I M Perfect lady

Author: bjukuri

  • Reposting….Naked and Imperfect.

    Who puts Perfect in us? What makes us Perfect? Who are the Perfect maker people, where do we find them and how does it work?
    And how do we know we need Perfect, how do we know we are missing Perfect?

    It seems that all are seeking Perfect? It seems that it is the prize and I want to know where is the Perfect store, the place where all Perfect is stored, I want to fill up on Perfect, for without it seems we are doomed for failure, failure without Perfect.

    Perfect, boy for such a nice word, it sure causes a hell of a lot of grief, we lose ourselves for it, we cry for it, we die for it, we kill for it, we lie for it, we steal for it, my God, it seems to be a motive for a life of hell.

    And I am not swearing just to be dramatic, I literally mean hell, if you are not Perfect you are in hell. And if you let go of that word, Heaven!
    That now seems mental, and upside down and backwards, for all our lives ever since were little, Perfect was what we wanted.

    Perfect baby, Perfect girl, Perfect mom, Perfect wife, Perfect friend, million and one Perfects! Until Perfect stands before us, always, and not just sometimes, like we can’t see us for the forest of perfects.

    How in the world have we gotten lost behind perfects? Lost behind Perfects, so we are there, just that Perfect is standing in the way?
    Who put it there? How long has it been standing there? And why do we want to hide behind Perfects? Why?

    We hide ourselves behind Perfect, so Perfect is a mask?
    The mask is Perfect? That is the mask? We pretend to be Perfect?
    That doesn’t seem right, but true.

    WE hide behind the Mask of Perfect…so Perfect is not real?
    Perfect is not real? How in the world did we go seeking something that is not real? Not real?

    So what is real? If the mask is pretend, fake, untrue, and it’s name is Perfect, than what does that make us behind the mask of Perfect?
    Just us. Just us being ourselves, what is wrong with ourselves?
    Who told us we could not be ourselves?
    Who wanted us to be different and why?
    Where did this all start, what is wrong with being you?

    Somewhere along the way, we had to hide behind the mask of Perfect, somewhere we had to pretend. Someone didn’t like us as we were, why? What happened that they didn’t want to see?

    It is shocking even as I write this to see that Perfection is a screen to hide behind! I knew I was ok as an imperfect person, but now I am way way way ok!

    For now I know that my mask is no longer needed, for I am ok without it. I stand alone, mask-less and proud.

    Our El Camino has a window sticker “Ride Naked” and I loved that saying from the beginning and now I know what it truly means, ride without a mask! And get this, my license plate says UBEEU, ride naked and you be you….

    When my parent’s masks fell, so did my world, for I was in love with their perfections, not the person behind. Imagine I was in love with a mask. A mask, and I wanted this mask to change, to do this and do that and to love me back. Oh my Goodness this is good.

    No wonder I made sense when their mask fell, for I never fit the mask! My mask.

    A mask of Perfection….that will stay with me awhile.

    Standing here naked and imperfect!

  • Hand and Hand…

    There seems to be two energies of silence, awareness and unawareness, peace and hostility, love and fear, solitude and loneliness…

    There is silence to shun and hurt to push out and away that isn’t inclusive but divided.

    Silence that is cold and uncaring, thoughtless and too busy, unaware and out of touch, forgotten…and good intentions piled high, never spoken.

    Silence of lazy relationships or untried or pushed, where silence is required, no speaking of the ills, just silence.

    The silence I was raised upon.

    Seeing, feeling, and knowing my mother’s silence in anger, dark still, raging, quiet, strong silence.

    Her silence against what was wrong.

    Silently staying.

    Silently waiting for change.

    Silently looking away. Silently.

    Silently hoping, wishing, praying.

    Silently walking hand in hand with pain, shame, guilt, abuse, neglect, betrayal, faithless, unworthiness, looking away from innocence and vulnerable child and self.

    The dark side of silence…where nothing changes, pain continues, victims born, old victims live, abuse blossoms.

    Silence isn’t peaceful in an abusive home.
    Silently we suffer.

    Breaking the silence I have found myself in a new kind of silence, the knowing silence.

    Knowing silence is peaceful, strong, empowering.

    I speak out about the abuse, but am silent with the abusers.

    Living the opposite.

    Where before my ‘peace’ was gotten from being silent, I needed to be silent in order to survive, to be in my home, my family.

    A false sense of peace and security living silently in abuse, blind and unknowing.
    Now my peace is to speak of my abuse, telling is my peace. Telling brings me power.

    Silence and abuse go hand and hand…

  • Darkness is the Only Love She Knows

    (reposting this for my brother)

    “The more of our self we own, the less need for enemies to embody our disowned darkness. Everything is welcomed by the soul.” Pat B. Allen.

    People are carrying the dark parts of us? Who we call our enemies are really folks carrying our darkness, our disowned darkness. So if we OWN our own darkness, then we will no longer have enemies?

    Darkness what is darkness? They are carrying our darkness, what is that? How do you explain darkness to others, how can a child know what this darkness is?

    If you showed a child an enemy of yours what would they look like, speak like, act like? Here is my enemy?

    How odd this all seems that our enemies are here to bring us a piece of ourselves we lost or disowned. That seems like a good thing, yet why are we so opposed?

    Enemies are our friends. Then who are our friends? Enemies?

    “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.” Martin Luther King Jr.

    I think this is all interesting.

    Can it be that silent friends can become our worst enemies?

    “Enemies will embody our disowned darkness.”
    I wonder than what friends embody? What is their role?

    Disowned darkness is not that there isn’t darkness within us, there is, but we don’t want to own it and only our enemies are brave enough to show us where we are not!

    Doesn’t this make sense, for I know that there are many times that I didn’t want to point out to a friend a dark spot along the way. And I have also experienced losing them when I did.

    In the end I became the enemy that carried their darkness for them, I became dark and unfriendly, this is amazingly accurate when I look at it.

    You become the message not just the messenger.

    Within my family I became the dark sheep, hey is that where the term came from, anyway I became the darkness for speaking the truth of what is.

    If I was the enemy for speaking the truth, what were their friends telling them?

    I am way confused on what being friend is now, for it sure seems backwards to me.

    In my experience, being friendly AND being truthful isn’t seen as one and the same!

    I literally remember being thrown back when they didn’t want to hear what I had to say! I was startled when I found myself standing against them as their enemies for speaking of reality.

    It wasn’t that I was making up stories or telling them lies against what is, I was just standing in a spot and being a commentator of it. And I became worse then the actual crime.

    Can a crime be owned or disowned? It surely seems that way. But whether you own it or not will it still have happened?

    When I arrive in front of my family they see me as their enemy, I am the one who is the problem, me.

    I used to say, “how in the hell am I the problem, me the ‘little girl’ in the molestation, I am the one who has issues, surely this is not right!”

    I became the darkness, which is what so many little girls become. They become and are the ‘disowned darkness’.

    We become the enemies of an otherwise beautiful kind world filled with sunshine and happy deeds, if only we would keep our mouths shut and our darkness to ourselves!

    We carry their disowned darkness, we the little ones carry their loads for them.

    In a letter my mother wrote to me on my birthday in 2004;

    “I have Beth’s core love as a daughter for her mother. I saw her as this beautiful small child. Blond hair chubby cheeks – sitting on the grass by the side of the house, a schoolgirl working very hard at home and at school a very good sincere child. Serious beyond her years. A young adult trying to keep the whole family marching along in line, reaching back to gather up the stragglers. Stepping up to carry part of the burden of my son’s handicap, to lightening the load for her mother…..

    In some way I cannot understand with my limited knowledge some where along in her childhood she picked up all the stray, sick, mixed up emotions whirling around our family. All the emotions and ugly undercurrents I did not see or feel, she did. As a child she tried to make everything right. A hopeless task. The same way I tried to make our family close, loving etc by pasting on false fronts, making excuses for my husband, working harder taking all lacks myself to make the perfect mother perfect family. (Daughter) you can rest now. You no longer need to carry this unmanageable load. I grieve your 46 years but I cannot undo it. I no longer need your affirmation of your love. I have it deep inside of me. Nothing can remove it….. Forgive me so you can release your soul to soar among the angels. Always forever, Mom

    I carried this letter around for a while, it seemed that my mother could see me, yet in the end it was her only seeing my love for her.

    It was painfully clear that in order to have her love, I had to carry the load, put the load down, so goes the love.

    Darkness is the only love she knows.

  • Ten Affirmations for Male Survivors of Abuse

    My brother found these on Oprah’s website, and I believe they can be for
    anyone who is has been sexually abused.

    Howard Fradkin, Ph.D., LICDC, Co-Chairperson, MaleSurvivor Weekends of Recovery

    1. Recovery is absolutely possible and achievable for me.

    2. I will practice being disloyal to dysfunction and loyal to functionality.

    3. I give myself permission to connect to loving, affirmative, strong, sensitive, accepting men and women in my community.

    4. I release and forgive myself for any responsibility I have accepted in the past for my abuse.

    5. The abuser (s) from the past chose to hurt me; I will stop repeating the lie that it just happened to me.

    6. Offering myself daily compassion is necessary for my healing and growth.

    7. I commit to connecting to the boy inside me today so we can play, laugh and experience joy together, even if just for a minute or two.

    8. I believe deep inside me I possess the ability to face the truth of my abuse and to learn to use new tools for healing.

    9. I have the right and the ability to speak the truth of my abuse and deserve to be heard, understood, believed and supported.

    10. Feeling is healing; as I heal, I develop the ability to experience a wider range of emotions to enhance my health and connections to other.

    Thanks Oprah and Dr. Howard Fradkin, for doing the show, for sharing this information and for allowing each of us to stand a little taller, feel stronger and less alone.

  • Cover Your Truth.

    The phrase, “The Elephant in the Room” what does that really mean and how is it used properly?

    Have we been taught to not speak about things that are there, due to the reaction they bring?

    What are Elephants in a room?
    What is that?

    Is it a truth that is too much to bear?

    It seems to me that IF all know the Elephant is there and will not speak of it; we are all playing a game called, ‘lets pretend’.

    And ironically, it isn’t the Elephant we are pretending about but ourselves.

    A silent unspoken agreement that states, I will pretend to like you when I know you do things I don’t agree with, if you pretend to like me for pretending to like you.

    It seems to me that allowing an Elephant/truth to sit unspoken about is to pretend to pretend to pretend that there is a common ground that slipped away with the truth.

    And in order to maintain this false relationship, the Elephant/truth must not be mentioned, we skip around the mountain, and reach the summit of social niceties.

    We then form a new relationship that requires us to not go near the Elephant or truth.

    So what are we really preserving by being so courteous?

    Isn’t it just an old relationship minus the new and changing truths?

    This Elephant in the room that no one speaks about or entertains, to me is just dancing in denial with another.

    Being in a relationship that dishonors both.

    If truth isn’t allowed into a relationship, then I have no interest there.

    I am almost positive that the Elephant that arrived in the room with my father is he is a pedophile. If many adults in my youth had spoken of this Elephant, perhaps a few little girls would have been saved.

    It isn’t so much about the Elephant, but the ones who sit silently and allow it to be there.

    Elephants don’t disappear, don’t change, aren’t healed or treated in silence, nope, instead they continue to live out their sickness in full living color, while many courteously look on, being much to kind to speak of such ills about another person, to kind, to much into the social niceties, preserving a family, saving a father, sparing a brother, keeping sweet, that which isn’t.

    An Elephant in the room is showing you what is wrong and you will either see it and respond or look away.

    Pretending there is no Elephant is denial.

    And denial doesn’t heal, cure, erase, etc to the Elephant, it says much more about you than them.

    They are being their true selves; you are not willing to see it.

    You want to preserve a relationship of old, like good memories, and not willing to be present with who they are today, for it will crack, shatter, and explode the person you need them to be.

    At some point in time, it will be harder and harder to be in a room with an Elephant, it will simply cost you too much.

    My silence is not for sale, it cannot be used to cover your truth.

  • Gateway Into Self

    A blog called, Brave Girls Club, has a wonderful story about wearing signs, or the lack there of at;

    http://www.bravegirlsclub.com

    As I pondered which signs I am hiding or what I am not revealing it occurred to me that a sign was hung upon my neck, when my father’s truth hit the daily news.

    His past hung heavy around my neck.

    A sign I did not want to wear.

    His sign and my sign were puzzle pieces, they went together, he was a pedophile and I was his victim.

    Yet the sign wasn’t hung upon me until a niece spoke up and her words matched my feelings, and now I had a sign as proof.

    What an awkward, clumsy, shameful, disgusting sign, I had to wear.

    It was this sign that all turned away from, old friends became strangers, acquaintances dodged me, my sign didn’t fit into many relationships.

    The sign entered into the room before me, it over shadowed any cute outfit I wore, there was no way to hide or dress it up, It was exposed.

    Sadly some signs are not given the same considerations as most.

    In the first blushes of wearing this sign, I stood alone.

    Me and my new sign not knowing how to stand, to walk and carry myself with this new found history, I soon seen how I was someone to steer clear of.

    It is so interesting that some signs gain many friends and tons of support, while other signs are shunned and feared, their darkness too dark to approach.

    Standing up in those early days, with the weight of the devastation upon me, the sign nearly collapsed my spirit.

    Surprisingly that by having had to walk alone, I have more strength, not less.

    I still wear my sign, it will not go away, it and I are one, my past is me, and I am it.

    Some signs are the gateway into self.

  • Stand Up!

    Yesterday Oprah had the second part with the 200 men who stood up against abuse, I have only seen small segments on her website, but the few I seen offered this, “Standing UP against abuse”.

    Standing up and speaking up with courage, releases the shame, the blame and the rage that live in silence.

    Standing up is not a victim stance.

    Standing up takes courage.

    Standing in the truth of your life and your life experiences, standing and speaking of the deeds of evil you survived as a child, the mixed messages, the bad definitions, the path it set you upon, all stop when you stand up.

    You then pick your own path.

    A path free of abuse.

    I believe to the depth of my soul, you either are sitting down with abusers and letting the legacy continue, OR you are standing up and speaking out and walking away from the abuse.

    It takes courage to stand up, but standing up is the only thing that will stop abuse.

    Sitting and remaining in relationships where the abuse lives is sitting down in abuse.

    I Stand UP!

    I applaud these strong men and the courage it takes to stand up and I am standing with you!

    It will change your whole life, from being a victim to becoming a survivor.

    Standing up and speaking is the only way to end this.

    It is never too late to stand up!

  • Mismatched Lives

    I will not presume what grief of losing a love one in death is, but I feel like I can articulate the grief felt when leaving a family.

    It is an odd sense of grief, almost self-inflicted, where you purposefully leave and walk into a field of sorrow and lonesome.

    You continue to keep yourself there each time you choose to not participate, you segregate yourself to solitary confinement, yet knowing others gather and go on, you become a ghost in their lives and they in yours, living walking talking ghosts.

    Your lives no longer intercede, nor are there new memories made, unless you count the new grief ones.

    The relationship has died but the body lives on.

    You become a silent witness, a ghost with a body.

    We may all appear the same, unchanged, and many have kept up their same old routine, it is only I that have left the path, one that keeps us separated.

    The separation is as complete as death.

    And even colder, I feel, for there isn’t loving feelings flowing back and forth, instead stark obvious disagreement, irreconcilable differences.

    The differences are what separate us, not death.

    Death is final the ultimate trump card, there is nothing to wish, hope or try to change. Both sides agree.

    In irreconcilable differences, sides continue to be haunted by trying.

    Trying to reconnect and trying to move on, failing to articulate and stop even trying, there never seems to be a Game Over sign.

    And you can be going along seemingly healing from the ‘divorce of family’ and a phone call comes in, a name is mentioned, a party gathers, a reminder once again of where you are literally standing, alone outside.

    Where in death people want to keep the old memories alive, I feel that when the past comes knocking it sets me back.

    Back to me having to decide again, is this a relationship I want, is this healthy for me, what has changed in their worlds, a ghost coming back to me…asking again,
    divorce or not, dead or alive, with me or not, friends or enemies, sisters or strangers, mother or abuser, a choice to once again be made.

    Nothings over, no final exit, just flowing in and out, shouting our glaring difference, daring me once again to not see, to turn away from the truth and get along. See not our mismatched selves and be a family.

    A family of mismatched lives.

  • One Verse

    Life seems to unfold flatly in front of us and some will half close their eyes to bring in a fuzzy sorta kinda picture, so not to see its pure untouched nakedness.

    Raw life.

    Life without words, just life arriving unshackled, free and unbound.

    Reality.

    Worldwide realty show where there is no re-shooting or voice over, just life coming to us live!

    Life coming to us live and in living color!

    Yet how often do we see/hear and get what is playing out in front of us, the untouched version?

    How often do we excuse, dismiss, and let be behaviors due to some long held relationship we feel unable to dissolve?

    How often do we respond authentically to what is actually happening, or do we look the other way?

    When we turn, does the reality show make a sharp left with us?

    Do reality and its history not get recorded due to us blinking instead of responding in kind?

    Sometimes living in raw life I find myself brushing up against people who seem unaware that life is a live living breathing moving event.

    These are not actors, but actual people living life, it is not a rehearsal or a bad game show.

    This is your life.

    This is your moment in time, the here and the now, and each little tiny raw life moment is comprising your life, they all get tagged and stored into your history.

    What you do today is a day in the life of you.

    What you see today and respond to today is a recorded response in the life of you.

    How you respond to raw life builds the character called you.

    We can either work harder on keeping reality back or succumb to the rawness of life.

    Welcoming life exactly as the Universe created it, accepting the darkness as dark, the light as light, love as love, fear as fear…allowing each its own perfection.

    Love as love, not fear.
    Fear as fear, not love.
    Seeing the darkness as dark.

    Seeing the dance of Life as One….The Universe. One Verse.

  • Yoga Heals a Loveless Self

    “The purpose of yoga is to heal.

    Most people start practicing Bikram Yoga to flatten our stomachs, stretch our tight hamstrings, and/or to prevent future injuries. And yes it will do all of that, but those are the secondary benefits to practicing Bikram Yoga. The purpose of this yoga is TO HEAL and that healing takes place from the inside out. It works on a mental level (and spiritual level) to heal our minds. Only then can we begin to change our self on the outside.

    Bikram says, the yoga practice teaches us how to like our self and we start taking better take care of our self then we fall in LOVE with our self!”
    Karen Buckner

    What I didn’t know when I began this practice was how out of love I was with myself, and how my love of my self depended upon another.

    If they loved me, I was okay.

    I never loved me alone, by myself without doing for another.

    It is shocking how dependent we are taught to be on another’s good opinion, how we act/be/live/think/believe to be loved.
    To have another love us, yet we don’t stop and think what it would take for us to love us, alone.

    Doing was my self worth, which I mistook for love.

    I was worthless unless I was doing.

    Imagine this type of self-love where you give and give and give until there isn’t any energy left, until you are filled with resentment of the takers who are your love givers.

    Giving to get love?

    My damaged body is what drove me to doing yoga, with an arm hanging limply at my side, my upper shoulders and neck one huge knotted ball, I began to work on self.

    What I didn’t know was that I was actually filling up my empty tank inside and dumping out all the past beliefs about how to love, changing my inner beliefs of my self, one-second at a time, as I paid attention to my breath and body.

    Each day I brought my body to the mat, and focused on my breathing, as I twisted and bent this constricted body into unimaginable poses, I was changing deeply inside.
    It is a like strenuous physical magic, while I was concentrating so hard to change my body, my insides were healing, my sense of self blossomed, my inner strength to be me became strong, my mind sought clarity and the willingness to face what is…the list goes on and on.

    Yoga heals a loveless self.

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