I M Perfect lady

Category: Books

  • Awareness of Your Unconsciousness

    "I don't address Ellen as a victim or "survivor" but as a subject. She is the subject of her own unconsciousness, and, as a subject, she knows where to lead me, and she can become responsible for the havoc and suffering and choices of her own unconscious life. Even as a child, when she's eleven, this process of listening to the unconscious and becoming responsible can begin. From my point of view she is responsible for not telling, which doesn't mean she's to blame."  Annie G. Rogers

    A lot is being said in these few sentences.  

    Changing the words and veiwpoints from being a victim or survivor of abuse to being the Subject of your own Unconsciousness is not only huge, but accurate.

    It is about exploring the deep inner workings of how you live the way you live.  

    You are the subject that you are exploring and learning about, NOT the abuse.  You can't get free of being unconsciously moved about, unless and until you can see it. See it and understand the whys.

    By hiding from yourself, you are in the dark about so many things.  And yet, your actions are showing.  

    Somehow we believe that if we do not go deeply into our histories and delve into the actions of our parents, we will escape.  But in fact it is the opposite. You are held prisoner of your past when you fail to see it.

    The words victim and survivor didn't explain me as much as an explorer of my unconsciousness.  I had to know how I was able to live a life clueless of my abuse…for 46 years.

    I had to dig up what was going on in my childhood, the lay of the land, and to see who was doing what to whom and what was the response, in order to see how I grew to be the way I was.

    Just the fact, that I could live for 46 years unaware of my abuse, shows that I was unconscious of the truth of my own life.

    Knowing this startling fact, was where I began my search to know about me.  In learning about me, I was also learning about my family.  I wasn't created in a vacuum.

    I was born into a play that was already going.  I had to learn the language of my parents home.  

    In reading Annie G. Roger's book, "Unsayable"…I clearly was guided sublimibly.

    In order to keep their play going, I had my part.  It wasn't about my life, but theirs.

    Their play is still running, even after a few of us left the stage, the players are still maintaining the lead roles as accurate, even if the truth disputes it.

    In order for me to go back into the family, I would have to become unconscious again, which is impossible.  For once you know, you can't not know.

    Listening to my unconsciousness is what guided me to find me.  First I found me mental and broken, and could clearly see how I had to be in order to keep their story going. And once I seen how my behaviors were for them and for hiding abuse, I was then able to make new choices.

    I also love how she says, "she is responsible for not telling, which doesn't mean she's to blame."

    What is so confusing, is that if we tell, we are then accused of breaking apart a family and if we don't tell, we are then blamed for hiding abuse.  Which of the two evils do you want to pick?  Neither are the truth.  Yet somehow society has the person who has experienced the abuse, as the one who is responsible.

    Never is the abuser blamed for either.  When in fact he/she holds the responsiblity of doing both.  

    Tearing a family apart happens when the abuse occurrs…and it is for their personal benefit to keep it hidden.  It is their unconsciousness being exposed.

    If we all can start the language and conversations about exploring our unconsciousness, we can begin to find answers to abusive behaviors.  

    Abuse is our unconsciousness speaking to us. When we turn our backs or hide, or if we deny it, it doesn't go away.  It will continue to run and spread.

    My father's uncosncioussness was telling a story in his actions.  Those who refused to believe what he was saying, allowed him to speak it again.  If, the courts of the land understood this.  They would put him away so his truth didn't hurt another…and begin the process of having him explore his own life to reconcile his own childhood truths.

    There is only one way abuse can stop its cycle, and that is by awareness of your unconsciousness.




  • Care to Know.

    I finished Annie G. Roger's Book, "The Unsayable" and I found it had tons of information packed into it in a wildly compact messy way…not unlike how abuse feels in the body.  How she is trying to show clearly that which isn't clear.

    It is very complex and hidden…how it begins, how it is disguised and how it repeats and appears behind the facade of illusion we create.

    I believe we, as humans, would like to put abuse into a tiny package and keep it separated and isolated; so it not drip into our own lives. We would like to see it as only the issue of the perperator…that evil exists out there, and not see the strains within our own lives.  To see that our lives are weaved by those who came before us…all their unresolved issues, become our DNA.

    What I learned most from this book, is that way abuse flows from generation to generation.  How it appears and how it is overlooked, due to the blindness of what abuse is or how to read the language of the unsayable.  And even more importantly, how we continue to look outward and blame others for our own language…and how we don't pay attention to the signals and signs of our unconsciousness…screaming to gain our attention.  

    I do know that it takes great courage to go inward. Especially where abuse is.  You have to see where it came and how it grew you.

    I find her work remarkable in its accuracy and how it seems to settle her clients when they are being seen in their true natures. Even as Annie helps to show them their unsayable language it makes sense. 

    Highly remarkable, and not an easy read.  But, then so are we who have been abused.  

    Annie's closing remarks.

    "I've written this book with the hope of making some concepts clear to any reader, but especially to people who have clinical practices and those who come to us to trust us with their suffering. And, in the end, there are at least three things to glean from this book." 

    The first of these is that in America we've watered down and neutralized Freud's concept of the unconscious to such a degree that we no longer know how to listen as he listened. What's taken its place is a practice that in fact closes down the unconscious and its great gifts to us. We diagnose, medicate, remove symptoms, change cognitions, change behavior, and understand relationships, and yet we ignore the unconscious—its otherness—because we're frightened of it and have no access to it in the way we practice. I hope my efforts here awaken an interest in Freud, the original, daring Freud, and his idea of the unconscious.  

    The second idea is close to the first: The unconscious insists, repeats, and practically breaks down the door, to be heard. The only way to hear it, to invite it into the room, is to stop imposing something over it—mostly in the form of your own ideas—and instead listen for the unsayable, which is everywhere, in speech, in enactments, in dreams, and in the body. And the third idea is the simplest and requires the most courage: to befriend your own unconscious—its signifiers, symptoms, and quirky logic—or it will play havoc in the work you do with patients, no matter your intentions, no matter your degrees and qualifications."  Annie

    While she is writing this for her fellow therapists, I would like to encourage others who have been abused to read this.  It will make you feel normal in how you came to be, having lived unseen.  And how it was impossible for you to speak, when there was no one there capable to hear.

    She clearly shows how untreated incidents of abuse manifest in our lives. How the trauma doesn't go away, it is in plain view for all to read and hear…if they are willing.

    What she clearly shows as well as the deafness of the parents, how they too are contributing factors in our having to make a second hidden language…which appears not so hidden, if you care to know.



     

  • Language of Abuse.

    I am reading "The Unsayable" by Annie G. Rogers.  It is her view of how abused children live their lives after the trauma, when it goes unnoticed, unheard and unaddressed, how we live our lives in code, repeating the abuse over and over to be heard.

    I know it sounds insane, but the unconscious wants to be seen, to be reconciled with the reality of what was, and is relentless so that you and your life are at peace, where the columns are in harmony; where negative is in the negative column and positive stands under positive.

    "Trauma is so much like tipping a snow globe and watching the snow descend on the same scene in the same way. Whatever is unresolved and unsayable repeats."  Annie

    This is what is so tricky and so relenting, that it doesn't matter if you accept and acknowledge and fully bring in the abuse; you will repeat it, until you fully understand all the nuiances of it.  

    What is incredible to me that even if you are not willing to talk about it, and will not resolve your life, your life will reflect that which you are not wanting to see.  It is there in full view.

    You are living your unconscious truths, even if you your self are not willing to know you.  It is there in full living color each day. 

    "She tacked back and forth between resistance and speaking and I saw that it wasn't simply that she didn't want to speak or remember. Tasha wanted to speak and to avoid speaking (and remembering) simultaneously.  I began to hear the "unsayable" as something that moves toward speech and away from speech at the same time."  Annie

    What Annie is so briliant at, is to hear and discern what isn't being said and to read the code by behavior and even the words that are repeated in the context of talking about that which you don't want to talk about.

    I do get this.  I notice what excuses are being used, how we speak but don't say…yet say by what we do.  What people are drawn to and away from…all are messages.

    If this sounds confusing it clearly is. But, it also clearly shows how most of us live.

    I found great comfort in that the actions after the trauma are here to be heard, that we don't repeat this behavior for no other reason.  That the truth is working its way into our awareness, if you are willing to see who you truly are.  How you were built and why.

    She also says how we are born into this language….

    "While every child is assigned a place in language by being given a name, and every child is born to fill what Lacan calls a "Lack", an unconscious hole left by a previous generation, the lack Ellen was required to fill was born of horror.  Her very name, its "el" sound, pointed back to Helen and Helene. Ellen arrived to fill a hole or lack in her mother, passed down from her mother, by her grandmother."

    This does make sense to me.  I saw and felt that we were there to serve thy mother…and not to have our own life.  It is that there is a gapping hole that needs to be filled and taken care of, before you are free to live your life.  But, only to find out while you are filling her hole, your own hole is left empty.  And her hole will never be full. She will always need. That is the language.

    Not only is there a hole to fill, but we use our children to fill it up.

    My emptiness was my children's problem. My insecurities were theirs to make better. The insanity would have continued, if I hadn't become aware of my unawareness and what it was trying to tell me.

    I lived the language I was born into until I understood the language. Once I understood that my actions were serving to keep abuse alive and well, and that I was an active participant by not seeing etc….I had to begin speaking differently in all my words and deeds…and to be extremely aware of what my feelings were and what I expected of others.

    I wasn't free until I was free from believing that others need to fill my hole.

    Until I recognized that I was responsible for building me…and for tearing down the old me. 

    Her books are brilliant not only in showing how we were built, but also in de-coding and how to live differently.

    I love how it explains me…and how it explains how abuse thrives.  It is the language of abuse.




  • Unsayable is in the Art!

    In the past few days, I have gotten to see the actions of abuse in the language of actions, even if the words were silent.  Now, I am reading another book by Annie G. Rogers, "The Unsayable- The hidden Language of Trauma".  

    What is totally connecting to me is the way we as humans speak, either in action and words, and actually how actions are much clearer and more accurate than the spoken word.

    To walk the talk isn't that easy, when our bodies and unconscious knowing are not that easily controlled…for our bodies and our unconsciousness want to be known.

    Annie writes,

    "This book reveals specific aspects of my work toward one end; to write history where silence reigned, where silence was broken by an undeciphered cry that went unheard.  When all the traces of history have been erased and the body itself is inscribed with an unknown language, how does a child begin to speak?  How is it possible to listen so that the child comes to know something vital, and speaking freely becomes possible, so that living inside one's own body is no longer a nightmare?  These are the questions that would guide my listening."

    "This book carries stories of terrible anguish girls have lived. They are stories of how something real impinges on us and marks us in our bodies. This thing – I'll call it trauma – enters our speech as if by stealth, through the back door, in the night.  Then it sounds as though we are speaking in code to one another and to ourselves, and that code is both the mark of trauma and is, itself traumatizing." Annie

    Her book, as well as the movie, "The Celebration" by Thomas Vinterberg, are clearly making me see that when you are not allowed to talk about abuse, when your mind has shoved it far away out of reach of memories, Your body and life's actions will still be screaming out your correct past.

    Annie, also gave me an insight about abusers.  How their ACTIONS are showing what happened to them.  How they are speaking their trauma in actions.  It makes sense to me. 

    So, what is so thrilling in a horrifying way is that we are all speaking, just that no one is listening, for we are concentrating on what is being said, and not what is being acted out.

    What Annie came to know, is that in a group dynamic of the old therapy ways, where you all sit around and 'share' your story, the story wasn't being told. But, put them in a room doing art, without rules, just giving them the supplies and a few words, incredible things would show up.  The body and unconsciousness would be doing the art!

    I know this to be true in my experience; my quilts were done without direction, plan or words.

    Unsayable is in the Art!


  • Files you Mislabeled.

    "In any treatment situation, it is the therapist who is responsible for holding two stories, or two plays, together. The work of sustaining a therapeutic relationship demands a two-sided or perspective in order to understand both stories. And the deepening of this relationship over time demands honesty and intimacy and sometimes extraordinary courage. Knowing that we are human, and therefore limited in our understanding and courage, we can be overwhelmed by these responsibilities. We can then create a greater distance to protect ourselves, and even appear to be unmoved by our patients’ responses to that distance. But the effect on our patients is deadening whenever we show them that they do not affect us. Or, alternatively, we can create an illusion of intimacy by making false promises, unwittingly seducing patients to reveal their deepest and oldest wishes, as if we could somehow mete out the right responses and withhold what would be harmful, as if we really knew that difference. But neither of these strategies really protects us from the terrible responsibility of holding another’s heart in our hands, at least for a time, while not forsaking ourselves.
    
    As I write this sketch of my observations about clinical practice, I see that, rather obviously, they carry the story of the book as a whole. I hope that others—parents, teachers, patients of every age, but clinicians especially—will read this story as if standing outside a house at a window at night, peering into a room at once familiar and unfamiliar, and watching an unfolding drama that adumbrates their own knowledge of relationships in psychotherapy."
    From Annie G Rogers, "A Shining Affliction - A Story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy"

    To me, it isn't just in the world of therapy, but in life in general. We are both responsible for holding the story and play of our lives together.  Being engaged with another human is to be fully present, to be the witness of their truths…to have the courage to be true.

    What is so amazing about Annie, is that she was a victim, she healed her wounds and can now be extremely affective as a therapist, for she can know what is helpful, what is needed…and that she must show up completely.

    The key is always…I see you.  And in my experience, until I saw myself completely, there was no way I could see others.  We see only as far as we see ourself.

    There are victims out there who are trying to help others, who have not dealt with their whole lives, especially perpetrators who focused only on their victim days and did not address their abusive ways.  If you can't see how your past is playing out in your present, you are not aware…and are repeating the past in the present.

    This is how the legacy continues.  The lack of seeing the past, the past shows up in the present to be seen. You don't see it, and the pattern goes on and on.

    The only way to stop the past from repeating is to see it.

    See what actually happened there, not what your mind would like you to believe.  To see reality in the past, will stop the past from living in your present day.

    I know this will be argued, but look around.  And see in families the dynamics being played out verbatium.

    If you can find a therapist who will challenge your past in your present, you will be on the road to recovery. Recovering your past and correcting all the files you mislabeled.


  • Wearing the Label “Therapist”.

    I just finished Annie G Rogers book "A Shining Affliction – A story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy"…it is brilliant in the understanding of how the past arrives in the present, until the past is corrected, and it shows the delicate balance between therapist and client.  How the truth can be manipulated by either side…

    Healing will take two people facing the truth.

    "The psychotherapy relationship is two-sided, whether we acknowledge it is or not. Each person brings to that relationship whatever is unrecognized, unknown, and unapproachable in her or his life, and a wish for knowledge of truths and wholeness."  Annie

    This alone is the key as to why some therapy works and others don't.  It isn't the total blame of the client, it is a relationship, where one person fails to show up fully, authentically…and I wonder what is the percentage of failures…Client or Therapist?

    Blaming the client only will no longer be acceptable.  How many folks have a relationship with the 'crazy' one and who are not truthful?  How many times does the 'crazy' one get left standing alone, unsubstantiated?

    What truly drives us crazy is not so much the actual facts of our history, but rather the lack of integrity of those who are 'helping' us….or our family and friends.  It is easier to put me into the category crazy, by my self.  But, it has more to do about their story than mine.

    I love the title, HARM and Healing.  

    For what most automatically believe is "If she would just get therapy, she would be healed"…and not take into the equation the other person in the therapy relationship…that there can be more harm being done in therapy, if the therapist doesn't see the client. 

    It is amazing that you can continue on your path of being a victim….just being victimized by the therapy world.  Ugh. How can you know?

    I instinctively have hung back from therapist, well actually from people…as someone I could rely on to tell me my truth.  I had followed folks for my first 46 years and they led me astray from reality.  Now, I was hell bent on going it alone.  Forcing myself to see that which I hadn't seen, feel what I had pushed away. Being aware instead of blindly following.

    I love how Annie shows the nuances of the client and then the harmful behaviors of the therapist as well as what is healing.

    It is my belief, that we are now on the cusp of recognizing that the crazy one isn't the only one who is misleading the healing, but that rather it is at the mercy of courage of the therapist.

    In the past, the one with the most college credits or the one who sat behind the desk was seen as the wisest.  

    That no longer will be the case.

    I am thrilled that there are books like this one out there.

    To show the way of not only how the past is repeated in our present, but how to get out of the cycle….and that it will take the right kind of person wearing the label "Therapist".



  • A Field Of Truth.

    "Then if you speak, you must not show your face, Or, if you show your face, you must not speak.  Shakespeare

     In Annie Rogers book, "A Shining Affliction" she writes,

    "These words of Shakespeare's.  I make my own translation quickly; "Speak the truth and hide your feelings in response to her nonresponse; or make up what you think she wants to hear, but shut up about what you really feel."   

    What is so mind blowing about this book, it is about therapists, but also therapist who are unhealed or who are blocked when it come to healing their patience, due to their own issues.  Incredible and astonishing and true. 

    The weaving of this story is spellbinding…and tragic and enlightening, how the patients truly is in charge, how they bring in their truth, how they are so authentic and then how it is met.

    Into what hands does their truth fall?

    And how is it held and responded to.

    I believe, if the folks in therapy knew how critical it is for us to find someone to hold our truths, that it is WAY more about how they hear us then, HOW we tell our truths.

    It is my belief, that by the time an abused confused person happens to be sitting in a chair in any therapy type situation, they are desperately seeking someone to get them back to reality. 

    And, if the therapist ISN'T in their own reality, HOW in the Hell, can they get us to ours???

    This book is a Must read for anyone considering the line of truth work. That is what therapy is. We are looking to you to help us find our path in reality.  

    I just know by my own experience, that when I wasn't in my truth, I couldn't see truth in others.  

    Now that I am, I can be a witness to anothers truth.  I believe, to the depth of my being, that therapy will be changing in this direction. It will be a field of truth!

     

  • My Truth was Welcomed In.

    As I sit back and ponder my Keynote at Dial Help's Gala, I recall telling Tom Rosemurgy, that I always felt safer when he was there.  It even struck me as odd, for I was mingling and thoroughly enjoying myself, so where did the "unsafe" feeling come from.

    It occurred to me while taking my sheets off the line, that what he does is he upholds my truth with me.  He carries it, he believes me.  He, the Law Man.

    I felt so safe with Tom and the Dial Help girls and even with the Audience.  Safe meaning my truth about my history was honored.

    When I feel that with these kind folks, it makes me understand what "hostile" means.

    It means NOT believing in me…

    I know that some of my family reads this blog, and they would dispute my claims, that they don't believe me…or my story.  For they would say they do.

    Yet the sole reason, I physically as well as emotionally have put distance between us IS their reaction to my truth.

    While they were retaining a family, I was tearing it down exposing the abuse.

    This is the parting of ways.

    Their focus is and has been on keeping the family unit.  Which then leaves me standing there with my abuse showing and them paying more attention to keeping a family, than looking at how it affected me.

    What I felt on August 9th, as I moved around the atrium with My Lady quilts fully displayed, were folks who seen me.

    Their first agenda or words to me were not why I wasn't with my parents etc.

    They were extremely attentive to the journey an abused person travels in order to regain their power.

    My speech will not win ribbons, but what I love, Love, LOVE is that I did it.

    I stood up and gave it my best first shot.

    Against the family grain, I did what they don't want me to do.  Focus on Abuse and speak of estrangement.

    I am not even certain, they realize that I am estranged…due to their lack of being with my truth and not with the family.  I have felt that they hold me entirely responsible for my poor choice of keeping away from family members, functions and exiting relationships.

    How many folks would stay with someone who required you to keep your truth away.

    I just read today in a book titled, "A Shining Affliction- A story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy" by Annie Rogers….

    "I feel we're not talking about me – as I know myself."  She does not respond.  I go on. "When I say something really important to me, it doesn't seem to matter to you."  As I speak, her face is closed.  My words go out into the air and dissolve, as if I've said nothing – or worse, they hang in the room as if I've said the wrong thing.  I keep trying, as if I can find something that will interest Melanie and compel a response.  Then I give up, and we sit in silence again."  

     This is fairly close to the reaction my family has given me…What a great paragraph to depict why we feel the hostility.  There is no welcoming of our truths.

    Here is a picture of Tom…that I love.  He never, not ever, closed his face and let my truth hang in the room as if I had said something wrong. He is a gift to all victims who find the courage to speak up.  And he passed me on to An-Gel, who also accepted me completely.  The ease we have with each other is priceless.  They help carry my truth.  

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    And here is one of my new friend Barbara Rose. We felt an immediate connection.  I feel humble by her hearing me.  Sitting with my buddy Kirsten Menigoz, who when we met felt a strong immediate comfortableness…old souls reunited.   

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    Imagine what a fine reception for my truth!  A beautiful venue…and even Live music of Melissa Davis.

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    Thanks Melissa…it added a wonderful lively touch.

    Here I am in my speech talking about loving my lady, even without hair and standing like this.

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    I love my open stance, strong and sure.

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    And I love this one of the three of us. These two ladies are working hard to help victims…and I have now joined their team.  

    It certainly was a night to remember…a place that honored my truth….stood in reverence of my quilts…I was completely at home there, for my truth was welcomed in.

    Thanks to all the Dial Help Team, Tom and the community!  I am humbled by it all. 

  • 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.

    IMG_3178

    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.