I M Perfect lady

Tag: child

  • We abuse our self.

    I am working on putting a Picture Book together with my Story Line quilts…and writing a brief synopsis about each quilt as it represents a portion of my journey.

    I have a visual graph of my inner transformation as I undid abuse and changed my perceptions back to the truth.

    Change is a very slippery word and it often times gets misconstrued, for we are expecting a dramatic life altering physical change, when all that is required is a 360 degree perceptional change.

    It is to change HOW you see things, not the things.

    To remove yourself from one belief and settle your self into another.

    Moving your awareness.  Rearranging your thoughts to match reality instead of using thoughts to cover up what is real.

    What most may fail to recognize, are the changes we fail to make when abuse calls upon us.  Many will focus on the physical act, but few will focus on our perceptions.

    In an abusive home, where abuse isn't addressed…what this means is that, perceptions don't change to now match the new reality.  It isn't that the act isn't dealt with, but rather the perceptions don't change to mirror what just happened.

    It is this that totally screws with the minds of a child.

    Here is the deal.

    My father CHANGED when he acted out sexually to me.  At this point, my viewpoint of him should have changed too.  When I didn't change this inside of my head.  My head no longer matched reality.

    With a head that is askew, I then built my life.

    To undo the abuse, what we are really saying is that we need to straighten out our perceptions.  We have to now make the changes we failed to make way back then.

    It sounds so simple, but I had created a whole life, based on the wrong perceptions.

    I now had to change a father into a pedophile, a mother into his accomplice, and it left me with a new family portrait.

    Change one picture, and the rest start to shift.

    My father changed when he abused me and I didn't act like anything had changed. 

    However, my reality had changed, I just wasn't allowed to let my perceptions of him change.

    Instead of recording the actual event, it recorded things that surrounded it.

    I don't have many memories of my childhood, but I do have wierd ones.

    However, most importantly, my body recorded it accurately.  IT feared my father.

    It didn't want to get close to him.

    No matter what my mind concocted, my body held the correct perceptions.

    I had to change my mind to match what my body felt.

    Undoing abuse means you have to change your mind.

    It doesn't mean forcing your body to feel comfortable or at ease with someone who has hurt you.  It means to follow your body's lead.

    When you change the perceptions in your head to match reality, you will begin to act differently. 

    You will act in kind to reality.

    I no longer felt I had to force myself to be in relationships with family who I no longer trusted or felt safe with…or whose perceptions didn't match reality.

    The greatest tragedy of abuse is that we don't change our perceptions of the person who hurt us.  We want a mother and father so badly, we will think anything to maintain this in our heads.  And as little helpless children, we needed to believe that we were safe.  We wouldn't have survived knowing there was no one there to save us, that we were living in the home of a pedophile and his wife.

    How awful this is to an abused child.  Your wounds go unattended, in order to keep up the perceptions in your home.  If they see your abuse, they will see the monster who lives there too.

    In order to keep the illusion going, you adjust your perceptions.

    Most have no clue what this does to a human being.  It makes you insane.

    Insanity is seeing a reality that doesn't exist.

    Seeing a father where a pedophile stands.

    I became sane, when I saw reality…my perceptions finally matched my body.

    Abused children who are abused by a family member, are usually neglected in order to keep the abusive family member. Rarely is the child treated and the family member removed.

    They would rather keep an abusive father than live without one.

    The child then learns, to overlook abuse and keep the relationship.

    What we fail to appreciate is that we are holding onto abuse and there is no relationship outside of that.  Our new relationships are abuse.

    It is abusive to ourselves to change our truth and perceptions to go against reality.

    We keep a 'loving' father and we abuse our self.

  • Covering Up my Truth.

    I listened to Jane Fonda speaking about her life, and I wasn't able to write it down word for word, but what she had to say struck me.

    How our survival self stands in the way of us growing up and becoming whole.

    I know this is true.  

    She said, "I stepped out of myself to live next door to me, in a shell of perfection."

    This shell is pretending to not be hurt and abused, but to be 'okay' and 'normal'. We have to act like this, in order to maintain the family's image and good front.  It soon becomes who we are, it grows thicker and thicker, the longer we live this way.

    She also said that the tool we use to survive, becomes the tool that is the obstacle for becoming whole.

    I see it as the shell has to be taken down in order to get back to your own self, and this shell is the facade we lived as to be normal and okay.  Removing this wall brings us to our truth.

    Our truth is scary on many levels.  For one it is not accepted by our parents and others who want to remain in their shells.  And it was terrifying knowing that I lived as a shell, but not me. That my truth wasn't who I had lived as.

    I knew my shell much better than I knew who I was and my history.  As a shell I constructed things to look better than they appeared. Friendlier, kinder and more loving.  Outside of the shell it was like all my friends became enemies.

    Yet, without ever leaving the shell of pretend, I would not have grown up…I would have remained stunted and as immature as a child inside; a wounded child.

    It is funny, in a peculiar way, that we believe we can add things to cover up our abuse, and that we can grow around it.  But, in the end, we end up with a pretty, perfect shell, and a yucky inside.

    Our outer appearance can't change how we feel inside.

    This is the mad dance and marathon…forever adding something on the outside to help boost our self esteem.  I couldn't be good enough, smart enough or cute enough to erase the abuse.

    Once I sat down with my wounded child, I was able to begin growing as me.

    No more shells.  

    No more pretending.  

    Instead I began falling in love with me…broken, abused, but real.  

    I loved my real self and had to say good bye to the shell.  

    The shell that helped me survive my childhood had followed me into adulthood.  

    Jane is right, the shell that kept me surviving my childhood, also kept me from being whole and me.

    So in order to become me, I had to leave my shell behind.

    My shell was the shield that kept my real feelings from showing.

    Kept me from pleasing myself, but always pleased others.

    It shielded me from becoming too emotional and loving, from being open and vulnerable.  My soft spot remained behind this thick wall.

    I remember my husband commenting, in the very early days of my father's exposure, that I was like a scared rabbit.  And I was.  I was walking around fully exposed without my shell.

    God, those early days were brutal.  Living life without a shell had me feeling extremely naked…and bloody.  The image of a wound.

    I was walking around as a wound…without a shell. No longer able to pretend that I wasn't abused.

    Until you can heal the wound you are very sensitive…with your nerves exposed.

    Now, I feel my wound is healed.

    Shell long discarded…and I am growing up. 

    My insides are matching my body.

    I no longer am a grown woman, wearing a shell, to cover up my wounded child.

    I am now grown woman who was wounded as a child…who grew up as I mothered my own wound, by no longer covering up my truth.



  • In Control Within the Flow

    Today's reading, March 21,in the Book of Awakening, by Mark Nepo "To Harbor and Release"  I love this one.

    "Often the pain of resisting makes us rust like iron, and in order to re-enter the flow of life, we need to be scraped back to our original surface.  Our feelings, if not released, bread the heart with their grit. Like windows filmed by weather, we wait on loving hands to be rubbed clear.  It is inevitable.  Experience covers us over, and the expressive journey lets us come clean to the table of light. Again."

    "All things in existence participate in this involuntary cycle.  For human beings, the process of living stains us repeatedly with the grit of being here, with heartache and disappointment and the pointedness of being human, which can sicken us if harbored or make us whole if released.  Again and again, we, more than any other life form, have this majestic and burdensome power to harbor or release the impact of our experience."

    "Humbly, we are asked to keep the flow real between what is taken in and what is let out.  We have only to breathe to remember our place as a living inlet.  Experience in, feelings out.  Surprise and challenge in, heartache and joy out.  In a constant tide, life rushes in, and in constant release, we must let it all run back off.  For this is how the earth was made magnificent by the sea and how mankind is carved upright, again and again, by the ocean of spirit that sets us free."  Mark Nepo

    What we have to remember, what we take in, we have to let out.  I love, "Experience in, Feelings out."  This one sentence alone says so much.

    I believe that children who were abused in childhood, learn to experience and not to let the feelings out. We instead try and hold our feelings inside and do so til we explode in various ways.

    Rarely are children allowed to express their feelings after being sexually abused or physically abused.  We experience and then we have no outlet.

    This alone has created an unnatural way of being human. To take in things in silence our of fear of reprisals, is living half way.  This is how the rust builds upon us. And in my experience, only by expressing what has gone unexpressed, do we clear away the layers of film upon us.

    The natural process of Experience in, Feelings out, is disrupted in abuse and this alone is the cause of so much disease and violence…we are out of control, out of order, not able to work correctly.

    The term harboring resentment came to mind.  I didn't know that when we don't express our feelings (release them) we are harboring.  

    I had truckloads of expressions to release, and in the beginning they flowed like a rushing river, tumbling over each other, with volumes raised, they tore out of me…held back so long their force near violent in the outward flow.

    While it had to be shocking and out of character for others to witness this of me, it felt extremely healing to say what I had failed to say…for years.

    I wasn't the most prolific or articulate or kind as the words came rushing out, but I was scraping off the rust of old feelings I hadn't felt.  Some were not so pleasant or kind themselves…and all had to be felt in order to be released.

    Now, it is my intention to not let layers of unexpressed or unfelt emotions pile up upon myself, for it feels heavy and a burden to carry…so whatever I experience, I let my feelings out…I don't like holding on to feelings.  

    Harboring your feelings seems safer when you have been abused…we learn to keep them in order to get along and for sheer survival for some.  

    Abuse teaches us to live only taking in…never in a healthy release.

    I am still learning how to release.  Sometimes it still comes out very fearful or childlike in expression, but to me…it isn't about the delivery, but rather that they get out.  Maybe over time, with enough space and healing, I will be able to release them with a graceful kind and compassionate delivery…and not the hurried careless abandon that often rushes out.

    I will find my natural releasing stance…that isn't totally harboring or rushing abandon…but rather a fearless authenticity, beautiful yet powerful, in control within the flow. 

     

     

     

     

     

  • Unplugged

    In the confusion between vulnerability and how it felt equal to abuse, I had to look up the definition of abuse.

    "to use wrongly, mistreatment, ill-use, to hurt or injure, improper use, abuse a privilege…"

    And vulnerability was  "exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed either physically or emotionally, susceptible to attack.

    So, it is two sides of the same coin.

    As a child we are innately vulnerable and 'accepted' ill-use and mistreatment due to the lack of alternatives…and even grew to accept this as normal.  Especially when we are treated this way from the folks who 'love' us.  Love then equals mistreatment…we mix love and ill-use of our selves and call it normal.

    We are stuck in the sate of vulnerability with those we 'love'…and those we love feel betrayed when we assert power, for being 'loving' is to be open to attack and ill-treatment.  How dare you shut them out.

    It is a muddled up mess when you believe love hurts and attacks…and in order to gain your power back you must shut the door against those you love.

    The powerless state of vulnerability and being ill-used in this state is that we never know self power.  We are taught to seek power from the powerless. 

    My children had the power to make me mad, etc…and I had to be stronger than them to keep my power…is what I thought.

    However, when I took my power back from my family of origin, I realized that I had been raising children with no power source within themselves.

    What a huge gift it was to give my children their power back and what a relief it was to be free of that power struggle; continual fight and fear of losing power.

    In abusive homes the children are left powerless, taught that love means allowing, acquiescing their rights, their feelings etc, they are always left helpless waiting for the 'powerful' to decide.

    They are lost to their own power source…and learn that power is 'out there' somewhere.  And happiness comes when you find a power source that doesn't hurt you.

    A kind power source…that you can plug into.

    Which is co-dependent.  You are not a self contained power source.

    I literally had a moment in time, where I unplugged everyone from me and me from everyone.  I stood powerless.  I had to find a way to live unplugged.

    It was the beginning of finding my authentic power…which Gary Zukav writes about…read below!

     

  • Baton-Less!

    I thought about innocence yesterday and what it is, how is it experienced and do I truly know it.

    This morning it came to me that I was picking up pieces of innocence as I walked searching for truth, and that perhaps truth is innocence, for without truth can there be innocence?  And is it possible to have experienced so much that isn't innocent and still be innocent or be able to return to the land of innocence?

    I had looked up the meaning of innocence and one definition said, "freedom from guilt or sin through being unacquainted with evil – blamelessness.  I like this one.

    Being free of guilt…

    I thought perhaps it was impossible to get back a state of innocence, that once you fell out of that pureness, it would be impossible to wipe yourself clean again.

    Innocence dies when you feel blamed.  Innocence dies when you become acquainted with evil… And it returns when the blame lies outside of you.

    If everyone would look upward, toward their parents, victims would dry up…innocence would bloom…like a chain reaction of love flowing backwards through generations; innocence would flourish.

    Seeing the flow of guilt and how it poured downward into small children, you can see the cause…how it forms and why.

    Alice Miller is correct, that the fourth commandment has really messed with our heads and psyches, by bringing blame into our selves out of fear of blaming our parents.

    Innocence is being able to stand up and face the truth of what is…not carrying the blame, shame and guilt that isn't mine to carry.  I didn't start this trickle down affect, but I do carry my responsibility to stop it from flowing down into my children.

    If I blame my children for 'making me mad' or 'losing control', I am passing the baton of guilt to my child.  If she reaches for the baton, she will lose her innocence.  Taking the blame for something you didn't start is to lose your innocence.

    Taking back your innocence is to hand back the blame.

    A relay going backwards, is the only way we can heal ourselves from abuse…

    The weight of carrying the wrong baton is where all the issues lie.  

    I remember in the early days of my mental breakdown, the days of discovering that all I thought I knew, I knew nothing….I recall feeling that this mess was much to big for me AND that I can't fix what I didn't create.  

    It took me out of the lives of my parents and siblings and into my own.  My own was a big enough mess and I carried only that.

    I handed the batons of guilt and responsibility back to my parents.

    I handed the batons of guilt and responsibility back to my siblings.

    And only sat with what I was responsible for.  

    In the past, in the present or in my future.  Holding that damn baton in order to keep my parents guilt free, had done nothing to clean them up, but in fact dirtied me.

    I see sins being forgiven the same way.  "Here hold my guilt for me…carry the burdens of my bad choices!"

    Quitting the relay team of guilt has set me free…I carry only me.

    I take responsibility for what I do, what I say and how I act.

    My children don't have to carry any part of me.

    I am a self contained container…a free me.

    Innocence is being free to be me…baton-less!

    IMG_2364
    Photograph by Hannah Jukuri….

     

  • Who Believed the Worst About Herself.

    In the aftermath of reading David Hawkins, I am left with an even greater understanding or perhaps an explanation of my journey, how I arrived, what happened that covered my eyes and spirit; my innocence.

    I almost felt that I was responsible for being so irresponsible, that I had somehow fallen asleep carelessly or that perhaps I didn't care enough to save myself or was kind enough to save my sisters or any other girl who was abused after me.

    There was a part of me, a pretty large part that felt I was responsible for being so irresponsible…and that irresponsibility is my nature, my soul's fingerprint, the DNA of who I am.  

    Another huge chunk also enjoyed the haughty elitism of the FALC; the one right pathway to Heaven.  That I didn't mind all the other poor souls going to hell…I was heartless to the core…Self Rightiously superior and self absorbed.

    When my 'truths' of my first forty-six years revealed themselves to be false, I began the digging process to uncover how I had gotten so blind, backwards and confused, and who was the real me underneath it all?

    It feels like I am paleontologist of my own life, where I am trying to get to the fossil of who I am…to see me in my natural state.

    While it takes courage to be willing to want to know the truth, to search for answers to your irresponsibility, to go into your coldness, your blindness to evil within as well as out; like researching a monster called Self.

    Being a detective in your own life…your dysfunctional life.  

    Taking apart your mental mind, re-creating the pathways of beliefs that led you to act like a robot…with a mind completely closed down and emotions and feelings buried deep.  A great student of hatred in order to feel good.  

    What I recall of the First Apostolic Lutheran Church, is that they spoke of nonbelievers as being the devil, along with items they called sins; how they will slowly take away your 'faith' little by little.  When in actuality, they (preachers) were taking away our innocence bit by bit.

    Each time we believed in the sermon about nonbelievers being bad, we were taught to hate them.  Each time we relinquished our rights to our body, the preachers/church won another part of our lives.

    Its subtle and not so subtle messages slowly turned us into hating not only others but our own flesh and blood…and the weakness of self against them.

    How it would be impossible to resist the devil, so best not to dance the first step.

    Innocence and strength of spirit was not preached…but wretchedness and our inherent weakness poured into us. 

    I recall spending my first night at a non-relative nonbeliever's home…I was in grade school.  They had a TV, the parents drank beer, and I was afraid to go to sleep.  I was terrified, like sleeping in the devils home.  Fear of them…and fear of the pull and not being able to resist.  I remember we slept on the floor in the livingroom, and she fell asleep with the TV on…and I was mesmerized watching it, while knowing it was wrong, but couldn't stop.  I felt how 'evil' was stronger than I.

    The little innocent child self, curious and in wonderment, wanted to see TV, knowing it was wrong…did so and then was terrified I would die with this sin in me and go directly to hell.  Stuck in a home of nonbelievers.  A weak child against the demons.

    Looking upon this from the perspective of the program they were putting in place sickens me.  Not so much the program which is so filled with elitism, but the fact that the innocent child gulps this up without question. 

    Eroding its sense of pureness. Imagine by grade school, I was already gone.  

    Now add onto this being abused by my father.  I am weak and wretched once again.  

    And now my mother's opinion of me comes in.  Once again, no one sees my innocence.  It must be true.

    Three very influential factions in my little world all see me as no longer innocent.

    There is no way I can't turn on myself and see me as they see me.  

    See my body as they see my body.

    And if I was of stronger 'faith' or a stronger little girl, I could have saved my innocence….I believed.  I was the one who was weak and couldn't save myself.  Because I couldn't I was responsible for being irresponsible.

    I didn't pull apart the string so deeply to see the intricate pieces of how all my innocence was lost.  

    If the church still held me innocent, while I had lost it with my father, I would have then been half innocent; half good.  But, there was no one in my little life that seen me as a very innocent child whose consciousness is not devious.

    What a big burden for a child to carry, the lack of innocence and good.

    No matter how much I tried to do good, It was never enough to erase the DNA of being guilty for losing my innocence…hating my weakness against evil.  I lost and it won, always.

    To see myself and to know myself and to feel myself as being innocent/good/a joyful Spirit was taken from me…replaced with feelings of guilt, shame and weakness. 

    It is like the church/dysfunctional parent rips apart all that is natural, and of spirit; peace, love and joy…transforming the child of innocence, to reflect instead, that of the devil and hatred and fear.

    What chance does the child have?  

    No wonder I felt weak and powerless, I was.  I was weak in discernment, weak in not standing up against adults.  I was weak in not questioning…I was weak and unable to fight those who were determined to have my innocence.

    Yet I berated myself and my weakness…and grew into a girl wise beyond her years.  An old person in a young life.  I tried to control what was out of my control….and felt guilty when I couldn't.

    I knew I lost my innocence. I knew I was weak.  What I didn't know was that the strong people in my life preyed upon this.  That there was no way in hell I could have stopped this.  

    Not the rape of my body nor the rape of my innocent mind by the church…nor could I have convinced my mother.  For her love of both of them left me with no one to turn to.

    As Dr. Maya Angelou says, "Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives."

    What I failed to appreciate are a few things;

    The strength of the adults and the natural inherent trust of the child and its inability to discern makes it the weaker of the two.  It isn't that I was irresponsible, I was naturally over taken.  

    I didn't fight this larger system.  Which leads to another quote by Dr. Maya Angelou "…surrender in its place was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice."

    I now can honor my lack of resistance, for I had no choice.

    It wasn't weakness…I surrendered in order to survive.

    I can vividly see, feel and know the weakness wasn't weakness, but the truth of being a child…it is inherently weak against an adult.

    It isn't a personal character flaw, a carelessness or calculated callousness; I was naturally being a child.

    I could weep for the natural little girl…who believed the worst about herself.

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    Photograph, by Hannah Jukuri

     

     

     

  • Wish For Your Self.

    What a great year of learning, again.  

    Lessons seemed to continually line up to serve to me… more of me; more freedom, more letting go, surrendering and allowing, more ways to be expressive, a deeper understanding, followed by affirmations of what doing the opposite would look like.

    I think I thought, that when I said I was going forth with love, peace and joy, like magic, that was what would follow.  Wrong.  

    Instead I was served up all of my relationships were no love, peace or joy existed, and asked to redo myself there.

    I was given opportunity after opportunity, sometimes many at a time, all clamoring for my attention…insatiable energies of need and control, that had kept me from peace or feelings of love or experiencing joy.

    What I believe lots of folks believe, is that they stay in the same place, but instead of feeling anxious, controlled, resentful, rage, anger, tight restraint…they will just work harder to feel different.

    To stay with same relationships, BUT feel differently about them.

    Feel more loving…will bring up love.  And to become peaceful where rebellious feelings explode…to dial down or to a different frequency.

    That isn't what real love, peace and joy is.

    That is denying what is there and forcing feelings.  Which is to have false feelings of love, peace and joy.

    Many believe you can simply just 'think' differently about an individual etc and like magic, feelings will change.   That your feelings are the problem within the relationship…not that the relationship itself is where the troubles lie.

    Seeing life differently is where the key lies.

    I am reading, "The Body Never Lies" by Alice Miller.  This is one of the first authors who addresses the child, instead of the parent…she sees abuse from the child's perspective and how the body feels and then how the child is made to 'feel different' in order to honor and love thy parents.

    She writes, "The parenting approach know as "Poisonous Pedogogy" breeds overly well adjusted individuals who can only trust the mask they have been Forced to wear because as children they lived in constant fear of punishment. "I am bringing you up in the way that is best for you" is the supreme principle behind this approach. "If I beat you or use words to torment and humiliate you, it is for all for your own good."

    "In this famous novel Fateless, the Hungarian writer and Nobel laureate Imre Kertesz describes his arrival at the Auschwitz concentration camp.  He was fifteen years old at the time, and he tells us in great detail how he attempted to interpet the many grotesque and appalling things he encountered on his arrival there as something positive and favorable for him.  Otherwise he would not have survived his own mortal fear."

    "Probably every child who has suffered abuse must assume an attitude like this in order to survive. These children reinterpret their perceptions in a desperate attempt to see as good and beneficial things that outside observers would immediately classify as crimes. Children have no choice.  They must repress their true feelings if they have no "helping witness" to turn to and are helplessly exposed to their persecutors. Later as adults lucky enough to encounter "enlightened witnesses," they do have a choice. Then they can admit the truth, their truth; they can stop pitying and "understanding" their persecutors, stop trying to feel their unsustainable, disassociated emotions, and roundly denounce the things that have been done to them.  This step bring immense relief for the body.  It no longer has to forcibly remind the adult self of the tragic history it went through as a child. Once the adult self has decided to find out the whole truth about itself, the body feels understood, respected, and protected."

    "I call the violent kind of "upbringing" abuse, not only because children are thus refused the right to dignity and respect as human beings but also because such an approach to parenting establishes a kind of totalitarian regime in which it is impossible for children to perceive the humilations, indignities, and disrespect they have been subjected to, let alone defend themselves against them. These patterns of childhood will inevitably then be adopted by their victims and used on their partners and their own children, at work, in politics, wherever fear and anxiety of the profoundly insecure child can be fended off with the aid of external power. It is in this way that dictators are born; these are people with a deep-seated contempt for everyone else, people who were never respected as children and thus do their utmost to earn that respect at a later stage with the assistance of the gigantic power apparatus they have built around them."

    "The sphere of politics is an excellent example of the way in which the hunger for power and recognition is never stilled.  It is insatiable, it can never be entirely satisfied. The more power these people have, the more they are spurred on to actions of compulsory repetition, restore the initial feelings of impotence they were trying to escape; Hitler is his bunker, Stalin in his paranoid fears, Mao in the final rejection by his people, Napoleon in exile, Milosevic in prison, Saddam Hussein in his mortifying fall from power. What impelled these men to abuse the power they had achieved to such a pitch that it ultimately plunged them into impotence and powerlessness?  I believe it was their bodies.  Their bodies sustained the knowledge of the impotence they felt in childhood; they stored such knowledge in their cells, and they set out to force their "owners" to face up to that knowledge. But the reality of their childhood instilled such fear in the hearts of these dictators that they preferred to wipe out whole peoples, to exterminate millions of human beings, rather than confront the truth – their truth."  Alice Miller

    I am reading this book for the second time, and it once again has a much broader meaning to me, than the first time around.  I am now able to see more potently the actual ways a child has to disregard its own body in order to survive, to look for 'positive' so not to drown in its own mortal fears…and how quickly an outsider can spot the crimes, while those within are unable to see.

    I have experienced the view of being an outsider and the quick slamming of the door behind me as I stood on the sidewalk, for the 'family unit' couldn't withstand the truth…mine and theirs.

    Their impotency against truth is what causes such insane behavior. Their lack of self power and worth has them snubbing outside…like that is where their truth lives…within us.

    You can berate me and kick me out of your life, but your truth, just as in the Dictators of the past did…but you are kicking us so as to NOT feel and own your own truth.

    I know that I have been kicked aside.  And it has nothing to do with me, but it has much more to do with the individual's fear of their own truths.  By keeping me out of their worlds, they like the 15 year old Hungarian Boy, keep their concentration camp a place of positive living…of love, peace and joy.

    I am so grateful that I was able to have the courage to see my own truth…

    What I didn't know, is that the most violent among us are those who are in mortal fear of seeing their childhoods in Reality's Light.

    That their violent behavior is to keep themselves from feeling the truth about their parents.

    So, as you go forth on this New Year's day, be careful what you seek for your self in 2012.

    If you seek, like I did, a life filled with love, peace and joy; you will first have to find all the places you have it wrong.  It has been 7 years of learning what isn't…in order for me to then set forth again.

    My wish for you is your own wish for your self.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • When She Writes It.

    I am at work, with a racking cough, aching bones and going through piles of mail, and come across my name and my mother's handwriting.  

    I put it in my slot. 

    What now, I wonder, what now…?  The added weight of the letter works on me as I continue to toss the mail.

    As I am bundling the mail to take on the route, I put mine in my purse, in case I decide I need to know what she has to say somewhere along my route.  I don't.  I feel the weight without even reading the words.

    I listen to a novel, moving along box to box, road to road, package to package….time passes, and she comes and goes along the route and I don't read it until I turn on my road.

    These words are spread out on stationary sheet, blue snowflakes around the border…plain white middle.

    Birthday/Christmas 2011

    Dearest Beth,

    You have been a great help and joy for many years.  You are my daughter and I have always loved you from Day 1.

    May God bless us all and give peace in 2012.

    A Mother's Love,

    Always and Forever,

    Mom

    I wonder what she is trying to accomplish by this letter.  What prompts her to send out these words?

    Stating a mother's love? Trying again to make me believe…

     A mother's love???  A mother who blessed her husband when he raped me.  Really, you loved me since day one.  I would beg to differ.  No matter how many times you write it, it still sounds hollow to me.  I don't feel the love.  Too many little girls lives were changed by how you loved me.

    She says I have been a great help and joy….And I certainly had been to abuse. She mentions nothing about my actions today, the present Beth, just the Beth of old.  She sees only her….refusing to acknowledge my changes, the new me.

    "May God Bless us all and give peace in 2012."  

    What is peace to her?  Would peace return to her life, If I would turn back into being a help and a joy for abuse?  Would peace then return, is that the Blessing she wants from her God?  

    Peace in dysfunction…an oxymoron for sure.

    Taken at a glance and just reading the words, it sounds like a lovely letter from a mother to her daughter; but the background experiences taint the words.

    Even the little girl in me feels the absence of her understanding as to where I am at.  I don't know if she can even fathom my path…our differences are so vast.

    While these notes may be comforting or helpful to her, they are not to me.  They come in blindly seeing only how she feels and what I brought….they fail to see how I felt or what I got back then.

    I asked myself, "what did I get from her…?"

    What is my response to her.  

    As a daughter of hers what can I possibly say?

    "Mommy Dearest…"  

    It seems when the hurt gets toughened up and put aside, she comes back in to peck at the cut.  I told her the kindest thing I have to offer her is silence.  No words.  Nothing.  Empty of retorts.

    As soon as I ponder what I would respond, it gets my blood pressure pumping.  I feel all the rage and wounds and resentment, hurt and pain.  Not only for me, but so many little girls, I get swallowed in the dark…I have no kind words to send back to her.

    I stop mentally writing a response…

    I just want her to remain silent.  To let it be.  To stop writing how much she loves me and how she will be my mother forever and always.

    Don't I know it.  Haven't I felt her brand of Love?  Was I not given another dose even today?  How can a mother who allowed such atrocities go on, write this letter to a Me?

    All she sees is how she loved me, not HOW she loved me.

    She misses all the places she wasn't aware…and I was abused.

    She misses all the things she overlooked that caused me pain.

    She misses all the mothering things she failed to accomplish when abuse walked through her door into her life, into her marriage and into her daughter.  She misses that.

    She only wants to see the joy and help.  She doesn't want to see the gaping wound of dysfunction.

    The wound that steered my life into flowing backwards and crooked.

    Seeing my Helping her and Joy for many years IS NOT what I need her to see. She doesn't need to see me that way.

    She needs to see me, a little child being hurt by her father. She needs to see that and then write letter about how she loved me so.

    Without mentioning my pain, her love stays golden.

    And without mentioning my pain… I would dissolve back into a land of dysfunction again.

    She keeps sending me letters expounding on her love…when a letter explaining how she couldn't have loved me would be more true to the nature of my experience.

    I don't want a love letter… I want a letter telling me how she abused me.  Isn't that odd.  We don't want our abusive parents to tell us how much they loved us for we carry scars of abuse…we want them to acknowledge what they did to us was not love.

    I could puke on the words of love she writes.

    Trying to give me her love…in words, when she failed in deeds.

    Once again, she didn't write the letter that will break my silence…

    She continues to hide behind a loving mother…when reality has shown me the opposite.  

     It is good for me to know what letter I am waiting for.  I always felt no need to respond, and now I know what words I am seeking…my truth, I will recognize it when she writes it.

     ‎"Truth can be Unrecognized, but it can't be changed." 

    David Hawkins  

     

     

  • “Called Out of Darkness,” a Spiritual Confession by Ann Rice

     …was playing in my Mail Jeep today.

    It is a very interesting journey, from being a Catholic, to Atheist to…not sure, not done with the book. 

    It was very interesting to see her viewpoint of religion and really life itself.

    She is about 20 years older than me, for she graduated the year I was born. But she noticed as a child, that the adult didn't like the children, and often times treated them as if they were innately bad. That if the adults were not watching the children would naturally misbehave.  

    She didn't like the way adults treated the children.  Her parents were different, and to them the kids were just other people in the house…and she never even was treated like a girl, but just a person.  So, she didn't have gender self esteem issues.  In fact her parents named her Howard and the kids called their parents by their given name. They didn't know authority in their home.  An interesting way to grow up.

    Imagine the hidden ways in which we lower a child…naturally.

    She said children are told things long before they have a question about things.  What an interesting observation. Imagine if we didn't tell children things, but waited until they asked???

    Her mother was teaching her religion…long before she could even understand the dynamics of it.  She does however recall feelings of awe and wonder about the Saints and Statues etc.  

    Life to me is lived mostly from the Authority viewpoint and imagine how much better we would all be IF we took the child's viewpoint instead?

    Lots of our religion can't be explained to a child, yet a child can tell you all the wonders it sees as they walk through life.

    She has a very unique viewpoint of her life…and herself.  Her novels spoke of her internal spiritual struggle that she failed to realize until later…I know the feeling.

    Listening to her story has provoked many new things to ponder.  I like it when books do that…nothing I love more than to see things from a new angle.

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  • Authoritarian Lifestyle.

    ‎‎"Since authoritarian parents are always right, there is no need for their children to rack their brains in each case to determine whether what is demanded of them is right or not. And how is this to be judged? Where are the standards supposed to come from if someone has always been told what was right and what was wrong and if he never had an opportunity to become familiar with his own feelings and if, beyond that, attempts at criticism were unacceptable to the parents and thus were too threatening for the child? If an adult has not developed a mind of his own, then he will find himself at the mercy of the authorities for better or worse, just as an infant finds itself at the mercy of its parents. Saying no to those more powerful will always seem to threatening to him". Alice Miller ~ For Your Own GoodSince authoritarian parents are always right, there is no need for their children to rack their brains in each case to determine whether what is demanded of them is right or not. And how is this to be judged? Where are the standards supposed to come from if someone has always been told what was right and what was wrong and if he never had an opportunity to become familiar with his own feelings and if, beyond that, attempts at criticism were unacceptable to the parents and thus were too threatening for the child? If an adult has not developed a mind of his own, then he will find himself at the mercy of the authorities for better or worse, just as an infant finds itself at the mercy of its parents. Saying no to those more powerful will always seem to threatening to him". Alice Miller ~ For Your Own Good

    "Since authoritarian parents are always right, there is no need for their children to rack their brains in each case to determine whether what is demanded of them is right or not…is the sentence that struck me.  So, in homes like these the children are ALWAYS wrong.

    Imagine what this does to the self-esteem of the child and how voiceless they are. And if they always succumb to the power of authority, they will never get the chance to be on their own.

    And this is another way we lose our connections to our feelings, IF they are always 'wrong' we no longer trust them.  Instead we trust what the authoritarians are saying….and God Forbid we dare criticise…for we have been taught IT is not acceptable.

    The children of the FALC are mostly raised this way…in fact the parents of the church bow down to the power of authority (Ministers) and the rules of the church. And they then power over their children expecting them to act like they do….

    Being without connections to their feelings…and instead do as the authoritarians tell them to do.  A cycle of no one daring to criticize, for Only the ones in power are right.

    And within this system child abuse occurrs and it is so easy, for the children have been primed to do so…by simply being born into this authoritarian lifestyle.