I M Perfect lady

Category: FALC

  • I Hope I Never Recover.

    As I thought about the word, RECOVERY, and what that truly meant for a child of abuse, I had to first look up its meaning. 

    Recovery, "Return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength…"

    Perhaps the burden to return to normal is what is truly felt by each child who has a parent expecting it to be so.

    When I look at the overall picture of abuse, I see the abuser not being asked to recover his normality, yet he is granted it.  In fact, most will not even put him into the category of being NOT normal.  And the child instead has to work to make Him (the abuser) normal in her mind.

    Oddly, my father didn't have to recover anything, for he never lost his original position as father.

    I however, felt the strain and stress of their annoyance and disappointment, that I could not recover my original state of mind.  I wasn't able to return him to father, and it wasn't HIS problem, but mine.  I am still in 'recovery'…is how they see it.

    I am not normal.  I haven't returned back into the family.  I refuse to fall into line.

    Child abuse is a crime that doesn't just affect the child. The wound ripples into the family, for it is usually someone they know and of that 50% a family member.

    The abuse shows the abscess in the family unit.  But, what usually happens, all look upon the child as the abscess, and not the abuser…and not the family as a whole.

    The legacy of this disease is that the family structure isn't seen as the problem and NOT the child.

    Expecting the child to only recover its normal state of mind, is to be in a huge state of denial.  The child, in my opinion is the one with the least amount to recover.  They are the ones saying what is wrong.  Usually, they speak up and then…nothing happens.

    No family implosion…there is perhaps a bit of wobbling, but the family unit doesn't fall down.  It stays standing.  They will Bless the 'sins' of the abuser….and return to work as usual.  

    And the child is expected to return to a normal state of mind…and slip back into the family with an abscess of abuse still alive, well and even in the home.

    In my case, I had to make the abscess normal and Me not normal.

    Recovering my normal state of mind was only gotten, by me leaving behind the family.

    If a family doesn't implode, the child has to leave…in order to recover.

    If a family imploded, it would show that they believed the abuse happened and it AFFECTED the family.  It took a once normal family unit and infected it. Yet, more often than not, the reactions of the family – Not imploding- is what set the child up to be the only one who sees this as wrong.

    Yet, in order to fit back into the family unit, you have to make up something in your mind to make it okay.  Usually, you are a child without a healthy adult supervision, so you make up the most plausible story…and return to a 'normal' family.  Never knowing you have just done what your relatives before you did.  Make abuse normal.

    If indeed, you stick your ground and refuse to recover the family unit, you will be ostracized.  You become the abscess.  You are not recovering…and seen as still being 'affected' by abuse.  Like, I haven't gotten over it yet.

    What they fail to appreciate is that I can't recover my dad or my mom.  They have been completely changed when I was abused.  By him abusing me and she did nothing. That is my abscess I can't recover from.

    Not the actual act of sex.

    It is the meaning of mom and dad.  I won't recover and return to my original state of mind.  I refuse to call them mom and dad.  Until I do, I am seen as not recovered.

    Looking for a child to return to their normal state of mind, to me means….to get back to the original relationship. And in order to do that the child has to give up their truth and pretend it didn't happen.  I still have a dad…and mom.

    It is my intent to never recover.

    I want to always remain connected to the truth of my past.

    When I look upon the way the FALC dealt with abuse, they make you recover quickly by the forgiveness of sins.  You are not allowed to remember, but made to forgive and forget.  You quickly MUST recover and return to the 'normal' state of mind.  

    The third party that failed me was the church.  Its foundation is created by washing away the image of abuse, to return my father back into a father. They never kept him as a pedophile, but washed his actions away.  They recovered his father image…and in doing so made me a liar.

    In order to be a good christian, I must return him to father…and her to mother.  Remember, "Honor thy mother and thy father…"

    I hope I never recover.


     

  • Notices the Lies.

    While listening to Debbie Ford talking to Oprah, she had an acronym for Denial; "Don't Ever Notice I Am Lying".  

    Isn't that clever?  

    And how often do we play this game, not only with ourselves, but with others as well.  We either say things we don't mean or mean things we don't say…we get in the habit of not speaking our truth, no matter how small and insignificant, we embellish it by not letting it just sit there in its glory….we lie.

    Who knew, lying is denial….

    When I think of the word denial, it was to put people in a state of not being aware.  I didn't put them actively participating in leaving reality; by saying what isn't true for them.

    It makes denial a less passive sport.  It makes it a personal activity.

    Most often, we know that our truth will ruffle feathers and sends ripples of waves in our 'close' relationships, so we hope they don't notice "I am lying".

    What I even believe, is that denial is rampant state of being, we are so used to saying not what we mean, that it is incredibly hard to not lie.

    To just say it as it is.

    We are addicted to the false sense of comfort of lies.

    This is especially true when you were born and raised in dsyfunction.  You don't really, really really want to know you are 'not normal' or that your family is not anywhere near the state of wellness.  You began living in this state of lies in order to survive your childhood, and then forgot to remember it was all lies.

    There has to be only two states of being. Denial…and lies or Truth and no lies.

    It isn't that we set out to be liars, but when abused, we are told to lie and lying becomes our way of being.

    We lie about how we feel, about not being afraid, about who we love, who we trust, we lie.  We lie in order to keep our worlds looking the same.  The world stays the same and inside we lie.

    Denial on the inside…so our worlds on the outside don't collapse.

    We then live rotting on the inside, while the outside has a mom and a dad, not a pedophile and his accomplice.  It is easier to lie, than it is to sit and feel the brunt of feelings and emotions that arise with the knowing of reality.

    My denial was brought into the open when my father was exposed as a pedophile, all my lies were found out.  I was a liar.  

    I would have thought our whole family would have been forced out of denial, but instead some were able to keep on lying.

    It was incredible and extremely frustrating and maddening and still is today…to witness the strength of denial.  And in order for them to keep up the lies, they can't participate in life with me.  I see now, I notice.

    I do notice their lies…which is what they push away from.

    I have had the opportunity to see my family and religious community in action when you bring up the words abuse or speak of pedophiles…They won't bring it in.

    I understand to my bones, how impossible it would be for a small child to wake up these folks, for I have been trying to piearce their denial…and have failed.

    They keep lying to themselves…over and over, flinging back the truth and saving the lies. Their whole lives are built upon a rotting foundation and they will work on the rotting structure, making it appear undamaged…while damage runs free.

    I am utterly impressed with the volume of lies folks believe.

    And I have become the liar in their midst, while they cling to the image of father and mother.  Something has to be wrong, so it is I.

    I am the lie.

    And he is the truth…as a father, not a pedophile.

    In order for the lies to work, I am not telling the truth…they are or he is, or my mother is truthful and I am a liar.

    They will deny my words and cling to the rotting family tree.

    My experience of them is that I am the one to stand clear of and they have.  Step back from the abused and step towards abusers to protect their own lies.

    Even within the church, the churches hierarchy will not even begin an inside investigation, words of abuse falls on deaf ears.  Who are they protecting???  Not the children, so then who?

    It came to me yesterday, Sunday when the church is full, that they too are hoping "Don't Ever Notice I Am Lying".  The church is lying. It lies when it says it can make the sins disappear.

    It is lying.  

    And yet, bring abuse there and you will be treated like a liar, no one believes you…yet they believe enough to bless it away.

    Their business is to bless away reality, kinda like denial.  Hoping no one notices the lies.


  • I believe

                                "Believe, that I believe."  Cheryl Richardson

    My Lady quilts are back in the basement, their debut over, my coming out out.  

    It almost feels like the past two days, was about me going over the finish line, the ending of a birth…or even a return to just living.  For it seems like I have been on a dual journey, healing and living at once…with the emphasis on healing… and living was secondary.  It is like a huge job or task has come to an end.  

    Like I was in labor for 7 years and have just given birth.

    It is like I have been in mourning and creating a baby at the same time….and the quilts have equal emotions of sorrow and joy.

    A close friend and I were talking, and she shared with me how moved she became when trying to tell others about my journey, she couldn't get past the lump in her throat after a few quilts.  The emotion and feelings I had while creating them, are still there, lodged in the fibers, like my pain was removed from me and is now residing there, along with hope, confusion, lost self, etc.  They seem to connect with the subconscious places within…

    I hadn't counted on them being "moving" or that it would require others to feel so intensely.  I was amazed that friends who have been on this journey with me, who have witnessed huge portions of it, are still taken a back.  

    It was so unexpected…I was chuckling in the profundity of it all.

    Marveling at temerity of The Lady.

    I was laughing with my friend, but about The Lady… not her lack of composure.  

    It seemed absurd, that My Lady seemed to pull endless amounts of emotional energy, always deeply moving, no matter how familiar they are with me.  She still reaches deep.

    She never fails to elicite a reaction of the spirit.

    I am in awe of her power as well, it is way beyond me.

    I now feel like she is a complete set, that my work on getting her to her full power is done. 

    I created her and she created me, and we are both in a place now, where the deep excavating is over, we dug deep and rebuilt well.

    It was like my job was to create her and in doing so would heal me.  If at any time I would have stopped, we both would have been left incomplete.  I had this feeling of not being able to stop, that I was driven to create her.  It wasn't an option.

    Just as it wasn't an option to make a different choice, each time I was presented with following my truth or denying.  Truth was the only answer.  Just as working on ladies wasn't an option.  Nothing and I mean nothing else would raise my inner joy as she would.

    As I worked on My Lady; I was working on fixing my wounded self.  

    I see the story line quilts almost like x-rays of my wound being healed.

    While she filled my vessel with gallons of joy; she also carried away tubs of sorrow.

    Her and I are one.

    I can talk about myself in the third person when I have My Lady…she allows me to show my scars in an artful way.  She isn't scary like an abused child is, when you have no way of 'fixing' her.

    I know, to the depth of my being, to the first stitches of My Lady, that we are meant to be used to offer hope, to explain the affects of abuse and to display the journey out of the darkness, to show that it is possible to make it all the way out.

    We will never be able to erase a part, nor do we want to.  If we took out one quilt the story would be broken.  

    The beauty of My Lady, is that she began at zero, a nothing, worthless and faceless, she was born after her life of lies about destroyed her.  All she had was the love of quilting art…everything else about her was a lie.

    I had to create me again.

    My Lady walked with me, held my hand, kept joy when I was swimming in sorrow.

    Certainly, there were times when my life wasn't a life, but her life was filled with great mystery and excitement.

    Now my life and her life seem equal.

    We are both standing at the edge wondering what is next.

    When creating My Lady quilts, I would be intrigued in seeing if I could get her to sit down, to ride in a kayak, or dance and do yoga…now she will be seeing what she can make me do.

    Already, we have a book.

    We were featured in a quilt show.

    We have a second engagement scheduled for August 9th.

    We are gaining fans.

    I feel, and have always felt, she had magic, that she was of the Universe…that we were destined to be.

    It was for me to experience my life exactly as it has happened.

    That I have met the right people at the right time, all of them are handing me off to the next group, raising me higher and higher.  

    There is wind beneath My Lady and I that I am not in charge of.  Its course is already in the stars.

    What a ride, what a horrifying joyful ride…and I believe that the real work is about to begin, that My Lady and I are now ready to do what we were created to do, our life's purpose.

    As Cheryl Richard's quote says, "Believe, that I believe."  I have believed in My lady, always.  I have put my faith and my hope and my dreams and my life in her.

    I am her, I believe.

    IMG_3321
    Photograph by Hannah Jukuri


  • To Be Heard, Believed and Loved.

    Yesterday afternoon, I went to see my display with a girlfriend, one who has heard hours and hours of my life story, who is very close to knowing and understanding me, and yet…when she stood in front of my quilts, she began to see me more clearly…and was blown away by the story unfolding in my quilts.

    By the fifth quilt, she was in tears.

    I had her twin girls and we browsed the rest of the show to let her read, see and feel the display.

    It is like a magical story line, an incredible unbelievable 7 year art project, created in the darkness and sometimes out of order.  Yet when it all together it reads like a novel, but is actually non-fiction and raw at its core. And even I, who created it, feel the incredulousness of it all.

    How is it possible to show how it is when you don't know how it is.  

    To know how insignificant you are, while not knowing it, yet create that image.

    And to chronicle the journey unbeknownst to yourself.  It is like writing your memoir without writing it.

    As we stood there, other women happened by.  I talked to a women, who listened and gave me a hug before we parted. She took a slip of the WIND info.

    I have heard from the quilt ladies, that women want to buy the book, ask about what patterns I used…are talking how truthful and out there I am…  My Lady is causing ripples of conversations.

    My friend didn't want to leave the display, she wanted to tell the new comers about the story, about the Lady and I.

    It was good for me to go and to witness the reactions of women as they were stopped by My Lady.  I love that she demands your attention, she is hard to walk by. Even her beginnings are striking…with no woman present.

    As I strolled through the rest of the show, I saw wonderful fabrics and patterns intricately pieced together with mountains of patience and time…and behind each piece stood a woman or man, trying to execute perfectly their vision.  I call these quilts normal quilts.  I never could do this.  It is very hard for me to follow a pattern, I get agitated and stressed trying to follow an exact way.  It doesn't feel good for me. I feel immediate rebellion.

    What is so odd or not, is that following a pattern feels like a prison to me.

    I am sure, coming from where I came, (cult like religion full of rules and regulations of what you can do and what is absolutely forbidden) I need a place to escape, and I choose quilting for my free expression.

    And when my life fell apart and I wasn't able to express how I felt to those who I wanted to listen, I spoke in my quilts…my feelings were being expressed, I felt heard.

    Abuse wants our silence, so this was another way to be outspoken.

    I needed an avenue to be heard.

    Now I am taking it to main street.

    I love that my Lady has an audience.

    I love that people stop and listen.

    What all abused children need is an ear to hear, and eye to see and a hand to hold.

    My Lady is holding court…her feelings are flowing forth, and she is getting a loving reaction.  No one can silence and ignore her now.

    This is the wish of every abused child….to be heard, believed and loved.





  • One Less Suffering Soul.

    In reading the Extoots.blogspot.com post today, I felt the two sides of leaving a very strict religion and the joy outside of it, how it is twofold, for you have to reconcile the beliefs you were raised in, while integrating yourself into what was preached as a sinful world; to go out and explore what it offers as well as engaging with folks outside of religion; to open up and trust yourself and them.

    I love to read how others are managing the entry into the great big world and how it feels.

    It wasn't that I was not out in the world, but it was my viewpoint of those outside of the religion, this deep seeded belief we were taught to believe, that arose in the face of anyone outside of the church.

    They are pre-judged by the preachers…all put into one category, dumped into a depository labeled Worldly and Sin Full; people going to Hell.

    What is so liberating and thrilling is to greet the world and let them show you who they are; to arrive empty waiting to receive what they have to offer…to sit with an open mind…to not feel their inevitable doom, but instead see them as fellow travelers on this journey called life…equal.

    When you can see others as free spirits, you are seeing yourself in them.

    You are free.

    What a tragic crime so many religions preform, when they gather groups of people and toss them away…by filling our minds with beliefs we were too young to ward off.

    Our invitation to the living in the world had so much of it off limits and filled with sin and evil…it was a fearful place to be.

    And yet, at the same time, the church had this haven like description, while it preached against so much of life.  It didn't allow for most of living…what it wanted most was a crippled version of our selves.

    Stunted and deformed.

    When we do exit these cult like religions, it is like we get new eyes in which to see. Eyes that are not covered by the preachers words of sin.

    Hard to wrap your brain around, unless you were raised with this mutilated view of the world.

    What I love is the experiences that are written about the horrors of what we were taught, and then the delights to go out and explore and see what was labeled Evil is really Joy, Love and Peace…and that the Evil was in the church.

    To watch the dawning and feeling their joy…the freedom that is hard won, the reward for leaving!  And I know, there is one less suffering soul…



  • Wrong View of Life

    ‎"The mind composed of ignorance or wrong view suffers from spiritual disease; it sees falsely. Seeing falsely causes it to think falsely, see falsely and act falsely. You will see that everyone, without exception, has the spiritual disease." Ajahn Buddhadasa

    "In Pali, the ancient source language of Buddhism and Hinduism, the word for mental illness means "wrong view". We must be careful not to interpret this righteously, as in, If you see things differently than I, you are wrong. The wisdom lies here in the revelation that our wellness of mind hinges on how clear and true we remain to the pulse of life itself." Mark Nepo

    I have said about myself, that I had a "mental breakdown" when actually I was going through a change of view.  I was beginning to see things clear and true…being at one with the pulse of life itself.  

    I love this for it makes complete sense to me.  It wasn't that life was wrong, but rather my mind was comprised of ignorance and it then seen life falsely, which had me speaking and acting falsely.

    I find great peace in reading this for it matches my experience.  

    Here is another paragraph;

    "At heart, our mental health comes out of the sacred relationship between our deepest Self and the very source of life.  The moment we distort, limit or rationalize things away from what they truly are, we start to experience the spiritual disease that Ajahn Buddhadasa speaks of."

    This is why I am so vigilant if you will to try and align myself with what is, to not try and distort or rationalize or change the way things truly are; my mental health depends on it.

    Of all of Mark Nepo's writing this has to be number one for me, for it echos my experience of the mind and how it can have a wrong view of life.



  • Born this Way.

    Tony Robbins spoke about being Feminine…a viewpoint I wasn't aware of.

    I never thought of where our feminine natures came from or how they were inspired or nurtured…and learned; that if a woman has to be the one in control, who is required to be strong, she is neglecting her soft side.

    I have been exploring my feminine side now for the past 7 years.  This side was eclipsed from me.

     As a child it wasn't a safe place to be.  

    My being feminine was the very source of my abuse.  My father liked little girls…to satisfy his sexual desires.  It wasn't safe to be feminine.  It was scary to be soft and vulnerable.

    And, my body knew no one was in charge.  I had no one who was stronger than I. My mother wasn't able to respond to my abuse.  My father wasn't able to not hurt me.  It is no wonder that my feminine side was sorely neglected.  I had to be the tough one.

    I knew I didn't have access to this vulnerable soft nurturing self, but I just thought I was born this way…It was good to hear how I grew this way.

    I also feel that I am now able to relax and be feminine…that I can actually have both sides of being human.  

    I learned to be strong in my choices, to stand up for my feelings, instead of being strong while being in abusive relationships. 

    There is an ocean of difference between the two.

    Being strong while being subjected to abuse language or actions isn't strong, it is being without a choice.  Unable to move or to have free expression, isn't strong, it is a frozen victim.

    To be able to extricate yourself, to begin to move after years of remaining frozen is a task that will require great strength and inner fortitude, but it can be done.

    It will be seen as a weakened state, to tuck tail and run…seen as a traitor to the family etc, but it will awaken the feminine soft and vulnerable side within you.

    As you begin to make choices, the emotions, which I heard yesterday means to move.  Your emotions will come alive, you will begin to move and be moved by feelings.

    This frozen state we are put in when we have no choice but to withstand the blows, leaves us without access to our emotions.  We have to squelch them in order to not be hit or shuned or kicked out.  Hide our emotions and don't move.  

    Once we start moving and feeling and following our emotions, we will be reconnected inside.  I didn't have to go and find these feelings, these feelings began to feel free to be expressed. 

    Years worth of crying was stored inside of me.  Years worth of feelings bubbled to the surface. 

    I wasn't born cold and unfeeling, I was that way in order to please my parents…I had to make no moves, emit no emotions; I couldn't be unruly in the chaos, I had to be the calm in the storm.

    I had to make our family look normal…by being a 'good' girl.

    Imagine the task at hand for a young child…to dissolve a pedophile and his knowing wife and create them to be normal folk.

    The same strength it took to try and create this image is the exact strength I used to tear it down. To sit down and not lift a finger to paint them pretty, but to let them be in their raw glory.

    A family of abuse.  We looked like it, talked like it, stood like it, acted like, lived like it, and yet we had to be silent and pretend it wasn't happening…frozen in a land of impossibilities.

    I am seen as unruly, acting untoward in regards to family.  I am the oddity, the black sheep, the cold hearted bitch, by literally being able to move.  I am no longer frozen and stuck, I am free to say and feel and act in the manner in which it suits my truth.

    Again, I have a hard time trying to picture my old life…but can feel the heavy garment of restraint I lived under.  Like trying to be joyful and free, while wearing a iron suit of armour.

    We don this garment in order to protect our soft sides…pushing down and back all our emotions and walk in the world minus our feelings.

    Like little army men ready for battle hits.

    I also recall the day my suit or armour crumbled, when I shook and the truth was able to penetrate beneath this armour, when my feelings hooked up with the truth, the suit of armour fell away.  

    I recall feeing so helpless and vulnerable, so naked and raw, like a newborn child…with nothing to protect me but the truth.  It seemed so flimsy.

    Yet its strength is stronger than my former suit of armour…it penetrated it.

     It broke it.

    My suit of armour that I used to survive was called pretend…denial.  A fantasy that I created.

     My feminine side lay beneath the armour.  It was reborn the moment someone else seen my truth.  My truth came out in the papers, on the news on TV, it wasn't so much my father was a pedophile, but that it was he, who stole my feminine side.  I didn't know it was wrecked and stuffed away.  I thought I was born this way.

    IMG_8250
    Photograph by Hannah Jukuri

     I love that my feminine side is coming out in quilts…the Lady!






  • Speaking Up.

    What hope the Sandusky's conviction has for victims of childhood sexual abuse. It shows that there is no organization that is too big to hide a pedophile, that eventually it will come out in the wash. Imagine 48 counts…and 45 guilty verdicts.  

    This gives me great hope for the children in the FALC.  That one day their sexual abusers will have the light of the world shining upon them.  All it takes is for one to step forth, it lends courage for others to join, there truly is strength in numbers.  

    I can't imagine sitting in that jury box hearing story upon story…some boys were abused 100 times.  

    What makes this trial even more significant, is that it is boys. The courage it takes to be a man and speak of acts done to you as a child is extremely hard, let alone against an organization that is male dominated…a football team.  They are heros that came forth and use their lives to stop this man…

    It just fills me with hope that there are no organizations out there who are immune.

    Of course the organization that I want to see investigated is the church.  To have children of the church line up and speak their truth…no matter what age they are now, it will change the tide for the next generations.

    One voice starts the conversation…opens the door for others to walk through.

    Tom Rosemurgy or Dial Help will listen and hear your truth.

    It matters not how long ago, it matters that the silence is broken.  Someone has to be first.  

    Silence just builds a longer lineup of victims.

    Let your voice be the first. Dare to step forth and tell someone.  Dare to move where in the past you didn't.  It doesn't matter when you moved, but that you moved.  You didn't stay frozen forever, you will begin to take your life back from abuse when you tell someone.

    The fear is that telling nothing will happen and no one will believe.

    In your silence you can bet that nothing will change. You can't know what the road will look like, when you speak. 

    It will set you free…you will no longer be frozen in the land of silence and fear.

    You will activate your choices when you tell.

    You will stop being a victim when you speak. 

    Being a victim is a person without a choice.

    The perpetrators want you to remain silent and frozen…it allows them to continue to lure and play sexual games with children.

    When you can activate yourself out of the frozen fear, children will have a chance.

    It is like an insane game that we use to do in childhood, where if you were tagged by one team, you would have to freeze.

    The pedophile is in power if you freeze and for as long as you freeze.  When you are able to move and go against His/Her wishes, you are no longer under his spell, his control, and power.  You literally get your power back when you can tell someone.

    No matter the outcome, being unfrozen will start the process of going from victim to survivor and hero.

    It is my greatest hope that this Sandusky trial will move others, that it shows the impossible is now possible.

    Make a move, write an email, make a call, a little child who is next in line…will notice.  Their lives will be affected by your call.  It is never too late to be a hero in a child's life, especially if that child is you.  The child within you needs you to say your truth.

    Say what you need to say…Tom will listen.  Even if you are shaking in fear…being fearless, is to feel the fear and terror, but do it anyway.

    Trembling and fear, is showing you that it is true…your truth wants to come out. Let the courage of the men at Penn State fuel you…and know that one call can start a ball rolling in a new direction.

    For years Sandusky had his way with boys….and now it is completely in a new direction.  He no longer is in power.  He wouldn't stop on his own.  Someone has to be brave enough to speak to get the abuse to stop.  Let it be you…and others will join your chorus.

    In my nieces case, she spoke up and 9 other girls followed.  Unlike Sandusky, the prosecutor didn't put us on the stand, didn't  try my father on 10 cases, but only one. It is the act of a poor prosecutor, ironically or not, a member of the FALC.  And no matter how the trial ended, the fact that we were innocent, when he was shown as a pedophile.

    I am hopeful that this will trend, that more adult children will finally have their say…breaking the silence is the only way this will stop.

    Break the silence and change the game for the pedophiles…your voice will start the process to freeze them out of the lives of children.  They need to be stopped, and the only way is for the adult children of abuse to start speaking.  Put your past to rest by speaking up.



  • Place of Obliqueness

    Today I pondered the land of obliqueness and if it was actually a kissing cousin to denial, or was it totally different.  (after a conversation with my brother)

    I felt that obliqueness would allow you the comfort of not committing…while actually knowing where you stood. Is it possible that obliqueness is a form of denail or is it denial of being openly truthful?

    I looked up the definition of the word obiqueness and found this, "The property of being neither parallel or perpendicular, but at a slanting angle….not level or upright; inclined; not straight to the point; not straightforward;"

    Obliqueness has a tone of weakness to me, of declining either side.

    I can see how it has great advantages, of not standing for anything, but being accepted by either side.

    I lived like this, tilted nowhere….until I committed myself to being abused.  Once I did, I no longer could be oblique. I stood upright.

    I can see how we learn to live on a slant, for we are made to lean away from our truths, and even away from theirs.  No one in my childhood home stood directly and distinctly against abuse…all sorta slanted away from it, yet neither could we live totally in the land of love and trust.

    This awkward leaning is being oblique.

    Unable to voice the truth, you learn to just lean away from it.  The truth doesn't go anywhere, nor are you living in the land of wholeness, but rather the space between the two.

    When I stopped leaning, and stood up, many relationships fell down.  For our common field was to be slanted folks.  All in agreement to the slant we lived upon.

    Obliqueness is the silence space that is between the truth that surrounds us.  Not actually open denial, yet not actual open truth. But the cirtuitous place of nowhere.

    I had to look up the word cirtuitous, to make sure that was correct, here is the definition; "1. describes indirect, unclear speech or behavior; 2. having a circular, indirect course."

    This is the place abused children learn to live in…when our truth isn't welcome, we are not welcome, we are sent to obliqueness or in a cirtuitous land.  Our speech, our thought patterns, and our actions are directly impacted by this place.  We form our speech and actions to always remain slanted….slanted away from directness.

    It isn't that we want to live this way, but in order to be accepted, we must.

    In order for their to be peace and a loving family, we slant ourselves away from who we are, our experiences, our feelings and emotions; our truth.

    We can't even know we are doing this. For our slanting began so early in childhood, we never were able to grow standing upright.

    Out of fear we slanted…and now to straighten up, we fear again.

    Fear the outcome of standing to one side…and being direct.

    There was a cost in childhood, and there same cost is present today, even if it is 40 years later.  

    My mother and I had two perceptions, but we both lived slanted.  I from what I felt was the truth and her from hers….in this middle space neither of us had to deal with our lives, we lived obiquely.

    When I no longer was slanting away from my truth, but upright in it, she and I no longer matched.  IF, she were to flop back into her truth, we would once again meet.

    My experience of her is that she wants to keep far away from the truth of her life…while I am clinging to mine…she wants me to come to the land of obliqueness and I am no longer interested in returning there. 

    We are at an impasse.

    We no longer speak the same way.

    I head directly in, while she lives in the noncommittal place of obliqueness.





  • I began at zero.

    The feelings of wanting to be rid of the stain from abuse, leads me to feel that with it I am not okay…that something is wrong, I am not whole or complete; that I am ruined.

    Somehow we have taken abuse to be a huge negative about us, to who we are and how we are seen by others. Shame enters when we are no longer perfect or whole, when we somehow feel damaged.

    We internalize this damage as now being part of who we are, and NOT something that happened to us.

    Unlike sickness or even scars from accidents, the wounds from sexual abuse become a direct reflection upon who we are.  It slides into the soul and its dark energies invade our sense of self worth.

    I am not sure if other abuses do the same thing, but sexual abuse is the one area that is littered with shame and self blame for being victimized.

    We own the crime…because it changes who we are.

    We are no longer the self we were prior, NOR can we return.

    We are forced to live like this now.

    It may be due to the damage to the psyche that sexual abuse seeps into who we are and not something that happened to us.

    Once our psyche is damaged, we feel we are damaged.

    Unlike a broken leg, the psyche is how we perceive the world.  And a broken psyche skews how we see the world now.

    Abuse that comes from friendly fire if you will, causes the deepest wounds.

    In order to maintain the family unit, you have to live with a damaged psyche but not show it. You have to "Honor thy Parents" and in order to do so, you bend or break your psyche to make it so.

    The cost of living with a broken psyche is to keep the pain/abuse hidden and out of view. To remain friendly in an unfriendly zone.

    The pain, fear and lack of trust is present, we just pretend it isn't so. We continue to try and perceive friendly parents.

     To live in a body that knows and a mind that is convinced it isn't so, is to live forward and backwards at the same time.

    The damage to the body heals quickly, but the broken psyche will stay broken until you can see the truth of your abusive home.

    It seems we are in the tightest of spots.  Lose a family or lose your mind.

    What other disease or accident would require such a choice?

    I do know that living in an abusive home and pretending it isn't so, completely messes with your psyche.  I am not sure if it matters, whether your mother hits you or your mother is an alcoholic, the results are the same.  You have to pretend that all is well with thee…that life is the facade that is given to the world and not the truth you have experienced.

    Bending this truth into something it isn't, is the task each little child has to do, in order to honor thy mother and father…and in doing so they dishonor their own psyche.

    I am sitting here today with my psyche unbent, but a family lays in ruin.  It was literally my sanity or them.  

    Somehow we have it more honorable or more loving, more kind and pretty to save a parent and family, than we have to save your own mind.

    The affects of abuse, the literal damage to my vagina healed within days/weeks of the event.  The damage to my psyche went untreated and actually was exacerbated each time my mother treated Ray Huhta like a loving father and husband.

    Perhaps our biggest shame is that we can't, no matter how we try, fix our psyche to match kind illusion that so many adults in our world see.

    "Do you see what I see?"  

    I know that what caused the damage to me, it wasn't the act itself, but the way I had to perceive it…in order to keep a 'loving' family alive.

    At 46 years of age, I discovered my broken mind…and it changed my loving family into a broken one.

    It has taken 7 years and counting to unbend my broken psyche…and each time it straightened out, my family broke even more.

    The contorting you have to do in your mind to change a pedophile into a father, is what a child's mind is forced to do…in order to keep a mother's dream alive…and a father's sickness from being known in the world. 

    I can't begin to begin to begin, to pick up that wreckage and create a loving family.

    I also believe that I have a inner knowing of what a broken psyche looks like, talks like and walks like.  I know mental illness now…and in a dysfunctional family, clarity and truth are its worst enemy.

    This truly is the seeds of dysfunctional…to break the psyche to not see the harm or to turn it into loving kindness.  To not see the harmful parent, but instead see a loving dad or mom.

    You either get a broken family or a broken psyche….pick one.

    To undo this damage is a journey of a million sorrows and huge gulps of calm peace to finally be one with the truth of what is.

    So, what they call psychic blindness, really is to see what isn't there to see.

    To see love instead of abuse.  And in order to keep a loving family alive in an abusive home, you become the abuse, not them.

    You and your sense of self have the value of abuse.

    And they who are abuse get the value of love.

    I began at zero.