I M Perfect lady

Tag: family

  • That is Me.

    I listened to a podcast, about exploring the rising trend about going No Contact with your Family.

    I have been No Contact with my family now for over 20 years, which seems almost surreal. A brother was the last contact I lost – about 10 years ago.

    It was good to hear others experiences. And, it affirmed a few things.

    One being how the old way – of respecting your parents – for their role – rather for how the relationship was between you – is over.

    The new way is now about the relationship. How do two people engage with each other. We no longer put the role before the way the relationship feels inside.

    This makes so much more sense – and I feel that both sides would gain so much – if the relationship was healthy.

    We are no longer expected to stay in toxic relationships no matter who they are with. There is a huge amount of freedom knowing you can do the No Contact route.

    Another part was when a hospice nurse spoke about parents who were dying and how they wanted the estranged child to call. The feelings the hospice nurse had was that it was about control – that the parent believed since they were dying the child would acquiesce.

    The nurse felt it was a selfish act.

    This was how I felt and it is good to be affirmed with that choice. She even said that even though the child didn’t want to speak to the dying parent, most wanted to be called upon the death.

    The nurse saying something about how terrible it would be to find out on Facebook. Which is exactly how I did.

    The podcast also showed how there are many reasons for children to have no contact with their parents and siblings. As well as parents who put up boundaries against children.

    Mostly, it is about how we feel inside when we are with our families. How they see us, hear us and understand. Just as in any relationship we have, it is best when they are healthy. When we can be ourself and be loved unconditionally.

    I think this trend of No Contact, will make better parents – ones who are less about the role they play and more about the content of their relationships. It will help them see their child as unique individuals.

    One young girl said how much better her insides feel now that she has no contact – she feels so free and happy in her life.

    That is me.

    You can listen to Oprah’s podcast to hear more.

  • Where Love Lives.

    A lifetime ago, I used to go Caroling with my siblings. One year I made us all scarves to wear. The simple joys of the holidays. Being a creative person, each Christmas I would try and make them all something. Pouring my heart through my hands.

    My brother sent a text yesterday. “Happy birthday! Life is short, enjoy each day. ”  Just enough to bring them and the drama to the front. 

    No matter the words I use, they can’t comprehend my journey.  

    I started to respond, but what could I say? What words would make him and them – understand the magnitude of love, peace and joy there is away from them.

    I believe they see me as suffering in the past hurts, holding on to grudges and non-forgiveness. Forsaking this moment with a mind and heart full of anger.

    Why else remind me of the shortness of life and to enjoy it.

    No matter the words I would type or the sentiment I tried to present, he wouldn’t understand how my heart and soul are filled with light. That stepping away from cycles of abuse the brainwashed cult-like religion – set my soul free and my heart to love.

    I miss family – but not the toxic one. That family comes with generational behaviors and patterns that are near impossible to have real relationships with.

    When I look back at our blind innocence and the unconsciousness of our denial – how we dressed up the holidays to be more – to hide the truth that lay beneath.

    What an impossible task to try and make our family whole. No scarves or ornaments – made with love by me – could put a dent into righting the mess.

    Those simple fun memories are now tainted, knowing what we didn’t acknowledge.

    If only they were just joys of caroling, with fun scarves, sharing our Christmas baking. If only there wasn’t ugly truths right beneath the surface.

    A friend sent a photo of her and her 4 sisters caroling – and their mom.  It fills my heart and breaks it. Of the joy of family and the loss of mine.  A wound that will follow me always.  They are there – sometimes loud – most often a faint hum in the background of my wonderful life.

    I know there are many of us out here, who are living, loving and finding peace and joy – away from our families of origin. It is more than okay to feel the ache of loneliness and feeling sorrow when you see family being loving family. And, the holidays can be especially hard to walk in tandem with grief and joy.

    What I know to be true is that the grief just pops up here and there in the sea of goodness I live in.

    My heart can hold joy and sorrow. If Christmas wishes were granted, I would want my siblings to join me here – on the outskirts of toxic family patterns.

    Until then – I hold space where love lives.

  • Where the Heart Lives

    Tonight I am sitting with gratitude and a thankful heart to the home we have been lucky enough to live in for the past 30 years.

    This home welcomed us with our 4 children and a dog.

    We loved, lived and grew old here. We have survived some tough patches – but the majority of my memories here are good ones.

    During the tough patches it was a refuge sitting along the river with wide open fields and plenty of nature to soothe my soul.

    This place holds many memories for our children and grandchildren. Campfires, camping, fishing, and skiing, snowshoeing and kayaking. Endless wonderful things to do, right out the front door.

    How lucky were we to raise our children here.

    Our youngest was one when we moved here – and now he is returning here with his wife – becoming the third generation to call this home.

    And we are moving back to where we began as newly weds. Back to the land our children have memories of as well.

    The place on the river has steps and we couldn’t live on one level – so we felt it was best to be in a place that would welcome our old age. A place where we could live on one level and have less upkeep and less work all around.

    So we will be able to visit here and have new memories here – so it isn’t good-bye – but see you later.

    My heart will always hold this place dear. Love has lived here, and love is moving here and love will go with us to our new home.

    Home is where the heart lives.

  • His Daughter to Live hers Well.

    Dates on the calendar can stir up memories – a glimmer of significance to the day. My father would have turned 96 today – he’s been gone now 13 years – but he was gone for me long before that time.

    It is different when you lose someone you were already estranged from – and your memories are tainted by his worst deeds.

    What I don’t have are heart felt memories – or sadness that he’s gone. It is a void where a father should have stood.

    So a date arrives and it is unusual with its significance- a day that used to be – and his life it feels was one that brought pain.

    I don’t follow the news, but there are many who do – and many who feel the angst of all that is going on. I don’t have answers for the multiple things that are wrong – but what I do know is that within my family of origin when all seemed lost – what I focused on was what I could do in my small corner of the world.

    I could gather Love, Peace and Joy.

    I wasn’t changing the devastation my father’s life did.

    I wasn’t changing the lives of those who suffered – I couldn’t.

    But, I could affect change in my small circle. I was able to use my life to live the opposite. I live with intention and keep as much love, peace and joy in my world.

    There are things we have influence over and there are millions that bring stress – and where we can do nothing.

    I believe if each of us sought out more of what we love, what brought joy and held peace, the world would tilt in that direction.

    I knew if I focused on my father’s deeds and the suffering and pain he sowed – I would have shriveled up and died inside.

    When I vowed to not let him define my life – I turned towards a new direction.

    It wasn’t easy at first – it felt awkward to turn away from so much bad – to seek instead the things that warmed my heart. Over time the new habit became my life.

    Even today as so much is upside down and backwards in this country – I still center myself on the choices I can make to bring love and light to my little world.

    It is during the darkest of times, we need more art – in all categories. We can send waves of positive energies out into the world each day by what we spend our days doing.

    Perhaps in honor of a life so wrongly lived – it is a must for his daughter to live hers well.

    Art is a sanctuary for my troubled mind- or when my left brain is stressed. There is joy letting the right side play.

  • Norm within the Church

    The latest news within the FALC, is that the Chairperson of the Zion church was caught with his pants down so to speak…which to me is a huge red flag waving once again above the steeple.

    How many flags need to be waved before the people in the pews will see that this behavior isn't isolated to a person, that it is an affect of abuse itself?

    Who will see this as a sign pointing to the contents of the family and not try and keep it as rogue behavior?  He is displaying the affects of abuse.  

    How will this affect or not affect the members of the church?

    Who will begin to unhook the mantle of 'purity' and see that beneath the veil lies reality?

    I see him as a confused adult child.  I see him as the natural progression of unhealed sexual abuse.  It isn't just a bad choice…of doing the wrong thing in the wrong place, it is a symptom of a much bigger problem.  

    To isolate him and focus on the act and not see the pathway that led him there is to miss the whole picture.

    His family tree is a new tree in the forrest of names that I have. Another name, another family, another section of the church where the virus of abuse has spread…

    The hope section grows smaller, that this isn't the norm within the church.  

     

  • Love responds in truth always

    In my mother's latest note I found a new viewpoint, another place where we don't match, the two drastically differing ways to deal in life.

    While she keeps coming back to how she feels and how she sees me, I too keep coming back to my viewpoint of her and they don't match.

    My experience of her, isn't her experience of me.

    I did bring her joy and help.  I did try my best to alleviate the overwhelming situations of being in a family of 14, what I failed to understand that behind me, she and her husband were making things even more difficult to manage.  A backdoor was opening and closing allowing in abuse, that was eroding the family atmosphere I worked so hard to keep afloat.

    She keeps talking about what I was doing and NEVER mentions what she was doing behind my back.  My aching tired and overstressed back.  I was seeing chiropractors in middle school…ya think???

    Trying to keep her family together…when abuse was ripping it apart. There wasn't enough I could do to mend what they broke.  And yet she speaks of it not.

    Tell me mother what do you think it was like being a child of yours?

    Tell me mother…how do you think it feels to be me. 

    My abuse went unnoticed, uncared for, unreported…with no response from you…except that you appreciate my help and joy.  Imagine an abused child now has to bring help and joy…while no one tends to their wounds.  We try harder to please for somehow in this upside downstate, when you fail to take responsibility, we do.  

    You say you love me.  How I ask?  How?

    What does love look like to you?  Does love turn its back on the hurting?  Does love not see the abuse?  

    You keep repeating words about love, but can't take a step that is loving.  

    Love walks right into abuse and takes full responsibility.

    Love protects the child at all costs.

    Love doesn't forgive and forget, it remembers and acts accordingly.

    Love is being in your truth and my truth.

    Love is not just a four letter word…

    Love is fearlessly seeing what you don't want to see and doing things you can't imagine doing, to protect the innocent and to stand strong against those who hurt.

    Love…doesn't only see what is kind.

    Love sees it all…and love responds in truth always.

     

     

     

  • Meant to be…

    At Christmas time we send out greetings of Peace, Love and Joy, and yet we fail to send them out to the folks we are estranged from.

    The meaning of estranged is, No longer close or affectionate to someone; alienated and I wondered what I would write to those who I am not close to, but have been.  

    My Estrangement Christmas Letter…

    Since we are no longer close, we no longer communicate and that leaves us in silence.  In that silence and space there seems to be peace; for separation brings us both peace in our lives, for each of us disagree with the way the other is walking. 

    As we both walk separated, we are here for a reason…a season or a lifetime.  I can't know if we will never connect, or have given each other the lesson or message we needed to…or do we come together at another time…and for another reason.

    It seems that if you let someone go and they come back to you, it was meant to be, and if they never do…that too is the way of it.

    We were in each others lives until it was no longer peaceful to be.

    I have no regrets to walking my path, nor in letting you walk yours…holding each other prisoner in a life we don't want would not have made us closer.  There is peace is separation.

    I have learned volumes of lessons in letting go, in giving freedom, and in seeing when I held on too tightly…and smothered life.

    Estrangement actually feels honorable when our ways of living life are different and not closely related; our paths are strange to each other…I would not force you to walk on my path and am thankful you are not asking the same of me.

    I wish you peace as you walk your path and know there is a rhythm and beat to the drum you follow, that only you can hear.  It is your heart and your soul you follow…it leads you.  

    You can make no mistake, for your life is set for you pace, your comfort and you will always know when to move. Always. It is never too late or never not right.  It is always right for you.

    I wish you joy in all things.  Joy at being you.

    I wish you love of self first…for it leads the way.

    And yet, there is an belief that says we do one of four things;

    We come in Light and move toward the Light

    or come in the dark and stay in the dark

    or come in the Light and move towards the dark

    or come in the dark and move towards the Light.

    The latest is me.  I can't know your journey, nor can anyone, but you.  I can only honor what you say and what you do…for you do it for reasons that only you can know.

    Whatever is your journey, I wish you peace, love and joy.

    I thank you for whatever time we spent together, what messages we shared and the lessons we learned.  I know for me, that each person I have been in contact with has walked part of my journey with me.

    You lent a kind word, walked through a particularly dark time, showed me the wrong way, brought me words I didn't want to hear, etc…I couldn't have done it without you.  

    I believe that those I am estranged from are Angels who did what they had to do to make me who I am today.  Even the dark ones, had to walk a particularly hard journey to help me see.  I am in awe of your journey the most.  For it is easy to be a Light walker, and much more difficult to walk the walk of the dark.

    On this Christmas, I wish you peace on your journey…and am grateful for you being part of my journey.  It is with an understanding heart and soul, I know we would be together if it was meant to be…

      IMG_4580
     Have Peace this Christmas…

  • I need nothing from Christmas.

    What I haven't realized until it was gone, are the feelings of heaviness and weight of the added stress of holidays…What I had thought was extra work, was actually being slammed by feelings.

    Feelings come alive and merge and meld in multitude of ways during this 'Family' time.

    If you have reconciled all your feelings, trimming the tree is just trimming the tree….there is no hidded wound it has to fill, no making you feel 'overbright'.

    When I hadn't come to terms with all my feelings or felt truthfully all that I had felt, It seemed like I was being scrambled by the holidays, that they were forcing me to do things I didn't want to do or were exposing things I didn't want exposed.  And during this family time, well, we had just damn well better be a family!

    It was trying to bend into the Spirit of the Holiday with feelings that didnt' match.  

     

    I have come to terms with the new me…and feel okay, settled and the Holidays are not asking anything of me…or putting me in a position that brings up feelings that I don't like.  And I have no false expectations of Christmas making a family that isn't already there.

    I am not sure I can put to words the absence of my feelings being pulled and prodded; where hidden in each 'tradition' lay a sword that could split me in two.

    I had three Christmas filled days and nothing bite me.  Nothing felt bad or overburdened and sad, no Blue Christmas….tones floated in.

    I am not sure I have ever had a Christmas minus awkward feelings of something.

    The childhood expectations always were left wanting…when I was young, and I thought I was seeking a better gift, when what I actually sought was to live in a space free of expectations…perhaps expectations that were impossible to deliver.

    Christmas had to deliver to me what the rest of the year failed to do.

    Without expectations, there is zero stress.

    My gifts are just gifts, they expect nothing in return.

    The tree isn't there to bring me happy feelings…with happy feelings I trimmed the tree.

    The difference is like breathing or not breathing.

    Bring a happy person to Christmas is what I could not do before…Christmas was to make me happy, while I struggle and stressed to make it just right, so I could be happy.

    Imagine.

    Now I don't need Christmas to deliver to me that which is impossible to deliver, I need nothing from Christmas.

     

     

  • I run, because you can’t……for my sister friend.

    “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way and not starting.”

                 Buddha

     

    I felt the loneliness today of my Aunt who ran away.  A woman I never met, yet I feel we are one.

     

    I felt her sadness of being misunderstood and unknown, how her choice to save herself, sentenced her to a life alone outside of her family.

     

    Ostracized for escaping, for saving ourselves, for walking free of abuse, we are not cheered, no clapping, instead we are jeered with sarcasm.

     

    I never ever thought my harshest critics would be from my own family, they are forever punching the already weakened psyche.

     

    The Little girl within feels so sad, empty of words to make them see. 

     

    Today I wondered about my Aunt and her life, how she survived without contact from her family, yet like me the family she missed is the same one that brings her pain.

     

    The intellectual part of me understands that the energy they bring me isn’t healthy, but my heart yearns for acceptance, for understanding and even empathy.

     

    Like missing the stick that is poking you in the eye.

     

    I have more empathy for folks who are set aside because of who they are, parts of themselves they cannot change.

     

    Maybe because my Aunt disappeared and no one spoke her name that I want there to be words about me.

     

    Perhaps this blog is a way that I too will not just simply disappear without a trace.

     

    In the first few days of my father being accused of criminal sexual conduct, I wrote.

     

    I wrote in disbelief, I wrote the words to anchor myself somewhere, to hold me in the sea of grief.

     

    Writing is evidence of my journey.

     

    I have kept all written communications from my family as evidence. I know that is an odd word to use. 

     

    It was the evidence I needed to sort out which one of us was in reality and which one wasn’t.

     

    My mental mind fought a long hard battle up against reality and in reality there are written words from a family who is not cheering me.

     

    In as much as I want them to be cheering, what I needed more were their words of mental ness to shine the way out.

     

    Maybe in the end their shouts of sarcasm are cheering me forward.

     

    They are showing me there is nothing for me back there.

    They were showing me how not to be.

    Showing me how far I have come.

     

    I feel the energy of my runaway aunt; she joins me in spirit as I run along, lending me her courage and strength.  I feel the spirit of many little girls whose time ran out, who were too empty to begin, I run for you. 

     

    I run towards wholeness with truth at my side.

    I feel you with me as I run.

     

    The refrain “you are the wind beneath my wings” came to mind.

     

    I am so grateful I was able to run away.

    I am so not alone.

    All little girls everywhere who suffered like I, I run for you.

    I run, because you can’t.

     

     

     

  • Less abusive to live a lie.

    "We call it 'verbal abuse' when someone tells us the truth about ourselves and we don't want to hear it."  Byron Katie

     

    The above sentence stayed with me and it occurred to me that we have been taught or led to believe that by telling the truth about someone is abusive.

     

    I know that I have become an outcast due to the fact that I speak the truth, about my family.  I state what is and this is seen as abusive, that it is much better to give a false identification of someone, to not share how they hurt you.

     

    Imagine, we are seen as being 'verbally abusive' for 'Telling'.  It is no wonder why children do not speak up, for we feel it will hurt them to hear the truth.

     

    Isn't it interesting that we protect the ones who hurt us.

    The question is why. Why is it so hard to state the facts, to draw the tough lines when abuse is clearly apparent?

    As Dr. Phil says, there has to be a payoff.  What do we get for our silence?  A father and a mother?

    It is unnatural for a child to estrange themselves from their parents, but what they fail to see is that it is natural to move away from abuse.

    That we were born into an unnatural environment, where the parents abused their offspring, they did not 'raise' them, but lowered and changed who they were.

    In society, it is pressed upon us that we are to love and honor thy parent, that family is sacred.  That is, for the normal functional homes.

    And what is the creed for the unnatural families? What is the rule we are to live by?  How do we unhinge ourselves from the parents that abused us…

    I had mistakenly felt that all would abandon my father…and instead they abandoned the truth.

    They abandoned the truth so as to not be abusive towards their parent, while they are now having to live a lie.

    It is remarkable to me now, that it is literally easier to live a lie than to live the truth.

    And it is abusive to our bodies and our lives to live this lie, but we do it to keep a parental relationship alive.  And the truth of this relationship we dare not speak of….So, we have a silent clause, a do not speak of 'the abuse' clause and if you do so you will contine to be part of this family and/or organization.

     

    We would rather abuse ourselves by living a lie, than to 'abuse' our parent by telling the truth and moving away from abuse. We somehow believe that it is 'less' abusive to live a lie.