I M Perfect lady

Tag: abuse

  • Sprouting Self Hatred

    As I headed to my room to do yoga with my belly unsettled, images of the laughing sisters, my demeanor glum, I wondered how yoga would be.

    The standing poses went by without a hitch, but as I lay on the floor, my focus went into the belly.

    What was going on?
    What was I feeling?
    Is the gut where you feel?

    The thought came in, “I hate your guts”…and then I thought of how in the last few weeks, while doing yoga, I have been concentrating on my belly, my hernia that has been there for a long time, and I have been mentally pulling my guts back in.

    Whether it will work or not, my focus has been on my belly.

    “I hate your guts”…I thought was coming from my sisters, that I was feeling their negative energy coming in to me.

    As I lay there rubbing my belly, asking it what it was up, what was all this about?

    Tears flowing, caressing my belly, breathing, missing poses, it finally occurred to me, “I hate My Guts!”

    My hating of my self has been with me a long long time; in fact my guts have been trying to escape!

    I hate my self for no longer being perfect, I felt like a little girl hating her body for its abuse wounds.

    During the final breathing exercises, I visualized hate blowing out, and immediately felt that I have been holding a belly full of hate for my body since my abuse.

    I hated being imperfect.

    My belly can rest now, for I will now work on loving my belly, loving more the imperfections that abuse leaves behind.

    How awful that abuse leaves hatred of self inside our bellies, how we try to escape from ourselves.

    I feel I have found the source of all my angst, the infestation of feelings that lay inside, the seed abuse left there to grow.

    Sprouting self hatred…

  • Turn My Light Back On.

    While listening to Tyler Perry talk to Oprah about his abuse as a child, he speaks of how when his father beat him, he would escape to a park in his mind, but on one occasion, he recalls the beating was so severe that he was unable to reach the park, and on that day his little boy died.

    The little boy was beat to death, yet he survived.

    I also believe now, that my little girl died when my father raped me, that IT changed who I am.

    And I somehow felt I could retrieve that little girl, the spirit of innocence and trust that I could bring her back into my world, resurrect her to live again.

    How can I do that? How do you take out the abuse that resides in all my cells? How can I change who I am? How can I rewrite history?

    Oprah asked Tyler what he wanted to say to his little boy, which made me wonder what I would say to my little girl.

    My little girl died before she had a chance to live, to be free, to make decisions and choices that were hers alone to make.

    I feel that I can honor her life by living my life with the courage to speak and walk my truth.

    Her courage to endure is now my courage to stand strong, her enduring spirit lies within me.

    The spirit of my little girl walks with me always….

    Its hard to picture such a little girl being raped, her innocence lost, her trust and faith shattered, and how she had to continue on, without the wonderful free spirit, instead a shadow of her self emerged, a frightened, scared, on guard version came forth, the light was diminished from within.

    The death is when the light goes out.

    Molestation steals the light.

    It has taken me a long while groping along in the darkness to find the switch, to turn my light back on.

  • The Wise Listened

    I only spent one hour in her presence and wanted to follow her home, and in fact we may have been behind her motor home as she left our town, I had the chance but turned off as our road appeared, allowing her to leave me wanting more.

    It wasn’t so much her story but rather the affirmations I felt as I listened to her.  I wanted more.

    Her story and mine shared some similar roads, and I could see how her courage was grown, how she shined in her individuality how comfortable she is in her skin, although I know it wasn’t always so.

    She spoke of her childhood in a tone of ‘this is what it was’ marveling with us and showing us how those steps were gifts that she used to become who she is today. 

    Dr. Maya Angelou.

    From an abused mute child to one who had us all sitting in rapt attention to each word, insight and profound wisdom she uttered.

    Maybe we can’t listen to another until they have something worthwhile to share.

    She has enough wisdom inside, and I feel I just got one little tiny peek.

    A peek of who I will be!

    She makes life seem only worthwhile if it is colorful; with characters and scenes that put fiction to shame.

    It’s like the more you suffer, the better the storyteller you will become and how much more interesting the story will be to tell.

    She didn’t hide the ‘shameful’ parts, rather she allowed them their truths to stand equal to the kinder parts, the happier times and she weaved them all together into one strand of self.

    The audience followed her as she led us on her journey as we sampled a few moments of significance that made her who she is today.

    A colorful woman telling us this isn’t a rehearsal, so get on and live life.

    Thanks Dr. Maya Angelou for taking the journey to come and speak to us today.

    We are just another spot on her journey, and she a spot in ours.

    A connection and energy exchanged.

    I left feeling she was giving us a hand up, as she reminded us of all who came before us, what their cost was, and how we don’t have the right to waste our time being less than who we can be.

     A wise woman sat on that stage and the wise listened.

     

  • Cheering for the Butterfly!

    We would rather be ruined than changed;
    We would rather die in our dread
    Than climb the cross of the moment
    And let our illusions die.

    ~W.H. Auden

     

    As I sit in the graveyard of my illusions, I am left with merging emotions, crashing upon each other, overlapping – sorrow and freedom, sadness and joy, feeling left out and being spared, all swaying within like ghosts.

     

    Memories of happier times try to overpower awareness of reality’s raw experiences; a game of pretend almost arises, like an abused woman who refuses to see the man who beat her, by focusing on the good times.

     

    Hope plans a future that isn’t to be, sorrow knowing you can never go home.

     

    Being sprung free and yearning for the cage.

     

    Celebrating while crying.

     

    Unable to firmly grasp one without feeling the loss of the other.

     

    It feels like I am dying while alive, grieving for my own self.

     

    Having one foot in the grave of my old life, while learning to walk in my new.

     

    The hardest part is to let me die, to be strong and keep killing the illusion, the dysfunctional relationships, letting them go on without me.

     

    I wish I could say I am tough and this is easy to feel the sorrow and pain as another section of my life dies…and I am left in the space of empty.

     

    The wise say that without change we would have no butterflies.

     

    But the time between caterpillar and butterfly is you are neither, suspended in time…

     

    You don’t fit with the caterpillars anymore, and you still have no wings to fly.

     

    In a cocoon I live, one life not finished and new one not fully begun.

     

    Suspended in soup of transition.

     

    Crying for the caterpillar and cheering for the Butterfly!

     

  • One Real Me

    “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?  Four.  Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.”   

    ~Abraham Lincoln

     

    I love the simplicity of how this shows you can name anything you want, but that doesn’t make it so.

     

    I have been learning about my self, a part of me that I didn’t even know existed, it was like I was a tail, but was called a leg.

     

    I knew myself the best as a leg, and I created a life as a leg, learned how to live and be and love and enjoy life, as a leg and I was really a tail.

     

    It isn’t that neither is wrong or right, except that if you are one thing and think you are something else, then it is.

     

    That is where the psychological damage is done.

     

    Somehow it slipped my attention for 46 years that I was not who I knew myself to be.

     

    It is beyond what a thought can hold to not know that you didn’t know that you are not what you thought you were.

     

    Its like my only normal was to be two things, yet could only see one of them, I saw me as a leg, yet I acted like a tail.

     

    The two were never fully in my awareness at one time. 

     

    I am now working to merge the two selves inside so that I become one real me.

     

  • Annihilate My Truth

    My brother wrote about the word annihilation and I had never looked at what it meant, yet I too have used the word, but now I want to see how it is applied.

     

    Words to me are much more than words, they seem to have power in and behind them, and it’s feelings that give words energy, not the word itself.

     

    We use words to describe feelings, to express how the body feels.  Words to me are secondary in living life; they are the running commentator to what is actually going on. 

     

    Often times it seems people’s commentators are liars and they speak the opposite of their feelings, in kindness, to spare another their true feelings, or to spare themselves making light of what is bad.

     

    When the feelings and the comment about the feelings don’t match, you are lying in words but your feelings are still there unchanged and unexpressed.

     

    "Annihilation is defined as "total destruction" or "complete obliteration" of an object; having its root in the Latin nihil (nothing). A literal translation is "to make into nothing"."

     

    When I spoke of my experience of fear/terror of my father, it never felt like it was taken serious and that I could easily transfer words back to make things right.

     

    And when I use the word rape and abuse, or pedophile instead of father, or neglect instead of mothering, I have the problem.  I am using the wrong words.

     

    The word annihilation is even a kind word for liar.

     

    My family prefers liars and will annihilate those who use the incorrect words.

     

    The word family covers up the feelings of incest, rape, neglect, and I am annihilated when I dare expose what lay beneath the word father.

     

    It seems the greatest error is to annihilate the truth, to make into nothing my truths.

     

    I am not annihilated, the truth is.

     

    To be a truthful commentator means you have to walk and act in harmony with your feelings.

     

    Which is why I had asked my sisters if they too recalled feelings similar to mine, for if they didn’t, I could greatly understand their comments of father.

    I am made into nothing due to being abused.

     

    Here is the choice, being annihilated by my family for speaking my feelings or becoming a liar.

     

    Annihilation is their action, being a liar would be mine.

     

    I would have to lie to return to the family and annihilate my truth.

     

  • I Didn’t Forgive Her

    When women feel they have learned to forgive their mothers – and men, their fathers – all it usually means is that they've decided to allow themselves the same kind of behavior.

    ~Mignon McLaughlin

     

    The above quote caught my attention and I full heartedly agreed.  Yet someone commented that it was kinda negative, and I agree it is negative and rightly so.

     

    What is forgiveness?

    How is it applied and why?

    Who needs it and is it our responsibility to apply forgiveness upon the behaviors from someone who have hurt us, and if so, what does it change?

     

    If I hurt someone, will them adding forgiveness on top like gravy make it feel better, remove my actions, will they feel less pain and will it stop me from hurting them again?  What is my consequence for hurting them?  Them being okay and letting it go letting me be a harmful humanbeing, is that good for me??? 

     

    While the word sounds so compassionate and very loving, is it?

     

    Forgiveness is applied upon another, when I believe it was meant for personal use.

     

    I had mentioned to my mother a long time ago, that the forgiveness she seeks is of her self, and I still agree with that today.

     

    How do you apply forgiveness? 

     

    Is it a thought, a feeling, an emotion and it it possible to transfer it to someone?

     

    In my experience of how my siblings used forgiveness it is to ‘overlook’ pardon the hurtful actions and remain in a relationship with my parents. 

     

    It is seen as a more loving thing to do.

     

    More loving than not forgiving.

     

    What is not forgiving? 

     

    Is it to not overlooking the actions, not pardoning them, but holding them accountable?  Is that wrong?

     

    I am not seeing why it is bad to hold someone accountable, to not pardon their behavior, what am I missing here?

     

    It didn’t take me long to realize that IF my father was a monster, and IF I didn’t see that, and due to the fact that I had missed this fact, I had brought my girls to him, I was accountable for my behaviors, there was no pardon that would change that fact, none.

     

    I was the driver of the car that brought them to him.

    I hold myself responsible for my part.

     

    As a child who didn’t know, but feared him and was silent, I was not to be pardoned for not telling, being silent was a behavior that was not to be overlooked, for when I was silent he continued to abuse.

     

    You can’t pardon my behaviors and even if you did, they will not change the outcome of the past 45 years, nothing, absolutely nothing will change if you forgive me.

     

    Nor did it ever even once cross my mind to ask my children or my siblings to forgive me, for I knew full well, what my actions had caused.

     

    Martha Beck has a new meaning of forgiveness that I have adopted, “Forgiveness is accepting that the past will not change.”

     

    I agree.

     

    I have been working on forgiveness, (accepting) my actions and behaviors for the first 46 years of my life, and there is no pardon on earth that will change what happened.  None.

     

    No fancy words.

    No transferring energy to me.

    No emotions can be put upon me to change the outcomes, none.

     

    What was done was done.

    Many a little girl lost her innocence and there is no pardon for that, none.

     

    Pardons will not change it.

    Overlooking what happened will not change it.

    Refusing to hold them accountable today does not change it, yet all I can do is make sure today that I remain accountable of my actions today.

     

    Today I will not forgive him, that is for him to do.

    Today I will not forgive her, that is for her to do.

     

    Today I will forgive myself by accepting that the past will not change, that I can’t change who I was back there, I can’t change what happened, but I can change who I am today.

     

    Who I am today is someone who will not overlook, look around or away from a behavior that hurts, I will hold you accountable for your actions and me for mine, I will speak up instead of be silent about my feelings, and I want you to be honest with me about yours.

     

    I don’t want a repeat of my first 46 years.

     

    I am grateful I have a second chance at life.

     

    Grateful that I have been able to make corrections so history will not repeat itself in my life.

     

    I am grateful I didn’t learn to forgive my mother, for I would have allowed the same behavior in myself.

     

    It was for both of us that I didn’t forgive her.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • United together without abuse.

    “One can be a brother only in something.  Where there is no tie that binds men, men are not united but merely lined up.” 

    ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

     

    What is the something that binds a family together, what binds sisters to sisters, and brothers to brothers, and sisters to brothers and brothers to sisters?

     

    What ingredient is needed to weld a family together?

     

    Something held us together and something tore us apart, and I want to know what that something is and who was responsible for stealing the something.

     

    We can all get together and be a family lined up as I see it, or as others see it, a united family.

     

    If I were to join the lineup today, I would just be lining up I would not be reunited.

     

    The ‘something’ is missing for me now.

     

    Did I give it away or was it taken from me, or was it even there in the first place, perhaps it was just a total illusion all along.

     

    Maybe all we ever were was a family line up.

    A line up of abused kids.

    We were bound by abuse.

     

    When I stopped standing there in the abuse, when I left and walked away, I broke the bond that held me in place, I left the abuse, I walked out of the lineup.

     

    I was bound there by abuse, by a shared secret, my insides matched their insides, and we were united.

     

    United in a lineup of abuse.

     

    I want to lineup again, but not in abuse.

     

    I want to line up in a real family.

     

    And that is the legacy I am trying to build for my children, so that they have a family that is united together without abuse.

     

  • Shamelessly Me

    “Yoga Makes you you” is what Bikram says near the end of the 90 minutes of yoga, and until today I had always envisioned a new me.

     

    Today I realized that I get to be me minus the shame.

     

    Shame was my inner state of being.

     

    Shame colored the lenses with which I seen myself in the world, or felt myself in the world, I didn’t leave home shameless; I was filled to the brim with feelings of shame, in shame of being me.

     

    In shame of being me, yet I didn’t fully know the cause or when the seed was planted, it seemed I came this way.

     

    Now, I know better, the seed was planted by my father and fertilized by my mother in her reaction to me.

     

    It wasn’t until I read the book “Hannah’s Gift”  by Maria Housden that it affirmed my belief, that depending upon the way my mother handled the facts it would directly affect me.

     

    The tragedy of abuse, of incest, of being raped by your father, is it is bad enough his treatment of you, but then to have a mother do nothing compounds the shame.

     

    Her lack of doing anything to move away from that man locked me in my closet of shame.

     

    I lived there for 51 years.

     

    Today in yoga I finally felt free from the shame I carried about being an abused me.

     

    “Fake it ‘til you Make it” quote came to mind as I looked back upon my last 5 years, I literally forced myself to stand tall, when inside I was shrinking in shame.

     

    To walk a walk of one with no shame hasn’t been easy. To stand and believe in myself against all enemies both foreign (strangers) and domestic (family), to put myself out there all bruised and beaten claiming my rights to be me.

     

    I didn’t know if I was writing my death sentence, if I would survive, but I knew for sure if I stayed in the closet of shame I would have.

     

    I have been out of the closet for 5 ½ years and today was the first time I felt it is my right.

     

    It is my right to live shamelessly me!

    IMG_4981

     

  • Keeping Our Family Sweet

    I am drawn to stories of adult children who have escaped cult like religions and who speak out about the abuse they endured, and the juxtaposition between religion and abuse.

     

    The severity of the abuse almost seems equal to the severity of the religious beliefs, the stricter the more deviant the abuse.

     

    There seems to be a common theme of obeying.

     

    As Brent W. Jeffs writes in his book “Lost Boy” when speaking of his mother.

     

    “Her life was focused on following the church’s command to Keep Sweet.  This meant to submitting to its rules and leader and through him, God, not grudgingly but happily.” 

     

    “Submitting happily.”

     

    Under the veil of religion unspeakable things happen, and due to the ‘nature’ of religion we are seen worse for not submitting happily. 

     

    They focus on how we respond, not what has happened.  How do we accept being abused, am I a good abused girl?

     

    What does it mean in the eyes of the church to be a good abused girl?

     

    What is beyond what a mind can hold is that the focus and guilt or shame is put upon the child IF she can’t keep sweet. 

     

    I am the one with the problem, it’s my response, NOT him in his crime against me.  It is how I responded that is seen as a major fault.

     

    What I still find so utterly unfathomable is the guilt or wrongness I feel for not keeping sweet. 

     

    It is almost like feeling bad for not living the lie anymore, a feeling of being guilty for no longer pretending.

     

    The focus is on us no longer keeping sweet and that is a crime that is against the family rules, a sin that is punishable by shunning or being excommunicated.

     

    They don’t shun the criminal, but the one who fails to respond as the religion dictates.

     

    I had an adult woman tell me that there is no sin to big to forgive.  Laying the guilt upon me, IF I could not forgive this deed and remain a loving daughter.

     

    The religion doesn’t leave room for the child, no matter what age to move away from the abuser.

     

    While the forgiveness wipes the abuser clean, it leaves the abused pretending to be clean when we are not.

     

    The whole system that religion operates under, works wonderfully well for abusers and offers nothing for the abused.

     

    When I spoke up I paved my way out of the religion and out of my family.  I broke both their rules.

     

    Keeping our family sweet.