I M Perfect lady

Category: Books

  • The Function of Mindfulness

    "Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child" by Thich Nhat Hanh.

    The Function of Mindfulness

    "First function of mindfulness is to recognize and NOT TO FIGHT. We can stop at any time and become aware of the child within us. When we recognize the wounded child for the first time, all we need to do is be aware of him or her and say hello.  That's all.  Perhaps this child is sad.  If we notice this we can just breathe in and say to ourselves, "breathing in, I know that sorrow has manifested in me.  Hello, my sorrow.  Breathing out, I will take good care of you."

    "Once we have recognized our inner child, the second function of mindfulness is to embrace him or her. This isa very pleasant practice.  Instead of fighting our emotions, we are taking good care of ourselves.  Mindfulness brings with her an ally – concentration. The first few minutes of recognizing and embracing our inner child with tenderness will bring some relief. The difficult emotions will still be there, but we won't suffer as much anymore."

    "After recognizing and embracing our inner child, the third function of mindfulness is to soothe and relieve our difficult emotions.  Just by holding this child gently we are soothing our difficult emotions and we can begin to feel at ease.  When we embrace our strong emotions with mindfulness and concentration, we'll be able to see the roots of these mental formations. We'll know where our suffering has come from. When we see the roots of things our suffering will lessen. So mindfulness recognizes, embraces and relieves."

    "The energy of mindfulness contains energy of concentration as well as the energy of insight.  Concentration helps us focus on just one thing. With concentration, the energy of looking becomes more powerful and insight is possible.  Insight always has the power of liberating us.  If mindfulness is there, and we know how to keep mindfulness alive, concentration will be there, too. And if we know how to keep concentration alive, insight will also come.  The energy of mindfulness enables us to look deeply and gain the insight we need that transformation is possible."  Thich Nhat Hanh

    Wow.  I love that mindfulness brings concentration and concentration brings insight!

  • Healthy Psyche

    Here is another section that I love in the book, "Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child" by Thich Nhat Hanh.

    "Consciousness is like a house in which the basement is our store consciousness and the living room is our mind consciousness.  Mental formations like anger, sorrow or joy, rest in the store consciousness in the form of seeds. We have seed of anger, despair, discrimmination, fear, a seed of mindfulness, compassion, a seed of understanding, and so on.  Store consciousness is made of the totality of the seeds and it is also the soil that preserves and maintains all the seeds.  The seeds stay there until we hear, see, read, or think of something that touches the seed, and makes us feel the anger, joy or sorrow. This is a seed coming up and manifesting on the level of mind consciousness, in our living room.  Now we no longer call it a seed, but a mental formation."

    "When someone touches the seed of anger by saying something or doing something that upsets us, that seed of anger will come up and manifest in the mind consciousness as the mental formation of anger. The word "formation" is a Buddhist term for something that's created by many conditions coming together.  A marker pen is a formation; my hand, a flower, a house, are all formations.  A house is a physical formation.  My hand is a physiological formation.  My anger is a mental formation.  In Buddhist psychology we speak about 51 varieties of seeds that can manifest as fifty-one mental formations.  Anger is just one of them.  In store consciousness, anger is called a seed.  In mind consciousness, it's called a mental formation."

    "Whenever a seed, say the seed of anger, comes up into the livingroom and manifests as a mental formation, the first thing we can do is to touch the seed of mindfulness and invite it to come up too.  Now we have two mental formations in the livingroom. this is mindfulness of anger.  Mindfulness is always mindfulness of something. When we breathe mindfully, that is a mindfulness of breathing. When we walk mindfully, that is mindfulness of walking. So in this case, mindfulness is mindfulness of anger.  Mindfulness recognizes and embraces anger."

    "Our practice is based on the insight of nonduality – anger is not an enemy. Both mindfulness and anger are ourselves.  Mindfulness is there not to surppress or fight against anger, but to recognize and take care.  It's like a big brother helping a younger brother. So the energy of anger is recognized and embraced tenderly by the energy of mindfulness."

    "Everytime we need the energy of mindfulness, we just touch that seed with our mindful breathing, mindful walking, smiling and then we have the energy ready to do the work recognizing, embracing and later on looking deeply and transforming. Whatever we're doing, whether it is cooking, sweeping, washing, walking, being aware of our breathing, we can continue to generate the energy of mindfulness, and the seed of mindfulness in us will become strong. Within the seed of mindfulness is the seed of concentration. With these two energies, we can liberate ourselves from afflictions."

    The Mind Needs Good Circulation

    "We know there are toxins in our body. If our blood doesn't circulate well, these toxins accumulate.  In order to remain healthy, our body works to expel the toxins. When the blood circulates well, the kidneys and the liver cand do their job to dispel toxins.  We can use massage to help the blood better circulate."

    "Our consciousness too, may be in a state of bad circulation. We may have a block of suffering, pain, sorrow, or despair in us; it's like a toxin in our consciousness. We call this an internal formation or internal knot.  Embracing our pain and sorrow with the energy of mindfulness is the practice of massaging our consciousness. When the blood doesn't circulate well, our organs can't function properly, and we get sick. When our psyche doesn't circulate well, our mind will become sick.  Mindfulness stimulates and accelerates circulation throughout blocks of pain."

    Occupying the Living Room

    "Our blocks of pain, sorrow, anger, and despair always want to come up into our mind consciousness, into our living room, because they have grown big and need our attention.  They want to emerge, but we don't want these uninvited guests to come up because they're painful to look at. So we try to block their way.  We want them to stay asleep down in the basement. We don't want to face them, so our habit is to fill our living room with other guests. Whenever we have ten or fifteen minutes of free time, we do anything to keep our living room occupied.  We call a friend. We pick up a book. We turn on the television. We go for a drive. We hope that if the living room is occupied, these unpleasant mental formations will not come up."

    "But all mental formations need to circulate.  If we don't let them come up, it creates bad circulation in our psyche, and symptoms of mental illness begin to manifest in our mind and body."

    "Sometimes when we have a headache, we take aspirin but our headache doesn't go away.  Sometimes this kind of headache can be a symptom of mental illness. Perhaps we have allergies. We think it's a physical problem but allergies can also be a symptom of mental illness. We are advised by doctors to take drugs but sometimes these will continue to suppress our internal formations, making our sickness worse."

    Dismantling Barriers

    "If we can learn not to fear our knots of suffering we slowly begin to let them circulate into our living room.  We begin to learn how to embrace them and transform them with the energy of mindfulness. When we dismantle the barrier between the basement and the living room blocks of pain will come up and we will have to suffer a bit.  Our inner child may have a lot of fear and anger stored up from being down in the basement for so long.  There is no way to avoid it."

    "Taht is why the practice of mindfulness is so important.  If mindfulness is not there, it is very unpleasant to have these seeds come up. But if we know how to generate the energy of mindfulness it's very healing to invite them up every day and embrace them.  Mindfulness is a strong source of energy that can recognize, embrace and take care of these negative energies.  Perhaps these seeds don't want to come up at first perhaps there is too much fear and distrust so we may have to coax them a bit.  After being embraced for some time a strong emotion will return back to the basement and become a seed again, weaker than before."

    "Every time you give your internal formations a bath of mindfulness the blocks of pain in you become lighter. So give your anger, your despair your fear a bath of mindfulness every day. After several days or weeks of bringing them up daily and helping them go back down again, you create good circulation in your psyche"  Thich Nhat Hanh

    Awesome!  My psyche now has great circulation…however I used to live trying to keep them all down the basement.  Yet, every now and again, my children paid the price when my anger arrived in our living space and all holy hell broke lose.  I would vent and then stuff it back down. What I failed to do was embrace and meet it with understanding, to see it as the wounded child.  

    I instead would vow to not let it happen again…forcing down deeper and try harder to keep my living space free of those feelings.  Little did I know I was blocking what I needed in order to have a healthy psyche.

     

  • Listening.

    In the book, "Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child" by Thich Nhat Hanh, he writes about Listening.

    "When we speak of listening with compassion, we usually think of listening to someone else.  But we must also listen to the wounded child inside of us.  Sometimes the wounded child in us needs all our attention. That little child might emerge from the depths of your consciousness and ask for your attention.  If you are mindful, you will hear his or her voice calling for help.  At that moment, instead of paying attention to whatever is in front of you, go back and tenderly embrace the wounded child.  You can talk directly to the child with the language of love, saying, "In the past, I left you alone.  I went away from you.  Now, I am very sorry.  I am going to embrace you." You can say, "Darling, I am here for you. I know that you suffer so much.  I have been busy.  I have neglected you, and now I have learned a way to come back to you."  If necessary, you have to cry together with that child. Whenever you need to, you can sit and breathe with the child. "Breathing in, I go back to my wounded child; Breathing out, I take good care of my wounded child."

    "You have to talk to your child several times a day.  Only then can healing take place.   Embracing you child tenderly, you reassure him that you will never let him down again or leave him unattended.  The little child has been left alone for so long. That is why you need to begin this practice right away. If you don't do it now, when will you do it?"

    "If you know how to go back to her and listen carefully every day for five or ten minutes, healing will take place.  When you climb a beautiful mountain, invite your child to climbe with you. When you contemplate the sunset, invite her to enjoy it with you.  If you do that for a few weeks or a few months, the wounded child in you will experience healing."

    "With practice, we can see that our wounded child is not only us.  Our wounded child my represent several generations.  Our mother may have suffered throughout her life.  Our father may have suffered.  Perhaps our parents weren't able to look after the wounded child in themselves.  So when you're embracing the wounded child within us, we're embracing all the wounded children of our past generations.  This practice is not a practice for ourselves alone, but for numberless generations of ancestors or descendants."

    "Our ancestors may not have known how to care for their wounded child within, so they transmitted their wounded child to us.  Our practice is to end this cycle.  If we can heal our wounded child, we will not only liberate ourselves, but will also help liberate whoever has hurt or abused us.  The abuser may also have been the victim of abuse. There are people who have practiced with their inner child for a long time who have had a lessening of their suffering and have experienced transformation. Their relationships with family and friends have become much easier."

    "We suffer because we have not been touched by compassion and understanding. If we generate the energy of mindfulness, understanding and compassion for our wounded child, we will suffer less. When we generate mindfulness, compassion and understanding become possible, and we can allow people to love us.  Before, we may have been suspicious of everything and everyone.  Compassion helps us relate to others and restores communication."

    "The people around us, our family and friends, may also have a severely wounded child inside.  If we've managed to help ourselves, we can also help them.  When we've healed ourselves, our relationships with others become much easier.  There's more peace and more love in us."

    "Go back and take care of your self.  Your body needs you, your feelings need you, your perceptions need you.  The wounded child in you needs you.  Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it.  Go home and be there for all these things.  Practice mindful walking and mindful breathing. Do everything in mindfulness so you can really be there, so you can love."  Thich Nhat Hanh 

    I know that we are not truly listening If we only listen to others and neglect hearing what our wounded child needs.  Unhealed wounded children are the source of all the pain on this planet…

    Each of us can end the pain and suffering by learning how to hear what our wounded child needs.

  • Grateful for being Detached

    "We cannot begin to work on ourselves, to live our own lives, feel our own feelings, and solve our own problems until we have DETACHED from the object of our obsession. From any experiences (and those of others), it appears that even our Higher Power can't do much with us until we have detached."                        Melody Beatte

    When our choices 'affect' another's happiness there is a codependent relationship…or if we feel unable to do what we want, we are not detached, but connected.

    And the work towards healing is learning how to detach; to make a choice that you know is against what the other wants, but it is for your own happiness, that you begin to work yourself free of this codependency.

    I love that even the Universe is unable to do much with us while we are focused on the happiness and peace of others….while we are neglecting us, so is the Universe.  It honors our free will….and we are using our free will to dance to make others happy…neglecting our own soul.

    I use to be a great jailer of my children's lives, and wanted and needed them to act a certain way for my happiness and peace of mind.

    When I detached from my children, my children did not have to run away to be free…they had a free life in my presence.

    There was nothing they could or could not do that would change the climate inside of me. I was the only person responsible for my feelings…it now seems so hopelessly silly to imagine that old life, and totally debilitating for me, and harshly selfish and cold towards them.

    Neither of us were in control, and both of us needed the other to act a certain way…how incredibly hard to live this way.

    How freeing to just act for me….which leaves you at act for you.  

    I am grateful for being detached.

  • Shattering Dream

    While commenting back and forth with Lynn C. Tolson, the Author of "Beyond the Tears", on facebook, it came to me why folks support the Coach and the Organization and not the abused boys…they don't want to lose that which they are a part of.

    Whether it is to be a fan of a winning football team and coach, or whether it be a family and father, no one wants to let go of that which they have looked up to, aspired towards, cheered on and been part of.   

    By looking at the abused child, you will see that your hero is a monster.

    It isn't the pain of the child, it IS the pain of the dream dying.

    Lynn asked on facebook, "Why is it so painful to support the abused children? Why, why, why (not expecting an answer). The topic of child sex abuse is so uncomfortable yet the victims live their entire lives in a world of hurt."

    It isn't the child's pain we fear, but our own pain as our family dies, our team isn't as grand as we thought, or that the icon coach is just a normal man, who didn't want to turn in a friend, or who didn't want the public to know that it is as vulnerable to abuse as any other organization.

    We fear our own losses so much that we will hold on to a false dream rather than feel it actually die.

    In walkng face first into my greatest fear, I was able to then see the abused child.  It seems we all have a choice in either holding up a dream or letting it die to save a child.

    What very few can do is let go of their own lives in order to save a life of a child, to spare them the shame, guilt and blame of 'wrecking' the dream.

    What hurt me the most, wasn't the rape of my father, nor even the image of him changing from dad to monster, but what hurt even more was being blamed for killing the family.  

    I wasn't rioting for his reputation…so it was seen as I was out to tear our family apart, when in fact all I was doing was standing by the abused children…the long list of girls who suffered under his hands.

    I wasn't able to stand in a picket line supporting those who knew and said nothing, and I was seen as a traitor to our 'family'.  

    It wasn't my pain that they couldn't bear feeling, but they didn't want to feel the pain of losing a family.

    We wonder why more folks are not lining up to give up the details of their abuse, it is to give evidence and facts that will tear apart their dream of family…

    It isn't that we don't support abuse, we don't want to support the tearing apart families, religions and organizations. But if abuse is within, your organization is decaying from the inside out, and eventually, there will be no good there to hold it up.

    Penn State has shown us it isn't the abuse that we can't bear to see, but the shattering dream.

     

     

  • It knows and Forgives it away!

    Byron Katie, "Loving What Is"

    "I love thanking these men for sacrificing their entire lives to teach our children how not to live – and therefore how to live – if they want to be free.  I tell them that they are the greatest teachers and that their lives are good and needed.  Before I leave, I ask them, "Would you spend the rest of your life in prison if you knew that it would keep one child from having to live what you're living?" And many of these violent men understand, and they just well up with tears like sweet little boys."  Byron Katie

     

    Imagine using your life as an example of what not to do.  I truly do believe that if they are willing to sacrifice their whole lives so we can see a living example of what not to do, it begs us to learn from that.

    Just as Penn State is a living example of how not to react when faced with abuse. It seems that each person who heard or saw something did the opposite of what needs to be done.  And in doing so has shown us a great example of a huge institution and how one man has the power to taint it all.

    The opportunities of people stopping him are incredible…big guys, powerful guys, guys with clout and intelligence, and all let this pedophile continue to hurt little boys.

    What a shining example of how we deal with sexual abuse.  WE don't.

    If only this was a Penn State problem, but it is a world wide epidemic.  Look at the students RIOTING to save a man who didn't tell.  

    We want to save a reputation of a man who didn't tell.  Oh, he told the supervisors, but he didn't draw a hard line and refuse to work in an organization who protected pedophiles.  He didn't of himself go to the law of the land and say, "this is going on".

    And as Jon Stewart says, "We are not trying to take away your football" or in the FALC's case, your religion…WE just want the ABUSE to STOP!!!  

    Let's use this as an example and begin walking one by one to the sheriff with what you know, names you have heard, tales of horror being done to the children.  I know, IF I know, you know.  

    You know and you will either be an example of doing nothing or doing something…the choice is yours to decide.

    Sadly, It isn't that no one knows…it is that they know, it is just that they too decided to do nothing for reasons personal to them.  

    The church is not what you all think it is…it isn't this pure state of faith, this island in the storm of evil of life, it is the vortex of sexual abuse, that has a bigger tool than Penn State, It has the Forgiveness of sins.  IT knows and Forgives it away! 

     

     

  • Freedom

    Martha Beck writes in Leaving the Saints,

    "My defection from Mormonism changed me in the same way Adam's disability did: it became an open-ended tragedy that I wouldn't give up for anything in the universe. (not even my own planet) because it helps me let go of beliefs that had damaged my soul.  An erswhile friend of mine in the Oak Hills Forth Ward once said he thought the only prayer we offer spontaneously is "Why am I in pain?"  Knowing that I am considered wicked and perhaps insane by people that I love is so painful that it continually drives me to this prayer, drives me to seek sustenance even more stable and powerful than human acceptance and company.  Please, Please, Please, Please…"

    "When I persist in this prayer, sooner or later (the more I practice the more it becomes "sooner") something wonderful happens.  My status as an untouchable feels so terrible that something deep inside me finally lets go of it, of all identity, of all attempts to prove or please or control anyone.  At that moment, I rediscover the stillness in my own heart of hearts.  Then I feel its connection to the Stillness all around me, the gorgeous, blissful Stillness that holds every heart, every mind, every tree and rock in its infinitely loving embrace."

    "I am here. Always.  I am always right here."

    "And it is, it is, right here, nearer than near: connection, comfort, safety, belonging.  Home.  Lao-Tzu said, "The master can travel all day without ever leaving home," and while I'm no master, I have returned home frequently enough to know he was right.  I'm starting to believe that my homing instincts will guide me back anytime I consult it, from anywhere in creation.  I think that may be the reason for this whole terrifying excruciating mortal existence, to wander away from home, then find your way back, so many times we learn from our toes up that no matter how far afield we may stray, we can always, always, always get there from here."

    Martha and I both found that outside of the family and church community there lies a new home.  One that resides inside of us…without that I know I would have certainly died.

    She writes about her new path…"I was teaching career development, helping students create successful lives. But to me, that didn't neccessarily mean huge salaries and a Donald Trump social profile.  It meant learning to go home and stay there, in that place where joy is not dependent on wealth or image, and even the deepest sorrow is a guide toward healing and happiness.  During my years in Utah, through all those days of spiritual trial and effort, all those nights of psychological struggle, I'd developed a repertoire of techniques that helped me do this.  In Phoenix, I began teaching these techniques to my students."

    "You'll know when you're in the wrong job interview," I'd say during a lecture, "because the pit of your stomach will tell you to get out. Your first priority should be stillness, attention to what you really know and what your really feel.  Don't 'network' into meaningless relationshiops with colleagues who bore you; find the people who can make you laugh all night, turn on the lights of your heart and mind. Do whatever work feeds your true self, even if it's not a safe bet, even if it looks like a crazy risk, even if everyone in your life tells you you're wrong or bad or crazy."

    "What I was really tellng them was how to be a Leaf in the Stream, though of course I never  called it that.  Nor did I quote Jesus' question, "What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"  I rarely used Buddhist terms like awakening or right action. But all these concepts, all the things I'd learned in my search for God, drove every piece of advice I gave my students."

    "I also started writing books and articles, on many topics but with only one theme, Dante's theme: the journey through the inferno as the road to heaven.  Paradise lost and found."

    "In my case, the inferno-road led through Provo, Utah, the well-meaning bureaucracy of Mormonism, the community of Saints.  Yours probably passes through some other territory, but we all make the same trip.  We believe without question almost everything we learn as children, stumble into the many potholes and pitfalls that mar any human endeavor, stagger around blindly in pain and outrage, then slowly remember to pay attention, to listen for the Silence, look for the Light, feel for the tenderness that brings both vulnerability to wounds and communion with the force that heals them.  Don't worry about losing your way, I tell my clients.  If you do, pain will remind you to find your path again.  Joy will let you know when you are back on it."

    "I still make the journey every day, which is why I wrote this book. Many people, especially I myself, have asked me repeatedly why I'd do such a thing.  I hate conflict, have an enormous fear of being disbelieved, and remember just enough of the old-fashioned Morman temple ceremony to be paranoid about lethal reprisal from the lunatic fringe of my father's fan base ("and whether they will slay me, I know not…"). But much as I dread the consequences of openness, I know the consequences of secrecy are worse.  I've read research that indicates that people who hide a history of traumatic experience live shorter lives, less healthy, less happy lives than those who tell their stories. I know, at a much deeper level, what keeping secrets did to me, and even more to my father. He did more than die for is religion; he gave it his life.  He almost gave it mine.  The memory of that is awful it leads me down Dante's road many times every day and each time, the awfulness makes me keep going, all the way through hell and back to paradise."

    "Once I am home again, I know that my father's true self is not the same man who lied and covered up and sacrificed his children's happiness for his religion…"

    "Even if I never know the explanation behind what happened to me as a child, I do know this for sure; Whether my father had the freedom to choose his thoughts and actions, I do.  I am free, and always have been; free to accept my own reality, free to trust my perceptions,free to believe what makes me feel sane even if others call me crazy, free to disagree even if it means great loss,free to seek the way home until I find it."

    "All the great religions I have studied, including Mormonism, hold that this irrevocable soul-deep liberty is the key to the end of suffering and the beginning of joy.  The Buddha said that just as you can recognize seawater because it will always taste of salt, you can recognize enlightenment because it always tastes of freedom.  About a year after I discovered I'd become a life coach, I stumbled across a Buddhist prayer that felt so true to me it almost stopped my heart.  The last section goes like this:

    "As long as space endures,

    And as long as sentient

    beings exist,

    May I also abide,

    That I may heal my heart

    The miseries of the world."

    "Of course I am not saying I can fulfill the promise of the prayer, only that I want to die trying.  Maybe I already have died trying, once or twice."   Martha

     

    What I recognize most in the similarities between Martha and I, was the cost of speaking out and finding our own inner peace…and how we will repeatedly go back to the fire if we feel we can stop the misery in another, by speaking the truth.  We are willing to die again and again…in order to have freedom.

  • What we endured.

    From Martha Beck's book, Leaving the Saints
    "All my life, I'd read and reread a thousand religious epigraphs to the effect that "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."  I'd always been told this had to do with joining the true religion, learning the true description of the Holy Trinity, memorizing the true Commandments.  Now, with that gong like tone thrumming through me, it all seemed so much simpler.  The truth I needed to be free was simply the reality of my own life: This is what I feel.  This is what happened to me. To know these small truths was to know myself; to speak them was to connect with my real self, other human beings, and God."
    Martha was told by many people she was not allowed to tell her story of abuse, that the church's reputation was on the line, that her father needed to be held up as a pillar of its community, that many mormon spiritual lives depended upon her silence… except one woman came to her.
    "Martha…I don't believe God would ever ask anyone to endure that sort of thing without talking about it.  No one. No matter what."  Her voice when through me like an arrow, through all the pain and confusion and fear to something at my very center. My body filled up with a kind of resonance, like one of the huge gongs I'd seen in Shinto shrines that make the air throb when they ring.  It shattered my reserve, and as usual, I started crying.  Rosemary just sat there, not a shred of tension or resistance in her presence.  "Was it your father?" she asked, quietly.  I covered my face with my hands to keep myself from falling apart, but it was like trying to protect a sand castle from high tide. "I didn't tell you!" I gasped, when I could speak.  "Where did you hear that?"  She shrugged and tapped her chest. I felt that sense of resonance again, crumbling all the barriers of my mind.
     "You can't tell anyone!" I whispered.  "And I can't tell anyone! Ever! I can't!"  
    "Martha, listen to me."  Rosemary's voice was no louder, but it had taken on a peculiar intensity.  I remember thinking that I should pay close attention. I was right. The next three words Rosemary Douglas spoke changed my life forever.  The moment she said them, I knew that this was the stable patch of earth in the landslide, the single great spiritual truth upon which I could build my life now that all other foundations had proven frail and uncertain. The words weren't God loves you, or Jesus is Lord, or Keep the faith.
    Rosemary put her hand on mine, looked right in my soggy eyes and said, "You are Free."
    We are not free until we can speak our story, to tell of our experiences…and sadly we wait for the permission of those who hurt us.  What a great gift this woman gave her, to say, "I don't believe God would ever ask anyone to endure that sort of thing without talking about it.  No one. No matter what."
    At times this blog feels as if I don't have the right.  But I agree with Rosemary, we must talk about what we endured.

  • Whatever Reality Serves.

    My brother's blog (www.messyguru.typepad.com ) shows the switching characters that a mother often displays when faced with truths that directly oppose her life.  Her life and dream and ideals.
    I have somehow had this wrong.  I had presumed that my mother lived in truth and slide into unreality when uncomfortable subjects arose, but instead it seems she resides in non-reality and will slip out into reality every now and then.
    Although this is just hearsay on my part, for she never came out of her camp of denial, pretend, or righteous unknowing for me.
    She stayed true to the character of my childhood.
    I can't know what would be more perplexing on a child, to have her step forth in knowing, and the go back to unknowing or to remain steadfast in unknowing?
    While her actions aluded to the fact that her husband was in jail, for she seen him in an orange jumpsuit behind bars, she never not once spoke to me about why he was there.  
    This omitance echoes my childhood.  This is what I meant by she never once told me to fear my father, to stand clear, to not trust etc.  Instead it was always me that had issues, not him and certainly not her.
    However during the early months of this, since she wasn't speaking of this, not available by phone, I made my own conclusions about the lay of the land.  My body and I were in total agreement to who he was as well as to who he was married to and how this was able to continue on for so long.
    My mother's character never wavered from the mother I knew as a child.
    My father's character never wavered from the father I knew as a child.
    My character greatly changed, when I saw them in their true colors.
    All it took was one look, and my whole world shattered.
    The character that I had been playing, loving daughter, died.
    And in its place a new role was born.
    I gave up all outside roles and stood firmly in the role called me.
    I moved forward by what I felt inside.
    I responded in kind to what life served up
    When it served me a pedophile father, I walked in harmony with that.
    When it served me up a mother who was unable to step into my world, I accepted that.
    My new role is to walk in step with whatever reality serves.

  • Coming From Whence We Came…

    Our book club is reading the book, "leaving the Saints" by Martha Beck…this section was particularly affirming to me when I first read her book about five years ago.
    She recounts how her life began to make sense after getting the first waves of memories…
    Her memory " I am five years old, my hands are tied, and my father is doing something that feels as though it's ripping me in two.  I am stretched on my back, legs spread like a frog on a dissecting table, unable to see or understand what is happening, focusing as hard as I can on the cord around my hands, because it distracts me from what is happening elsewhere….The first horrific flashback was like a nuclear detonation.  It felt nearly real as if I were actually experiencing the original event, as though the nerve impulses for perceiving it had frozen into the tissues of my body, never reaching the level of conscious awareness, and were now finally completing their long-delayed journey…"
    She also writes about an extremely painful doctors visit that now made sense.
    "I am twenty-six, lying in another damned emergency room.  The Doctor has just told me that I waited so long to seek treatment for an abscess in the tissues of my perineum (look it up) that he's afraid infection might enter my bloodstream any minute. There is no time to put me under general anesthesia, so he gives me a shot of novocain in a very private place, then hands me a washcloth and tells me to bite down on it.  "please don't hate me," he says, and starts operating."
    "Numbed by the local, I don't even feel the first incision. But then he sticks a pair of scissors into it, and the pain is just absolutely incredible.  I've never felt anything this bad, not in childbirth, not when a dentist accidentally drilled right into a nerve.  I am positive that nothing could possibly hurt more than this. Then the Doctor opens up the scissors inside the incision, and I realize I was wrong.  And then, oh Lordy.  Then he starts to cut."
    "Out of all my medical misadventures, this memory stood out most in my mind the day of my first flashback – not just because the injury was related to those badly healed scars, but because the pain during that surgery was the only thing I could compare to the pain my mind and heart felt when the flashbacks started.  It wasn't simply the agony and degradation of being raped but, more, the absolute horror of a five year old who has just learned that the universe is ruled by an evil god and that this god seems to have commanded the most beloved and powerful figure in her life to destroy her in a manner much more devastating than death.  "We all have our little sorrows," said my Allusion Manager, quoting screenwriter Ronald Harwood even at this awful pass, "and the littler you are, the larger the sorrow."   Martha
    What I find so remarkable is that the physical pain is of a lesser degree in devastation compared to knowing that your father is capable of doing such awful things.
    That knowing is by far worse than any bodily discomfort. The body will heal and the pain goes away….but the knowing who your father is and what he is capable of doing does not go away.  
    No scar will form over this knowing…it stays an open wound.
    What is also comforting in a very horrific way is how she too experienced the time travelers that brought forth the exact feelings from her childhood.
    When my niece spoke up stating that my father abused her, my body responded before my mind could comprehend.  It shook and was filled with terror in every cell.  I knew without a shadow of doubt that she spoke the truth.  I too could not stop the mental tumblers from clicking into place and my life began making sense in a horrifying way.
    Her husband too was seeing her in a new light, she began to make sense to him…"That is why you space out when I touch you," he said.   "That is why you scream in your sleep. That's why you can never really relax."
    And while her direct honesty and openness about her abuse may be very disturbing, it is very comforting for an abused child of abuse.  It Makes us make sense.
    We make sense coming from whence we came…