I M Perfect lady

Category: Examples of an Imperfect woman

  • My psyche was all wrong.

      

    What is the meaning of the word psyche?

     

    psyche /psy·che/ (si´ke)

     

    1. the human faculty for thought, judgment, and emotion; the mental life, including both conscious and unconscious processes; the mind in its totality

    distinguished from the body.

     

    2. the soul or self.psy´chic
    psy·che(s k) n. The mind functioning as the center of thought, emotion, and behavior and consciously or unconsciously mediating the body's responses to the social and physical environment.

     

    If I am reading this right, we have a body, then we have a psyche body that makes up our thoughts, judgments and emotions, our mental life, including the conscious, and unconscious.  And this mind body or psyche body mediates our body’s response to the social and physical environment.

     

    The mind body, what our minds have learned and are comprised of, which is why my brother feels that his psyche is so mixed up at times.

     

    If I am understanding this correctly, then in the case of being raised by dysfunctional parents we then get a dysfunctional psyche. 

     

    This dysfunctional psyche is what we think from, judge from and our emotions are set from this point.

     

    The psyche body is our mental us.  Our mental definitive description of us.

     

    Just as you have a physical body type and shape, we have a psyche type and shape.

     

    Our psyche then has to be the combination of thoughts, judgments and emotions we interpeted from our parents interactions and actions, we have mimicked their psyche.

     

    To change your psyche is to change your thoughts, judgments and emotional reactions.

     

    When I wrote a reply to my mother’s letter, it occurred to me that what she wants most, is for my emotional or my actions to be different with the incoming information.

     

    It isn’t what we see that is the issue, but how we react, she wants me to have my old sense of psyche, to have dysfunctional responses, to not feel the correct emotion, to not scream, cry and shout. 

     

    That is the twist, the backwards psyche we have developed.

     

    We have been taught to respond differently.

    We have been taught to think differently.

    We were taught to develop this psyche that isn’t healthy.

     

    My brother and I have been pushed back in our chairs in total bewilderment, angst and horror to see some of our beliefs, thoughts and just our overall mentalness.

     

    To see first hand, to awaken to the shocking observation that our psyche is totally flipped around and backwards.

     

    I had written Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor about her stroke of insight, and shared with her, mine.  What I related to her was that I had become aware of all the files that I had in my mind were totally screwed up.

     

    Here is what that email said;

     

     

    Dear Dr. Jill,

     

    Thanks so much for sharing your experience.  What I want you to know, this book also helps others, even ones who have no physical brain issues.

     

    When you discussed the two sides of the brain, and how each carries separate parts of how we experience our reality.  It explained to me, many things, that before I could not explain.

     

    I am a survivor of incest and have memory loss, of the actual event.

     

    Now, I know that in order to disassociate from those events, I made my files different from reality.

     

    I am 49, and at 46, my niece was brave enough to speak up that her grandfather, my father, was molesting her.  It was then, that I had a stroke of insight.  My stroke of insight was that all my 'files' were wrong. Truth and reality shattered my world!

     

     Truth and reality, hard to believe that they could be harmful.

     

    They were, to my left- brain.

    It forced me into the right side.

    It was the right side that brought me security and comfort, while I sorted out my life.

     

     Files with the labels, father, love, mother, and Normal, were all shattered. My whole world had been created with wrong information.

     

     I have in the past three years, walked through each file, and compare my old beliefs and knowing, with what is really reality.

     

    It was like going to find myself, when I didn't know who I was, or even what I believed in.

     

     Your book, shared physical insights into what the brain is capable of doing.  I loved how you said the left side would take minimal information and create the most plausible truths.

     

     It can actually create whatever it wants to…. What it creates is a dysfunctional relation with reality.  Has you seeing what is not there, and not seeing what is.

     

    Creates an untruthful place that allows you to be with people who are bad for you.  And sadly, it takes the good and turns it bad.

     

     I said that I found myself upside down and backwards, but for the first time felt right side up. For you see, I could not, as an adult get physically close to my father.  Something in me, kept me back.

     

    My body feared him, but I had no words/pictures of why.

     Now, I know I was reading his energy.

     

    The world was not upside down and backwards my left brain had created it that way. I lived in the left side, until Dec 4th, 2004, when truth exploded.

     

     The right side, reality and truth, led me out of a wilderness of dysfunction. My disassociation had kept me from me.

    I have now found me, the Me that ran away when terror stepped into my world and stole my innocence and a normal view of reality.

     

     I am right side up, and my family is still upside down.  They are still lost on the left side, in files that are all wrong, compared to what is really happening.

     

     Thank you so much and again, you have no idea of how much you can help so many, whose files have been wrongly labeled depending upon the adults that raised them.

     

     My sister had aptly put it, "we were left alone in our minds, without adult supervision"…..

     

    She was right; we created the most plausible reason, with the least amount of information.  Children who have no idea what sex is, will do that. Sex with a father is way confusing to an adult, let alone to a child.

     

    When you live on the left with files filled with information that is

     incorrect, you continue to live a life of abuse.

     For file labeled love, is full of abuse.

     File labeled security, is full of none secure places.

     

    You book could shed light on why……and maybe teach others “not to trust “ the left side, like we do.

    The left side is built upon the platform called home.

    If your home is not in the truth, neither will your files be.

     

    More and more mental diseases have to be from that basis.

    Children grow up upside down and backwards, trying to fit into an right side up world.

     

    When I began looking at my world, from the right side, and seeing what was really there, what I found, was a pedophile, a mental mother, siblings lost in dysfunctional lives, to me.  Me, who am I?  I had no idea. I found myself, a grown woman, with four children and a husband, living a life that had no basis in reality or truth.

     

    It has taken three years, to walk out.

    I am still a woman, with four children, and a husband.

    All my relationships, have changed.

     Like you, I want to help others, shed some light.

     I too feel like I was conscious going through this.

    Where as my siblings, were not.

    All but one, have continued to be lost.

     

    I know it as consciousness that saved me.

    I had more awareness to correct the files.

     

    Thanks for you time…..your book completed the puzzle, as to why and how I could not see, what was there!

     

    Sincerely,

      

    My stroke of insight was that my psyche was all wrong!

    Dr. Jill signature on her email says,

     

    *I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.*

      ***Einstein***

     

     

     

     

     

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  • Extra Ordinary

    Elizabeth Lesser writes, “A good guide tries to get his or her personality out of the way. An inexperienced or self-interested guide does not.  A good guide is always turning the focus away from himself and back on the student or client, always reducing the work at hand to its most simple, personal, and intimate dimensions. Good guides are not miracle workers.  If they suggest that have special powers to heal you – or if the people around them prop them up as magicians – I would think twice about working with such teachers, counselors or therapists.  Oftentimes the most effective guides are what I call extra-ordinary people.  They are extraordinary healers because they are profoundly ordinary people who are comfortable with their humanness.  They are extra-ordinary.

     

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  • Me

     

     

     

      IMG_1218

    My daughter brings in the mail and drops it on my lap.  In the small stack is a manila envelope addressed to me, and of course the writing is recognizable, her scrawl immediately slings me into feeling that she is pleading or wanting something from me, ‘what now?’ I say, ‘what can she possibly want now?’

     

    Dearest daughter,   10/19/09

     

    I am consolidating my scrapbooks.  You were always the one interested in relatives.  That may have changed and that is fine.

     

    These are yours to keep or throw away.  My memories are only mine.  No one can take those from me.  May you find acceptance and peace in the past.  What is – is, no amount of screaming, shouting, crying can change it.  I love you, always have and always will.  You are my beloved daughter I continue to pray you will come to accept me with all my faults and failures.

        Always and forever,

          Mom

     

    Beneath her declaration of ‘love’ are old photos from my father’s family, his parent’s death certificate, their wedding certificate, just photos of relatives from long long ago. 

     

    Only one picture pops out, it happens to be the first one and has a little green post it note.  “Family, only Edna is missing,”

    Dated January 1957.

     

    I didn’t even know I had an “Auntie” Edna, until a few years ago.  She was never brought up, it just never came up that my mother had a sister that she lost contact with.

     

    Isn’t it strange how history repeats itself? 

    Maybe by scrawling a little green note that she is missing, she is included.

     

    How I would love to know her story, to know the reasons she left and perhaps of all of us I know.

     

    My mother’s letter wants me to accept without screaming, crying and shouting what is.  To silently accept it, perhaps put a smile on my face and be a good girl!  Accept rape with dignity.  Accept being molested by my father with grace.

     

    And that I am to accept her failures and faults, like accepting a body part.  That she has issues, but she doesn’t have to change them, but I have to just accept that, she prays for my acceptance, not for her the courage to change herself! 

     

    Oh my God, I wonder what my letter of response would be?

     

    Mommy Dearest,

     

    What I want from you is for you to kick and scream and shout and cry when you see me.  I want you to see the past and feel the past and live with the pains and hurts and bruises and silence and all the goodness that I was forced to do while I was wounded inside. 

     

    I want you to react when you see a child of yours wounded.  I don’t want you to turn away, to make excuses or forgive the man that did this.  I want you to make a scene, to shout it to the heavens a little soul is wounded!

           

        Wounded, always and forever,

            ME

     

     

  • Not a Drop Less.

    My brother suggested since I used the term dad or father, that there was a part of me that still held out hope, or was in denial.

     

    He may be right; the little girl in me is waiting for her father, waiting maybe for him to see what he left behind. 

     

    A little girl waits, wanting to be special, to be held and protected, there is a part of me that wants a loving dad, a trusting dad, a faithful dad, one that will do anything for his family, a dad like my girls have.

     

    I will not settle for a half dad, a partial or absent dad, I am not in denial as to who he is; I may be in denial that there is no hope.

     

    It is a teeny tiny little spark, held way deep inside, one that you dare not even look at very often, for the smallness of it is so frail, it could easily disappear. 

     

    When I watch my girls with their dad, the jostling for his attention, the flirting that goes on, the way he balances his love to each, taking time with each, the joy that fills him up when he sees them, the way he takes care of them, how he sees them always as ‘his little girls,’ reminds me this is possible.

     

    He is not extraordinary, just simply extra ordinary as he interacts with them.  He treats them as individuals, enjoys teasing them, teaching them, guiding them, and allowing them to make their own choices. 

     

    He is himself with them, he treats them like equals and lots of the time he slips down to their level and joins them there to play.

     

    If I could pick a father it would be him, and I guess I did, I gave my girls what I didn’t have. 

     

    My little girl within is so happy for my daughters, and sure I would be a liar if I didn’t wish to be them, even for one small moment, to have what they have, but it is not to be.

     

    In order to be a mother you have to put your own little girl aside and mother your children.

     

    It is really hard to do if your little girl never had a chance to be a little girl to someone.  It is like skipping a step.

     

    “Wise beyond her years” and “She is such a little mother,” were terms used to describe me, I never had a chance to be a little girl, for my parents were Adult Children.

     

    I guess the little girl is waiting for her parents to grow up, wake up and realize that this is not a rehearsal this is real life.  Waiting for them to see me as a little girl, their little girl, a little girl who is wounded by them.

     

    Unless and Until they see the wounded little girl, nothing has changed.  They didn’t see me then and they don’t see me today.

     

    How would it be to know for sure, to have the door of dreams slammed shut tightly?  To have them held prisoner behind there?  To know without a doubt, they will never see me?

     

    I will not be the one to lock that door, nor can I be the one to open it.  That door will open only from their side. 

     

    Children can’t make their parents parents.  It isn’t our job.  A child’s job is to be a child.  When you become a parent, you can no longer be a child.

     

    It is then time to grow up and be the model they need, to grow up, and the only way you teach a child to grow up is be a grownup your self.

     

    There is a duality in place within me for a part of me still longs to be the little girl I didn’t get to be.  Yet there is also a knowing, that as I play in life, as I find things I love to do, my little girl comes alive within me.  I am learning how to balance both being a mother and a little girl. 

     

    It is not all or nothing, to pick just one this time.  If you are a parent you get to pick two.

     

    I think both my parents are sitting and waiting for someone to come along and recognize their own wounded child.  And I am waiting for them to be done waiting. 

     

    Little do they know that while their wounded child goes unattended, we, their children too go unattended, the cycle continues, we have to be the ones to stop it. 

     

    To stop the waiting and start taking care of our selves.

     

    To stop wanting someone to come in and fix the child within, we have to be the ones to do the work.

     

    We are the ones to speak for her, stand tall for her, to walk a walk of honor for her; we have to be the ones we always dreamed about.

     

     

     

    It is not an impossible dream, the dream is to one day grow up.

     

    While I have been growing up and making tough parent choices, while I have been working really hard to see that my children have a mother that will do and say the strong things, I have also raised my little girl up to a standard that she expects the extra ordinary father.

     

    She will not settle for ‘good enough’ she will not relax her inner self worth and allow another to bring her down.  I may have over shot the mark, but I now have grown into a higher standard.

     

    I want my father to be the best father, not only for me, but also for himself.

     

    I was a mother of lesser standards and I know the cost of that.  I know the pain my children suffered because I wasn’t a grown up, I wasn’t seeing the children, for I was too messed up.

     

    I want for his kids the same that I want for my kids, I want for him what I want for myself.

     

    I want him to be all that God intended him to be and not a drop less. 

    071
     

    (In Elizabeth Lesser’s book, “Broken Open” she writes about extra ordinary.  I love that term and it fits my husband.)

     

     

     

     

  • Uncontested.

    My brother and I have been writing about our feelings or the lack thereof with our father, there is still something I am missing in our dialogue.

     

    When I wrote the second time, I was addressing the fact that my brother was disappointed with the kind of father he had.

     

    We also talked about my usage of the words dad and father when speaking about this man and it opened up another point. 

     

    What is the meaning of dad and father?

     

    Dad – an informal word for father.

     

    Father – A male person whose sperm unites with an egg, resulting in the conception of a child. b. A man who adopts a child. c. A man who raises a child.

     

    While reading them, the last part is where he failed; he didn’t raise us, he lowered us. 

     

    My brother would like me to write the word dad (dad) to emphasize the lack of being one. Or perhaps use biological dad.

     

    For the past 4 ½ years when I would speak of my father I would call him by his name, I could no longer referenced him with dad.

     

    It would be nice if there was a new term for this, for a man who lowers his kids, who makes them less than who they are.

     

    The word dad was like a swear word to me, like a mouth full of disappointment, and my tongue couldn’t form the word to slip it past my lips, it had broken my heart.

     

    His formal name came easy, it ripped the title from his back.

     

    It seems like a betrayal to yourself as a child, to use that name for someone who hasn’t acted like a dad, but rather used the dad term for priveledges of a sick disease.

     

    In fact I had read somewhere that pedopiles who abuse their own children are seen as lazy, for they don’t even have the energy to leave their homes. 

     

    You see some pedophiles don’t have home grown little girls, they have to construct elaborate ways to have the opportunity to be with little girls.

     

    I guess that makes sense and it makes us seem like we were grown for a set purpose and then became residual garbage.  No wonder my brother feels so useless, he wasn’t even ‘special’ for a short period of time.

     

    I felt this odd jealousy or a oneupmanship between my brother and I.

     

    Is it better to feel used, abused and damaged or to never be seen at all?

     

    About six years ago I read a book, “The Hidden Messages in Water,” by Masaru Emoto and here is a portion of what he says.

     

    I have the impression that the act of looking at water crystals is an act of creating life.  This is because when you look at the crystals, the water changes its appearance moment by moment.  Your gaze has a special energy of its own, and while a gaze of good intentions will give courage an evil gaze will actually take it away.

     

    A family that subscribed to our magazine conducted an interesting experiment.  They put rice in two glass jars and every day for a month said “Thank you” to one jar and “You Fool” to the other, and then they tracked how the rice changed over the period.  Even the children, when they got home from school, would speak these words to the jars of rice.

     

    After a month, the rice that was told “Thank you” started to ferment, with a mellow smell like that of malt, while the rice that was exposed to “You Fool” rotted and turned black.

     

    I wrote about this experiement in the book that I published, and as a result hundreds of families throughout Japan conducted this same experiement for themselves.  Everyone reported the same results.  One family tried a variation of the experiement: like the others they said “Thank you” to the first bottle of rice and “You fool” to the second bottle, and then they prepared a third bottle of rice that they simply ignored.

     

    What do you think happened?  The rice that was ignored actually rotted before the rice that was exposed to ‘You fool.’  When others tried this same experiement, the results were again the same.  It seems that being ridiculed is actually not as damaging as being ignored.

     

    To give your positive or negative attention to something is a way of giving energy.  The most damaging form of behavior is withholding your attention.

     

    I think this experiement has the potential to teach us a very important lesson.  We must take care to give our children our attention, and to talk to them.  Speaking words of kindness and love should begin from the time of conception…..Masaru Emoto.

     

    This book came to mind immediately and I recalled this experiment, but what I didn’t recall was the one jar of rice that was ignored.

     

    So in the oneupmanship, my brother wins.  He rotted first.  I never knew that they hurt worse.  Wow.

     

    Being abused you get attention, which is better than none at all.  I know this has to be why we feel guilty, for we wanted the attention so bad. 

     

    Imagine what we do to just get attention, to just be seen, just so we are not ignored.

     

    Neither one of us can call him dad, we both feel the title doesn’t fit, I just wish there were a title that did.

     

    What do you call a man like our father?

    What term can possibly fit that?

    Estranged father?

    Ex-Father?

     

    I looked up divorce from father, and while glancing at the different sentences, one word caught my eye.  Uncontested.

     

    What I feel most is that he didn’t contest his worthiness as father, he didn’t protest at all, how sad to find not one place where we could call you dad.

     

    The scales tipped uncontested.

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  • I Held Up Me.

     

    My brother’s blog, www.messyguru.typepad.com spoke of his disappointment of my father, well our father.

     

    How will a child ever be happy or content with a pedophile for a father, having a serial abuser for a parent, and feeling proud, is that possible?

     

    There is such disappointment and such a falling of pride to discover that your father is a pedophile, that your father has ruined many a life, destroyed self-esteem, self love, stolen faith and love from many a small girl, not to mention the lack of being a father to his sons.

     

    It is so huge to grab onto, to stand up against the volume of pain that one man caused, and we have to call him dad.

     

    We have to call him dad and be related to a man who reigns terror upon little girls, the meanest of all men, the one who in prisons get killed, his crime is the worst of the worst, and we have to call him dad.

     

    That is preposterous at best, insane and beyond what a child can hold no matter what his age.

     

    We have a father, but a father that isn’t a father by definition, but we can’t exchange him for another, and that leaves us dirty by association.

     

    In fact my brother was astonished that I used the term dad or father, for I haven’t really used that term much, I resorted to calling him by his first name, like he no longer was my dad.

     

    What do you do with a pedophile for a father, you are left with something that has no hope of becoming better.

     

    It seems like we were the winner of the worst father ever, a man that murderers feel justified in destroying, and the rest of the planet would cheer.

     

    That is our dad.

     

    And then it gets worse, for he had a wife, she is our mother, she stood by this man, well not only stood by, but protected and built him up into something he could never attain, never letting go of the image of her first love.

     

    The two role models we have are tarnished, broken, shattered and a crumpled mess. That is what we have.  We cannot change them, it is the hand we were dealt.

     

    When you are standing before your family tree of insanity, seeing, really seeing what is standing there, what choice do we have but to then look down at where we stand.

     

    Then who am I?

     

    What you fear the most has been realized, what we hated most in them was lying deep inside of us.  Our worst secrets lay bare.

     

    It is a selfish response to take the focus off of them and instead shine the microscope inside, yet what courage that takes.

     

    To shine a bright light and expose all the fears you overlooked, all the feelings left unfelt, all the places where you just never took the time or effort to think a new thought.

     

    Inside of you lay years and years of places where you could have should have would have done better.

     

    A vault of all your sins, a well of remorse, and now you have to pick up each morsel and correct where you were so wrong.

     

    To hold up a father and find a pedophile, leaves you breathless and without center post.  To then pick up a mother and find no love and comfort there leaves you weak and alone.

     

    To then turn in the mirror and see yourself in all your glory leaves you empty and dead, it is then you get to rebirth your self, define your self, not by where you came from but instead by where it is you are going.

     

    Perhaps the biggest disappointment is with the self to know that all your efforts were to support insanity.

     

    I didn’t know if I could turn a 360, to take a sharp turn to get out of the rut, but I knew that who I was in the mirror was not someone I could be with.

     

    I recall telling Paul, “at least you can walk away from me, but she is me, I can’t leave!”

     

    I killed that girl with the mental mind, one step at a time, It was not a merciful death, but painfully slow, and it seemed she had a million lives, for just when I thought, whew that is the last mental mess I have to untangle, she would burst fourth and take hold of me once again.

     

    Perhaps it was being witness to what would happen if we did nothing but stand in the forest of insanity that gave us the courage to at least try.

     

    For like my brother said, his father didn’t even try.  Nor do I think our mother made any attempt except to forgive his weakness.

     

    So it was by their example of not trying that I found my willingness to at least try.  I guess she taught me well to hold up the hopeless, in the end I held up me.

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  • A little boy.

    What do you write, say or feel towards a man you have known your whole life?

     

    The reason he came into my awareness again is that it is his Birthday today, my father turns 83 I believe.  I have lost track of time in his life.

     

    When I decided I would write about him, I sat waiting for feelings to come up, I have been asking myself what do you feel towards him now.

     

    There seems to be an empty cavern within me, a silence and vacancy of feelings, it is not indifference but the absence of rage.

     

    The last time I seen him was the fall of 2004, I recall touching his shoulder and feeling relief as they drove away heading south for the winter. 

     

    Like an obligation was over.

     

    I tucked away the sense of guilt that followed, embracing instead the space I would have not having to go there, it was getting harder and harder to be around them.  I no longer had to come up with excuses with the kids to not go to Sunday Dinners.

     

    At the time, I had no one thing I could point to and say this is the reason I want to separate from my family, but I had become unenthused seeing them.

     

    Something was changing within me and I was finding it harder and harder to pretend to feel connected to them or even the wanting to try.

     

     

    Inside space was already moving and growing, the space I would need to take such bold steps.

     

    I felt terrible that my feelings were freedom as they drove away, and I am not sure I spoke it out loud, in shame I kept silent.

     

    As the news broke, as my feelings were justified, I knew to the dept of my being I would never see that man again.

     

    It was like a long struggle was over and now I simply had to clean up the mess.  And what a mess it was, but I felt strong in an odd way and I had a clear focus.

     

    The fight within me was over, the fight between love and fear.  In the end fear won, fear was justified fear was reality and I was no longer having to force love.

     

    Forcing love when fear stood in its place.

    Trying to push reality over.

    What great relief to go with reality.

     

    His was such an unnatural love, so twisted I can’t even wrap my mind around it, nor can I pretend to understand his feelings.

     

    If I had to choose who I would rather be him or I, it is no contest I would be me.

     

    I was forcing myself to love a hurtful being and he was hurting a loving one.  I was trying to make innocent a man who wasn’t and he was making wrong the innocent.

     

    We are opposites and my path is easier.  Thank you dad for taking the path you took and for giving me the easier one.

     

    I guess in the end, that is what dad’s do, they spare the child and they take the rougher road.

     

    I always hear, who in their right mind could do such a thing.

     

    What I know for sure is that your mind isn’t right, there is a major disconnection going on, you are lost behind your addiction your disease, lost and alone.

     

    I cried for you in the first hours of your discovery knowing you would die a very lonely man.  I know this more than ever.

     

    Beneath the messed up mind, behind the mountains of dysfunctional abuse, sits a little boy lost.

     

    You and you alone have to make the journey back to him.

    I can love the little boy, but I fear the mental mind that stands in front of him.

     

    I am not certain if you will be free of that mind in this lifetime, or why your soul choose this journey, but for some reason I was set free. 

     

    This is my lucky lifetime.

     

    I wish it were yours.

     

    My Birthday wish for you is to become free of that mind, to find your spirit self, to embrace love, peace and joy, to be once again a little boy.  Happy Birthday Dad.

      

     

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  • Equal In My Eyes.

     

     

     

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    What is the difference between hollering and verbal abuse?

     

    What is verbal abuse? 

     

    Well I looked up the definition of Verbal Abuse.

     

    Psychology A form of emotional abuse consisting of the use of abusive and demeaning language with a spouse, child, or elder, often by a caregiver or other person in a position of power.

     

    So hollering becomes abuse when the one doing the hollering is in the position of power or caregiver, hence parents.

     

    I know for a fact that what I used to call ‘hollering’ was verbal abuse, I was the person of power.

     

    I looked up the word ‘demeaning’ to see if what I was hollering about was ‘demeaning’.

    Demeaning. Humiliate and degrade: to reduce somebody to    a much lower status in a humiliating way.

    To reduce someone to a lower status, wow hollering makes him or her lower.  I also felt the guilt, but this puts a name on the feeling.  I was lowering their sense of status in our home, by hollering for them to do their jobs.

     

    We could split hairs and say, hollering at them to clean up isn’t demeaning, but what we fail to notice is that they are our equals.

     

    We have neither right nor power to subjugate them to feeling less then us.

     

    What I came to learn was that by making them equal I gave them back their responsibility.

     

    Yesterday, I had a prime example of this interaction.  My daughter who is in college now, but living at home, wanted to just study all day.  What a sassy child you are all thinking, but what we expect from each, is not only to do well in that part of their world, but also to contribute to living here.

     

    So, we had a conversation, each of us stating their side.  I truly commended her on doing her life so well, but that she forgot to leave time for contributing for her living.  She suggested that I do all the work, since she was so busy and I had a day off.

     

    She has homework time, boyfriend time, but no “taking care of her living” area time.  Time management was her issue; she forgot to include cleaning up house time.

     

    We have offered to accept money instead of time, but they all decided time was cheaper to give. 

     

    I addressed the issue of her noncontributing, that it was to raise her up to my level, not to keep her beneath.  To show her that there is more to living than just schoolwork and a boyfriend, but to also be responsible of her living space.

     

    I stated, “I could do your part, but that isn’t fair to you, you need to feel that you are a contributing part in this house, and it surely isn’t fair to me to carry your weight.  It is abuse in the opposite direction to make you useless.”

     

    It is sad to know that so many of the hollering mom’s believe that they are hollering to make the children be more, yet what they are doing is bringing them down. 

     

    Whittling away at the Bright Spirit that they arrived as.  We ironically whittle them down to our own dysfunctional size.

     

    Lowering their status, keeping the scales unbalanced, keeping them feeling less and less, neither of us feeling good when the hollering is done.  We both are losers, we both feel less.

     

    But what we fail to realize or have the tools to implement, is that we must  bring our children up to our equals.

     

    How often do you see someone holler at his or her equal? 

     

    How do you feel after you have been hollered at?

    Does it raise your sense of wholeness, your brightness, and your rightness?

     

    Hollering is sugar coated verbal abuse.

    Hollering makes it seem less to the hollering person.

    Call it what you will, but in the end, it lowers the status.

     

    It is our job or responsibility as parents to raise our children, not lower them.

     

    What I knew was that this abuse had to stop, and I had to be the one to stop it.  It was up to me to save my kids from me!

     

    I had to be the change. 

     

    I had to focus on raising them and to do that, I had to raise the bar, raise the consequences, and make them an equal in my eyes.

     

     

  • A Present To Open!

    “Our relationship with the Present Moment defines our relationship with life itself”

                  Wayne Dyer

     

    The connection between how we relate to this moment is how we relate to life overall.

     

    How do you greet each present moment?  Do you find it bountiful or lacking?

     

    When the moment arises and presents itself to you, how do you react, what do you say to it?

     

    With each breath we take a new moment arrives, and how do you welcome it?

     

    What happens if we dismiss this time, if we are too busy planning for a time in the future, a present moment in the future, what happens to this time right here right now standing in front of you?

     

    What happens if you ignore this moment, turn a blind eye to the Now, planning on how you will or will not behave or be taken care of over there?  What happens to this little moment of newborn time standing here?

     

    The old saying “Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves,” is the same with seconds of time.

     

    If you take care of how you greet each second in time, your whole life will take care of itself.

     

    We can only live our life one second at a time, we can’t spend in the future and we can’t get back the past, those seconds we already spent or are not here yet.

     

    How many people are holding their breaths, enduring for the moment for a Heaven to come?  Folks working in jobs they hate for a retirement in later years, women married to a man who they hope will change in some distant future, mothers waiting for their children to grow up and away so they can have the freedom to be?

     

    It seems people are holding themselves hostage, kidnapping their lives today for a better life tomorrow.

     

    How does that work?

     

    I know that I used to be holding my breath wishing time would speed up and free me from my predicament.

     

    How backwards is that?

     

    Blaming time for going so slow, like how am I going to live like this for that long of time, never once thinking that I could be spending my time doing something I love, then time would be immaterial. 

     

    It isn’t time to blame, but how you spend your time.  Can you really blame time for your unhappiness?

     

    Time passes by, present moments go by you as you are holding life hostage for a better tomorrow, insanity at its best.

     

    Like ignoring this precious moment in time, stuffing it full of things you hate, so that you can live a better life eventually.

     

    What happens to yourself while you do this?  Can you really stuff full a life of discourse and anger, resentment and hate and come up with a wonderful retirement or freedom in some distant place.

     

    Isn’t it like taking the trip to a wonderful Island Resort by paddling an inner tube across the ocean to get there?

     

    Is the journey of suffering worth the reward at the end?

    Can we toss aside billions of present moments and call it a life well lived?

     

    Imagine how many present moments there are in each day, in a week, a lifetime!

     

    It overwhelms me in the sheer number we get and we do nothing for them.  They simply arrive, a present to open!

     

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  • The genes of Me!

    Your Lingering Early Programming – “Excuses Begone”

     

    In addition to our genetic makeup, the other big excuse that most of us use to justify unhappiness, poor health, and lack of success is the family and cultural conditioning we’ve been programmed with.  To that end, there’s a fascinating area of inquiry known as memetics, which deals with the mind and is analogous to the relationship of genetics to the body.  So as the basic unit of genetics is the gene, the basic unit of memetics is the meme (rhymes with “team”).  Yet unlike an atom or an electron, the meme has no physical properties.  According to Richard Brodie, in his work Virus Of The Mind, it’s ‘a thought, belief, or attitude in your mind that can spread to and from other people’s minds.

     

    Richard Dawkins, the Oxford biologist who coined the word meme, describes the process in his book, The Selfish Gene.  My understanding is that memetics originates from the word mimic, meaning to observe and copy behavior.  This behavior is repeated and passed on and on the mimicking process goes.  The key point is this:  transferring an idea, attitude, or belief to others is done mentally.  We won’t find memes by turning up the magnification of any microscope – they pass on from mind to mind via hundreds of thousands of imitations.  By the age of six or seven, we’ve all been programmed with an endless inventory of memes that act very much like a virus.  They aren’t necessarily good or bad; they simple spread easily throughout the population.

     

    Once a meme is in your mind, it can and will subtly influence your behavior.  This is one of the ways you acquire a huge category of excuses that keep you in a rut.  For example: My memes made me do it!  I can’t help it!  These ideas (beliefs, attitudes) have been passed on to me from one mind to another for generations, and there’s nothing I can do about the way I think. These memes have been building blocks of my mind, and I can’t deprogram myself from these viruses of the mind that just keep replicating and spreading.  These ideas (memes) are so much part of me that it’s impossible to ‘disinfect’ myself from the results of all of these mind viruses.”  Every excuse you read about in this book is, in reality, a meme that was once planted in your mind.

    (Wayne Dyer)

     

    How exciting is all of this?  It shows and explains how it is possible to ‘change your habitual mind’.

     

    The potential to rehabilitate our selves from childhood trauma is huge.  As I was walking away from my family I was changing my memes.  The selfish gene should really be called the self-loving gene.

     

    This is proof to me that when a mother changes and finds inner empowerment, so do her children.

     

    I intuitively knew that if my mother had taken a strong stance, it would enable her children to follow suit.  And I also knew that I didn’t walk alone, but that my children, my daughters especially, stepped in my footprints. 

     

    To be the change in this genealogy or memealogy takes huge amounts of will, for you are going up against the folks who raised you, supported you, and who we call family.

     

    In order for you to change your memes you alienate yourself from so many, you become someone they do not know, an enemy in the family.  You no longer mimic their thoughts, their beliefs and their actions.  You are the renegade.

     

    Seeing the written words that explain how I changed my ‘habitual mind’ astounds me.

     

    This also explain peer pressure, the mimicking factor that you are who you hang with!  “Birds of a feather flock together.”

     

    I love that I have a new vocabulary to explain what seemed so hard to articulate, “I changed my memes!”

     

    Wayne pronounces it Meam to rhyme with Team.

    I would like to call them ME ME Genes.

     

    The genes of Me!

      

     

     

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