I M Perfect lady

Tag: childhood

  • Where Love Lives.

    A lifetime ago, I used to go Caroling with my siblings. One year I made us all scarves to wear. The simple joys of the holidays. Being a creative person, each Christmas I would try and make them all something. Pouring my heart through my hands.

    My brother sent a text yesterday. “Happy birthday! Life is short, enjoy each day. ”  Just enough to bring them and the drama to the front. 

    No matter the words I use, they can’t comprehend my journey.  

    I started to respond, but what could I say? What words would make him and them – understand the magnitude of love, peace and joy there is away from them.

    I believe they see me as suffering in the past hurts, holding on to grudges and non-forgiveness. Forsaking this moment with a mind and heart full of anger.

    Why else remind me of the shortness of life and to enjoy it.

    No matter the words I would type or the sentiment I tried to present, he wouldn’t understand how my heart and soul are filled with light. That stepping away from cycles of abuse the brainwashed cult-like religion – set my soul free and my heart to love.

    I miss family – but not the toxic one. That family comes with generational behaviors and patterns that are near impossible to have real relationships with.

    When I look back at our blind innocence and the unconsciousness of our denial – how we dressed up the holidays to be more – to hide the truth that lay beneath.

    What an impossible task to try and make our family whole. No scarves or ornaments – made with love by me – could put a dent into righting the mess.

    Those simple fun memories are now tainted, knowing what we didn’t acknowledge.

    If only they were just joys of caroling, with fun scarves, sharing our Christmas baking. If only there wasn’t ugly truths right beneath the surface.

    A friend sent a photo of her and her 4 sisters caroling – and their mom.  It fills my heart and breaks it. Of the joy of family and the loss of mine.  A wound that will follow me always.  They are there – sometimes loud – most often a faint hum in the background of my wonderful life.

    I know there are many of us out here, who are living, loving and finding peace and joy – away from our families of origin. It is more than okay to feel the ache of loneliness and feeling sorrow when you see family being loving family. And, the holidays can be especially hard to walk in tandem with grief and joy.

    What I know to be true is that the grief just pops up here and there in the sea of goodness I live in.

    My heart can hold joy and sorrow. If Christmas wishes were granted, I would want my siblings to join me here – on the outskirts of toxic family patterns.

    Until then – I hold space where love lives.

  • His Daughter to Live hers Well.

    Dates on the calendar can stir up memories – a glimmer of significance to the day. My father would have turned 96 today – he’s been gone now 13 years – but he was gone for me long before that time.

    It is different when you lose someone you were already estranged from – and your memories are tainted by his worst deeds.

    What I don’t have are heart felt memories – or sadness that he’s gone. It is a void where a father should have stood.

    So a date arrives and it is unusual with its significance- a day that used to be – and his life it feels was one that brought pain.

    I don’t follow the news, but there are many who do – and many who feel the angst of all that is going on. I don’t have answers for the multiple things that are wrong – but what I do know is that within my family of origin when all seemed lost – what I focused on was what I could do in my small corner of the world.

    I could gather Love, Peace and Joy.

    I wasn’t changing the devastation my father’s life did.

    I wasn’t changing the lives of those who suffered – I couldn’t.

    But, I could affect change in my small circle. I was able to use my life to live the opposite. I live with intention and keep as much love, peace and joy in my world.

    There are things we have influence over and there are millions that bring stress – and where we can do nothing.

    I believe if each of us sought out more of what we love, what brought joy and held peace, the world would tilt in that direction.

    I knew if I focused on my father’s deeds and the suffering and pain he sowed – I would have shriveled up and died inside.

    When I vowed to not let him define my life – I turned towards a new direction.

    It wasn’t easy at first – it felt awkward to turn away from so much bad – to seek instead the things that warmed my heart. Over time the new habit became my life.

    Even today as so much is upside down and backwards in this country – I still center myself on the choices I can make to bring love and light to my little world.

    It is during the darkest of times, we need more art – in all categories. We can send waves of positive energies out into the world each day by what we spend our days doing.

    Perhaps in honor of a life so wrongly lived – it is a must for his daughter to live hers well.

    Art is a sanctuary for my troubled mind- or when my left brain is stressed. There is joy letting the right side play.

  • Hear Their Cries.

    It is that time a year when on my route, I get to see babies in nature.  The ones I particularly love, are the fawns.  They are so wobbly and tiny, and yet expected to cross the roads quickly behind their moms.  I have seen three sets this spring.

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    This little one got confused.  It did not follow the mom, and was making crying noises.  When I got between the baby and his mom, she came back across the road and stood between me and baby.  And she began making distress noises.  I drove off, letting them be in peace.  And, forgetting to get her picture.  You can tell by the size of the "For Sale" sign, how tiny it is.

    Further on the route, on a paved road, I again watched a mom cross the road, and a baby start, hesitate and then go back to the side of the road and lay down.

    So, I slowly drove up and snapped this picture.

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    This is right on the side of the pavement….I am just leaning out of my passenger window.  It can almost hide in the short grass.

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    As I am taking this picture, the mom comes back across the road, but quickly disappears in the trees. I again, leave…knowing I am causing them both stress.

    What amazes me is how attentive the mothers are in nature, and how defensive of their little ones, how they will put themselves in the way of danger to save their child. The natural mother instinct to protect, is alive and well out in the wild.

    What a marvel that without parenting classes they do this so well.  I said to the momma deer that stood and pranced in distress…."Good Mom, you are doing a good job!"

    And then there is the human species, who seem to fail at this in rising numbers.

    I am not sure if our natural mother instincts are disengaged, or do we not recognize danger?  

    In my experience, my body had a warning system fully engaged, but my mind overrode this "fear" signal.  It first of all deleted the molestation pictures or failed to even record them. So, all I had was a beeping body, but nothing else to go on.  My fears of my father seemed groundless and false.

    I was unable to discern danger…for I wanted my mind to agree. 

    As a child, in order to survive, our minds protect us. By not remembering the abuse. And this alone disengages the danger knowing.  We can't survive in childhood, with all of our faculties, IF we know, we are in danger.  Yet, oddly, what we don't feel is safe. We are not if full blown danger, but nor are we relaxed and feeling cared for.

    I have been thinking about what I could contribute to Dial Help as a hand out.  For they handed to me what was abuse.  I am thinking, instead there needs to be a worksheet, that is similar to "You know you're a Redneck, IF…."

    So, it would be, "You know you're a victim, IF…"

    The way the human body and mind work together to help us survive, is the hurdle we need to overcome in order to get back to who we were prior to abuse.

    This mechanism that is automatic, pre-sets us into believing what is not real…and not believing that which IS.

    Our inner sight and knowing is completely backwards.

    It is my belief, that there are many folks just like me in the FALC, who have this psychic blindness. And we are asking the blind to see. How?

     I am not sure I can articulate this accurately, to portray the dilemma any agency will have to flip this around, for they are living in a sea of danger and are unaware.

    The momma deer, knows I am a danger to her child.

    The woman who is married to a pedophile doesn't see the danger.

    What I do believe, though, at least in my experience…is that the child is trying to teach the parent. The child is giving out signals that the parent is missing.

    But what I also know to be true in most cases, is that the parent themselves are abused and their own pain has them so self absorbed, they can't see their children.

    They haven't healed from their own childhoods…so they don't know how to mother naturally, and to know danger.  Unlike animals in nature, we don't know who the predators are.

    And when this is so, the children are left unprotected.  It is open season all year round, and a child has no one to hear their cries.




  • By Feelings.

    I always knew that my quilting was Art Therapy, I just never knew how…it just was. 

    I never sat down and dissected the parts or even looked closely at the process, but rather was focused on the fabric, quilts and design, but not at what was happening behind the scenes if you will or what the overall technique was doing.

    I was processing my pain…while the mind was focused on the quilt, my unconscious was leaking out in the overall picture.

    It was like there were two selves down there quilting.

    The conscious quilter and the unconscious pain.

    My quilts were a barometer of my unconscious pain, my fears and sense of self; as my sense of self worth grew, the Lady in my quilt became more alive and animated. And at times answers to fears were shown to be unfounded.

    What I find so odd is that I felt I was escaping myself by quilting, and yet it was there that I was most prolific.  I wasn't running from me, but towards me.

    My feelings would dictate the scene in the Art and the fabric and design.  I knew I quilted by feelings, I just never looked at what I was feeling or why I chose what fabric I did and why I felt drawn to create a lady engaged in a certain feeling.

    And there were times I would start out with one feeling and then take sudden turn and a completely different quilt would emerge.

    All of this is very amazing looking back at my quilted journey of feelings.

    What I recall most, is the times I felt so out of sorts in real life, so lost in the now and old relationships, and how at home the Lady felt on the quilt…and how she seemed to foretell my feelings, ahead of me being aware I felt that way…perhaps ahead of my mind.

    Guess that is what Art is more about, getting out of your mind and playing with feelings.

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    Photograph by Hannah Jukuri

    A clothesline full of feelings as a woman processes her pain, her life and seeks to find hope for her future.  I was completely turned inside out and quilted from there as well.  These are my insides; my feelings and emotions.  Contrasts, convergences, waves of energy…processing who I wasn't and processing who I was…finding my way by feelings.

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  • Unexpressed fear.

    Mothering for certain is where my greatest weaknesses lie, where all my scars seem to congregate and wait for one child to push a button, and all of the unexpressed emotions come charging forward, ready to spill from my mouth.

    A few sentences do, a few sharp tones and hitting remarks find their target…before I am able to gain control of myself.  Inside of me then echos and reverberates voices of fear and confusion, feelings of being put upon, used, etc.  My child self rallies forth, elbowing out of the way the mom.

    I have, and have had, a very hard time heading into conflict a mom first…leaving behind my scarred child self.  Which leaves me standing there a mom, spewing forth childish words of defense…forgetting I am supposed to be an adult.

    By the time I remember to be an adult, the child has made a mess…voiced promises she isn't going to keep, poured feelings of petty indignation and pretty much presented a 'mental' mom.

    My adult self then has to clean up and find a solution that restores us both.

    As long as my children live here and are under my care, I will have to be on guard.  Just as I don't want my child self creating my nutrition plan, I don't want my scarred child mothering.  

    She mothers out of fear, screams in fear of injustice, fails to see both sides is very much shallow and self absorbed…contents of an abusive mother.

    Knowing she exists inside of me, isn't enough to keep her silent…to keep her back and away from conflict.

    I wonder what triggers her most?  What are the tones that ring for her to enter into my world uninvited.

    They are feelings…feelings of being used.  Feelings of imbalance. Feelings that others should or should not be doing that which they are doing…so when I feel out of control, she rushes forth.

    Guess that is what they mean by Post Traumatic moments.

    Ugh.  I just get so drained being a mom sometimes.  Working to not become postal, and yet time and time I do.  Each time I climb to the upper rung by putting them down, I lose.

    Certainly, they are not the long raging moments of before, just small aftershock like spews.  Is it even possible for me to be in conflict while in control?  I get there, but not till after I have had my ugly say.

    Ugly say has to be like sweet treats, something that my scarred girl lives upon…being mute in the first few moments of any conflict will help and open up space for my adult self to arrive.

    Today, I quilted…lots.  Thankfully so.  Imagine if all I had to do was to monitor the folks who lived with me???  My child self would have a field day.

    Maybe one day I will match the lady of my quilts.  Be a lady at all times…in conflict and without.

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    Doing Bikram yoga in the Sunrise…. (perhaps doing more yoga will release the unexpressed emotions.)

    And this is my latest Kayak Lady…

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    Art Therapy…it allows me a place to escape from the trauma…a place to express beauty…instead of unexpressed fear.

     

  • Norm within the Church

    The latest news within the FALC, is that the Chairperson of the Zion church was caught with his pants down so to speak…which to me is a huge red flag waving once again above the steeple.

    How many flags need to be waved before the people in the pews will see that this behavior isn't isolated to a person, that it is an affect of abuse itself?

    Who will see this as a sign pointing to the contents of the family and not try and keep it as rogue behavior?  He is displaying the affects of abuse.  

    How will this affect or not affect the members of the church?

    Who will begin to unhook the mantle of 'purity' and see that beneath the veil lies reality?

    I see him as a confused adult child.  I see him as the natural progression of unhealed sexual abuse.  It isn't just a bad choice…of doing the wrong thing in the wrong place, it is a symptom of a much bigger problem.  

    To isolate him and focus on the act and not see the pathway that led him there is to miss the whole picture.

    His family tree is a new tree in the forrest of names that I have. Another name, another family, another section of the church where the virus of abuse has spread…

    The hope section grows smaller, that this isn't the norm within the church.  

     

  • Agree With the Line.

    I finished listening to the Book "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett while I sewed yesterday afternoon.  

    The CD describes it as such;

    "Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step…

    In 1962 Jackson Mississippi, two African American maids and one white Junior League socialite- seemingly as different from one another as can be, will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why?  Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed."

    "In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three memorable women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women – mother's, daughters, caregivers, friends – view one another.  A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor and hope.  "The Help" is a timeless universal story about the lines we abide by and the ones we don't."

    I had read this book, watched the movie and then listened to it…all three times I was drawn to the courage it takes to step over the line.

    Stepping over the line, isn't done lightly or without great personal risks and consequences, and yet if someone doesn't take a chance, speak out and dare show the wrongness, change doesn't happen.

    Towards the end, the white character muses…"I may not have changed their minds… But at least I no longer agree with them." Speaking about her socialite friends.

    She had broken out of a system that had been put into place long before her birth, one she had grown up in…and dared to explore and see it from all angles.  Willing to see the wrongness of her people…

    It came with a personal cost, she lost friends and love, but gained personal strength and courage.

    I totally understand her dilemma…of stepping over the line, knowing you are stepping out of the life you have…into the unknown.

    Stepping over the line is what has allowed us as a species to evolve…if we all stayed behind the line, no change would occur.

    Once one takes a step, another will follow.

    The lines are drawn often with the mindset or understanding at the time, and progress happens when someone dares to argue with the line.

    I see one very entrenched line that is holding its ground and only a few dare to step over it and walk away…and that is the parental line.

    When you cross this line, your life will change.

    Most parents do not want their lines crossed…especially abusive parents.

    The treatment of the children in these homes is similar to the African Americans…for they are not allowed to have a voice, to speak about how the treatment feels on their end.  They are to serve the family in silence, bowing down to the heads of the households…a second class member…They are lower down on the totem pole, only those up higher can have their say, speak their minds and share how it feels…and enforce it.  Disregarding your vote without an election.

    This is the way of it, the line is not to be crossed…it stays firm until their death.  Their feelings are to be considered at all times…and perhaps even posthumously.

    At no point is a child to go against what the parent feels, thinks and believes, or they will be crossing the line…and stepping out of the family.

    I would love to see a revolution within abusive homes.  Of voiceless, choice-less children walking free.  Marching for the right to stand up. Shedding the cloak of secrecy that keeps their parents reputations clean in the social world…while the child remains in the silent darkness of abuse.  A flipping of the tables…

    Fear is what keeps most from stepping up to the line.

    The fear is as palpital as the ones the maids had. They had lived in fear of the white folks for so long, it never crossed their minds to speak up, even anonymously.

    Some may say, they 'respect' their parents too much to speak out…but respect doesn't keep you silent, fear does.

    Fear of stepping over this invisible line that has been there since you were little.  Fear keeps you on your side of the line…as it always has. 

    In life, there are always lines…and you will define yourself by the ones you abide by and the ones you don't.

    You have to wonder about lines and who they serve and why.

    And depending upon which side of the line you are, that line will represent two drastically different views.

    Look at the line of silence in abuse…see clearly how it divides and makes one a victim.  One of lesser value…and one more powerful.

    Abiding the line, you are agreeing with the imbalance.

    What I too truly love, is that I may not be able to change your mind, but I love that I no longer have to agree with the line.

     

     

     

     

  • The Images in our Minds

    "It is because of awareness that we know what is going on in consciousness.  It is because of consciousness that we know what is going on in mind.  Because of mind, we are aware of what is going with sensations. Because of sensations, we are aware of what is going on with the body.  Consequently, that which we are – that which is aware, that which we really mean by the ultimate "I" and the infinite Self, and that which is conscious – is operationally many levels removed from the body.  The interesting thing is that the body expresses and does what the minds holds.  One is subjected to what the mind believes.  In other words, the body, being like a puppet, is controlled by the mind, both consciously and unconsciously.  Few people realize he power of mind over body."  David Hawkins, Healing and Recovery.

    What amazes me continually, is the fact that so many people live lives unquestioning and firmly NOT wanting to know, to look at what was put in their minds and how?  Many are very content following blindly (unconscious) never daring to not follow meekly and without question. 

     I am not sure what brings or strengthens a person's awareness, but without awareness, your life gets left at the same level you were raised in.

    It seems awareness is the ability to question and research your past.

    And you know, the ones with the most to hide, research the least, question nothing and blindly face the future, never wanting to know, know, know what really went on.  Who did what to whom and how did it affect them.

    Parents who abused their children, are the ones firmly intent on letting the past go….letting their sins fade away.  They are the ones who fear questions of the past and fear awareness of what went on…and even worse, face the responsibility of their actions and how it then affected the young and impressionable who lived with them.

    Instead of looking deeply within themselves and their past, they focus intently on the future, like running away…yet they can't.

    Their past rides with them in the lives of their children.  The abuse program virus runs on.

    By not looking, you don't escape.  In fact, it is what keeps your mind in control, your failure to bring in awareness, allows the past to keep re-creating itself. 

    If you were born into a family of abuse and don't want to research it, you will then run on the same program set into place.  

    Somehow the vast majority of society believes that by not focusing on what happened, you will be set free…that you can live  your life forward, without exploring what was put into you.

    It is like you are running a software program to which you don't want to know its content.  Or, you want to believe you are running a wonderful program called loving kindness, when in fact it is one based on fear and abuse.

    There is no way in hell you can live in a home of abuse and come out with a program called love and caring.  NONE.  

    And unless you un-program what was given to you, what you soaked up living in that space, you will live your life with that program leading the charge.

    Running from the source of how you were programmed will not change the program.

    You literally are a software program and will have to change this program while its running in your mind.  Sorting through each untrue thought and switch it around.

    For what I am most certain of is that the child of abuse, in order to survive, changes the labels of emotions or doesn't record them at all.

    It makes a software program that doesn't record truth and reality.

    This illusions software is what it lives with. These are the glasses in which it sees the world. These are the backwards thoughts that live in its head.  The flipped upside down viewpoint of all things.

    We create this fake software in order to survive and it gets left running, unless we become aware of its wrongness.

    You can change locations, stop going to church, you can change clothes and houses, but the software continues to beat out its madness.  You can't change it by changing location.  You can only change it from the inside out.

    You have to see what is programmed and cancel it out.

    And those who will not see abuse, can't cancel it out. The abuse software then run their lives…it lives within them, it can't be out run…the virus isn't on the outside, it is in your head.

    Abuse isn't something out there. Abuse is living with a software program that is the opposite of reality.

    Imagine if you will, if children didn't depend upon their parents in order to survive, do you believe that they would simply allow themselves to be beaten, raped and fondled and be okay with it???

    We have to change the program inside for we can't change the outside. We are forced to live in an alternate universe and get lost there.

    We lose our way back to reality…

    Running away physically will not correct this program.  It is like changing the screen the projector is shining upon.  There is nothing wrong with the screen, but the projector is playing a movie called illusion.

    We say the opposite of what we feel….a film about what isn't our truth.

    In my experience, truth re-programed me.  

    What a parent who is abusing their child fears the most, is that we won't stay programmed, that we will awaken and become aware…that we will truly see and begin to untangle the mess…

    For when we do, our world flips and so do the images in our minds.

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    (Photograph by Hannah Jukuri)

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Your children are sure to follow.

    "The Body Never Lies," by Alice Miller.

    ‎"Children cannot escape their own parents, so they cannot afford to see through them either. Blindness makes it possible to survive. This is the way the abuse of children has functioned since time immemorial. BLINDNESS AND FORGIVENESS ARE ESSENTIAL TO SURVIVAL. But at the same time they lead to repletion and they perpetuate cycles of cruelty."

    "To break through this vicious circle we need to understand that so-called love cannot survive abuse, deception, and exploitation without seeking new victims. And if it requires new victims, it is no longer love but at best the longing for love. Only UNFLINCHING REALIZATIONS OF ONE'S OWN PAST REALITY, OF WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED CAN BREAK THROUGH THE CHAIN OF ABUSE. IF I KNOW AND CAN FEEL WHAT MY PARENTS DID TO ME WHEN I WAS TOTALLY DEFENSELESS, I NO LONGER NEED VICTIMS TO BEFOG MY AWARENESS. I no longer need to re-enact what happened to me and take it out on innocent people because now I know what happened. And if I want to live my life consciously, without exploiting others, then I must actively accept that knowledge." Alice

    What seems so clear, yet is so hard to wrap your brain around, is that a defenseless child is left without escape and in order to survive turns itself blind to what the parent is doing.  You mind will not allow you to SEE your parents.  Not 'remembering' what happened, allows you to live in a fanatasy. And in this so called, 'loving home' you then begin to grow and develop awkwardly.

    You set into place the opposite screen to what is.

    Love is abusive.

    Caring is neglectful.

    Your 'truth' is backwards…you become authentically dysfunctional and can't even see it.

    It is my belief, that we then hurt our children in order to keep 'love' alive.  Love means there must be a victim and a perpetrator.

    The fog of not seeing who my parents were, also swirled and darkened my access to emotions that were what they truly were.

    Meaning, I didn't have access to moving away from fear, and even more tragically, I didn't have emotions of warmth and kindness that moved me towards goodness.

    Not having access to warmth and kindness, kept me pushed back on the inside, not feeling drawn to children inside.

    My insides were all wrong.  

    My arms could wrap around them…but not my heart.

    My heart was used for clinging to abuse….so oddly it is, if you could see your children as hurtful, unkind, etc, then they could be loved.

    Not sure if you all can follow this, but it makes bitter sense to me.

    What gratitude I have for the fog lifting 7 years ago…and to see in harsh reality my parents and what they did to defenseless children unable to escape; I then was able to walk right-side up.

    Walking and pushing back from abuse and things that hurt me…allowed me to feel warmth toward my children…to feel their innocence and my deranged mind.

    For all the mothers out there who have doubts and glimpses of their childhood terrors, and are unable to see straight through to what their mother did…You will enact her emotional pattern.

    You will love what hurts…and be pushed back and away from kindness, love, peace and joy.  You will shut out the Light side of life, while stoking the fires of hell…and not even know it, for the blindness of surviving your childhood blocks you from seeing.

    Growing up means taking down the survival glasses and facing the reality of your childhood, feeling and seeing the defenselessness of being you in their home.

    The blocking out abuse lenses are also blocking you from seeing your innocence.  

    If you can't see you as an innocent child, your children will never wear that banner…

    It all falls down to pick one.

    You or your parents are innocent or to blame, for the childhood abuse.

    Depending upon what path you take; your children are sure to follow.

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  • How It Feels

    I am reading "The Body Never Lies," again by Alice Miller.  

    What is really standing out to me this time around is the fact about feelings. Or the fact that it is more typical than not to not be aware of your true feelings.

    Alice writes, "Genuine Feelings are never a product of conscious effort. They are quite simply there, and they are there for a very good reason, even if that reason is not always apparent.  I cannot force myself to love or honor my parents if my body rebels against such an endeavor for reasons that are well-known to it.  But if I still attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, then the upshot will be the kind of stress that is invariably involved when I demand the impossible of myself.  This kind of stress has accompanied me almost all my life.  Anxious to stay in line with the system of moral values I had accepted, I did my best to imagine good feeings I did not possess while ignoring the bad feelings I did have.  My aim was to be loved as a daughter.  But the effort was all in vain.  In the end I had to realize that I cannot force love to come if it is not there in the first place.  On the other hand, I learned that a feeling of love will establish itself automatically (for example, love for my children or love for my friends) once I stop demanding that I feel such love and stop obeying the moral injunctions impossed on me.  But such a sensation can happen only when I feel free and remain open and receptive to all my feelings, including the negative ones."

    "The realization that I cannot manipulate my feelings, that I can delude neither myself nor others, brought me immense relief and liberation.  Only then was I fully struck by the large number of people who (like myself) literally almost kill themselves in the attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, without any consideration of the price this extracts both from their own bodies and from their children.  As long as the children allow themselves to be used this way, it is entirely possible to live to be one hundred without any awareness of one's own personal truth and without any illness ensuing from this protracted form of self-deception."

    "A mother who is forced to realize that the deprivations imposed on her in her youth make it impossible for her to love a child of her own, however hard she may try, can certainly expect to be accused of immorality if she has the courage to put that truth into words. But I believe that it is precisely this explicit acceptance of her true feelings, independent of the claims of morality, that will enable her to give both herself and her children the honest and sincere kind of support they need most, and at the same time allow her to free herself from the shackles of self-deception."

    "When most children are born, what they need most from their parents is love, by which I mean affection, attention, care, protection, kindness, and the willingness to communicate.  If these needs are gratified, the bodies of those children will retain the good memory of such caring, affection all their lives, and later, as adults, they will be able to pass on the same kind of love to their children. But if this is not the case, the children will be left with a lifelong yearning for the fulfillment of their initial (and vital) needs. In later life, this yearning will be directed at other people.  In comparison, the more implacably children have been deprived of love and negated or maltreated in the name of "Upbringing," the more those children, on reaching adulthood, will look to their parents (or other people substituting for them) to supply all the things those same parents failed to provide when they were needed most.  This is a normal response on the part of the body.  It knows precisely what it needs, it cannot forget the deprivations.  The deprivation or hole is there waiting to be filled."

    "The older we get, the more difficult it is to find other people who can give us the love our parents denied us. But the body's expectations do not slacken with age – quite the contrary!  They are merely directed at others, usually our own children and grandchildren.  The only way out of this dilemma is to become aware of these mechanisms and to identify the reality of our own childhood by counteracting the process of repression and denial.  In this way we can create in our own selves a person who can satisfy at least some of the needs that have been waiting for fulfillment since birth, if not earlier.  Then we can give ourselves the attention, the respect, the understanding for our emotions, the sorely needed protection, and the unconditional love that our parents withheld from us."

    "To make this happen we need one special experience; the experience of love for the child we once were.  Without it, we have no way of knowing what love consists of."  Alice Miller

    While I knew that having lived 46 years trying so hard to possess feelings of love and warmth toward my parents, and working at being a warmer person, it had never not once occurred to me that I wasn't the problem. That due to the lack of feelings of love didn't mean there was something the matter with me…but rather what I was trying to love.

    I remember having odd and horrifying realizations about my self, when the lack of deep caring and love didn't arise from me, towards my parents.  I would not even want to glance to long at this self that seemed to be so detached and cool.  For what child doesn't want to be with her parents?

    The double feelings that I had with the discovery that my father was a pedophile, was that I wasn't a broken love person.  I wasn't cold or detached…I wasn't living in a broken body and cold toward family…I wasn't damaged…but my family was.

    I am not sure I can tell you how it feels to believe you don't have access to warmth and caring or love towards parents…and feel you are damaged. That you arrived empty of that kind of love.  Yet I knew I could feel, but couldn't carry those feelings to my parents.

    It now gives me great peace to know I can't manipulate feelings…that emotions are natural responses, ones that come up without any assistance from me.  It leaves me in a neutral position taking the lead from my body.

    My body never lies…however, I have lied about my body.

    I have lived faking my feelings.

    Living a fake life.

    But no more.  Now, I simply agree with how It feels.