I M Perfect lady

Tag: children

  • 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.

  • Live in this Moment of Time.

    I think as parents we believe we are riding shotgun in our children’s lives, while in reality they are flying solo.

    Our children are separate individuals doing their lives and we are spectators not operators of their lives.

    New souls in a new body landing on earth and they get to learn how life flows down here.

    It is all new for them, and we as parents are wanting to spare them the pain and suffering, when in actuality it is by walking through different experiences that gives them character.

    My view is much broader and I am living out front of where they are, a trail guide hollering out what is up ahead.

    Yet how can I know for sure?

    It is my challenge to walk besides, not up ahead.

    Our lives unfold as they will, and it takes energy to be in the future while living in today.

    Today, what do I do today?

    What is going on right here right now?

    I will return to living on a short time frame.

    I also learned that if you take care of the people the people will take care of the rest.

    And if you do right today, the tomorrows will also take care of themselves.

    All we are asked is to live in this moment of time.

  • Moral Wrong Doing

    I looked up the meaning of Innocence yet again, and it says, “Freedom from sin or moral wrong.”

    Freedom from sin and moral wrongdoing…to be free of engaging in such behavior is to be innocent once again?

    To be free of moral wrong doing…

    This meaning has more of an impact to me as a mother watching her daughter who is newly freed from an abusive relationship.

    I love that you can return to the state of innocence when you leave the moral wrong doing.

    Another meaning is,
    ”It can also refer to a state of unknowing, where one’s experience is less than that of one’s peers, in either a relative view to social peers, or by an absolute comparison to a more common normative scale.”

    I love this meaning as well, for it implies the state of unknowing due to the lack of experience.

    What I knew to a DNA level was that my daughter was at a disadvantage that her experience level was sorely lacking, where she was like a babe in the woods.
    Isn’t it interesting that you can become innocent when you are free from moral wrong doing or when you lack experience?

    My childhood religion’s set point was that we were all damaged goods that the body itself is filled with sin and our minds and thoughts riddled with landmines of moral wrongdoing, we were born not innocent.

    I believe this is totally the opposite.

    The church and its leaders were damaged goods, their psyche filled with feelings of unworthiness, and they preached from that standpoint.

    Many a parent preaches from their own private pulpit when they raise their children, we are seen from their lenses of self.

    I have viewed my children through many false lenses.

    I have seen them in the eyes of the church, the views of others, the fears within me, through my lacks and my moral wrongs, but I was able for the first time, sit with my daughter and see, feel and know her innocence.

    Being able to sit, as an innocent mother with an innocent daughter is a beautiful thing.

    I have seen myself and her both being locked in a dance of moral wrong doing, and then both of us being set free.

    My dance lasted 46 years, and then six years of intense inner inspection, seeking of self, looking at the world critically and with discerning eyes pleading for reality to show me who I am.Her dance was much shorter, but the lesson equally as meaningful.
    I would like to think that my bully pulpit of innocence shortened the time she had to suffer.

    That by me seeing me with clear eyes, I then had a better lens in which to see her.

    It is unbelievable yet believable, that my mother saw herself in me.

    This is why; “the sins of the father onto the children” make the children sinners. They don’t have a chance to make their own sins, for they follow what they are taught.

    Just the very clear and simple view of reality gets distorted, when no one knows what innocence is.

    The greatest tragedy of a dysfunctional family, isn’t that they don’t understand evil, it is instead that they have no idea what innocence feels like, what freedom tastes like, what love is.

    Love is innocent.

    Love is being free of moral wrong doing.

  • Felt Its Worth

    Before beginning yoga today, I cleaned the mirror I stand in front of, it was layered with weeks of dust, and I appeared fog like behind it. Today I felt the need to wipe it free, as I did so the line from a song arose in my head, “I can see clearly now the pain is gone…”

    Then into yoga I went.

    I was on the third part of the Awkward pose, where I go from standing up to squatting down, and Bikram asks us to descend slowly, and I lost my control and fell into a squat and smiled as I did so.

    This smile took up my whole face, my cheeks, my eyes and my mouth rose into a delightful bend, and inside I felt its wonderful wave of joy.

    I smiled at my rendition of his yoga; I smiled at me and the transformation of my face and received fully my smile about me.

    A smile about me isn’t something I have any memory of ever receiving.

    I was shocked first at the way this smile changed my look, and even more stunned to receive its full value inside.

    To feel myself worthy of a full-blown smile.

    I froze for a half of second to feel such sheer delight inside myself.

    My smile quickly disappeared and I struggled to smile while tears of sorrow dampened my face.

    Imprinted in my minds eye is my smiling feeling being over swept by sadness as memories flung themselves upon me, one on top of the other.

    A 50 year long life review flashed before my eyes, all the places where I mistook myself for being bad, wrong, and despicable, how I had not seen my own worth or how I had lost sight of myself inside myself.

    The simple fact that I was unworthy of a smile from me about me is so harsh and tragic; yet it was never my smile I sought. I didn’t even know I was missing my smile for me.

    The mouth I tried to change was my mother’s.

    Before putting my words to paper, I spoke to my brother and then did some mindless cleaning, and it came to me what love I had for my mother.

    I literally gave my soul, my insides away in order to bring a smile to her face and to keep it there.

    How tragic that she wanted my smile more than she wanted my tears and my sorrows, and even more dreadful for a little girl to be left with such sorrow inside, such darkness.

    In denying my abuse, she left me in the dark.

    It is funny in a sad way, how I wanted her to have a smile, more than me.

    I could cry a river of tears for the little girl who wasn’t allowed to feel her sorrow out loud, to be heard and valued as abused.

    Valued as abused and not having to hide this fact.

    I can see I took up my mother’s view of me.

    My mouth and facial images reflected hers in my mirror and even more tragically inside.

    Inside I knew my mother blamed me.

    I took away her sunshine, I stole her lovely story, I was darker than the darkness that abused me.

    I changed her smiling face to anger.

    And it was my job now to put her smile back.

    And I tried and danced, and pranced and worked and slaved and toiled to bring it back, and to keep it in place.

    When I was tired of holding up those cheeks, when I simply didn’t have anymore to give, or when I tried to tend to myself, I heard her angry response, “How dare you Beth Ann…” and up I got and began dancing again.

    Six years ago all my dancing for her was over, done, finished, the end.

    I stopped where I stood and in the middle of the darkness began to see what I did for me and what I did for others.

    Life offered up to me a million situations for me to choose again, their pleasure or mine, their smile or mine, their feelings or mine.

    Each and every time I found the strength to disappoint my mother and chose me; I opened up inside, made room for that smile.

    Today, I feel that I have made it to the other side, to the side of worthiness, or at least I have felt the wave of joy lap at my feet, I feel that I am worthy to now frolic in the ocean and swim to its depths.

    I look forward to seeing another one come out of me and shine upon me and for me to welcome it in!

    I have been waiting in vain for her to arrive and tell me that I am a good girl, that I am of value, and that the abuse didn’t change who I am, in her eyes.

    I wanted her to smile that it was okay that I was abused, it didn’t matter to her, and she loved me any way.

    Again, the smile I sought was hers and the one I found was mine.

    What I love is that the first smile I was able to receive was mine!

    A smile in full acceptance of all of me, the darkest dark and the brightest bright.

    I smiled at me and felt Its worth.

  • A pocket of Unreality.

    What I think I have been doing in an odd way is by only looking at the criminal, I spared my ‘dad’.

    By focusing so much on the criminal aspects, I negated joining them with my father. I left the father part pushed far away, in a spot where crimes can’t touch him.

    I didn’t want my criminal to intertwine with my dad.

    I didn’t want the combo, the molesting dad.
    I wanted the criminal called Ray.

    This is a reverse of what I did as a child.

    The time has come to join the two together and make them one, a criminal dad.

    Then I become the daughter that he hurt.

    Not just a random girl, and he not a random man.

    The two parts merge as one; the disassociation now associates with both sides of the same mirror, no more trickery.

    I didn’t know that I had slipped the dad in a special spot, and only focused on the criminal, that I had still kept them separated inside.
    In my heart of hearts, in the fiber of my being I had separated them and never spoke of dad crime, just Ray crime.

    This is incredible to me that I had flipped and exchanged into my mental hiding spot, a dad.

    I hadn’t brought them together inside of me for reconciliation.

    Which is why in order to write a letter they will become one.

    A criminal dad.

    Even resorting to his given name or using the word father, removing the familiar comfortable name while addressing his crimes kept the dad safe inside.

    I would not have known that I was hanging on to a dad inside, that I immediately changed his name when the crime came in, yet there is no way to quickly alter the mind’s beliefs and thoughts attached to him.

    Now the time has come to drop the divider and let them hook up together.

    A little girl sits with a criminal dad; there is no separation or pretend space he can sit in, nor I.

    The restraining letter should have been addressed to my mom accomplice.

    What I failed to realize is I was separating them inside by addressing them by their given names, so that I wasn’t saying my mom did this or my dad did that…I was making my familiar into strangers for the crimes.

    This is unreal to me that I protected the child in me by not joining the two together, reversed from my childhood days, but nonetheless kept them separated.

    Perhaps a letter addressed to Mom and Dad is what is needed, to speak my peace now standing in a spot where there is no veil between the roles of mom and dad and criminal and accomplice.

    I never knew that you could do reverse disassociation, switching the good for bad or the bad for good, that the mechanism worked both ways.

    A pocket of unreality. Where real could hide and not be seen by me.

  • Life of Freedom

    The leader of my childhood religion will be laid to rest today, yet his teachings will live on within many of his devote followers.

     

    His word and guidance led my mother’s life, which in turn greatly influenced mine. 

     

    Born into this religion, it was what I was raised upon. Like food for the body, this controlled my mind.

     

    What is unreal to me is that I didn’t know that my mind was controlled until after I left the church, for while I was there; insanely I felt this was my choice.

     

    It is not a choice if you are not given an alternative.

     

    Inside the walls of this religion you hand over your mind and your body. 

     

    It owns them both, like a robot you then march forward. 

     

    A good Christian soldier mindlessly unquestionably and in Faith walks on, blindly following where the preacher leads.

     

    Your inner guide is replaced by the spoken word in church.

     

    This spoken word from the preacher overrides all individual choice, and in fact individual choice is seen as the devils urgings.

     

    The only way this system works is that a child is born into it, before it has power of Self, it is programmed and brainwashed into believing the message of the church. 

     

    The children are the seeds of the next generation.

     

    It isn’t so much the elders of the church that keep this system going, but rather the children which are crafted into little Christian soldiers before their minds ever know a free thought.

     

    Bending and twisting the free spirit into a controlling mindless Being is the only way this insane religion will work.

     

    No one in their right minds will hand over their body, their mind and surely not their soul.

     

    Oddly enough, the preacher man believes he is saving souls and perhaps he is, saving them for his own good. 

     

    They are giving up their lives for the cause.

    The sheer volume of children that are born into this religion boggles the mind.

     

    I had thought that the children were the residual affects of the sin called “No Birth Control.”

     

    But it is more insidious than that; it is where the power comes from, it is how the army continues to grow from inside the walls.

     

    Being born into captivity the little children seldom escape to live a free life.  For inside the cage lives their parents and family members. 

     

    In order to be free, you leave them all behind seemingly puppets on the preachers string.

     

    As many mourn his passing today, I will mourn the thousands of little children stuck inside the cages of their own minds, who may never know a life of freedom. 

     

     Outside the box 2

     

     

  • More from Deepak Chopra….

    " Children's brains have neurons that mirror the brains of adults in their surroundings.  These so-called mirror neurons are responsible for the way children learn new behaviors, so the theory goes. As they develop, young children don't have to imitate their parents in order to learn something new; they only have to observe them, and certain brain cells will fire in a way that mirrors the activity.  For example, a baby being weaned from breast-feeding watches how her parents eat.  As they reach for food and put it into their mouths, certain areas of their brain light up.  Simply watching this activity leads the same areas to light up in the infants brain.  In this way the newly forming infant brain learns a new behavior without ever having to go through trial and error.
     
    This model has already been tested in monkeys and theoretically extended to humans.  It provides a physical explanation for something as mysterious as empathy, the ability to feel what someone else is feeling.  Some people have this ability; others don't.  A few saintly individuals have so much empathy that they can hardly bear it when someone else is suffering.  Research with MRI's and CAT scans suggest that brain function plays a major role in empathy.  A child's neurons mirror the emotions of the adults around him, leading the child to actually feel what their parents feel.  So if a youngster is surrounded by unhappy adults, his nervous system will be programmed for unhappiness, even before he has any cause for unhappiness himself.
     
    Why doesn't every child learn empathy?  Because brain development is wildly complex and never the same for two babies.  When we were infants, all kinds of brain functions were being programmed at the same time, and for some of us empathy was only assigned a minor role.  This is a troubling inequality, and it extends to happiness.  When you see the brain has a set point for  happiness, traceable either to genetics or childhood influences, it's all too easy to conclude that nothing can be done about it.  However, this would be a mistake, because neither the brain nor your genes are fixed structures; instead, they are in process every minute of your life, constantly changing and evolving.  You are still being influenced at the genetic level by new experiences.  Every choice you make sends chemical signals coursing through your brain, including the choice to be happy, and each signal helps to shape the brain from year to year.
     
    In the overall picture, research has shown that the brain's set point can be changed by the following:
     
    Drugs that act as mood elevators, which work only in the short term and have side affects.
     
    Cognative Therapy, which changes the brain by helping us change our limiting beliefs.  We all tell ourselves stories in our heads that provoke unhappiness. Repeating the same negative belief over and over, ("I am a victim, I am unloved, Life isn't fair, something is wrong with me. etc" creates neural pathwayss that reinforce negativity by turning it into a habitual way of thinking.  Such beliefs can be replaced by others that are not simply more positive, but are a much better match with reality (I may have been a victim in the past but I don't have to remain that way; I can find love if I chose better places to look for it, etc)  In treating patients whose lives are dominated by negative beliefs, psychologists have found that altering really fundamental beliefs can be as effective in changing brain chemistry as prescribing drugs.
     
    Meditation, which alters the brain in many positive ways.  The physical effects of sitting quietly and going inward are amazingly extensive.  it took a long time to unravel the puzzle.  Researchers had to work against the Western assumption that meditation was mystical or at best a kind of religious practice.  Now we realize that it activates the prefrontal cortex  the seat of higher thinking- and stimulates the release of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and brain opiates. Each of these naturally occurring brain chemicals has been linked to different aspects of happiness. Dopamine is an antidepressant; serotonin is associated with increased self-esteem; oxytocin is now believed to be a pleasure hormone (it's levels also elevate during sexual arousal); opiates are the body's painkillers, which also provide the exhilaration associated with runners high.  it should be obvious, then, that meditation, by creating higher levels of these neurotransmitters, is the more effective way ofchanging the brain's set point for happiness.  No single drug can simultaneously choreograph the coordinated release of all these chemicals.
     Deepak Chopra – book "The Ulitmate Happiness Prescription"