There are many different small pieces of myself I have been working on.
The integration of my mother's image and mine.
The lack of control of have of the next generation.
Mostly just focusing on being a single me.
Bringing my attention to what is mine to manage and to let go of what is not and creating more fully who I am.
I get that we are part of a continuum – I am tagged to the woman above me as well as the women below me.
Yet I am a single me.
Becoming a single me has been a journey of extricating myself from the cycles of abuse. And, reconnecting with the self that I was prior to abuse. While living out my life as a mother.
The woman I am – greatly mattered in how I would mother.
And, there does come a time where your mothering days are over.
Where there isn't a need anymore – there is a letting go – and allowing.
Allowing of lessons to be delivered – learned or ignored.
It is crucial to know when to bow out and when to engage.
What I am feeling the integration mostly of is the boiling down of all my choices that are Me.
The work I have done, is done. The work of assimilating my abused self into reality and then redefining me.
I was undoing my false self and becoming my real self - without a self if that makes sense.
The Who I was wasn't me and who I would be has been slowly growing over the years – a slow process of unraveling and knitting together.
I think, I thought that what I was doing was for my kids or the next generation; but in reality it could only be for me.
A old dysfunctional mode of co-dependency had me always believing that I somehow swayed the trajectory of others by how I moved.
I guess because I was so strongly influenced by mother, I felt that I too could/would/should influence as well.
That may be the dysfunction way of legacy.
I wonder what is a healthier version of influence.
I do know that I have been greatly influenced by women who are strong, brave, resilient and who have swerved when their lives took a turn that left them heartbroken – but pulled themselves up and carried on.
What I always come to is the frustration and anxiety of trying to control an outcome – that I have no power in. And, after days/weeks of wrestling – I get tired and I let go.
I let go out of wisdom – not because I don't care.
I actually care and love deeply – which is why I want to intervene and save.
Yet, that isn't the way the world works.
In Byron Katie's words "There is your business, my business and God's business. If I am in your business, no one is left in mine."
Perhaps the guts of my journey for the past 16 years has been to disengage from dysfunction. To be just in my business. Or to find out who I am.
The lessons I have learned by first doing things for the approval of others, to be liked, to fit in, etc – brought me to a place of being without Me. I was only alive in the eyes of others.
I literally woke up at 46 and there was no Me – in me.
I had lived empty inside.
The outside created me.
I was asleep in my own life.
And, each time I hop into someone else's business I leave my life empty.
Often I go into another's life when I am not eager to play with my own lesson.
My lesson now is integrating myself – with my mother – in a way that leaves me at peace.
I don't know how to do this.
Elegantly.
Kindly.
With love.
I sit with where I came from – the woman who is my mother.
What parts -that are in both of us – that can be salvaged.
When I feel most strongly repelled.
I feel the rejecting – more than the continuum of family.
The solid and complete rejection I have had from my family, I am sure influences this.
For, I feel that character traits – are what flow from generation to generation.
Traits that I saw – held abuse alive.
How can you find the string of love – when love wasn't felt.
Or strength of moral value – when none was seen.
It is an odd grasping – and trying to integrate the old – when I pick up a piece, to just put it down.
Who am I?
I sometimes feel like a freak of nature.
One who doesn't fit into the societal roles of what a daughter does – a sister etc.
A misfit or rebel.
Yet, I do feel that I am sliding from daughter/mother into just being Me.
Maybe a grandma Me who doesn't hold the same responsibilities that a mother holds.
Grandma Me is freer.
I have walked my parts out.
Until I walked here.
To the single Me.
Maybe I have defined the traits I was looking for in my mother. I defined them for me.
The love I feel towards myself is what I have to give others.
The morals and values I have – are what can be pulled to the next generation If they chose.
Maybe the integrating I need to do, is being older.
The mothering days are few and far in between. They will let me know when I am needed.
I no longer am a daughter.
a sister
or even an aunt.
The space is wide open to be Me.
Perhaps this is what the mid-life crisis is – where you have to redefine the roles in your life.
The older you get the fewer there are.
Maybe what I am really feeling is the birth of just being a single Me – in the parade of life.
I M Perfect lady 