Tag: acceptance

All of Life’s Realities.

It is my 53rd Birthday, and I feel so young at heart yet wise beyond my years. I feel so wondrous in Spirit and the weight of a life's journey…Light but knowing the journey it took to get here.

The Soul Lost quilt..

The "Soul Eclipse" was created in 2005. When I felt like I was drowning in emotion and the only place I felt normal was in quilting. As you can see it came through on my quilt. Merging emotions and the sliver of gold is my Soul trying to gain ground or a toe hold on 'normal'. I seemed so small against the world of troubles…or the messes so large.

And then I felt the urge to create a woman…

This was my first lady, emerging and in a dark shadow. She is very small against the back drop of great patterns and designs and colors, she herself is small, yet crucial in the overall quilt.

And then I felt like I wanted to do moving ladies….

The great Energy behind the ladies is still there, and the ladies are now moving and dancing. The sisterhood of Ladies….who dance to the beat of their own drum, was something for me to aspire to. I Loved my Lady. I just didn't know that the Lady was me for many months of creating her. She was leading my way.

She would tell me I was okay, long before I knew…and would express emotions that I had a hard time verbalizing or bringing into myself. She got it…My Lady.

In November 2010, I made this Mitten Tree Quilt, and felt the weight of being a misfit, of no longer fitting into my family. It felt as heavy as the cloak the Lady is wearing. But, I was resigned to my life and accepted it with reverence. I loved this quilt for it had so much truth and wisdom there…I was okay being me, even if I only fit on the Mitten Tree of Misfits.

And then, I created my latest one this fall…

She is walking with definite knowing, and great direction, confident and very much okay with who she is, celebrating it even…not wearing it like a heavy garment. Not only has she accepted her path, she is Perfectly Perfect being her…she wouldn't trade nothing for her journey now, as Dr. Maya Angelou says. I M Perfect and it is impossible not to be….And I LoVe Being ME!

A journey from imperfect to perfect, by accepting all of life's realities!

December 19, 2011

acceptance, art, changes, life, love, quilts, realty, self
The Grieving Process

I am rereading Melody Beatte's book, "Codependent No More," and I am very surprised to see how she spends a lot of time on the grieving process.

She writes,

‎"A codependent person or a chemically dependent person may be in many stages of the grief process for several losses, all during the same time. Denial, depression, bargaining, and anger may all come rushing in. We may not know what we're trying to accept. We may not even know we're struggling to accept a situation. We may simply feel like we've gone crazy"

‎"We may travel back and forth; from anger to denial, from denial to bargaining, from bargaining back to denial. Regardless of the speed and route we travel through these stages, we must travel through them. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross says it is not only a Normal Process, it is a necessary process, and each stage is necessary. We must ward off the blows of life until we are better prepared to deal with them. We must feel anger and pain and blame until we have gotten them out of our system…"

‎"Grief, like any genuine emotion, is accompanied by certain physical changes and the release of a form of psychic energy. If that energy is not expended in the normal process of grieving, it becomes destructive within a person. Even physical illness can be a penalty for unresolved grief…" Melody

‎"Learn the Art of Acceptance. It's a lot of grief" Melody

This section in the book has opened my eyes to many things. First that the five stages of grief don't run in a straight line, nor do they wait their turn, you can actually be flung from one to another in rapid succession AND, we can be processing many losses at one time.

I can see the road I traveled and why. And I love that she (Elisabeth and Melody) allow us to be in our stages of grief for as long as it takes, that there are no rules, that we will PROCESS that which we need to process in our own time.

I knew I was grieving, what I failed to appreciate was how many feelings I had repressed that had to be felt, as well as brand new ones that came in.

Not only did I have to grieve the loss of a father and mother in my past, but had to do so in the present moment as well when they failed to act parental in this moment in time. AND, to say nothing of processing my loss childhood and me…siblings, religion and all the trappings that go with.

What I also wasn't truly understanding while I was living it, was that my feelings my feelings were the key to healing.

She writes,

"Another problem with repressed feelings is they don't go away. They linger, sometimes growing stronger and causing us to do many peculiar things. We have to stay one step ahead of the feelings, we have to stay busy, we have to do something. We don't dare get quiet and peaceful because we might then feel these emotions. And the feeling might squeak out anyway, causing us to do something we never intended to do; scream at the kids, kick the cat, spill on our favorite dress, or cry at the party. We get stuck in feelings because we are trying to repress them, and like a persistent neighbor, they will not go away until we acknowledge their presence."

"The big reason for NOT repressing feelings is that emotional withdrawal causes us to lose our positive feelings. We lose the ability to feel. Sometimes, this may be a welcome relief if the pain becomes too great or too constant, but this in not a good plan for living. We may shut down our deep needs – our need to love and be loved – when we shut down our emotions. We may lose our ability to enjoy sex, the human touch. We may lose the ability to feel close to people, otherwise known as intimacy. We lose our capacity to enjoy the pleasant things of life."

"We lose touch with ourselves and our environment. We are no longer in touch with our instincts. We become unaware of what our feelings are telling us and any problems in our environment. We lose the motivating power of feelings. If we aren't feeling we're probably not examining the thinking that goes with it, and we don't know what our selves are telling us. And if we don't deal with feelings we don't change and we don't grow. We stay stuck."

"Feelings may not always be a barrel of gladness, but repressing them can be downright miserable…" Melody

When I let the gate open to ALL feelings, I was overwhelmed and flooded, lost in the sea of emotions. I sat for days (really years) and just felt. I wrote and felt, and walked and felt and expressed and swore and hollered and vented. I cried and cried and sorrow poured from me…

When I finally sat down to feel, I had 40 years worth of feeling to do.

The past emotions clashed with my present day ones to be felt, and the volume was scary and volatile, I literally thought I was losing my mind, but what I was really doing was coming alive.

I not only was feeling feelings on the darkest end of the spectrum, but I was at the same time feeling the most exquisite feelings of warmth, joy, peace, love.

I was moved to tears by beauty.

While it may be the scariest of rides, this ride through the grieving process, to accept the horrors of life, it also is the gateway into living an authentic feeling life.

My feelings now are welcome, for I know the cost of repression AND how it really is an act that is futile; for unexpressed emotions never leave you….time travelers they have been called.

All you are doing is blocking ALL feelings. If you can't feel the sorrow, you will not be able to feel the love, the peace and the joy.

I lived blocked, like a block of wood for way too long. I now celebrate feeling! It matters not to me what the feelings, are I accept them all.

This book also offers to me and explanation for so many who are unable to walk in their truth…and feel. It explains how they are not skipping around the mountain, but trying to hold it back…they can until they can't. For now, they are not willing to leave that stage of the grieving process.

December 17, 2011

acceptance, beatte, codependent, Elisabeth, emotions, feelings, grieving, Kubler-Ross, life, losses, melody, more, no, process
It is ill fitting in their worlds.

What I discovered in telling my story is that people get lost in their own lives while listening…lost in trying to defend and discern if my story matches theirs.

It isn’t being told to match yours, it is merely being told…yet while you are busy trying it on for size, you miss what I am saying…you can’t hear me as you are fitting my words into your world and tossing out the ones that don’t fit.

As the author of this story and the one who experienced my life, I felt the desire to share what I had lived through or more importantly what I had falsely believed in and was putting it down on paper to find my truth.

What I had not counted on was that people would try on my truth of for size, to see if it fits their own experiences and then say it isn’t so.

I wonder if that is how I listen, to see if it fits in my truth, do I hear others, or do I immediately feel threatened by their story if it clashes with mine?

It leaves me to wonder, what words another could say that would threaten my world…how another’s experience would unravel my world…what could they possibly say that would start a second avalanche?

I guess I expected questions or folks who were interested in knowing more, but I hadn’t expected others would try on my experiences and call them fake.

It is the resistance against what I am saying that feels so out of place.

The defense of the Church, the defense of the people, the defense of the family, defense of the siblings…and the defense against their practices of handing their sins over to Jesus, all the while unknowingly discounting my story as they are so busy in their defense.

This rooting around in their defense drowns out my words and leaves me unheard.

It is like talking to someone who is paying attention to something else, and they are.

They are worried about their worlds.

I wonder if we all do that? If we all have our very own sets of truths and protect them while not paying attention to others.

I just hadn’t considered that in speaking out that the facts and truths of what I discovered would be tried on and then tossed out, if it didn’t match their files.

Somehow, I naively believed that I would have the ears of listeners, and not truth fittings.

What I feel most, is that a child who is asked to tell the truth about an abuser would face the same kind of treatment, where their words would not be brought in as sacred truths, but rather items to be tried on for size.

A child can discern, as I have, the ears who listen with compassion or the ones who are merely trying on their truth and kicking it to the curb in order to maintain their own lifestyle.

Perhaps my ears have become more open the more open I am with my own truths.

I can only gauge others by how they grab my truths and try them on, and then how quickly I am discarded…or received.

I have been taking this personal, trying to say things more eloquently, softly, with class, trying to make the presentation prettier, kinder, nicer, more convincing and it is all for naught. For it isn’t my truth with the issue, but their lifestyle…my truth just doesn’t fit in. It is ill fitting in their worlds.

October 3, 2011

acceptance, being, FALC, hearing, listening, Open, truth
Unhappiness wants what is impossible to get.

“Happiness is a function of accepting what is.”

~Werner Erhard

I received a message from an old friend, and he was worried about me being happy, that he was sorry I felt so badly towards my mother, he hoped I would get over it and let go, he also wished me the best and a little peace.

It is hard to explain how I can be happy away from my mother/father/family.

What I have written about most is what was wrong with our relationship, not what was good.

Ask any divorced women if she is happier away from her ex or in his presence, and that is how a child feels who finally is able to exit a bad family relationship, no matter what age.

My peace inside comes from knowing I have put up boundaries, where I will not be hurt again.

My happiness is by accepting who they are and not expecting something else.

I am not sitting waiting for what they are unable to give.

I had to let go of my image or idea of a father and have accepted that he is sick and is a pedophile; he is unable to be a dad. Happiness is no longer wanting what he isn’t able to give. Happiness comes in letting go of the Hallmark picture, and instead seeing what I have.

I had to let go of my thoughts of who my mother was, and had to replace them with reality.

Peace comes in knowing there is nothing I can do to change who they are, but rather change how I react.

Even though much of my writings are struggles to figure out all the nuances of abuse, the traces and hooks that have me mixed up inside, each time I unravel a new strand I am more peaceful.

Writing is my therapy, it allows me to work out what I fail to see, what part of me is still confused, lost and unsure.

What part of me is still in the illusion of a loving family.

I am not happy until I have full disclosure of what is.

Happiness is being at one with reality.

Unhappiness wants what is impossible to get.

September 24, 2010

acceptance, happiness, impossible, peace, unhappiness
A Mother who Walks in Reality.

Last night I read, “Hannah’s Gift” by Maria Housden, Lessons from a Life Fully Lived.

What a great gift they gave each other as they bravely faced life as it unfolded for each of them, in truth.

For a mother to be truthful in the face of death allowed her daughter to fully accept with grace who she was, for her son to walk step by step, hand to hand, eye to eye sharing her journey full on.

‘Sparing’ the truth may seem kinder at times; I am once again affirmed that truth is the only way to be.

There is grace and peace in an odd way when you are able to set your fears and selfish wishes aside, when you can disregard your dreams, and instead stand bravely in what is.

Even when the what is, is the death of your child.

It allowed this little girl to live her life honorably, for her mother honored her just as she was, in each moment, fully embracing what she had, now.

Her intuition in giving her daughter a voice, allowing her to be who she needed to be to live a life that was hers, no matter its length is remarkable to me.

The courage to let go of the pretend reins we all believe we have in controlling our worlds, our children’s world and gracefully succumbing to reality’s power, to ride the ride no mother wants to take, but do so with her eyes on the child’s desires, is what I believe makes a truly remarkable mother.

Thanks so much for showing me the walk of truth.

Coming from a child whose mother couldn’t face the truth, I know that it was you who gave your child the greatest gift on earth, seeing her truth!

Allowing her to be okay and be fully her self, even while life seemed to stealing her away, she was able to live completely as herself until her very last day.

She never, not once had to pretend to pretend to be anything other than herself in your eyes.

What a gift you gave her, she was allowed to Live as her self.

Your journey shows me that a mother can literally change a child by their reaction to the child’s truths, if you can’t see it, they will pretend not to see it either, but if you can, you both will be enriched.

Truth sets you free to be you in reality.

Thanks Maria for sharing the wonderful journey being a mother who walks in truth.

September 12, 2010

acceptance, child, death, Hannah’s Gift, honor, Housden, joy, life, Maria, mother, reality, sickness, truth
Awareness of Self

It is interesting to me that when you see someone in denial you automatically think that they just need to see reality.

What is a much deeper problem is the ways in which they have lived to ‘not see reality’.

And it is from there that you begin.

You don’t need to see what is in reality; you need to see what you are doing to cover up reality.

It is the cover up that needs to be explored.

The cover-ups can be dismantled by doing as Martha Beck suggested, begin telling the truth no matter what.

Instead of ‘hiding’ the fact that your eating is out of control, face the fact that it is. Name it to claim it, is a term Dr. Phil has used.

As I explored the affects that sweets had on my body, and how I overindulged them, and how they left me empty of the very thing I thought I was getting, love, I knew I was on to something.

I loved sweet treats. I felt good eating them, yet the final out come was not love or good. I had an overweight body that was sluggish and one that I didn’t like.

My life style of indulging in sweets and looking for opportunities to ‘treat’ myself, and them giving me something wonderful, really gave me the opposite.

Denial is not recognizing what the affects of ‘treating’ your self is actually doing.

You somehow just have a thirst for sweets, and feel you deserve the treat, but never look at the actual almost scientific reading of the outcome.

Denial is a twisting rope that never allows you to see all sides at once. You can either see the thirst or the bloated body….

Once I decide to stay awake for both parts, to watch the sweets going in and I didn’t tell myself a limit, I ate as many as I could, but I also had to monitor myself during and after.

Denial seems be cured by being truthful on all sides, there is no side that will slip away.

It is refreshing to be honest, to expose the secrets of understanding how you operate and why, it allows you to be free of the unexplored agendas that you have somehow overlooked.

Once I understood that the sweets didn’t really bring me good feelings, I was able to sit with what they really were. What they were comprised of and what they really did to the body.

Denial is the doorway that will lead you to full awareness of self.

July 2, 2010

acceptance, awareness, denial, doorway, Geneen Roth, reality, seeing
Letting It Go!

Acceptance and I are staring at each other; it dangles both pain and freedom. I see the two sides and feel caught in between, stuck standing still.

I see with big lady intellect and with little girl dreams, I feel the struggles between them.

The lady’s wise words and focus on actions fall on the little girl’s deaf ears.

Or perhaps I don’t want to be the one to end the little girls dreams, to crash and burn her long wait, to give her nothing but acceptance.

Acceptance, hollow, empty, cold and unloving.

Can I break my little girls heart? Is it my only heart?

Acceptance shatters all dreams.

Acceptance makes daddy’s monsters forever.

Acceptance makes moms cold and distant, always.

Acceptance hurts in reality.

I always thought what I feared most was my mental lady, instead what I feared the most was the shattered spirit of the hopeful dreaming little girl.

To live empty, hollow, forsaken, alone, cold and hurt a girl with broken dreams.

Is it possible to separate the little girl from her dreams, to untangle the loveless dream and set her free?

To let the dream go, like a flyaway balloon…

But keep the little girl spirit, her optimism, and her dreaming quality?

My little girl survived holding on to that dream.

And now her survival depends on her letting it go!

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

~Mother Teresa

June 29, 2010

acceptance, broken, dreams, lady, letting go, little girl, Wise
The Cost of my Peace!

I finally figured out what I can’t accept in having to accept.

I can’t accept that someone can’t change.

And I guess that is not the meaning of acceptance. I want acceptance with a clause.

I want to accept who you are, but that you can change.

This is incredibly insane.

This isn’t acceptance it’s conditional acceptance.

It seems to be hopeless to accept others as they are.

I am not sure if you can follow this, but in my head it makes sense as to why I am forever waiting and hoping, for I believe to the depth of my being that changes are possible.

Even if the other person has yet to make one step, I am of thinking, ‘they can’.

Yet can they?

It almost seems like I have to become a pessimist or at very least, a realist and see who they are, not their potential with change.

Imagine, “their potential with change” that is so not accepting who they are in this moment, but dreaming and believing that who they are isn’t who they want to be.

Instead who they are ISN’T who I want them to be.

I want them to be different.

I want them to change to satisfy my ideas of what would make them a better this or a better that.

This is an ongoing problem with me living in the land of potential changes, instead of being real right now.

It is what it is. I had said a million times. But what I felt is, ‘it is what it is, until it isn’t’!

Living in a hopeful state that someone will change, leaves you feeling hopeless.

Somehow I have to work on accepting others not ever changing, and by seeing it is I with the problem, not them.

They are quite happy being as they are.

As Byron Katie says, “who are you to ruin a good buzz, they are happy drinking!”

I am the one that struggles with accepting that they are okay where they are, that they have no thoughts of changing, and have told me so repeatedly in words, thoughts and deeds!

UGH.

This will sit with me today.

I accept who they are, but that they can change.

Which is totally counterintuitive!

I will only accept what is if what is changes!

It would be funny if it wasn’t such a tragedy and if it hadn’t cost me so much peace.

Believing in changes at the cost of my peace!

June 28, 2010

acceptance, changes, co-dependency, denial, disbelief, Dysfunctional, non acceptance, potential for change, relationships
A broken Heart.

Remnants of a long conversation linger in my head, dragging out more ideas and different slants on fear, truth and death.

I wonder what some would fear most, facing their truths or facing their deaths.

If you truths were real vanilla and uneventful, of course death would loom large and scary, but what if your past was scarier?

What if you were being asked to look upon a past filled with trauma, then how would your death look?

Death seems like an escape hatch a welcome slide into oblivion, compared to having to feel, deal and heal a wound of abnormal proportions.

Today I was exploring the depths of psychosomatic symptoms in the body and this is what I read.

“Yet even when a patient accepts their symptom is being caused by an emotion—an exceptionally difficult barrier to surmount—the trauma that caused the symptom in the first place is often shown to be so ugly that both patient and doctor can readily understand why the patient’s mind converted it into a physical symptom in the first place: even the mind itself believed the emotional trauma to be easier to handle that way.

Physical symptoms often get better with a pill. Emotional traumas often take years to heal—if even then. The technology we have to heal the scars caused by some traumas—as advanced and helpful as psychology can be—still lags behind the technology we have to treat ailments with purely physical causes.

But we shouldn’t be discouraged. We may all experience psychosomatic symptoms to some degree, but when our symptoms are shown to be so and we accept it, that acceptance becomes the most important step toward resolving them. After all, how can we find a contact lens we lost by looking near a lamppost when we lost it in the shadows? The real work begins, of course, once we start looking in the right place. Dealing with somatization only requires us to bring to the table one quality: courage.” (Alex Lickerman)

Isn’t it amazing that the mind can convert trauma into a physical symptom?

How interesting to read and understand more how emotional trauma affects the body.

And I love how courage is what we need to bring to the table.

Courage.

Courage to face our truths, our past and our hurts, and especially if the truth hurts the images we held of our family.

Courage, wow, I think they forgot a broken heart.

June 26, 2010

abuse, acceptance, affects, body, childhood, courage, emotional, healing, psychosomatic, scars, trauma
I can.

”We would if we could.” This phrase my brother picked up from Bryon Katie. Her books are about accepting what is, or loving what is. So that phrase must be in reference in being unable to accept what is.

It can’t be about changing reality or changing other people, it has to be about changing ourselves, for she isn’t an advocate of trying to change someone else or even reality.

I have been starting and stopping pages about ‘I would if I could’ in trying out to see the application of that.

When does the phrase, “I would if I could” apply?

When do you say those words and to whom?

Do you say it to yourself or just to others?

I would if I could.

In my own world, I don’t say that very much, but I bet I act it out a lot and feel it plenty.

I also bet my sisters, brothers and parents are the ones who feel the ramifications of the “I would if I could.”

In my first writings of this it seemed like a victim mode, a stance you take or a refusal to do something, that maybe if you just changed your thoughts or beliefs or minds, you could.

If I use this phrase in my current life with my current or nonexistent relationships with my brothers/sisters and parents, I can now see how it works.

They see me refusing, and I am.

They see how I could, but I don’t.

I see how I could as well, but at what cost.

I am thinking the choice is there, but that there is always a cost, always a consequence and always an affect.

This information may only be a feeling, an intuitive knowing, but nonetheless it is there.

There is something we are unwilling to give up in order to do what it is we are being asked to do.

Mostly it seems we have to give up an idea in our minds.

“I would if I could.”

I know that feeling, but it is the opposite of how my brother is using it as.

He uses it when his mind controls him. When he feels victimized by his anxious roaming mind. He would if could, but he is unable to get ahead of it. It is like his mind is making the choice for him, not him. That he believes his mind, or is incapable of not believing his mind.

And I am standing on the opposite side of his example.

I am challenging the mind, questioning it to see what is true for me. I have more space to question my mind thoughts. I see them come in and I engage them, but then get to decide If I tag along.

Maybe my phrase is I could but I won’t.

I can but I will not.

It is feasible, but I am choosing not to.

I have to believe that there is much more empowerment on this side of “I would if I could.”

I would be a sister if I could….

I would be a daughter if I could….

I guess what we are saying really is I would but with conditions.

Is it a bargaining of sorts?

I would if I could, but I am unwilling to let go in order to grab on!

In my world the cost is way too high to be back in relationships with folks who are incapable of seeing me with empathy and understanding. And maybe this is an issue for me, that I am not seeing them with empathy or understanding.

Is that true?

It seems that in understanding me, I was unraveling them as well.

I do have empathy for them, I do know that they will when they can and until then they can’t.

To go back to my old way of thinking, believing, and being is impossible for me, “I would if I could?!”

But it is like a bell that has been rung. Byron Katie says, once you no longer believe something to be true, you can’t then believe it to be true ever again. It is impossible to flip back and forth.

I love that.

I would if I could. But my mind refuses to believe that my father is just a father, that my mother is not in denial, that my brothers and sisters are healthy whole functional beings.

I can’t get that false belief back. Thank God.

I would if I could…..nope that isn’t even true. I am happy that I can’t unlearn or forget that information.

My life is so much more enriched knowing what I know.

My brother hasn’t discovered all the truths and he is still seeking and investigating thoughts and beliefs that are not true.

They call it seeking the truth; I am thinking it should be seeking the untruths that we believe in.

That would be easier to discover.

Is it true, can we absolutely know that it is true?

How do you react when you believe that thought?

Who would you be without that thought?

Turn around, (find three examples of how each turnaround is true in your life.)

Those are the questions Byron Katie uses to get you to see if your stressful thoughts are true.

I love that I now know about “I would if I could” and I love how that isn’t even true for me.

This has to be the meaning of a quality no….knowing you could but that you won’t.

I can.

September 22, 2009

acceptance, byron Katie, loving what is, no choice, quality no