I M Perfect lady

I'm perfect – it's impossible not to be.

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about – A Fiber Artist -passionate about women empowering.

  • Useful and Beautiful.

    There was a criteria for organizing your home by which each item has to be useful or beautiful, and the rest released.  (from the book, Simple Abundance, by Sarah Ban Breathnach)

    How interesting to look at your home from those lenses.  I have way too much stuff that is just simply stuff.  I will reduce the useless energy and extra work that the stuff adds to my life….It is like clearing out weeds to see the beauty that you enjoy.

    I will be able to see the real things I love and use, when I get rid of the things that have a weak reason to be in our home.

    I have emptied walls and drawers for cleaning purposes, but will take the time to filter out the things I no longer find value in.  

    Our home will then be easier to be in.

    I wonder how much of the rest of our lives are cluttered with things we do not find joyful, beautiful or useful?  Will this technique work as well on that?

    It was amazing to me how much I had around that didn't matter.

    I think I hung on to things out of being lazy, being afraid that I may need them at some point, or maybe not wanting to take the time to ask if it was useful or did it carry a connection to me.

    How many relationships do I have that are no longer useful or beautiful?  Are we too afraid to look closely at them?  How much of a drag do they have on our lives?  Is it truly possible to filter our whole lives by useful and beautiful?


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  • Step through the Fear?

    How much does fear play a role in your life? How many things do you do, that you don't want to do, because of fear of not doing them? Or, how many things do you want to do, but fear is standing in the way?

    Back on the Ex-Toots blog, there is a list of 44 things that are a sin in the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church.  And, there are questions as to why?  Who decided doing this or that is a sin?

    It wasn't the insane things on the list that caught my attention, but rather how many adhered to the rules without knowing the basis of why it wasn't okay to do them. Like women not being allowed to wear pants….men, neckties…for example.

    And, it isn't that folks want to follow, but they are afraid NOT to follow….for each rule has a fear attached to it, mainly Hell if you don't follow and shunning or ridicule for standing out and doing the said fashion sin.

    Fear is being put into them, not a reasonable reason as to why not.

    What I find funny, is that without fear, the rules would be silly.

    Can fear really take the silly and make it scary?

    Can fear make people do things they normally would not do?

    Is it possible to make a large group of people conform without fear being the impetus?

    If it wasn't so tragic it would be laughable, to so many.  How they have given up the rights to their bodies, their fashion sense, their right to have or not have children, to move around the world curious and follow their inner delights and excitement….and instead of frozen in place with fear.

    I know many will suggest that they are choosing this lifestyle, except that they have not been allowed to choose.  It isn't a choice if only one way is offered…and fear separates the choices.

    Fear seems to be an energy that is standing in the way of freedom…a gate that feels impenetrable.

    If you don't leave out of fear, are you really free?  Or are you just afraid to step through the fear?

  • Change in our Homes.

    Real signs of Spring along the mail route!


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    You can see the brown that surrounds them, but tuffs of green sprouting up!


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    Love the surprise and changes I see…each day, if you look closely it's a new painting…nature, doing what nature does…Change.

  • A mind game at its worst.

    In the extoots blog I follow and comment on ( http://extoots.blogspot.com ) a response from Finland caught my attention…or a few sentences, where the church is once removed from the congregation in times of trouble.

    "The sexual abuse scandal was badly managed by the SRK leaders, it looked like they got everything wrong in communicating it to the media, right from the start. However, for those who want to go the truth behind the headlines, it is also quite obvious that there never was any institutionalised abuse (such as in e.g. the Catholic church) but the incidents occurred inside families. In those circumstances, it is difficult to hold the congregation responsible especially when the official teaching has always been that crimes do not go away by the forgiveness of sins. (Unfortunately there were exceptions to this rule, and in a few cases, the congregation lay preachers were involved in hiding such crimes and criminals from the police, and also preventing the victims from getting help. This is not acceptable and I am very sorry for this ever happening in my religion.) 

    What makes the FALC or other like minded religions different from the abuse within the Catholic Church, is that the abuse is happening within the families. It isn't the "leader" of the church so to speak. So, the church can't be held accountable.  It isn't the institution that is doing the abusing, but rather the members of their organization, not the organization.

    Like "the church" somehow gets to escape, that "the religion" isn't where the crimes are occurring, but outside of it.  Like church and religion are actual entities….one stepped removed from family.  Yet it is infiltrating each family with its teachings.

    To me, it is like preserving the integrity of "Family" while abuse is happening by my father…as if he isn't part of family.

    I can't see how they can separate one from the other.

    Where in the church is there actual accountability to the law of the land, to the safety of the children, to the integrity of its message of high morals and values when it wants to keep its distance between It and the People?

    It rules the people, but doesn't want to be affected by the actions of people.

    It controls the people, but will not take control for the people's actions.

    I am not sure if others can see this slight but wide gap between their responsibility and the lack of owning it.

    While telling folks what to do, they fail to see what they are doing…and then totally disappear when $%#@ hits the fan.

    The powerful energies that preach these rules become silent and apathetic in the face of tragedies…'not responsible'…when those they control go out of control.

    Hard to hold the church responsible as much as it is hard not to.

    How interesting that the church boards are free of all negligence, while dictating how so many live their lives.  

    While I wanted to blame the church, I also had to see    how much of my life I had given over to the church.  I just didn't know it would NOT take responsiblity for the aftermath of what it preached. It is like it is only responsible for the out flow, not the backlash.

    I had to own my lack of self care and my own rights I had reliquished to the church…AND, I had to see what they did with me. They didn't care for me, they didn't protect me, they didn't even seem to notice they were holding all of me. 

    Again, not sure I can articulate the disappearing church we gave our self to.

    Giving up our lives, our choices, our freedoms to this thing. And this thing disappearing right before our eyes and us with it.

    How the church doesn't want to be seen in the families its controlled…when the church was such a large seen force that molded many families….how can it then disappear?

    And what happens when it does?

    A mind game at its worst.

  • Unplugging and Being Free!

    "When you are a mother you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice – once for her self and once for her child."  Sophia Loren

    As I look upon Mother's day, I see my mother and I see me mothering.  I see how mothering doesn't come with a clean slate, that the child doesn't make you a better mother depending upon his or her life, but rather it is all set in place by your life experiences.

    What you fear will infect an otherwise normal response.

    Where you are weak, will be challenged time and time again, urging you to shore up those weaknesses by choosing different…most often our failure is the most strongly felt by the child.

    Sadly, we are asked to be the mother our mother's couldn't be, and tooled with dysfunctional tools she gave us.

    When I seen the errors of my mother, I tried to do the opposite in hopes of sowing different results in my children; breaking the chain of dysfunction.

    Dr. Maya Angelou says, "When you know better, you do better."  Which sounds so easy…and simple.  Stopping the harmful reflexes are not always easy.  

    Children who come from mother's who are still wounded from their own childhood, know that hurt people hurt people.  You then begin motherhood hurt.

    A hurting, wounded woman often looks to the child for comfort and happiness, to make her feel loved…the child's behavior then is to either make her happy or make her sad.  They become the happy switch….or anger switch. They control the mother's life.

    When others celebrate Mother's Day, I feel oddly detached and maybe shameful for having such a complicated, hurtful, detachment from my own mother…the flowery singing of phrases seems foreign to me. And, my own rocky mothering to my children don't fit the phrases either.

    It is almost like it is a false holiday…a day where we overlook all the failures and hurt and concentrate on the good.

    I guess I just have complicated feelings about mother's day.

    When I look towards my mother, there is a mountain of twisted hurt….when I look at my mothering, I see transformation.  But, at the same time I know the hurt I caused while not aware.

    My reflections on mother's day are not in cards and quotes.

    For those mother's out there who are trying to unravel or turn off the switch attached to our mother's feelings….I wish you strength.  

    The hardest job you will ever do is to unplug your self from your mother's happiness. To no longer be responsible for her happiness or disappointment.  

    This disconnection is crucial.

    A mother who is unhurt will have plenty of space to allow her children the freedom to be who they were meant to be.  

    May Mother's Day be a day of unplugging and being free!

     



  • I love you today!

    Twenty-Six years ago today was our wedding day…I was 28, he 32. Hard to believe 26 years have gone by.  Our magic is that we didn't always agree or see life from the same view, but we always respected each other…even when mad…or more importantly when we disagreed.  We had to work into our life our differences. 

    The greatest thing I learned from my husband is how to be your self.  

    How to stand up for what you feel and to be stubborn about it.  The things that used to really upset me, are the same things I admire.  He was un-bendable….and still is…about who he is.

    Once I stopped trying to change him or wish he was different… we got along much better…or I got along much better…I lovingly accepted.

    I learned to respect his uniqueness and his unabashedly being himself, regardless of fashion, political correctness, other's wishes etc, he just lived life guided by his own inner sense of being.

    What I can always count on is him being himself…peacefully so. Honestly. He doesn't expect others to think, feel or care like he does.  He just does himself, by himself, outstandingly…with reckless abandon.  A man with his own mind and sense of personal morals and values.  

    Perhaps the only time he questions himself, is as a father.  A role that no man can know, but only can learn by doing, without knowing.  And can know better in hindsight. And yet, the greatest gift a father can give his children is to model being a strong individual, to love yourself by being yourself…and to love and respect their mother.  He has.

    He has taught me love by being himself…and by respecting who I am. We both are allowed to be different…without consequences.  We respectfully go our own ways. 

    Our love is unbound, free and strong…due to our personal freedom.

    We don't complete each other, we are complete standing alone.

    In the midst of my greatest breakdown, when I didn't know who I was or if our marriage would survive, I told him we will put our marriage on the floor, that we will work on each of us finding our center; on being who we are…and if in the end, we ended up with two people who no longer cared to be together, one of us would be strong enough to let the other go. That we both had to be strong and authentically our self…and not stay for the sake of the other's happiness, but we were free to stay or to go, if need be.  We ended up with "I love you today…" for we didn't know in the midst of so many changes, how this story would end.

    And we still don't know.

    What I do know, Is…I love you today!


     



     

  • Control of others.

    I have been part of the discussion on the ex-toots blog  http://extoots.blogspot.com as we all discusss the consequences of extreme religions.

    I feel those who stand in defense of the church are actually defending themselves against any life change.  They simply can't bear the consequences of being wrong.

    While a woman's life has reached the extreme end of anguish, a baby's life is lost, the much larger more deeply felt is the shaking of their religious beliefs.

    What would happen if the church would be found out, to be upheld by a wobbly foundation?  How much of their lives would collapse when it falls?

    When a collective group have fashioned their lives and given up their own rights for a cause, for a belief that is larger than their self…it eclipses the self and they become it.  They become the church, they are part of the foundation, one of the bricks.

    And, when the bricks begin to crumble and show their instability, then what?

    Somehow we see the "Church" as being this higher power, this impotent god like untouchable person.  When in fact the church is made up of humans.  It is being lead by a collective board of humans, and preached by a human to other humans.

    The collectiveness of these folks IS the church.  And yet, with the discussion on the ex-toots blog, it appears that the church is a non-human thing is what they are following…and IT is reading the bible and pulling out things that they should or should not do, and creates these rules and the rewards and or punishment.  Like a imagination game….but with real life consequences.  And all things have to be run through this non-human like thing, although the church is run by humans.

    It is quite spectacular in its own mentalness.

    The preachers are not willing to stand in the light of reality and claim clearly and succinctly how it is that they don't believe in woman's rights.  And the women who have given up their rights are looking to the 'church' to stand strong in saying how it will be impossible to get to heaven IF you take birth control.

    What happens to the women who have abided by these rules to find out that they are not steadfast?  

    How terrifyingly incredible it is to watch them speak out of both sides of their mouth, to see the twisting twirling sliding ungrasping of this rule in the light of murder.

    No one wants to claim it as part of their faith.

    How sad that this mother who killed her child doing what was deemed good and promising of heaven is now standing out there alone.

    Her preachers are unable to articulate and own the path they set her upon.

    They ARE responsible for preaching.  She is responsible for letting them control her body, until it became uncontrollable. 

    A clear example of what happens when you take control of others…

     

  • What we want

    As I have watched nature showing itself as Flooding, I watched the changing transformation….how it expanded and now how it is contracting, receding back into its normal size.

    I have thought how it is a metaphor for life.  How we will have moments or events that will overflow, create difficulty in life.  We traverse them, grow, gain confidence, wisdom and then they too recede into our past.  A memory.

    I was delighted yesterday morning to see the evidence of the river level dropping.


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    The snow banks are gone, and the chair stands…


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    This is the corner where the river found its exit….and it is still coming out, but much much slower.  And, further up the road there is a place where the river flows back in…like it is testing land for a bit…or perhaps Me.


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    What my jeep looks like after a rough day on the Spring roads.  I actually had to use my four- wheel drive to get out of the mud. But, on my way home yesterday, through the water, it washed the wheels.  A good under body flush while the river was up! 


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    See how green everything is beginning to turn…there are buds on the trees, but very small…a bit of warm weather and another transformation begins.

    I guess what we love are pretty transformations, the ones that seem to require nothing of us, just our admiration upon completion.  But, the transformations that tear apart your insides, demand changes in behavior, etc we deem as 'bad'.

    However, they are the ones who develop us.  Those transformations oddly are course corrections, they are taking away all that isn't our soul's purpose or what is right for us.  

    Most of what I lost were toxic or dysfunctional or abusive.  I didn't lose love, peace and joy….it was through the transformation that I found them.

    And how would we appreciate dry dusty roads, if we didn't have a foot of water to compare them to?  The contrasts of life gives us meaning, helps us navigate into what we want. 

  • Love, Friendship and Loyalty.

    I am half way done with the book, "Bloom – Finding Beauty in the Unexpected" by Kelle Hampton.  It is a wonderful fast moving harsh truth read; when life changes its course without our permission or willingness to go along.  

    It isn't so much about WHAT event changes your life course, but how you handle it, what goes on in your mind, how you act, don't act, learn, grow and how when life changes, often so does your perception.

    AND, what had me in the ugly cry, is how much love and support she got at the moment her old life halted and the new one began.  How her flailing psyche, emotional insides were being held up by so many supportive people.  How different we both were.

    Until I read the massive amounts of help she received, did I sit with the silent echo when my old life halted and my new one sat there.

    My new life.

    A life change that came out of nowhere, yet one that had been traveling with me unawares…Guess I was living a double life and the false one fell down.

    To me, it isn't the tragedies in life that mark you so much, BUT it is how others act when it happens. How your relationships can withstand the punch.

    We all assume, that our families are waiting in the wings…arms and spirits ready to catch us when we fall…that our tragedy will be one they will not mind handling…

    This book left me wondering if sexual abuse is the last place of discomfort?  Are we as a society so ill prepared to deal and address the needs of a victim as she makes a life away from her abuser?

    How is it that my tragedy had people walking away from me and not draw in closer?

    The very people Kelle leaned on the most heavily, were absent in my life.  Granted, new people stepped in, but the old reliables, were unreliable.

    It perhaps was by far more tragedy on an already tragic moment.  In fact, it is what Kelle feared the most; the reactions of her family and friends.  She needed them to see her life change in a positive way, and not have it be untouchable.

    I felt untouchable.

    I felt the repulsive push back.  

    I saw the familiar friends, turn away instead of scurrying to bring comfort.  Quick short glances, a soft hi and the turn away.  Or, worse yet, hollering and outrage from my family….and even worse yet, the comfort and care my father received…he the sexual abuser….and NOT me, one of his many victims.

    I do understand the why this happened, I just don't know how we can change it.

    The why….Is because my abuser was their father and husband.  It was Grandpa….and his accomplice, their mother and grandmother.  I was asking them to let go of a relationship to support me.  I was asking them to drop their old self and take the free fall with me into the land of the unknown….estrangement.

    It isn't about sexual abuse.  It is about CHOOSING the life of estrangement.  

    Well, choosing isn't actually what we freely do either, but actually what happens.

    I again looked up the word estrangement.

    "estrange, alienate, disaffect
    These verbs refer to disruption of a bond of love, friendship, or loyalty. Estrange and alienate are often used with reference to two persons whose harmonious relationship has been replaced by hostility or indifference: "

    I didn't find the other definition about moving away from hostility…..

    But, I guess we can look at both sides of estrangement. How folks responded and then what I chose to do with their reactions.  

    Imagine feeling hostility and/or indifference to your sexual abuse BY familiar family…your 'support' system?

    While they were anything but HOSTILE and INDIFFERENT to my father.

    It was the complete and utter flip or backwardness of it all.

    Which again, is why I felt so cheated, so ostracized, so rejected when tragedy struck.  

    You truly don't know the circles of support you have around you….from the very close family, to the really good friends, to your intimate partners, to sisters….until you test its strength, by tragedy or a challenging life situation.

    You can't know until.

    Will relationships bloom brighter or whither on the vine?  What is the strength of the relationship? 

    Sadly looking back, my estrangement happened when I was a very young girl. Sexual abuse was the disruption in the bond of love and trust, it happened way back then. But living in denial and living with a mind that blocked out the "disruption" I continued on like the bond had not been broken.  Like there was love, trust and loyalty…when it was long gone.  

    You know what is funny in a tragic way, is that I felt the broken bond.  I lived with feelings of "not feeling close" of not feeling warm or loving towards them….But I thought it was me.  I thought I wasn't trying hard enough to feel more.  I had a broken inside, I was cold and uncaring. I had the fault inside of me.

    Instead, on the cold December day, I felt the truth of it all.  I wasn't broken.  I was completely right.  I couldn't get close to hostility.  It wasn't me that was broken, but them.

    They (my parents) disrupted my bond with them.  They broke the chain, not I.

    And, I took this broken chain and called it love.  

    I modeled my life after theirs.  I mothered a lot like she did. I treated my self a lot like she did.  I worked harder and tried to be more perfect to fix the broken chain.

    When, the only way to fix me, was to walk away.

    The tragedy of sexual abuse, is that in order to heal, you have to walk away from the broken chain…you can't fix the chain by staying.  You will just be another broken link in the line of many.

    Isn't the saying we are as strong as our weakest link?

    Sexual abuse tears the bond of love, friendship and loyalty.


     

     


  • What is the Cost of No Choice?

    The issue of women's rights has come up with the death of a woman's 9th child by her own hands…or maybe the lack of Human Rights.

    What I am hopeful of, is this is the hole where common sense will begin to seep in or at least begin the real conversation of how human rights are being taken away in order to follow these extreme religions…and its very high cost; human life.

    When a woman no longer has her human rights, she is not free.  

    Martha Beck uses the phrase, "born in captivity" and that applies to so many women who were brought up within these churches, how their human rights were taken away in childhood; choices eliminated by church rules.

    In the climate where there are no choices, only one way, a person doesn't use their own common sense, it is a muscle that has grown weak and virtually useless…their 'strength' is in their staunch support of the ruling system…not in standing up for their own Self.

    You always hear comments suchas, "who in their right mind would do such a thing?"…without hearing your own words…"right mind".

    It is hard to explain or articulate the absence of choice and how the mind is created or convinced…how it feels to live "BrainWashed".

    Where common sense is washed away.

    Where self and individual choices are beat out of you…by fear dressed in many outfits.

    In order to survive as a child, you give up your human rights.

    They become a virtual stranger to you, a thing you never quite can recall, gone before you knew they existed.

    You know yourself as part of the whole…a paraiste…at the mercy of the animal (church and/or family) and would cease to exist if the family and church were to die. There is virtually no separated self.  You only live as part of the whole.

    The mind sees no self.

    The mind is incapable of reaching so far back where choices lie…without encountering the fear that was used when choice was taken away.

    Many people fear freedom, like all manner of hell will break lose if people were free, if our rights were our own…and forget to see the Hell many live due to being brainwashed free of choice.

    Just sit with the feelings of no choice.

    At a certain point, this will implode upon itself…just as it did for the mom who felt her only choice was to kill her baby…only a confused, tortured mind would see it as a solution.

    May the conversation begin…what road did this woman travel to get here?

    What is the cost of no choice?