Our book club is reading the book, "leaving the Saints" by Martha Beck…this section was particularly affirming to me when I first read her book about five years ago.
She recounts how her life began to make sense after getting the first waves of memories…
Her memory " I am five years old, my hands are tied, and my father is doing something that feels as though it's ripping me in two. I am stretched on my back, legs spread like a frog on a dissecting table, unable to see or understand what is happening, focusing as hard as I can on the cord around my hands, because it distracts me from what is happening elsewhere….The first horrific flashback was like a nuclear detonation. It felt nearly real as if I were actually experiencing the original event, as though the nerve impulses for perceiving it had frozen into the tissues of my body, never reaching the level of conscious awareness, and were now finally completing their long-delayed journey…"
She also writes about an extremely painful doctors visit that now made sense.
"I am twenty-six, lying in another damned emergency room. The Doctor has just told me that I waited so long to seek treatment for an abscess in the tissues of my perineum (look it up) that he's afraid infection might enter my bloodstream any minute. There is no time to put me under general anesthesia, so he gives me a shot of novocain in a very private place, then hands me a washcloth and tells me to bite down on it. "please don't hate me," he says, and starts operating."
"Numbed by the local, I don't even feel the first incision. But then he sticks a pair of scissors into it, and the pain is just absolutely incredible. I've never felt anything this bad, not in childbirth, not when a dentist accidentally drilled right into a nerve. I am positive that nothing could possibly hurt more than this. Then the Doctor opens up the scissors inside the incision, and I realize I was wrong. And then, oh Lordy. Then he starts to cut."
"Out of all my medical misadventures, this memory stood out most in my mind the day of my first flashback – not just because the injury was related to those badly healed scars, but because the pain during that surgery was the only thing I could compare to the pain my mind and heart felt when the flashbacks started. It wasn't simply the agony and degradation of being raped but, more, the absolute horror of a five year old who has just learned that the universe is ruled by an evil god and that this god seems to have commanded the most beloved and powerful figure in her life to destroy her in a manner much more devastating than death. "We all have our little sorrows," said my Allusion Manager, quoting screenwriter Ronald Harwood even at this awful pass, "and the littler you are, the larger the sorrow." Martha
What I find so remarkable is that the physical pain is of a lesser degree in devastation compared to knowing that your father is capable of doing such awful things.
That knowing is by far worse than any bodily discomfort. The body will heal and the pain goes away….but the knowing who your father is and what he is capable of doing does not go away.
No scar will form over this knowing…it stays an open wound.
What is also comforting in a very horrific way is how she too experienced the time travelers that brought forth the exact feelings from her childhood.
When my niece spoke up stating that my father abused her, my body responded before my mind could comprehend. It shook and was filled with terror in every cell. I knew without a shadow of doubt that she spoke the truth. I too could not stop the mental tumblers from clicking into place and my life began making sense in a horrifying way.
Her husband too was seeing her in a new light, she began to make sense to him…"That is why you space out when I touch you," he said. "That is why you scream in your sleep. That's why you can never really relax."
And while her direct honesty and openness about her abuse may be very disturbing, it is very comforting for an abused child of abuse. It Makes us make sense.
We make sense coming from whence we came…
Blog
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Coming From Whence We Came…
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The Principle Won, always.
While reading in “Shattered Dreams” by Irene Spencer, I came upon a paragraph that struck a cord within me.
She is describing the polygamy Principle, which is commonly known by Principle.
“A teaching that was to have a grave impact on how I lived my life can be summed up quite simply as follows; People may fail the Principle, but the principle itself never fails.”
This is how many folks look upon religion, as seeing how the people fail IT, and not that IT fails the people.
She goes on to write, “My mother lived in a religious no-win situation. She was devoted to a tradition that defeated her.”
Imagine being devoted to something that defeats you?
What struck me as I pictured this girl watching her mother struggle with plural marriage, was in how she didn’t see her mother’s defeat, but wondered more about her own strength to endure…she never considered breaking the chain of polygamy.
My estrangement with my mother happened because I was determined to break the chain of mothering as she mothered. I believe each of us have either the strength to endure and continue on the chain or legacy….or the strength to break the chain.
And there are many women who feel empowered by holding up doctrines and belief systems, while they are defeated by them. What they see isn’t the lack of self, but rather the success of not allowing the belief to die.
I had said that my mother’s greatest strength, was her blindness. And now I understand that her blindness was of her self or what the cost had on her family to uphold the doctrine of the Forgiveness of Sins. That is the Principle of the FALC.
As Irene writes, “…when the children of the covenant lacked the courage to live polygamy for themselves, it was always the fault of the human weakness and sin, never a problem with the Principle.”
My mother never could see any fault with the church and would not hear a word that would go against her Principle Belief. We became invisible to her. Her main focus was always to be loyal to what I feel was helping to defeat her.
Putting her Faith in the Principle (forgiveness of sins) was always a higher need than her own childrens or her own. We came in second, always…and in doing so, it defeated our family from the git go.
We were born into a system where we came second from day one…and there was no way to move ahead, if anything we fell lower on the totem pole as the years went by.
It is very disheartening to see that in your mother’s eyes you stand behind the system that defeated her. And in order to get along with her, you too have to be defeated.
Defeated I left my relationship with her, for she couldn’t see how damaging she was to herself, to our family and to me.
Her beliefs destroyed everything…while holding high her faith in the Principle. The Principle won, always.
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Drink In Their Truths
Mark Nepo writes in The Book of Awakening, “The unwavering truth is that when we agree to any demand, request, or condition that is contrary to our soul’s nature, the cost is that precious life force is drained off our core. Despite seeming rewards of compliance, our souls grow weary by engaging in activities that are inherently against their nature.”
In another section he writes, “It’s taken me thirty of my forty-nine years to realize that not being who I am is more deadly, and it has taken the last nineteen years to try and make a practice of this. What this means in a daily way, is that I have to be conscientious about being truthful and resist the urge to accommodate my truth away. It means that being who I really am is not forbidden or muted just because others are uncomfortable or don’t want to hear it.”
His words affirms how I found myself…first I was given the full frontal view of all the things I had said yes to when I should have said no. All the discomforts I had withstood for the sake of getting along, had grown even more uncomfortable and it seemed some discomforts had whole families of uncomfortable feelings.
It is like all the little mole hill choices grew into mountains as the years went past. That one little situation, that I said yes, when my soul wanted to say no, was now way out of control.
We fail to realize what each little tiny decision means in the direction our lives move and how often we neglect our souls to say yes to comply.
In that brief moment we take the road of least resistance and then ‘forget about ‘ or at least try to. But the things we acquiesced to add up and soon there are a pile of misrepresented items of you.
The total balance sheet of you shows columns of mixed up messages. Saying yes when you mean no weakens who you are and your life has no core value to stand up.
The saying, “if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything,” comes to mind.
Mark Nepo and other masters, authors and teachers are trying to help us find ourselves…and the real self can be found in each authentic response to all of life’s little questions.
What do you want for dinner?
Where do you want to go for a ride?
What movie do you want to watch?
We think we will become enlightened by the deep profound questions, but actually we find ourselves in the small authentic answers.
This also caught my eye…. “Well, it is no secret that slowness remembers and hurry forgets; that softness remembers and hardness forgets; and surrender remembers and fear forgets.”
“It is beautifully difficult to remember who we really are. But we help each other every time we fill up the cup of truth and hold each other up after drinking from it.”
I love beautifully difficult…and holding each other up after drinking our truths.
My life is beautifully difficult and my passion or desire or where I find I am best used is in supporting others as they drink in their truths.
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A False Appearance Called You.
Between the comments, a conversation and reading, it came to me that this isn’t unusual this indirect conversations. And in fact, the bigger the ‘secret’ or point the bigger the fear and the consequences or fall out will be.
There is a payoff for not talking directly, it allows you to be in a pretend safe zone. Get that, a pretend safe zone or a pretend friendship, or a pretend relationship, a pretend love.
A pretend love. What is that?
And how is it that we are more comfortable being a pretend self, than being a truthful one.
I know I was fricking inept when it came to being myself. I had no clue. I was frustrated, anxious, nervous, a mess, a total basket case, BEING me.
How is that possible, that we wear the mask of pretend with ease even if it doesn’t cover up the resentment and fear that lies beneath?
What I know for sure is that we fear a big fall out equal to the level of fear we have IF we were to be ourselves and REALLY say what is on our minds…as well as the size or the extent of the secret.
In my family it was gigantic, earth shattering big.
In other families it is huge and life changing for sure.
But we fail to realize is that it will change the pretend fearful weird exchanges we have with each other to truthful ones.
I recall my sister asking to be my friend on face book (after a four year silence and vast differences)…and being this new frank self…I asked, “why do you want to be my friend and told her she may not like the new me and that she best to go to my blog and read.” She came back and said, “Nope, not that interested”.
While that hurt, it also set us both free from pretending. I didn’t want to begin a second time around with her and leave my frankness behind.
Now it seems quite silly and childish or immature to even entertain the idea of pretending to get along…And that whole sentence is wrong for little children are known for their frankness.
So, maybe it is not silly or childish, but just lingering on junior high, where we will do anything to get along, to be liked, to be part of a group. We pretend to get along and in doing so live a pretend life.
That to me is so tragic, that many many people live their whole lives as somebody else…or for somebody else.
Self loving is not ever having to pretend. I LOVE that.
I used to pretend to have no fear of my father.
I used to pretend that I had no resentment against my mother.
I pretended that she made wise choices or that they didn’t bother me.
I pretended and pretended and pretended, until I lost complete sight of who I was.
I looked up the definition of pretend. “To give a false appearance.”
Yes, I was afraid of my father and I acted like I wasn’t.
Each and every time we pretend or cover up a feeling or not speak our truth, we lose a little bit more of ourselves…and gain more and more of a false appearance.
Who knew that by sparing another you would create a false appearance or false self. And here is the deal, you are only fooling your self that if you don’t address each issue, that they fade away and disappear.
They don’t.
They are with you always.
For your feelings can’t be erased by pretending.
Love can’t be formed by pretending. Friendships are not bonded deeply in pretending. All pretending does is pretend that it isn’t so…when it is.
Isn’t it funny, you thought you were fooling another when indeed you were fooling your self, creating a false appearance called you.
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Point of Conversation
Martha Beck writes (In Leaving the Saints) about the way she was taught to communicate in the Mormon Church, “through continuous indirect communication, I learned that a good Mormon girl doesn’t travel in the dimension of direct communication.”
This is how I believe most of us are taught and then call people who do talk directly and succinctly… bold, brash, cold and even bitter.
Direct communication is scary after talking indirectly and around most sensitive issues, to just say what it is you need to say… feels terrifying.
What I know is that there are reasons we are taught indirectness in our speaking. We are told either by words or actions ‘not to go there’ and we don’t, we learn to talk in a pretend roundabout way.
We say things we don’t mean or feel…and instead say things that are not true…out of fear of getting in trouble if we don’t. Mostly we are taught to shut off our feelings and not to be so sassy and say what is on our minds. We are taught that indirect conversations are best for all concerned, it isn’t good to go to the heart of any issue.
What I know for sure, is that I went along with the indirect conversations in my home and it costs me greatly in the end.
Now, direct open frank conversations are the only ones I care to engage in, the others seem like disconnected words. Words that are not attached to the person or their truths.
I had lived for years believing that words alone were powerful that they had this great impact upon the land, until I learned that unless words are with reality and truth, they are simply just words…meaningless.
Minus meaning or meaning less than what needs to be said.
There is no difference between what I say and what I do, they match.
In the past, what I felt and what I said were worlds apart, like the polar opposites in life. I never felt that I could actually say what I feel, let alone act according to my feelings. I was taught to act against my feelings for the sake and happiness of others, out of love.
If you love someone ‘you spare them your true feelings’ is the gist of what I was taught.
And now I have learned if you love someone they above all deserve your truth.
In the end it boils down to you either have a direct meaningful relationship or you have an indirect one.
Indirect, do you care to guess its meaning? “Indirect, diverging from the direct course, roundabout. Not proceeding straight and to the point or object.”
What I have learned in the past six years is that very few speak directly to the point…most are speaking in roundabout ways, they are trying to skirt the mountain of truths, to spare their feelings and the feelings of others.
In fact, when speaking indirectly you will avoid feelings and miss the point of the conversation.
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Feeling the Unbounded Heart.
In Martha Beck's book, "Leaving the Saints" she writes,
" I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained. I wouldn't give up the journey – not a moment of it. On the other hand I have no desire to live it again."
My journey from not knowing to knowing has equal parts horror and beauty, for it seemed with each new glimpse into the vestiges of evil sprang a new wondrous insight and freedom…
The dichotomy of the polar opposites and how you are plunged into the horrors that you failed to see and or acknowledge to your self, and then the beautiful release from them into the wide-open space of freedom leaves me breathless.
We somehow believe if we sit smack dab in the middle of the horrors of our lives, we will get left there, that you will sink as if in quick sand, but that isn’t so.
If you don’t go into what frightens and scares you, you will live in the space between.
No terror and then no beauty.
You are in the middle land, the purgatory space, neither heaven nor hell…
When you leave the comfortable space of no feelings and dare to walk fearlessly into the emotions and truths you were too frightened to see as a child, it feels alive, electric and the enormity of it all leaves you overwhelmed.
Fear keeps us out of those dark corridors where our unexpressed, unexamined life lives. And by leaving that door closed you live a life that isn’t alive…in its truest sense.
You are forced to live without feelings and free expressions.
Martha is so right…for I too recall the horror and the beauty, the enormity of the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained.
You truly lose the world as you have known it, but you gain a self you have never met.
I lived in this the middle ground for 46 years, where fear kept me motionless, frozen and lifeless. I followed life, but I did not live it freely.
I never wavered from the path of least resistance, I had no individual thoughts and I was not connected to my body and its feelings.
The middle ground certainly will not allow you to see the horrors, but it also keeps from you the intimate beauty of love and freedom.
Stretched into the zone of nothingness…but keeping the static going so you never dip into the terror that lurk at the sidelines of your life… your life’s goal is to remain numb.
You are frozen in place and have no conditions.
No rules of your own, in fact I see this as being a lump, where the dark murky waters can wash over you and you feel not its affect, nor do you try and get out of the way…and sun is shining just above the surface, but you make no move to reach toward it.
It is living and letting all manner of things happen and you don’t move…and the delights of life await and you are unable to reach.
Waking up in this state left me horrified of what I had allowed and how I had not been aware…and as Martha writes about the Lion stage of awakening.
“When we have discovered the hearts capacity to face any situation, the joys and sorrows of existence as they are, we awaken to freedom. Then the Golden Lion speaks with a roar. Out of the mouth of the lion comes the undaunted voice of truth, the liberation of the unbounded heart.”
It is the liberation of the unbounded heart…whereas before it was wrapped up like a mummy unfeeling anything.
And she goes on to say about the third stage of awakening, “In the last stage the lion gives way to the child, to an original innocence. This is the child of the Spirit for who all things are new. For this Divine child there is wonder, ease and a playful heart. The child is at home in reality of the present, able to enjoy, to respond, to forgive, and to share the blessings of being alive.”
(I best give you the first stage as well…”In the camel stage of awakening, we make ourselves available to the Spirit through humility, prayer, repetition, and manual labor)
The first stage was where I spent most of my life, ‘repetition and manual labor…not so much humility or prayer.
The tumultuous unwrapping of going from living life bound up in the beliefs and thoughts and affects of abuse etc, to undoing it all is extremely horrifying and beautiful in equal parts.
Isn’t there a saying from the bible, about ‘what is bound on earth is bound in heaven…? I believe that it is talking about the heart.
There is truly an incalculable preciousness of feeling the unbounded heart.
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We are denied our truth.
Yesterday I listened to the end of The 19th Wife
and heard the ponderings of Brigham Young as he had to explain his marriages to the outside world. The 19th wife was suing for alimony after she left the faith…And it came down to either denying this faith and what he believed or paying the fees to his wife.In order to stand straight with the law, he had to admit that he only had one ‘real’ wife, and that the rest were ‘spiritual wives’.
What was so telling is how he couldn’t take his ‘Faith’ outside of the confines of the church, for it wasn’t recognized there…and how it greatly affected the wives by how he spoke of them.
When he denounced his 19th wife in the laws of the land, they all felt the space open up in their promised spot on his celestial planet…it all evaporated like the marriages did when he walked into the court of the land.
They married him for the sole reason of the afterlife promise.
This poignantly showed the vast contrast to our ‘beliefs’ and how they actually walk in life or when taken outside of the churches environment, how others perceive what we have been taught to believe.
Whether you are talking about polygamy or forgiveness of sins, it is the Belief in them and how they are carriages into the afterlife that steer your world today.
And what is even more striking is the way the Faith has to be left behind in order to comply with the law…
It almost seems like there were two Brigham Youngs, when it came down to the ‘crime’ against women. Inside he was heralded as being a great celestial planet populator, and then in the eyes of the law…he is practicing adultery.
What sat with me for the rest of the afternoon, is how Faith oftentimes isn’t supported by the law and this is why there is the separation of church and state.
But when the practices of Faith harm children or women, you certainly have to question just what is your belief?
In the FALC, the forgiveness of sins equals the belief of polygamy for its ultimate goal is a place in the afterlife.
In order to get to heaven you have to overlook lots of things in the present.
My experience with the forgiveness of sins is that it is the delete button for truth and in order for you to be a good Christian; you have to Believe that it (the sin) is no longer there.
So, in the face of reporting abuse…it is impossible to report something you believe is no longer there.
This twisted concept of changing the truth to serve your afterlife, leave the present in quite a mess.
My father’s abusive ways were seen, and then they were Believed to no longer be there. Only a poor Christian would dare drag up the sins and bring them into the authorities.
It is my humble belief that the ministers and church boards main goal is to keep the system going, in fact they will tell you point blank, if you bring up abuse, “their business is the forgiveness of sins.”
As they practice this ‘Belief’ it leaves the abused child in an awkward state. Abused, but can’t be seen as such.
We walk around with the affects of the abuse, while the ‘abuse’ was deleted.
I am not certain I can again, make this point for it is slippery and fluid, the sleight of hands, the magical waving and distorting the truth….
What I had mistakenly focused on was how others couldn’t seem to see the truth, but they can. In order to bless it you have to see it first. But once you see it, bless it, it then disappears.
How can you bring to authorities what You BELIEVE is no longer there?
Their faith would be tried if they went to authorities…they would be challenging the practice of forgiveness if they stepped forth.
This isn’t about delivering the truth, it is about denying their faith.
The main thrust underneath, the fear or pushing them away from speaking out is all about their afterlife promise…and has nothing to do with the affect that has on the children.
They need to see the children as innocent IF their Faith works. If they see abused children, that will mean their Faith didn’t work.
Again, it sounds insane as I speak of this, of the tragedy and incredible twisted and warped sense of living with this every turning of
reality, but it is so.I lived in this circuitous religion, where nothing was
concrete except the magical Forgiveness of Sins, and the afterlife spot that
this would ensure.It isn’t that truth and reality isn’t present today, it is there, but their belief is stronger in believing that it can be wiped away.
The child then gets left being untreated.
No longer innocent, for it has suffered abuse.
No place to go.
You are either bad for speaking of it…or bad for no longer
having faith, love and trust, in your parents.You are hung in between, in the land of flipping realities
and in both places you are damned, for neither place accepts the truth.And the truth is, you are abused, and someone abused you
and no one will see it for that will mean no heaven for them when they die, so
meanwhile you are unable to be your truth.The people or very few from the FALC will ever go to the
authorities for it will mean they will have to deny their faith, and in doing
so, give up their spot in heaven. It isn't about abuse, but Heaven.In the polygamist religions there are “Lost Boys” for they are the residual affect of the plural marriage, if one old man needs to have
many wives, they certainly can’t have young men around.In the FALC, there are Lost Children.
Children who get left hanging between truth and a deleting
reality…swinging between both poles never fitting in on either end.The religion needs the truth wiped clean.
The abuse lives within us, and we are unable to get rid of
its grip it now has.Lost children hang in the balance when they will not deny
their faith…we are denied our truth. -
Sooner or Later
I had made a comment that sounds like an oxymoron, “Prisoners of Faith”.
The two don’t seem to mix, and churches seem a far cry from prisons, but in my experience, if you are not free to live, you are in a prison of your mind…and even deeper, in your subconscious beliefs.
What most fail to consider is that the way religion is oftentimes presented is with the Fear of God, not with the Love of God.
They frame the confines of religion with fear.
Fear of dying and going to Hell.
Fear of a Judging God.
Fear of the Un-Believers.
We were held together by what we feared, not by what we loved. Fear kept us there, not love.
And still today, millions are prisoners of their ‘Faith’.
In listening to The 19th Wife, fear is the common denominator in what stops you from straying, from going out beyond the confines of your ‘Faith’.
Fear.
Fear is the main ingredient of religion.
Fear that if you don’t obey you will not make it to heaven one day. They live in hell today for a promised Heaven.
Women having a dozen of babies out of fear.
Raised in an environment where fear is the main motivation, you can’t learn how to govern your own life based upon love.
Love is freedom. You fear freedom.
The way the church rules is not based upon love and certainly not with freedom to the masses. The main figurehead or Prophet needs to control and in order to gain control he uses fear.
If he didn’t fear losing control, he would not have any rules.
Rules are only for those who fear losing control.
No one calls these fear-based religions. But clearly they are not based upon love and freedom to be and express and to live.
Prisoners of faith…living in fear, without control of their own lives, sentenced to eternity in hell if they don’t submit to the rules of the Prophet.
The Prophet or the seer of the future is stealing them blind by controlling their lives today.
And they didn’t even see it happen, they lost control of their worlds today, by worrying about what will happen after they die. “Let me have your life…or when you die you will suffer greatly.”
Convincing you that suffering for God today will ensure you a spot in Heaven when you die. Bear this cross today…
Either they rule you by fear of hell or convince you that suffering will bring you to Heaven someday. Either way, today, right now, you have no control or freedom. You are damned no matter which way you turn.
Free today only to die and go to hell.
Live in Hell today for a promised Heaven.
Either way you get hell, it just depends either living or dead.
Guess you’re a prisoner of hell sooner or later.
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Unconditionally loving the Abuser.
As human beings we are used to riding along and adjusting to change, but we are not used to being “the change you want to see in your world” as Gandhi put it.
We want change and we want it now, but we don’t want the change to start with us.
Most of us change only when forced, when death or tragedy impacts our lives, but rarely do we actively make changes.
Besides the lack of being a self-starter, we find it impossible to see the enemies that walk among us, for we have called them friends and family. (This of course is only for those of us who suffered abuse within our family homes, in our friendly neighborhoods, and churches.)
Since 90% of the abuse happens with someone we know, and 50% with family members, that leaves only 10% to be strangers.
The changes that need to happen are folks need to start treating family and friends like strangers.
I know this seems backwards, but so is abuse.
The legacy of abuse will continue to flow in your family unless and until you start treating folks who abuse like enemies of family and love, for they are.
They are not there to instill a safe secure environment, nor sowing love and kindness, they are inside infesting the core values of what family means.
Abusers can’t be treated the same as members of the family who mean no harm.
In order to stop abuse, you all have to stop treating abusers like constructive members of your family, but rather the destructive people they are.
They need to get help, be taken out of the family, isolated…in order to preserve the family’s integrity.
However, in my experience, the child (grown adult child) must leave in order to feel safe, for the perpetrator was not made to go.
He was cared for and protected within the family unit.
This is the sole reason that abuse continues. The family refuses to treat him like a stranger who came in and abused the girls.
And as it stands today, I am treated like a stranger and he like a family member.
This backwards treatment alone keeps abuse going.
Most don’t want to speak up and act like I did, for they know the outcome. So instead of being alone, they will be part of keeping the legacy of abuse going.
What happens is you become a stranger to your family as you fight against abuse…and for most that is too big a price to pay, so they will settle back into the comfortable routine of being a family…unconditionally loving the abuser.
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |||
I M Perfect lady 