I M Perfect lady

Tag: childhood

  • Be you alone.

    Yesterday I was asked if I felt lonely and I felt inside of myself and I didn’t, but I understood lonely and have been there often.

    Yet what I failed to understand until I started writing today was that lonely is seeking that part of ourselves that were wounded in childhood. It isn’t so much someone, but a part of us that is missing. We are lonely for ourselves.

    I was writing along and discovered that my meaning or my view of a childhood wound was neglect, sexual abuse, damage, something awful, but do you know what it really is?

    If you look at this from the point of view of what the child lost instead of what happened to them you would discover that the wound is something missing, not something added to who we were.

    It isn’t that we now carry rape and its disgusting features, especially if you were a child and the man your father, but what happens is that in that instant, we felt that our innocence went missing.

    Most focus on the rape and its ugly addition to us, like it now becomes part of who we are, instead of seeing this as something our innocent self endured.

    What I believe is if we are not treated as innocent, we then believe we are not, and then leave childhood minus our feelings of being precious and innocent.

    Living life without knowing you are innocent and precious will open you up to all kinds of situations where you sell your self short, become a people pleaser, have no sense of your own value and self worth.

    The one two punch that my parents delivered left me feeling that I was no longer innocent, my value had changed, I was no longer precious to him and she was unable to see her precious husband change, so instead I had to be the one.

    How confusing this can all be. You think you have to go back and wrestle with the feelings of being abused, but actually it is feeling the loss of innocence.

    A childhood wound is a hole in our innocence.

    And we are the ones to bring it back.

    We are the ones to strengthen our weakened state.

    In the beginning of healing we find ourselves as leaky as a sieve and we slowly over time, we become a solid bowl.

    My container of self, my wholeness is more solid today than ever before, I had plug the holes by speaking up about my innocence.

    In the past few months, I have been able to witness the loss of innocence, the lure and the grooming and the way others treat my daughter after, myself included, to find the intricacies of abuse and what it actually means to be wounded in childhood without the experience of guarding your self worth and value.

    Sadly, the reason there is so much childhood abuse, is these newly arrived souls on the planet haven’t learned to protect themselves they are easy targets.

    They are loving trusting and kind individuals that get lured and groomed into letting go of their innocence for the pleasure of an abusive person, confused with the attention and courtship, they fail to see the hook, before they swallow the line.

    What makes this so hard to stop, is that the abusers knows how to lure and groom and make comfortable and when they have complete trust and faith, they then ask or move in a direction we did not see coming, and in that instant we are asked to stand by our innocence or please them.

    Comfort them, love them, allow them, do this favor, lend an ear, bring compassion and empathy…letting go of our own innocence we focus on what they are asking, and our innocence fades away.

    We become part of the dance.

    Even though we didn’t start it, we participated and that alone makes us guilty, yet all we did was let our innocence go to please someone one.

    Letting go of our innocence is our crime.

    What I also found is the steep incline it took to get my innocence back, I had to put the ‘blame’ if you will on the one who treated me poorly, they had to own their own actions and I got to own mine.

    While I balanced my self worth sheets inside, I created two columns, what was my responsibility and what was yours.

    Separating who did what to whom, what age, what experience, what was reality in that time frame in my life, and in doing so, was able to see the trend continuing forward, all the places I lost myself.

    What I have found is the characters from way back then to present didn’t change, but rather I was able to see what was actually going on, and how I felt and how they felt about me by our actions.

    I had no one to blame in my adult years but me.

    It is in owning me as an individual and not a public held entity, that I see it all begins and ends with me.

    My business is being me, being whole, and finding myself in the midst of deep lonely feelings, for you can be certain there is another hole to plug.

    Healing is removing the parts of my self that I have given away to others, pieces of my innocence, chunks of my self worth, bits of value. To see all the times I looked at other to carry me, to make me happy, feel loved, feel worthy, all are signs of my weakness…the places I let my self go.

    Each time I am lonely…it is clue, I lost my self there.

    Each time I feel powerless, well you can bet I gave myself up there.
    Each time I am angry at another’s action, I am expecting them to do something for me, carry me, love me, make me feel secure, and so I know I dropped a part of me there.

    It is amazing how fragmented we are, how may folks carry our sense of self.

    It is lonely, if you need others to be you.

    In a co-dependent society, being alone means being lonely for no one is supporting you.

    How awful to stand alone, separated, unattached…

    Being whole means needing no one to be you.

    You just be you alone.

  • Matter to someone.

    What came to me yesterday was the moment in the diner this summer, when I saw my mother for the first time after a 5-year separation, and how my body responded. How before I could put on my social cloak, I was riveted in fear.

    My body had reacted perfectly and yet I didn’t have all the puzzle pieces, but now I do.

    The reason I feared her isn’t because of what she would do to me, but what she had been unable to do in my past.

    How she was unable to get me/us away from a pedophile, that in fact she did the opposite, she tried to make their union normal, while he abused us.

    How she forgave his sins, and rallied harder to make their marriage work, to keep him so we had a father. She put all her efforts in keeping something that wasn’t true. She focused harder on him, and never once treated our wounds.

    As a child you see how invisible you are, how unhearing she is, how unresponsive to your pain.

    I now feel better about the way I feared her, for at the time it almost felt like I had self empowerment leakage, where even as a 51 year old woman, my 80 year old mother could send me into a fit of terror.

    My body recalls her and responds in its truth.
    I love my body and its meters.

    And how true to form she has remained after all these years.

    What stands out the most of the days, weeks, months after my father being arrested for molesting his granddaughter, is the absence of my mother.

    She actually was sequestered and not taking our calls. She went on vacation to Australia and Hawaii, she stayed in the warm climate for months, and only arrived here around the time my father was driven home in chains.

    I do not recall one action that would bring comfort to a child who was abused by that man, not one. She was so busy caring for her needs and his, that she overlooked the dozens of girls, by this time, who stood around with their underwear down, bottoms exposed, abuse clearly showing, and did what she needed to do.

    When I sat in her home, four months after the fact, I saw her shed tears about what was going to happen to her, I saw her strength arise in defense of him and her religion, I saw her blank and defensive when I confronted her on her actions as a mother.

    Not a tear fell as I told her about my experience with her husband, it was like the doors were all closed, I was talking to nothing.

    Isn’t it incredible yet again, that we can fear actions of nothing.

    Nothing. To do nothing is extremely painful to endure.

    My mother sent cards and made personal visits to all the girls she knew who had been molested by her husband, neighbor girls, but she did not give me her daughter the same courtesy. She apologized in a letter saying how sorry she was, that she didn’t believe this young neighbor girl and was sad that it took years to do so.

    The detective handed me that letter, and I crumpled it up and threw it on the floor, like a child enraged, and I was.

    My own mother at the time was sequestered and not taking my calls, was unable to hear of my childhood abuse, and she was penning letters to other hurt little girls.

    How telling, how cruel, how insane…how dare she dismiss me that easily.

    Again what I feared from her was nothing.

    Nothing again.

    I am worth nothing again.

    Nothing.

    What she gives me is nothing, a void. Space, silence, a void.

    I just looked at the two words together. A Void.

    I didn’t know that avoiding was nothing.

    A void.

    When you avoid someone you give them nothing and doing nothing creates a void

    A void isn’t love, it is space, silent, open, and alone.

    Imagine feeling this energy from a mother while you have wounds from your father?

    Instead of being able to find comfort and shelter, we encounter a void, space, emptiness, where no one is coming, nothing will happen…

    A void is who my mother is to me.

    Running from my father I fell into a void.

    It is no wonder my mind couldn’t comprehend or compute, there was no safety anywhere.

    Who is there to catch you when you fall?

    My last line in my letter to Mr. Detective man was, “Every little girl should matter to someone.”

  • A good NO.

    There are two small words that I feel are crucial to every relationship and most important to the one between you and you, and they are Yes and No.

    If you haven’t found the inner power to use these words freely, than you are at risk of being abused or most likely have been.

    I think back on the terrible twos my kids went through, and mostly what they were doing was activating their power to use these words and most parents are not happy about this, this opposing powerhouse in a tiny body.

    I do believe that we come with the natural ability to say yes and say no, to speak of our feelings, but during our ‘upbringing’ they are slowly eroded away.

    We are much easier to handle without this freedom.

    In fact I believe my childhood religion thrived on stealing away most of my power, which was the perfect partner for abuse, I had been removed of my tools to fight the enemy.

    When I see very submissive children being so obedient, I shudder now, for I see them being helpless and easy targets.

    My children came with much self -knowledge and I wasn’t able to remove all of it and it is unimaginable what we call raising; for it seems it is more like erasing.

    Erasing their natural abilities to survive in this world.

    I had mentioned to my brother that we would have been better off being raised by wolves, he laughed but then agreed.

    I would raise my children completely different if I had the chance, and perhaps I have been able to reset their buttons in the past six years as I reset my own.

    In fact I believe if we all sat back and followed a child, we could relearn how to be a full and happy adult.

    Who we grow up to be begins in childhood, and in order to change who we are now, we have to head back and see what rules we were taught and what things inside of us were squelched due to the fear of reprisals from our parents and or church.

    We have to learn how to say yes and for stand solid in the word no, become a stubborn two- year old!

    We need to reclaim our freedom that was stolen in our terrible twos!

    I love that we can begin to act like a two- year old and find our power, but how cool, we are two- year olds who are the head of the house and can drive…I say No parents allowed!

    It is time we reclaim our lives, our yes and our no.

    I am not sure, but I feel depression is when we lose the power inside, when we are stuck powerless, without a choice. And brainwashing has to be removing the flexibility to say yes or no that is against what the other wants.

    They brainwash away the free will to say yes or say no…

    These two little words and your freedom to use them will set your free and you will begin to see life as a child full of wonder and delight, for you have the power to steer clear of what you don’t like.

    There is nothing like the power of a good NO.

    Again, as Bryon Katie says, “Saying no to you is a yes to me!”

  • With your loving support.

    My old definition of marriage was the joining of two people of like minds, and perhaps friendship held this too, but that you both viewed life from the same space and often responded to life with the same footsteps.

    Your histories and life pathways joined together for you shared similarities.

    I now find myself yoked to a man who hasn’t lived life as I have, hasn’t had to walk the same footsteps I have had to take, and we are dissimilar in the way we now respond to life as it happens.

    The yoke that held us close together didn’t matter, for we were the heading in the same direction, speaking in the same language and doing the same response.

    Now it feels odd, like our yoke is gone, and we are two separated individuals doing our own thing.

    Great freedom to be who you are, doing what you love, honoring your differences etc…all good and well, until your differences become a weak spot when combined.

    I have zero tolerance for abuse and he hasn’t been affected by it like I have so, he truly doesn’t grasp the affects, nor will he; his loving trusting belief in others is a weakness when you are dealing with abuse.

    Abuse and its manipulators can get away with what they do, for they bank on your trust and your kind nature and that you won’t hold them accountable for what they do.

    They rely on you seeing their behavior as an anomaly in their otherwise normal world.

    What we fail to appreciate is that the anomaly is the truth and all the ‘normal’ behavior is a shield to hide it.

    What I trust now, is what do they do when they are asked to stand with or against abuse, no matter who it is that is doing the abusing, be it a friend, a spouse, a father, mother, sister, brother, is who they are.

    I see who you are by who you support.

    The greatest weakness and hole that a perpetrator, or even an abusive man hurting a woman, uses is that we trust and believe that they are more good than bad.

    We want to believe that they just had a moment of confusion, a slip of control, a ‘moment of weakness’ but that all in all, they are good people.

    If we all stopped and cut our old opinions up the moment abuse entered the picture, we would save a lot of little children and even young adults who find themselves in a relationship that is detrimental to their well being.

    It is the stopping and not continuing that is the key.

    When people show you who they are, believe them. Damn it, Believe them.

    It seems so easy, so simple and yet time and time again, abuse slips by attached to the one you love.

    Attached to the one you trust.

    Attached to the old relationship, the kind man, the loving brother, abuse is attached to them, and you just refuse to see it.

    Oh, yeah…sometimes you see it but you will not toss out the old relationship for one little act of abuse.

    Or for one little moment of supporting abuse…we overlook the supporting for they too may be someone we love and trust.

    It is this blind trusting faith in a person who has abuse attached to them that keeps this cycle going, the legacy of abuse is mostly to blame on the ones who love and trust the ones with abuse attached to them.

    I never knew that abuse thrived more because of the love and trust than it did because of the driving desire of the perpetrator.

    In my one experience with abuse, if you don’t see the abuse attached to your loved one, and you continue to have relationships with him, then abuse gets attached to you.

    You are now the carrier, the supporter and the accomplice.

    The ‘love, trust and belief’ that my family had in my father has allowed him to be a free man.

    Each one of them who didn’t not see the abuse attached to him, now are carrying his legacy forward, in love, trust and faith in a man who gives abuse back.

    So, each time I am faced with a similar type event in my world, where abuse is attached. I see abuse and let the rest fall away.

    Again, the greatest supporter of abuse is love, trust and faith.

    Imagine?

    And yet the schools are teaching, good touch bad touch.
    Stop.

    They need to teach that we have the right to revoke friendship, love and trust, we can withdraw it at any time.

    So, my loving trusting and believing husband and I are on the opposite sides of this and my behavior seems harsh and so narrow minded. And it is.

    What I needed the most as a little girl was for someone to see the abuse, to act with the abuse and to see me and not see the man who clothed and fed 14 children, a lumberman, a hardworking, not asking for anything man.

    I needed one eye to see me, one ear to hear me, one hand to hold me, and to let him go. Instead all eyes, ears and hands reached out to him and they let me go.

    Me the abused child.

    Refusing to let his image of goodness die, instead they let me fade away, the one ‘insane’ voice against many.

    The majority wins; abuse will prevail…with your loving support.

    (What happens when in one home you have opposing voices?)

  • A Lady with Borders

    I listened to Dr. Laura Berman speak about “Borderline Personality Disorder”. It sounded so similar to where I came from, where the lines between what is your life and what is my life are blended, and how you can flip between like and hate in relationships, blaming the other for your actions. She was speaking to a woman whose husband had this and the husband blamed the wife for his cheating.

    Dr. Laura’s advice to the woman was that even if you are the only one that is sane and all are calling you insane, you are still sane. That for her to grab a hold of reality and not let go for it seems we can get sucked into their twisted reality and get very confused. And usually these types of individuals are married to or in a relationship with co-dependents who live to make you happy.

    I was glad to hear of this Borderline Personality Disorder, and I feel that it mirrors own life in how I used to blame my poor behavior as a mother on misbehaving children and how I also have lived on the other side of the coin, being a good daughter to make a good mother.

    This was an interesting view of my family and how they still are using each other to behave.

    I will get a good sister IF I be a good sister.
    I will get a good mother if I be a good daughter.

    This conjoined way of living is very weird to me now, and the insanity that ensues mind blowing, for they literally believe that they can control another’s behavior by their behavior.

    I am stunned to know that finding reality and separating bodies is what is needed, to stop bleeding into others lives or having their lives bleed into yours, that we need to find a way to stay completely in your own power.

    I also listened to Mark Nepo who wrote “The Book of Awakening,” and he spoke of a time when he lost his job and found out he had cancer, and at the moment when his life seemed to all fall apart at once, he found his soul, a part of him that remained untouched by the chaos.

    I get that.

    I felt that at the time my whole world fell apart that inside of me my soul awoke or I awoke to my soul. It was the only thing dysfunction hadn’t touched.

    I can’t be certain what my overall mental status was for 46 years or what conditions all in my family have, but this Borderline Personality Disorder seems to explain the sense of guilt I had when I wasn’t able to make them better, or the shame I felt for my father’s deeds, like we were all one big ameba.

    I woke up as a woman without borders!

    The past six years have been constructing fences, separating my flesh from theirs, my emotions and feelings being shanghaied by their lives, and learning how to be a lady with borders.

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  • You can feel its worth.

    While tossing around in my head conversations about the differences between going into the Light and heading into the Darkness boggle my mind.

    How it is that a person loses direction, how do their maps get turned upside down, how instead of growing brighter they can actually become very dark and NOT even know it or maybe more true, is not know how to stop it.

    That their life blood is drained and they are actively involved in the letting go and letting it drip out, drip by drip, bit by bit.

    Their vital life energy leaves and they don’t even know it.

    The passions die, the love changes, inside of them has been an energy transplant and they are totally unaware.

    This is very scary to me and yet very much understandable.

    For if a perpetrator or abuser does his job well, you will not even feel your self leave, his sweet words and wonderful attention dances before your eyes, and like a magician, he switches your energy to his.

    Once the switch has been made, you have to work like Hell to bring back your bright energy, your innocence, your passions, good energy, self worth, self esteem, love.

    I see my daughter now as one who is lost in the sea of darkness inside of her, and she doesn’t even know who is the bad man who stole this, who came in and courted her while draining all that was good from her.

    If after the first time you do not tell, you believe you are now his equal, and his lure and charm hard to resist, his needing you a drug that keeps you dumping more and more good into.

    I am not certain, but feel that only abuse does this.

    That you come in as Light and can have it stolen away…

    The little boy with Oprah who was overly sensitive to the darkness, knew that Darkness FEEDS off of the Light.

    This sounded weird to me, but it literally swallows whole, kindness, love, compassion, caring, it has a voracious appetite.

    Darkness doesn’t see who you are, just your good energy that it needs to survive.

    I had to stop feeding the monster, to stop giving up my life for its happiness, its peace and its joy.

    The Light energies try feeding the monster to make it brighter, to make it happier; to make it more loving, and all it does is suck you dry.

    That little boy also said that the dark energies can come to you as Father, brother, sister, friend, that it isn’t some monster.

    Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor also suggests that we are responsible for the energies we bring into a room.

    I believe that abused people abuse people, that hurt people hurt people.

    What seems we need is to heal our own pain, to be the one, to be the caretaker of our own energies, to stop blaming others for how we feel, and to harness our own Light.

    As well as being responsible for another’s happiness, peace, love or joy.

    If we can separate ourselves and not be sucking the life blood from each other, and instead be Light keepers within ourselves, the world would be a much brighter place.

    My daughter seems to have allowed another to extinguish her Light and what I want most is for her to be her own Light keeper.

    To hold it dear.

    Yet, maybe you have to lose something before you can feel its worth.

  • That Kind are not Family.

    I heard the Oprah show on the radio about the twin girls that were abused for years by their brothers and father, whose mother knew but did nothing.

    At the end of the show Oprah gives them a few words of wisdom, one about forgiveness and the other about not letting their spirits be killed by what their brothers and father did to them.

    She said her definition of forgiveness is,

    “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past would have been any different.”

    She told them to let go of the hope for a different kind of father.
    Let go of the hope for different kind of brothers.
    Let go of the hope for a different kind of mother.

    Letting go of the hope a Different Kind…you have to then accept the kind you have.

    In my case, I had to accept a raping kind of father and a mother who also knew, but did nothing.

    We did not get the loving kind or the supportive protective kind, we got the abusive kind.

    Secondly, Oprah said, “I want you to not let the spirit be killed by what your brother and father did, to not let the spirit die.

    The toughest part is really feeling that the hope is gone for a different kind of father/mother/siblings, but at that point when you lost all, you are then left with a part of yourself that is beyond all that, your spirit.

    It seemed to me, in the darkest moment of seeing the kind of family I had, I was then able to see a small seed that wasn’t going to be defined by what they did to me, it was a part of me that separated from them.

    I then set to work on redefining me and reworking the parts of me that were confused and mixed up due to abuse.

    I had to learn how to love, to trust and to find faith within myself.

    I had to reestablish what I felt were my boundaries since I was raised in a home without boundaries, in an unsafe place, where a father can rape a child and the mother remains married to him, forgiving his ‘sins’, Sins that hurt me.

    If these twins can find the strength to fully accept that the kind of parents and siblings they have, they can then begin to make choices that will not include abuse.

    If you don’t see the monsters you will continue to have ‘father/brother’ like relationships with a men who rape you.

    The greatest work that needs to happen is that you have to pick only one. A father OR a Monster, you can’t have both.

    And at that time you will also pick which one you will be.
    A daughter who allows this behavior or one who will save her spirit and walk away free.

    Also at the end of the show, Oprah said that 99% of abuse is from family members or someone we know, and we have to be willing to put fathers, brothers, uncles and friends in jail. And this is huge. This is key, this is very had for most to do, which is why mothers don’t see and sisters don’t tell etc, no one wants to put family in jail, families that rape and abuse children! Families of that kind are not family!

  • Meant to be.

    Motherhood begins in childhood, and womanhood starts there as well. The essence of who we are as a woman will directly relate to what kind of mother we are.

    There is no separation between woman and mother; the two are one.

    We don’t leave behind who we are as we take on the responsibility of a child, we simply add this to our ongoing relationships that are already in place.

    A child joins your relationships and will emulate them as he begins to create his own, he watches how you treat yourself and how you allow others to treat you, and it is from there that he learns self-care.

    My motherhood path began with me being a valiant co-dependent, a people pleaser and a whore for love and peace, there was very little of my life that was solely for me, most of it I lived for the benefit of others.

    All my decisions and choices were linked to someone’s happiness or love, I made choices based on whether I would lose their approval or not.

    When I stopped seeking approval and instead began living inside out doing what I loved, I began seeing a Me emerge, a separated unique individual, a self.

    As I grew into being more me, I no longer needed others to support me, and it set them all free to be them selves.

    My children were set free when I set myself free.

    My children’s lives returned to them and they too are now free to be what they want to be from the inside out.

    I am there to guide them to show they the lay of the land, but at the end of the day, they get to decide their fate depending upon the choices they make.

    It isn’t my life it is theirs.

    The freedom you give comes with self responsibility and that is what I believe the goal of each parent is, to make them ownership of their lives.

    To raise them to see the consequences from the choices they make, and to allow them to sit in the consequence is the learning of life.

    How we deal with all facets of life is how they learn to deal.

    How authentic we are, how loyal to self we are, where our integrity lies, all will be reflected back to us in our children’s lives.

    Mostly what we fail to notice is that our children’s lives will be lived as we live today, not our potential or what we plan to do, but as we do today.

    To raise independent children, be independent.
    To raise children who love themselves, love yourself.
    Who you are today is the pattern your child will follow, our footsteps are leading them into a life we have.

    We can’t do nothing and hope our children learn from our mistakes, we have to undo our mistakes.

    There are a few, a slight few, changelings of this rule, they are the exceptions not the rule, that will strike out on their own and redefine themselves leaving behind a family, I know this happens for I was one.

    I changed the family legacy by leaving instead of staying in the cycle of abuse/dysfunction and co-dependency; I had to walk out to save my self.
    Time will tell as my young adult children leave our home and set out on their own making choices, was there enough time spent with me to learn a new way of being or were their formative years to tightly ingrained.

    I sit here today aware that the woman who I was and the woman who I became, mothered the same children.

    How this will affect them remains to be seen, what pattern will they follow, how deeply were they affected by their formative years and how much of an impact has my freedom made?

    What I know for sure is that the more I remain honest with myself, the more I love myself, the brighter the second pattern is seen.

    To be the best mother ever is to be the best you can be with your self.

    Loving yourself enough to say no when you mean it.
    Loving you enough to put up boundaries to keep hurt out.
    Loving you to speak your truth always.
    Loving your self as you find your self in this moment, knowing you are a work in progress and be willing to do what it takes in each moment to stand with your self.

    You will then mother a child of strong courage to be who they were meant to be.

  • You Break the Chain

    Grand Traverse Women Magazine was asking about articles on Motherhood, and immediately I felt that I had a unique perspective in how my mothering changed as I unraveled my life of abuse.

    It is like my children had two different mothers without going through a divorce, the changes in how I mothered are totally opposite.

    The woman in motherhood is the key component, how she is built and operates, is how she will mother.

    Who I was as a woman is where I began mothering from and I brought to mothering, the skills I learned from my mother, a legacy that flows into us like breath.

    Mothering doesn’t change us; we bring to the child who we are.

    All of our past lands upon the child in the way we relate to them and how we expect them to relate to us, we began building a relationship.

    A relationship of dysfunction or one with healthy boundaries, and it all depends upon the adult.

    Whether this is motherhood or fatherhood, the adult is the operator of the relationship and how they conduct themselves is how healthy or unhealthy the child will grow.

    My father was a pedophile and I one of his victims. My mother stayed married to this man for 49 years, this is the pattern I had to follow.

    I mothered as she did, until at 46, I found out that my childhood of no memories was due to the fact I was abused, I then had to re-look at who I was and how I lived.

    An adult woman of abuse is very co-dependent, she expects her children to make her shine, to make her happy to live for her.
    A woman who is clear and separated from abuse knows her children are free to live and be themselves, and will monitor but not control their lives.

    The dysfunctional co-dependent way of mothering is hell to do and tragically damages children to the extent that they don’t know how to live a life separated from others, they are groomed to be parasites.

    Living off of what makes others happy.

    My children, all four, were set free the moment I knew I was abused and that I had serious work to do on getting me back to ‘normal’.

    I allowed them to be themselves and we worked on separating them from me and my demands and my wishes and my dreams.

    As I separated myself from my mother I then could allow my children to be separate from me.

    Mothering is to nurture and to love and respect WHO they are and not hijack their lives to become arm candy and self-esteem boosters.

    My children were an extension of me, not individuals.

    The more I became an individual the more I could allow them to be individuals too.

    Motherhood to me now isn’t so scary, for I would now allow them to enter onto this planet as wonderful curious loving souls and let them explore and learn to be who they were meant to be.

    My children experienced two kinds of mothers within one woman; the changes in our home are extreme.

    My rages and violent screaming rampages have disappeared and in its place a woman who seeks to find a peaceful solution, a way to co-habitat that honors all who live here.

    Motherhood is only as happy as our childhood…the legacy will repeat itself unless and until you break the chain.

  • Activating Inner Compassion.

    “The Presence Process” by Michael Brown

    Activating Inner Compassion

    The Intent to re-establish a loving relationship with our child self activates the procedure of learning how to become our own parent. Connecting with our child self calls us to step onto the pathway of self-nurturing, a pathway that is paved with compassion. This pathway invites us to overcome issues we unconsciously have with our own parents by reaching into a place where only forgiveness can take us. Every effort that we make to re-establish a loving relationship with our child self is rewarded with an every-increasing sense of present moment awareness.

    Many of us in this world appear to be very helpful, but when it comes to the necessary ability of knowing how to nurture ourselves, we discover that we are at a loss. We also realize that we tend to feel a deep sense of guilt whenever we attempt to do anything real and loving for ourselves. This is because it is only our unconscious sense of helplessness and neediness that drives us to sacrifice ourselves in the name of helping others. The behavior of running around and trying to help everyone to our own detriment is always fueled by the reflection we see of our own helpless plight mirrored in the world around us. We cannot give away what we do not have, so only when we learned how to truly nurture and unconditionally love ourselves do we develop the propensity for authentic service. Unless we consciously step into the present moment and own our life, our ability to be truly of assistance in this world will remain shallow and ineffectual. The first step in learning how to nurture and unconditionally love ourselves is to understand which aspect of our being is really suffering and needing our attention.”

    As adults, we experience myriad physical, mental and emotional states of imbalance, and when we do, we usually do everything in our power to numb, or distract ourselves from our plight. Or else we run to someone for attention. When we live in a time-based paradigm, what we are unable to see is that none of our physical, mental, and emotional difficulties stem from what is happening to us right now, even though they are clearly reflected in and by what is happening to us right now.

    During Session Four, we were encouraged to allow ourselves to feel all our pains and discomforts without fear or judgment. By allowing ourselves to have this experience, the realization to which we are opening ourselves is that all our pain and discomforts carry and emotional signature. The identity of this emotional signature will be one of the many emotions that arise from the trinity of fear, anger and grief.”

    Throughout The Presence Process, we call this emotional signature “the emotional charge”. We may identify this emotional charge by a variety of names ranging from fear to rage to grief. This emotional charge is an unpleasant feeling that we will literally do anything not to feel. As we progress through The Presence Process, it will become clearer to us that it is the emotional charge crouched behind our pains and discomforts that fuels our compulsion to metaphorically run from the present moment and into distraction. By reacting to this emotional charge, we lunge free Presence to pretence. We sidestep from authenticity to drama.

    We also know by now where this emotional charge is really anchored. We have already been shown how to track it back in time. To recap: if we look back over our life, and instead of viewing our past experiences as physical circumstances we choose instead to see them as a re-occurrence of emotional signatures, we will see a clear pathway of similar emotional signatures extending all the way back into our childhood. This pathway reveals to us that the imbalances that we feel today, be they physical, mental or emotional, have nothing to do with our present adult life. They are merely reflected in it. This pathway shows us that all our experiences of imbalance were initiated by encounters that we had before we turned seven. And so one of the biggest revelations we can have at this point is:

    It is not our adult experience that requires healing: it is our childhood.

    From the moment we turned our backs on our childhood so that we might become acceptable in the adult world, our child self has been using physical, mental, and emotional states of imbalance to attempt to attract our attention. Our child self has been attempting to attract our attention so that we can consciously and compassionately attend to the unintegrated emotional state in which we left it. Until we consciously attend to the unintegrated experiences of our childhood, our adult experiences will continue to be an unconscious unfolding “effect” of our unintegrated childhood.

    In “time”, our adult experience is an echo of our childhood.

    Until we integrate our childhood, our adult life will continue to be an seemingly chaotic and disconnected experience sewn together with what appears to be randomly occurring physical, mental and emotional imbalance. It is crucial at this point in The Presence Process that we understand that an unbalanced adult experience is “an effect”, not a cause of anything. It is crucial that we understand this because it is futile tampering with an effect of anything, as it is only at the point of cause that any real change can be initiated. The only value our adult symptoms of imbalance is that we can use them as clues to successfully navigate our awareness to their childhood causes. Unless we embark on such a journey, we remain ineffectual.

    The pursuit of happiness, in other words, the drive to control and sedate external circumstances so that we can feel at ease within ourselves, is nothing more that a behavior that stems form attempting to fiddle with an effect to adjust the cause. This is impossible. Such behavior leads us further and further away from our inherent joy that is already available and waiting for us within our child self. The child self is our harbor of innocence, joy and creativity. When we ignore its state of imbalance, we trade our inherent innocence, joy and creativity, and instead invest our energy in attempting to be happy by “making something of ourselves”. And so we are faced with another major revelation:

    Unless we are prepared to reach back through time and space and rescue our child self by bringing it into the safety of the present moment, where we can give it unconditional love and attention it is calling for, we as adults will never experience authentic peace.

    The intention to metaphorically reach back and rescue our own child self can be thought of as a form of time travel. However, this form of time travel is not science fiction. It does not take place “out there”, and its purpose is not to visit other far-off places. It takes place within us, and its Soul purpose is for us to compassionately reconnect with a particular attribute of our own Being from which we have become separated and alienated. This is an inside job that consciously connects our present moment with our past. It invites unconscious behaviors triggered by our past experiences to the surface of our present life so that we can consciously attend to them right now. If approached with commitment, consistency, and sincerity, this inner work releases our child self of its pain and discomfort. The unfolding consequences of rescuing our child self is that our present adult self will gradually be released from the emotional charge that is the source of all our distraction and imbalance. In other words, it is our child self that is the caretaker of our emotional charge. Emotionally it is in charge.
    Michael Brown.

    One more paragraph….

    If we have not done work with our child self prior to this moment, then it is important to realize that our relationship with our child self right now will be similar to that of a parent who has for many years abandoned their own child. At about the age of seven, most urbanized humans begin preparing to enter the adult world. This requires a willingness to turn around and walk away from our childhood. As the years unfold, it is very unlikely that we choose to look back or even consider the state of the child we once were. In most cases, we lay a blanket of forgetfulness over that aspect of our Being and openly admit that we cannot remember much of what happened when we were children. We can no longer see our child self, yet it sees everything. We seemingly no longer feel its pain, yet all our adult pain is a mirror of its unresolved feelings. We may ask, “Why must we now go back and deal with the past? Can we not just leave it alone and carry on with life?”

    Our unfortunate predicament is that the pain and suffering of our unresolved childhood issues follow us as an emotional trail of imbalance that pollutes our adult experiences in an ongoing patter that is as regular and punctual as a time piece. And this timepiece is not neutral, as the mechanical watches we wear on our wrists. The ticking of this childhood timepiece and the effects it has on our present life is what maybe thought of as “emotional time”. Wearing a watch and using it as an instrument to navigate the present moment of our life is different. It is a conscious experience. We can choose to remove the watch at any moment and no longer be exposed to its influence. However, the debris of “emotional time” is constantly invading our present moment and distracting our attention. For years, we can sedate and control the effects of the childhood debris which leak out into our adult experiences, but sooner or later it will rear up like an angry snake and challenge the very fiber of our Being. It is not necessary to get to a crisis point in our life before we begin paying attention to it, but sometimes a crisis is exactly what it takes for our desperate abandoned child self to harness our attention.

    Yet the moment we turn inward and start sincerely attending to our child self with the unconditional love, compassion, and the devotion it deserves, our physical, mental and emotional states of imbalance gradually begin subsiding. This is the real work, and it realizes very real consequences. Once our child self comes to peace, so do we. It is that simple and that powerful. If we are not at peace, it is our child self that is in conflict. There is nowhere else to look, and there is no other solution but to compassionately reach inward and lovingly attend to this precious part of our Being. Only when we begin to accomplish this task, we will be able to truly understand what it is meant by the words:

    “Only when we become as children again, can we enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18:2-4)