, he also attempted to break his brother’s finger. And so that’s once again pain in our family is synonymous with Mike Rinder.

I mean every sense of the word: mental, physical, vicariously, directly. Pain equals Mike Rinder in our family.

And that’s why I use my voice to expose Mike Rinder and say to everybody: don’t support Mike Rinder and don’t support people that make pain for others. Be nice, be helpful, be a good person. It feels much better, for sure.

I’ll see you next time.

This is Taryn with justice4mom.

Mike Rinder means family pain.

Don’t support him.

justice4mom.org

Path to Recovery

My whole campaign is predicated upon the fact that my mom was assaulted by my father, Mike Rinder, and for that I am seeking justice—justice for her.

I’m here with my mom today, and I wanted to demonstrate with her the lifestyle changes she's had to make because of the broken shoulder and the damage inflicted on her by Mike Rinder.

My mom explains the changes she has had to make in her life in order to cope.

Here is some of what she has said:

• I can’t tie my shoes. So what I do is I wear slip-ons. All my shoes are slip-on shoes and that’s how I deal with that. It is not that big of a deal but it is a restriction.

• I have tried to hold a glass or a cup in my right hand but because of the nerve damage and the other things that impinged on the entire nervous system in my right arm and the inflammation and all the other repercussions, I don't have feeling in two of my fingers. So the glass or cup slips and breaks. I only use paper cups now with lids on—for everything.

• Common everyday things like brushing your teeth. I had to actually learn how to do—I’m right-so I had to teach myself and train my left hand, to one degree or another, to do certain things. I had to figure out how to brush my teeth with my left hand.

• Putting on makeup—or I don’t or very minimal because I can't do it.

• And I wear contact lenses. And that I've been able to learn how to do with my left hand only. Numerous times they fell on the floor and I have to do it again. But that's how I do it. That’s how I live.

• One of the very common things I can’t do, which my friends help me with is, for example open a bottle of Gatorade. It’s been pretty hot this summer. I literally, even with my left hand, I cannot open a bottle. I can’t open anything actually. So I have to go to someone else and ask them, “Could you please open this for me,” which they do. And then I keep it open.

• I have done photography most of my life. And I could not any longer lift or press a shutter on a camera. I literally don’t have the strength and it’s shaking. I tried tripods and various things. It just doesn’t work. So that’s something that just got taken away from me which is that pleasure of doing things that I like to do. In addition to the pain.

• I cannot put my arm up on a desk and leave it there because it doesn’t go that high so I have lots of clipboards to use if I need to write something with my hand or sign something or write a letter or a birthday card. I pull my clipboard and slide it under my hand because I cannot move my fingers. And even so, after a few minutes my arm stops working because it goes numb. So I write intermittently. But that’s how I do it.

• When I type I have a computer. I’ve used a computer right-handed forever until this. So that was a big challenge and it took quite a long time to learn to use my left hand, and I even learned to somewhat type with my left hand only. I switched to a left-handed mouse. And luckily I am a touch typist so that assists.

• To do my laundry I have to have one of my friends carry my laundry down to be done and get assistance in that.

• There’s certain food I can't cut so a friend will cut my food and things like that are now sort of my routine.

• So I’m coping day to day. I can’t lift a box. Opening doors is horrific. If the door itself and the way the door handle is doesn't accommodate my left hand, I use my feet. That’s how I do doors.

That is plenty to endure. And the pain. The pain where Mike Rinder attacked my mom on my forearm and tore out a piece of it, she has scars that if they go in the sun they’re so delicate they start bubbling.

My mom’s arm is constantly swollen. My mom’s shoulder is constantly swollen.

I can’t express how much it hurts her during the day, every day, in addition to the rotator cuff damage and all of that when Mike Rinder pulled her bones he also pulled her shoulder blade. So my mom’s right shoulder blade is also out of alignment and the damage is permanent too. So that causes her a lot of pain and I have to say, she spends too much time just in grief, because it’s hurting her so much every day. And this comes after years of trying to get her arm to even move again, having the operation, doing intense physical therapy for a long time. So that itself—it has been just a long train of pain.

I think that sums it up. This is not right.

Mike Rinder, my father and her husband for thirty plus years, did this and as you can see there's a lot of pain because of his domestic violence attack.

And that pain is caused by Mike Rinder and we're coping and enjoying life but that doesn't mean that he can get away with it.

Thank you.

This is Taryn with Justice4mom.

Domestic violence is painful

Expose the truth.

justice4mom.org