I M Perfect lady

Tag: freedom

  • Bathed in the Light.

    “A chick pecks its way out of its eggshell and is born into the world when a toxic gas fills up the interior of the egg. At that point, it is literally dying to be born.
    Is there a toxic situation in your life that it’s time to break free of in order to born to the next level of your existence? Is there a symbolic eggshell surrounding you that is time to peck away at, freeing yourself to live more fully?”
    Marianne Williamson

    I love this question and I love the visual it portrays, how we can literally feel like we are suffocating in life and need to start pecking holes in what we are doing.

    And I love “dying to be born”.

    Most changes, at least life altering changes, require a dying in order for there to be a birth, a letting go in order to grab on to something new, a giving up one way before gaining something new.

    Change is a one two step.

    “You have to be willing to let go of who you are, to become who you want to be.” I can’t remember the author of that quote, but Wayne Dyer uses this often.

    The little chick can’t stay in the egg and be born, she has to be willing to get out of her toxic life in order to thrive.

    And the greatest news is that we will know intuitively when the time has come, when we can no longer remain in a relationship, when its toxic energies simply overwhelm and threaten to kill the essence of who we are IF we are to remain inside the shell of that old relationship.

    Like a very brave little chick, we have to go out into a very big and strange land…leaving behind a relationship we have outgrown.

    As the little chick, once we peck our way free of this toxicity, we are free to live a life we can’t even imagine it can be.

    From a small confined limiting space to the wide-open field of pure potential that Rumi speaks about.

    The visual is striking, a dark small space of an eggshell or the expanse that surrounds it.

    Held in the darkness or bathed in the Light.

  • That Loving Feeling?

    “Love Must Be Tough” by Dr. James C. Dobson, is a book a friend recommended for my daughter to read, by I am reading it first.

    In chapter three called, “The Tender Trap” he states first the three conclusions he has so far.

    1. Marital (and premarital) conflict typically involves one partner who cares a great deal about the relationship and the other who is much more independent and secure.
    2. As a love affair begins to deteriorate, the vulnerable partner is inclined to panic. Characteristic responses include grieving, lashing out, begging, pleading, grabbing, and holding; or the reaction may be just the opposite, involving appeasement and passivity.
    3. While these reactions are natural and understandable, they are rarely successful in repairing the damage that has occurred. In fact, such reactions are usually counterproductive, destroying the relationship the threatened person is trying so desperately to preserve.

    In the previous chapter we explored the fears and sorrows reverberating in the mind of the rejected partner. Now let’s take the next step by looking at the husband or wife who is drifting away. In order to pull that person back from the brink, we need to understand the forces operating within. What do you believe motivates a man or woman to terminate a marriage? What thoughts are typical of one who rejects the unconditional love offered at home? What secrets lie deep within the psyche of the woman who has an affair with her boss, or the man who chases the office flirt? Is the desire for a new thrill the only enticement, or the more basic motivators operating below the surface?

    It has been my observation that the lust for forbidden fruit is often incidental to the real cause of marital decay. Long before any decisions is made to ‘fool around’ or walk out on a partner, something basic has begun to change in the relationship. Many books on this subject lay the blame on the failure to communicate, but I disagree. The inability to talk to one another is a symptom of a deeper problem, but not the cause itself. The critical element is the way one spouse begins to perceive the other and their lives together. It is a subtle thing at first, often occurring without either partner being aware of the slippage. But as time passes, one individual begins to feel trapped. That’s the key word, Trapped….

    This intense desire to escape from a marriage can occur on the first day of the honeymoon or fifty years thereafter. For men, it is the primary ingredient of a midlife crisis. But these feelings of constraint are by no means unique to men. For women, they usually (but not always) occur in response to an unromantic relationship that refuses to be energized. A wife may ‘reach’ for her husband for years, beg for his attention, nag him when he fails to notice, and the scream to herself, “Help! I’m suffocating in this loveless marriage! Somebody get me out!”

    How sad it is, furthermore, that this trapped partner who is fighting an impulse to run is rapidly sinking deeper and deeper into a form of marital quicksand. Why? Because the more he struggles to gain his freedom (or even secure a little breathing room), the more his panic stricken spouse clutches his neck. Even the fluctuating emotions of the rejected party are interpreted as attempts to grab and hold.
    For example:

    The response of grief: “Please don’t hurt me. Come and meet my needs.”

    The response of anger: “Get back in line, stupid! How dare you try and walk out on me!”

    The response of blame: “How could you do this to me and the kids?”

    The response of appeasement: “Name it and you can have it. Just don’t leave me.”

    The response of servility (the doormat): “No matter what you do, I’ll go on smiling ‘cause you’re mine.”

    The common denominator between these varied responses is one of entrapment. They each restrict the freedom of the less interested party. For someone in the trapped syndrome, love then becomes an obligation rather than an incredibly wonderful privilege. Perhaps it is now obvious why the natural reaction of the panic-stricken spouse typically drives the cool partner farther away; the more he pulls back from the relationship to gain desired space, the tighter the bonds close around him. He sometimes becomes almost claustrophobic in his desperate attempts to breathe – to get the noose off his neck. He may even resort to infidelity as a vehicle to escape from his partner’s clutches.” Dr. Dobson

    How affirming this book is to my experience. He is explaining how the trapped feelings don’t work, while I am experiencing the joys of the free-range children and I love you today.

    What is sad though, is that the ‘other woman’ is used to escape, an excuse to leave the place he feels trapped.

    And I bet that she feels like freedom to him, but the other woman is actually a bridge across the moat to freedom, but not what he is seeking. He wants his freedom and he will use her to get it.

    She is being used to set him free from a marriage he feels trapped in. Incredible.

    Of course he has this death like grip on her, for she is the answer or his way out!

    And I can see how she does feel like she is ‘saving him’ or rescuing him from a ‘broken marriage’ etc, for she is saving him, but little does she know, it isn’t so much about her, but a way out.

    Not sure if my daughter will read this book, but it has given me a clear view of the dynamics she is in.

    Freedom or trapped what gives you that loving feeling?

  • While waiting…

    What came to me today while mindlessly tossing mail, was that the reason I was so sorely affected by my daughter’s life, was that her life was in my life, that we didn’t have a clear and separate space between what is hers and what is mine, the apron string was still connected.

    The impact upon my body and psyche was equal to it happening to me, where my inner wounded child responded, my ‘mental lady’ mom came out ready to fight battle, and the Loving awareness arrived all fully engaged in her life as soon as she spoke of her crisis.

    What was so beautiful and tragically displayed were how all the parts of me felt and responded and finally released her to be on her own, a completely felt separation and liberation for myself but more importantly for her.

    She was given her life without any strings attached to me.

    While it was the hardest thing for me to do, to let my child go it was almost like a second birth, but this time a birth of freedom.

    And a three-week labor of intense inner working and letting go.

    As long as I feel the strain or worry of what her actions will be, there is a string attached into my world, and I have to snip it to let her be fully and completely free.

    It is not to say, I will no longer give word of wisdom or point out what I see in reality, or how I see changes happening between her and I, I will. But the greatest thing is, that our bodies and psyches are separated.

    It almost seems like this was my last co-dependent exam, a lesson with huge consequences one that my old co-dependent self would have longed to get wrapped up in like an old cozy blanket.

    Yet this time it felt like I was being possessed by another’s life, that their choices had the power to make or break my life, take my peace, destroy my inner sanctity of love and joy and that I was once again riding shotgun in another’s life.

    It was the ultimate life review of how it feels to be a victim in a co-dependent relationship.

    When I look at my daughter there are no strings attached to my happiness or my unhappiness, instead I am sitting in a place of wonder.

    I wonder what it is she will do.
    I wonder how it will affect her.
    I wonder, but my life isn’t totally eclipsed by her life, I feel space opening up and distance coming in.

    A place where If she is to suffer, I can be there as the non-suffering one, we are no longer one big animal of two.

    Today, I was listening to a CD by Sarah Ban Breathnach called, “Romancing the Ordinary.” What she is teaching and talking about is how to romance your self and be fully engaged and in love with you and your life.

    It is simply delightful in the very simple ways we can look around where we are and see what is all there. How we can listen instead of just hear, how we can use all our senses to connect to the Universe.

    I am thinking as long as I was connected to the lives of so many, there wasn’t space or feelings of my senses left for me to use in my life, for me to feel for me, to see for me, to be for me, for so long my life has been used by others.

    Sarah spoke of the waiting. And in my case I have been waiting for my daughter to make a choice, breathlessly waiting, life stopping waiting.

    What Sarah suggests is to make use of the time while we wait, while the Universe and her soul converse and decide, I can use this time in a million little ways.

    While I wait, I can quilt, I can read, I can sit and watch the sunrise, I can sip tea and watch the fire, feel the warmth of a quilt, smell the scent of a candle, and the waiting will pass by…in delight.

    I can’t know tomorrow or what or when or if, how her life will go, but I can get busy in my life while I wait.

    I love this.

    I already listened to a few CD’s while I waited.

    I enjoyed a bowl of soup and homemade bread, while I waited.

    I love that I am free to pass the time while I wait, instead of sitting and worrying while I wait.

    What a huge gift to live my life while I wait to see what transpires in hers. When she needs me, I can stop enjoying the waiting and act.

    I can’t tell you how this simple idea freed me or gave me permission to enjoy my time while waiting.

  • Find Their Own Way…

    The battle of the wills end when you allow the other to have free will, it is pretty hard to fight with freedom.

    The tighter you hold and the more you force, the less the other person can feel and find their own sense of what it is they want to do.

    When I was in the beginning stages of my mental breakdown, my husband and I found a place to stand that left us both in total freedom, a place called “I love you today.”

    In this spot, it allowed each of us to change our minds and to gauge our own feelings about whether we wanted to stay together. This free space to be yourself, to feel that which you feel and to express it daily allowed us the time to re-configure a new normal in our relationship.

    We fell into this spot after weeks and months of feeling the instability each of us had during the most stressful event in our marriage, Me not knowing who I was.

    Pretty hard to promise tomorrow, when today is unknown.

    It felt so much easier to breathe when we embraced the unknown and lived presently with each day and even each moment.

    “I love you today” is an honest and alive relationship and we both promised the other that if and when we didn’t want to be here we would tell the other.

    It isn’t a piece of paper, the ‘happiness’ of our children, or a million other reasons that folks stay together, but instead we individually get to choose if we fit together, if we are happy here, if we enjoy this place, if we are at peace here, if it is a spot for us to grow and change….

    It is like a free-range relationship, where each has the freedom to be who we are, and when who we are no longer works together, we will be brave enough and honest enough to let the other know.

    I just don’t feel then, that we can blame the other; we will always hold the power within us.

    I love you today, and if it changes I will let you know.

    I am thinking this same idea can be used upon our children. Instead of raising children who must remain in our pen (religion, mind set, pathway, etc), where we tell them how to be and grow, that we instead open the gate and let them roam free.

    Let their will be done.

    Let them decide which way to go and how to be.

    It releases both of us to be who it is we were meant to be.

    This reminds me of the paragraph from one of Bryon Katie’s books,

    “I don’t know what is best for me, or you, or the world. I don’t try to impose my will on you or anyone else. I don’t want to change you or improve you of convert you or help you or heal you. I just welcome things as they come and go. That’s true love. The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way.”

  • That Kind are not Family.

    I heard the Oprah show on the radio about the twin girls that were abused for years by their brothers and father, whose mother knew but did nothing.

    At the end of the show Oprah gives them a few words of wisdom, one about forgiveness and the other about not letting their spirits be killed by what their brothers and father did to them.

    She said her definition of forgiveness is,

    “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past would have been any different.”

    She told them to let go of the hope for a different kind of father.
    Let go of the hope for different kind of brothers.
    Let go of the hope for a different kind of mother.

    Letting go of the hope a Different Kind…you have to then accept the kind you have.

    In my case, I had to accept a raping kind of father and a mother who also knew, but did nothing.

    We did not get the loving kind or the supportive protective kind, we got the abusive kind.

    Secondly, Oprah said, “I want you to not let the spirit be killed by what your brother and father did, to not let the spirit die.

    The toughest part is really feeling that the hope is gone for a different kind of father/mother/siblings, but at that point when you lost all, you are then left with a part of yourself that is beyond all that, your spirit.

    It seemed to me, in the darkest moment of seeing the kind of family I had, I was then able to see a small seed that wasn’t going to be defined by what they did to me, it was a part of me that separated from them.

    I then set to work on redefining me and reworking the parts of me that were confused and mixed up due to abuse.

    I had to learn how to love, to trust and to find faith within myself.

    I had to reestablish what I felt were my boundaries since I was raised in a home without boundaries, in an unsafe place, where a father can rape a child and the mother remains married to him, forgiving his ‘sins’, Sins that hurt me.

    If these twins can find the strength to fully accept that the kind of parents and siblings they have, they can then begin to make choices that will not include abuse.

    If you don’t see the monsters you will continue to have ‘father/brother’ like relationships with a men who rape you.

    The greatest work that needs to happen is that you have to pick only one. A father OR a Monster, you can’t have both.

    And at that time you will also pick which one you will be.
    A daughter who allows this behavior or one who will save her spirit and walk away free.

    Also at the end of the show, Oprah said that 99% of abuse is from family members or someone we know, and we have to be willing to put fathers, brothers, uncles and friends in jail. And this is huge. This is key, this is very had for most to do, which is why mothers don’t see and sisters don’t tell etc, no one wants to put family in jail, families that rape and abuse children! Families of that kind are not family!

  • 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.

  • By each Choice we Make.

    Did you know that brainwashing is when you no longer have the option of choice?

    I witnessed my daughter lose her power of choice.

    She didn’t even know she gave up her choices while she attended only one option.

    The one option became the most important, she was willing to lie to protect that option, she was willing to give up her self for that one option, she lost her self by focusing on one choice.

    It soon had control of her and not her of choice.

    This secret life, the clandestine meetings, the specialness of feeling that only the two of them knew, created the one option.

    This one option wasn’t to be shared.

    It was separated from the world.

    It was ‘special’.

    She lost her other choices for none of them were allowed in the ‘special’ spot.

    The special spot and the man who occupied this site began changing her to fit his spot.

    She had to change to play there.

    She couldn’t bring him into her life; she could only go to his.

    This ‘special man’ didn’t fit into her old life; she had to create a new self to fit in his.

    In doing so, she lost the options.

    She lost the freedom, the flowing back and forth between two lives unchanged.

    She had to become different in both worlds.

    In his world, they had to be quiet, keep it secret, don’t let anyone know what it was they were doing, it was the key that turned the lock.

    This twisted sense of special steals away the person you are and you leave your old life and self behind to fit into this new picture, unknowingly.

    You leave yourself bit by bit by bit, until you are fashioned into this new self and the path back to your old self goes dark.

    What my husband and I had to do was let her make choices, to unlock the frozen part in her brain.

    While his key is secret, our key is freedom.

    He had taken away the choices we gave them all back.

    We had to do the opposite of what had led her down this road.

    She gets to make choices.

    We won’t tell her what to do.

    We open up the space for freedom.

    I share my views.

    I show her how I see things.

    I allow her to see them her way.

    What I love is that we remain our selves and that alone will lead her back to her self.

    She left us to play in a secret land we did not leave her.

    So she gets to decide, does she want to play in the secret land or play in our land.

    Does she want to be the person she needs to be to be ‘special’ with him or does she want to be her old self.

    The freedom we allowed was the key that set her free to begin to once again make choices.

    Choices, they seem so obvious so simple so easy, and yet that is what the perpetrator seizes first.

    You are not given an option to do it any other way.

    Their option is the only one that will keep this relationship going.

    You have no choice but to go along.

    And sadly, usually by this time you have become friends, you have given trusts and faith and love to the individual, and in order to maintain this ‘special’ relationship, IT depends upon your silence.

    Your silence and his creates a cocoon that separates you from your self and the world around you.

    You live in this upside down and backwards ‘other’ land.

    You have to change to fit in there and the changes are so noticeable in your old life.

    You have to lie to leave your old life to go to his.

    You have to lie to your self and overlook how it makes you feel in your old life.

    You come alive in his and die in your own.

    What a tragedy.

    The greatest thing we did was to give her back her choices.
    To allow her to choose what path she wants to strengthen and which one she wants to weaken.

    Her brainwashing was in a very short time and she didn’t play in the secret land too long.

    The longer you are there, the more ingrained the false self gets and the further away the road that leads you back.

    But as far as I can tell, by my experience, is that when I gave myself the option of choice, I was free.

    Free to begin, choice-by-choice, bit-by-bit to recapture life for me.

    The freedom in allowing all in our home to be free is the key that makes this a non-brainwashing home.

    A home of choices, you get to decide which ones you want to make, but make no mistake, each and every choice comes with a consequence, and it is up to you which consequence you choose.

    We create a life and self by each choice we make.

  • Confines of a Well

    There seems to be two perceptions.

    The Perceptions with choices and the perception of no choices or the perceptions of freedom or the perceptions of limited and no choice.

    And depending upon which land you occupy you will have a life that reflects that.

    I lived in both places. The first being the dark narrow hole of perception that I was frozen in, where I had to do what others wanted of me, where my life was led by the wishes of others, I had no free will of my own.

    We can call it a victim hole, and its perception is very one way, or co-dependent, where the quality of my life depended upon another.

    The perception in that land was very limited and the quality of life was at the mercy of another’s good will.

    It was from that darkness I fell out of onto the land of wide open expanse and freedom, where my strings to others were untied, where I was able to walk freely and express myself freely, where the victim chains that held me in place fell free.

    It was equal to walking out of Plato’s cave or the story in Sogyal Rinpoche’s book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, about the frog who climbed out of the well to see the ocean.

    It is like your constraints and perceptions shatter into a million fragments, where you now have access to an unlimited choice.

    There is no common ground between the two worlds.

    I feel that I lived in a place where my boxes of choices were not available to me.
    It seems incredible to me now that I didn’t have access to my own box of choices that I waited for someone to tell me what to do.

    Imagine the difference of perceptions to having access to your own choices or not.
    Living, as a prisoner in your own life is pure hell, its living in a dark well and not knowing what freedom exists outside.

    So while I agree perceptions are a choice, it is way hard to phantom that inside the well.

    If you disagree that perceptions are a choice perhaps you best look around where you are living and see who holds your box of choices.

    You will either find the freedom of the ocean or the confines of a well.

  • Stand Up!

    Yesterday Oprah had the second part with the 200 men who stood up against abuse, I have only seen small segments on her website, but the few I seen offered this, “Standing UP against abuse”.

    Standing up and speaking up with courage, releases the shame, the blame and the rage that live in silence.

    Standing up is not a victim stance.

    Standing up takes courage.

    Standing in the truth of your life and your life experiences, standing and speaking of the deeds of evil you survived as a child, the mixed messages, the bad definitions, the path it set you upon, all stop when you stand up.

    You then pick your own path.

    A path free of abuse.

    I believe to the depth of my soul, you either are sitting down with abusers and letting the legacy continue, OR you are standing up and speaking out and walking away from the abuse.

    It takes courage to stand up, but standing up is the only thing that will stop abuse.

    Sitting and remaining in relationships where the abuse lives is sitting down in abuse.

    I Stand UP!

    I applaud these strong men and the courage it takes to stand up and I am standing with you!

    It will change your whole life, from being a victim to becoming a survivor.

    Standing up and speaking is the only way to end this.

    It is never too late to stand up!

  • Life with Empty Arms.

    I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. 

    ~Frederick Douglass, escaped slave

     

    Last night in a dream I was able to see what I carried around, what I have been trying to put down or at least find the owner.

     

    In my dream I was holding a boneless fat baby and dragging this huge duffle bag, which was his.

     

    Life seemed to be moving along all around me, opportunities to engage, from adventures to shopping to eating in fine diners, people coming and going, and there I was with the floppy baby.

     

    I couldn’t get a good grip to hold it, for the chub was slippery and I tried really hard to keep its head up and limbs looking normal, while dragging this huge heavy bag.

     

    In yoga today, it came to me that this represents my spineless self, the one who didn’t stand for anything, but instead had to be carried around.  And this self came with a ton of baggage.

     

    This baby was forever hungry; all I recall is the mouth under a head of wild hair.

     

    What a great overview of seeing my self with carting around a belief system that kept me from being me and engaging in life.

     

    I knew that the baby wasn’t mine and was searching for the owner, being my responsible self; I was unable to just drop it.

     

    This also shows my dedication in not letting go, that I expect to find a person to take my old self from me, instead of just doing the job myself.

     

    Now that I have this visual of how it feels to live with self with so much baggage, perhaps I will be able to just let it go.

     

    Let it go and walk away free.

     

    Free to enjoy life with empty arms!