Tag: girl

• Meant to be.

  Motherhood begins in childhood, and womanhood starts there as well. The essence of who we are as a woman will directly relate to what kind of mother we are.

  There is no separation between woman and mother; the two are one.

  We don’t leave behind who we are as we take on the responsibility of a child, we simply add this to our ongoing relationships that are already in place.

  A child joins your relationships and will emulate them as he begins to create his own, he watches how you treat yourself and how you allow others to treat you, and it is from there that he learns self-care.

  My motherhood path began with me being a valiant co-dependent, a people pleaser and a whore for love and peace, there was very little of my life that was solely for me, most of it I lived for the benefit of others.

  All my decisions and choices were linked to someone’s happiness or love, I made choices based on whether I would lose their approval or not.

  When I stopped seeking approval and instead began living inside out doing what I loved, I began seeing a Me emerge, a separated unique individual, a self.

  As I grew into being more me, I no longer needed others to support me, and it set them all free to be them selves.

  My children were set free when I set myself free.

  My children’s lives returned to them and they too are now free to be what they want to be from the inside out.

  I am there to guide them to show they the lay of the land, but at the end of the day, they get to decide their fate depending upon the choices they make.

  It isn’t my life it is theirs.

  The freedom you give comes with self responsibility and that is what I believe the goal of each parent is, to make them ownership of their lives.

  To raise them to see the consequences from the choices they make, and to allow them to sit in the consequence is the learning of life.

  How we deal with all facets of life is how they learn to deal.

  How authentic we are, how loyal to self we are, where our integrity lies, all will be reflected back to us in our children’s lives.

  Mostly what we fail to notice is that our children’s lives will be lived as we live today, not our potential or what we plan to do, but as we do today.

  To raise independent children, be independent.
  To raise children who love themselves, love yourself.
  Who you are today is the pattern your child will follow, our footsteps are leading them into a life we have.

  We can’t do nothing and hope our children learn from our mistakes, we have to undo our mistakes.

  There are a few, a slight few, changelings of this rule, they are the exceptions not the rule, that will strike out on their own and redefine themselves leaving behind a family, I know this happens for I was one.

  I changed the family legacy by leaving instead of staying in the cycle of abuse/dysfunction and co-dependency; I had to walk out to save my self.
  Time will tell as my young adult children leave our home and set out on their own making choices, was there enough time spent with me to learn a new way of being or were their formative years to tightly ingrained.

  I sit here today aware that the woman who I was and the woman who I became, mothered the same children.

  How this will affect them remains to be seen, what pattern will they follow, how deeply were they affected by their formative years and how much of an impact has my freedom made?

  What I know for sure is that the more I remain honest with myself, the more I love myself, the brighter the second pattern is seen.

  To be the best mother ever is to be the best you can be with your self.

  Loving yourself enough to say no when you mean it.
  Loving you enough to put up boundaries to keep hurt out.
  Loving you to speak your truth always.
  Loving your self as you find your self in this moment, knowing you are a work in progress and be willing to do what it takes in each moment to stand with your self.

  You will then mother a child of strong courage to be who they were meant to be.

  February 9, 2011

  abuse, behind, child, childhood, choices, courage, dysfunction, family, girl, growing, healing, independent, learning, leaving, legacy, motherhood, patterns, separating, strong, womanhood

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• A Man abusing a woman.

  I have such great admiration for the choreography of the Universe, how it manages to give to you the right and perfect set up to heal your wounded self.

  In my quest for wholeness, the main theme has been feeling and seeing. As a child of abuse, I had separated myself from my body, and what I need most is to bring up those emotions, to feel them and greet them with understanding, and they recede on their own, once I ‘get it’.

  The message.

  What I was able to feel and see is beyond what I can hope to put into words.

  It gave to me the access of feelings that I feared I had lost.

  It brought forth a visual so brightly displayed for me to witness the dance of luring and grooming of an innocent girl.

  Delivering to me, the need of the perpetrator over shining the care this innocence needed.

  Showing how innocence the friendship begins and its ultimate conclusion, where the courtship is long and subtle, their needs small at first and how they build, how we start simple and grow into a complex adult scenario long before our time.

  How we are changed slowly and you don’t see yourself change, how you gradually succumb to the tiny wishes, one at a time, trusting and going along, until one day you wake up and your no longer there, in its place is another woman.

  It showed me how a mother should respond and how a mother did respond.

  My daughter found herself in a relationship with a married man, the man she was babysitting for, a man whose children she cared for, tended to like a second mother for many years, since the time she was just a girl herself. To see her in the role of being the other woman, to see her self so changed, broke my heart.
  To see her lost of her inner self worth shattering.

  The overall picture of seeing my young and innocent daughter being courted by such a knowing man, brought me back to the way my abuse played out for me, but with a different ending.

  The dual lesson that my daughter and I danced through leaves me breathless and to feel past overlapping onto the present, the weight of the legacy and it’s vine stretching into the next generation and feeling and seeing my abuse from all angles left my mind whirling.

  I had to first feel the devastation as a mother seeing my innocent daughter in a friendship with a man who single-handedly soiled her fine reputation, without blinking an eye.

  To feel my worthlessness in undoing what was already done.

  To then see the dance and the lure and the friendship and its ‘friendly like’ image have such a dirty ugly affect on the girl, left me shattered and broken as I clearly saw what she failed to see.

  And to be the one to shatter her dreams and love and to flood him in a new light, but then to also put the image on to her self and to see what she ‘allowed’ her self to be. By showing her what the other woman does.

  I was able to see what my mother couldn’t see.
  I was able to do what my mother couldn’t do.
  We both, my daughter and I, were able to stand taller and stronger in truth, than either of would be able to do in lies.

  It was an incredible and heart breaking 24 hours.
  My daughter feels she carries the shame of being the other woman, I feel she carries the experience of being abused.

  I can see how we carry forth from abuse, that we were at fault, that we allowed it, we dance too, but there usually is One with more power, more experience, more everything, that leads the dance to lowering our self worth in their blind desire for their needs being fulfilled.

  The fail to see how it affects us.

  My daughter’s reputation was damaged while his remained unchanged.

  She approached the friendship as innocent.
  A young girl who didn’t realize when you knowingly do what you feel is wrong but do it anyway, you are giving away your self worth.

  We do it for many reasons, to be liked, to please, to get attention, to feel good, and what we all fail to realize, is this feeling is fleeting, it is like a drug, we are forever needing more.

  A habit of pleasing another for our high of feeling good, while our sense of self gets depleted.

  The subtle disappearing self in the dance of friendship that has a greedy needy thirst on one side and the other willingly feeding the supply is a train wreck waiting to happen.

  How grateful am I, that my daughter was able to see and feel her sense of self being lowered, being changed, how she became a stranger to herself.

  Yet when this happens as child, we don’t even have a self established to see disappear, it is gone before we knew it.

  The lessons I was able to experience while she experienced it first hand is like a mirror image of me as a child.

  I can see how my mother’s reaction affected how I was unable to see myself. For my mother’s affection and allegiance was to my father. She didn’t see my change within; she didn’t see my self worth leave.

  I can see how my husband reacted, how she had a loving space to show her the difference between what is a loving friendship and what lowers you.

  There are a million ways this has opened my eyes and hers, how it shows us both, our own boundaries of self love matter most before any request outside.
  Some may see her as the other woman and call her awful names, judge and criticize her actions, view her as the home wrecker etc. I will see her as a victim of
  Abuse.

  Her babysitting children’s father took advantage of her.

  The lack of self worth on his part lent itself to overstep his boundaries. He took liberties that were not his to take.

  He tried to make an adult friendship and press it further with someone who was way out of his league.

  Her innocence was no equal match for him. It was like taking candy from a baby.

  I will see his strengths and her blindness and trust, see her having to lower who she was to become his friend.

  Friendships like that we don’t need.

  Friendship and love will raise you up, not lower you down.

  What a great lesson to learn as such a young age.

  The reason I was having such a hard time seeing her as the ‘other woman’ was that she was just a girl.

  An innocent girl being swept away in an adult world of lies and secrets, of being chosen for the role of ‘other woman’.

  It wasn’t that she auditioned for the part, that she was out seeking this; it came in while she was babysitting.

  The contrast to the label he put on her back and the girl who sleeps on the top bunk in our home is a world apart.

  They don’t even come close to matching.

  Imagine, she still shares a room with her sisters.

  She occupies the top bunk. How can the other woman be the girl who sleeps on the top bunk?

  I feel so fortunate that we have her on the top bunk to have her in our home, to have this wonderful loving, kind and gentle girl in our home.

  What a close call.

  She now knows that when a ‘friendship’ lowers who you are, it isn’t a friendship, you are being abused.

  It is not the other woman on my top bunk, it is my little girl.

  My little wounded girl, who we will love back to her bright sunshiny self.

  We will love her as we always have, for this family didn’t believe, was shocked to the core that our innocent girl was put in the role of ‘other woman’.

  It is abuse, no matter the age.
  A man abusing a woman.

  January 19, 2011

  abuse, child, courtship, friendship, girl, innocent, lure, Man, self, woman, worth

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• The Journey….

  In Kim Rosen’s book, “Saved by a Poem” she writes,

  “ I discovered how the separating lines of culture and age can dissolve in the presence of a poem the first time I went to Africa. In Kenya, at the Tasaru Ntomonok Rescue Centre for Girls in the Rift Valley, I unexpectedly found myself speaking a poem to a group of Maasai girls, only a few hours after I met them. I had long wanted to visit this miraculous place, ever since it was opened by Eve Ensler and her organization V-Day in collaboration with Agnes Pareyio, a Maasai woman who dedicates her life to stopping the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). Tasaru, also called the V-Day Safe House, was created as a haven for girls escaping FGM. Fifty or so girls live at the house at any given time. Each has had to leave her family and community. Many have traveled alone for miles, barefoot over rough roads, spending nights hiding under the bushes for fear of being found by wild animals.
  My first few hours there were awkward. My shyness kept me from striking up conversations with the girls, most of whom though they understood English, did not speak it willingly. They were shy with me too, keeping their distance and watching me in twos and threes, whispering in Maa (the language of the Maasai) and giggling.

  Finally I decided to go over to the kitchen, where I heard a lively singing as a group cooked ugali (Porridge made of cornmeal) and cabbage over an open fire. I listened outside as the last song dissolved into gales of laughter and a cacophony of exclamations in Maa. But the chatter instantly hushed when I walked in. A tall girl who spoke excellent English came up to me and stood directly in front of me: “Do you remember my name?”

  I didn’t. I had been introduced to about 20 girls in the last couple of hours and could not for the life of me remember which beautiful Maasai face went with which name.
  “Salula?” I asked sheepishly, grabbing the only name I remembered. “No!” The girls shrieked with laughter at what must have been a big mistake on my part. “That is Salula!” They pointed at one of the youngest girls, who had arrived at the Safe House only months before at the age of 9, having been rescued in the midst of a forced marriage to a 42 year-old man.

  “I am Jecinta.” The tall girl spoke to me with exaggerated patience, as if to a two year old. “Do you know any songs?” Clearly she was giving me an opportunity to redeem myself.

  “I know some songs,” I said. “But what I really love most is poetry.”
  “I write poems.” An older girl with exquisitely chiseled features and piercing eyes was looking at me intently from behind a huge cauldron of steaming cabbage. She was dressed with more sophistication that the others, wearing a tight sleeveless shirt and matching short skirt that made her look more woman than girl. I noticed her gold necklace and earrings as they glinted in the light of the cooking fire.

  “Do you know any of them by heart? Can you recite any of them here?” I asked.

  “I am too shy to do that.” Her beautiful accent made even this simple statement sound like poetry. “I cannot.”

  “May I recite a poem to you?” I asked her. “Then maybe after you will want to recite yours to me.”

  She nodded. Suddenly I panicked. What poem might these girls relate to? I pored through the archive in my mind. Not one seemed remotely appropriate. Their life experience was so different from mine.

  The kitchen became strangely silent. The clatter of washing and cooking had ceased. The whispering and giggling that had been a constant soundtrack in the background was quiet. All the girls stopped their work and were waiting for my poem.
  Out of nowhere “The Journey” by Mary Oliver, a poem I hadn’t thought of in months, burst to mind. Without even taking the time to run through it silently to see if it was appropriate, I began speaking: “One day you finally knew / what you had to do.”

  The poem is about leaving home, turning away from the many voices that demand that you stay, risking the anguish of those who need and love you, and walking alone into a wild night in order to save “the only life you can save.” The girls listened, transfixed. Each of them had lived through such a turning point. Each of them, at a very young age, had defied tribal tradition and left her parents, friends, and community to save her own life. Who could understand these lines better than they?

  It is difficult to describe what happened in that crowded smoky kitchen as I delivered the poem. There I was, a white, middle-class American woman, speaking words written by another white, middle-class American woman, surrounded by Maasai girls who had grown up in tribal villages in the Rift Valley, in families so poor that two cows their parents would get when they gave their daughter to an old man in marriage were their only hope of a better life.

  But as “The Journey” filled the kitchen, there was no separation between us. We were transported into a timeless, placeless, languageless realm where we were the same. By the end of poem, tears were running down my face and several of the girls were crying as well. Several of them dove toward me, wrapping their arms around my waist. There was a long silence. The Jecinta asked, “Who is this woman, Mary Oliver? Is she Maasai?”

  I shook my head, barely able to speak. “American,” I whispered. “Mzungu. Like Me.”

  “How did she know?”

  In the silence that answered her question, the girl with the gold necklace and piercing eyes came from behind the cauldron of cabbage into the center of the dirt floor.

  “I am ready to say my poem,” she announced.

  In a single wave, the other girls and I moved to one side of the kitchen, spontaneously creating a stage among boiling pots of food.

  “I am just a girl child.” Her voice was surprisingly strong, pulsing with a natural rhythm as contagious as any slam poet’s vibe. “It sounds good but oh no-/ To my father I’m just a source of income.” She continued through the list: her mother who sees her only as a “beast of burden,” the boys at school who objectify her beauty, and “the sugar daddy,” for whom she was just “a juicy fruit to be eaten raw.” The poem ends with the wise and heartbreaking question, “Who cares for me?”

  By now there were about two dozen girls packed into the smoky kitchen or leaning in the windows. As the poet spoke her final question, we all cheered and burst into applause. I looked around the crowd that had gathered. Most girls were melted into each other, their arms draped around their friends. Two girls had maneuvered me into the space between them; one rested her head on my shoulder. For a long moment of silence gazed at each other through the smoke, our eyes full of light.

  In these moments of poetic communion when life comes into a harmony, miracles happen organically: the stroke victim’s brain starts making new synaptic connections; a sense of uncanny peace and joy pervades the Freedom Space as bombs explode in the surrounding streets; the armed Sunni soldier embraces the Shiite poet in tears of joy to discover they feel the same grief and longing; a runaway Maasai girl hears her own story told by a white
  American writer, and she is empowered to find her own voice. When you speak a poem that is written in the language of your soul, you become a voice for the heart in the world, and everyone around you is blessed by a sudden grace.
  Kim Rosen

  The Journey

  One day you finally knew
  what you had to do, and began,
  though the voices around you
  kept shouting
  their bad advice —
  though the whole house
  began to tremble
  and you felt the old tug
  at your ankles.
  “Mend my life!”
  each voice cried.
  But you didn’t stop.
  You knew what you had to do,
  though the wind pried
  with its stiff fingers
  at the very foundations,
  though their melancholy
  was terrible.
  It was already late
  enough, and a wild night,
  and the road full of fallen
  branches and stones.
  But little by little,
  as you left their voices behind,
  the stars began to burn
  through the sheets of clouds,
  and there was a new voice
  which you slowly
  recognized as your own,
  that kept you company
  as you strode deeper and deeper
  into the world,
  determined to do
  the only thing you could do —
  determined to save
  the only life you could save.

  ~ Mary Oliver ~

  November 20, 2010

  a, by, connections, girl, Inner, joining, journey, Kim Rosen, Mary Oliver, Poem, Saved, soul, The, women

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