I M Perfect lady

Tag: growing

  • Covering Up my Truth.

    I listened to Jane Fonda speaking about her life, and I wasn't able to write it down word for word, but what she had to say struck me.

    How our survival self stands in the way of us growing up and becoming whole.

    I know this is true.  

    She said, "I stepped out of myself to live next door to me, in a shell of perfection."

    This shell is pretending to not be hurt and abused, but to be 'okay' and 'normal'. We have to act like this, in order to maintain the family's image and good front.  It soon becomes who we are, it grows thicker and thicker, the longer we live this way.

    She also said that the tool we use to survive, becomes the tool that is the obstacle for becoming whole.

    I see it as the shell has to be taken down in order to get back to your own self, and this shell is the facade we lived as to be normal and okay.  Removing this wall brings us to our truth.

    Our truth is scary on many levels.  For one it is not accepted by our parents and others who want to remain in their shells.  And it was terrifying knowing that I lived as a shell, but not me. That my truth wasn't who I had lived as.

    I knew my shell much better than I knew who I was and my history.  As a shell I constructed things to look better than they appeared. Friendlier, kinder and more loving.  Outside of the shell it was like all my friends became enemies.

    Yet, without ever leaving the shell of pretend, I would not have grown up…I would have remained stunted and as immature as a child inside; a wounded child.

    It is funny, in a peculiar way, that we believe we can add things to cover up our abuse, and that we can grow around it.  But, in the end, we end up with a pretty, perfect shell, and a yucky inside.

    Our outer appearance can't change how we feel inside.

    This is the mad dance and marathon…forever adding something on the outside to help boost our self esteem.  I couldn't be good enough, smart enough or cute enough to erase the abuse.

    Once I sat down with my wounded child, I was able to begin growing as me.

    No more shells.  

    No more pretending.  

    Instead I began falling in love with me…broken, abused, but real.  

    I loved my real self and had to say good bye to the shell.  

    The shell that helped me survive my childhood had followed me into adulthood.  

    Jane is right, the shell that kept me surviving my childhood, also kept me from being whole and me.

    So in order to become me, I had to leave my shell behind.

    My shell was the shield that kept my real feelings from showing.

    Kept me from pleasing myself, but always pleased others.

    It shielded me from becoming too emotional and loving, from being open and vulnerable.  My soft spot remained behind this thick wall.

    I remember my husband commenting, in the very early days of my father's exposure, that I was like a scared rabbit.  And I was.  I was walking around fully exposed without my shell.

    God, those early days were brutal.  Living life without a shell had me feeling extremely naked…and bloody.  The image of a wound.

    I was walking around as a wound…without a shell. No longer able to pretend that I wasn't abused.

    Until you can heal the wound you are very sensitive…with your nerves exposed.

    Now, I feel my wound is healed.

    Shell long discarded…and I am growing up. 

    My insides are matching my body.

    I no longer am a grown woman, wearing a shell, to cover up my wounded child.

    I am now grown woman who was wounded as a child…who grew up as I mothered my own wound, by no longer covering up my truth.



  • Being a Beginner!

    The question, “What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about doing it perfectly”, got me to thinking of all the things I have done, and how many I didn't do perfectly.

     

    How it is insane to ever believe that your first attempt will yield perfect results, it is only a select lucky folks who happen on a hole in one, the first time out.

     

    Before I could even list the things I would do, I thought of all the things I have done without knowing how or being able to do them perfectly and yet they have given me great returns.

     

    Number one, being a mom.  There is no training for this, you get a baby and you’re a mom.  And you get to perfect your ways through repetitive actions…and by the time you understand the baby years, they are into being toddlers…it is a learning process one that has you always starting out as a beginner.

     

    Being a wife is the same.  You get married and you’re a wife, no place to practice this and when you become ‘perfect’ seek a spouse…it works in reverse.  Only trial and error makes it perfect. And as with children, it is always in process of growing and as your life changes, the way you are a wife changes as with age etc.  There is no such thing as perfecting the wife skills.

     

    I then wrote about quilting and being an Art quilter.  You can’t begin after you become a perfect quilter… you just do it and the more you do, the closer to perfect you become.  But the horizon keeps moving back, new techniques and ideas come in and you once again begin a beginner and not perfect.

     

    What I loved about the question was how I was able to look backward in my life and all that I have done and how incredible it was that most of it was not perfect and I survived and even thrived in many places.

     

    I didn’t get the chance to learn how to perfectly leave a family before I left or did I have a class on how to be a perfect abused child, to perfectly speak my truth, or how to exit a cult… I just did it.  Perfect didn’t matter.  I became better by doing.  I am not sure there is another way.

     

    Imagine all you have done without being perfect and just imagine how much more you can do by allowing yourself to be a beginner! 

    I love this we need to replace the goal of being perfect with being comfortable as a Beginner.  At least is shows we are begining something, we are attempting we are moving, growing and changing.  If you are not beginning something new, you have stopped living.

    I love being a beginner!

  • Willing to Hear.

    Two years ago on Easter Sunday I began this blog. At the time, I felt that I would have something to say to help other women who found themselves lost in their own lives, and instead I have found it was all for me.

    The amount of clarity that I have gotten from asking questions with an open mind, willing to explore and delve into thoughts and beliefs is beyond what I could have imagined.

    The blog seems like a very trusting confidant and yet the key in keeping it real is that it is wide open for all to read.

    Writing to me has become another Art form and something that I believe will now be part of who I am…an Author who helps me be me.

    The truth arises when you are willing to not know the answers…but willing to hear.

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  • 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.”

  • 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.

  • Growing Me.

    There is another word that has screwed up more people than being perfect, and that is being normal.

    What is normal?

    Can you spot a normal person in a lineup?

    Inside of us isn’t there a specifically designed normal for us, one that is specially made by the path that we walked?

    Normal in the dictionary says to conform to the standard.

    What is the standard?

    Who designed the standard in each situation and can the standards change?

    I had to look up standard; it says the level of quality.

    Quality of what?

    How can we know the best quality and isn’t our best the best quality?

    Do we have to measure ourselves against others standards?

    So normal is conforming to standards of quality.

    But who are the quality makers?

    Who decides whether I reached the level called normal?

    To me, this seems like perfect recipe for failing to always be looking outward to the judges of quality for the nod of approval, instead of creating a normal for you.

    It is normal for me to run, from groups that seem to enjoy brainwashing conformity, as a newly freed mind!

    It is normal for me to embrace all things free after being held captive by a mental mind for 40 years.

    Yet is this normal?

    Perhaps I did overshoot the mark and I have landed in a land beyond normal.

    Some feel ‘normal’ in abusive situations for that is all they ever have known, to them that’s normal’.

    That is the only quality or standard they know.

    Maybe it is only when you no longer like that standard or that quality that you strive for a higher level, a new normal for you.

    This new normal for you is personal, societies standards, nor your friends or parents don’t measure it, it is an inside job.

    Inside of you, something tells you that you are ready for a new normal.

    You no longer are comfortable doing that which you have done, and want to raise the standard by which you live.

    You then move to a new normal for you.

    What is normal is conforming to standards you now have.

    I feel we re-set our standards time and time again, the more we learn the more re-setting we do.

    I had previously set standards by my parents, until I saw their standards, and then I began creating my own standards.

    What was normal for me for 46 years was their standard, not mine.

    Now I have a new normal and in this new normal, I reset my standards all the time, they seem to be fluid and life changing.

    There is no mark that I will hit and say “Bingo” I am now stuck at this normal.

    My life and me are normally changing, we are not stuck unchanging like a plastic flower, we are like a real live growing me.

    I love that I am not done growing, for I think that is dead.

    I am a normal growing me.

  • The Limits of My Self.

    What I am learning as I go along, is that there are people I will agree with, people I will be drawn to, and others that will stir up my strong held beliefs, it seems that the ones that frustrate us the most or put off the highest charge within us, are carrying a part of us that we need to bring back in.

    In my experience those got the highest reaction from carried a message I needed to solve.

    It seems we are on a mystery tour, where we are discovering new exciting things along the way. In the darkest hours wonderful insights arrive, and strange dialogues open us up to a new way of thinking.

    I feel braver now to explore the reaches of humanity instead of sitting frozen in fear that my long held beliefs will be damaged.

    Or maybe that I will be destroyed hearing a thought or idea that is different than me…

    We never know who we will meet, what words will be spoken that is the key to our next phase in life.

    I used to fear living and fear dying, now I am trying to love living and love that I will die, and in between I get to explore the limits of my self.

  • My Soul Cheers

    Shutting the valves or entry points where I have allowed toxic behavior and or negative energy to seep in, feels soooo liberating, so empowering, so self loving, I feel so lightened by this, if only I knew that I wouldn’t feel alone, but empowered, I wouldn’t have waited so long.

    The first time I left my family, I did so in fear, anger and anxiety, in moments of pure panic due to the way they were all acting, I segregated myself in solitary confinement in fear. Fear of who they were and how weak I literally was, I scurried to be far far away from them.

    I was out of control in a lonely spot with raging fear, alone and empty inside, twisted up with confused and conflicting images, tangling love and fear, I had to run to survive, not knowing that I would survive…I left.

    It wasn’t an act of courage or empowerment but an act of sheer terror.

    The difference between fleeing in terror or fleeing with knowingly and great awareness are oceans apart.

    One leaves you vulnerable and alone.
    The other empowered and alive with great gusts of newfound peace, like breathing or not breathing.

    Breathing with the right to orchestrate your world, using your free will to close the source of pain that flows into your world.

    What a great thing to know, how empowerment is grown, it is birthed by making a choice, using your awareness and seeing the cause, doing what you can to eliminate it in your world.

    This isn’t at all about them, but about you.

    You have the right to open and close relationships.

    I love that I found the energy to use the switch, to flip the button to off.

    It doesn’t change who they are, but it greatly changes their impact in my world. Little did I know, even though I left the window open, that I was the one I was waiting for…

    Inside, as my tank overflows with empowerment, my soul cheers!

    (I think I scored one for me!)

  • Follow an Impulse Fearlessly.

    “Every day we slaughter our finest impulses.  That is why we get heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognizes them as our own, as the tender shoots, which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.  Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.  We all derive from the same source.  There is no mystery about the origin of things.  We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.” 

     ~Henry Miller, Sexus

     

    Slaughtering our finest impulses…is what leads us to not doing what we feel inside.

     

    What stops us? 

     

    I am learning to follow the impulse, to listen to the voice inside, whether it be to steer away from things or to be drawn towards them.

     

    Our lives are lived from the tiny impulses that happen as we move along each day.

     

    Impulses to take a new path, to speak to a new friend, to call an old one, to send a card, to make a call, to say words we fear, to try a new idea, a new hobby; all are sparked by an impulse within.

     

    It isn’t so much that we don’t have impulses, but fear quickly comes between the impulse and us halting it from happening.

     

    To follow the lead of the impulse fearlessly, knowing you are in fear, but to feel the excitement of doing something new, daring to express or share a part of you that needs to be voiced, to be a playmate with the impulse. 

     

    Be a willing playmate, stop sitting on the sidelines of your life…get up and follow an impulse fearlessly. 

     

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  • I Am A LIttle Closer.

    “Most people become extremely nervous or tense when they are trying to accomplish something that means a great deal to them.  Anxious, nervous actions do not draw that power of God, but continuous, calm, powerful use of the will shakes the forces of creation and brings a response from the Infinite. The germ of success in whatever you want to accomplish is in your will power.  Will that has been badly battered by difficulties becomes temporarily paralyzed.  The resolute man/woman who says, '"My body may be broken, but my head of will power remains unbowed,” demonstrates the greatest expression of will.

     

    Whoever would develop will power must have good company. If your desire is to become a great mathematician, and your customary associates all dislike mathematics, you will certainly be discouraged. But when you mix with accomplished mathematicians, your will is reinforced; you think, "If others can do it, I can do it."

                    Paramahansa Yogananda

     

    Our remote yoga teacher sent this to us, stating how she felt that it pertained to our email group, how we can watch each other succeed, and know we can too.

     

    I know that in the past I nestled myself into groups of ‘I can’t’ and they accepted less of me and in fact being less was required; your overall energy was, “I CAN’T”!

     

    As you travel towards the new camp of “I Can” you are walking away from old familiar buddies, and forging new ones, learning a new language of I Can.

     

    I have felt unsure of myself in this new mode of I can, I hadn’t yet built my inner will power and so I was leaning on the group’s energies like a cane when I felt weak, when “I can’t wanted to stumble from my lips. 

     

    As a group we do believe that the other can! 

     

    Our actions and our words are literally cheering them, giving them our can energy when theirs is lacking. 

     

    It is like a relay race, where we hand the stick of will power over when we become tired of carrying the “I Can” and they take it over.

     

    A rag tag bunch who have come from the “I Can’t Camp” and are determined not to fall back in to the lazy waters that surround it.

     

    I feel the empowering waters, the resolute determination and will power growing in the two little words, I CAN as I make my way into Camp I Can.  Not quite at home yet, but every day I can, I am a little closer.

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