I M Perfect lady

 

Below is a segment of a chapter in the book Awakening Intuition by Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz.

 

“What is the essence of nurturance?  We might find it in a certain South African Fish.  The male fish is the social organizer; he plays the role in the outer world.  When a predator appears, he calls the alarm.  The female fish then opens her mouth and all the babies swim in to be sheltered where it’s safe and warm.  When the danger has passed, the male gives the all-clear, the mother opens her mouth and all the baby fish swim back out into the open water, to continue to grow in independence and autonomy.  This is the kind of warm, rosy image of motherhood most of us cherish, the mother protecting her babies against the dangers of the world, yet letting them frolic and develop on their own when safety permits.  Curiously, though, every once in awhile, one of these fish apparently has a problem with the motherhood role.  When the father calls the alarm, she won’t open her mouth to let the babies in.  They either escape on their own or get eaten by predators.  Conversely, there is on occasion a mother who’ll take the babies in when the alarm sounds, but when she gets the all-clear, she won’t open her mouth to let the babies out, and they smother inside of her.

 

The magnitude of difference, between a healthy and balanced mom, one who knows when safety is required and one who also knows when to allow the child to go free to develop its independence, and one who is unnatural and dysfunctional, is so wide and vast, with lasting lifelong affects to the child.

 

If only we were just affected as a child.

 

Instead when grown in such an unnatural environment we become that, unnatural.  And live an unnatural life, and in my case 46 years of being unnatural.

 

Living in a world with your head on backwards.

 

Your thoughts, beliefs, values and morals are all held firmly in place with an unnatural mind.

 

My mind wasn’t right with reality.

 

What I now know today, is that my parent’s influence was far reaching and changed who I would become.

 

I became an odd cartoon figure in their mad play.

Through conditional love they molded me into this person.

It had nothing to do with the spirit of me.

 

Dr. Phil speaks of how parent’s actions write on the tablets of who their children will become, and he is so right.

 

Children are not raised in a special place outside of the environment of your home.  No, instead they are literally being built by what is going on in your home.

 

I became what was needed in our home, I became what he needed, what she needed, but I never had the space or the choice to just be me.

 

It is unbelievable that the environment can override natural tendencies that we can literally learn and grow up being unnatural.

 

My unnatural state served their needs, but had little to do with mine.  As long as I mirrored their unnaturalness I was part of the team, but that team has no room for natural state of being, of seeing reality in it’s true view.

 

Their mad play has no lines for me now.

 

I can still recall the day I was writing an email to my brother about how that childhood play no longer works for me, how those old scripts I will not utter again, how I walked off that stage and onto my own.

 

Their play hasn’t ended, my absence did not stop production, in fact I think my sister quickly filled my old shoes, but I feel that for the first time I am a star on my own stage.

 

Isn’t that what all children should feel?

That they are the main player on their stage called life.

That it isn’t their job to be the supporting actor, to make another’s play work.

 

Imagine my whole life up until I was 46 I was a supporting actor in my parents play.  I did barely anything without their approval or a thought of how it would affect them.

 

I was so totally linked in chains to the stage of their life.

 

We hear of co-dependency but how about putting our kids in chains to make our life work? Isn’t that being dependent upon our children? 

 

Take it from one who busted the chains, we know we are no longer supporting you, and are even fearful for going against your play, but know it is the only way we can survive.

 

My mother and father expected me to continue to support their cause until death do us a part and beyond. 

 

Society doesn’t look kindly upon children who go against parents, but fails to see the side of the child.  What has the child done, what life has the child had?

 

Autonomy isn’t to be a supporting actor, independence isn’t found spewing lines the other wants to hear, instead of your own.

 

And what society fails to support are the children who want to get off the stage.

 

Instead they want us to try and fit back in with our new scripts and new ways of seeing.  Like that would work?

 

If I can’t call him dad and treat him like a dad, do you really think my new voice will be welcomed on that stage?

 

Our voices are drowned out with jeers and sneers, we are made to be the bad man, the one who isn’t loving, forgiving, this or that.

 

Again, we are set back out in the open sea, alone.

 

This time though, we are in the sea of normal.

 

We are learning the ropes of normal, learning what lines we want as our own, learning what steps we want to take, we are free, the designers and choreographers of our own stage.

 

We are born again we get another chance to live life normally!

I can also recall feeling like being a baby in those one piece pajamas and looking around knowing I was also the mom.

 

Like I could be a mom when I felt like such a baby, so naïve and childlike, I was to be running a house, and cooking meals, let alone dealing with a family deeply entrenched in dysfunction, to walking out in public with him on the front page, like oh my God, this is soooo not going to work, that I was put in charge of my own four kids, someone will certainly see the baby inside of me, that I am an imposter and not an adult at all.

 

It was freaky thinking I was to be in charge when I felt so out of control and helpless, I wanted so badly to be just a baby, to be held and comforted, to be taken care of, to just lay on a blanket and coo.

 

What I had to do was embrace that child and be an adult at the same time, the balance of not being one or the other, but instead nurture both.

 

I did what the mother fish was supposed to do for me I mothered myself!

Nature showed me how.