I M Perfect lady

Tag: Dysfunctional

  • Real Person

    This truly would change the world…"The Conscious Parent" by Dr. Shefali Tsabary.

    In the first few pages…

    "Many of us don't consider how the way we parent affects our children, which might cause us to change our approach.  Does the method especially include listening to your child's spirit? Would we be willing to change the way we interact with our child if it became clear that what we are doing isn't working?"

    "Each of us imagines we are being the best parent we can be, and most of us are indeed good people who feel great love for our children.  It certainly isn't our lack of love that we impose our will on our children. Rather, it stems from a lack of consciousness. The reality is that many of us are unaware of the dynamics that exist in the relationship we have with our children."

    "None of us likes to think of ourselves as unconscious.  On the contrary, its a concept we tend to balk at.  So defensive are many of us that, let someone say a word about our parenting style, and we are instantly triggered. However, when we begin to be aware, we redesign the dynamic we share with our children."

    "Our children pay a heavy price when we lack consciousness. Overindulged, overmedicated, and over-labeled many of them are unhappy. This is because coming from unconsciousness ourselves, we bequeath to them our own unresolved needs, unmet expectations, and frustrated dreams. Despite our best intentions, we enslave them to the emotional inheritance we received from our parents, binding them to the debilitating legacy of ancestors past. The nature of unconsciouness is that, until it's metabolized, it will seep through generation after generation. Only through awareness can the cycle of pain that swirls in families end."

    "To Connect With Your Children, First Connect With Yourself."  

    "Until we understand exactly how we have been operating in an unconscious mode, we tend to resist opening ourselves to an approach to parenting that rests on entirely different ideals from those we may have relied on until now."

    "Traditional parenthood has been exercised in a manner that's hierarchical. The parent governs from the top down.  After all, isn't the child our "lesser," to be transformed by us as the more knowledgeable party? Because children are smaller and don't know as much as we do, we pressume we are entitled to control them. Indeed, we are so used to the kind of family in which the parent exercises control, it perhaps doesn't even occur to us that this arrangement might not be good for either our children or ourselves."

    "On the parent's side of the equation, the problem with the traditional approach to parenting is that it rigidifies the ego with its delusions of power.  Since our children are so innocent and ready to be influenced by us, the tend to offer little reistance when we impose our ego on them – a situation that holds potential for the ego to become stronger."

    "If you want to enter into a state of pure connection with your child, you can achieve this by setting aside any sense of superiority. By not hiding behind an egoic image, you will be able to engage your child as a real person like yourself." Dr. Shefali

    Just imagine the difference it would make in the lives of children and parents to be aware and conscious and to separate ourselves into real people?

    I know, that my parenting changed drastically when I discovered how disconnected I was with myself.  How much I needed my children to fulfill my needs and how I had parented so unconscious…as unconscious as I was myself.

    I would highly recommend this book, for its goal is to erase the dysfunction unconsciousness breeds.  Some may think that sexual abuse was the biggest factor in creating dysfunction in our home, but its overriding system was unconscious parenting.

    Just the fact that the FALC awards parents who can create mini selves with their children, when you can have them all conform to your beliefs, shows the model of NOT seeing the child and its spirit.

    It would horrify the loving parents of many religions to know they are actually shutting out the spirit of their child when they impose their expectations upon their child. 

    Instead of many religions igniting the spirit, they are separating the child from who they were born to be.

    I can't express adequately the powerful change I experienced when I understood these two drastically different ways of parenting….unconscious to conscious.

    When parents change the way they parent…we will see beautiful expressions of spirits being born…instead of the continual seeping of dysfunction from one generation to the next.  The sheer volume of pain unconscious parents create would stop…if they first connected to their own pain….their self.

    Our generation is the start of this paradigm shift.

    Just to be aware we do not have the right to douse the spirit of a real person.

     

     

  • Rear-View Mirror

    It is interesting to me the dynamics of Functioning or Dysfunctional, and how the very nature of dysfunction leads you to make choices that will reap more dysfunction.

    The very nature of dysfunction is to not look at what is, or not feel that which you feel, which leads to a life that you won't look at or feel, which has you facing forward to the next moment in time, but not this moment.

    It is natural in the dysfunction to look ahead and disregard past behaviors, to not voice how you feel and to remain focused on the future, without looking out the side windows or definitely the back-window.  To not follow through with what you feel, but toss your feelings behind you and look ahead.

    My mother drove her life, heedless to how her actions affected us. Her attention on the future, kept her from dealing in the now. And she certainly was not going to look behind her at what lay there…and in doing so, years upon years of abuse lay scattered in her rear-view mirror, while she doggedly drove on into the sunset, never taking her foot off the gas peddle to stop.

    Her not stopping her life for an act of abuse…made it so my father didn't have to stop either…If she stopped, he would have been made to stop.

    She was his ticket to keep going.

    While she focused on the wide window in front of her, he was off to the side abusing, and in her rear-view mirror we all lay abused…while her attention was looking anywhere but there.

    Dysfunction is not looking and certainly not stopping your life style or interrupting your 'family' for abuse.

    Dysfunction doesn't stop when it sees abuse.  Dysfunction doesn't stop when it feels pain. Dysfunction doesn't stop when it is betrayed…dysfunction just plows ahead.

    Heading to a destination that is far away from abuse, into happiness or laughter, but dysfunction certainly doesn't stop for abuse.

    That is dysfunction. That is why families are okay with abuse, for it doesn't pay attention to it.  It allows it to ride along in the rearview mirror by promising NOT to LOOK.

    Looking at abuse is not permitted in dysfunction.

    Speaking about hurtful behavior by another is not allowed in dysfunction.  You are to forgive and move on, you are not allowed to hold 'grudges' or carry the truth forward, you must leave it lie in the rear-view mirror.

    Dysfunction is to create a person without a past.

    None of their 'sins' are taken into the future….only who they are today…sinless, abuseless, just a body without past actions….that is all that comes into the future.

    You are not allowed to look at the junk in their trunk…that is dysfunction…you must keep separating actions from the person.

    Surely I could keep a dad if I didn't bring forth the rape…that is dysfunction.  Yet,I kept looking behind in the rear-view mirror and seeing the rape….oh why couldn't I just focus on today…and a rosie future.

    In my experience, the only thing that happens if you never look back or out the side windows is Abuse gets to dance free….

    While my mother stared ahead toward future happiness…my father was able to rape and fondle and forcefully hold many little hands upon his penis…dysfunction won't look at abuse.

    Function stops and stares at abuse…function sees the child, function doesn't drive on…function stops her life…and stares behind her at all the flags she missed, all the places she didn't see…Function sees the monster…dysfunction sees the husband/wife.

    In order to continue on without abuse, you have to see where you have been…how you drove and not take that road again.

    Is impossible to stop abuse by not seeing it.  You can stare for the rest of your life ahead and it will not stop.

    Abuse needs you to not see.  My father needed all folks to Not see his abuse. And sadly, only the children saw it.  The helpless child felt the pressure of his powerful hands pressed upon his penis….they couldn't stop him.  

    Dysfunction will not stop and stare…

    I believe children are told to not talk about it, not dwell on it, to forgive that action and move on….it isn't that it isn't seen, but we are told to look ahead, and not to look behind.

    Not hold another person accountable…not let that one action or multitude of sins color their character, focus on the good times, the good things and ahead.

    That is the ingredients of dysfunctional families.  They don't stop for abuse…and they never look in the rear-view mirror.

    "Objects Are Closer than they Appear" 

     

     

  • Love will never leave you Powerless.

    In the past seven years, my brother and I have been dialoguing and most often coming to the same point, but from two different directions.  But we have always honored and respected each other enough to only speak our truths, even if and when that truth landed in unsettling ways…it seemed that we needed each of our sides in order to fully embrace and know the lay of the land.

    Our conversations often times are batting words and definitions around, trying to understand where the other is coming from.  For while we were raised in the same house, we came out differently, but the same. We both walked forth dysfunctional, yet displayed it in two different ways.

    I have been telling him for many many years, that he is Authentically Dysfunctional, and it meant to me that he was bravely owning all of his abuse and how it left him…and how he has done extremely remarkable in undoing the damage by learning to function in reality.

    What he heard was he could never not be Dysfunctional.  What I had implied was that he was openly dysfunctional and recovering his functions.

    For what I believe is the heart or root cause of the term Dysfunctional, is that you are unable to function correctly in a situation, that you do odd things instead of what nature would do.

    Our Function as a human being, no longer functions correctly; our systems begin to operate backwards.

    We are drawn to people who hurt us, instead of being repelled away.

    The complexities of living backwards is mountainous; our whole lives are lived blindly hurting ourselves and blaming others.

    We can't function on our own.

    We need others to change so we can be okay.

    We have lost the connection inside of us to move away.

    In abuse, when someone overpowers us, especially someone we love and trust, we become powerless to them.  We are then left minus the switch to move away.

    To function means you have your power back.  You can move towards and away from people and behaviors that don't feel okay to you…You become unfrozen.

    Without this switch, you are dysfunctional.  You can't function and be the one to move.  You are left in a place without legs.

    The Function of a victim is to be powerless, unable to move, frozen without choices.  Many folks get stuck in this position after abuse, especially if the abuser is your caretaker.  We simply are left without a choice, we can't move, so we grow up in the position of being powerless.

    Being powerless and being unable to move is the function of a victim, and a victim we will remain, until we can move.

    While my whole family of origin sees me as being cold bitter, angry and stuck, it is actually the complete opposite.  I am free and functional for the first time since my father's abuse.  I lived as a victim for 4o years, and now in the last 7 have been working to become functioning as a natural human being.

    I now have the ability to move away from folks who hurt me, who bring toxic energy…

    In order to function again, you first have to see where you are unable to move…where you are a victim, where you haven't moved away from abuse…That is my meaning of being authentically dysfunctional; you have to be real with what is not working in your life.

    If you cannot see your self in prison, you can't set your self free.

    And I do believe, that it is easier at times to stay prisoner in a life that you know, compared to walking free into one that you don't know.  

    Just as in the experiment of mice, who were raised in a shock box, one that would emit shocks in order for them to eat…when they were given two choices, a box without shocks and food or one with, they all chose to continue with what they were used to.

    I do get that it is easier to continue being shocked than it is to learn a new way of being.  It is easier to sit in the jail and be a victim, than it is to walk free.

    But the bottom line, is that you and you alone decide to move your switch or to let it be.  Once you know, you can't not know…and once you know, you are willingly being a victim, and then, IS that really a victim or are you now an active participant?

    Being authentically dysfunctional is admitting you can't function…and in acknowledging you are unable to function, is the first function of becoming functional.

    If you can't see where you lost your power, you can't get it back…it remains lost.  

    Sometimes, it is hard to get your power back from those who took it in the first place, harder still if you believe love is attached.  But here is what I know for sure, love will never leave you powerless.

    (Dysfunction, equals no power, which then adds up to no love.)

     

     

  • Authentically inauthentic.

    I had to look up the word Authentic, to see if I clearly understood what that means and is there a difference in being authentic and having an authentic relationship.  

    Authentic, "Of Undisputed Origin"…"authentic, genuine, bona fide mean being actually and exactly what is claimed."

    "Being actually and exactly" what you claim to be.

    The claiming part is where the sea of difference lies.

    We can claim to be anything, but can you actually and exactly follow through, that is where authenticity lies, where the rubber meets the road if you will, and if not, all else is meaningless.

    Stating claims isn't always necessary, we catch titles just by being in the world.  I have claims of sister, daughter, mother attached to me. How I am inside of these claims is oftentimes imprinted upon us as we see the adults in our world playing them out.

    And yet, each claim comes with its own definition or the definition of a dictionary, but that isn't always what we experience.

    A mother in the dictionary as a verb is, "Bring up (a child) with care and affection: "the art of mothering"…and as a noun, "A woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth."

    And in reality I did get the noun version, but the verb part was lacking a few things…like "Care and Affection".  Other verbs, action verbs took their place and in doing so, my mother was not an authentic mother…she couldn't be exactly and actually as her role claimed.

    What we are not taught in school, that the words and reality will often not match, that there is very little authenticity.

    In Bird Watching, there is a saying, "When the bird and the Book don't match, BELIEVE the Bird."

    The other part of authenticity was to be of Undisputed Origin…and I take that to mean, that it is senseless to dispute how you were raised.

    I had to look up the definition of Origin to make sure.

    "The beginning of something's existence. A person's social background or ancestry."

    My social background and ancestry is my undisputed origin.  I fully own and embrace all of it, for if I didn't, I would be inauthentic.

    So, in knowing all that…what then is an authentic relationship?

    To me, there can be no authentic relationship, if you are not authentic as a person.  Whatever false claims you live will come forward into the relationship; it is simply impossible to keep them out.

    True authentic relationships allow into the relationship your social background and ancestry and not only expects but demands that you literally be actually and exactly that.  An authentic relationship will not allow you to bring in false claims.  

    Claims without actions of being actually and exactly who you claim to be is being authentically inauthentic.

  • Stories of Fiction.

    What they don’t tell you is that while you are finding out who you are, you will isolate your self from your old life; you will become a stranger there, while becoming your own best friend.

    My five sisters are gathering together this week, and not a whisper to invite me, I am too odd, and too weird, too nuts or insane, a myriad of labels, but a sister to be included I am not.

    There is a part of me that grieves for the loss of being included and my little girl self feels sooo misunderstood and so misclassified.

    It seems my truth seeking spun me into this evil creature that they don’t want no part of.

    The deeper I delved, the more I explored, the more distance I put between us all, my healing keeps pushing me further away.

    It is like I am set out to sea while they are on the beach having a party.

    I know intellectually, that my spirit and soul would have no peace with them, that I have lived too deep now to go back to be a surface dweller…yet I grieve.

    I grieve for what is, for what was.

    I feel being isolated for all the wrong reasons or so it seems.

    I didn’t sexually abuse them…my father did; yet I am out for talking about it.

    I didn’t neglect them like my mother did; yet I am out for pointing it out.

    It is odd for my little girl to reconcile to make a nice neat understandable folder to put them all in.

    The girls I used to take care of, no longer care for me.

    By doing what is right I am wronged.

    I get it and I don’t.

    It amazes me that they can’t see the bad in my father and then see only bad in me.

    My son, when he was a baby, always said when he did something I thought was wrong…”what did my do?”  With a face of innocence…he wondered.

    And that is what rings hollow through me, “What did my do?”  What hurts the most is that I did nothing wrong. 

    All I did was walk hand in hand with the wounded girls, the girls who were all hurt by him, I never left my line…I never wavered, never veered off course, although there are times like these I wobbled.

    I wobble, shed a few tears, and feel the separation and the unjustness of it all, but I forge ahead.

     

    I forge ahead with the truth and bear the consequences.

    They say, “what doesn’t break you makes you stronger.”

    I am being forged in grief it seems at times.

    How can my mind comprehend me being worse then they who hurt them, again, what did my do?

    It seems they have their story of me and a story of my father, both are stories of fiction…

     

     

  • Rob me of being Me.

    Doesn’t it seem like people lose their senses when it comes to love and religion, that they leave their common sense and critical eyes behind, and blindly follow?

     

    How is it that matters of the heart and soul are often sold to snake oil salesmen speaking of a promise land, someday?

     

    The seemingly intelligent folks who fall victim to the fairy tale most religions spin is utterly amazing to me, that we will give up the very insides of us for their cause.

     

    We will give up the right to our bodies, our minds, our hearts and our souls…until all that is left is a shell.

     

    A useless shell, for there is no heart, no soul, and no mind.  We become members along their narrow pathway leading to the promise land.

     

    We sell all our todays, all our feelings within our hearts, all the stirrings of our souls, for Heaven after we die.

     

    What they fail to tell us is we are the walking dead.  That we of our own free will and ourselves is dead.

     

    We have no I.

    We have no me.

    We have no self that is free to live, as it wants.

     

    And grown women give up the rights of their bodies, minds and souls and call this a spiritual experience with God?  How???

     

    It sounds like a very dysfunctional love affair.  Where one has all the power and the other is stripped of all sense of self.

     

    That was my old relationship with God…it was self less.

    Without common sense or my eyes, my ears, my feelings, my intuition, my gut, my instincts, my heart and my soul, my passion, my gratitude.  I was absent; I disappeared in order to love that god.

     

    And that god as far as I can tell is the devil who wanted my soul…a destroyer god, one who stole my free will.

     

    In my experience the God that I now know, the one who orchestrates the stars, the moon, and is intimate with each blade of grass, wants for me more than I can dream myself.

     

    He isn’t here to rob me of being Me.

     

  • I am allowed to feel…

    I lose control of me, when I feel I have lost control of others, and it puts me in a very immature action, where my voice gets higher and higher the more I feel I am losing.

     

    What I can’t understand is why I want control in the first place, when life is showing me I have none, nor will I ever, nor is it mine to have.

     

    Being a mother tests this in ways you would normally not have, or perhaps it is in relationships too, but for me it is in mothering where I lose it.

     

    I lose my decorum or any spiritual idea of being in love, peace and joy…it evaporates quickly and in its place rages an out of control woman who wants control of the uncontrollable.

     

    My son’s life is saturated with folks I would rather he keep his distance from, and this fills me with anxiety that explodes unexpectedly for both of us.

     

    It seems so simple to him, let me be with my friend, let me work for a cheating man, let me hang with friends from a cult like religion, just let me be.

     

    And to me it seems I am knowingly allowing him to engage with folks who are confused at best and due to this fact alone, will not hold his best interest at heart.

     

    Yet my hollering is not helping…and I have no other response.

     

    While I lay in bed after he happily was off again, it came to me to let him go, as he is long gone already.  He has always been there; he hasn’t left just because I have.

     

    I somehow missed this, that when I left, I felt I pulled them all out…even when and if reality and life are showing me different. 

     

    I fear losing them, and instead they are already gone.

     

    I guess I didn’t want to know I walked away from the crowds and places they are comfortable in.  I didn’t want to know I left my children there, but I did.

     

    I raised them with the ideas and thoughts and beliefs of the cult like religion, being comfortable around dysfunctional people, and now I appear like the madwoman as I rant in fear because they still enjoy being there.

     

    I seethed in hatred for living here, for that bunch still having an influence over my children, and I knew that my hatred was directed at me.

     

    That what I rail against is not about them, but about me.

     

    I hate me for the dysfunction I brought to my children.

    I hate it when they show me over and over what I taught them.

    I hate to see it and I hate to own that it came from me.

    I hate that while I became aware, I can’t change my children, I can’t stop the train I put them on as children.  I hate that I now must find peace in allowing them to be where I planted them.

    I hate that I have no control, that I can’t rip them out of the dysfunctional gardens I planted them in and transplant them in a space that is much more kinder to their souls.

     

    I hate that I have to watch them grow there.

    I hate that I am aware in moments like these.

    I hate that loving someone means letting them make choices that are not like mine.

    I hate that I hate that which I cannot change.

    In hating it keeps me from accepting, but accepting at times is a hard pill to swallow.

     

    I am granting me time to hate…like a mourning process.

    I am allowed to hate until I accept.

    I am allowed to not like that which I don’t like.

    I am allowed to feel out of control, when I am out of control.

    I am allowed to feel…

  • 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.

  • I am Way beyond Okay!

    I often wondered if my clarity was clear enough, if my love was loving enough, if my wisdom was wise enough, if I had healed enough to be in a relationship where I didn’t contaminate the other with my old dysfunctional love.

    And in the past few days, I have been given the opportunity to see and feel the affects of who I am and where I was and how much I have changed.

    The greatest gift I have to offer my daughter who was abused by this man, is to see her bathed in a sea of Innocence so bright it hurts your eyes.

    We had a visit her and I last night, and she tried very hard to get me to see her in a new light, a dimmer light, a dark, guilty blaming shaming light, I simply could not go there.

    I tried. I listened and I followed the trail she walked, I looked around and there was no shame, blame or guilt that I could see.

    We even tried role reversal where I could be her and she could be me, and still nothing changed within me, instead she even appeared more innocent.

    She asked if I would speak to “the Man” and I said I wasn’t really interested, I only cared to speak to her.

    She wanted me to see how she carried half of the weight of this encounter, I just couldn’t reach that same percentage, damn, she always came up short.

    I tried.

    I tried to see her as clear as possible and I tried to see her through her own eyes, and still I came up short.

    The scales were simply unbalanced.

    He was married, she was not.
    He had children, she did not.
    He has experience with relationships with the opposite sex, she did not.
    He was her boss and her elder, she was not.

    So we then tried to see if they matched equally in what they each brought to this new friendship.

    She brought a past reputation of killing one chicken when she was near 5 years old when she accidentally dropped a water container on a little chick and he died. And she had written a letter of apology to her father stating her truth and how sorry she was.

    She also had stolen a cookie and ate it. A cookie that was for a bake sale, she took and didn’t pay for it. This had her crying uncontrollably on the top bunk she still sleeps on. Those were the two blackest marks on her reputation that we could find.

    She said she wasn’t perfect, that she has other things she has done. I said great, give me what you have so we can balance this scale.

    I asked if she had a husband I didn’t know about.
    Nope, none.

    I asked if she had a few kids off to the side somewhere, and nope that wasn’t true.

    I asked if she had experience with men that I was unaware of, and nope she had none.

    We searched her and I for things to put on the scale to make it more even, so she could carry equal weight, for this to not be so lopsided, and nothing could we drag up besides one dead chick and a stolen cookie.

    It just seemed incredible that one young lady of 20 years old had so little to add.

    I told her I would give her a few points for each.

    And now lets look at what He brought.

    She said we didn’t need to do that.

    We didn’t.

    What is so strikingly stunning is in this case, there literally is a girl with the past of one accidentally killed chick and one ‘stolen’ cookie standing up against a man who cheated on his wife, who single handedly change her from a chicken killing thief to being seen by our little community into a soiled dove.

    A dove whose wings were clipped before she even had a chance to use them.

    Her Lilly white reputation is laying on the ground in a dirty mess; she simply did not have the experience to match this man.

    Nothing in her past prepared her for this.

    She unwittingly followed where he led.

    It is an unknown as to what would have happened if the wife didn’t find the text he sent to my daughter, asking her if she could talk.
    How far would he have gone?
    How far would she have followed?

    I am so grateful it was stopped when it was.

    That now, added to the list of chicken killing cookie thief, we have a girl who listened to a married man.

    She listened with compassion, with kindness, with trust, while going against what her inside told her.

    And when it was discovered that they were caught, she literally faced the wife, face-to-face, eye-to-eye, woman-to-girl, and said how sorry she was, how she felt, and owned up to her part.

    What more could a mother ask for?

    She faced in truth and felt the weight of her actions and admitted her part, fully owing that and more.

    Being so forthright, so bold to stand in the truth makes her a very poor ‘other woman’.

    In her innocence, she felt that by meeting them with openness and admitting her part, that perhaps, they would give her the same courtesy, it was denied.

    She didn’t get back once again, what she gave to them.

    Instead the wife threw the first ball to smear her reputation, the first glob of mud landed within the hour of my daughter leaving her home.

    Ugly accusations were posted on her facebook wall.

    No matter how kind, how loving, how remorseful, how sorry, how caring, how trusting she is, they fail to see it, and instead of just the husband soiling her, now the wife has joined his team.

    My little girl wanted me to speak to him…oh honey, I have nothing to say to him.

    Silence is the only kindness I can offer.

    My ears are for her.
    My eyes for her.
    My hand for her.

    All I have to give is for her.

    There is no part of me that is interested in what he has to say, what he wants to show me…nothing.

    I will stand with innocence.
    I will walk with my daughter, head held high while they lob dirt upon us, while they label us, and shout unkind things behind our backs, I will continue to walk forward.

    I have no time to give for the reasons they are doing these unkind things, it matters not.

    The only thing that matters in all of this is her.

    Oh, the easy job I have, to be with her innocence.
    How wonderful it is to sit with her and share this spot.

    It matters not rats ass, what ‘others’ say about her, no one can change my mind, weaken my stance, shake my firm ground, I know who my daughter is.

    She is a chicken killing, cookie stealing girl who listened and followed a married man as he walked her down the trail away from her innocent self.

    She has two choices to pick from, a life with him or one without.

    We can’t make the choices for her, all we can do is sit back and let her decide, which home, his or ours makes her feel her brightest.

    Which man in her life, her father or this man make her feel special and loved?

    Which woman, his wife or I, honor her truth?

    The choice seems simple on my side, but I understand how you can get flipped upside down and backwards in abuse.

    So, I am here to be her clarity as my wise brother suggested I do.

    I will listen as she struggles in finding her balance again.

    She knows what she lost inside, she knows she has work to do to get it back, and she has the perfect environment to do this.

    I no longer question my clarity, my wisdom or my love.

    I am way beyond okay!

  • 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.