I M Perfect lady

Category: Examples of an Imperfect woman

  • Unbelievers Live Free.

    In my old religion, those who left the church or perhaps those who never entered were called Unbelievers.

    These Unbelievers didn’t believe like we did, and in doing so didn’t move about the planet like us. They were ‘allowed’ to do things that good Believers were not allowed to do.

    Unbelievers were easy to spot, they had pierced ears, painted fingernails, colored hair, they were allowed to do things with their bodies we were not allowed to do.

    Unbelievers also had a say in how many children they would have, or if they wanted any. They had freedoms in their lives we didn’t have.

    You could almost see the Believers being stuck and the Unbelievers being free.

    It all began and ended with my mind.

    When I believed my mind, its thoughts and its beliefs, I gave up my body and my free will. When I didn’t believe, when I became an Unbeliever, I had my freedom back.

    It resembles an addiction in how it takes over your life.

    My mind became addicted to limiting thoughts.

    What is so extremely debilitating is how we are afraid to not believe those thoughts, for those thoughts were taught to us from a very young age.

    The thoughts and beliefs become who we are, and to let them go seems to be killing yourself.

    Being held prisoner in your own life by thoughts is being the jailer and the jailed.

    You have to become an Unbeliever to be set free.

    We were taught; Unbelievers go to Hell, so who wants to be free only to spend eternity in Hell.

    Isn’t there a saying “What is bound on Earth is bound in Heaven”?

    Being bound on earth is how I lived for the first 46 years of my life, being a good Believer of a very mind controlling religion.

    Becoming unbound has been a long process and one that has brought me much peace, love and joy…

    Unbelieving is unraveling the ties that bind.

    Unbelievers live free.

  • Mold in sight.

    What I didn’t know about writing is that you are supposed to have a plan first, a graph, a map, an idea, an outline, something for the words to fall into, that you don’t just stand there empty handed and catching them as they fall.

    I felt like a neglectful writer, unskilled, untaught and uncaring, yet as I step back and see the overview, I am astonished how hard most writers make it.

    It seems they are trying to predict the unpredictable, like trying to control reality, or planning for an unknown future.

    As I look upon my first 46 years of living, I had structure, I had rules of a religion to follow, and I had to fit into that, foregoing all my instincts and passion.

    My natural spiritual self was whittled down to fit into their mold.

    My mother sculpted this mold, and we had to squeeze ourselves into the walls, making sure we didn’t jut out unbecomingly.

    Our goal was to replicate this mold and make our children to conform to look the same, sound the same, and walk the same, little molds of sameness.

    Kept to the outside were words that didn’t match this mind set, this ideology and beyond their very rigid lines danced wonderful words and ideas in a field of pure potential…forbidden to us congregants.

    We had to disregard all things that didn’t match the mold, and by doing so passed up 99.9% of reality…and lived with .1% of our self.

    This .1% of me is where I began writing from, asking how I had sold so much of myself off and what did I truly believe coming from the base of me.

    From the base of me I ask the question and have no rules as to what comes, or where it takes me, what conclusion we draw, what systems we debunk, there is nothing off limits, there are no walls between me and my words.

    In fact I am tearing down the parts of me that have been crammed into the tight space, and giving life again to the long forgotten parts of me.

    There just simply can’t be a grid to follow, for I have no idea who I am, where I am going or what my purpose is…writing is helping me define who I am.

    I am meeting my words with a blank slate and they are coming from the mold of extreme restriction, so they too are excited not having to guard themselves and their truths.

    We are the clay and the sculptor with no pattern or mold in sight…

  • An Artist with words.

    I have been going to writing classes, listening as Authors speak of their writing techniques and style, it seems they all know what their pattern is called and how it works, and I have yet to hear one who writes like me.

    My words come barreling out, pushing and shoving each other; they are not at all concerned about style and land on the page happy to be free from my tangled mine.

    They are driven by confusion and fear mostly, and feel much better on a clear white paper, all sorted out and explained.

    My writing starts usually with a thread or a nagging and often times a sinking feeling, and it matters not to me or the words how they look after we are done explaining.

    They are all bunched up in my head, running over each other, truths buried beneath the piles of fearful thoughts, overrun with uprooted beliefs and all are wanting the space to sort themselves out.

    A place where they can line up and be seen and felt, acknowledged and labeled correctly, room for separating truth from fiction.

    They are in a hurry and are reckless, heedless to watching where they land and how. Haphazardly flopped they care less about how they look as long as they are felt properly.

    As a writer I have failed in the eyes of the writing teachers, for I have not followed any proven path, but set out on my own and let my words land as they may, letting them be the creators not I.

    It truly puzzles me how they can know ahead what the words are going to need, how they can have in mind the structure that they will use to express themselves, like map writing, they seem to know where the words are going.

    My words are like vagabonds wandering around or riots of revolting feelings; it would be nearly impossible to know ahead of time where they are going, let alone draw a map ahead of time.

    Perhaps my words and self-expression have been tied up in the dark for too long; guarded, restrained and held in strict beliefs and ideas, that we are not willing to succumb to lying down nicely, instead we run wild in expressive freedom.

    Maybe I am not a writer at all, but an artist with words.

  • Turning Bad to Good.

    On the sliding scale of normal, I lived on the high end up near the top. I was pushed up there by fear and fear stood between the middle ground and me.

    My hyper responses seem normal, unless you compare them to another’s; they seemed natural in their unnaturalness.

    It literally feels like I am being put in harms way to forge into the middle responses, like they are too weak for my security.

    My security calls for over the top measures, I do not trust middle ground.

    Middle ground appears as doing nothing, is standing still, is allowing, is not knowing what your playing with, it seems pointless and weak.

    And perhaps what I call middle ground is the bottom rung called nothing, the very opposite of where I lived.

    It seemed my scales of normal had two responses, hyper screaming or nothing. Middle was nowhere to be found.

    I had to crawl through fear and let go of where I was in order to be introduced to reasonable.

    What is reasonable?

    Balancing on the razor edge of reason feels like a weak position to my hyper vigilant self.

    The space that is needed is what Stephen Covy writes about in his book, The 8th Habit. The space between a life incident and your response. He says that the space is almost non-existent for an abused person; we have no space before we react.

    What he calls space I will call reason. We are left without reason.

    We enter into a life changing moment without reason.

    We can’t be reasonable, for we don’t have reason.

    We can’t find a reason and we don’t’ look for it. We react without reasons.

    This may sound very peculiar to some, but what I felt was that the situation is what drove me up the tree, like a fearful raccoon; little did I know I lived there and beckoned it to come to me.

    I reacted from there. I brought in the high hyper energy, it wasn’t the scene that spewed it forth, it came from me, I elevated the situation as high above middle as I was.

    Instead of meeting the situation, I brought it up the tree with me.

    In order to find reason, I had to lower myself down.

    What an odd view I had of myself lowering my energy, letting go of my fear, and climbing slowly down towards middle and not dropping all the way to nothing, but to sit in a place of reason. To meet the situation where it is.

    Reason. I had to look up the meaning.

    n. The basis or motive for an action, decision, or conviction.

    It is interesting to see that Reason is the basis or motive for how we act or the decisions we make.

    I had reason, I had many reasons and all my reasons were fearful reasons.

    It was reasonable for me to be so high up the scale of normal.

    I read that Fear is False Events Appearing Real.

    If Fear believed in what isn’t real, you would think we would naturally turn to what is real.

    But what if what is real is horrifying?

    What if you have to give up father for a pedophile?
    Then what?

    My lessons letting go of false events was to grab on to much more scarier things.

    Yet I believe this is why most hang on to fantasy, to what isn’t, to build up a wall of fear, a wall of false events, false ideas, a fairyland between them and reality.

    What is so sad, is that you think by not dealing you are keeping the boogie man at bay, and what you are actually doing is creating a cage for you all to be together.

    It was like I lived in the highest tree in the cage, for fear of what lay at my feet.

    It is incredible the wall of fear we build out of false ideals…and we don’t want to drop the pretty curtain to reveal who really lives with us.

    And imagine, we think fear is about something scary, when fear most often is putting pretty masks on scary things.

    Fear is make up, a pretend mask on a bad behavior or person. Fear is making up a fantasy.

    Who knew that fear was creating things that were not real?

    Fear is to a make up story.

    What I had thought, was that fear was about something scary, I failed to understand the application of fear.

    Fear is building a false event or story and the unease I believe is the body knowing the truth that lay beneath.

    The body trembles in the false events appearing real.

    What also occurred to me, we rarely make up scary stories about good things. We make up wonderful, kind and loving stories about scary things.

    Interesting fear is turning bad to good.

    A friend passed on a quote she found on an Art Quilt made by Tina Koyama, “Beyond the four walls of fear is all of life’s energy waiting for me.”

  • Echo each other.

    I was in a discussion about Art and its healing qualities, and it came to me why Art is so crucial, Art or any creative activity is done in this moment of time.

    It requires you to be here focused on what is at hand, bringing your attention to this second of your life, it wipes away the past for a while, and blocks the future, it becomes an island of safety in an otherwise troubled time.

    An island that isn’t asking questions or requiring you to make hard choices, it is an oasis of freedom to let your life’s troubles go and you come to play.

    Like recess.

    It is a playground where you can leave your worries or stresses behind.

    While playing with colors and designs, you are reconnecting to what you love.

    Art has to be an exercise for the soul…

    It isn’t an intelligent process at all; it doesn’t require the mind to show up, what happens is that instinct leads the way.

    In my darkest moments, I played with the brightest fabrics, and was drawn to creating feelings and emotions that I didn’t have access to in my life.

    Art held for me these emotions, until slowly they seeped back into my own life.

    Art was a place to put my love, peace and joy, until it was safe to return it to the world around me. It was a place I could trust, when all else seemed unfaithful.

    Perhaps we learn to trust our selves by doing Art, or find what we love, what we want, and the freedom to be ourselves.

    I had little fear in Art when there was so much to fear in life, I became fearless in trying new things for I had nothing left to lose.

    I think we all hide or escape to playgrounds when life becomes unmanageable, but the key isn’t to stay there, but to take what you learn from Art and create an Artful life.

    I have learned that by letting go and not trying to force things to happen, answers arrive. To just move things around until they click or to walk away for a while an come back, to ask the Universe for answers and then pay attention, you will be surprised who brings you the perfect technique that you need.

    To not expect that you should know where to go, what it will eventually look like, but to live in the space of surprise and unknowing.

    Try new things, go new places, or go back to old places but look for new things…life is an interactive play, and you hop and interact.

    Art can heal a life that isn’t Artful or one that is missing your spirit.

    Art is expressing your soul. If you can’t do it in your life, begin by allowing it to express itself in an art form.

    It matters not what kind of Art you do, what matters is that you listen to the voice inside of you, to feel its passion, to feel its excitement…to feel life.

    Art and life echo each other.

  • Meet your Truth.

    Remember playing with magnets as a child, and how they would either click together or be repelled apart?

    I was reminded of magnets as my friend talked about situations we get into in relationships, where we are going along with mutual attraction and then somehow we get flipped around and now are being repelled apart.

    I recalled the magnet’s inner wisdom was much smarter than our strength, no matter what we did; they knew when they matched or when one of them was turned the wrong way, in order to click together they had to be facing the right way.

    And it was fun to feel the push away from these seemingly innate objects, like they had a mind of their own.

    The image of my friend’s hands and how they moved to resemble magnets stayed with me as I looked at my husband and myself and how we seemed at odds, and how we trying to realign ourselves.

    It seemed his truth and my truth didn’t match, and our bodies knew, repelling replaced our old attraction.

    My body has a magnet of its own and the flesh is just a covering on top and beneath my skin is this energy field that knows things my wandering mind misses.

    And my mind has learned that by faking it or pretending to be okay when the body is not, is fruitless for what I seek most is for the body to teach my mind.

    I listen and receive signals of distress or of peace.

    In the past I was the opposite; I turned away from the signals and bull headedly marched on, heedless to the discomfort my body screamed.

    My mind that had been taught what to believe, what was right and what was wrong and it neglected to seek counsel of my body. In fact the body, I was taught, was full of sin and it had the devils magnetic field that would pull us asunder.

    You would go to Hell if you followed your body; Heaven was to be gained by following your mind.

    Your body was your greatest enemy.

    As I write this, I know that my childhood religion was threatened by the wise wisdom of this knowing body.

    Imagine the wonderful creation of God, this highly functioning self-healing living breathing body being the devils property?

    What the religion was teaching was to go against the magnetic pull of my own body.

    With this being my background I as accustomed of turning away from my body, of shunning its desires and passions and neglecting the wise inner gut feelings and focusing instead of following the masses, the church leader and listening to what he and they felt was best for me.

    Stepping away from my body I lived disconnected and out of touch…I worked religiously against my own magnetic pull.

    Imaging going against your own truth!

    It is incredible to me that we all have these wonderful magnets that are infused into all our cells, and they know what is true.

    If you use your body like this big lie detector or treat it like a magnet for truth that it is, your life will be less complicated.

    I watched my daughter and how she appeared physically in our world while she lived a lie. Like a diseased plant she began to fail.

    What I notice about my body is it likes it when I speak the truth, even if the truth sounds bad, it cheers.

    When I was on our local school board and the president of the board lived in another city, but was on our board, it made sense to my body to say, “You have a pretend house in Chassell, so you can be legitimately on our board.” I told him, a man who pretended to live here and who had a fake home in our town were directing me on the board.

    My body felt better being there with the truth hanging out. And I knew better than putting trust or faith in a pretending man.

    So, even if you can’t make moves to get out from beneath the lies don’t lie about your situation; give your body the full report.

    It is not the actual reality that distresses the body, but us telling the body it isn’t really there. It likes to have a well-balanced reality accounting sheet.

    I love that I am aware of my body’s magnet and how its preset to the truth, how I can rely on it subtle and not so subtle readings, how it vibrates at a certain note to gain my attention, letting me know when I am not seeing or being in truth.

    My Universe and this magnet are connected and both dance perfectly in harmony with reality.

    My body thrives best in the reality of truth and I speak reality’s harshest truths with great courage for I now what happens when I don’t. I get repelled away from peace, love and joy.

    My magnet is set uniquely for me and I get anxious and scared when lies pile up and truth seems far away…

    Namaste, means the Spirit in me recognizes the Spirit within you…what I believe maybe more beneficial is my truth wants to meet your truth.

  • Taking the same steps.

    I backed away from people who hurt me, I retreated from untruths, receded from supporting religions, I moved from co-dependency, I pulled myself back from all the places that seemed to support dysfunction and it seems I landed in a corner with my back pressed against the walls of truth, and I now am standing alone.

    Perhaps this is how we enter into Heaven, we come alone with our suitcases fully packed with our lessons, our truths spilling out, our journey’s pivotal moments all stacked up like final exams waiting to be scored.

    Did I pass? Can I fail? How will I know?

    Sometimes it seems that in separating my truth from fiction, I have backed myself right out of my life.

    It is like I am at the end of my fictional life and a toddler in my new life.

    Simultaneously dying and being born, grieving while celebrating, saying good-bye and saying hello, a stranger and a new friend all living as me.

    It is like doing your own autopsy searching for the cause of death and witnessing your birth while being born, all at once.

    My greatest challenge is to find a new place to stand without the exhaust fumes of lingering fears clouding up my new self.

    To live fearlessly after knowing great fear, and not pack too much of the past into the present, be aware but not wary.

    Just as horses where blinders to shield them from scary things, I wear blinders that seem to shield me from good things. I wear them backwards.

    These blinders of immense fear stop me from seeing other alternatives.

    A wise woman kindly suggested removing the blinders, and letting in a view from the side.

    To see if perhaps there is a way to release the high emotions and find common ground where we are looking in the same direction but with two different sets of eyes.

    Self absorbed and selfish, is wearing blinders. Even if the blinders are made out of fear, they are blinders nonetheless.

    As a horse who has traveled so long relying on just one set of eyes, I am fearful in allowing others to see…with me or maybe for me.

    And to take my eyes off my road seems careless.

    Yet this one eyed view in a relationship, renders the other blind.

    Fearlessly I will have to take my eyes off my journey and look into his.

    And then perhaps when our eyes join together we will see a perfect view.

    Like getting the perfect pair of glasses that correct the distortion in our eyesight.

    I recall reading somewhere, that if two people are exactly alike as a couple, then one of them isn’t necessary. What I need isn’t someone who sees like me, but rather someone who sees what I don’t see.

    It doesn’t mean I give up my view, but I include his, and perhaps then we can find a place where we can walk together seeing differently but taking the same steps.

  • Gate to love

    Fear… this incredibly small word is extremely powerful and it has led my life and all its decisions.

    I am not sure I can articulate the difference of living life from a position of love compared to fear.

    Unless you see your fear driven life, you may not even know how much of your life has been absconded by fear.

    I looked up the word absconded, for it isn’t my usual word, but it felt right to express my sentiments, but I wanted to make sure I was using it properly.

    Do you know its meaning?

    It means – “To depart in a sudden and secret manner.”

    It fits perfectly. Fear absconed with my life.

    Here is what I know for sure, is that if you are left untreated after abuse, you will live from that day foreward, not as love, but fear.

    Fear replaces love. A young girl living in love, becomes a young girl living in fear.

    How to explain this. I go into a situation with my father filled with love for him and I come out filled with fear. I go to my mother in love and with fear of my father, and she doesn’t do anything, I then leave in fear her….

    My love, or those who love me are absconed and replaced with fear.

    Dr. Maya Angelou has a quote about the endurance of a child suffering is born out of the lack of alternatives.

    I didn’t have a loving place to go, so I had to live as fear.

    This fear mode of living is hard to describe, but it leaves you with the knowing that the world is not a safe place to be, that at any time terror will jump in front of you, that those you love will do something fearful…and you have to prepare and plan to dodge these bullets.

    My whole view of life was geared toward protecting and a very defensive way of living.

    I was on guard. A Fear Filled guard.

    The small pint of love that lived within me was toward objects and things, items that had no power of hurting me.

    But live living creatures, yikes, at anytime a friendly face could turn and bite you…and many did.

    The most sad and tragic part in being a fear filled maniac, is that my children were mothered from this position.

    Instead of teaching them the wonderful loving kind beautiful amazing things, my mantra was what was out to get you.

    Understandably we all know how I was raised to become this way, and gratefully with a lot of fearlessness, I have been able to learn how to love and not fear AND to fear those who rightly needed to be feared and not loved.

    What an amazing ride.

    There is a a poem that Kim Rosen speaks of in this months Oprah magazine, called Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

    “Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things,
    feel the future disolve in a moment
    like salt in a weakened broth.
    What you held in your hand,
    what you counted on and carefully saved,
    all this must go so you know
    how desolate the landscape can be
    between regions of kindness.
    How you ride and ride
    thinking the bus will never stop,
    the passengers eating maize and chicken
    will stare out the window forever.

    Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
    you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
    lies dead by the side of the road.
    You must see how this could be you,
    how he too was someone
    who journeyed through the night with plans
    and the simple breath that kept him alive.

    Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
    You must wak up with sorrow.
    You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.

    Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
    only kindness that ties your shoes
    and sends you out into your day to mail letters and purchase bread,
    only kindness that raises its head
    from the crowd to the world to say
    it is I you have been looking for,
    and then goes with you everywhere
    like a shadow or friend.
    Naomi Shihab Nye

    What I know for sure, is that without the years and decades of sorrow, I would not recognize kindness.

    Kindness, again such a simple word, but it is the gate to love.

  • How they teetered.

    Being in a marriage is like one long teeter-totter ride, where it takes finesse and decorum to keep it going gently up and down and up and down, a balanced movement.

    Do you remember how you can gain control in two ways on the teeter-totter? By moving your weight you can keep a person up in the air, unable to get down or by getting off he will be slammed into the ground.

    It seems that one person can take over control of the teeter-totter and in doing so gains control over the person on the other end and has the power to restore the momentum or stop it.

    We have many teeter-totter games going with all of our relationships, and we can feel or know when the momentum changes, when they have more power over us than we ourselves, and in that moment we have choices to make.

    In my past co-dependent teeter-totter rides, I was always on the end with no power, either waiting to be slammed into the ground or up in the air unable to move, and the person in charge, wasn’t concerned about me, but rather did what they needed to do, while I was along for the bumpy ride. Somehow it never occurred to me to get off to and not go back.

    We truly are in charge of how we feel in relationships, how their actions affect us on the other end, will it plummet us to the ground and hurt us, or will it leave us powerless.

    Learning how to teeter-totter in a relationship is key to having a beautiful friendship, to even know you have the power to slam them down, but don’t.

    As we teeter up and down, as we ride along with a gentle rhythm, every now and then something lands upon our teeter-totter that throws us off balance.

    A new experience has been added to our routine, and how do we balance ourselves back out?

    What I do know for certain is that a marriage or a friendship isn’t a flat line, a secure steady beam, but an up and down living breathing growing life like organism.

    They are all mysteries whose ending we don’t know.

    We can’t know what will happen to make the other leave, or what will make them use their power to manipulate and control or abuse, or what will make them just sit when it is their turn to push off.

    I am all I can be sure of.

    I know when I will stay on and when I get off.

    I have learned what it feels like to be in the air with out power and slammed down in hurt, and I also know what to do to stop those feelings. I get off.

    What is the old line, “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”!

    It isn’t so much about knowing who to teeter with but knowing when to get off.

    What is very interesting to me is that they banned the teeter-totters from school play grounds, they were too dangerous, and in fact they were great tools in getting to know someone, you could tell how kind they were by how they teetered.

  • How they teetered.

    Being in a marriage is like one long teeter-totter ride, where it takes finesse and decorum to keep it going gently up and down and up and down, a balanced movement.

    Do you remember how you can gain control in two ways on the teeter-totter? By moving your weight you can keep a person up in the air, unable to get down or by getting off he will be slammed into the ground.

    It seems that one person can take over control of the teeter-totter and in doing so gains control over the person on the other end and has the power to restore the momentum or stop it.

    We have many teeter-totter games going with all of our relationships, and we can feel or know when the momentum changes, when they have more power over us than we ourselves, and in that moment we have choices to make.

    In my past co-dependent teeter-totter rides, I was always on the end with no power, either waiting to be slammed into the ground or up in the air unable to move, and the person in charge, wasn’t concerned about me, but rather did what they needed to do, while I was along for the bumpy ride. Somehow it never occurred to me to get off to and not go back.

    We truly are in charge of how we feel in relationships, how their actions affect us on the other end, will it plummet us to the ground and hurt us, or will it leave us powerless.

    Learning how to teeter-totter in a relationship is key to having a beautiful friendship, to even know you have the power to slam them down, but don’t.

    As we teeter up and down, as we ride along with a gentle rhythm, every now and then something lands upon our teeter-totter that throws us off balance.

    A new experience has been added to our routine, and how do we balance ourselves back out?

    What I do know for certain is that a marriage or a friendship isn’t a flat line, a secure steady beam, but an up and down living breathing growing life like organism.

    They are all mysteries whose ending we don’t know.

    We can’t know what will happen to make the other leave, or what will make them use their power to manipulate and control or abuse, or what will make them just sit when it is their turn to push off.

    I am all I can be sure of.

    I know when I will stay on and when I get off.

    I have learned what it feels like to be in the air with out power and slammed down in hurt, and I also know what to do to stop those feelings. I get off.

    What is the old line, “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”!

    It isn’t so much about knowing who to teeter with but knowing when to get off.

    What is very interesting to me is that they banned the teeter-totters from school play grounds, they were too dangerous, and in fact they were great tools in getting to know someone, you could tell how kind they were by how they teetered.