I M Perfect lady

Author: bjukuri

  • Perfectly you!

    The reason I began this blog or writing for that matter, was that I found myself upside down in an upright world, my insides didn’t match reality, my dysfunction led me around the world not me.

    This me, I called the mental woman and she resided in me, in my thoughts and in my beliefs, she had ownership of this vessel and steered my actions from a fear based setting.

    I lived governed by fear and did most things to ward off the impending doom, for if and when the doom arrived, I would die.

    You see, once upon a time, a little girl was in a delightful safe world and out of nowhere, in the midst of her caring kindness an ugly monster appeared, plunging her into a state of terror.

    Once this terror is felt and no one releases you from it, you then set forth with the Fight or Flight Switch always on ON.

    My past six years has been to re-set that switch, to not respond in terror, but in love.

    When my daughter’s psyche hung in the balance, when I could see the abuse’s affects, my Mental Lady, my Wounded child, and My Loving Awareness all arose.

    It was the epic battle within me.

    One moment I was writhing in terror, frozen, feet ice cold dripping in sweat, a child without a way out.

    The next I was a mental woman taking control with needs that overshadow my daughter, fear that I had somehow allowed this to happen, it was my fault.

    And the most wonderful delightful experience I have ever felt was to be present with my child, to sit with her and her pain and see nothing but innocence, feel nothing but love.

    The contrast of these three individuals that I vacillated between had me swing to the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.

    It was like my past ghosts and my present awareness engaged in many battles, taking me on a wild life review.

    My views of her, my views of self, my extraordinary view of my husband, was like an epic play and I played each role.

    I feel utterly blessed and filled with gratitude that the most predominate woman within me is Loving Awareness.

    To live the rest of my life in this mode, riding behind
    Big as a house Heart, means to me that the Universal love, the essence of nature, the God Spirit, is leading me forward, that the clutches of evil and fear have been released.

    I am a woman who has been to the depths of hell and have emerged brighter, more loving and kind to my self.

    I know if I can travel this road, than my daughter and all girls and women who find them selves like I did, can do it.

    You do it by loving your Imperfections until they become perfectly you!

  • Imperfectly Me.

    Yesterday morning, after a sleepless night I wrote the post about unconditional love, about knowing to the depth of my soul, no matter what I will not be the one to abuse my wounded child.

    I let go of all things but unconditional love.

    My husband and I had decided we would get out of the house and go for breakfast to give us a chance to talk privately.

    My husband turns to me when I enter the car and says, “do you have anything left to say to our daughter, is there anymore you have to offer?”

    And I say very weak defeated, no, I have nothing, all my knowing, my wise words and experience, all my efforts and love are not seemingly working, I am at the end of the road, I have nothing.

    He says, “Good. Here is how this is going to go down. What we did to her last night, by pressing her is going to drive her out of our home. I will not do that to her. She is hurt and needs a place to be, where there is no one pressuring her, a place where she feels comfortable…I love my daughter and want her always to feel that she is welcome in our home no matter what.

    I tell him, I agree. I just learned about my unconditional love for her, that I too will not hurt her when she is down.

    The next thing he says is you have to let her go, let her do it her way, let her be EVEN if she decides to move out of our home, let her decide, You have to let her go.

    I tell him he is asking too much.

    In that instant, I feel the little girl in me terrified of letting go, of losing once again.

    I tell him, Honey I know about letting go, about letting them decide, of allowing them to be, I let my family go and none of them came back to me.

    I have lost and I have lost and none of them ever come back, you are asking way too much, and now you are asking me to let go of my little girl to let her go free while she is alone and lost.

    I can’t let her go, for if she doesn’t come back I don’t know what I will do, I can’t let her go, I don’t have a heart big enough to bear this if she doesn’t come back.

    I tell him, “Mr. Big as a House Heart Man, you will have to lead this, you will have to stand in front of me, for me with the “Little as a Rock Broken Heart lady can’t be out front, I am afraid that if this little piece shatters, I will not have anything left, that I will go down and not come back up.”

    Honey I can let her go but your big heart will have to carry me, my heart isn’t big enough to do this alone and I don’t know how.

    In that moment I felt my holding grasp, its final clutch leave, and she was set off alone.

    Peace overcame me in that instant that seemed to settle over the spot that terror lived.

    My husband continues on unaffected by my emotional display. He says, “we can’t tell her what to do, she is a young lady, she is inexperienced, but this is how she will learn, we will offer her a space here to heal, but not tell her what to do.”

    I am in total agreement and following his lead.

    It is the first time in my life I let go of being responsible of taking the lead of getting on the back of the motor bike, of getting out of the wind and flying bugs and debris to snuggle in behind him and let him tell me what it is we need to do.

    What my husband and I then discussed was exactly what he had done for me six years ago when my world crumbled, when I too discovered that the relationships I had were very dysfunctional, when I had lost my way, when I found my self upside down and backwards, when I didn’t have a radar that knew its way, my dear husband opened up his heart wider, opened up our home, and allowed me to enter in.

    Nothing changed inside, it remained a place of normal in an otherwise upside down unnormal world.

    I entered in exactly as I found myself; there were no requirements no rules or regulations that I had to change first to be here.

    He allowed me the space, he demanded nothing, he asked no questions, he made no suggestions, he allowed me, a frightened wounded animal, to come into the warm space of his loving home and curl up an be safe.

    He never, not once asked me to do something I did not want to do, he waited for me to decide I was ready.

    He never not once wanted me to be further healed than I was, he waited for me to share with him.

    He continued to love and hold me like nothing had changed, to him I was the same person but sick or wounded, that was all.

    I told him, ”What you want me to do for our daughter is what you already did for me, I can do this.”

    I get to be him, to walk in his shoes and just allow her to be. I know even more for I have actually walked those steps.

    I felt immediately, that this was the right path for healing for I know that without him, this house, the space and undemanding loved ones, I would not have made it. I can now give to her that.

    I told him, “I can’t imagine what this had to be like for you, with a wounded wife, to be the only one to do this, it had to be very hellish, and how did we make it through that?”

    He isn’t wanting to go back, he wants to be here.

    He tells me, “you are not to say anything negative, in fact you are not allowed to say anything at all, you are to go on creating a loving home, doing what we have always done here and let her just be.”

    I say, “Honey I get it, I get to be a loving mom unconditionally l can do this.”

    I say I will follow your lead, for did the perfect job for me.

    As we sat face to face over breakfast, my body a noodle, empty and drained, feeling like I had just completed a 6 year marathon, I say to him.

    “Honey, what would a perfect mother have done?”

    He says to me, “she would have stopped this morning like you did, she would done exactly everything you did and said, but she would stop now and let her go.”

    I know for some this may not seem like an answer to a trouble wounded child, but it worked for a very mentally twisted up and wounded adult child.

    I sit in awe of what this man has done for me, and what we, him and I can do for our little girl, our almost woman child who has been wounded, we can open our home, our hearts and welcome her in.

    We demand nothing but accept all.
    We say nothing unless asked.

    We work hard to maintain the energy or atmosphere of our home as it always was.

    We keep this the one piece in the world unchanged in her very changed life.

    This home, the people in this home were my saving grace.

    They never treated me like the outside world talked of me, they remained true to me as what we had previous, they did not change.

    They went to work and did what they loved, they did not have a blame or shameful eye directed at me.

    In their eyes I was imperfectly me.

  • Without Conditions.

    My daughter asked me to clarify, that the abuse I speak of is not sexual, it is not rape, it is not fondling, it is I guess a light form of abuse, it is cheating.

    There has been no physical abuse to her body.

    While this may satisfy those who view abuse to be only sexual or physical in any manner, there is another level or spectrum of abuse.

    The psychic damage that lies beneath what the naked eye can see, its affects can only be seen by the actions of the body.

    Where it moves and how it acts, whether it has radar for when it either abuses or is abused.

    The damage psyche has a hard time discerning what is abuse and what is love, it has been led slowly and over time to shut down the body and its signals.

    It is running amuck and out of control, it is doing things that someone in their ‘right mind’ would not do.

    This psychic blindness to morals and values doesn’t happen overnight, it is a process, a slow and laborious time consuming process, it happens with saturation of crafty words, pretty messages, long winded conversations, a preaching of sorts.

    My daughter’s cell phone has recorded this outpouring of emotional cheating.

    Near 5,000 minutes in one month of talking…at least this is what our current bill shows.

    Plus another 3,000 text messages.

    Now, I will agree that there are a few sprinkled odd calls, but the most favored number appears over and over and over like a broken recorded, beating and beating, and beating, and beating…

    Some will say, I am over reacting, blowing it out of proportion that I have lost my mind or it is proof that I am certifiably nuts.

    But, I stand as I have stood and say, this MARRIED man, has taken advantage of his babysitter, he is abusing not only his wife, his children and my daughter, but he has changed the peace within our home.

    Some say, she too owns her part. I will agree. I now hold her responsible for the way this continues, how the road twists and turns, what bumps we will take, how this cheating dance that I have blown out of proportion will affect my happy home.

    It seems that my daughter and I are standing face to face, she has to lose what she loves or I have to lose what I love.

    She is standing in a spot that is very difficult to maneuver out of. You will lose something, you just have to decide what.

    She has to see where the biggest part of her self is.

    She has to feel down deeply and act accordingly.

    I have to honor her choice.

    I have had lots more practice losing.

    I told my husband, I have lost so much there isn’t much of my heart left to break, that he with his big as a house heart may have bear the brunt of it, hold me up, hold her up and carry us forward.

    It is out of my hands, has been out of my hands, it is out of my control, all I can do is allow the Universe to turn the corner, to take the next step and follow where it leads.

    If my lesson is total and unconditional love for her, she has it.

    I will love her no matter what.

    I will love and understand that she is doing what it is she is meant to do.

    I will not kick her when she is down.

    I love the confused girl, the almost woman, and the innocence she once was, there is no part of her I don’t love.

    I love now without conditions.

  • Emotional Cheating.

    Emotional cheating definition: It is an emotional relationship between a married or a committed person with another in the opposite sex not the spouse. It does not involve sex but includes emotional feelings and attraction and it is also referred to as an “affair of the heart”. It is difficult to spot because there is no physical evidence about it and its signs are susceptible to other interpretations. Emotional affairs are more about intimacy and romance but it can also be as damaging as physical affairs.

    Emotional cheating or an emotional affair has destroyed a lot of marriages because of various reasons. The cheating spouse invests his or her emotional energy and feelings to another person instead of the spouse and this usually results to a weakened marriage. These emotional investments should have made the marriage stronger but instead, it is passed on to another person.

    The problem with the emotional cheating definition is that it is inconclusive and there is a thin line separating an emotional affair and a platonic friendship. This why there are still debates whether emotional cheating should really be considered as cheating. But experts believe that an emotional affair is indeed a form of infidelity because it involves deception, betrayal, and a lot of lying.

    An emotional affair usually begins as a simple friendship with another person who shares a lot of common interest and desires. Then they start spending more time with each other and hang out more often. They share secrets and personal stories. If two persons are telling more things about each other and building intimacy and keeping it as a secret from the spouse, they are having an emotional affair.

    The most common signs of emotional cheating include: loss of sexual interest, spouse becomes too busy and spends less time at home, spouse becomes secretive and demands for privacy, spouse becomes moody, and the spouse becomes self-conscious on his or her appearance.

    Although some do not agree with the emotional cheating definition, there are still some ways to differentiate emotional cheating from a simple friendship. If your spouse’s relationship or friendship with another person is exclusive or very secretive and your spouse does not want you to be part of it and know more about it, chances are it is an emotional affair.

    Evelyn Andersen is a writer about emotional affairs and other relationship problems.

  • Moral Wrong Doing

    I looked up the meaning of Innocence yet again, and it says, “Freedom from sin or moral wrong.”

    Freedom from sin and moral wrongdoing…to be free of engaging in such behavior is to be innocent once again?

    To be free of moral wrong doing…

    This meaning has more of an impact to me as a mother watching her daughter who is newly freed from an abusive relationship.

    I love that you can return to the state of innocence when you leave the moral wrong doing.

    Another meaning is,
    ”It can also refer to a state of unknowing, where one’s experience is less than that of one’s peers, in either a relative view to social peers, or by an absolute comparison to a more common normative scale.”

    I love this meaning as well, for it implies the state of unknowing due to the lack of experience.

    What I knew to a DNA level was that my daughter was at a disadvantage that her experience level was sorely lacking, where she was like a babe in the woods.
    Isn’t it interesting that you can become innocent when you are free from moral wrong doing or when you lack experience?

    My childhood religion’s set point was that we were all damaged goods that the body itself is filled with sin and our minds and thoughts riddled with landmines of moral wrongdoing, we were born not innocent.

    I believe this is totally the opposite.

    The church and its leaders were damaged goods, their psyche filled with feelings of unworthiness, and they preached from that standpoint.

    Many a parent preaches from their own private pulpit when they raise their children, we are seen from their lenses of self.

    I have viewed my children through many false lenses.

    I have seen them in the eyes of the church, the views of others, the fears within me, through my lacks and my moral wrongs, but I was able for the first time, sit with my daughter and see, feel and know her innocence.

    Being able to sit, as an innocent mother with an innocent daughter is a beautiful thing.

    I have seen myself and her both being locked in a dance of moral wrong doing, and then both of us being set free.

    My dance lasted 46 years, and then six years of intense inner inspection, seeking of self, looking at the world critically and with discerning eyes pleading for reality to show me who I am.Her dance was much shorter, but the lesson equally as meaningful.
    I would like to think that my bully pulpit of innocence shortened the time she had to suffer.

    That by me seeing me with clear eyes, I then had a better lens in which to see her.

    It is unbelievable yet believable, that my mother saw herself in me.

    This is why; “the sins of the father onto the children” make the children sinners. They don’t have a chance to make their own sins, for they follow what they are taught.

    Just the very clear and simple view of reality gets distorted, when no one knows what innocence is.

    The greatest tragedy of a dysfunctional family, isn’t that they don’t understand evil, it is instead that they have no idea what innocence feels like, what freedom tastes like, what love is.

    Love is innocent.

    Love is being free of moral wrong doing.

  • By each Choice we Make.

    Did you know that brainwashing is when you no longer have the option of choice?

    I witnessed my daughter lose her power of choice.

    She didn’t even know she gave up her choices while she attended only one option.

    The one option became the most important, she was willing to lie to protect that option, she was willing to give up her self for that one option, she lost her self by focusing on one choice.

    It soon had control of her and not her of choice.

    This secret life, the clandestine meetings, the specialness of feeling that only the two of them knew, created the one option.

    This one option wasn’t to be shared.

    It was separated from the world.

    It was ‘special’.

    She lost her other choices for none of them were allowed in the ‘special’ spot.

    The special spot and the man who occupied this site began changing her to fit his spot.

    She had to change to play there.

    She couldn’t bring him into her life; she could only go to his.

    This ‘special man’ didn’t fit into her old life; she had to create a new self to fit in his.

    In doing so, she lost the options.

    She lost the freedom, the flowing back and forth between two lives unchanged.

    She had to become different in both worlds.

    In his world, they had to be quiet, keep it secret, don’t let anyone know what it was they were doing, it was the key that turned the lock.

    This twisted sense of special steals away the person you are and you leave your old life and self behind to fit into this new picture, unknowingly.

    You leave yourself bit by bit by bit, until you are fashioned into this new self and the path back to your old self goes dark.

    What my husband and I had to do was let her make choices, to unlock the frozen part in her brain.

    While his key is secret, our key is freedom.

    He had taken away the choices we gave them all back.

    We had to do the opposite of what had led her down this road.

    She gets to make choices.

    We won’t tell her what to do.

    We open up the space for freedom.

    I share my views.

    I show her how I see things.

    I allow her to see them her way.

    What I love is that we remain our selves and that alone will lead her back to her self.

    She left us to play in a secret land we did not leave her.

    So she gets to decide, does she want to play in the secret land or play in our land.

    Does she want to be the person she needs to be to be ‘special’ with him or does she want to be her old self.

    The freedom we allowed was the key that set her free to begin to once again make choices.

    Choices, they seem so obvious so simple so easy, and yet that is what the perpetrator seizes first.

    You are not given an option to do it any other way.

    Their option is the only one that will keep this relationship going.

    You have no choice but to go along.

    And sadly, usually by this time you have become friends, you have given trusts and faith and love to the individual, and in order to maintain this ‘special’ relationship, IT depends upon your silence.

    Your silence and his creates a cocoon that separates you from your self and the world around you.

    You live in this upside down and backwards ‘other’ land.

    You have to change to fit in there and the changes are so noticeable in your old life.

    You have to lie to leave your old life to go to his.

    You have to lie to your self and overlook how it makes you feel in your old life.

    You come alive in his and die in your own.

    What a tragedy.

    The greatest thing we did was to give her back her choices.
    To allow her to choose what path she wants to strengthen and which one she wants to weaken.

    Her brainwashing was in a very short time and she didn’t play in the secret land too long.

    The longer you are there, the more ingrained the false self gets and the further away the road that leads you back.

    But as far as I can tell, by my experience, is that when I gave myself the option of choice, I was free.

    Free to begin, choice-by-choice, bit-by-bit to recapture life for me.

    The freedom in allowing all in our home to be free is the key that makes this a non-brainwashing home.

    A home of choices, you get to decide which ones you want to make, but make no mistake, each and every choice comes with a consequence, and it is up to you which consequence you choose.

    We create a life and self by each choice we make.

  • I am Way beyond Okay!

    I often wondered if my clarity was clear enough, if my love was loving enough, if my wisdom was wise enough, if I had healed enough to be in a relationship where I didn’t contaminate the other with my old dysfunctional love.

    And in the past few days, I have been given the opportunity to see and feel the affects of who I am and where I was and how much I have changed.

    The greatest gift I have to offer my daughter who was abused by this man, is to see her bathed in a sea of Innocence so bright it hurts your eyes.

    We had a visit her and I last night, and she tried very hard to get me to see her in a new light, a dimmer light, a dark, guilty blaming shaming light, I simply could not go there.

    I tried. I listened and I followed the trail she walked, I looked around and there was no shame, blame or guilt that I could see.

    We even tried role reversal where I could be her and she could be me, and still nothing changed within me, instead she even appeared more innocent.

    She asked if I would speak to “the Man” and I said I wasn’t really interested, I only cared to speak to her.

    She wanted me to see how she carried half of the weight of this encounter, I just couldn’t reach that same percentage, damn, she always came up short.

    I tried.

    I tried to see her as clear as possible and I tried to see her through her own eyes, and still I came up short.

    The scales were simply unbalanced.

    He was married, she was not.
    He had children, she did not.
    He has experience with relationships with the opposite sex, she did not.
    He was her boss and her elder, she was not.

    So we then tried to see if they matched equally in what they each brought to this new friendship.

    She brought a past reputation of killing one chicken when she was near 5 years old when she accidentally dropped a water container on a little chick and he died. And she had written a letter of apology to her father stating her truth and how sorry she was.

    She also had stolen a cookie and ate it. A cookie that was for a bake sale, she took and didn’t pay for it. This had her crying uncontrollably on the top bunk she still sleeps on. Those were the two blackest marks on her reputation that we could find.

    She said she wasn’t perfect, that she has other things she has done. I said great, give me what you have so we can balance this scale.

    I asked if she had a husband I didn’t know about.
    Nope, none.

    I asked if she had a few kids off to the side somewhere, and nope that wasn’t true.

    I asked if she had experience with men that I was unaware of, and nope she had none.

    We searched her and I for things to put on the scale to make it more even, so she could carry equal weight, for this to not be so lopsided, and nothing could we drag up besides one dead chick and a stolen cookie.

    It just seemed incredible that one young lady of 20 years old had so little to add.

    I told her I would give her a few points for each.

    And now lets look at what He brought.

    She said we didn’t need to do that.

    We didn’t.

    What is so strikingly stunning is in this case, there literally is a girl with the past of one accidentally killed chick and one ‘stolen’ cookie standing up against a man who cheated on his wife, who single handedly change her from a chicken killing thief to being seen by our little community into a soiled dove.

    A dove whose wings were clipped before she even had a chance to use them.

    Her Lilly white reputation is laying on the ground in a dirty mess; she simply did not have the experience to match this man.

    Nothing in her past prepared her for this.

    She unwittingly followed where he led.

    It is an unknown as to what would have happened if the wife didn’t find the text he sent to my daughter, asking her if she could talk.
    How far would he have gone?
    How far would she have followed?

    I am so grateful it was stopped when it was.

    That now, added to the list of chicken killing cookie thief, we have a girl who listened to a married man.

    She listened with compassion, with kindness, with trust, while going against what her inside told her.

    And when it was discovered that they were caught, she literally faced the wife, face-to-face, eye-to-eye, woman-to-girl, and said how sorry she was, how she felt, and owned up to her part.

    What more could a mother ask for?

    She faced in truth and felt the weight of her actions and admitted her part, fully owing that and more.

    Being so forthright, so bold to stand in the truth makes her a very poor ‘other woman’.

    In her innocence, she felt that by meeting them with openness and admitting her part, that perhaps, they would give her the same courtesy, it was denied.

    She didn’t get back once again, what she gave to them.

    Instead the wife threw the first ball to smear her reputation, the first glob of mud landed within the hour of my daughter leaving her home.

    Ugly accusations were posted on her facebook wall.

    No matter how kind, how loving, how remorseful, how sorry, how caring, how trusting she is, they fail to see it, and instead of just the husband soiling her, now the wife has joined his team.

    My little girl wanted me to speak to him…oh honey, I have nothing to say to him.

    Silence is the only kindness I can offer.

    My ears are for her.
    My eyes for her.
    My hand for her.

    All I have to give is for her.

    There is no part of me that is interested in what he has to say, what he wants to show me…nothing.

    I will stand with innocence.
    I will walk with my daughter, head held high while they lob dirt upon us, while they label us, and shout unkind things behind our backs, I will continue to walk forward.

    I have no time to give for the reasons they are doing these unkind things, it matters not.

    The only thing that matters in all of this is her.

    Oh, the easy job I have, to be with her innocence.
    How wonderful it is to sit with her and share this spot.

    It matters not rats ass, what ‘others’ say about her, no one can change my mind, weaken my stance, shake my firm ground, I know who my daughter is.

    She is a chicken killing, cookie stealing girl who listened and followed a married man as he walked her down the trail away from her innocent self.

    She has two choices to pick from, a life with him or one without.

    We can’t make the choices for her, all we can do is sit back and let her decide, which home, his or ours makes her feel her brightest.

    Which man in her life, her father or this man make her feel special and loved?

    Which woman, his wife or I, honor her truth?

    The choice seems simple on my side, but I understand how you can get flipped upside down and backwards in abuse.

    So, I am here to be her clarity as my wise brother suggested I do.

    I will listen as she struggles in finding her balance again.

    She knows what she lost inside, she knows she has work to do to get it back, and she has the perfect environment to do this.

    I no longer question my clarity, my wisdom or my love.

    I am way beyond okay!

  • A Man abusing a woman.

    I have such great admiration for the choreography of the Universe, how it manages to give to you the right and perfect set up to heal your wounded self.

    In my quest for wholeness, the main theme has been feeling and seeing. As a child of abuse, I had separated myself from my body, and what I need most is to bring up those emotions, to feel them and greet them with understanding, and they recede on their own, once I ‘get it’.

    The message.

    What I was able to feel and see is beyond what I can hope to put into words.

    It gave to me the access of feelings that I feared I had lost.

    It brought forth a visual so brightly displayed for me to witness the dance of luring and grooming of an innocent girl.

    Delivering to me, the need of the perpetrator over shining the care this innocence needed.

    Showing how innocence the friendship begins and its ultimate conclusion, where the courtship is long and subtle, their needs small at first and how they build, how we start simple and grow into a complex adult scenario long before our time.

    How we are changed slowly and you don’t see yourself change, how you gradually succumb to the tiny wishes, one at a time, trusting and going along, until one day you wake up and your no longer there, in its place is another woman.

    It showed me how a mother should respond and how a mother did respond.

    My daughter found herself in a relationship with a married man, the man she was babysitting for, a man whose children she cared for, tended to like a second mother for many years, since the time she was just a girl herself. To see her in the role of being the other woman, to see her self so changed, broke my heart.
    To see her lost of her inner self worth shattering.

    The overall picture of seeing my young and innocent daughter being courted by such a knowing man, brought me back to the way my abuse played out for me, but with a different ending.

    The dual lesson that my daughter and I danced through leaves me breathless and to feel past overlapping onto the present, the weight of the legacy and it’s vine stretching into the next generation and feeling and seeing my abuse from all angles left my mind whirling.

    I had to first feel the devastation as a mother seeing my innocent daughter in a friendship with a man who single-handedly soiled her fine reputation, without blinking an eye.

    To feel my worthlessness in undoing what was already done.

    To then see the dance and the lure and the friendship and its ‘friendly like’ image have such a dirty ugly affect on the girl, left me shattered and broken as I clearly saw what she failed to see.

    And to be the one to shatter her dreams and love and to flood him in a new light, but then to also put the image on to her self and to see what she ‘allowed’ her self to be. By showing her what the other woman does.

    I was able to see what my mother couldn’t see.
    I was able to do what my mother couldn’t do.
    We both, my daughter and I, were able to stand taller and stronger in truth, than either of would be able to do in lies.

    It was an incredible and heart breaking 24 hours.
    My daughter feels she carries the shame of being the other woman, I feel she carries the experience of being abused.

    I can see how we carry forth from abuse, that we were at fault, that we allowed it, we dance too, but there usually is One with more power, more experience, more everything, that leads the dance to lowering our self worth in their blind desire for their needs being fulfilled.

    The fail to see how it affects us.

    My daughter’s reputation was damaged while his remained unchanged.

    She approached the friendship as innocent.
    A young girl who didn’t realize when you knowingly do what you feel is wrong but do it anyway, you are giving away your self worth.

    We do it for many reasons, to be liked, to please, to get attention, to feel good, and what we all fail to realize, is this feeling is fleeting, it is like a drug, we are forever needing more.

    A habit of pleasing another for our high of feeling good, while our sense of self gets depleted.

    The subtle disappearing self in the dance of friendship that has a greedy needy thirst on one side and the other willingly feeding the supply is a train wreck waiting to happen.

    How grateful am I, that my daughter was able to see and feel her sense of self being lowered, being changed, how she became a stranger to herself.

    Yet when this happens as child, we don’t even have a self established to see disappear, it is gone before we knew it.

    The lessons I was able to experience while she experienced it first hand is like a mirror image of me as a child.

    I can see how my mother’s reaction affected how I was unable to see myself. For my mother’s affection and allegiance was to my father. She didn’t see my change within; she didn’t see my self worth leave.

    I can see how my husband reacted, how she had a loving space to show her the difference between what is a loving friendship and what lowers you.

    There are a million ways this has opened my eyes and hers, how it shows us both, our own boundaries of self love matter most before any request outside.
    Some may see her as the other woman and call her awful names, judge and criticize her actions, view her as the home wrecker etc. I will see her as a victim of
    Abuse.

    Her babysitting children’s father took advantage of her.

    The lack of self worth on his part lent itself to overstep his boundaries. He took liberties that were not his to take.

    He tried to make an adult friendship and press it further with someone who was way out of his league.

    Her innocence was no equal match for him. It was like taking candy from a baby.

    I will see his strengths and her blindness and trust, see her having to lower who she was to become his friend.

    Friendships like that we don’t need.

    Friendship and love will raise you up, not lower you down.

    What a great lesson to learn as such a young age.

    The reason I was having such a hard time seeing her as the ‘other woman’ was that she was just a girl.

    An innocent girl being swept away in an adult world of lies and secrets, of being chosen for the role of ‘other woman’.

    It wasn’t that she auditioned for the part, that she was out seeking this; it came in while she was babysitting.

    The contrast to the label he put on her back and the girl who sleeps on the top bunk in our home is a world apart.

    They don’t even come close to matching.

    Imagine, she still shares a room with her sisters.

    She occupies the top bunk. How can the other woman be the girl who sleeps on the top bunk?

    I feel so fortunate that we have her on the top bunk to have her in our home, to have this wonderful loving, kind and gentle girl in our home.

    What a close call.

    She now knows that when a ‘friendship’ lowers who you are, it isn’t a friendship, you are being abused.

    It is not the other woman on my top bunk, it is my little girl.

    My little wounded girl, who we will love back to her bright sunshiny self.

    We will love her as we always have, for this family didn’t believe, was shocked to the core that our innocent girl was put in the role of ‘other woman’.

    It is abuse, no matter the age.
    A man abusing a woman.

  • Help you be you.

    A letter of apology to my daughters, for I have taught you wrong, all my selfish pleadings to do well for me, as created within you a program, that is better to give than receive.

    To give up your attention on self and in return receive accolades of a job well done.

    To wear proudly the tag of people pleaser, to lower your boundaries bit by bit to take on more and more, until you are swimming in a life that is minus of you.

    I taught you to please me.
    I taught you to do for me.
    I taught you to think like me, dance for me, talk for me, and become a victim JUST like me.

    To let go of your own needs, to be the need pleaser of many, to be in a vacuum of Other inside of you.

    Where your first and only concern is Other.

    Helping other, feeling other, healing other, dealing other, pleasing other, loving other, seeing other, with only a teeny tiny smidgen of space, a speck that is truly just for you.

    By the time adult friendship and relationships are due to arrive, you have your role all mapped out, you will be drawn and have feelings for the deepest hurt, the most messiest, and jump in and begin to save, rescue and recreate a better life for them.

    I taught you to love the messiest, I taught you to love me. So, love for you is to find the lowest among us, the most selfish and the most wounded, and you will allow them to abuse you as I did.

    I didn’t let you be you, I needed you to help hold up me. For inside of me was nothing of self. You had to be my self.

    I never let your self be born, to let it flourish, prosper, life in its full light, instead I used you to also.

    I used you making you a victim to me.

    Unknowingly I needed you to fix me.

    The past six years I have spent fixing me, what I failed to notice is that the fixing I am doing, may not be enough to overflow on to you.

    You may have to fix yourself.

    To rescue a speck of self and slowly nurture it to bloom as you.

    I covered up that little bright self, each time I hollered in fear, when I needed you to look a certain way, act a certain way for you had to make me a better me.

    It was your job. I assigned it to you as a baby.

    All your accomplishments were to make me better.
    To shield the fact that within me lay nothing but a wounded victim, not a whole mom.

    I wasn’t a mom, I didn’t know how to be.
    I was victim posing as a mom.

    I used your little lives and little bodies to cover-up my deficiencies.

    And now, I fear that this is the only role you know.

    That you are destined to a life of serving Other and neglecting you.

    You all have served me well, and I am sickened by this and feel to the depth of my being, that the legacy that I was born in has its tentacles in you.

    And there is nothing now that I can do to make you shine bright inside of you. No amount of praise, love and attention will melt away the program set as a child.

    It will be up to each of you to reset your inside, to find the Spirit of self, to set up boundaries, to find a value of self, and I am setting you to this task with very little self.

    It can be done, and it has been done.

    I found a me inside of me buried deep waiting.

    She is who you now have as a mother, a reformed victimizer, and sadly she now has to sit and watch the affects of years spent being abused by me, play it self out.

    The legacy is hard to get out from beneath, and harder still to watch in real life continuing on slurping up another life.

    My greatest plea as I lay in tears on my yoga mat, was if this is my lesson, I got it. I got it, and please let my children get it too.

    The saddest day of my life is to see too much, to feel to much, to know the intricacies of the legacy, of living a soulless life, to see what I created.

    It is like I wanted puppets to please me, but the puppets are only set to please messy people, selfish people, mentally unbalanced people, and I can’t reset them to be puppets to self.

    To turn all those wonderful attributes and let them serve you.

    Love you.

    Feel you.

    Please you.

    All the love and attention I needed from you, I now need you to turn that back to you.

    Be the most wonderful caring loving trusting self to your self.

    I am sorry.

    I love you.

    Words mean nothing, actions speak loudly.
    You have witnessed myself in the past six years taking care of my self.

    I am here to help you be you.

    I pray it is not too late…can I be stronger than the legacy I planted?

  • Felt Its Worth

    Before beginning yoga today, I cleaned the mirror I stand in front of, it was layered with weeks of dust, and I appeared fog like behind it. Today I felt the need to wipe it free, as I did so the line from a song arose in my head, “I can see clearly now the pain is gone…”

    Then into yoga I went.

    I was on the third part of the Awkward pose, where I go from standing up to squatting down, and Bikram asks us to descend slowly, and I lost my control and fell into a squat and smiled as I did so.

    This smile took up my whole face, my cheeks, my eyes and my mouth rose into a delightful bend, and inside I felt its wonderful wave of joy.

    I smiled at my rendition of his yoga; I smiled at me and the transformation of my face and received fully my smile about me.

    A smile about me isn’t something I have any memory of ever receiving.

    I was shocked first at the way this smile changed my look, and even more stunned to receive its full value inside.

    To feel myself worthy of a full-blown smile.

    I froze for a half of second to feel such sheer delight inside myself.

    My smile quickly disappeared and I struggled to smile while tears of sorrow dampened my face.

    Imprinted in my minds eye is my smiling feeling being over swept by sadness as memories flung themselves upon me, one on top of the other.

    A 50 year long life review flashed before my eyes, all the places where I mistook myself for being bad, wrong, and despicable, how I had not seen my own worth or how I had lost sight of myself inside myself.

    The simple fact that I was unworthy of a smile from me about me is so harsh and tragic; yet it was never my smile I sought. I didn’t even know I was missing my smile for me.

    The mouth I tried to change was my mother’s.

    Before putting my words to paper, I spoke to my brother and then did some mindless cleaning, and it came to me what love I had for my mother.

    I literally gave my soul, my insides away in order to bring a smile to her face and to keep it there.

    How tragic that she wanted my smile more than she wanted my tears and my sorrows, and even more dreadful for a little girl to be left with such sorrow inside, such darkness.

    In denying my abuse, she left me in the dark.

    It is funny in a sad way, how I wanted her to have a smile, more than me.

    I could cry a river of tears for the little girl who wasn’t allowed to feel her sorrow out loud, to be heard and valued as abused.

    Valued as abused and not having to hide this fact.

    I can see I took up my mother’s view of me.

    My mouth and facial images reflected hers in my mirror and even more tragically inside.

    Inside I knew my mother blamed me.

    I took away her sunshine, I stole her lovely story, I was darker than the darkness that abused me.

    I changed her smiling face to anger.

    And it was my job now to put her smile back.

    And I tried and danced, and pranced and worked and slaved and toiled to bring it back, and to keep it in place.

    When I was tired of holding up those cheeks, when I simply didn’t have anymore to give, or when I tried to tend to myself, I heard her angry response, “How dare you Beth Ann…” and up I got and began dancing again.

    Six years ago all my dancing for her was over, done, finished, the end.

    I stopped where I stood and in the middle of the darkness began to see what I did for me and what I did for others.

    Life offered up to me a million situations for me to choose again, their pleasure or mine, their smile or mine, their feelings or mine.

    Each and every time I found the strength to disappoint my mother and chose me; I opened up inside, made room for that smile.

    Today, I feel that I have made it to the other side, to the side of worthiness, or at least I have felt the wave of joy lap at my feet, I feel that I am worthy to now frolic in the ocean and swim to its depths.

    I look forward to seeing another one come out of me and shine upon me and for me to welcome it in!

    I have been waiting in vain for her to arrive and tell me that I am a good girl, that I am of value, and that the abuse didn’t change who I am, in her eyes.

    I wanted her to smile that it was okay that I was abused, it didn’t matter to her, and she loved me any way.

    Again, the smile I sought was hers and the one I found was mine.

    What I love is that the first smile I was able to receive was mine!

    A smile in full acceptance of all of me, the darkest dark and the brightest bright.

    I smiled at me and felt Its worth.