I M Perfect lady

Category: Examples of an Imperfect woman

  • Her Shore.

    com·pas·sion (k m-p sh n)
    n.
    Deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.

    I didn’t realize that the depth of compassion equals the height of awareness, yet this confirms the way my mother responded to my abuse.

    Who knew that in order to be compassionate, you have to have a higher level of awareness and that you have to be able to see and hear and understand what happened?

    Without this awareness you simply can’t respond in kind…instead you appear indifferent, for you can’t reach the level needed for the scope of pain present.

    And it definitely feels you are uncaring and unkind and unresponsive to our pain, that it simply doesn’t matter enough…all we feel is your lack of awareness.

    I sat in my mother’s home and felt the drastic space between what I was aware of and where she was, the bleeding wound I was drowning in and how she seemed to be resting on the shore…how was it possible to witness my pain in such an unmoving way?

    Her awareness didn’t allow her to wade into the waters and she didn’t hear me from the shore, the distance was too great.

    It is my belief, that if you haven’t gone deep enough into your own pain, if you haven’t gotten your toes wet, it is really hard to have compassion. Or perhaps your level of compassion equals the level of your awareness.

    All I wanted from my mother was her eye to see me drowning, her ear to hear my cries or a hand reaching toward me, and in her unawareness…all she seen was a peaceful water scene, gentle waves and children frolicking in life, filled with love and peace…When in reality the seas were angry, the waves fearful and menacing, we struggled to keep our breath.

    As we looked upon her, she showed no signs of our distress nor made a move to rescue us.

    We were left to fight the ocean of abuse alone…the sea monsters, the brutal crushing waves, the bottomless sea…not able to make it to her shore.

  • Life with no words?

    I listened to Deepak Chopra talk to John Francis who wrote a book called “The Ragged Edge of Silence”. He didn’t speak for 17 years. Yes, 17 years, but he did journal and he also gave up riding in gas vehicles. But what he said about silence is that when you are silent it is impossible to lie or argue.

    Isn’t that interesting?

    He also said that once he stopped talking he felt his authentic self arise and his ‘social’ self disappear.

    Imagine your day or week minus all the chatter?

    How much of your self is only known through what you say and not what you do, how you act or where you go.

    Would you be afraid to live in silence?

    I wondered if he talked to himself at all?

    Perhaps I will have to read this book and see what other insights come when you are silent with all people.

    And you know, I wonder how many people would be comfortable with you being silent, for many are uncomfortable in silences, awkward pauses would be frequent!

    It is interesting to know how you use language is it to share your insights, to reprimand, to command, to demand, to cheer, to delight, to ignite…imagine a life with no words?

  • Colored windows lose their beauty.

    “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still,” is a phrase that stops me from entering into a closed mind.

    What I find so enthralling is that religion isn’t a thing it is a thought.

    A thought, a wispy flighty jumble of words and it has the power to control a body and a family and a whole community a group and a bunch…just a few words.

    You can open up a church door and not find ‘religion’ and you can open up a mind and not find it there either, it is nowhere to be found, yet people build their whole lives based upon it.

    This illusive imaginative faith is as controlling as a dictator and yet there is no dictator to be found.

    When someone dies where does their religion go?

    Deepak Chopra says that you can dissect a brain and not find one single thought. And we know it isn’t held in our arms or legs, but yet we move like we are puppets on a string when we commit ourselves to a certain religion.

    Our words are tempered, our voices rising in unison using the same phrases and following the same rules, our minds are synchronized to match.

    Yet, when you take us apart no evidence will lay there.

    In fact the only evidence of your religion is how you lived your life, your life’s trail is a clue.

    What does your life’s trail look like?

    Just as there are footprints I believe there are religion prints that showed how you traversed this life.

    It shows what you leaped over or what you dodged, where you stopped and for how long, who you traveled with and why, your life history is your religious history.

    My first 46 years of my life were led by this religion, it told me who to be with and who to shy away from, what to overlook and what to look towards, who to befriend and to unfriend, who to care for and who to be indifferent to, when to shun and when to embrace, when to talk and when to sing…it controlled my everything.

    My body wasn’t mine it was a vehicle that I had to use to get to heaven and I had to do or not do certain things to it in order to arrive at Heaven’s gate.

    Heaven’s gate was the total focus and life and my body were out to see that I wouldn’t make it, they worked against me at every turn.

    It is my new understanding that what was working against my old religion was me. Me the individual, a me that wasn’t happy without a say.

    It may be hard for folks to realize the ramifications of following a religion and how it leaves out the individual freedom, where your own intuition is squelched.

    I was taught to not listen to my body and not to pay attention to the subtle and not so subtle messages it sent, to instead pull my attention away from the body and focus on the church.

    The church knew the way for me…yet many times I went against it, in shame and guilt, doing what felt right to me.

    It seems that the only way religion works is if they can control you mind body and soul. If the soul is alive if it has a whisper of breath, you will deviate off the path and be less controllable.

    What is so maddening to me is that they take the lives of people but they don’t care about the people.

    They are after the control, but not what they control. There is power when you control.

    Just as Hitler wanted power, he was able to control people to kill people…imagine???

    Perhaps religion has a kinder tone a more gentle approach a church it is housed in, with pretty glass windows, but it’s the overly sweetness that scares me.

    The charismatic chairman whose actions of indifference trail behind him. To the preacher whose trail of raped boys lie in his wake…the pretty colored windows lose their beauty.

  • Disguised as a religious church.

    What came to me is that religion wants to be separated from the people in the church, each and every time a scandal darkens it by one of the congregants. It is then there is a separation between religion and the people who worship it.

    What is it? Does it stand separated from the people; can you add it on and take it off at will? Is it within the walls of a church, where is this religion that stands alone?

    If the people are not all representatives of the religion, then where is it?

    When I discussed the pedophiles within the church, they make it seem like those folks are not representatives of the religion, that they somehow are now separated.

    I just can’t see where you can take the religion out of the man…

    Where is religion stored in a person, where is its compartment of being?

    From my experience the religion was the man/woman. How you moved and where you went all pointed to which religion you were.

    There is no separation between who you are and what religion you worshiped it was all one.

    My mother made no moves without her religion.

    I made moves that went against my religion and was made to feel less than, but they made sense to me, so I moved.
    I was a rebel in my religion when I made decisions that went against the rules. The goal of the religion was to keep us all uniform.

    What I think they failed to take into consideration is the human factor, for their religion looks good on paper but its application fails in reality.

    While trying to preserve the religion they disregard the children, so intent are they on the practice of forgiving sins, they fail to see the wounded.

    And the wounded fill the benches and continue to bleed upon the walls of their religion unseen or cared for.

    How is that religion any different than my childhood home?

    Wasn’t the cover of family supposed to protect the children?

    Somehow in the minds of the people in the pews they believe their children are safe from pedophiles, while pedophiles are preaching to them, sitting by them, singing with them, their blind faith has them unseeing.

    Their faith is to please God by blessing the sinners, while the sinners are free to sin against them again and again.

    The blessers fail to see that the it is not working, that the tools they are using are useless to stop children from being raped.

    And even more importantly, they can’t see themselves harboring criminals when they do so.

    A den of criminals is how my old religion feels. One huge moving abiding blind horrifying mess.

    If you can’t get the blessers to stop blessing, how in the world can you get the pedophiles to stop raping?

    What tools does your religion have to stop this insanity?
    How powerful is that religion if it condones this?
    Who are you as you sit in the pew?
    What are you truly part of?
    What are you supporting?

    I am sorry, but if you belong to a group that has had generations of pedophiles roaming freely, you are not in a religion but in a cult of pedophiles, that is disguised as a religious church.

  • In the Land of Falsehood.

    In David Hawkin’s book “Truth vs Falsehood” he writes,

    “The Reality of Freedom and Happiness.”“Just as all that is destructive has a common source, so do freedom, success, health and peace have a common source, which is that of spiritual truth and integrity.”

    “ Everyone is potentially free to be free. It is merely a matter of choice to follow the pathway to truth to the degree that one can discover it as identifiable, knowable, and confirmable. Instead of envying or hating success, the truly successful imitate it, copy it, identify with it, and develop the patterns. To take responsibility for one’s own actions and their consequences is, it itself, extremely powerful and almost instantly raises one’s calibrated level of consciousness to over 200.”

    Above 200 – Levels of Truth
    Below 200 – Levels of Falsehood

    “An extremely valuable insight that is learned by all spiritually evolved persons in the course of their development is seeing ones own personal consciousness as the decisive influence that determines all that occurs in one’s life.”

    “Another operative principle, whose recognition results in greater aspects for positionalities, is that the mind either consciously or unconsciously tends to manifest that which is held in mind. It is very helpful to see that, in reality chocolate is not the enemy of vanilla but represents only a contrasting option. It is also well to recognize the infantile ego that secretly hides within is extremely needy, constantly hoping for praise and input, and is obsessed with being “right” as well as nursing “wrongs,” “grievances,” injustices and grudges. It takes little reflection to see that the ego gets much energy and benefit from negative postionalities, and that spiritual evolution is accelerated greatly by the willingness to forego these dubious payoffs in return for real gains.”

    Pathway to Freedom and Happiness

    “The steps out of failure, unhappiness, frustration, lack, want, anger, and depression are deceptively simple. Life is a voyage comparable to being out at sea in which a shift of one degree on the ships compass will determine by the end of the trip whether or not one is hundreds of miles off course. The strongest too, which already exists within, is the spiritual will itself, which when firmly set, will face and take on any obstacle. It is this spiritual will that determines the success of the venture. From subjective experience, as well as many years of clinical practice, spiritual education, and research, it is confirmed that the spiritual will is the primordial rudder that determines not only this lifetime but classically termed karma (cal 1,000)”

    “By one simple decision, the impossible becomes possible because the lead sinkers that were attached to the cork have been released and now the cork effortlessly rises because of the density and power of the field. Thus, one can let go of the egoistic illusion that spiritual progress is difficult and that one has to do it all alone. On the contrary, illusions of lack disappear and powerful energies now help to sustain one’s progress, which is now accompanied by the pleasure of increased self esteem, and the world magically begins to appear to be a friendly and helpful place. The brains neurochemistry changes in a positive direction, and like a butterfly out of a cocoon, the etheric brain springs forth as a consequence of the onset of the flow of spiritual (i.e. kundalini) energy, and the experience of life and the self in the world transform.”

    “ It will be discovered that the ego consists of interlocking building blocks and that to move even one unsettles the whole pile which then begins to fall of its own gravity. Even a seemingly small effort can have very major effects, and one discovers that just a simple smile can totally change one’s life. The many thousands of people who follow self-improvement and spiritual pathways confirm the reality of this discovery.”

    “Following is a list of “winner” attitudes, all of which are quite simple to choose and have extremely long-term benefits. Life lived in the energy field of a calibration level over 200 is quite different from life lived from the conscious level of 180.

    Available 265
    Balanced 305
    Benign 225
    Calm 250
    Considerate 295
    Content 255
    Cordial 255
    Dependable 250
    Diligent 210
    Diplomatic 210
    Easy going 210
    Equitable 365
    Ethical 305
    Fair 305
    Faithful 365
    Firm 245
    Flexible 245
    Friendly 280
    Genuine 255
    Glad 335
    Happy 395
    Hard Work 200
    Healthy 360
    Helpful 220
    Honest 200
    Honorable 255
    Humane 260
    Humility 270
    Idealistic 295
    Kind 220
    David Hawkins

    What I found so affirming is that your Spiritual Will is the motivator and that by changing just one little thing, your ship will sail in a new direction, especially over time. And you are the one who can go inside and dig down and find the will you want and by standing by it, life will change.

    The other thing that I love is that just by owing your responsibility and accepting the consequences of your actions you rise to the level of truth. For when you blame anything outside of yourself, it registers Falsehood and is below the level of 200.

    Now, these numbers don’t mean as much as the words or implication of the numbers. That your life will change when you become responsible for it, you will see that your action delivered to you its consequence. So instead of blaming the consequence, get ahead of it by changing the action. The falsehood is that it is someone else responsibility for your happiness.

    And what is wildly exciting and filled with freedom is that it all begins with you. Just as Gandhi stated, “you are the change you are waiting for.”

    What I see is that your own truths when faced in a responsible manner automatically raises your happiness level, while in our heads it seems that it will lower it.

    We believe that if we show our truths, expose the reality of our lives, all hell will break lose, but in fact the opposite happens, heaven appears.

    I didn’t even know there was a number system out there that could calibrate the truth of things, but how curious it is that the higher the number the better you feel or in my case, I headed out and steered my world by feelings.

    I simply stopped doing things that didn’t feel good or that had terrible consequences to me feeling good.

    Some things seem at face value easy to do and harmless, but if you look at how it sits with your integrity it is huge.

    The greater tragedy in this business of Truth vs Falsehood is the application of my old religions tool of ‘blessing away the sins’ when in fact it is removing the truth from our lives.

    I see that religion as preaching falsehood and I know that many within there would be in shock and awe of my blaspheming.

    Yet, it is only when you have been on the receiving end of them disregarding the actions of a pedophile, that you can see the application of this.

    Instead of all preaching and singing halting when a pedophile is in their mix, they stay the party line and bless his sins away.

    How they believe they are heading in the direction of Heaven is beyond me…for it seems that just to arrive at the level of truth you have to take responsibility and their consequences, until then you live in the land of falsehood.

  • Rescue Dolls…

    Shortly after my Aunt died in a fire at her home, I rescued a box full of partially complete dolls. Their bodies were all stuffed, and their faces painted, wigs done, and their under garments compete down to tiny little socks and shoes.

    I finished 7 dolls and gave one to each of my sisters, my mother and my Aunt’s daughter-in-law. The pattern called for dresses and pinafores and hats, so it was up to me to make the outer garments for she hadn’t begun to do that.

    I meant to create one for myself, but time slipped away. It has been over 10 years since I made the last one.

    As I have been wondering about doing a Lady Doll, it came to me that my doll would not have a face, and perhaps I could learn how to do my doll by putting together the whole doll…well, I skipped all the small details, like socks, and petticoats and pinafores.

    IMG_6117

    I did find a hat and a pair of shoes, plus bloomers. I had to make her dress, it was a quick try and needs tweaking. I want to try and design a dress that is more appropriate for a Lady doll, instead of girl doll.

    IMG_6130

    She seems to childlike…I will have to play with different clothes and perhaps a new body type. But I LOVE her hair.

    IMG_6133

    While tossing ideas and inspiration it came to me, that I like my dolls and ladies without faces, for faces almost seem like masks…we can hide our true selves behind a face. And perhaps the face we are most familiar with was put on to keep our parents happy…or we have a social face, a business face…I like it best minus the face.

    I have two faces that my aunt painted and it came to me to use them in a Lady Quilt, where the face will be separated from the form of the Lady…perhaps seeing herself from a distant or her face on the ground. I can’t wait to begin playing, now that I have a feel for how a doll goes together, we started here… She was a brunette and I changed her hair color…

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    I am grateful that I had the opportunity to save these dolls. The pattern was dated 1977, created by Rainie Crawford.

  • In Peace I walked Free!

    After my last post about the Civil War in abusive homes, I had to look up the meaning of Civil to see what it means to be in a Civil war.

    Civil -polite: polite, but in a way that is cold and formal.
    And then I looked up the combination of the two words, Civil War,

    Civil War – is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation.

    The formerly united family is now at war with themselves, brothers against brothers, sisters against sister, children against parents for some of the blind can now see, some of the brainwashed are beginning to think on their own, an awakening is happening, and this causes a war within a war.

    I don’t want to leave the feelings that in this Civil War no peace is found, for it is. Peace is found in no longer remaining silent. Power is replacing the forced politeness…children are rising up and finding their true self, they feel the stirrings of their Spirit.

    They are finding their unused voices, speaking forbidden words and names, identifying the enemy and no longer remaining civil – polite cold and formal.

    They will become warm and informal, perhaps become unconventional and different, they will be marching to their own drums, hearing their own music for the very first time.
    Hearing the stirrings of inner freedom and expression, of passion and of self-awareness, they will fight now to be free from being held prisoner to another.

    This civil war will end for the lucky ones, for the ones who can find the thread of their soul, the inner knowing that their very aliveness depends on them leaving the family, that if they stay they may as well die.

    There wasn’t a moment of hesitation when I left my family, there wasn’t a drop of doubt, for to the depth of my being, I knew I had been one of the living dead and staying there aware would be to be buried alive, for now I knew I was alive but dead.

    What I had found that day back in December of 2004, was a dead me. A me that had no me in it. A me that was full of the definitions from my parents, the beliefs and thoughts of my religion, but there wasn’t but a speck of me there.
    Not a part of me that defined by me, just me.

    I was a body being used by my family and a religion, but I wasn’t alive and now I was aware of it. And once I knew, I could no longer not know. And when you know you are then awake of how asleep you have been.

    And when you are awake, you see the civil war you lived in.

    Imagine being in a war but unaware you are at war. Or even aware that you are scarred and lame due to the battles you unsuccessfully fought.

    A civil war refugee that finds its imperfect self is on the path to perfection.
    “Coming from whence you came…” you should act, be and walk and talk like the walking wounded.

    You are the perfect representation of an abused child. You are the signpost or the poster child for abuse. You have displayed yourself perfectly, the perfectly abused.
    Perfectly abused people act perfectly abused. When you are aware of how abused you are, you can then begin to heal.

    Denying your brokenness is denying your self.

    I found myself in a completely broken state and complete freedom arose, for I no longer had to strive for perfection instead I embraced my imperfections and found them to be perfectly me.

    In agreement with my history I found peace…and the freedom to be myself.

    To walk my walk.

    To talk my talk.

    To be a me I had yet to be.

    An individual, a free spirit, with a clear mind no longer washed by others, in peace I walked free.

    Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose!

  • A Pedophiles Nest

    There is only one human race, but there are many small sprints or similar roads we travel and our travel companions often times are running silently with us, unbeknownst to either of us.

    We feel alone and separated, when in fact our road is quite packed and overrun with folks of all ages.

    As refugees of our own secret war we hide our battle scars, for it is not a war we are proud to be in, it is more like we are prisoners of this war.

    Wartime prisoners walking free in chains of guilt and confused of who our real enemy is and fearful of those we love.

    To frighten to speak of the war crimes, we soldier on in silence, while our behavior displays great cover-ups and covert actions.

    Are we soldiers or are we prisoners?

    Who are we fighting for, whose side are we on?

    In the war of abuse the lines get fuzzy, our enemy lines are blurred by images of father, uncle, brother, sister, mother.

    The enemy looks and sounds too familiar. We can’t tell ‘friendly’ fire from those of our enemies.

    The war against abuse becomes the war against the family, a family’s civil war.

    This family civil war begins when a parent abuses a child or allows a child’s abuse to go untreated. The family home then becomes a war zone, where you’re living with the enemy, a prisoner of war.

    The war has been waging for generations and many lifetimes…and yet we feel that we are the ones who start the war by speaking of it, when if fact we are trying to end it.

    Ending this war means ending the ‘family’ as it stands.

    The insanity of it all, is what they call family is really a civil war, where children are born prisoners and in order to be free, have to leave the family.

    I am not sure I can articulate this correctly, but we are born into the land of the enemies and we are supporting a war machine while being the land it occupies.

    It is like we are on the team of our enemies fighting against ourselves.

    And to me, the reality of this was the beginning of an out and out war, for as long as I was a silent and well-behaved prisoner of war, a family’s image remained intact and the monster remained behind the façade of father.

    The near impossible task is to see the enemy of the family’s civil war, to feel the love evaporate, the trust turn to fear, and face that you lived in the middle of enemy territory.

    The refugees of this war come stumbling out of their families…lost, confused and alone or in the company of siblings in the same condition. In order to win the war, we’ll have to fight against the family, become its enemy.

    What is seen, as a family civil war is actually the war against abusive behavior, is a fight for the innocent children, a battle to begin healing from criminal acts in childhood.

    For all the new refugees and soldiers who have switched sides, I applaud you and your bravery and courage to stand up against enemies.

    The good news is that you have been fighting to keep a monster in power, and now you are fighting to take him down and all the energy, strength and endurance you have used to live within enemy camp can now be used against him/her.

    The family civil war can only be won in tearing the family apart and display it as it is, a pedophile’s nest.

  • Protected me.

    For six years I have been saying that I have no memory, and I have lied. I have no mind memory, but my body has always had its memory.

    I don’t have actual vivid stories to recount, but I do have the physical reaction within my body’s mass, its nerves and muscles…it knows what I forgot to remember.

    For years I wasn’t pleased with my ‘cold’ body, how it chose not to get close to my parents, how it literally would feel unease in their presence, never the desire to snuggle close or lean in and get into their aurora.

    It was like I wasn’t driving this body, that this body had a life of its own…it craved things and repelled things on its own volition.

    Now with hidden truths and untold stories known, I now am supportive of this living organism that has a beautiful memory, a trusting articulate knowing and isn’t fooled by flimsy masks.

    It never pretended to pretend it always reacted accurately aligning itself to the experiences of its past.

    Me inside was always disappointed in its lack of warmth for my parents, its lack of trust and faith and its inability to recognize and feel their love.

    My body stood strong and resilient to all my longings and childish wishes…it would not give up what it knew.

    It knew my father’s imprint, my mother’s indifference…it never once changed its way, lost its courage or grace.

    It just was…

    An abused body and it knew its source.

    Its memory carried me when I was to blind to see, to wounded to know, It always has protected me…

  • Elders of the Church

    There are no coincidences in life and the fact that I am learning about more and more sexual abuse in my old church while I am reading Alice Miller is profound.

    She is literally writing about the hows and the whys that seemingly intelligent functioning adults are unable to stop this behavior…or it seems “Knows” and does nothing.

    What I am getting a view of is my family but displayed in a much bigger group, widespread from state to state.

    That there is an underlying very pervasive evil preying upon the children, while half the adults sleep and the other are the perpetrators, and all presenting a mask to society of high morals and values, where TV, Music, drinking and drugs, etc are forbidden, where truth and honesty is the way of life….

    The grand scale and its history from generation to generation of criminal sexual behavior under the auspices of a religion of high morals and value is mind blowing.

    My mother was not an anomaly she was a typical church mother.

    And what is so extremely shocking to me is that I didn’t know of it when I was in it. Yet, here is the deal on that…I didn’t leave the church until I had seen the truth of who my father was. So, I guess, their families were like my family we all matched…so we were not outstanding in the fact that the children in the family were abused.

    Knowing that my father abused the neighbors and the neighbor’s parents were in the church and did nothing shows to me, that they too didn’t find this shocking or something that should be presented to the law of the land.

    Again, I felt I lived in this little nest of incest with neighbors that I later found out had their own nests, but that we were the ‘odd’ ones in the church. But 6 years later, I am finding out that we are far from odd, but perhaps just normal parishioners.

    In Alice’s book she speaks of forgiveness in how I seen it work in the church and how it actually is the juice that keeps the evil in the pulpits and on the church boards, literally running the church while raping the children.

    “Can forgiveness for the crimes done to the child be not just ineffective but actively harmful? It certainly can because the body does not understand more precepts. It fights to make our conscious minds admit the truth and transcend our denial of genuine feelings. This is something children cannot afford to do. They have to deceive themselves and turn a blind eye to their parent’s crimes in order to survive. Adults no longer need to repress their feelings. But if they do, the price they pay is high. Either they ruin their own health or make others foot the bill.”

    “A therapist who has forgiven his parents for the cruelty they showed him may feel the urge to suggest this same remedy to his clients. In so doing, he is exploiting their dependence and their trust. If he is not in touch with his own feelings at all, he may indeed be unaware that he is doing to others what was once done to him. In suggesting forgiveness as a solution, the therapist is abusing and confusing others, while rejecting any kind of responsibility for his actions. He is convinced that he is acting for their own good. Are not all religions unanimously in their conviction that forgiveness is the path to Heaven? Was not Job ultimately reward for the fact that he forgave God?”

    “Unlike children, adult patients have a choice. They can leave a therapist once they have seen through his deception and self-deception….”

    “To break through this vicious cycle we need to understand that so-called love cannot survive abuse, deception, and exploitation without seeking new victims. And if it requires new victims it is no longer love but at best the longing for love. Only unflinching realization of one’s own past reality, of what really happened can break through the chain of abuse. If I know and can feel what my parents did to me when I was totally defenseless, I no longer need victims to befog my awareness. I no longer need to reenact what happened to me and take it out on innocent people because now I know what happened. And if I want to live my life consciously, without exploiting others, then I must actively accept that knowledge.” Alice Miller

    What is so vastly incredible is that the one thing a child needs to heal is not offered to him in that church, instead the only thing that is offered is the forgiveness of sins and the fourth commandment…”to love and Honor thy parents”.

    It is no wonder to me, as a person who has lived in the system, who was abused and left untreated there, and has witnessed the responses of my siblings, that this vein of power is still in play, whether you leave the church or not, it will take Herculean power to stop the mind set of forgiving sexual crimes and not passively accept love hurts.

    As long as forgiveness is preached, children will suffer abuse from the elders of the church.