I M Perfect lady

Tag: go…

  • What Love means to Me.

    Mothering adult children has been a perplexing inner dilemma…of what to do and when, and when to hold on and when to let go.

    Letting go doesn't mean I don't care. Letting go means I care enough to let them be free.  Free to choose, free to experience, free to learn and to grow, free to make choices that suit their needs.

    Letting go means letting them do their lives…

    I think, I thought, letting go meant giving up.

    I also think, the letting go that I experienced was that I was cast out in the careless sea.  I wasn't let go for my own good, but let go  when I was too small…before I was ready to make it on my own.  

    So, to me letting go is scary and fearful.

    Letting go in a healthy way, means to allow…to release my grip on their lives.

    My middle daughter turned 23 today. She has made wonderful choices in her life…clearly showing me how capable she is in finding her way, in her time, doing what she feels is best for her.  And yet I worry, fret, think, conjure up situations out in the future, that I can't possibly know.  I get lost in the tangle of her life choices…wanting to protect and keep her from 'harm'.

    However, if I had my way today, I myself would have caused harm in stepping into her life unasked.  But the Universe protected her from me, in small ways, like the printer not working…etc.  It spared her from my 'knowing' best.

    In giving up, and allowing, I can be a woman without control of her world, and just someone cheering her on as she makes the best choices for herself.

    I should know by now, that my 'good intentions' are really control issues and my fears.

    Letting my children decide isn't caring less, but actually caring more.

    Letting them have a voice and a choice based upon their feelings, not mine.

    As I let it all go today…I felt free from the responsibility and was once again free in my world and it left her free in hers.  Happy Birthday Honey…I love you. Letting you be you…is what love means to me.

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  • It Caught Me.

    David Hawkins, "Healing and Recovery" writes about Catastrophes and Crisis.

    "Acute catastrophes are the times when we make great leaps, when we face them directly and fixedly say, "I will not veer from this spiritual work."  Now we are really confronted with truly spiritual work.  It is not reading some pleasant-sounding phrases in a book or looking at some happy picture.  Instead, we are right in the thick of it, in the teeth of it.  The teeth of spiritual work occur when we are confronted with that which we cannot avoid.  It is the direct confrontation that requires a leap in consciousness."

    "These are the golden opportunities that are priceless if we see them that way, if we are willing to be with them and say, "Okay."  The willingness to go with them, no matter how painful it may be, enables a giant leap in consciousness, a real advance in wisdom and knowledge, and awareness. That which we read about in books then becomes our own inner experience."

    "There is something below the emotionality that is experiencing this energy out for a person.  It is literally being handled by something far greater than one's personal self.  If only the small personal self were present, one would be swamped and obliterated by the energy released during these experiences.  One survives the experience because there is something greater than the personal self that is more capable of handling them."

    "The trick of the mind is to not see that.  It tries to change what goes on "out there", tries to figure it out, and then falls back on the intellect and finds that the intellect is not going to resolve this kind of problem. When we have dropped a big oak log on our foot and broken all the bones across the front of the foot, what is needed at that moment is our readiness and willingness to handle what life presents.  Having the tools and the willingness brings about very rapid healing."

    "There is the awareness in acute overwhelm that we really can handle the experiences.  Part of the panic comes from the realization that what we think we are – our powerless, limited self – is no match for the power of this experience. That is precisely what is going on – the limited individual, personal self cannot handle the overwhelm. this is the precise spiritual value of it.  What do we really want to change about the experience?  We will see that what we want to do is change how we feel about it. What we can know is that the feelings will come and go.  The even is not going to bother us after the feeling state. All that we have to experience through is the acute upsurge and energy of the emotion. The events will take care of themselves."

    The desire to change what occurred and how we feel about it have to be surrendered. The confrontation is there, and all we can do is say yes to experiencing it through, no matter what the nature is, such as a death of a loved one, divorce, separation, an acute emergency, or a catastrophic injury. All bring about a taste of shock that is the same, no matter what is the precipitating event.  The shock is the sudden realization of our powerlessness, the fact that the will has met a brick wall, that we are stoppable and have been stopped, and that the personal will cannot have its way."

    Therefore, the shock and realization of all this is the same in all the experiences, along with the fact that it is unchangeable and permanent. That is the shock.  It is as though we come up full speed against a brick wall, and every time in life when we do this, it releases the same energy field."

    "If you have been through more than one of these experiences in your life, you can look back and realize that this is so, and that each time the state of shock was the same.  The experience and sequence were the same.  There was the experience with the feeling of sudden numbness, the state of disbelief, and then the unleashing of all the negative feelings."

    "When we look at the negative feelings precisely and at some of the experiences we have had, we realize that  we experienced all of this. We experienced the totality of that negative energy field. In the morning it would be present, and in the afternoon it would still be present.  In fact, within a minute's time, we fluctuated back and forth.  It is like a scintillating energy field in which the form of the emotionality is flickering from anger to resentment, to self-pity, to jealousy, to getting even, to revenge, to hate, to hating God, to hating oneself, to blaming the family and society, to blaming the government and laws.  The mind wildly races around in this negative energy field. We can see the diffuseness and formlessness of it. It is like a basketful of negative energy, and we only have to hand the basket, not all the little things that flicker around in it."

    "We only have to handle the 'all' of it.  When we see that it is decompressing the 'all' of it, it moves us rapidly through it and out the other side. We see that it is an inescapable experience, and we must have the willingness to surrender to the work that has to be done now.  How can we tell when that work is finished?  When we suddenly come out into that inner state of peace."

    "We know that years later people continue to have resentment and anger and are still caught in some aspect of that negative energy field because the events are not handled in the first place.  The person was unwilling to sit down and handle them until completed.  People are unwilling to do this because of the pain involved and because they do not know the techniques to use."

    "Every time they go at it, they again start trying to change the events in the world and handle the thoughts.  The intellect and the mind try to figure it out, and the person runs into the same impasse. By not having an effective tool with which to handle events, the work remains incomplete."

    "What happens with the incomplete work and the emotions that were not released? That which is left undone begins to express itself in emotional attitudes and in the body in the form of illness.  The unconscious guilt that was not let go of over the catastrophe that happened many years ago comes forth through the autonomic nervous system and the acupuncture energy system and connects with something from the mind.  The energy field of the intellect of thinkingness is in the 400s. The energy field of guilt, fear, or anger then couples with some belief system in the mind about a particular illness that results in a physical illness.  In psychoanalysis, it would be called psychosomatic, and in this case, the contribution of the psychological element is on the surface and quite visible. The end result of the unresolved emotional healing of a catastrophic experience is often an illness that may occur many years later. the grief that was left undone at the time of the death of some family member twenty years earlier, for example, may now express itself as a heart attack."

    "A thing has been handled when we feel at peace and complete with it.  It no longer recurs or brings up pain when we think about it; we feel satisfied.  There may be regret about having to live through it, but somehow we come out on the other side of it as a different kind of person, and with that knowledge, there is a certain sense of peace that lets us know it has been handled now.  Catastrophic experiences are the seeds, the very essence, of the ultimate spiritual  experience.  Within it and following it to its very center core, totally walking off the cliff in complete abandonment, the full surrender to the experience is the very see and core of that which the spiritual seeker has been searching for all along."

    "With many catastrophic situations in ordinary life, there is an incomplete resolution of the experience, along with a lack of awareness of the jewel-like qualities and opportunities within the events.  We are overwhelmed by the 'whatness' of them and look in the wrong direction. The mind also gets a secret payoff from the negative emotions (e.g., attention, self-pity, drama) plus indulgence and martyrdom, etc."

    "Many times when drugs are introduced, altered states of consciousness occur, and the person is taken to the emergency room.  What could be a crucial spiritual discovery is covered over with a band-aid, and the family tries to distract the person from the spiritual work."

    "The essential aspect of the spiritual benefit comes from running directly into the experience.  There is a saying in Zen to "Walk straight ahead, no matter what," so when this catastrophic experience comes, it is beneficial to center oneself right into the core of it, say "yes" to it and experience it through."

    "There have been catastrophic experiences in my life where band-aids were available, and I refused to accept them because by then I had learned the value of experiencing them through. The band-aids really prevent the experiencing through of what might be called 'hitting bottom'.  The concept of hitting bottom, which is well known in handling many serious problems, such as alcoholism, means to let go completely."

    "In an acute catastrophic situation, the mind tries to cling to that which is familiar.  It tries escapism, distractions, tranquilizers, drugs and alcohol, and various other ways of trying to ameliorate the situation rather than face it directly and work through it."

    "The essence of a catastrophic situation is total surrender to the discovery of that which is greater than the personal self.  The experiencing through completely of the catastrophic brings us into a connection and realization that there is something within ourselves that has the power to sustain, no matter how catastrophic the experience appears to be.  As a result, we come out the other side of it as a greater person with the awareness that there is something within, that there is a Presence, a quality, or an aspect of life within that has the power to sustain us through the most seemingly impossible situations." 

    "If the catastrophic experience is not worked through completely, there are certain residuals. It is like we have only halfway fallen off the cliff.  Some people think they walked off the cliff, but actually we find that they were secretly crossing their fingers and hanging onto some little outcropping or lifeline.  The abandonment to God was not really total, so a doubt remains, and out of that doubt is the residual of, for example, grief or fear of the experience.  If we do not experience something greater than the personal self, when going through the experience, we may end up with a limitation, a certain crippling, and inability to go beyond a certain point, and the willingness to participate becomes limited.  The person who says, "I would rather live a limited life than face that kind of experience again.  I would rather never love again than to love and lose."  The saying is, "'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." The experiencing of lovingness puts us in touch with our Self, that which is greater than our own limited, small self."

    "The complete resolution brings us into conscious contact with something that is greater than the personal self. Many people who have tried to attest to the fact that when they surrendered the small self to something greater than themselves, they came into contact with that which they consider to be 'real'. That personal inner experience of spiritual reality takes one from book learning to a profound inner conviction.  Out of this inner conviction comes the willingness to re-enter life again, to participate in it, and to take the risks and chances."

    "What is the inner experience of hitting bottom?  It comes out of the feelings of hopelessness and despair; the person's small self is saying, " I of my own self, cannot handle this."  The person surrenders out of the hopelessness, and from that comes the willingness to let go, the surrender to something greater than oneself.  At the very bottom, in the pits, one realizes and accepts the truth, "I, of myself, my own individual personal self, my own ego-self, am unable to hand this.  I am unable to resolve it."  It is out of this defeat that victory and success arise.  The phoenix rises out of the ashes of despair and hopelessness.  It is not the despair and the hopelessness that are of value, but the letting go and the realization of the limitation of the small self.  In the middle of the catastrophe, the person says, "I give up.  I cannot handle this," and then may consciously or unconsciously as God for help."

    "Due to the law of free will and nature of consciousness being what it is, it is said that the great beings that are willing to help all of us are waiting for us to say "yes."  It is the sudden turning from the bottom of the barrel to the willingness to accept that there is something greater than ourselves that we can turn to. When the person asys, "If there is a God, I ask him to help me," then the great transformative experiences happen that have been recorded throughout history from the very beginning."  David Hawkins.

    Wow.  I know it is long, and if you are still reading….what I can say is this is all true.  When I found myself in the middle of something far too big and I too small, did I then find a Self, I wasn't even aware of. A soul, a connection to God…or I found God.  It was in the midst of pure hopelessness and despair…when I took the free fall over the edge that It caught me.  

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    Photograph by Hannah Jukuri

  • Grateful for being Detached

    "We cannot begin to work on ourselves, to live our own lives, feel our own feelings, and solve our own problems until we have DETACHED from the object of our obsession. From any experiences (and those of others), it appears that even our Higher Power can't do much with us until we have detached."                        Melody Beatte

    When our choices 'affect' another's happiness there is a codependent relationship…or if we feel unable to do what we want, we are not detached, but connected.

    And the work towards healing is learning how to detach; to make a choice that you know is against what the other wants, but it is for your own happiness, that you begin to work yourself free of this codependency.

    I love that even the Universe is unable to do much with us while we are focused on the happiness and peace of others….while we are neglecting us, so is the Universe.  It honors our free will….and we are using our free will to dance to make others happy…neglecting our own soul.

    I use to be a great jailer of my children's lives, and wanted and needed them to act a certain way for my happiness and peace of mind.

    When I detached from my children, my children did not have to run away to be free…they had a free life in my presence.

    There was nothing they could or could not do that would change the climate inside of me. I was the only person responsible for my feelings…it now seems so hopelessly silly to imagine that old life, and totally debilitating for me, and harshly selfish and cold towards them.

    Neither of us were in control, and both of us needed the other to act a certain way…how incredibly hard to live this way.

    How freeing to just act for me….which leaves you at act for you.  

    I am grateful for being detached.

  • Growing Lifeless.

    It seems that there is a side of change that continues to catch me off guard, while I eagerly lean towards growth and transformation, I fail to see I am outgrowing friends.

     

    My flippant quote that I clung to was, “Birds of a feather flock together…”  I just failed to appreciate that in changing the colors of my feathers, I would no longer feel drawn to being with certain people and then have to seek new feathers that matched the new me.

     

    There should be a warning label on all the self-realization books, that by becoming more aware, more truthful, more in alignment with your soul’s purpose, you may lose friends if they are not on the same journey.

     

    You arrive to the same group or have lunch with an old friend only to find you don’t sway to the same tune, that your music is no longer in sync…you both feel it and perhaps try and not notice, but eventually the ‘meetings’ become less and less attractive.

     

    We are attracted to similar energies and if our energies rise and theirs remain the same, the growing apart naturally takes place, you don’t have to orchestrate it, facilitate it, you just have to honor it.

     

    What I have failed to consider each time I get a great hit of new insights and understandings, when I burst forth in a new way, that I leave behind my old energy patterns which match my friends.

     

    I also believe that many are stopped on the journey towards living a full spiritual soulful life, is that it may mean leaving behind relationships of long standing.

     

    What I also have great confidence in is that many friendships are like a curvy path; we meet and go away only to meet again, for we are all heading in the same direction, but at our own pace.

     

    So I don’t see the leaving as in forever, but that our journeys are set at a different speed.

     

    What I need most is to pay attention to what I need, what excites me and makes me come alive…it serves no one to sit and idle growing lifeless.

     

  • My expectation.

    There are two ways to live, one with your expectations packed and ready for each day and each encounter… leaving very little room for surprises or impromptu circumstances, a very rigid needy control expecting life to follow your lead.

    You have plans and life works much better when life falls into step behind you. You are the mover and the shaker and all need to bow to your expectations.

    Expectations are very selfish little things that steal freedom from others, one little need at a time. Especially if you throw a tantrum when they are not met, or spunk or sulk in silence.

    The odds of our expectations being met are slim to none, unless we have become a tyrant and have stolen the lives out of those we love making them march along with our expectations.

    The other way is to follow life without expecting a certain flow, without scripts written and people’s parts picked out, instead it is all improvised as you go.

    When I found my freedom within to say no to others expectations of me, I also have freed others to be free of mine.

    It wasn’t an easy won battle within me, but I simply became overjoyed with my newfound word…NO and the freedom it brought to me.

    I loved not having to meet expectations of others and in disappointing them I grew to like me more and more.

    Each time I find myself unhappy, I look and see where I am stuck, what am I saying or doing that is stealing my freedom and whose expectations am I catering to?

    You would be surprised how much of life is lived with an expectations floating out ahead of us, a little thought that becomes a giant storm.

    Mostly the landscape ahead of me is blank. I have no expectations planted out ahead of me.

    I can’t plan the weather so that is out.
    I don’t own others actions so I am free there.
    I can’t even know for sure if I will do what I plan for what I know for sure is that there are a million things that can waylay me along the way.

    Greeting each day and each moment without expectations allows you to have your hands free to carry what comes in.

    If you are standing there with an armload of expectations…how open are you to receive?

    I didn’t on my own get rid of expectations, but rather all my expectations were unmet and unrealized, so it was either suffer or drop them.

    I thought confusion and mayhem would erupt if I had no expectations and instead peace, love and joy grew inside of me.

    When I let go…I was free.

    I was free to receive what is.

    What is is enough for me, no matter what it is.

    My new expectation is to be a peace with what is.

    To have no more expectations above what is or beneath what is.

    What is, is my expectation.

  • A Liar too.

    There seems to come a time in each relationship where the titles and names do not matter, where instead lies the meat of the relationship, the giving and the taking, the feelings we feel in the wake of their actions, the way we are treated or the lack thereof, it is like we can finally see what it is we are tasting.

    I asked myself if lies was an ingredient in love and could not find one recipe of Love that included lies.

    Not the love of parents, friends, lovers or self. Lies and Love don’t match.

    I also know that all relationships no matter what kind are subject to renegotiations if and when the ingredients change of one party.

    There isn’t a relationship out there, as far as I can see, that holds this sacred space of no negotiation.

    To me, all relationships are fluid and are living breathing exchanges between two people, that will change as the individuals in them change, and in fact the relationship is only as good as the weakest one.

    The weaker one is the sum total of the relationship, for if the stronger one settles, so goes the relationship down to the lowest denominator.

    My experiences with dysfunction is the strong lower themselves to be okay with dropping down to the low level, it is seen as kind and loving and accepting, and to forgive all actions, and call it unconditional love.

    Unconditional love to some is allowing all types of negative behaviors to messy up a relationship and you are to love no matter what.

    The ingredients of dysfunctional love is that anything goes and all must be forgiven, and relationships are made of steel there is no renegotiation, and you and I are locked behind the wall of our relationship.

    The relationship between sister and sister in some is non negotiable.

    Between parent and child…

    That what started out has to remain, we are locked in forever, like a steel cage within there is no way out, we must forever and a day be held together, withstanding bad behavior for the cause of Relationship.

    Two victims behind the relationship cage.

    I say, that if one in the cage changes, the other gets to leave if the changes can’t be reversed.

    When one changes, the whole relationship changes. It isn’t a cage, but rather the dance within the cage.

    Some put high regard on the titles, Mom, sister, daughter, father, and I see the individual behind the title, and I believe that the sister is only as good as her actions in the cage.

    Lies are lies no matter whose mouth utters them.
    Abuse is abuse no matter whose bodies are delivering it. It is convenient only for the one who is doing the bad behavior to use the trump card sister, to put that out in front of the poor behavior.

    Well, in my world I have taken down the cages that held me in and I am free.

    I no longer will be victimized or blinded by a title.

    Actions are actions, lies are lies, and deceit is deceit.

    Setting aside the relationship and seeing you as you, lies are not becoming.

    No good can be grown from a lie.
    No self worth can be gained from a lie.
    No love can be sown from a lie.

    In my childhood family they live among the lies and are not even aware that who they are playing with isn’t so, raised in the darkness full of lies, it is their normal. They don’t even know they live a lie for they never lived outside of it. Lies is all they ever knew. They have said and do say, that my parents did the best they could, and they did. But their best is to present one thing to the front while doing something else behind the scenes.

    A lie I call it.

    Most will not deal with the ‘thing’ behind the scenes; they would rather just play with what is in front, the pretend relationship label. Father, Mother instead of really looking at the actions within the cage.

    What happens in the cage is what you have a relationship with.

    Action to action is how we dance and relate to each other.
    If one says a lie and the other does not see it, the lie still happens, one is just denying it.

    It changes the dance from love to love and trust to trust… to lie to love and what they want is for us to continue to trust them while they lie.

    How?

    What is the point?

    Who trusts someone who lies?

    I can trust that I will not trust you when you lie.

    I trust that I will tell you I don’t believe you.

    I will say love doesn’t lie.

    I wonder why you lie?

    I wonder if you know that our relationship can’t hold what you do?

    It almost seems that if you have to lie, you know that if you spoke the truth, that it would change what we have.

    Yet sadly the lie does the same thing.

    Whether you do something that would jeopardize our relationship or you lie about doing it, it matters not.

    You have breeched its integrity, you have changed its value.

    As a child, my relationship with both my parents changed at a very young age, the seed of mistrust, conditional love was planted. In order to remain in the relationship, I had to keep their lies.

    Keeping lies changes who you are.
    Keeping lies of another doesn’t make them better, brighter, loving, happy, kind and compassionate.

    Holding a bag full of lies makes you a liar too.

  • The Door is Open.

    I listened today to a mother and daughter speaking about a time in their lives where the daughter wanted her freedom to do drugs and the mother wanted her daughter to stop using drugs.

    These opposing desires had them in a battle of the wills.

    Until the mother realized she couldn’t do this anymore and she let her go, allowing her to leave the rehab and set out on her own. She believed that in three weeks the daughter would be back home.

    Three years passed while the daughter went deeper into the drug world, selling her body to buy drugs, being homeless, until she almost died and had a near death experience, did she realize doing drugs wasn’t a good thing.

    What caught my attention was that no matter what the disagreement is, until you both agree, there will be a battle of wills.

    This battle of wills seems to make each person dig deeper and find reasons for their side and tearing up the relationship with each fight.

    I can’t even begin to imagine letting a daughter go to sink deeper into the drug addiction, but I can also see the struggle to keep her out, when everything inside of her screams for drugs and the freedom to do what it is she pleases.

    However, the mother did not allow this behavior to ruin her home; the daughter and her drug habit left her house.

    This exchange I heard this afternoon, shown me that what my daughter and I are going through is mild in a sense, and that the freedom I have given her to make up her own mind is a good thing.

    That she gets to decide what is good for her self.

    While I know my perspective is clear and she knows it, she now has to decide what is good for her, her life, and her future.

    Letting me down is the smallest of affects, for she will have to live with the choices fully just as the daughter who lived with all the things that come with the drugs, my daughter will have to live with all the things that come with a married man; the three kids, and ex-wife and the very beginnings of a divorce.

    My life, my home, my inner peace and happiness are separated.

    I will ‘think’ of her, but not experience her life, she will do that, she will feel the affects of all that comes with this man she has feelings for, he comes with a ton of baggage, all of which will spill into their relationship, but I will not feel it, she will.

    I am willing to let her go.

    Time will tell if the pull to go is strong enough to make her leave…there will be no battle of the wills. The door is open.

    “A woman convinced against her will is of the same opinion still.”

  • Rotting Tree

    We teach people how to treat us, we send out signals as to what is okay and what is not, we literally are teaching the friends and folks we want to hang with.

    They don’t know our boundaries we have to show them.

    When you do that, I tend to move away.

    When you your words and actions don’t match, I learn that you don’t follow what you say, I honor that.

    If I give you the freedom to act with your free will, than I get to react with mine.

    It isn’t a lopsided game of only one having more power; we each get our own set of power tools.

    My husband would teach our children a new thing, like putting on a new roof, and tell them, you have a new talent in our toolbox.

    This toolbox is yours; it is something that you carry with you where ever you go, a skill that makes you more self-sufficient.

    They also have another tool box, a self esteem or self worth tool box, and I wonder what skills and tools I gave them to erect boundaries, set limits, uphold values or define values, be ruled by morals, just what is in their own box when they leave this family.

    Will my values be theirs and should they be?

    Will our morals match?

    Is it possible that the apple does fall far from the tree and roll away?

    If you have done all you can do, if the fruit is ripe to fall, do you have any say as to where it goes and how it grows?

    Is there only so far a parent can take them and the rest they do on their own?

    Experience being their secondary teacher, do they travel onward being led by an inner feeling no matter the source?

    Is it possible that you can build the perfect emotional toolbox, one that resembles reality and truth, and they can kick it aside and set out on their own unlearning all of that?

    A rebel with a cause.

    The cause of doing it my way…
    While I concentrated on healing my limb of the family tree, I may have overlooked the fruits growing on the limb, to see the color changing…to see a new fruit growing.

    In reality I am seeing an orange from an apple tree.

    As she clings to this whole new lifestyle she leaves behind her family tree, just as I left mine.

    She doesn’t want to have to choose, but I am thinking it is pretty hard to mesh the two lives, the two selves, the old and the new into a new one…without see what truly is.

    You have to let go of who you are to become what you wish to be…

    In order to become a whole me, I had to leave the rotting tree…

  • Imperfectly Me.

    Yesterday morning, after a sleepless night I wrote the post about unconditional love, about knowing to the depth of my soul, no matter what I will not be the one to abuse my wounded child.

    I let go of all things but unconditional love.

    My husband and I had decided we would get out of the house and go for breakfast to give us a chance to talk privately.

    My husband turns to me when I enter the car and says, “do you have anything left to say to our daughter, is there anymore you have to offer?”

    And I say very weak defeated, no, I have nothing, all my knowing, my wise words and experience, all my efforts and love are not seemingly working, I am at the end of the road, I have nothing.

    He says, “Good. Here is how this is going to go down. What we did to her last night, by pressing her is going to drive her out of our home. I will not do that to her. She is hurt and needs a place to be, where there is no one pressuring her, a place where she feels comfortable…I love my daughter and want her always to feel that she is welcome in our home no matter what.

    I tell him, I agree. I just learned about my unconditional love for her, that I too will not hurt her when she is down.

    The next thing he says is you have to let her go, let her do it her way, let her be EVEN if she decides to move out of our home, let her decide, You have to let her go.

    I tell him he is asking too much.

    In that instant, I feel the little girl in me terrified of letting go, of losing once again.

    I tell him, Honey I know about letting go, about letting them decide, of allowing them to be, I let my family go and none of them came back to me.

    I have lost and I have lost and none of them ever come back, you are asking way too much, and now you are asking me to let go of my little girl to let her go free while she is alone and lost.

    I can’t let her go, for if she doesn’t come back I don’t know what I will do, I can’t let her go, I don’t have a heart big enough to bear this if she doesn’t come back.

    I tell him, “Mr. Big as a House Heart Man, you will have to lead this, you will have to stand in front of me, for me with the “Little as a Rock Broken Heart lady can’t be out front, I am afraid that if this little piece shatters, I will not have anything left, that I will go down and not come back up.”

    Honey I can let her go but your big heart will have to carry me, my heart isn’t big enough to do this alone and I don’t know how.

    In that moment I felt my holding grasp, its final clutch leave, and she was set off alone.

    Peace overcame me in that instant that seemed to settle over the spot that terror lived.

    My husband continues on unaffected by my emotional display. He says, “we can’t tell her what to do, she is a young lady, she is inexperienced, but this is how she will learn, we will offer her a space here to heal, but not tell her what to do.”

    I am in total agreement and following his lead.

    It is the first time in my life I let go of being responsible of taking the lead of getting on the back of the motor bike, of getting out of the wind and flying bugs and debris to snuggle in behind him and let him tell me what it is we need to do.

    What my husband and I then discussed was exactly what he had done for me six years ago when my world crumbled, when I too discovered that the relationships I had were very dysfunctional, when I had lost my way, when I found my self upside down and backwards, when I didn’t have a radar that knew its way, my dear husband opened up his heart wider, opened up our home, and allowed me to enter in.

    Nothing changed inside, it remained a place of normal in an otherwise upside down unnormal world.

    I entered in exactly as I found myself; there were no requirements no rules or regulations that I had to change first to be here.

    He allowed me the space, he demanded nothing, he asked no questions, he made no suggestions, he allowed me, a frightened wounded animal, to come into the warm space of his loving home and curl up an be safe.

    He never, not once asked me to do something I did not want to do, he waited for me to decide I was ready.

    He never not once wanted me to be further healed than I was, he waited for me to share with him.

    He continued to love and hold me like nothing had changed, to him I was the same person but sick or wounded, that was all.

    I told him, ”What you want me to do for our daughter is what you already did for me, I can do this.”

    I get to be him, to walk in his shoes and just allow her to be. I know even more for I have actually walked those steps.

    I felt immediately, that this was the right path for healing for I know that without him, this house, the space and undemanding loved ones, I would not have made it. I can now give to her that.

    I told him, “I can’t imagine what this had to be like for you, with a wounded wife, to be the only one to do this, it had to be very hellish, and how did we make it through that?”

    He isn’t wanting to go back, he wants to be here.

    He tells me, “you are not to say anything negative, in fact you are not allowed to say anything at all, you are to go on creating a loving home, doing what we have always done here and let her just be.”

    I say, “Honey I get it, I get to be a loving mom unconditionally l can do this.”

    I say I will follow your lead, for did the perfect job for me.

    As we sat face to face over breakfast, my body a noodle, empty and drained, feeling like I had just completed a 6 year marathon, I say to him.

    “Honey, what would a perfect mother have done?”

    He says to me, “she would have stopped this morning like you did, she would done exactly everything you did and said, but she would stop now and let her go.”

    I know for some this may not seem like an answer to a trouble wounded child, but it worked for a very mentally twisted up and wounded adult child.

    I sit in awe of what this man has done for me, and what we, him and I can do for our little girl, our almost woman child who has been wounded, we can open our home, our hearts and welcome her in.

    We demand nothing but accept all.
    We say nothing unless asked.

    We work hard to maintain the energy or atmosphere of our home as it always was.

    We keep this the one piece in the world unchanged in her very changed life.

    This home, the people in this home were my saving grace.

    They never treated me like the outside world talked of me, they remained true to me as what we had previous, they did not change.

    They went to work and did what they loved, they did not have a blame or shameful eye directed at me.

    In their eyes I was imperfectly me.