I M Perfect lady

Category: Examples of an Imperfect woman

  • What are we saying…

    In Sarah Ban Breathnach's book "Simple Abundance" she talked about the annual Christmas Letter…letters some of us write and most of us recieve.  How it does seem like we get the edited version of their lives, like they airbrushed out the difficulties of the year.  

    I wonder what an unedited version would read like?  How much more 'normal' we would all feel if the realities of life were laced with the joys?  It seems that we want this perfect picture to go along with the perfect letter…to send to our family and friends; so not to show our imperfections.

    She talks about writing letters of our own, about our self discoveries or lessons learned.  I would love to recieve letters that depicted a real life journey of one year…instead of only the high points.  It seems to me, we get to know more about folks as they share their struggles and how they climbed out of the lows…than we do about their shining moments.

    As I look back on my year, I wonder what my greatest lessons were, how they were delivered and what I learned?

    It is funny, in a peculiar way, how we celebrate the birth of Jesus, by sending out an edited version of our lives.  And, some have gotten away from a message at all, but send intsead a picture…

    An older woman handed me a stack of Christmas Cards….and she said, "I write personal letters in each one.  It is like having a conversation…"  

    If our Christmas Cards are a conversation with our family and friends, what are we saying?

     

  • What you settle for.

    There seems to be a quest to ‘stand against’ abuse that is out there, in someone else’s life. It isn’t something you do in another person’s life, but in your own.
    People ask what can their community do or what the church can do, when most abuse happens within families and with people YOU know.
    Standing against abuse means standing up to folks you know who are behaving in ways that are harmful.
    It is about no longer tolerating abusive behavior and or those who do.
    You don’t have to go out into the community, you have work to do in each of your relationships.
    How honest are you? What do you feel? How much do you pretend things are okay to get along. Ending tolerance for abuse, begins with you.
    Between you and you.
    How much integrity do bring to each relationship?
    How often are you silent out of fear?
    Fear is a sign, what is it saying?
    Resentment is another sign, asking for you to see the imbalance or pain and it’s waiting for a new response from you, while you are waiting for that person to change. For them to see you. You need to see you and how you are falsely participating.
    Abuse flourishes because we allow it…because we don’t change.
    Many wait for the abusive person to change, when all it takes is for us to stop being with folks who are abusive.
    We either allow abuse or we don’t, there is no middle space that requires nothing of us. You are participating by your lack of disengaging.
    You are either engaged with the abuser and disengaged with your honesty or visa versa.
    The phrase ‘gained the world but lost my savior’ comes to mind.
    You can’t dance with abuse and your soul at the same time.
    Your actions and movements are supporting only one agenda and it is up to you who you are with.
    I marvel at not the strength of those doing the abuse, but of those who continue to be with them. Their lack of requirements…
    You get what you settle for.

  • Nothing is hidden.

    "Love opens the doors into everything…including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self."  May Sarton

    What a great line.

    I know this to be true.

    I also know, that in dysfunctional families where secrets are kept, there is no love, for love opens the doors to secrets. 

    Love wants to know where the trouble lies, where problems are, what is wrong and what is causing pain.  Love doesn't exist where secrets live.

    If the other person isn't willing to pass through the door and sharing their real self, the relationship is not based on love…but fear. Fear of exposing their true self.  Speaking their truth, sharing their feelings and expressing their emotions.

    Mostly, if you were raised to keep secrets, you were raised to not be your self.

    And, love opens the doors to everything….and if there are things you don't want exposed, then love is not there…

    Fear is.

    Fear of being yourself.

    Fear of not being liked or accepted.

    In dysfunctional families, especially dysfunctional ones who are also members of a strict religion where you must fit into their idea of what is right, if you don't go along, you will tossed out.

    Being different is not okay.

    Being transparent about secrets not okay.  And, these are not secrets of surprises, but secrets of harmful actions, folks who are abusive and the abuse one suffered etc.

    Keeping sweet a family that is layered in abuse…isn't love.

    The greatest fear families of dysfunction subconsciously live with is, that when the doors are open, no love lives there.  

    When you add the secrets to the person, how do they change?

    Will love be there?

    What is the content of the person?

    And, are they exposing their own secrets or trying to keep the lid on?  

    I love that love opens doors…often terrible and frightening…Real Self.

    This can be very good or very bad, depending upon who you truly are.

    If your secret self fears being exposed…you will pass on love.

    It wasn't until I fully exposed and embraced all my secrets that I knew what love was.

    Love means nothing is hidden.

     

  • What Love is not…

    A woman mentioned she was an advocate for Love.  And, that led me to wonder what am I an advocate for?  What is my intention and direction; just how would I classify my advocation?

    I even looked up the word "advocate" to make sure I knew its true meaning.

    "To speak, plead, or argue in favor of…"

    What is it that I plead for or argue in favor of?

    Most, and many think I am against family…and religion and perhaps even God and forgiveness…against human kindness.  It often feels like many feel my agenda is the agenda of evil; when I believe its opposite.

    I would say, that I am for love, peace and joy, and have found it by leaving all that isn't.

    I would say that I argue for the rights of and love of, innocent children…and adults.

    It is more impacting to say what you are For, than what you are against. Being against something is relatively easy, you just shun or turn away from it. But when you are for something, you have to explore it…experience it, live it…be with it; stand for it in all things.

    I am for truth.  Even when it is ugly and not kind, when it has the capability of shattering my world, I am still for truth.

    I am for authentic living…even when it requires me to walk away from family.

    I am for real relationships…for not pretending in order to keep 'peace'.

    I am for integrity…especially when it is hard to stand in it.

    I advocate self-worth, self-love…individual imperfections that make you perfect.

    I advocate for reality and acceptance of all things…and our free will to respond as we wish.

    I advocate for freedom…and love.

    I advocate for the opposite of abuse.

    Power, freedom and choice.

    And yet, I am seen by those, I believe, still in abusive relationships as a threat or bad or evil….and I can see why.

    The most powerful tool we have against abuse is to be free and empowered.  I would be a threat to what you are holding dear, if what you are holding onto is abusive. 

    If what you are holding onto is power over someone.

    If what you are clinging to requires no new choices.

    If what you need is for others NOT to change.

    I love that I can fully embrace and hold, that I am an advocate for change in abusive homes…changing the victims into powerful empowered beings…from living in fear to living for Love.

    I do not believe that there is ever a Love option in abusive homes…fear is the only path. And, many who have only lived in fear are afraid of love…and its new choices and voices. 

    I can only recognize love as being free.  If you aren't free to do and say and be; it isn't love…its fear.  Fear leaves you with no choice. And no choice echoes abuse.

    So, I agree with the woman, I too am an advocate for Love.

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    I love my pictures when I was little, I was always holding hands or babies…even if I had no clue as to the environment of our home, I cared and did my best to love.

    When I was a young mom, I was not always so loving…or my love wasn't love but fear.  I love that person too….for she didn't know what she didn't know.

    I will no longer hold hands with those who want to keep the family together no matter what, for the 'matter what' is abuse.  I can't hold hands with abuse…

    I can't pretend to pretend that love is there; even for family.

    I am an advocate for healthy families; where children are safe.

    I am now able to be an advocate for love; for I know what love is not.

     

  • How much have you changed?

    There is a cost for being a Leader for Change within dysfunctional families; it typically means you lose your place in the family.  You will no longer be part of it, except to be on the outside.

    Changes within families require you to go against your elders as well as family members, where the sentiment that "we are family no matter what" is destroyed.

    It is to wreck all the typical safety nests…and to break the silence of compliance…to become the one who dares to question actions, words and motives…to not accept "they did the best they could".

    To be the Leader for Change, you will have to see their short comings and make corrections NoT in their life, but in your own.

    To see where their actions led and to course correct so you are not party to dysfunction continuing on.

    A leader for Change is showing in words and deeds that they will not perpetuate the flow of dysfunction as usual; they will do the opposite and be shunned for it.

    Leaders for Change will face persecution and criticism and be hated and hollered at, lied about…they will take the brunt of the family's derision; more so than the perpetrator of the abuse and his accomplice.  Leaders for Change who dare to follow the choice to change, will suffer most from their family.

    What makes this journey particularly hard is this alone.  You knowingly do what is against the family's unwritten rules of cohesiveness….you pull and tear apart actions and words to carry the truth forward.

    Leaders for Change will see the truth where others don't…and will live it, and not just make it an exercise of the mind; but a way of life.

    Leaders for Change are for those who have been victimized by the old system…and not see it as being a victim or a survivor, but that they can literally live to change the whole system…by being the change they want to see in the world.

    Leaders for change will be a different mother, daughter, friend….

    Leaders for change will do what their parents were unable to do.

    Leaders for change will be FOR change and not just accept that abuse happened and life goes on….to forgive and forget, to find the positive among the garbage, but instead find how the garbage became this way and then do different.

    I am hopeful that each family has Leaders for Change…and that we can slowly see the numbers begin to drop…so that the percentages of abuse no longer happens within families.

    How can people not hear that.  That it is the way these families live and how they are silent or compliant that promotes abuse to thrive….that it is not the laws of the land or even the insane preachings of the churches that is the biggest advocate for abuse; but the family units themselves.

    Each individual within the dysfunctional family carries the burden or the virus of abuse. They will carry it forward, unless they are the Leader for Change.

    It is the families that slowly slip back into the sameness after abuse who are the ones contributing to abuse.  If you didn't change…abuse is still your friend.

    The treatment that I have gotten, the way folks look at me IS how they should be looking at abuse…instead, they see me as delivering evil…while evil is literally destroying these families…from the inside out.

    One child at a time….for generations.  

    When the evil doers are treated like I have been, then abuse will begin the downward spiral…until then, abuse flourishes while they direct all their anger and rage at me, a Leader for Change.

    You are either with it or against it.  Change will be the indicator….how much have you changed?  (and, is it enough to stop abuse?)

  • Leader for Change…

    A Marine that was sexually assaulted, said that she wasn't speaking as a victim or a survivor, but as a Leader for Change…I love how she sees herself as an instrument for change.  Using her life experiences to help others, to make changes so others don't have to experience the awful way she was treated…not so much about the abusers – for that is a given, but from her commanding officers and how their response was felt as abuse, again and again.

    I too want to be a leader for change in the way families deal with victims and the way victims themselves deal with families.  

    We need to teach others how to have healthier responses so as not to harm victims further.  And to hold responsible adults who know and do nothing to the perpetrators…while demeaning and disbelieving the victims.

    The only way we can start turning around and lowering the numbers of children being abused, is to be a leader of changing how we deal with abuse.

    Instead of passively feeling as a survivor….I love the role "Leader for Change" inspires within me.  It leaves me hopeful and inspired and to use my experiences to shed light upon a broken system…and ways towards healing and living that changes the patterns of abuse.

    To be a leader of change, you have to be willing to lead the change in your own life.…to make different choices and to walk different, talk different, be different…everything changes; when you are leader for change.

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    I love these two ladies, attached by a chain….we can't know who is changing who?

  • What Part are you Playing?

    As I sat with the injustice of the justice system, it came to me that our solutions will not be with the same systems that are now creating the problems; but something totally different.

    Changing a broken system with the same tools that created it, Is insane….so the answers will be far from what we have previously thought were the answers.

    First of all, the court systems can't be the healing places….for they were built for justice.  

    And, I don't believe that Justice is healing for the victims…in fact, the purpose of our court systems is to remove harmful people from access to society; and they are failing where sexual abuse towards children are concerned…at least in our area.

    The focus of society and family needs to be on the victims. 

    What do the victims need to heal from their encounter with sexual abuse?

    What will restore their sense of safety and rightness with the world?

    What kinds of groups and services are available for children and adult children of abuse?  What works and what is not helpful?  

    Perhaps each story of a sexual predator escaping justice for what he actually did, needs to be followed with what kinds of help there is for his victims. What services will help towards recovery.

    It seems to me that we naively believe that by getting the perpetrator off the streets our world will right itself, when there are actually two very separate pathways.

    The journey of healing isn't co-dependent upon the long prison sentence…all it does is end the reign of abuse for this one man.  The journey of healing and breaking the cycle begins when family and society pay attention to the victims and what they need.

    Sadly, what the victim needs is for our attention to be on them…and society and the justice system gives more rights and leeway towards the perpetrator.

    All the maneuvering that happens between the lawyers on both sides to reduce and eliminate each charge is detrimental to the spirits of the victims.

    It is to reduce sexual abuse to a sorta bad touch….but, not the devastating event that it actually is.

    Also families carry a huge burden in the responsibility in how the child heals.  For the majority of abuse cases happen within families or with close friends….how then do the adults in the family respond to sexual abuse aligations and or court appearances and the knowledge of abuse?  Does life go on as usual?  Are new boundaries set?

    Each of us carry the same burden as do our court systems.

    My father was released back into society…by the Justice System.

    My father was released back to being a father by his family.

    In that, they did not estrange themselves from him…for they could not flip the tile that said "father" into "Pedophile" and treat him as such.  It isn't easy; but it is what is needed. 

    The family system that allowed sexual abuse to happen, has to be destroyed in order for healing to begin.  

    When we say we are against abuse, when it happens within our family, we have to be against the family structure that was in place when abuse happened.  All avenues and beliefs and structures have to be examined.

    As I see the Justice system failing the perpetrators, I also see the family units failing the victims, time and time again.  Mostly what I see are victims having to leave the family unit in order to heal; for the family unit is broken and useless in guiding them towards healthy boundaries.

    It's brokenness is that abuse is within the family.

    Members are sexually abusing members…and there is silence and shame.

    How can you keep the family together, when it is broken, and believe that you are against abuse?  When abuse doesn't shatter the family structure, it is the clearest sign that it is built upon abuse…it is the 'normal' ingredient in your family.

    Each of us has to look openly and honestly as to how do we support negative treatment within our lives and homes.  This isn't just the responsibility of the Justice System, this is the responsibility of each of us…we all play a part of stopping it or letting it go free into the life of another child.

    What part are you playing?

     

     

     

  • Another Level of Learning.

    I am exploring different avenues to sell art online…should I use Etsy or Square, have it on this blog, or begin a new Imperfect Lady Shop, and, then what to sell and how. This part is work and hurts my brain…and one that I have been putting off for a long time.

    I thought I would need the place to put the art, before actually sitting down and creating inventory.  I have quilts to sell, but not boxes of Cards or sizes of Prints or a Calendar etc.  Geeze Louise, there are options to the options!  But, first I have to know what I want to sell and then find a sight to plop down my Art.

    Each site will take a percentage, but they have the framework in place to make uploading new items, having a shopping cart and a way to pay…and then to deposit the money to me.  

    I guess, I can start slow and add as I go…I can overwhelm myself with the possibilities!

    Here is a quilt that I started last December…all that was done was the background and borders….this year I added the trees and Lady.

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    This picture is blury, but it shows the whole quilt…

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    I know it is early, but she has been half complete for almost a year!

    And, then I also worked on a new one…(both these were quilted at a quilt retreat – two days of quilting)

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    I have been wanting to add metal, and here are some washers painted and added onto a string….not so sure, if this is what I was feeling, but it is a start.

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    She seems the most daring…I love her hat and hair….well her whole demeanor.

    I can easily now, plop down photographs on the blog, and hopefully soon become real adept at doing the same for selling online.  

    My first task is to create a calendar…and a box set of cards. Now, to pick 12 Ladies…and perhaps a quote for each month. And, see the costs and if there would be interest….

    I will learn as I go….for now the road ahead seems dark and unmarked.  But, once I travel it a few times, it will brighten up.

    Sharing my ladies online…has taken some really neat twists and turns or maybe not so online, but simply sharing.  Here's too another level of learning!

     

  • Changes who you are.

    In the past few years, I have noticed, that people use November as a month of gratitude, and the lists are of typical nice things, good things, easy gratitudes, if you will, to notice, but rare is it something bad with a silver lining.

    It leads me to wonder if this gratitude month exercise would be more beneficial to find something good you learned from something bad.

    Being grateful for kindness seems just too easy…like it isn't a challenge, that it doesn't require you to sweat or change or require courage.

    Being grateful for unkindness and how it changed you, seems to make you go deeper into life…forcing you to see yourself and the world with new eyes.

    The exercise of recognizing the good as good seems so easy, it appears pointless.

    Now, how would it be to pull apart your day and take out the tough spots and work with them until you can see their gifts?  This, I believe would be a much more meaningful lesson in gratitude; to be grateful for everything…not just in the beautiful and loving.

    For it is in the darkness that we truly can see why it arrived, what its message is, and what it is here to tell us about ourselves. In my experiences, the darkness always brought back to me a part of myself that was absent in my life.  

    To me, this kind of gratitude would change the world.

    I am grateful for the courage I have to speak my mind, my feelings, especially when it would be easier to be silent.

    I am grateful for the strength to walk differently; when it would be easier to join the masses.

    I am grateful for being able to stand out and be one with my truths…when I would be more accepted if I did not.

    I would like to start a new trend, and have it be everyday; to be grateful for the hardest parts of our lives…for it would change the inner core of everyone who did this exercise.

    I recognize, that many folks move along their days, not even recognizing the good, but more often than not, it is in the dark times, we truly get lost.  That perhaps if we all knew, it was then the greatest gifts were given, we would stop and search until we became grateful for each moment of darkness…which always comes bringing gifts.

    The darkness is the greatest teacher and if used correctly, can return aspects of yourself that you have given away…or have been stolen with force or power or brainwashing.  

    My toughest times have brought me back to me.

    I am grateful I have been willing to go where most flee from; to sit in the deepest darkest part of me and see its brightness…to see that imperfect is I am Perfect, coming from whence I came.

    When you can see the perfection in the darkness….that gratitude is beyond what the mind can hold.  It is felt in each cell and changes who you are.

     

  • Didn’t Value Me.

    Rob Bell is an author, who is reflecting my experiences with the juxtaposition between being a God created wonderful intricate moving living breathing piece of Art, and then what my church and parents believed about me.

    The space between is wide and expansive, the differences are too huge to even comprehend.

    My old self, the one of the church's teachings was that I was wretched and a sinner. My parents actions shown me I wasn't worthy. Hence, my self- image grew from my parent's eyes and in the eyes of the church…they matched each other.

    After leaving the church and family, I began to search for who I was…already knowing to the depth of my being, who they thought I was, but was this true?  I knew that their idea or view of me wasn't correct in how it matched reality; for I wasn't the one who created the family of dysfunction, at least not in my family of origin, however, I had taken their model and began to recreate it in my home.  

    My unworthy feelings about myself….were being passed on to my children. 

    I began to question everything; me, my church, my family, my mothering….nothing was beyond my reach.  Everthing was torn apart to find its goodness.  And I pretty much came up empty.  I had to start from scratch, rebuilding, relearning and reteaching and redoing….in order to not replicate unworthiness.

    The book, Velvet Elvis understands my total transformation….from old to a new me…he is able to show how the religions are upside down.

    Rob Bell is flipping the church on its head.

    Taking the model of christian and showing its flaws and the way it isn't right with God in how He sees us.

    Here is a part that struck me from the "Velvet Elvis".

    "These first Christians kept insisting that something so transformational was happening in the lives of followers of Jesus that they could refer to their old lives as "the life (we) once lived."

    "It is not that we are perfect now or that we will never have to struggle. Or that the old person won't come bcd from time to time. It's that this new way of life involves a constant, conscious decision to keep dying to the old so that we can live in the now."

    "Paul describes it as Christ being our lives."

    "Paul go so far as to insist in another letter that if we are having this new kind of transforming experience with Christ in which we are taking on a new identity, we are literally now a "new creation".

    "I am being remade."

    "I am not who I was."

    "I am a new creation."

    "I am "in Christ."

    "When God looks at me, God sees Christ, because I'm "in" him.

    "God's view of me is Christ."

    "And Christ is perfect."

    "This is why Paul goes on to say, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy, and dearly loved."

    "Did you catch that word in the middle?" "Holy" "Not, "going to be holy someday." "Not, "wouldn't it be nice if you were holy, but instead you're a mess." But, "holy".

    "Holy means pure, without blemish, unstained." "In these passages we're being told who we are, now."

    "The issue then isn't my beating myself up over all the things I am not or the things I am doing poorly; the issue is my learning who this person is who God keeps insisting I already am."

    "Notice the words from the letter to the Philippians: "Let us live up to what we have already attained."

    "There is this person who we already are in God's eyes. And we are learning to live like it is true."

    "This is an issue of identity. It is letting what God says about us shape what we believe about ourselves. This is why shame has no place whatsoever in the Christian experience. It is simply against all that Jesus is for. As the writer to the Romans put it, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

    "None." "No Shame." "No list of what is being held against us." "No record of wrongs." "It has simply been done away with." "It is no longer an issue." "Bring it up is pointless." "Beating myself up is pointless."

    "Beating others up about who and what they are not is going in the wrong direction. It is working against the purpose of God. God is not interested in shaming people; God wants people to see who they really are."

    "Let us live up to what we have already attained." "I am not who I was." "You are not who you were." "Old person going away, new person here, now." "Reborn, rebirthed, remade, reconciled, renewed." "Jesus put it this way. "You are in me and I am in you." Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis

    What is so shocking to me is that I now agree with the Bible and its teachings.  I no longer feel so repelled by it.  I was repulsed and nauseated by the way the FALC used its words…and/or the teachings of Jesus and kept wiping the pedophiles clean.

    It wasn't teaching the worthiness of innocence.

    It wasn't teaching we are holy.

    It was completely the opposite….to the point that evil is treated better than good folks.

    I know as shocking as Rob Bell is to many, it is only because you have believed and bought into your own unworthiness and wretched sinning value….AND, that the church is there to save you….so when you die, you find Heaven.

    I found Heaven on earth, by leaving the church, and walking away from people who didn't value me.