I M Perfect lady

Tag: healing

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Healing Won.

    I dropped the letter in the outgoing mail; it sat in the box for a few hours, with me working nearby.

    Every now and then, I wondered if I should take it back; pull it out and retreat back to silence.

    When the time approached for the first mail truck heading south, my confidence waned, my insecurities arose, at times it was like holding a yoga pose to not walk a few steps and take it back.

    It is amazing to be nervously anxious and brave in the same breath.

    In the outgoing mailbox lay my restraining letter to my mother; it’s bold statements clear and concise, there is no mistaking or misreading its intent.

    I recalled a few of the lines in my one page letter.

    “It is not healthy for me to be around you.”

    “My silence is the kindest thing I can give you.”

    “I need you to honor and respect the silence and space I need to heal and be whole.”

    “If you fail to honor our separation as it is, you are deliberately seeking to disrespect and hurt me; I will take it as such.”

    The letter was easy to write, harder to send, and leaves my emotions scared inside, even though I mean every word, it just seems too harsh to send.

    There is a part of me that is still loyal to the mother/daughter relationship that has long ago dissolved, a part that feels it just isn’t right to actually send. It is okay to feel these things, but it is certainly not right to speak to your elders this way.

    A part of me feels there will be dire consequences for my words, punishment for being so ballsy for speaking to a mother this way.

    Yet on the other hand the feelings of self-empowerment and self-love are being flooded with strength as I did what no daughter wants to do.

    Restrain her self from having a relationship with her mother.

    How unnatural to leave a mother and to set up firm boundaries that lock you out, cutting the ties that sever the lines of communication.

    Becoming an orphan on purpose.

    What I failed to notice is that it is me that was restraining me.

    Restraining me from leaving.

    Restraining me from staying.

    Inside is the battle of the dysfunctional daughter and the healing one; how grateful am I healing won.

  • A safe place for Me.

    The sentiments, feelings, expressions, emotions of this blog may appear childlike and perhaps unbecoming of a big lady like me, but what I have just realized, is that the healing I am doing isn’t about a big lady, rather that of a little girl.

    The wounds that happened to me, happened as a young child, and what happens then the body grows big, but inside of me I am stunted and remain emotionally immature.

    Expressing my feelings now, about events long ago, sound like I am lost in my past, but what is really going on is that I am healing me in my past and allowing my emotional body to catch up with my big lady body.

    What is also very incredible is that an event today is orchestrated perfectly to heal a part of me that was hurt a long time ago.

    The gifts that I received by my mother leaving a message on my daughter’s phone, is multifaceted.

    Empowering, grieving, to seeing things I failed to notice, nothing happens by mistake.

    Each event that stirs up emotions is here to teach, to bring a part of me back to me.
    Just so you all know the little girl voice is a voice of little girl who had no voice growing up, and I am thrilled beyond words, that I have the opportunity and the vessel for her to heard.

    Whether another soul reads this or not, I am reading it as I write.

    It is an incredible experience to speak as me and to hear me, to feel the sorrow and be the one to comfort, to allow tears to fall that have been repressed for years, to feel after so many years of being afraid to, I am talking to or as the little girl in each post.

    What sacred space this is.

    A safe place for me.

  • 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!)

  • Window in Self Love

    Sitting here this morning with a visual of a scorecard and its shocking totals are prompting me to shut a door, close a window, and separate myself from those racking up the score.

    It wouldn’t be so bad if the game was close to a tie but the numbers in the Perpetrator column are 100 and the Little Girls Zero.

    This game started with my parents and continues on to the second generation, they have taken over the scorecard and adding their marks.

    Each of us carries our own scorecard and then a collective one for those we travel with, and we write upon who we are by where our hash marks go.

    Our actions are our hash marks, no words are needed, its an actions only game of life.

    I had 40 years of filling the column up with support for the Perp and his wife, I worked, lifted, carried, toiled, struggled, adding to their columns.

    They had my full undying support, my confidence, my faith, and what I called love back then…they had all of me, and I had zero.

    Zero was all I felt and all I was worth.

    My only worth came from filling up another’s column.

    It was up to me to build them up, cheer them up, help them up, make them up, hold them up, Anything to keep them from falling down.

    I was worth something If I could keep them from falling down. Like a juggler of bad behaviors, I kept trying harder the more they fell down.

    Sadly all the beefing up of their columns couldn’t make them into what I needed them to be, and in the end they fell exactly as they were, nothing changed.

    We just can’t know that we are not our brother’s keeper, we can’t make or break their lives by our actions, our actions and our scorecard is our life.

    Each of us accumulates scores by what we do.

    My actions have drastically changed, I no longer lift a finger to add anything or take away anything from another’s scorecard, I only make marks on my own.

    Don’t worry folks, I know what you feel about me, I know the sharp edges of self righteous labels you are sticking on me, the tags of uncaring, cold, heartless, mental, unstable, distant, sickening, all the names float towards me when we communicate, I get it, I receive fully your intentions and your feelings, and this is why I am shutting the window, closing the door, for I am not willing to take it anymore.

    You won, the game is over.
    I quit.

    You can’t keep racking up the scores against me If I am no longer in the game…

    My wellness, healing, happiness, peace, love and joy falter as each time I feel these energies coming towards me, it is self-abuse to keep the window open.

    I shut the window in self love.

  • Yoga Heals a Loveless Self

    “The purpose of yoga is to heal.

    Most people start practicing Bikram Yoga to flatten our stomachs, stretch our tight hamstrings, and/or to prevent future injuries. And yes it will do all of that, but those are the secondary benefits to practicing Bikram Yoga. The purpose of this yoga is TO HEAL and that healing takes place from the inside out. It works on a mental level (and spiritual level) to heal our minds. Only then can we begin to change our self on the outside.

    Bikram says, the yoga practice teaches us how to like our self and we start taking better take care of our self then we fall in LOVE with our self!”
    Karen Buckner

    What I didn’t know when I began this practice was how out of love I was with myself, and how my love of my self depended upon another.

    If they loved me, I was okay.

    I never loved me alone, by myself without doing for another.

    It is shocking how dependent we are taught to be on another’s good opinion, how we act/be/live/think/believe to be loved.
    To have another love us, yet we don’t stop and think what it would take for us to love us, alone.

    Doing was my self worth, which I mistook for love.

    I was worthless unless I was doing.

    Imagine this type of self-love where you give and give and give until there isn’t any energy left, until you are filled with resentment of the takers who are your love givers.

    Giving to get love?

    My damaged body is what drove me to doing yoga, with an arm hanging limply at my side, my upper shoulders and neck one huge knotted ball, I began to work on self.

    What I didn’t know was that I was actually filling up my empty tank inside and dumping out all the past beliefs about how to love, changing my inner beliefs of my self, one-second at a time, as I paid attention to my breath and body.

    Each day I brought my body to the mat, and focused on my breathing, as I twisted and bent this constricted body into unimaginable poses, I was changing deeply inside.
    It is a like strenuous physical magic, while I was concentrating so hard to change my body, my insides were healing, my sense of self blossomed, my inner strength to be me became strong, my mind sought clarity and the willingness to face what is…the list goes on and on.

    Yoga heals a loveless self.

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  • Boundaries are the Key to Healing!

    Putting up boundaries to keep someone out is where I still get a little shaky.  Yet it’s those times when I feel toxic energy seeping in, that I must erect a boundary in place.  It is imperative to my healing.

     

    Set up the space to keep me safe.

     

    Peter Levine says on his CD, “Sexual Healing” that boundaries are key to healing.

     

    He explains how if you have no boundaries you get stuck in that place, that trauma that abuse, the hollering, and the drama.  But if you can erect a boundary, it is the opening to which you flow into.

     

    It is the stopping power that I lost as a child that I can now use as big person, one that will restore my leaking boundaries.  

     

    Stopping them from coming into my world.  I have the power to keep people out, where as a child I had none.

     

    Who knew that trauma is about being boundary less, which is why the world seems so scary, you are unable to protect yourself.

     

    Or you have the reverse, still no boundaries and no contact with feelings, so anyone can stomp all over you, again powerless to more and more abuse.

     

    What I failed to realize is that healing is having boundaries.

     

    Actually stopping toxic people from walking on you is healing.

     

    In fact he says, having memories or not doesn’t matter, it is the process of completing the action where the healing stops.

     

    Traumatized people get left in the trauma energy, the tightness, and the constricted fear with no way out.

     

    He teaches you to flow between being comfortable and going into the tightness or stiffness of neck and places where you are stressed and then into places where you feel comfort, the ebb and flow.

     

    It is so exciting when you find that you can exit a place, a feeling, a stressful moment, a relationship, a situation, and a conversation, to be the one to ask for space.

     

    Space between you and harm. 

     

    Asking for space is the healing.

     

    When you are the one who stops the harmful interaction you are healing, you are completing the cycle of abuse.

     

    You are getting out of the way, instead of being frozen unable to move, unable to speak, to have a boundary.

     

    “Boundaries are the key to healing.” 

     

     

  • A Caring Ear.

    “Healing the Wounded Child Within” by Charles L. Whitfield MD.  Story Telling as part of the healing process, he writes.

     

    “Telling our story is a powerful act in discovering and healing our Child Within.  It is a foundation of recovery in self-help groups, group therapy and individual psychotherapy and counseling. 

     

    Each of our stories when complete contains three basic parts: separation, initiation and return (Campbell, 1949).  Twelve-step self-help groups describe their stories as “What we were like,” “What happened,” and “What we are like now.”  People in group therapy may call it risking, sharing, participating, and ‘working’ in group.  In individual counseling or psychotherapy we may describe it by similar names and psychoanalysts may call it “free association, working through transference and through unsolved internal conflict.”  Among close friends, we may call it “baring our souls” or “having a heart-to-heart talk.”

     

    In sharing our story we can be aware that gossip and wallowing in our pain are usually counterproductive to healing.  This is in part because gossip tends to be attacking rather than self-disclosing and it is generally incomplete, following the victim stance or cycle.  Wallowing in our pain is continuing to express our suffering beyond a reasonable duration for healthy grieving.  There is a danger here that maybe observed in some self-help meetings: When a person tries to tell a painful story that has no apparent or immediate resolution, the other members may unknowingly label it as “self-pity” or a “pity party.”  In this case, while self-help meetings are generally safe and supportive, the bereaved may wish to look elsewhere to express their pain.

     

    Simos (1979) said, “Grief work must be shared.  In sharing however, there must be no impatience, censure or boredom with the repetition, because repetition is necessary for catharsis and internalization and eventual unconscious acceptance of the reality of loss.  The bereaved are sensitive to feelings of others and will not only refrain from revealing feelings to those they consider unequal to the burden of sharing the grief but may even try to comfort the helpers.

     

    Our story does not have to be a classical “drunkalog” or long in length.  In telling our story we talk about what is important, meaningful, confusing, conflicting, or painful in our life.  We risk, share, interact, discover and more.  And by doing so we heal ourselves.  While we can listen to stories of others, and they can listen to ours, perhaps the most healing feature is that we, the story teller, get to hear our own story.  While we may have an idea about what our story is whenever we tell it, it usually comes out different from what we initially thought.” 

                    Charles Whitfield

     

    My story telling began in journals to myself, and eventually I was daring enough to have a blog.

     

    I do know the ‘risk’ it takes to stand and speak about your journey, and also the benefits to being heard.

     

    The biggest part of the storytelling is to have compassionate, caring, listeners.

     

    My blog seems to be that.  It is always available for me to place another bout of confusion down, a new wave of understanding, a twisted and unraveled past hurt, a present moment of disbelief, my blog is my group therapy.

     

    I also love that I have some faithful group members that willingly share parts of themselves with me and give me feedback so that I know I am being heard.

     

    All it takes is one ear and you can begin to unload mountains of grief even if the ear is online and it changes from day to day.

     

    I want to thank all the faithful ears out there who read, comment and allow me to share my story as my life continues forward, as I learn about my past and how it still affects my nowadays.

     

    A storyteller with out a listener will not work.  We need the listener, we need to know another soul is hearing us, can see us, and understands.

     

    The healer is a caring ear…

     

     

  • A broken Heart.

    Remnants of a long conversation linger in my head, dragging out more ideas and different slants on fear, truth and death.

     

    I wonder what some would fear most, facing their truths or facing their deaths.

     

    If you truths were real vanilla and uneventful, of course death would loom large and scary, but what if your past was scarier?

     

    What if you were being asked to look upon a past filled with trauma, then how would your death look?

     

    Death seems like an escape hatch a welcome slide into oblivion, compared to having to feel, deal and heal a wound of abnormal proportions.

     

    Today I was exploring the depths of psychosomatic symptoms in the body and this is what I read.

     

    “Yet even when a patient accepts their symptom is being caused by an emotion—an exceptionally difficult barrier to surmount—the trauma that caused the symptom in the first place is often shown to be so ugly that both patient and doctor can readily understand why the patient’s mind converted it into a physical symptom in the first place:  even the mind itself believed the emotional trauma to be easier to handle that way. 

    Physical symptoms often get better with a pill.  Emotional traumas often take years to heal—if even then.  The technology we have to heal the scars caused by some traumas—as advanced and helpful as psychology can be—still lags behind the technology we have to treat ailments with purely physical causes.

    But we shouldn’t be discouraged.  We may all experience psychosomatic symptoms to some degree, but when our symptoms are shown to be so and we accept it, that acceptance becomes the most important step toward resolving them.  After all, how can we find a contact lens we lost by looking near a lamppost when we lost it in the shadows?  The real work begins, of course, once we start looking in the right place.  Dealing with somatization only requires us to bring to the table one quality:  courage.” (Alex Lickerman)

     

    Isn’t it amazing that the mind can convert trauma into a physical symptom?

    How interesting to read and understand more how emotional trauma affects the body.

    And I love how courage is what we need to bring to the table. 

    Courage. 

    Courage to face our truths, our past and our hurts, and especially if the truth hurts the images we held of our family.

    Courage, wow, I think they forgot a broken heart.

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