Tag: exposing

• Returns to being good.

  What a multifaceted catch 22 it is when society is asking that the children of abuse be the ones to stop it. To be the ones to name their perpetrator, to come out of their cages of captivity and walk freely with courage seems insurmountable.

  What it fails to realize is the condition of the conditioned mind and how it has programmed the child or the adult child to bow down to authority, to keep silent and suffer in silence.

  We have been taught by experiences to go it alone and to keep to ourselves our selves, to not expose or share the feelings part of us, but instead walk around with a veneer finish that covers our truths.

  We have lived mostly as the veneer and have not allowed the real self to peep through and now in order to stop the abuse we have to completely reverse this.

  The veneer has to fade to the back and what comes forth is all we have tried to keep hidden. We have to now present to the world the very thing that terrorized us.

  Imagine? We are the ones who stop the monster, we whose power they took, now have to come forward fearlessly.

  And yet, as odd as this seems, as backwards and as upside down, the very step in sharing your wounds is the very thing you need to begin building your strength and courage, it will help define who you are from the base of truth.

  To speak your truth of who you are and what happened to you, who you fear and why, are truthful utterances of your journey in life, your biography and pathology, what has made you you. You then are able to see and feel that IT isn’t you that is bad, but them. You are not the problem, they are.

  And, by having a veneer, also shows the lack of support and caring you had. It literally shows how untreated you are.

  If, you had to ‘hide’ your abuse, it shows that you lived in an abusive home. For if you lived in a loving caring home, the abuse would have been treated, you would have been lovingly cared for and nurtured and the Bad Man/Woman would have been put away as so not to harm another.

  When the bad man/woman is not put away, we are left to feel bad and actually are told to put away our wounds.

  What an odd show and tell it now requires in order to stop more generations, we have to show who the monster is and then our wounded self returns to being good.

  May 18, 2011

  abuse, authorities, childhood, exposing, generations, monsters, of, out, perpetrators, show, speaking, Tell, telling, truth, victims, wounded

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• The Shame Lives when we hide it…bravery is born when we don’t!

  We can’t know the obstacle courses another person is navigating in their lives, what sorts of soul wrenching choices they are making, what tricky waters they are navigating by how they present themselves daily, for most often we are taught to ‘put our best face forward’ and not share the nitty and the gritty, the sad and devastating and we have all become masks of covering up.

  How did it become more natural to pretend than to walk in authenticity, like we get points for being the most put together and champions of keeping our ‘messes’ well hidden?

  So that now it seems that a person who speaks their truth and walks it is a phenomena instead of the norm.

  What is it about human nature that we want sunshine and blue skies, peace, love and joy and push back and away from feelings and emotions of great tragedy, yet live it anyway?

  The behind the scenes drama would be better served in front and out loud. To simply present to the world your selves dressed in your dirty laundry and wear it with flare.

  To be as disheveled on the outside as the raging confusion and overwhelming emotions of pain on the inside and for it all to match, instead of primping and struggling to remain perfectly coiffed while totally unraveling.

  It seems we want perfect looking lives whether we live them or not and we will struggle to pull it off, and feel victorious if we can walk around in public hiding our broken insides.

  Imagine the world and how much more relaxed it would be if our insides would appear as accessories, if we were allowed to wear our confusion outside, what great advice would pour our way and how comforting it would be to see that you were not alone.

  And, the greatest news is that the secrets would die for it would be unfashionable to not have colorful deeply intriguing soulful items displayed on your chest.

  Imagine the white blankness of indifference compared to the wildly attractive colors of wrestling with overcoming abuse?

  How nice it would be to get rid of the social presentation and just be our selves…

  What happens with these social masks and if they are good actors, is that you never get to know the real person, just the nice set of clothes that walk around.

  In walking and talking about my ‘dirty’ laundry or my truth, I have had the greatest privilege to hear others real life…they relax and be them selves where the social outside disappears and underneath is this wildly exciting alive soul living life, going through huge lessons of growth and inner knowing.

  Life is lived underneath the perfect faces and put together clothing and if you dare wear your dirty laundry in public you will find others who are eager to do so too.

  My dirtiest of the dirt is that I have a pedophile for a father and once I openly displayed this, owned it, spoke it, I have been free to display other shades of dysfunction as well, and little by little my whole self is allowed to come forth.

  I have become comfortable in my own skin and wear my abuse as a badge of courage not of shame; it’s one of the last diseases that need to be socially acceptable.

  Human nature when its abused creates this, it isn’t a bug, it is spread from family member to family member and I truly believe that the more we talk about this and the more we openly display our abuse, the less power it will have and its insidious spreading will recede.

  Incest is hidden behind nice looking clothes and demeanors, and family’s monsters are protected and made normal so as not to stand out and look odd…and we need to undress this normalcy and own it.

  When we own it we begin treating the root cause…we find the line and the path of destruction and can one by one bring them in the open and see how their abuse affected them.

  Are they still being victims or have they taken over and become what abused them? And we have to recognize that they are acting out perfectly for being abused.

  “Hurt people hurt people.” They are not natural monsters; they became this way coming from whence they came.

  While we can see the wolf in sheep’s clothing, we never treat the wolf we just pet the lamb.

  Petting the monster will not stop the abuse; it is only facing the monster within that we can begin to affect the root cause.

  Undressing and exposing the monster is a step in the right direction.

  Isn’t it funny, but we all know we are petting a lamb with the volatile wolf underneath…yet we are too afraid to know it and speak it and do something about it. It is much easier to pretend it is a lamb the whole way through, even though the wolf fangs are showing and we have bites to prove it…

  I know the cost of not disrobing the wolf…of pretending that he is only a lamb.

  Our children need to know from us adults in the room, that a monster is sitting in their presence and if we treat him like a lamb, so will they.

  It is time we call a spade a spade, a monster a monster and a molested child a molested child. It is time for us to wear our wounds on the outside with courage.

  The shame lives when we hide it…bravery is born when we don’t!

  May 16, 2011

  abuse, bravery, child, courage, disease, exposing, facing, hiding, life, secrets, sexual, shame, social

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• Annihilated in a Balloon!

  I could envision my self as a little girl and how she sits holding out her hands in shame again, for in them should be love and all she sees is fear.

   

  Fear and terror are in her hands.

   

  It feels like it is her responsibility to change that over to love, and no matter what she does or how hard she tries, what she tells her self, all that lay in her hands is fear.

   

  She is not good enough; she is unworthy, something is wrong with her, for she can’t get it right.

   

  Shame on you!

   

  I was totally confused and lost in the thoughts that fear and shame were tightly woven within me. 

   

  I was ashamed and in fear.

   

  When I pictured a young girl sitting there with fear in her hands and so shameful that she couldn’t change the feelings, it occurred to me, that ‘my little girl’ didn’t even have pictures in her head to know where the fear came from.

   

  She had feelings but no road map on how they got there.

   

  As thoughts came and went during the day yesterday, it came to me that my father changed my feelings I did not!

   

  A line in a song, “A little girl was waiting for her daddy one day…” came into my mind. 

   

  I was waiting for a daddy and who came was a man who hurt me. 

   

  He changed from being my daddy and so did my daddy feelings.

   

  In its place are bad man feelings and I can’t change them back.

   

  The tragedy is that I had love, trust and faith in my hands, and they quickly disappeared and terror took its place, a sleight of hand, a bad card trick, and I got left holding the terror card.

   

  I left the scene of the crime while the crime was taking place, but my body recorded the changes with feelings.

   

  Now as a little girl when she sees her ‘daddy’ and feels terror and she doesn’t understand why?

   

  Certainly something is so very wrong with her. 

  Shame on you!

   

  My whole body felt such utter relief to know that it wasn’t me who changed my feelings about my father, and it isn’t me that can change them back.

   

  It is up to him.

   

  My feelings will be stuck in fear unless and until he presents to me a man who acts like a dad.

   

  I am not responsible I didn’t do nothing wrong. 

   

  I was just a little girl who was waiting for her daddy that is all.  That is all…

   

  A little girl holding Love in her hands…that is all.

   

  There is no shame in that.

   

  I somehow felt I had to hide my fear; I was ashamed of my feelings.

   

  The near miss encounter with my mother, lunged me back into the feelings I had as a little girl, it brought me back to the feelings I had and still have today.  Nothing has changed within my body.  It is incredible that it registers the same.

   

  It is puzzling, how the feelings are similarly intense for her as with him.

   

  Somehow I felt shamed by her for my feelings I had for him.

   

  Disappointing her, her disproval reigned supreme as my number one thing I didn’t want to do. 

   

  Keeping her dream alive, “a longed for family” a father for her kids, I was guilty of not feeling the dream, yet I tried.

   

  Looking back at my life in this awkward review, I feel my life instead of see it; it was like I lived in a balloon that I carried.

   

  Up in the balloon I could pretend to feel what I didn’t feel.

   

  In the balloon, I lived annihilated from my true feelings.

   

  A life of pretend in a balloon, which never touched my body, for the string that held it away from me was called shame and fear.

   

  In order to get back to my body, I had to travel backwards and feel what I could bear to feel.

   

  That day in that dinner, without a balloon to protect me, I felt the electrical charge of fear wrapped around in a colorful ribbon of shame.

   

  With my big girl awareness and reality’s support, along with a friend named Ann, I felt what I needed to feel, the awkwardness of a child in fear sitting in shame.

   

  Shame is exposing your feelings of fear!

   

    

  I had this quilt at the Gallery for sale and I took it back. For as I look at it, you can see  how she has to now live.  In the presence of her family she was made to live removed from her feelings….and if you see it from her view, she had to keep her real feelings away from her self, annihilated in a balloon! 

  September 11, 2010

  annihilated from feelings, changes, disassociation, exposing, fear, incest, loveless, redicule, shame, terror

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