I M Perfect lady

Author: bjukuri

  • A Pretend Story In Front of It.

    "One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."     Maya Angelou

     

    While rereading many of my old posts, I can see where I had built up a story outside of reality for 46 years and how I was un-telling that story and then retelling the story with actual facts.

     

    It is like there were two separated stories going on at the same time, but only one has actual actions.

     

    In one post I talked about either tending reality or pretending reality wasn’t there.  I would now say, that we can either tend this moment and what is, or pre tend another moment yet to arrive, or past tend a moment in the past.

     

    Pretend. (V)

    1.    act as if something were true: to make believe that something is the case or that you are doing something by using your imagination or acting skills

    2.    make insincere claim about something: to claim untruthfully or exaggeratedly to be or to have a particular thing, or imply something in this way

    3.    make something seem to be true: to act in a way intended to make somebody believe something untrue or misleading.

     

    I am first of all shocked that the word pretend is a verb, and secondly it speaks of ‘acting’ like it is an action, not just a mind game, but that it actually has actions.

     

    I know that this may really show my stupidity, but I am in awe that pretending something requires an action. “To act in a way intending to make somebody believe something untrue and misleading.”  Shocking.

     

    While I have been comfortable with my mother’s blindness, this somehow makes it more assaulting.  It actually shows that a person has to know the truth and then work on misleading. 

     

    She was attacking the truth with actions of pretend!

     

    It just proves that she knew and that she tried to act her way into a different reality, to mislead her children down a road that led to nowhere.

     

    I am blown away that pretend is actually doing something.

     

    “To hold before, or put forward, as a cloak or disguise for something else; to exhibit as a veil for something hidden,” is another meaning of pretend.

     

    It just floors me that in order to pretend, you have to know the truth and then put on an Act to cover, mislead, to throw on a veil and hide something.

     

    She led the long line of pretenders, steering us always away from the truth, we marched along like willing soldiers, creating a veil for which my father was able to hide behind.

     

    This unties the tangle that I had inside of me, the twisted up thoughts of her having to know, and yet her actions of not knowing, I couldn’t seem to justify or find clarity there. 

     

    I had her lost in her mind, blind to His actions. Instead this puts her as a full fledged participant.

     

    Pretending has nothing to do with staying in this moment tending to what is, it actually is to act out in front of this moment as a shield and a disguise, a magic act.

     

    I guess I felt better knowing my mother somehow was incapable of digesting the truth, this shows that the truth was there all along, and in front of it she acted like it was not there.

     

    I must now look at my pretend actions.  My pretending I did not fear him.  I acted like I wasn’t,  I acted fearless, I was acting in front of the truth of being in terror.  Trying to pull off no fear.

     

    Somehow this makes life seem more complicated, yet more simple, which is why if you are willing to know the truth, it will appear, for it was there all along.

     

    When I stated that I simply couldn’t pretend to pretend to pretend anymore, I literally had no idea that I was unable to act anymore!

     

    I even recall stating that my scripts and lines were all wrong, that I left the stage of their madness.

     

    I was horrified to know what my scripts and lines supported, I was one of the many actors acting out normal in a very dysfunctional family.

     

    Somehow knowing that they all have the truth within them, and that they are pretending out in front of it, brings me peace. 

     

    It is not up to me to deliver the truth to them, to be the one to show them the truth that is already there, what I guess happens instead is that they get tired of acting

     

    Acting out in a play where all they can ever be is a supporting actor, to the main characters of mom and dad.

     

    How sad to spend all your time and efforts on a pretend family.  How sad to have a family lost in pretend.

     

    I really didn’t fully understand how this all was orchestrated.  Somehow I missed the whole picture, I did not see them out in front of truth, I saw them without the truth.

     

    I saw them not knowing the truth. 

     

    They know, but are working hard to pretend in front of it.

     

    The truth goes nowhere while the pretend dance goes on in front. 

    I can see clearly now both the truth and the veil in front of it.

     

    Not only are there two separated stories, but one is clearly designed for the purpose of shielding the truth, and that is what I find so shocking.

     

    If you didn’t know the truth, there would be no need to build a pretend story in front of it.

     

  • Gratitude of You.

    (I wanted to re-post this one too…..)

     

    Imagine if you will, two people with Posttraumatic Relationship Disorder, meeting the opposite person they were usually drawn to, yet forming a bond.

     

    If you understand the disorder, we are drawn to people who are not good to us, and can’t seem to be with people who are.

     

    My brother and I, even though we were raised in the same house, he and I didn’t share much common ground.  He went his way at eighteen and I went mine.

     

    Both victims of childhood abuse, we left home with our Disorder firmly in place and set out into the world fully packed for more abuse.

     

    While he left home and got as far away from our family, its religion, the rules and beliefs of our parents, I settled in and set up a home life much similar to my parents, minus the pedophile.

     

    We didn’t interact much with each other over the years, there wasn’t animosity, but nor was there a deep friendship either.  We were two grown kids doing the best we could, coming from whence we came.

     

    Somehow about 7 years ago, we began talking on the phone.  It was sporadic in the beginning yet an odd but interesting exchange always happened.  We began to explore and to seek a new and better God.  We met again for the first time.

     

    Shortly there after, he introduced me to yoga a well as new and exciting authors, and so began this most unusual relationship for us, the opposite of what our ‘disorder’ usually sought. 

     

    I now believe it was that fact alone that helped us the most.  I wasn’t his normal cup of tea if you will, nor was he mine, yet by our seeing the ‘other-side’ we were able to see where we stood.

     

    This may be hard to follow, but in my mind it is a clear as day.

     

    Up and until the time we re-connected we had no one to show us where we were wrong due to our Posttraumatic Relationship disorder!

     

    If you have a relationship disorder, you never really get to experience a ‘healthy’ relationship because the disorder won’t allow you to get there!

     

    It is simply amazing to me that we stuck it out, well it wasn’t always easy, we did go for months of silence, and had moments of major disagreements, but one thing always remained in the midst of us in the past 4 ½, Reality.

     

    Here we were two grown adult with this disorder or the affects of the disorder, learning to create or do a real relationship, the blind leading the blind.

     

    Except that I could see what he couldn’t see and he could see what I couldn’t see, so we were the perfect pair!

     

    I could see where his mind was confused and he understood perfectly where I had missed the mark.  We both needed the other to make sense of where we were, and even to where we stood today.

    Because of our similar childhoods with sexual abuse we were able to understand the unthinkable, to acknowledge the inner trauma and how it affects the body and mind.

     

    Where my mind was closed, my body was wide open and held the fear, his body was closed but his mind wide open to remember. 

     

    I was continually amazed at our sameness, but the differences we carried.  He remembered all, but his body was numb, my mind forgot all, but my body seemed to hold the memory alive.

     

    As far back as I can remember my mind and body were at odds, I would not be alone with my father, yet I couldn’t tell you why. 

     

    On December 4th 2004, I had the answer to a puzzle of 46 years, I made sense, the full disclosure of my life came tumbling out, and with it the aftershocks that left me standing in a pile of rubbish that was my life.

     

    The after affects were the knowing that I was with people who hurt me and couldn’t be with people who didn’t, that my whole system seemed to working backwards and upside down.

     

    The disorder had made such a mess of my world, I had a lot of relationships to rework or let go of, and in the midst of that my brother and I were both affected personally as well as a unit. 

     

    Our new relationship was going to be tried over and over and each time we were forging new boundaries and learning how to be with someone in a new way.

     

    He taught me and I taught him, together we stood true to ourselves and our inner truths, we challenged our minds and sought to reclaim a new reality, we shared books and new authors, to the millions of insights that would startle us and have us sitting back in our chairs, the volumes of ways we had it so wrong.

     

    It wasn’t a teacher and a student relationship although it was, we just kept changing chairs, sometimes I was being taught and others I was the teacher, it never seemed to matter which, if it was our time to be the student we welcomed the others great wisdom, and when it was our time to lead, we did so with the greatest respect.

     

    He thanks me in his blog, “Sister of Kindness” and I was beginning this blog at the same time.  Yet in it’s place came the blog about the Posttraumatic Relationship Disorder.

     

    I began a blog and was trying to share how we were the same but the opposites, how we connected in the most unlikely way, and how it was that we carried each other to the finish line while running the same race, and it seemed nearly impossible to write, but now I can see that I had to first read about the Disorder in Dr. Mona Lisa’s book, who we were and why.

     

    I didn’t have such a fancy name for our dysfunction, but I knew intuitively that we were the perfect opposites to make our way through.

     

    We have literally shared millions of hours on the phone, each in our own personal hell, sorting and labeling, tossing out and lamenting at each new loss, elated with each new freedom and fragment of self we discovered.

     

    If you can picture two lost souls buried under a mountain of rubbish, weakened and in total confusion, working in starts and stops to become free to stand tall and walk alone towards brighter future, that is who we are!

     

    The mountain of stuff we had to sort out whether it be in the reality of now or in the messed up past or in the vaults buried deep and out of sight in our minds, we have traveled great distances to get where we are today, and greatest feat is to figure out the messes of the mind.

     

    How do you do that?  How do you even begin to begin to begin sorting when you don’t even know that what is in your head is wrong?

     

    Our messes were created or began by little children, left alone in our minds without adult supervision, so we created and labeled and sorted out things as a child would, but then called it our truth.

     

    That inner truth was a beacon that led us down roads most would fear to go, in places and with people that were as messed up as ourselves.

     

    It is indeed amazing that you become color blind to the fact that you are both a mess. There is no one healthy person to compare your self too, no bright light of normal.

     

    Normal too is a fallacy for what is normal?  I have always said I went in search of normal but way overshot the mark.

     

    I am not normal in the general definition, but I am way normal for me.

     

    I am normal to me and my brother is normal to me, coming from the road we have been on, we are perfectly normal.

     

    We are the perfect example of two souls caught up in the disorder and the perfect pair to tag team and to work ourselves free.

     

    What a journey my brother and I have been on, one that required the fearless, a seeker of the truth no matter how shocking it was.

     

    We stood bravely and with courage without any idea what we stood against.  We were walking into a mad mad mind!

     

    A journey with my brother, wow what a road we have been on.  Thank you brother for being there, for being you and for walking the path you had to walk, because of it I can see.

     

    When you think that all your pain and suffering was for naught, it wasn’t, it was all for me.

     

    There is no word big enough, just Gratitude of you.

     

  • A Hoarder of Pain and Discomfort!

    “When we accept all of life’s contradictions, when we can comfortably flow between the banks of pleasure and pain, experiencing them both while getting stuck in neither, then we are free.”   Deepak Chopra

     

    Below is from “The Presence Process” by Michael Brown.

     

    From the moment we enter this world, we are taught by example of others to fear and therefore resist pain and discomfort by controlling it, sedating it, distracting ourselves from it, numbing it, drugging it, and even going so far as cutting it out.  By the examples of others, we are led to believe that pain and discomfort are our enemies and that when they manifest in our experience, we must escape or conquer them at all costs.  We are led to assume that pain and discomfort are always indicators that something is wrong.  In this world, it is very rare that we are invited or encouraged to respond to our experience of pain and discomfort by listening to them instead of running from them.

     

    During The Presence Process we are being asked to consider the possibility that the experience of pain and discomfort is deliberate and therefore on purpose.  In other words, when these experiences occur to us, it is because they are supposed to happen.  We are asked to open our mind to the idea that pain and discomfort are essential forms of communication that have necessary and valuable function in our life experience.  We are being invited to change our perception of what pain and discomfort are and what the nature of our relationship is with them.

     

    We are being invited to consider that pain and discomfort are our friends, not our enemies, and that they have come to assist us, not hurt us.

     

    Consider what the experience of pain and discomfort automatically accomplishes. It always obediently brings the focus of our attention to a specific place in our physical, mental or emotional experience. Why? 

     

    Consider how we impulsively react to this experience.  Metaphorically we run in the opposite direction by pulling our attention away from area that is experiencing pain and discomfort.  We do our best to annihilate our awareness of this experience with tablets, alcohol, or various medical procedures.  In other words, we automatically attempt to resist and suppress the experience through control and sedation.  What are we assuming?

     

    Our reactive behavior never resolves the pain and discomfort; it merely suppresses and postpones it for a time.  Inevitably, the pain or discomfort will reappear at a later date and continue its attempt to gain attention or show up in another form elsewhere.  Consider this possibility:

     

    The most painful thing about pain and discomfort may well be our resistance to it.

     

    During The Presence Process, our suppressed memories are going to be surfacing deliberately so that they can be integrated by our compassionate attention.  Pain and discomfort in the body, mind, and heart are our physical, mental or emotional bodies calling for our attention so that we will attend to them.  Yet our impulse is always to run away from these experiences or find someone else to attend to them.  What we are now being asked to consider is this:  maybe our lack of success in resolving our pain and discomfort in the past is because it is not possible for someone else’s attention to integrate our experience on our behalf.  What we are being invited to consider is that because it is our physical, mental or emotional body that is in a state of imbalance, that it is therefore our attention and only our attention that can really restore balance to our experience.

     

    All of our prophets, spiritual masters, and sacred texts tell us that the omnipresence that we have named God resides within all of us.  If we can on some level begin to accept this, even initially only as a concept, then we can also begin to accept another possibility – that in our life experience, our direct link to the intimate presence and unlimited healing power of what God is to us is to be found in the presence of our consciously wielded attention.  However, the possibilities contained in this realization remain mental gymnastics until we begin exploring them experientially. The only way we can know if this is true is to consciously and compassionately wield our attention with the intention of resolving our own states of physical, mental, and emotional imbalance.  In other words, our experience must become our own laboratory, our own testing ground.

     

    During The Presence Process, we are deliberately using the breath as a tool to bring our attention back into our physical, mental, and emotional bodies to temporarily anchor it there.  One of these consequences of this practice is that we become aware of pains and discomforts that have been with us since we were children, but that we have successfully suppressed from our awareness. 

              Michael Brown

     

    What I find so affirming to my experience is that all the pain and discomfort in my body and mind, as well as the volume of emotional pain were here to bring me messages. 

     

    Not just a simple message, but books of messages that I had discounted for 46 years, they all came running forth once they understood that I was willing to hear them.  It seemed they lined up for miles and months eagerly spilling forth what I failed to notice for so many years.

     

    Here to show me just how out of balance my life was. The further from reality you are, the greater the discomfort and pain and a longer line of unfelt and unexpressed emotions!

     

    Isn’t it amazing that they waited so long, crammed into my body, one discomfort piled upon another, heaped to the brim and overflowing, pain leaking out into various body parts screaming to me, I was busting at the seams! 

     

    A hoarder of pain and discomfort!

     

     

  • I am a Perfect Guru of Me!

    I am in the 9th month of blogging, and am looking for my top ten posts, it seems an impossible task, to put favor one over another. So, here is another one that I wanted to repost.

     

    Without the understanding of ordinary perfection, spirituality can put us at odds with our life.  The images we have been taught about perfection can be destructive to us.  It is like the Eskimo hunter who asked the missionary, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I still go to Hell?”  “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.”  “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?”

     

    When I read that in Jack Kornfield’s book “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry,” I was taken aback.

     

    First to see the application of Knowing and Unknowing, second to see the innocence gone, and third, the questioning of why.

     

    I can visualize the child skipping along in the ‘adult’ world happy in their innocence, and we are the Missionary Priests that come along and offer a place called Hell.

     

    There was another part that caught my attention….

     

    We cannot know death.  Death remains a mystery.  When one Zen master was asked what happens when you die, he answered, “I don’t know.” “But aren’t you a Zen master?” continued the questioner.  “Yes,” he responded, “but not a dead one.”

     

    I love how honest that answer is, for how can any living person ever know for sure for sure, just what death is all about.

     

    Eccentricity means uniqueness, finding the freedom to be utterly one’s own person.  Even if outwardly we do not appear different, inwardly there is the fearless ability to be wholly the embodiment of yourself.

     

    When the emotions are free and the heart can express itself without concern for the opinions of others, that freedom extends to every aspect of our character.

     

    I was amazed to read that and to discover being eccentric isn’t odd at all, but rather being ones self.

     

    The true task of spiritual life is not found in faraway places or unusual states of consciousness: It is here in the present.  It asks of us a welcoming spirit to greet all that life presents us with a wise, respectful and kindly heart.  We can bow to both beauty and suffering, to our entanglements and confusion, to our fears and to the injustices of the world.  Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom.  To bow to what is rather than to some ideal is not necessary easy, but however difficult, it is the most useful and honorable practices.

     

    To bow to the fact of our life’s sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable.  As we learn how to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.

     

    Those two paragraphs were in the introduction of this book.  I love how we only have to bow to what is, to accept all that comes our way.  And in doing so live a spiritual life and one with our hearts wide open, to accept the joys and the sorrows.

     

    This book set out to show that even the Guru lives a life that is not stress free if they were to leave their ashrams and come and join us in mainstream life.

     

    Pir Vilayat Khan, the seventy-five year old head of the Sufi Order in the West, confides his own belief:

     

     

    Of so many great teachers I’ve met in India and Asia, if you were to bring them to America, get them a house, two cars, a spouse, three kids, a job, insurance, and taxes…..they too would all have a hard time.

     

    All in all it was a book that showed the humanness of the great masters, teachers and gurus.

     

    In the end, we are all gurus in our own lives.

    I am a perfect guru of me.

  • What is your Attitude?

    While reading my past blog posts, I came upon this one.  I want to re-post it.

    In the past few days I have had the opportunity to bump into many of my past girlfriends, some as far back as 40 years ago, and some as recent as only one year. 

     

    To be part of the sisterhood of ladies from my way distant past, to old church members, to schoolmates, to ladies who share the same spiritual ideals, to those playing in Art with me, connects me. 

     

    All these ladies come with a story, with a walk in life, a journey filled with choices and ideals, dreams broken and shattered, to ones not yet dreamt. 

     

    I recall the youth of many, the lightness of heart and spirit and to see today the cost it has taken to stroll along in their worlds.

     

    Life is hard on some or some are hard on Life, not sure which way that goes.

     

    It seemed that so much of my past was in my present and in my present I was seeing how I changed.

     

    My journey has led me down some darkened corridors, with pit falls of huge proportions, into bends of sheer madness, over hills of anxious moments that take your breath away, and then into places of pure delight, giggles and play, inspiration and wisdom of knowing.

     

    I am so blessed that I was kept moving along, it would have been hell to get stuck along the way, in say misery and anger, rage and resentment, denial and hiding, to have sat down in the midst of any stage of grief would have stopped me living.

     

    So many of the ladies I have known, the past and the present carry the torch of courage, of walking forward no matter what, to being strong, stronger than even they know, not letting life’s bumps define who they are.  Not allowing another’s bad behavior be the cloak they wear.

     

    I am in the sisterhood of women who are walking strong and carrying with them their inner resolve to be themselves in the midst of troubles and turmoil, to see the other as the other, and not themselves.

     

    How awesome for me to be surrounded with ladies who can triumph over life’s rolling waves of disappointment, the crusher of dreams, and destroyer of little girl ideals!  And to have the stamina to dream yet again!

     

    The character of ladies that I know, have the fortitude to keep seeking to learn, in daring to try new things, and the guts it takes to just be in their lives, amazes me.

     

    What has happened to me is that the more I share my story, the more they share theirs, and in doing so neither of us are alone.

     

    It is the nature of the sisterhood to be connected just for being born female.  We connect in our pain and our celebrations or the moments that we are victorious over life’s challenges, to the times we learn huge lessons about ourselves.

     

    The shoes I walked in are many, from poverty abuse and neglect, locked in a religious cult, to the unraveling of much of my life, to now being in a state of rebirth, growth and learning, to simply being a woman, all have added to the nature of me.

     

    I am who I am, not because of my choices, but because of life’s choices for me.  It seems I am being carved out and whittled down and smoothed out, and formed into this lady, an artful display called me.

     

    Each of us seems to get a pair of shoes, a road to walk, the inner fortitude to traverse the terrain ahead, we each are on our own separate journeys called life, and are blessed with those who dare to walk with us!

     

    All of my past brought me here today, to be this person, to be me, to know what I know, do what I do, and live like I live. It is truly amazing to look at life’s journey, midway up the hill!

     

    What lies ahead or behind is not what matters, but why lies within.  I have found peace with me all of me along with acceptance and the knowing nothing will come my way that isn’t in the designing of who I need to be.

     

    I give thanks for the sisters of my past, the fallen and the triumphant.  I am grateful for the ones who I have recently found, to the ones I am yet to meet!  They all shared a part of my walk with me.

     

    It is in the greatest of grief that I see my own sisters, my little friends who suffered like I, it is with understanding I see those left behind, compassion fills me as I pass sisters along life’s way.

     

    Walk on knowing that the shoes you wear to day or the road you walk will change, for nothing stays the same and it is all part of being you.

     

    Now I know for sure we are not our shoes!

    We are the ones who walks with an attitude while wearing them!

     

    What’s your attitude?

  • No One Can Do It For You.

    I first heard about the five stages of grief in Forgiveness from Connie Domino and her book “The Law of Forgiveness,” which I have not read, yet.

     

    I heard her in a conversation about how feelings and thoughts have to be in harmony, when she spoke on Sirius Radio.

     

    She is saying that you can’t forgive just by saying the words, or using words alone, you have to feel it.

     

    And this is where I think people get it wrong, you can’t fake feeling okay or fake feeling peace, or fake feeling anything, and try to believe the words have more power over what you are feeling.

     

    She is saying to be in harmony with your words and feelings. 

     

    And I would say use your words to describe your feelings, feel it and give them words.

     

    If you are angry, give it words!

     

    Bring in the five stages of grief into whatever situation you are dealing with and trying to find forgiveness in, the five stages of accepting what is you have to accept.

     

    First you have to accept it, and in order to get to acceptance, there are four steps in front of that.

     

    Denial

    Anger

    Bargaining

    Depression

    Acceptance

    I looked this up and here is what I found.

    The Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as the five stages of grief, was first introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.

    It describes, in five discrete stages, a process by which people deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness or catastrophic loss. In addition to this, her book brought mainstream awareness to the sensitivity required for better treatment of individuals who are dealing with a fatal disease.[1]

     

    1. Denial — "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."
      Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of situations and individuals that will be left behind after death.[1]
    2. Anger — "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"
      Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.[1]
    3. Bargaining — "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if…"
      The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the hi is saying, "I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time…"[1]
    4. Depression — "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . . What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"
      During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.[1]
    5. Acceptance — "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."
      This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the death that is approaching. Generally, the person in the fifth stage will want to be left alone. Additionally, feelings and physical pain may be non-existent. This stage has also been described as the end of the dying struggle.[1]

    Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to people suffering from terminal illness, and later to any form of catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom).[1] This may also include significant life events such as the death of a loved one divorce, drug addiction, an infertility diagnosis. Kübler-Ross claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two. Often, people will experience several stages in a "roller coaster" effect – switching between two or more stages, returning to one or more several times before working through it.[1]

    Significantly, people experiencing the stages should not force the process. The grief process is highly personal and should not be rushed, nor lengthened, on the basis of an individual's imposed time frame or opinion. One should merely be aware that the stages will be worked through and the ultimate stage of "Acceptance" will be reached.

    However, there are individuals that struggle with death until the end. Some psychologists believe that the harder a person fights death, the more likely they are to stay in the denial stage. If this is the case, it is possible the ill person will have more difficulty dying in a dignified way. Other psychologists state that not confronting death until the end is adaptive for some people.[1] Those who experience problems working through the stages should consider professional grief counseling or support groups.

     

     

    I thought of these stages in death, but to use them in all tragedies or when facing forgiveness allows us to be ‘normal’ in abnormal situations. 

     

    I am wondering about the action of forgivenes if we have to do all five stages?

     

    If you can skip a few and still get to the end result of feeling total acceptance and finding peace there?

     

    I am sure most never contemplated the thought that forgiveness is a death process. 

     

    What I felt was a huge loss, but what I didn’t know was forgiveness was a loss.

     

    I never considered this a grieving process, yet I felt that I had lost my whole family in one tragic event.

     

    I grieved the event and the family seemed like colateral damage, but maybe it was reverse.

     

    There are seem to be many levels of acceptance and owning the finality of it all.

     

    The final stage of letting even the teeniest of hopes go, the slightest desires of hope, all hope must die.

     

    Hope becomes a bargaining or denial tool that can keep you in a stage without final and complete acceptance.

     

    It keeps you in a land between, in a place of noncommitment. 

     

    The fight that seems to carry on inside.

     

    The fight inside of me was always between, me alone with acceptance, or me with them and not accepting.

     

    I could not have it both ways. 

    In order to forgive I had to walk alone. 

    Forgiveness is like dying no one can do it for you.

     

     

     

  • I didn’t stick together, I fell apart.

    Everything always comes down to feelings or maybe the absence of feeling a feeling.

     

    It is hard to explain, but I feel the absence of feeling a part of a family.

     

    And by tossing in ‘a family’ the feeling wouldn’t be satisfied, not just any ole family will do.

     

    When you think of family, do you have any idea of how much space of memory it takes up in your world, how much of your world consists of family?

     

    Unexpectedly a feeling of being an orphan ripples through, a feeling of being alone, floating unattached, no firm strings of feeling holding you secure and protected, that you are out in front, alone.

     

    Each year the ‘feeling’ of being outside of a family lessens, but there are moments when I am moved to revisit the loss.

     

    Families carry a feeling, families carry you when you can’t carry yourself, families carry your confidence until you find your own, families protect and nurture you, families have certain connections that those on the outside can’t see, families.

     

    Families create their own little circle of protection against the world.

     

    Without family vulnerability comes in along with an absent sense of who you are.

     

    I can catch a little glimpse of being adopted, how you are still not connected to your birth parents, one step removed, good, but not good enough.

     

    It almost seems worse to have had birth parents, but absent the makings of a family, minus the correct feeling from family. 

     

    Our birth parents didn’t form a protective circle around us; instead we lived unprotected from them, vulnerable within the circle of family.

     

    Within the circle of family you are hurt and abused. 

     

    Wouldn’t that be like the wolf living inside with the chickens?

     

    Here is a clip my mother put in her Grandma Journal, in December 2001.

     

    The stick-together families are happier by far.

    Than the brothers and the sisters who take separate highways are.

    The gladdest people living are the wholesome folks who make

     A circle at the fireside that no power but death can break.

    And the finest of conventions ever held beneath the sun are the little family gatherings when the busy day is done.

     

    There are rich folk, there are poor folk, who imagine they are wise, and they’re very quick to shatter the little family ties.

    Each goes searching after pleasure in his own selected way,

    Each with strangers likes to wander, and with strangers likes to play.

    But it’s bitterness they harvest, and it’s empty joy they find, For the children that are wisest are the stick-together kind.

     

    There are some who seem to fancy that for gladness they must roam,

    That for smiles that are the brightest they must wander far from home.

    That the stranger friend is the true friend, and they travel far astray

    And waste their lives in striving for a joy that’s far away,

    But the gladdest sort of people, when the busy day is done,

    Are the brothers and the sisters who together share their fun.

     

    It’s the stick-together family that wins the joy of earth,

    That hears the sweetest music and that finds the finest mirth;

    It’s the old home roof that shelters all the charm that life can give;

    There you find the gladdest play-ground, there the happiest spot to live.

    And, o weary, wandering brother, if contentment  you would win, Come back unto the fireside and be comrade with your kin.

            By Edgar A. Guest

     

    Isn’t it amazing and profound that she feels sticking together is the utmost importance, even ahead of what you are sticking to.

     

    The stick-together family and she tried valiantly to save that family at all costs. 

     

    At all costs.

     

    She spared nothing to see to that.

     

    She also wrote of her two sisters, one is 25 years older than her, “and very seldom came to family gatherings.  She was very self centered and she missed out on fun and love.” 

     

    Another sister was 8 years older “she went her separate way. She never took time for family unless she needed something.  She died in California at the age of 39 of ovarian cancer.”

     

    She goes on to write, “What I am trying to say to you is always take time to call, write and visit each other. Be there for each other, even if your own plans need changing be there.  You will never regret it.” 

     

    Her perceptions still amaze me even if I have lived the consequences of all of them.

     

    Putting family first.

     

    Love, where is love in this?  All I feel is responsibility to hold it all together, to keep sticking it back together no matter what!

     

    The guilt at not being a stick-together family girl overwhelms me at times, the comrade that fled, abandoned them in their darkest hours.

     

    I didn’t stick together, I fell apart.

     

  • Manifesting Hope.

    In Martha Beck’s book “Leaving the Saints,” she wrote she read somewhere that,

     

    “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having a different past”

     

    And there is a freedom that comes when you realize that all hope is gone, when you are standing on the edge where the past is glaring at you in all its horrible honesty, and where the mind can no longer build dreams of past memories to sing a different tune.

     

    When the tune comes out the same no matter how you spin it, turn it, twist it, there is only one sad song and there is no hope of making it sound different than what it is.

     

    While it seems to put you in a hopeless state, that state of hopelessness is actually a good thing.  From there you have not thing left to lose.  It is over and done with and it requires nothing from you.  It is not a place to put your hope.

     

    Looking for a different past is just not possible. 

     

    It is hope less. 

     

    I had to go and look up that word.

     

    1. Having no hope; despairing. See Synonyms at despondent. 2. Offering no hope; bleak. 3. Incurable. 4. Having no possibility of solution; impossible.

     

    That meaning sounds so hopeless if you are in the state of hopelessness, it sounds downright depressing, wow. 

     

    So I had to look up the word hope. 

    Hope – to want or expect something: to have a wish to get or do something or for something to happen or be true.

    – confident desire: a feeling that something desirable is likely to happen

    – likelihood of success: a chance that something desirable will happen or be possible

     

    I wonder if you can get left in a spot where  you are hopeful of changing a hopeless past?  Where you use your hope wrong in a place where hope is use less.  It seems like people need to be taught where to use hope.

     

    I did not put my hope into the past changing, nor did I put my hope in even them changing, I only put my hope in that I could change.

     

    My hope was to change so the past is not repeated.

     

    All I had inside of me was hope, just hope.

     

    I took all my hope from the past and placed it in an unknown future.

     

    I stood behind hope and began walking a different walk, singing a different tune, and walking away from hopeless, while feeling the pull of hopeless I resolutely walked on.

     

    It literally seemed to always come down to two choices.

     

    In each choice I always picked hope.  I followed hope.

     

    I didn’t know where I was going, what I would look like when I got there or even if I would know it, but I followed hope.

     

    I blindly followed hope.

     

    I recall walking one day along the river sobbing, huge gulps of sorrow and my custom was to allow sorrow to walk with me in one direction, but when I turned around to head home I had to be possitive.

     

    This particular day, it was cold, very cold, clear and bright, snow crystals decorated all the trees along the river, the river itself a ribbon of sheer white, the sky the deepest blue and the sun shining bright lighting up everything in diamonds, and I said to my self, “I will go forth with love, joy and peace.”

     

    Love, Joy and Peace was the place I was headed.

     

    It seemed near impossible to comprehend a day where the sorrow would receed like a bad tide, but within me I placed all my hopes that eventually the tears would stop, that I would come to an end of painful things to look at, that all the years of blindly living, its karma would finally run out.

     

    Looking at this today, I can see that  I walked with hopelessness, despair and anguish in one direction, feeling my past, going into the emotions and feelings of abuse and when I turned around I was carried by Hope.

     

    I had to go and look up hopeful too.

     

    Having or manifesting hope. 2. Inspiring hope; promising. n. A person who aspires to success or who shows promise of succeeding.

     

    My walk back home was manifesting hope.

     

     IMG_1251

     

  • Party On, Party Off!

    As I ventured out to do the mail yesterday, it was my plan to follow it up with a delightful Christmas party and quilt meeting.

     

    With this front and center I approached the Post Office resolute that I would move quickly and set the pace, with plenty of time to transition into party clothes.

     

    In high spirits, I thought let’s get this work out of the way, so I can play! 

     

    The route I am doing is one that I hadn’t done in many months, so the people were far away in my brain storage since I hadn’t used them in quite awhile, and I knew I would be slow at first.

     

    The first sight was five trays of mail to sort, one tray held three box holders, which means Everyone gets one, which then means, I stop at each and every mail box along the journey.  (Yes surprisingly some people don’t get mail each day, and we can smile and zip on by)

     

    A glance at the packages showed that it was a ‘light’ day and so sorting I began filled with great expectations. 

     

    A truck arrived within 20 minutes delivering packages for us to deliver, followed shortly by another truck with more packages for us to deliver, when it was all said and done, I had 85 packages to deliver.  The Post Master dropped a few off on her way to lunch, but the pile still was quite large.

     

    With each thin flimsy bulk piece of mail I struggled with, time slipped by, and as it slipped by, my end of the day treat dangled precariously, and my attitude changed from feeling like I can make, to there is no way in Hell I will!

     

    When I approached my mail car to fill it up with packages in order of which they will be delivered first, I noticed the remnants of my son’s deer that was transported home on the ‘luggage rack’ of my car.  If, someone muttered yesterday, “that bloody Mailman” they would have been literally correct.

     

    Even though the window of time was very tight, I still had a bit of hope, if I moved swiftly delivering, perhaps, just maybe I could regain the slippage of time I lost in sorting.

     

    Soon I knew the roads would be stealing the treat for sure.

     

    I slipped and slide overshooting more mailboxes in my ‘haste to the party’ that I lost even more hope in the first half an hour.

     

    No matter how gently I pressed on the gas, it spun, no matter how I eased on the brakes, it slid and I ended up out of reach of the mailbox.

     

    We have to scan most packages since most carry the words, ‘Delivery Confirmation’ and my scanner wouldn’t work like normal.  Usually the laser picks up the bar code and away you go, but not today.

     

    Today, it was tilt box forward and backwards, hold scanner closer, further away, upside down, while I am voicing very loudly, “come on, work with me!”

     

    It is a fair estimation that out of the 85 boxes, 50 plus needed the scanner to ‘read and record’ that they were delivered.

     

    The mail boxes are put there for our use only, but on this day, the UPS man chooses to use them.  He had hung huge bags holding huge packages, so that when I approached the box, they clung in the way of opening the box!  A few choice words were carefully directed at this man, and then reported to my Post Master….Come on Universe I cried, I have a party REMEMBER!

     

    As I approached what we call the second half of the route, I knew that the second half would be even more fun than the first!

     

    The estimation of reaching the party has faded, the mail and the route is who I am blaming for this and I just want to get it done and get home.

     

    As I head out, I see the sun making it’s decent and with it goes my daylight or well my light to see the addresses on the mail I am to deliver.

     

    I am okay for the first 15 minutes, and then I am squinting and holding the mail up to the dim interior light straining to see, while the strobe light now dances and confuses things inside the car.

     

    In the daytime I don’t even know I have a light flashing above my head, but in the dark, it blinks fast, on and off!

     

    Now you see, now you don’t, taunting me!

     

    Oh, and the roads haven’t gotten better, I still slip and slide, and since this route I haven’t done in awhile, I am now straining to read numbers on mail boxes Did you know that the reflector numbers actually reflect light and just seem like bright lights, until you are right upon them!

     

    Oh My God, I am now hysterical but in a scary way….the urge to toss the mail in one big pile is sooo huge!

     

    We had a man who was training to be a back up and when it got dark he came back to the post office, done for the day.  Bringing with him the mail, which he just piled on the floor.

     

    I wondered who in their right would do such a thing, just stop delivering the mail, now I am thinking who in their right mind would go against all odds and deliver ALL the mail!

     

    Who is more a fool? 

     

    I have been know to drive home with my flashing strobe light on, but I was so damn grateful to shut that taunting light off, which seemed to be a metaphor for the whole day.

     

    Party On, Party Off!

     

     

  • Nothing Left to Lose!

     

    Since I posted the letter to the Detective, I will also post the article that appeared in the Gazette, the day after his sentencing. 

     

    I will not ‘hide’ the names, for this article appeared as is, in the local paper, dated May 28/29 (weekend addition) 2005.

     

    “Hancock Man Sentenced On CSC Charge To Serve No Jail Time.”

    Huhta to be on probation in Texas

    By Garrett Neese – Gazette writer

     

    Houghton – A 75 year old man accused of sexually molesting an 8-year-old girl will live in Texas in lieu of Jail Time.

     

    Raymond Huhta, of Hancock, would have faced up to six months in prison had he stayed in Michigan.

     

    He was charged with one count of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, a high court misdemeanor punishable by up to two years in prison, a $500 fine and a mandatory HIV/AIDS testing.

     

    Huhta was accused of sexually touching the girl between Oct 1 and Nov. 7 of last year.  He pled no contest to the charge, which is treated as an admittance of guilt for sentencing purposes.

     

    At the time, a second-degree criminal sexual conduct charge was also dropped.  The felony charge is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

     

    Huhta will be on probation for several years, during which time he cannot return to the 12th District, which includes Baraga, Houghton and Keweenaw counties.

     

    The 96 days he has already spent in the Houghton County Jail awaiting sentencing will be counted towards that time.

     

    The victim’s father recommended Huhta be allowed to live with his daughters in Texas rather than go to jail.

     

    “It’s been a long, rotten ordeal, and from what I understand, he’s served 90 days, and I feel no better….I know that’s where he wants to go, and it’s where I want him to go,” the father said.  “The faster he gets there, the happier I’ll be.”

     

    Hood said he would set aside the six-month prison time due to the man’s request.

     

    “It carries a lot of weight to me when the victim’s asking me to do something,” he said.

     

    Bob Daavettila, Huhta’s attorney, pointed out that this was Huhta’s first charge, and that he had ‘raised, clothed, fed and educated 14 children” during his 50-year marriage.

     

    Huhta stood next to Daavettila, squeezing a facial tissue in his left hand and occasionally raising it to blow his nose.  When asked by Hood if he had anything to add, a crying Huhta declined.

     

    Mike Huhta, one of Raymond Huhta’s sons, said he could begin driving his father to Texas within hours.

     

    “We could be in Kansas City by midmorning tomorrow,” said one of his sons.

     

    While on probation, Huhta will be prohibited from verbal, written, electronic or physical contact with any child 16 years or younger.

     

    If he returns to the 12th District without the approval of the court, he will serve a minimum of six months in jail.

    (end of article)

     

    In the past few days as I looked upon the old articles, the old journal entries and emails, it astounds me how this all played out in the court of the land and within my family between parents and siblings.

     

    It is beyond what the mind can comprehend how justice was “served”, that we the people of the land took ‘care of’ a man who is hurtful to little girls, by allowing him to go free!

     

    There is no way that all parties involved, whether they will acknowledge it to themselves or not, do not know that they allowed a pedophile with a 40 plus year history to walk free.

     

    While I would like to believe once again that the justice system will prevail and consequences for unspeakable behavior will be handed out with Mr. Seppanen, I am sitting here very very skeptical. 

     

    I walked down this road and watched the way it all turned and in the end, the girls were left with our undies down, our shame and embarrassment showing, and he skips away free.

     

    What I am certain must happen, there has to be a change in the way we handle these cases, a way in which there is no statue of limitations, like abuse fades in time to a blurry splotch of nothing.  We, the ones who walked the longest with the abuse, our voices should be permissible in the court room, a choir of girls singing loudly and clearly just what affects they have lived with because of one man.

     

    The Detective sat in my home in utter amazement to the length of time, the amount of girls and the volume of people who knew and did nothing.

     

    I told him after the trial, that he just joined a long long line of folks who knew and did nothing. 

     

    A pastor, the neighbors, A social worker, fathers of a victim, a Detective, a Prosecutor, and a Judge, all seen him, some had him in jail and actually the state paid to haul his ass up here, and all of these people all did nothing, at the end of the day, he walked away free.

     

    I could do nothing. 

    I was beyond the statue of limitations.

    I was just an old victim.

     

    I had no courtroom.

    I had no law book.

    I had no jail key.

    The trial was not about me.

     

    As I sit here 5 years later, this still amazes me that this man who literally raped my friends and me, who abused in various ways and degrees way too many little girls, his daughters, granddaughters and their friends, HE was set free!

     

    Justice?  Justice, I plead; there is no justice in what the court of the land allowed!

     

    Even as I speak of this today by writing in a blog, by not associating with my family who ‘loved and supported a father’ who is a pedophile, I am the one who is seen as a monster.

     

    Me?  

     

    If this seems absurd to you, imagine living this out if full color!

     

    The longer I walk it the more insane it seems.

     

    I had faith in the law and in the Justice system, a faith I had not tried until his trial, I am now faithless.

     

    I always knew my family stood behind me, I knew that I could rely on anyone of them in my greatest need, it perhaps was the hardest thing to see, the crumbling of what I thought stood behind me.

     

    I think when your whole world crumbles, when you are standing there hopeless and helpless surrendering to the truth of Reality, Grace arises within you, wisdom I never even knew existed stepped forth, I was not alone inside!

     

    A little voice, strong and resolute  connected to the Universe and led me forward, allowing me to see Reality and a way forward and gave me strength and courage to always speak and act in a way that I would never have imagined.

     

    “Forgiveness is Knowing the Past will not change,” and freedom comes when you have nothing left to lose!