I M Perfect lady

Category: Another’s view

  • When I moved away.

    In watching this video on Forgiveness,by Jack Kornfield,  

    It occurred to me that the old style of forgiveness is to restore things back to normal, that it doesn't mean you ever walk away or end something, but rather that things return back to 'normal'.  

    And, I am seen as being angry and full of hatred, when I am choosing to protect or to eliminate further abuse and hurt towards me…by ending relationships.

    I honestly don't feel angry or hatred inside of me, now.

    Now, meaning since I have forgiven in the sense that I am no longer holding on to the past being different, but accepting them as who they are.  In doing so, it has allowed me to decide IF I want to be in a relationship with them.

    Do I want to subject myself to being hurt again or do I not?

    It has nothing to do with hatred or anger.

    It does have to do with loving myself enough to protect me and act responsible for my feelings and honor and respect myself enough to want relationships where I am seen and heard.

    Hatred towards them or anger towards them is not inside of me….my choices are based, NOT on them, but on me.

    I tend to move away from folks who I no longer trust.

    My body doesn't feel safe with folks who lie.

    It is about me, not them.

    I can recognize how they can project different energies about me, but inside of me, is a calm pond of peace, love and joy. And, it becomes upset and rippled with anxiety when I am not honest with myself…when I don't honor how I feel.


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    I make no appologies for how I feel inside when I am with folks who are not capable in honoring how I feel…who trample down my boundaries, who lie and holler and scream at how insane and mental I am.  It doesn't feel good inside, so I move away…keep my distance, ask for space.  

    Remember the definition of estrangement?

    "Estrange, alienate, disaffect share the sense of casings (someone) to turn away from a previously held state of affection, comradeship, or allegiance. Estrange often implies replacement of love or belonging by apathy or hostility."

    What many will fail to appreciate, is that I didn't change from love to apathy or indifference, but rather I felt it and moved away.

    The previous state of affection and comradeship between parent and child was destroyed when abuse entered into the picture.  It just took me 46 years to realize I needed to turn away.

    Each relationship I had/held changed the same way…

    The relationship changed from love to indifference or apathy.

    I never felt I left affection behind…it had already disappeared.

    Estrangement is not an unhealthy thing, but rather a very loving gesture within yourself; you are moving away from a relationship that changed. You are no longer pretending or trying to force or feel that which is no longer there.  You are honoring your body and feelings when love and belonging are replaced with indifference and apathy.

    It isn't about hatred.

    I do not hate.

    I accept the past as it was. 

    I believe I hated for many many years, in hating it could not be as I wanted it to be.

    I hated the past when I wanted it different.

    Once I accepted the past as it was, I found love.

    I did not find love in indifference or apathy.  I found love when I moved away.

  • Completely New Design

    Wayne Dyer had an interesting viewpoint of the New Year Resolutions,

    "This is the time of year that many of us make resolutions, or rather, reinforce the notion of living in the future, when really, the important question to be asking yourself is “How am I going to use my present moments this year?” It is simply a matter of asking yourself at the beginning of the day, “How do I want to conduct my life today?” When you get good at living your present moments one day at a time, you’ll see yourself changing right before your own surprised eyes. Remember, anyone can do anything for just one day, so tune out the sentences that keep you locked into your old self-defeating ways and begin to enjoy each day of your bright new year."  

    There is always a lot of chatter at the beginning of a new year, when the year changes, we have this notion that we are turning over a new leaf, that our future will change, we just have to request the right goals…and like magic, a new world will be there…and we will be different.

    Like the Year has the power and not you.

    Who wants to know that you have the power?

    Who wants to feel that it was each little choice that has lead you straight to here?

    Imagine blaming a calendar number for your life.

    When you look up ahead into the distance in a wishful and even resolute…placing your desires on the year to change you, you are looking outward, when all the power lies within.

    You got you to this point. You are the common denominator in your life.  You are the choice maker or the "Not New Choice Maker".

    As my brother used to say, "There is no one coming."  He knew he was the only one to rely upon.

    And, I also believe lots have no faith in themselves, for their lives keep repeating themselves.  But, maybe, it was because you relegated your life to the year on the calendar.

    What if you took it back.

    What if you let the year go.

    What if you only held you responsible for taking care of you?

    What if you watched what you did.

    How you ate and when….how you spent money, how often you were silent when you should have spoken, how many times you said yes, when a no was more truthful, how often you sat down instead of being active, etc. 

    It is a full time, plus, job to pay attention to your self…and to be aware and responsible for each of your choices…before, during and after.

    How do you feel before and what do you do?

    How does it feel during?

    And how did that choice leave you feeling about yourself.

    You are the one doing and the one feeling…the calendar number could care less.

    And, Wayne is right, anyone can do something for one day. Just run the One Days together…but do it one day at a time.

    I start to get anxious often, when my mind begins planning or worrying about a tomorrow to come.  When I bring my attention and focus back to this moment in time, and I look around, I know what I need to do.  

    It is up to each of us to set up our worlds today for the kind of life we want tomorrow.

    The new life, the new change, begins here…it will require you to do something different now.

    When I worked for the Census, the main boss man always wanted me to read the reports of the numbers…a blury page full of scales and percentages and lines.  I looked, but could not understand what they meant for my future predictions.  I would tell him, "you look at the reports and I will take care of the people….that If I do a good job taking care of the people, the people will take care of the numbers."

    And they did.  I always finished first and my numbers were always ahead of the others and I did not look at the numbers on the paper, ever….for I knew that life lived and moved and was created in each action or non action of the people who worked for me.  We were the LIVE version of the reports.  I didn't need numbers telling me If I was doing a good job, I knew by what I did each day. 

    We don't need a daily or monthly report to tell us how we are doing….our live version of our lives is already telling us so.

    And, you can't expect a good report on paper, if you have not done the work.

    When I hear people say, "I am so glad this year is over and that I have great hopes in next year", I feel that they are removing themselves from the Line Item in the reports. Failing to appreciate that they are the ones generating the report.

    Each day, each moment, each decision is creating the outcome of this year.

    How will you stand on December 31, 2013, will depend on you.

    There are 365 lines in this report, will your lines be following the same path of last year, Or, will you see a completely new design.



     

     

  • Positive Negative

    My brother wrote on his blog, http://www.messyguru.typepad.com about Being positive and acting positive…being polar opposites, and I agree.

    What I believe happens is that when you are raised in an abusive family you work like hell to keep it appearing and looking positive, nice and pretty….and that space is where you believe the heart of the family lies…in the space above the abuse.

    And it is the child's job to continually create and re-create this space…and not look directly into the parents lives…but to see them with one eye closed and humming loudly to block out the harsh reality of what they are doing.

    While beneath this pretty picture the children are painting, lies the dark ugliness of abuse…rotting and infecting each new generation…while the older generation continually tosses out abuse like yesterdays OLD NEWS. 

    Acting positive in order to be a family…while the negative feelings surge and rage through you, require you put on a pretty face.

    Trying to be patient, trying to be kind, trying to be positive.  Using alcohol and drugs to keep you feeling positive.

    It is a false positive…in a false positive family. In order to be part of this family, you have to leave your abuse and its affects and stop talking about it.  IT is not welcome here. It is over and done, we moved on.

     This isn't something that is taken lightly or not defended.  I am shoved to the side in order to protect this false positive family unit.  For I will not act positive about a negative member(s).

    Somehow dysfunctional families are striving to be perfect by NOT talking about the negative, when in fact, the only way to return to being positive is to talk about it, to keep talking and dealing until it is fully displayed and dissected and no longer putting in a negative charge into your system.

    If only abuse was a one time event.  

    If only abuse happened, and then was dealt with, but instead in abusive homes, it happens, it is covered up and never talked about, and you are left with a negative feeling inside of you that then goes on to collect more negative feelings, while the home life surface looks like a Hallmark Picture…

    If you look again, at the family snapshots my mother sent, of a large family doing christmas, you would not see any indication of a pedophile or his damage upon the children…you would have to look deeper into their lives.  It is to HER benefit that a false positive be hung up. 

    She doesn't want to air the dirty laundry of her marriage and child rearing years…she wants it to reflect the kinder side of her life.

    It leaves those of us out here with the affects of the abuse, no where to go.  We don't fit into the family picture she paints.  In order to come in, you have to pretend to pretend that you are not abused OR that it has had any adverse affects in your life.

    It is okay to say your abused, but don't talk about it or act like it…and certainly NOT for 8 years!

    I guess I talk about it because she won't.  I talk about it because it made me who I am today…I make sense when you factor in the negative in our home.

    It is not having the space in her life for us to be abused…that pushes us away.

    Even my brother doesn't want me there, for I have this negative side of my life.

    A side that has wrecked havoc in my world.

    How could I ignore it and live a full life?

    And if I did ignore it, would all the affects go away?

    What I know for sure, is that my life was out of control until I was forced to face the negative and see where it was the leading director in my life.

    I lived my life dancing above the abuse…in order to feel positive.  I was the good girl to make me good.  I had to please others to feel positive.  I had to make my children be good for me to be a good mother.  I was directing the world around me to make me good.

    Now, I am good inside.  I am good with being abused.  I am good in knowing that I was but an innocent child and I was abuse.  It isn't who I am, it was what happened to me. 

    It matters not how many kick my ass to the curb, I am still a good person inside.

    Their actions say more about them, than they say about me.

    As they kick me away, I know that they are kicking away abuse.

    I am not my abuse.

    I am me.

    In order to make a false picture family, you will kick aside the good and keep the bad, for in order to make the negative positive, you make the positive negative.



  • Parent’s False Image

    "I was not drawn to this quote because it helped me to understand narcissism or narcissistic behaviour but because it reminded me of how much I was willing to see myself as ‘the problem’ when I first began the healing process that I write about here in ‘emerging from broken’.  So many ‘victims’ of dysfunctional family systems or any type of abusive or one sided relationship see themselves as the one who might be the narcissist.  Narcissistic people groom their victims to always look at themselves and make every effort to avoid letting anyone look more closely at them.  They make sure the flashlight of self-examination is always firmly on the victim both from the view of the narcissist, AND from the view of the victim."  Darlene Ouimet – Emerging from Broken 

    It is interesting to read this and see myself as being 'the problem' and how many others point their fingers at me as well; leaving my parents actions and lives out of the spotlight, while they focus intently upon what I am doing or perhaps not doing with the family.

    Very interesting to note.

    I am a classic case of being a victim who is blamed while the narcissistic mother escapes the glaring light upon her.

    I can't tell you how many times she has been defended and her faults explained away and forgotten, while I am being subjected to treatment that should fall on either of them, but not me.

    Tell me why again I am the problem???

    The second part of this article that was so helpful was the equal value.  

    "Finally understanding what equal value is, was the most freeing and important concept that I learned in the process of emotional healing.  I was never treated or regarded with equal value and therefore I had never considered that I actually had it or even that it was an option ‘for me’.  I had to change this false belief. I found out how to repair my self-esteem and take my value back by finding out where and how it got broken and falsely defined as ‘less than,’ in the first place.  I had to see the truth about who the abuser actually was and what false messages that I had been given and that I accepted as the truth." Darlene Ouimet

    This disparaging viewpoint of self in comparison to others is the key source of remaining a victim.

    I completely agree that you will not see or feel your own self worth, until you first see and feel their truth.

    Until I had seen and felt the complete truth of my father being a pedophile and his treatment to me as well as feeling the lack of caring from my mother, was I able to see me.

    I know it seems counterintuitive, but you can't get your whole self back until you tear down your parents false image.

    We have a false image of our selves based upon the treatment our parents shown us…

    So many want to move on and forget about the treatment my parents issued us, to just let the past remain, the past, to go forward with the positive. You can try.  But what you are taking forward is their definition of you…not your own.

    Until you see who they truly are, you will not see who you truly are.

    While you see their false image, you will have a false image of self.

    What I hear most is their children protecting the images of the parents, and in doing so they are blocking their own value.

    In order to shine from the inside out, you have to see that which you are unwilling to see.

    I am grateful to have read this article for it shows an overview of how we get lost and then how we are found.

    I found my true self when I lost my parents false image.

  • The Zero, Labeling Mental Disorders Doesn’t Answer the Real…

    Labeling Mental Disorders Doesn’t Answer the Real Question: Does a “Diagnosis” Mean There’s a Cure?

    via andrewvachss.tumblr.com

    Here is a paragraph that is chilling to me.  This is why many abusers pass lie detector tests!  Please read the whole article!  Amazing insight!  

    "The last explains why they never bounce the needles on a polygraph, a machine which does not detect lies, but only measures “guilty knowledge.” Neither ever feels guilt for their conduct, because they do not experience—or even conceptualize—guilt." quote from article.

  • Cover Up

    In listening to Iyanla Vanzant speak to Oprah about Family Secrets, I learned a few things.  

    One, that secrets are usually to protect someone….and secondly, that it is due to shame and guilt.  Also, Fear of a consequence IF the secret were to be known and to Cover Up a poor choice.

    I guess when I thought of secrets, what I focused on was the secret If you will and not the reason that a person decides a secret is the way forward.  I was short sighted and stopped with the lie. Not why the lie was formed or what it was the best option, but the lie itself, isolated; a character flaw.  But, I failed to see the life of the secret.

    Secrets usually are after a poor choice has been made and it can't be fix, so then a secret is a way of covering it up, by not mentioning it or trying to hide it.

    I didn't realize that their are legitimate reasons for lying even if they don't work…that a poor choice that can't be fixed is a source for a secret.  That the person feels if we find out about the poor choice, that we will then look upon them differently, that they may be rejected or that they don't want to disappoint us.

    Imagine a history behind the secret…I didn't know.

    I wasn't looking deeply into the pathology of secrets, but rather at the secret…not the why.

    The why is key to knowing the cause of the secret and why it grew…and why a relationship was void of trust, how betrayal seemed to be the kinder option.

    They also spoke of secrets making you sick.  The negative fear based energy and the guilt and shame that lives with secrets will infect other areas of your life.

    I just was amazed at the multi-faceted nature of lies/secrets…how it weaves and grows a life of its own.

    She also said that typically the secret comes out, when the pain of keeping a secret out weighs the pain of the secret.  That was interesting too.

    That the shame of the secret itself becomes a lesser pain…for the pain of lying becomes harder to do and is more painful.

    The Truth shall set you free. Free from the pain, shame etc that the secret was meant to cover up.  Who knew that a secret was a cover up???



  • Talking Crazy!

    I watched the movie, "The Celebration" twice…although once through would have been enough… it is brilliant in depicting the dynamics of how covering up abuse is impossible; only the eye of denial sees it as gone.  For in reality you can't cover up how you have been altered…your untreated wounds continue to rule your life. 

    I saw denial at its truest form being played out within the family…its response is what clearly marks its insanity.

    How the truth enters in and then the response.  A response clearly rehearsed from eons past…expected.  Demanded.  Needed.

    The orchestration of denial has everyone playing their part, except one.

    One is singing off key….

    He is the problem.  

    He isn't following the family plot.

    He dares to stand up and say what everyone is trying so hard to not say, while screaming it.

    He becomes the problem…a bigger problem than the one they are all working to keep hidden.

    He becomes the source of their wrath and anger, physically or silently opposing…for their very lives depend upon silence, and denial.  Denial is who they are. They don't have another person to change into.  Who would they be without the pretty story that they overlaid upon the wretched truth?

    To see the abusers mother singing a haunting religious melody…echoes the FALC.

    To see the wife focusing on the 30 year marriage, that she has always gotten what she needed.  

    To know that the weakest, or perhaps the strongest killed herself to exit out of the false reality.

    To be the one called crazy for standing up and saying the truth. 

    The truth wasn't challenged.

    But, the person uttering it was…he had to be crazier than the truth.

    At the end, the abuser apologized and knew he would be left alone outside of the family, the wife let him go, alone and she stayed with her children…. LIKE HE was the ONLY Problem….Not her.

    Not her who witnessed her son being abused….and did nothing.  

    The siblings did an about face in a couple of hours….and all was well with thee.  

    What it doesn't show is how you then have to work like hell to eradicate the denial files in your head, your beliefs and your relationships.  How your denial self is all you have and you then have to walk and find your true self.

    Who am I if I am not acting to cover up abuse in my childhood?  Who am I when I am not crippled by the affects of not being with my own truth?

    It shows a family in complete agreement that "one man" is the problem, when in fact the wife is his equal and the children who hold the secret their army.  

    All soldiers giving up their lives in order to preserve the father's innocence….and mother's.  To Honor, Love, and Obey thy parents…always and forever.  To never ever say the truth about what happened to you.  

    In your silence you hold their honor. It isn't so much that you speak for them, but rather that you don't speak for me.  You don't not call me crazy.

    Yet the silence of words does not matter when it comes to the picture of the family.

    The movie shows the actions of the adult children of abuse, how it SCREAMS I am abused, confused and wounded.

    No matter how we close our mouths, the abuse leaks out by what we have to do to cover it up.

    What this movie left me with the most, is that no matter if you say it out loud or not, it is running your life, by how your denial has to be stronger than the abuse.

    The sister who took her own life, couldn't find nothing strong enough to cover up her abuse.

    It kept shining through.  In her dreams, it happened time and time again.

    What I know, is that if you accept the truth, the truth will not haunt you.

    What I would love all Huhta's to do is to watch this film and see who they resemble…see who matches your behavior?  And how do you feel our story ended, in comparison to how this movie ended.

    It is not a realistic ending.  The years of denial have left deep ruts into the psyche of generations of a family, and it can't be undone over night.  It is years in the correcting.  Yet, if you are willing to start leaning towards the truth and away from abuse, the Universe will support you. 

    The difference between this movie and my truth speaking, is that I was asked to leave, by the silence.  No one stood up and asked my father to leave.  Instead, they paid his defense fees, they drove his truck, provide him with a home to live in, they did everything for him.  I was the one who knew I would not see them again.

    Not as long as I was talking crazy.

     

     

  • Bond of Our Whole Truth.

    "Trauma into Truth – Gutsy Healing and Why It's Worth It" By Rythea Lee

    This book is small but packed full of affirmations for my journey…and she sees what I see, feels what I have felt…makes me feel normal through her sharing of her own experiences.

    She answers the question, "Who are your witnesses?"

    "I found an enlightened witness when I was most unnerved. She looked quite normal but she had this unusual capacity to let me unravel.  I came apart somewhat dramatically and it was almost as if she smiled because she knew I was coming together. But she didn't smile, she made a space so large and quiet that when she spoke, it reverberated into my suspicion.  She was unafraid and that was a gift."

    "It has become clear to me through the years that anyone can become a therapist. Anyone can go to graduate school, graduate with a degree, obtain a license, and saddle up with top-notch theories. Anyone can charge a bundle, sit on a wicker chair and look interested.  I've met some of these anyones."

    "My first official therapist assisted me in retrieving a repressed memory, rallied me through the grueling process of naming the face of my tormentor, and then announced that she didn't believe me. After devastating consequences, I came to learn that she did this with her clients as a regular practice. How lovely!"

    "I swore off therapy for life but then in desperation began interviewing professionals like a mad woman.  The process of asking questions and screening down the finalists lead me to a single question posed to each candidate, "Have you done your own healing?"  Out of the large number of therapists, one woman told me then and there that a healer cannot heal unless she has healed herself first.  Over many years of rock solid support, she proved to me how true that statement was."  Rythea

     

    My initial gut instinct as to be wary, very wary okay downright suspicious of therapists.  I intuitively understood that if they hadn't traveled via experience into their own childhoods searching for the truth, how in the world could they help me with mine.  

    It didn't mean that they had to walk my same journey, but that they had to have walked theirs.  Book learning doesn't equal experience.  

    Reading about betrayal, pain, or suffering, certainly doesn't equate with being a first hand learner of it. And it isn't so much experiencing or feeling the expressions of emotions, but then how did you right your world?  How did you free yourself from the grips of dysfunction?  How were you able to be a separated being?

    What we do need is someone who can let us unravel without them being afraid…knowing we are not falling apart and breaking, but that we are "coming together"…and willing to witness and let us be our truth, no matter what it is.


    Under the question "What if I don't want to remember what it was like to be a child?", she writes.

    "You were a baby, you were a toddler, you were a young child, a teenager a budding adult.  On a physiological level you remember it all.  Each moment is stored somewhere in your brain, every cough, whisper, and breath, whether you consciously remember it or not."

    "Sometimes I look at a friend or client and see the little girl or boy they once were.  Their laugh, facial expression, or gesture has distinct childish qualities that are unmistakable.  Even a person's voice can change from responsible adult to a higher pitched tone and there it is, that innocence."

    "Alice Miller is one of my heroes.  She has written prolifically on the subject of child abuse and how it gets passed down from one generation to the next through cultural and familial denial.  She asserts that any individual who has not spent time unearthing the child they once were, coming to understand what it was like to be defenseless and vulnerable, will pass unresolved remembrances onto their children or loved ones.  She has made it her life's work to prove that this is so."

    "They did the best they could" is a phrase people use to dismiss the betrayals, abandonment, and violations they suffered.  They do not want to go back and feel the raw emotion from the past.  They believe it is easier to forget.  But if you take a good look at someone's life, someone who doesn't want to look into their past, you can usually see the consequences of that choice.  They are usually running scared, sprinting as fast as they can from what is screaming the loudest."  Rythea Lee


    I love that we both agree with Alice Miller a very controversial therapist of her time and I believe she still is so today.  I too feel that this is my life's work, to share what I can about the pathology of abuse, how the patterns and legacy are repeated out of not dealing with the truth of YOUR parents.  If you can't see them in their true light, you will never begin to heal from the abuse.  

    Whether you agree with Alice Miller or Rythea Lee, reality has proven these two women to be correct.  Our society at large is paying the consequences of therapy practices that don't demand going back and feeling the truth of our childhoods. 

    By eliminating this one very crucial step, we have the repetition of our parents lives being played out…due not only to familial denial, cultural denial but that our therapist may be taught lots of theories in books, but are not made to travel back and heal their own childhoods.

    Perhaps our planet would be better served if the prerequisite for being a therapist was to have corrected your familial denial.  For, how can you possibly expect another to do what you haven't done, OR help them to get where you haven't been?

    I love that I am in good company, that these two women are echoing my sentiments…and that we are not in the majority, but the minority. It truly is the path least traveled…and the one that can stop the legacy from dripping into the generations beneath us.  We are the only ones who can stop the dysfunctional pattern of our parents from bleeding on to our children.  

    When asked if Rythea was healed, she answered this way.

    "Yes, I am.  My history no longer dictates how I live my life or how I feel about myself." I smiled because some evolved part of me had answered the question."

    "I still hurt, I still struggle, I still have inner mulch to make art about (relationships, politics, potato chips), but now there is a place I tap into that is absolutely independent of my wounds and sufferings.  The process of coming to full-bodied grips with my past has tipped the scales from unconscious reactions to a reality that moves from a deeper unscarred knowing. This is my evidence that there is rhyme and reason to dismantling our false beliefs, getting to the bottom of our self blame." Rythea

    Perhaps healing is having two places within you…the wound and the space where you can now react to life, instead of being in the swirling patterns of a dysfunctional legacy.

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    We can't take the wound out of us, but we can learn to live life consciously creating a new pattern.

    A pattern called truth.  

    Where our mind, body and soul are all joined together by the strong bond; our whole truth.

     

  • Wreckage We Called Family.

    Rythea Lee's book, "Trauma into Truth – Gutsy Healing and Why It's Worth It."

    She has words and her Art…she answers questions that she was asked most often…it is an artful book.

    Here is one section that popped out to me, having just experienced an encounter with my mother.  Rythea knows my view.

    The question: "Was it Lonely?"

    "Lonely like a solitary walk down a long wooded pathway.  Lonely like the sting of cold air when your warm hand lets go of mine.  Lonely as if I am entering a park full of busy unrecognizable people.  I have felt this sweet kind of lonely."

    "Then there was the lonely of sitting across the dinner table looking at my mother and sensing something was wrong. A wall, an electric fence, a city of buildings, an entire continent between us. She had hurt me early on but now she was smiling at me.  Her arms had not held me when I was tiny and crying but now she smiled at me as if we were close.  I told myself lies in order to feel one with her.  I said she would never hurt me, she didn't mean to, it never happened, I'm crazy, and clearly we are close, look at how her eyes water when she smiles at me.  I created vats of fantasies setting off warm fuzzies within me, living inside them completely."

    " All the fantasies in the world could not eradicate my terror. That kind of loneliness was deadly.  The loneliness of sitting across from someone who supposedly adores you and feeling sheer terror.  That kind of loneliness would undo me.  So I went away and learned to live with a lonely that had congruence.  I was alone, I was without the woman who had given birth to me. I was leaping into a void of unknown solitude but I could live with that loneliness.  It was a lonely that made sense." Rythea

    I get what Rythea means.  I love that she can separate the two lonely places…and how one makes sense and the other is sheer terror.  

    Underneath the question, "Is healing a selfish Act?" she writes.

    "There have been countless days when I wanted my life to be different. I wanted my parents to be different parents, my siblings to be different siblings, my path to be a different path.  I went so far as to pretend the abuse I suffered did not exist.  I was willing to blot out any inkling of unrest just to have a family, to be part of the only home I had ever known."

    "Was it selfish to choose the truth above all else, even security?  Was it selfish to dive into years of grief and longing to give birth to the only self available to me, me?"

    "Selfish would have been passing the abuse on to my children, my loved ones, my partner.  Selfish would have been carrying the denial into the next generation. Selfish would have been becoming angry, scared, small, withheld person who never healed, who did not find her clear unique voice."

    "If I did not choose to remember the violence, the sexual abuse, the loss, the crazy-making epicenter of my childhood, I would not know who I am.  I would not have have harbored the tools of self-responsibility that enabled me to be in service to other survivors.  I would not have grasped, down to the bone, the kind of atrocities people live through and been able to offer my understanding."

    "The time it has taken to recover my essence has been a long, indescribably challenging road. I wanted to skip the journey and go into hiding.  I craved addictions and self destructive acts that would turn off the stark reality of what people do to children. But then, in the quiet place of faith, I sensed that love was growing.  Every day it grew in the compost of my terror. Amidst the wreckage of what people call "The American Family" stood a figure unafraid.  I had something to give and it had not died."  Rythea.

    I so know the feelings of being thought of as being selfish, as I don't wave, as I drive past, as I keep my eyes, mind and soul focused on healing. How my behavior today and my actions are cited as being worse than my fathers abuse, I know.

    I know what it means to dive into years of grief and longing.  Only those who have sought healing know the pain and echoing feelings of craving family…when you head out to save the only one you can….you.

    I also know that it would have been very selfish and self absorbing to not at least try and change the pattern…to protect the generations below you, to stop the legacy from continuing to your children's children.  It wasn't for me, that I began this journey, my sights originally were upon my children. For me…it seemed it was too late.  Yet, in being self less, I found me.

    In finding me, I am setting up a new pattern…one where when I look into my children's eyes, they will not shudder in fear…nor will I sit in guilt for not doing something.

    Rythea is another huge affirmation on my journey…

    I love too, how she felt the love begin to grow. Feeling that love, and experiencing joy, is truly what keeps us going.  Through the days and weeks and years of grieving about the wreckage we called family.

    Thanks again Rythea for understanding me.  Now I know, for you are me.


  • Seen and Understood.

    "The people who have lost their parents and families due to abuse deserve the utmost respect and support. These people have risked it all to heal and stand up for the truth. These people are heroes and angels who hold a horrific reality for everyone else. They have suffered and escaped, and for that, I bow my head in reverence."  Rythea Lee

    What I love about her writtings, is how she totally gets it from the point of view of the abused; how we lost our parents and families due to abuse.  What a different perspective compared to how most see me…as leaving a family…and not that I lost a family.

    Slight is the angle of words, yet how vast is the difference. One blames me, the other corrects that.

    One seems to set me as uncaring…like if I cared enough I could have a family.

    That a family is still there waiting, not a collection of toxic relationships.

    Vital is the difference in understanding, there is no family there.

    No nurturing loving cove.

    I love how she writes, "hold a horrific reality for everyone else"  Yes, that seems perfect to me.  Nice to be acknowledge from the outside.

    Rythea also writes, "We do not live in a world where abuse is acknowledged and dealt with as an epidemic, relentless, radical situation.  If we did, there would be systems of support that help families, children, and adult survivors prevent and heal from trauma. There would be programs in schools teaching children about abuse and encouraging them to speak up about things that are happening to them. There would be extensive programs for all parents to learn and share about abuse prevention and treatment. There would be funding put forward for a complete revamping of our foster care system, which, as it is, does not protect children in foster care. The entire mentality of “family” would be questioned and explored in our communities and organizations to foster support at every level of functioning."

    I love that she too uses the word epidemic…and that it is relentless.  Very few acknowledge the volume, even when the numbers are as she writes, "One out of 4 girls and one out of 6 boys will experience contact sexual abuse by the age of 18 (Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, 2005). This statistic should cause the kind of alarm that is aimed at war and environmental break -down. What could be more important than a child’s safety? Isn’t it obvious that child abuse becomes the stem of violence that pervades our nation and beyond?"

    I love her frankness and where she directs her focus.  I feel the weight of blame being directed at me, changing course.  Just reading, that I lost a family, I didn't leave one, makes my body relax…I always felt it was no different than losing them all in a tragic accident…yet they are not dead. 

    I bow my heart in thanks, for getting our walk…and for you caring enough to write your experience of seeing me. It feels good to be seen and understood.

     

    These quotes were written by Rythea Lee. Her new book Trauma into Truth: Gutsy Healing and Why It’s Worth It is available at Amazon.com. Rythea Lee has a private practice in Northampton, Massachusetts and teaches workshops and classes for healing and self-expression. You can read more about her and her dance theatre company, the Zany Angels, at http://www.zanyangels.com . You can also see Rythea Lee perform on youtube.