I M Perfect lady

Tag: denial

  • Thank you.

    As I sit here on Thanksgiving morning, I look back at this year and find so many moments of gratitude, it seems I had a year full.

    My moments of gratitude are interrupted with moments of sheer pain, frustration, sorrow, confusion and tangled thoughts; it is only when I truly see the whole picture that I am overwhelmed with gratitude, knowing I was spared.

    Spared a lifetime stuck in that thought pattern, or held prisoner by that belief, to be forever at the mercy of another, while never seeing me.

    It isn’t so much that they didn’t see me, but I didn’t see me.

    Seeing and feeling me, learning how to respond that is respectful of me, what honors my soul, bringing forth a new version of me, one that is authentic and uniquely me, one that brings me to life.

    Gratitude of such magnitude, there isn’t a word that adequately expresses this freedom; it is like breathing or not breathing, love or fear, living or being dead in your life.

    To not be dead in my life is beyond what words can hold, to be alive in each moment, aware that I am connected to the Universe, that there are no mistakes, just opportunities to expand further and further, that even the darkest of the darkest moments are bringing me back to myself.

    The Universe only wants the grandest version of me; it doesn’t want a replica of someone else’s dreams.

    This past year I have been shown all the places I was still stuck, lost in the dark, and each time I become aware, I bring peace in to me.

    In peace I am overwhelmed in gratitude.

    I am thankful on this Thanksgiving Day for all the moments of pain, the untangled thoughts, the dark stuck places, and sorrow of what isn’t, for they all came bearing gifts.

    They all delivered a part of me that wasn’t free.

    Hell doesn’t seem like hell when it comes bearing gifts.

    I am grateful for my pain and for my suffering, for it was grieving the loss of me.

    It was telling me where I wasn’t present.

    In the darkness I mourned the loss of me.

    It was in the dark that I found me.

    On this Thanksgiving day, I thank you.

  • Devils in Disguise.

    I am finally seeing how literally birds of a feather flock together, clinging to the same version of heaven and hell, love and fear, good and evil, that depending upon your level of awareness and type of energy you carry, your heaven will reflect that.

    Somehow heaven on earth seemed to be a statement or a flight of fancy, perhaps a daydream or a wishful idea, but we all have our heaven on earth and we all flee from what we think hell on earth would be.

    And sometimes a tragedy happens and you arrive at hell in an instant, your worst fears are realized.

    Walking through hell changed the energies within me, little by little the negative energies were replaced with positive ones, until the balance tipped and I no longer was the same inside.

    Oddly what I called hell was actually the place where I found my positive energies.

    I found pieces of myself I didn’t know were missing, patches of self-esteem long forgotten, newfound love, bits of passion, parts of authenticity, chunks of courage, that slowly arrived as I trudged through hell.

    Hell before was reality, and reality now became my new heaven.

    I am not sure I can articulate this wonderful view that I now have of where I was and where I am, how walking through the ring of fire totally transmuted me inside.

    I know my family came close to the fire, were singed and burned, some came in for a short while, but the heat was too strong, the truth seared their illusion, and they scurried back to safety, to their old life, to old habits and routines, catching a glimpse of hell and retreating.

    When they fled, I went in deeper, and explored all the caves of hell, looking for the self I had lost there.

    Imagine I found myself in hell!

    In the darkest of moments, during the most excruciating sorrow out I popped.

    The me who went into hell and the me who walked out bear little resemblance to each other, we are not the same lady inside.

    It is then no wonder that I respond to my family different and they to me, that our hells don’t match nor do our heavens, for my hell became what I call magical and transforming and filled with grace.

    While I wouldn’t wish my hell on anyone, it is the greatest thing that ever happened in my life, it has transformed me in ways just regular old life can’t do.

    I can’t remember how the country song goes exactly, but something about when your going through hell, keep on going,get out before the devil even knows your there….

    But what if the devil is the truth, and you keep going, not stopping for it and you slip out before the truth catches you…what have you escaped, Heaven or Hell?

    It is so intriguing to me to see that perhaps our heavens and hells do match, but that you haven’t become aware…that you are dancing with angels who are really devils in disguise.

  • Cover Your Truth.

    The phrase, “The Elephant in the Room” what does that really mean and how is it used properly?

    Have we been taught to not speak about things that are there, due to the reaction they bring?

    What are Elephants in a room?
    What is that?

    Is it a truth that is too much to bear?

    It seems to me that IF all know the Elephant is there and will not speak of it; we are all playing a game called, ‘lets pretend’.

    And ironically, it isn’t the Elephant we are pretending about but ourselves.

    A silent unspoken agreement that states, I will pretend to like you when I know you do things I don’t agree with, if you pretend to like me for pretending to like you.

    It seems to me that allowing an Elephant/truth to sit unspoken about is to pretend to pretend to pretend that there is a common ground that slipped away with the truth.

    And in order to maintain this false relationship, the Elephant/truth must not be mentioned, we skip around the mountain, and reach the summit of social niceties.

    We then form a new relationship that requires us to not go near the Elephant or truth.

    So what are we really preserving by being so courteous?

    Isn’t it just an old relationship minus the new and changing truths?

    This Elephant in the room that no one speaks about or entertains, to me is just dancing in denial with another.

    Being in a relationship that dishonors both.

    If truth isn’t allowed into a relationship, then I have no interest there.

    I am almost positive that the Elephant that arrived in the room with my father is he is a pedophile. If many adults in my youth had spoken of this Elephant, perhaps a few little girls would have been saved.

    It isn’t so much about the Elephant, but the ones who sit silently and allow it to be there.

    Elephants don’t disappear, don’t change, aren’t healed or treated in silence, nope, instead they continue to live out their sickness in full living color, while many courteously look on, being much to kind to speak of such ills about another person, to kind, to much into the social niceties, preserving a family, saving a father, sparing a brother, keeping sweet, that which isn’t.

    An Elephant in the room is showing you what is wrong and you will either see it and respond or look away.

    Pretending there is no Elephant is denial.

    And denial doesn’t heal, cure, erase, etc to the Elephant, it says much more about you than them.

    They are being their true selves; you are not willing to see it.

    You want to preserve a relationship of old, like good memories, and not willing to be present with who they are today, for it will crack, shatter, and explode the person you need them to be.

    At some point in time, it will be harder and harder to be in a room with an Elephant, it will simply cost you too much.

    My silence is not for sale, it cannot be used to cover your truth.

  • Mismatched Lives

    I will not presume what grief of losing a love one in death is, but I feel like I can articulate the grief felt when leaving a family.

    It is an odd sense of grief, almost self-inflicted, where you purposefully leave and walk into a field of sorrow and lonesome.

    You continue to keep yourself there each time you choose to not participate, you segregate yourself to solitary confinement, yet knowing others gather and go on, you become a ghost in their lives and they in yours, living walking talking ghosts.

    Your lives no longer intercede, nor are there new memories made, unless you count the new grief ones.

    The relationship has died but the body lives on.

    You become a silent witness, a ghost with a body.

    We may all appear the same, unchanged, and many have kept up their same old routine, it is only I that have left the path, one that keeps us separated.

    The separation is as complete as death.

    And even colder, I feel, for there isn’t loving feelings flowing back and forth, instead stark obvious disagreement, irreconcilable differences.

    The differences are what separate us, not death.

    Death is final the ultimate trump card, there is nothing to wish, hope or try to change. Both sides agree.

    In irreconcilable differences, sides continue to be haunted by trying.

    Trying to reconnect and trying to move on, failing to articulate and stop even trying, there never seems to be a Game Over sign.

    And you can be going along seemingly healing from the ‘divorce of family’ and a phone call comes in, a name is mentioned, a party gathers, a reminder once again of where you are literally standing, alone outside.

    Where in death people want to keep the old memories alive, I feel that when the past comes knocking it sets me back.

    Back to me having to decide again, is this a relationship I want, is this healthy for me, what has changed in their worlds, a ghost coming back to me…asking again,
    divorce or not, dead or alive, with me or not, friends or enemies, sisters or strangers, mother or abuser, a choice to once again be made.

    Nothings over, no final exit, just flowing in and out, shouting our glaring difference, daring me once again to not see, to turn away from the truth and get along. See not our mismatched selves and be a family.

    A family of mismatched lives.

  • One Verse

    Life seems to unfold flatly in front of us and some will half close their eyes to bring in a fuzzy sorta kinda picture, so not to see its pure untouched nakedness.

    Raw life.

    Life without words, just life arriving unshackled, free and unbound.

    Reality.

    Worldwide realty show where there is no re-shooting or voice over, just life coming to us live!

    Life coming to us live and in living color!

    Yet how often do we see/hear and get what is playing out in front of us, the untouched version?

    How often do we excuse, dismiss, and let be behaviors due to some long held relationship we feel unable to dissolve?

    How often do we respond authentically to what is actually happening, or do we look the other way?

    When we turn, does the reality show make a sharp left with us?

    Do reality and its history not get recorded due to us blinking instead of responding in kind?

    Sometimes living in raw life I find myself brushing up against people who seem unaware that life is a live living breathing moving event.

    These are not actors, but actual people living life, it is not a rehearsal or a bad game show.

    This is your life.

    This is your moment in time, the here and the now, and each little tiny raw life moment is comprising your life, they all get tagged and stored into your history.

    What you do today is a day in the life of you.

    What you see today and respond to today is a recorded response in the life of you.

    How you respond to raw life builds the character called you.

    We can either work harder on keeping reality back or succumb to the rawness of life.

    Welcoming life exactly as the Universe created it, accepting the darkness as dark, the light as light, love as love, fear as fear…allowing each its own perfection.

    Love as love, not fear.
    Fear as fear, not love.
    Seeing the darkness as dark.

    Seeing the dance of Life as One….The Universe. One Verse.

  • Shine Once Again.

    “Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.” ~Maya Angelou

    I don’t know what to blog about the show with Oprah and 200 Adult Children of Sexual abuse, men whose boyhood was stolen and now their manhood too seems to be lost, they are left in a middle ground, no longer innocent and no longer able to be a man.

    What I heard was that sexual abuse leaves you feeling vulnerable.

    The definition of vulnerability is,

    “Susceptibility to attack or injury; the state or condition of being weak or poorly defended; a specific weakness in the protections or defenses surrounding someone or something.”

    Being susceptible to attack and injury is to be a child, especially one that isn’t being properly watched and cared for, being poorly defended…having a specific weak parent that can’t protect you.

    A weakness in a parent can be a simple as loving the predator, defending his goodness while the child’s experience is widely different.

    I have stood on both sides, the parent and the child, the blind and the unseen, the knowing and the unknowing, on both sides feelings are denied.

    Fears are pushed aside…children are left undefended, monsters go on labeled as father, feelings not felt.

    Blindness spreads.

    When I did see, damage lay all around.

    When I did feel, terror was the truth.

    When I did know I was cast out.

    Cast out for speaking, seeing and knowing abuse.

    As I watched these men, I know what they fear, they fear being cast out.

    Shunned for being abused.

    How is that right?

    How do we have this so upside down and backwards?

    What I know to be true is I was cast aside, my voice not wanting to be heard, what they want the most is for me to be unchanged, to appear like the picture of innocence all the men held.

    To just be me without the abuse.

    What an impossible task to attain… to not be abused while being abused.

    So each man stands in the impossible stance, abused while trying to not show the affects of it, yet the abuse has infected each part of their lives, there is no place that abuse doesn’t touch.

    Once you stand fully in being abused, you can then begin to see where abuse created a life instead of you.

    Exposing the abuse allows the innocence to shine once again.

    “In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

  • The Quiet Room

    I am reading “The Quiet Room” by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett.

    What is so interesting is that her parents don’t want to accept her illness, and deny it by looking repeatedly for ‘normal’ behavior and are more concerned about how she ‘got’ this illness, they are fearful they caused it.

    Yet the mother had a mother with the same illness and didn’t know it until her daughter displayed the same behavior, then her mother made sense.

    She was mentally ill.

    I know how odd this is that you can’t recognize sickness, especially if you called it normal all along and it is only after the fact that looking back the red flags are waving wildly all about.

    Even Lori herself, believes we all have manic voices in our heads telling us to do things, bad talking esteem wrecking talk…and we do, just not to the degree she did.

    The first half of the book is about looking for normal when normal is nowhere to be found, how everyone wants her to not be sick while she is.

    How awful to have to live pretending or working hard to pretend, that nothing is wrong, how much kinder a ride to be a mentally ill person as you are mentally ill.

    To stand in the truth, no matter what truth you have to stand in is much easier, than trying to be something you can’t be.

    Even if her family didn’t accept it, it was there.
    She was expected to be the one to be the strongest to lead the way, while being mentally ill.

    Like having the blind lead, the deaf listen for us.

    I can’t wait to compete the story and see how she was finally able to see that she was sick and then to convince others of this fact.

    How much easier to just be yourself in whatever state you find yourself in…

  • Upset the Arrangement.

    There is a land called, “It would be Nice” and it is full of wonderful well-intentioned dreamers, folks who are stolen from reality in a fraction of a second.

     

    One second you are here, and before you even see yourself leave you are there, and once you are there; you can only know it by how you feel.

     

    In the land of it would be nice, you feel unhappy, unsatisfied, discontent no longer wanting to be where you are, but someplace else doing something else, with someone else. 

     

    While sounding like a nice place, it leaves you uneasy.

     

    No one warned me of this phrase and how it doesn’t allow you to feel what is going on right here and right now, for as soon as you say the words, “it would be nice,” you change locations and your feelings follow.

     

    As Byron Katie stated in one of her books, you can be sitting on a couch and feel like it is heaven, until you think, “It would be nice to have a pillow”, and then you are uncomfortable with just the couch.

     

    From Heaven to Hell without moving anywhere except in your mind.

     

    The three words Byron Katie says cause the most suffering are, would, should and could.

     

    What I didn’t know is that these words are the expressways out of reality, an escape route to a place far from where you are standing.

     

    You mind leaves reality, and takes your feelings with, and all that is left is the physical body, but it can’t feel or know it is in the here and now, for the mind and awareness are gone.

     

    Have you ever driven a car and can’t recall passing things, like ‘mindless driving’.  Your driving but your mind is elsewhere, that is leaving reality.

     

    Once you are aware of how much you are not aware, it is scary to know how little in a day you are actually present and fully connected to what is.

     

    Often times it is when you are doing ‘mindless’ tasks, or when you are where you don’t want to be, you visualize yourself to be elsewhere. 

     

    Most often you are unhappy with how life is operating at this moment and want to affect change, and do…but all you really change is leaving the scene in your mind.

     

    Leaving what is for what should be.

     

    Not wanting what is there or wanting more than what is there and even less, forever trying to arrange life to suit your mind.

     

    I can visualize three islands, Would be, Should be, and Could be, the islands of life’s discontent!

     

    It takes practice and sheer determination to not try and rearrange life as it appears, to just sit softly in acceptance being bent by life, instead of trying to bend life into what you feel would be better.

     

    It’s to go from being a duck on a river trying to direct the flow, to being a duck floating in total submission.

     

    Floating in total submission doesn’t take away from the duck or the river; it shows them in perfect harmony.

     

    It seems insane that the mind wants to make corrections to what is happening right now, but it does, and perhaps that is the meaning of insanity.

     

    Insanity is the mind trying to control the Universe.

     

    I had to look up the word Insane.

    It means, pertaining to, or characteristic of a person who is mentally deranged.

     

    So, I had to look up the word deranged.

     

    Transitive verb deranged-·ranged′, deranging-·rang′·ing. to upset the arrangement.

     

    To upset the arrangement.

     

    Does that mean to Upset arrangement of reality?

    To be upset with life?

    To want to arrange things better, different, more to your liking, to be forever at war with reality?

     

    If it is true then we all are insane in various degrees, with mild or extreme tendencies, and perhaps the tougher reality is to swallow, the more extreme the Upset.

     

    So when people get upset, due to the fact they don’t like arrangement of life, they are mentally derranged or insane.

     

    The opposite of insanity is total acceptance to what is.

     

    Is that right?  That if you are not mentally with reality you are arranging it differently in your mind, you upset the arrangement to suit your needs, then you are insane.

     

    If this is the case, then I truly was insane and mentally deranged for most of my life, and still fall into this position from time to time.

     

    Insanity is to upset the arrangement.

     

     

  • What Isn’t There to See!


    To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have. 

     ~Ken S. Keyes

     

    We have two eyes and I am thinking we need to use them for two separate things; one to see what we have and the other what is missing.  I also suggest keep one eye working more than the other, perhaps even wear a patch over the one who is a forever counting what is Not here.

     

    Our train of thoughts need to keep the track to the positive eye well used, and abandon the tracks to the one that is forever reporting the doom and gloom, the worrier, the spoil sport, the one that is adding up a long column of negatives, when there is a whole world of good to be calculated.

     

    I know that by switching how I look upon my job makes a difference, if I can see all the positives, the downsides will fade from neglect.

     

    I heard Dr. Maya Angelou say of people who whine, ‘stop you will let them know a Victim is in the area.’

     

    So in the vicinity of your voice how is it being heard?

     

    What are you mentioning most often, the things going right or what is going wrong?

     

    We are either a victim commentator of life or one that sees things as they are and rolls by accepting, being enthusiastic or having enjoyment in what is, as Eckhart Tolle suggests.

     

    If you can accept what is going on, you are no longer a victim.

     

    When you fight it, you become a victim to It, no matter what It is.

     

    It is raining and you want sunshine, the rain will victimize you.

    Just by wanting what is not there, IT takes your power; your eyes are on what isn’t happening.

     

    When you keep your strongest eye on what isn’t happening, you waste what you have in life.

     

    Can you have what you don’t see?

     

    Yet we believe we can have what we don’t see by focusing on what isn’t there.

     

    How backwards this all is…What we can see, we don’t and what we don’t we focus on.

     

    Seeing what isn’t and not seeing what is.

     

    Like a trick mirror, reporting back what isn’t there to see!

     

  • Head in the Sand.

    On our travels I seen a tree that was planted upside down, its root system was above ground and it grew leaves. 

     

    It did not grow upward, but rather like an umbrella, its branches/roots hanging downward.

     

    These trees are not a freak of Nature, but rather have been manipulated to grow like this by a human being.  Someone has spliced their root and branch system weaving it together to make it grow this way.

     

    While it appears normal, you can clearly see the roots are growing leaves!

     

    There are striking similarities between this tree and a sexually abused child.

     

    We didn’t start out upside down and backwards, but rather someone came along and manipulated us and from there we grew.

     

    In my family, it is normal to grow this way.  We were born unto parents who were planted upside down, hence it wasn’t long and we all too were manipulated to be the same.

     

    Our family tree is this upside down tree.

     

    I am trying to show upside down people an upside down person, and asking them to see the differences, and they find nothing wrong.

     

    Incredible, for how can they, they match!

     

    They are not seeing anything wrong, anything different, all seems normal.  And it should, for we have never known our parents to be a right side up tree, nor do we remember ourselves any other way!

     

    Picture a forest of upside down trees and I am walking among them trying to tell them they are all wrong.

     

    Its like trying to explain that the roots belong below the earth and the leaves and branches above, while they are growing and appearing normal in this upside down and backward way.

     

    It would be like telling you your head belongs where your feet are and your feet belongs where you head is.

     

    And what seems to be even more incredible in a very sad way is that while they are upside down, they will raise their children the same way.  The legacy will repeat it self.

     

    As my sister sees herself as being vigilant in watching my father, yet she isn’t watching herself.

     

    She isn’t seeing her behavior at all.

     

    How she is allowing her granddaughter access to this man who is the master manipulator to take a right side up tree and flip it, changing it forever.

     

    She doesn’t see that she is bringing him something to manipulate.  He needs a young seedling.

     

    His forest of upside down little girls would stop growing if he had no seedlings to flip.

     

    Just looking at the forest of trees this man has touched, is mind blowing!

     

    If you are one of the flipped trees, you can’t be normal, not while your head is in the sand.