Who decides it is time to change?  Do we?  Is there a master plan and we change according to plan?  Is it something we have to learn, to practice, or does life happen and changes are required?  Required because the landscape we live on has changed.

 

And does the landscape change according to a plan, like the seasons of nature, or are we victims to a mad puppeteer!

 

When you are in the middle of hellhole, a mad puppeteer seems to be the answer.  However, once you have experienced the inner changes that have happened due to the long walk through this living hell, you understand that it was all for your benefit.  It leaves you then sitting in a state of pure gratitude.

 

Many wise people have used the analogy of caterpillar and the butterfly.  And in my experience that is correct.  I do feel like I went from being one thing to becoming something totally different, from walking to flying!

 

And I have to believe that I am part of a bigger plan, that the wise Universe is orchestrating all of this, for opportunities were staged for my greatest growth. 

 

In the middle of change I was not singing happily or even willingly going along, I went along kicking and screaming inside!  I had daily battles with my mind trying in vain to maintain the old me while being shown daily it wouldn’t be possible.

 

Like trying to keep a thousand legs of the caterpillar when only two were needed being a butterfly!

 

We don’t know that we are going to become a butterfly, all we feel is the death of the caterpillar.  We are in the midst of great angst, the life is seeping out, and we are dying. 

 

Changing from a caterpillar to a butterfly is an inside job.  It seems to require our very DNA to change, all our past behaviors are null and void now, and the past becomes the soup inside the cocoon that the butterfly grows from.

 

The caterpillar is gone and we then have to learn to live with less legs and wings.  Wings that we have no idea of how to use.  And the view of a butterfly sure is much different than that of a caterpillar, it leaves us dizzy with new possibilities.

 

If you sit and ponder the caterpillar becoming a butterfly, it truly is amazing. And if the wise Universe can do that, imagine what it can do for you? 

 

I know that it is not up to me to change others, that I am not the magician who can whip the soup to allow a butterfly its wings! 

 

I have seen the magic of the Universe at work, I have experienced miracles and seen that I was given the right and perfect tools I needed to get me through each stage.

 

In my world, it was as if this change was pre-ordained and I just went along for the ride.  I am still unsure as to why, why me, why was this my lucky lifetime, why did I make butterfly soup?

 

It seems too, that I have been conscious inside the whole while, that I was able to see the old me dying and struggling, while a new me was being born, and I held on desperately to the old one.

 

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

                                              ~ Einstein

 

Maybe all we have to give up is our ideas that we will not change.  How about living in a place where nothing remains the same. 

 

Isn’t it like expecting a river to not move?  Isn’t it like expecting each sunrise to be the same?

 

Give me one thing that doesn’t change?  Just one.

What remains the same always?  

 

 

What is unchanging forever? 

Be that!

There seems to be just two ways to live your life, either pretending or tending.  Tending to the truth of what is, or pretending it doesn’t exits!  Tending or pretending sounds simple, except when the truth is hurtful to you or to those you love. 

 

Tending the truth, means having to say no when you want to say yes, it means facing realities and not pretending that they don’t exist.

 

Pretending is pretty much what we teach our children every time we tell them a little white lie, every time we hide the truth to spare their feelings, each and every time the truth is not faced and acted upon we pretend.

 

Tending to our lives, to see what is really there, to not shy away from feelings, to honor what is, each and every time Is shows up.

 

It seems odd that we have to work like hell to get back to reality.  It seems odd that we are so far from the mark.  Yet we are.

 

Little by little our lives were stolen away by lies. Piece by piece they slipped away, until all that remained was a false sense of self.  A façade a poor rendition of ourselves, a imposter, someone whose life we were living, a life but one that wasn’t ours.

 

How is it possible to lose sight of our own lives, our own dreams our own worlds?  How is it possible our actions are more for the other than ourselves?  How can we now become selfish of our time, and become self- loving?

 

How can we teach ourselves to no longer pretend, how do we find the self behind the pretending?

 

It seems that lies are the answer.  Stop lying.  Stop lying, even the little white lies.  Stop lying when you say yes and you mean no.  Stop hiding behind lies when you don’t want to feel, to be hurt, to be sad, to be this or that!  Be sad if sad you feel, be happy if it is happy you feel.  Stop lying to spare the others feelings.  Wouldn’t it be better to feel the truth of what is now?

 

It is insanity at its best to think we can pretend anyway. Pretend what?  That the thing we are pretending isn’t there will go away if we pretend!

 

How is that ever going to work, yet we do that time and time again.  We pretend if we say yes this one last time They will not ask again.  We pretend if we don’t see that action that eventually the he will change.  We pretend to pretend to pretend that life will work itself out, if we can only hold on pretending until it does.

 

We can’t even stop lying to ourselves that our pretending is getting us nowhere!

 

Pretend or tend….to be or not to be, that is the question.

What will you pretend today?  What will you tend today?

 

I tend reality.

 

While quilting this morning I had on Sirius Radio and the two talk shows I was listening to had the topic of lies.  How woman lie more, are taught to lie politely, use lies to survive and how our personal lies are so hurtful and leave us in situations that are not good for us.

 

It seems we lie to make things better either for someone or for ourselves.  We lie to protect their feelings while sacrificing our own.

 

Lies and pretending isn’t that the same.  We pretend to not be hurt so that another feels better.  And we may even pretend that another’s actions are not hurtful to protect ourselves the hurt.

 

Now that seems weird, can we really tell the lie to ourselves and then believe it!  Wouldn’t we know we were pretending? 

 

I would like to bring lies and pretend to wars working.  It is Memorial Day and I now have grave issues with wars being the way to peace.  That it is a necessary evil to eradicate evil.  Fighting evil with evil will win us a place called peace.  How can that ever work?

 

Peace is not the gift of war.  Peace does not fall when the war is won.

Peace is not even found in one returning from war.  Peace and freedom is the cost of all wars.  We loose what we are fighting for! Who is really at peace in war, and who really gains peace through fighting?  Either you are the one doing the beating or the one getting beat, now that doesn’t sound peaceful at all on either side!

 

Freedom is the reason we fight, but do we gain freedom if we have to fight to keep it?  We are fighting to have freedom?  So the freedom is gone and we are made to continue fighting lest we lose it.

 

It just seems madness to me. Madness and insanity all around!  And then I see the honorable services, the ceremonies honoring those who fought.  Fighters being honored, the peace keepers fighting to the death for us?

 

I can’t even pretend to pretend to understand or agree with any of this any more.  Mothers on this side and Mothers on that side are losing their children, Fathers on this side and Fathers on that side losing their kids, and the kids on both sides dying for our peace, our freedom and our beliefs.  Our children are made to fight for us!

 

How can we honor that? 

 

Is it possible that we are all tired of the pain, the deaths and fighting going on? Is it possible there is a better way?  Is it possible to stop the wars?  Who will?

 

We all need to stop pretending that war is the answer for peace.  That one life is worth the price?  That we can afford to hurt others and not feel their pain? 

 

I am not sure how this can get turned around, but it seems that with all the technology of today, the wisdom we have, that we should be working to find peaceful solutions.

 

I just can’t lie to myself anymore that wars work.  I am so thankful that my children have not yet had to be asked to fight.

 

Imagine asked to fight.

 

We are so not a peaceful nation. 

 

Peace, “be the change you want to see in the world” is what Ghandi said.

 

Here it is Memorial Day and I want to focus instead on ways we can live peacefully.  I want to find peaceful answers, ones that don’t require another to lose either their minds or their bodies. 

 

I have a hard time to even muster up support for their actions now and of the past.  It seems that I would be supporting fighting, killing and maiming!

 

Perhaps the truth needs to be faced, to see what it is we are really doing and who we are really hurting, and then shake out the bottom and see if Peace and Freedom lay there.  Who is brave enough to look?  Who has the courage to see what it is we are doing and to whom?

 

God and Religion are the main reasons that wars are fought.  Imagine if we instead looked for ways we can honor and serve God.

 

Perhaps the belief that there is only one right way to God is what has us all killing each other and hating so many.

 

What if instead we looked at all the different paths to God, to honor all the different ways we can reach God, see God and Be with God! 

 

If we could agree that there is not just one right way, then perhaps we would not have so many wrong. 

 

Whenever you are made to pick sides, to choose teams, to have a winner and a loser you, are separating.  We are separating and making one more special than the other, instead of seeking to join and becoming one.

 

If we saw ourselves as the human family on this planet called earth, a family that was eager to get along, to serve and honor each other, seeking to understand different cultures and rituals, perhaps we could have less wars and more peace parties. 

 

Peace parties, that I can attend…I would love to be part of a Peace Party!

 

 

There seems to be this fallacy of completion, of finishing, of getting to a spot when all is done, when I am perfect, when I am now me, when change is over.

 

Some how we have it that when we get to that spot we will control life and we will have smooth sailing.

 

How about instead if we get to the spot that we instead see that life happens, and we just happen along for the ride.

 

The thing that seems to stand in the way of accepting is our thoughts.  Our thoughts and beliefs that things should be different, that we should even respond differently, that we should have control over more things.

 

Will we ever get to a spot in life where no thoughts will pop up, where no outside event will happen that we don’t want, that life will always be this perfect dance for us.

 

To be accepting of all things, the good the bad and the ugly, to accept them as part of your world, for do you really have a choice?  Is there a way we can hit a button and all those things we don’t like disappear? 

 

It seems we have been told or taught to believe that we have more control than what we do. 

 

Abuse is actions that are out of control and it leaves us feeling out of control inside, especially if at the time an adult isn’t available to help us express our fears, our terror, our helplessness.  The term adult child is that we are left emotionally at the age of our abuse no matter how big our body grows.

 

We then go forward with an inside that is out of control and we respond to the outside way out of control.  Our reactions are swift and volatile, at a much higher volume than needed.  A hair trigger on our tempers, with a bucket load of emotions behind, we respond with pent up unexpressed emotions. 

 

To gain control of our emotions, to express ourselves is the task an abused person has to deal with one situation at a time.  Little by little we regain control of ourselves in reality. We are able to see what happened, to express our emotions, to leak a little out here and there, to unleash their hold on us.  We learn how to respond, not react.

 

Maybe this is what life is.  That life happens and we then get to see how we respond?  See what we do with each new moment, situation or person in our presence?  What happens inside of us, what decides what we do?  Is that the real spot we are seeking to stand on, the perfection we are striving towards to always stand on the same spot?

 

To always see the truth of what is, to really see the person who is standing in front of us, to hear their words, their actions.  To see life as life presents itself and then learn to act accordingly, to be ok with going this way and that way, to be directed by life, instead of us trying to direct life. 

 

There seems to be the dance of the Universe and it is up to us to hear the music and dance along.  Perhaps the spot we are looking for is within us.  To accept the music we are hearing, always.

 

Dance with the Universe in grace not trying to lead, but to be the one to follow.

Held in the arms of the Universe.

In grace accept this dance.

 

Outlier – noun

1: something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body.

2: a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample.

 

This is in the beginning of a book I am now reading “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, the story of Success.

 

What an interesting book on how there are so many factors that dictate the success of an individual.  From where you are born, to whom you have for parents, from the availability to practice your talent, IQ, and to even the global transformation such as the Technology Era.

 

Preparedness meets opportunity repeatedly in the lives of our most successful individuals.  It seems the whole world was lined up perfectly for them.

 

They all had 10,000 hours of practice, whether you are playing music like the Beatles or playing on computers like Bill Gates.  It wasn’t work they were doing, but what they loved to do for 10,000 hours before actually making it big.

 

High Intelligence seemed to also need Practical Intelligence as well as parents that were supportive, and then living in the right place doing the right thing in the right era. 

 

I identified with the term Outliers.  Outliers from Normal, it seems we too had to have many things line up perfectly. The right set of parents, in the right community, believing in the right religion, right neighborhood etc. the perfect set up for dysfunction.

 

Amazing when I look at it from that point of view.  How so many had to act a certain way for dysfunction to continue!

 

And the term Outlier also fits for being the one to step out of the dysfunction.  Did I have 10,000 hours of practice in?  Was I blessed with practical intelligence and more IQ?  Was I now living in a supportive home?  To reading authors that challenged the way I lived, believed and thought? 

 

As I look backwards, I had been preparing myself totally, and that the Universe seemed to be one with me, all I needed the most I received.

I had the perfect darkness and then had the exact things I needed to transcend that, and now I feel like I am getting all I need at the right time to support me today. 

 

I can see myself more as an Outlier in many places even today as well as in my past.

 

Being the oldest daughter I was given the task to be the second mother.  In so doing, I was not a child among the children and I was not the real mother and I never felt like a daughter to her, but just second in command.  I was in a position of being an outlier to each group, a group of one.

 

My whole past has been practicing to walk away alone, an outlier.

 

Now I sit in a place of gratitude that I had so much practice.

I just had no idea what I was practicing for!

 

And even today my story isn’t over, but I am confident that being an outlier I will be different, set aside from the norm, but I am way ok with that.  Where will I go and what will I do, who knows, but I can tell you this, I must be practicing for it now! 

 

Practice.

What is the responsibility of Giving?  Is there a responsibility in Giving?  It seems that the giver almost carries more than the receiver.

Can an exhausted giver really blame the ones she is giving to? 

 

In the case of being a mom, we tend to give and give and help and help, but what is that really doing?  Is that making our children takers?  If we don’t expect them to give how can they learn to be givers?

 

It seems the responsibility lies within the Giver to stop giving.  Stop.

 

It was easier to give them an easier day, to take away their jobs, to ease the burden in their world, by doing things they could do, should do, would do, If I gave them the chance.

 

Hey, I can give still, just give them the chance to be responsible, be self-sufficient!  I can give them self-empowerment.

 

If I can give that back to them, I must have been a taker not a giver.

I was taking away self-empowerment!

 

I think by just looking at this differently, by seeing what I am taking away instead of what I am giving, is crucial.

 

So each time I give I will have to first ask a few questions, such as, can they do this themselves, do they really need my help, am I making them helpless or allowing them to be responsible for Self.

 

What is so odd is that I then resent them for my giving too much, resent them for not doing enough for themselves as I walk behind them picking up their stuff.   A maid.  A resentful unpaid maid!

 

And as I took their lives, I resented that no time was left for me, and my life!  Of course not, I was too busy messing up their lives, their self-esteem, by doing their jobs for them!  Unreal!

 

As a mother my part is to give them their lives back, to stop doing their jobs!  To stand in my spot, do what is expected of me.  I just bet that I will have more time to do fun things for me.  I just bet that the balance in this house will even out.  Harmony will return, balance will once again be here.  It is not reasonable to expect them to be in their lives if we don’t let them.  We have to allow them to live in all parts of their worlds, not just the good parts.  Nope, we have to give them the opportunities to live in all parts, the struggles, the hardships, the highs and the lows. 

 

I failed to see how my giving was taking and that their taking was because they had no choice.  Well, I guess they could have said, “please don’t let me sleep so long, please stop doing all my clothes, please stop cooking all my meals, please stop cleaning up my messes, please stop!”   Little did I know as I was hollering at them to change, I was really hollering at myself.

 

I knew I was doing something wrong, I just couldn’t figure out how my doing so much was a bad thing for them, for it seemed they were the ones benefiting the most!  Yet in the end we both were losing.

 

They had the most to lose, their self-esteem and power.  The satisfaction of being a member, a contributing member in this house, of this family!  If we were a team, I would have been the ball hog the one who is forever playing and the rest are sitting the bench!

 

What can our kids learn by sitting on the bench?  Oh my God, I was a ball hog, and I have always hated the coaches who let the players sit the bench.  I was a coach who never even let them play so busy was I playing their game!

 

I wanted them to play the game, but I was holding the ball tightly in my hands, hollering at them to play, after the game was already over.

Pretty hard to cleanup a cleaned up mess!

 

Perhaps I need a coach whistle to keep me reminded of my role.

I am a coach.  I get to shout encouragement from the sidelines!

I no longer have to play all positions it sure was wearing me out!

 

I love that I am a coach.  I get to sit the bench!

What is the difference between living a life as a Mask or one that is mask-less?  How do you know you are wearing a mask?  How is it that we prefer the mask to our original selves?

 

Putting on Airs or putting on a mask, and weren’t we all taught to be social, to do pleasantries, to be polite and not mention the unmentionables.

 

Do religions have certain masks?  In order to match each other do you have to conform and behave in like manner?  Do even families wear certain masks and hid the skeletons in the closet? 

 

Who would we be without our masks?  And is it possible we are all in the process of either adding to our masks, or tearing them down.

 

Is the Mask the Ego?  What is the mask?  Is it a secondary lifestyle?

If the truth lay beneath the mask, what is the mask?

 

It seems that the mask always ends up being the Illusion, the false one, pretender, fake, imposter, yet it seems most have one.

 

Why is it that so many are wearing masks and even more are unknowing of this?  How is it possible not to know you are wearing a mask?  How is it possible that you have never met the real you?  That seems insane!

 

Are we born into a family of masks and taught the legacy that has been handed down. 

 

You know the term “black sheep” is that one who refuses to don a mask?

 

While listening to the XM Radio, Rev. Ed Bacon was on with Elizabeth Lesser.  They were talking about how parents raise their children to be spiritual.  And what was presented was for parents to raise children who were seekers, who questioned the way of humanity.  Little souls who arrive and let them tell us what it is they are here to do, not Us giving them an agenda the minute they arrive.

 

Little souls that arrive, what a cool thing! 

 

What is your soul’s purpose?  What is it that you are here to learn, to be, to do?   We all came in as new little souls, did we lose our way, did we get so caught up in the life of the masks that we simply forgot our way?

 

Learning to be and live without a mask is almost like living without a shield or protection, to be outside of groups of belonging, to be click-less, the black sheep for sure.

 

Our society it seems is not very user friendly for newly arriving souls, for immediately we want to classify them into a space, to make them fit into an already formed society, to tag them, to slap a label on before they even utter one little word.

 

We become part of the group we are born into without even asking what it is we are here to do!

 

Imagine if we looked upon all new little souls with wonder, in awe of what gift they are here to bring?  Imagine then how our world would be.  We would be open to individuals, to a million different expressions of the same thing. 

 

A Spirit on a Human Journey! 

 

“My fear was to remove my mask would be to risk insanity.”  This is a line in the book  “Art is the way of Knowing” by Pat B. Allen.

 

It seems if you have enough consciousness to know you are wearing a mask, if you are tired of seemingly being two people, one you seem to control and the other out of control, this dropping of the mask would be easy.

 

What I have come to find out is the mask is the ‘nice’ one and the other the beast.  A thirsty beast, relentless, cunning and deceitful, never content, and forever bursting into normal days to upend them, sort of like a bratty child perhaps a neglected one.

 

We are fearful when we drop the mask of nice, we are left being the neglected abused child, dirty, soiled, confused, screaming, not breathing, hyper-ventilating, breathless, too messy to look upon by others.  Way too hard to listen to, too horrific is our tale.  We fear being too yucky to bear, too ruined to fix, broken into a million pieces never to return to wholeness.

 

Yet, it is by actually dropping the mask of pretending we are normal that we find the wounded one.  We have to be the brave one to sit with us awhile.

 

The fear that we will never ever find normal again is real and present, but we are also faced with attending the broken child.  It seemed to me, that I had to let the future go on hold, while going backwards to gather into me a little girl who was for so long left alone, while I was busy pretending she wasn’t there, unbeknownst to me.

 

The fear is we will get left broken, unfixable, twisted and insane.  And once we drop the mask of pretending otherwise, we will be left exposed, exposed and not showing our best side, but our worst.

 

It took literally one second to agree with the statement that, “she said grandpa touched her”, one tiny little second admitting that her statement and my body agreed, that one small moment had the momentum to crash my normal mask.  Beneath it lay years of unknowing. 

 

My body shook like a volcano inside, the fear was cursing wildly throughout my body, gripping me and wrapping itself everywhere.  In an instant my world changed, my past too would never be the same, a future was uncertain at best.  Just to just survive the news took all my strength.

 

 Made to walk into fear, terror and the unknown, while being so messed up your self seems madness now.  I have no real idea of how this all managed to work itself out.  How I managed to not only walk about, do normal things while in this state, but to hold on to reality.

 

Holding on to reality when reality is a mess is not an easy task.  Your reflexes almost seem to want to look away, to do anything but look, than to deal with something so large and so out of control.

 

My mask of being who I thought I was for 46 years lay broken on the ground, useless and hopeless.  I was not that, and I surely didn’t want to be just another victim of a man who abused girls, a girl who is broken, with no memories, knowing that all she knew, she had no idea of the truth, fatherless, I became no one.

 

I recall not wanting to be his descendent, or even carrying a name.  I just wanted to be a no one, attached to nothing, nameless, faceless, past-less. I guess free of the mess that lay beneath the mask of normal.

 

In the book Art is a way of Knowing, she suggest that if you are seeking to know, you best take care of yourself in your ordinary life.  To eat, sleep and work regularly, so you have a set routine to balance the imaginal work.  For me that means going backward in your mind to sort out the details that I had wrong, I had imagined many things that were not true.  Like imaginary friends!

 

So while I worked to put realness to my imaginary people, I tried to stay as normal as possible.  Which is funny now, for I had no idea what normal was.   My husband said, “What is normal, isn’t that different for all of us?”  And I agree, there are no rules to get you through this process. 

 

To keep the balance I sought out Nature.  I walked along the river, I sat for hours inside watching birds at our bird feeder, it was a waking meditation when my life had too many problems to work on.  I was blessed in having a one- day a week job, a husband who supported me, and lots of space to heal. 

 

Little by little, and piece by piece I healed, and I became whole, a whole new little girl, imperfect, but for me perfect.  

 

A broken bowl glued back together is stronger than the original, is what I had read once.  I would have to agree.  I do know that of myself.  I am stronger now then ever before.

It is true, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!

 

I guess I now fear normal pretend masks over what lays beneath.  Beneath is the truth.

 

In the case of addictions and out of control behavior who is in charge of the body?  Is it the mind?  Or is it something deeper than our minds? 

 

For we can say in our minds, I will not eat sweets, I will not holler today at my children.  Those are just two of my biggest hurdles I had to overcome.

 

I could tell myself in my head a million and three times not to holler to explode to get so out of control mad and yet the second something in front of me was a tad out of place, AAAAHHHHHHHH!  Yelling would come out of me like projectile vomit!  Covering all who happened to be in my way, doing what they were doing.  And looking back they didn’t have to be doing anything really bad, but it was something I felt was unnecessary.  I was the keeper of necessary.

 

It was like I was afraid of things getting out of place, like I would be judge upon my house, my kids and how they both looked, like I was hiding behind control and clean.  And perhaps I was.  The real me was a battered and beaten down little girl.

 

My hollering could have been fear of being discovered, discovered that I was not perfect, not good enough, loveable enough, just a battered little girl.  So what do I do, I batter my kids, as I was myself.

 

The cycle continues, not because we want it to, but because it is coming from a place deeper than our minds, our wishes, our dreams, and our hopes.  It is coming from the depth of our beings.

 

It seems to me that we have a dream person in our heads, the one that has wishes and possibilities and seems clear on the future, and yet battling for that space is another who we can only know by feelings.  That person feels or desires or is the drawing into our lives person, and the two of them have never met.  And then if you are like me and have a glimmer of consciousness or awake and can see the out of control person you are….that makes three!

 

It is getting crowded in my body, oh yeah and then the body.  The body gets to bear witness to all the drama inside, in fact when in doubt look at what the body does, where it goes and how it responds, acts and lives!  That is the affect of the deeper third desire feeling person.

 

In my world the words and flimsy dreams had no chance up against the desire feeling person.  It was not even a close war, but a slaughter. 

 

This desire feeling person literally moves the body where it wants to go and eats sweets by handfuls disregarding my plans to diet.  This desire person hollers any time something is off base, yet no one knows the correct way or the way to stop the hollering one.  WE inside don’t even know.

 

So then how is it possible to get free of the addictions?  What causes them to start up in the first place?  What is it that keeps us locked in the madness of the desire person when in our minds we would like a whole different life?

 

In my case, reality came in and tossed me upside down or right-side up!  I was shown how wrong I was inside.

 

As wrong as my reality was, that was how wrong I was inside.

 

I have been known to say we get the understanding in three levels.  The knowing happens intellectually first, then our hearts feel, and lastly our souls know.

 

It is when you know it at the core level, when we discover that we had a secondary fear system running our lives, we see the wound, the seed that grew into a need much larger than us ourselves.

 

In abuse and especially when it is a family member, we get handed abuse along with love.  Love comes attached to the pain and hurt, and we tangle the two together in a messy little package we simply call love. 

 

In our insides we then desire and crave the Love.  The love is the heat -seeking device that calls out for love, our definition of love, abuse.  This device was set at the moment of abuse.  Our interpretations as a young innocent child is that love hurts, love is out of control.   In fact the more upside down our worlds the more normal they feel.  We feel love, we don’t think it, and if abuse is our love, that is where we feel love.

 

It is not like we have two choices of love. Nope we get one version, just one.  And in my experience it takes many years to come out from under the control of that device that calls abuse love.

 

It is not the walk for the meek or faint of heart, it will take you to your knees and require strength you never knew you had.  You will be asked to do battle with an unseen, unknown device that has led you around unwillingly for years!

 

Once I understood that my love label was wrong, that is when the work began, that is when the walking was required, that is when there had to be a second of space to step in before reactions did. 

 

You are literally required to learn what real love is, to recognize that all you had prior was not love, but abuse.  That the intentions could have been love from your parents, but it failed, their love was abuse.

 

“Forgive them they know not what they do.” Is a phrase that has saved my sanity, for they did not intentionally hurt me, they just did not have a second choice in their love either. 

 

Karma, the cycle that flows from cause and affect, is either personal or group, and in the case of abusive families, it is both.  A legacy that reaches beyond just my life has been set in place.  I felt at times I was going against generations and generations and feeling like a baby as I tried to change the pattern.

 

I am not sure why this was my path, why I was the pattern breaker, why it seemed that I had a second of space, a glimpse in to the reality, while most in my family are locked into the pattern and can’t seem to escape, I can’t tell you why.

 

But it is with gratitude in my heart and a new version of love inside of me that I am outside of that pattern.  I know how hard it was for me to break out, and I know that I did not do this on my own.  It was beyond me, beyond my realm of knowing, beyond and for the sake of many, not just I.  I am simply one who experienced the ride out!  

 

It is still with great reverence for those who are locked behind the addictions, fighting for space, for even an inch to get ahead of the demon that runs with our lives securely in it’s grasp, I know from experience the hell they are locked in.  The battle inside that rages, that seems to always win no matter what our good intentions. 

 

With reverence I have escaped it’s clutches for today, for this moment, for now.  And I believe that the more I can cultivate awareness, present moment being, and stay in reality, the less chance it has of winning. 

 

It has been a hard won fight, and I love to be in control of my reactions to my world.  Reality will happen, but I control my reaction to it.  I am the choice maker in the face of reality, now.

 

I can’t, and couldn’t before, control others, I can only hope to control me, and that is a full time job!

 

I do this second by second and moment by moment, not getting too far ahead of reality.  Live shortsighted like children do, live like there is no tomorrow, let the worries go, for we can only control or be in this here moment called now.  Just be here now.  It is by gaining control of this little second, this little bit of time, that we control our whole worlds!  Second by second we can change the whole world!

 

Life unfolds seconds at a time, not in days, weeks and months.  Do each little second well, and if you fail, I am sure another second will arrive momentarily! 

 

This second counts, always.

 

 

Today is the day that I find out if I can follow the Pattern of the Route.

I did cheat however, last night my husband and I took a ride and tried to follow the map.  Lucky for me we did go.  One road is unmarked, and I would have breezed by unknowingly.  

 

And by seeing it a second time from the front seat of the car allowed me to get a better view!  Imagine they do a ride along and have us sit in the backseat. 

 

I know the phrase “backseat driver” but you really only get a good side view!  That is fine if you never plan on driving!

 

So by going over the pattern a second time, I already feel that it has an imprint on me.  I remembered and found it familiar already.  Soon this route will be cemented in place in my file of memories.  It will be hard to remember not knowing.

 

The mind is an amazing thing and we fail to understand its flexibility!  Just because we have been stuck doing something over and over, doesn’t mean we can’t add or switch it up!

 

It is actually hard for me to remember my blind way of operating, of being so lost in a sea of rules and others ideas.  I have gotten used to being me, doing, as I want, being an Art Quilt in my daily life!

 

 

Well this Mail Lady best be getting her lunch box packed for her solo ride!  What will I see, how will it go, what will I remember and what will I forget…..who knows, we don’t until we arrive.  Just arrive!