I M Perfect lady

Tag: learning

  • “Called Out of Darkness,” a Spiritual Confession by Ann Rice

     …was playing in my Mail Jeep today.

    It is a very interesting journey, from being a Catholic, to Atheist to…not sure, not done with the book. 

    It was very interesting to see her viewpoint of religion and really life itself.

    She is about 20 years older than me, for she graduated the year I was born. But she noticed as a child, that the adult didn't like the children, and often times treated them as if they were innately bad. That if the adults were not watching the children would naturally misbehave.  

    She didn't like the way adults treated the children.  Her parents were different, and to them the kids were just other people in the house…and she never even was treated like a girl, but just a person.  So, she didn't have gender self esteem issues.  In fact her parents named her Howard and the kids called their parents by their given name. They didn't know authority in their home.  An interesting way to grow up.

    Imagine the hidden ways in which we lower a child…naturally.

    She said children are told things long before they have a question about things.  What an interesting observation. Imagine if we didn't tell children things, but waited until they asked???

    Her mother was teaching her religion…long before she could even understand the dynamics of it.  She does however recall feelings of awe and wonder about the Saints and Statues etc.  

    Life to me is lived mostly from the Authority viewpoint and imagine how much better we would all be IF we took the child's viewpoint instead?

    Lots of our religion can't be explained to a child, yet a child can tell you all the wonders it sees as they walk through life.

    She has a very unique viewpoint of her life…and herself.  Her novels spoke of her internal spiritual struggle that she failed to realize until later…I know the feeling.

    Listening to her story has provoked many new things to ponder.  I like it when books do that…nothing I love more than to see things from a new angle.

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  • Wanting me to disappear.

    I found it interesting that my mother’s voice still echoes in my head, that it rings out loud and clear each and every time I veer off her well-beaten path, my fear of disappointing her screams louder than the thrill of doing what I love to do.

     

    These echoes have traveled with me a long long time, and they are laced with fear that freezes me in my tracks if I even begin to ponder doing things differently.

     

    This underlying system was created when I was very small, and the definition of self was built upon this very odd system, where my ‘goodness’ was mirrored when she was happy and my ‘badness’ when she wasn’t.

     

    It had nothing to do with what I wanted to do, but had everything to do with her.

     

    This track was laid down within me by how my mother reacted to life, and making her happy was my only goal, for her happiness meant her loving me. 

     

    It had nothing to do with the actual things I was doing, but the withdrawing of love dare I venture into a place that made her frown.

     

    I wonder if this is how all children learn about life, that we simply follow the smiles and steer away from all the frowns, that we never learn to steer by our own smiles, we learn to navigate through life by others happiness.

     

    Living in this backward system for 46 years, the last 6 have been spent learning how to live from my inner smiles and standing strong against their frowns.

     

    Learning that I am not responsible for other people’s faces, that it is not my job, has been a full time job, undoing the tracks from childhood, taking them down one piece at a time.

     

    I can see how people lose themselves while living with themselves, how they get pulled into the lives of others simply for happiness and love.

     

    What is so debilitating is that your life disappears while theirs seems to thrive.  And how is that love if you disappear?

     

    In order to be loved by my parents, I had to disappear.

     

    My needs had to disappear, my wants, my desires, my happiness, my joy, my love and my life.  I learned to disappear for love.

     

    As I walk forward learning how to love myself, her echoes come back to remind me of where else I let my self go, where I lost a part of me, where I buried myself and now where I can reclaim that piece.

     

    I didn’t know I buried her in so much responsibility. 

     

    I find now, when I feel so stuck, so angry without a choice, I am tugging on a piece of the old track, and it has nothing to do with what is going on today, but instead what I have learned a long time ago. 

     

    A voice from the past wanting me to disappear.

    1Shared Wisdom closeup 
    This quilt represents my inner wisdom and the young artist…. I am so happy that this one didn't sell!

     

  • Island of Love, Peace and Joy.

    Today while writing my Morning Pages, I wrote that I am feeling more like a self I recognize. A self who feels normal being estranged from her family, that I no longer feel so odd to myself, this new me feels like me now.

    That it is normal for me when it is Father’s Day to have no obligations or sentiments to deliver, nor do I feel the sinking feeling of sorrow…in its place is vast openness.

    No reservoirs of wishing and hoping, just space where a father used to live…there is acceptance of what is, minus the agony of it being so different than what I want.

    I am okay now.

    I am amazed at the journey out of denial or blindness to his truths and mine.

    In the first years of our estrangement I was riddled with grief and peace, hope and hopelessness, sorrow and fear and worry and wonder and angst of being a daughter with a living dad and not engaging with him in any way…I felt inadequate.

    I no longer feel less than… for his life.

    I no longer feel responsible for being a daughter with nothing to do on Father’s Day.

    I read on facebook some daughters feeling the loss of their dad; of missing him and wishing he was here. I feel none of that. Nor, am I one who is praising and send him accolades.

    I cannot relate to either of these kinds of daughters.

    The space I stand in is one of peace and I stand alone…okay and fine.

    It is not a land in between, but one of its own.

    This spot isn’t a place most would dream about and crave to be in, but a place that we land in order to heal from sexual abuse, child abuse or neglect, it’s the place we come to feel safe from our abusive parents, like an orphanage, but one where we are not looking to be adopted.

    Separation is key to our wellness and it is odd for others to phantom this concept, when it is their desire to remain close.

    We crave space, we desire no contact, we thrive in our silent relationship…this no relationship brings us peace. We are more alive in the absence of interactions, more authentic and feel our sense of who we were born to be come alive.

    This isn’t a purgatory state, or forgotten land, but rather a wonderful island of love, peace and joy.

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  • Mold in sight.

    What I didn’t know about writing is that you are supposed to have a plan first, a graph, a map, an idea, an outline, something for the words to fall into, that you don’t just stand there empty handed and catching them as they fall.

    I felt like a neglectful writer, unskilled, untaught and uncaring, yet as I step back and see the overview, I am astonished how hard most writers make it.

    It seems they are trying to predict the unpredictable, like trying to control reality, or planning for an unknown future.

    As I look upon my first 46 years of living, I had structure, I had rules of a religion to follow, and I had to fit into that, foregoing all my instincts and passion.

    My natural spiritual self was whittled down to fit into their mold.

    My mother sculpted this mold, and we had to squeeze ourselves into the walls, making sure we didn’t jut out unbecomingly.

    Our goal was to replicate this mold and make our children to conform to look the same, sound the same, and walk the same, little molds of sameness.

    Kept to the outside were words that didn’t match this mind set, this ideology and beyond their very rigid lines danced wonderful words and ideas in a field of pure potential…forbidden to us congregants.

    We had to disregard all things that didn’t match the mold, and by doing so passed up 99.9% of reality…and lived with .1% of our self.

    This .1% of me is where I began writing from, asking how I had sold so much of myself off and what did I truly believe coming from the base of me.

    From the base of me I ask the question and have no rules as to what comes, or where it takes me, what conclusion we draw, what systems we debunk, there is nothing off limits, there are no walls between me and my words.

    In fact I am tearing down the parts of me that have been crammed into the tight space, and giving life again to the long forgotten parts of me.

    There just simply can’t be a grid to follow, for I have no idea who I am, where I am going or what my purpose is…writing is helping me define who I am.

    I am meeting my words with a blank slate and they are coming from the mold of extreme restriction, so they too are excited not having to guard themselves and their truths.

    We are the clay and the sculptor with no pattern or mold in sight…

  • Fully Engrossed in Her Life.

    “There are three kinds of business in this world, Yours, Mine and God’s. If I am in your business, it leaves no one is in mine…” Byron Kate.

    When you have children it seems that our business is their business at least until they are capable of doing it for themselves and actually that is the greatest sense of freedom we will get when we can see our children flying well in their own business; their lives.

    When they fly way off course it seems that we do have to leave our lives to help them navigate back and at the same time be present in our lives.

    My fear and challenge is to return to my life and allow them to make corrections needed to get theirs back on track.

    And the most important thing to learn is not what knocked you off course, but also how to get your wheels spinning in the right direction again, and the only way to do this is to do this.

    To do the walking, to make the changes, to gather your life back.

    I just didn’t think that we both had to do our parts and return to our separated worlds, somehow I got stuck in my child’s life and my meddling there was actually slowing down the progress of healing.

    I am grateful that she told me what it felt like to have me crowding her world.

    I am also grateful I could hear that and can rejoin my life that has been somewhat neglected. Okay pretty neglected.

    What a gift to return to my business, to relax and give her back business.

    There is finesse to this mothering thing, to help but not takeover, like a hostile takeover I bet it feels similar to.

    Where at a weakened point another entity comes in takes over.

    I don’t want to be a corporate raider, but a loving mom and when I overstay or overstep my bounds, it is like taking over a company, or my daughter’s world. I have the image now, and I can see that I was lurking on the sidelines waiting to snap it up, instead of giving her space to shore up the weak spots.

    I love that I know this now.

    I love that I am not in the business of taking over other people’s business, I love that I can be very content with one business, mine.

    I guess the best mother is there for consulting services and will be asked when needed…until then, she carries on in her world, doing what she loves to do, growing where she needs to grow, learning how to navigate into being a mom in the ever changing landscape of our children’s lives.

    We must remember to keep the woman in the mother healthy, happy and fully engrossed in her life.

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  • The Artist Way

    On the CD of “Romancing the Ordinary” by Sara Ban Breathnach, she mentions Julia Cameron a few times. She is the author of the book, “The Artist Way”.

    My brother sent me the book and notebook that went along with it a little over six years ago to begin discovering the Artist within me.

    Julia wanted us to write “Morning Pages” just a simple practice of writing a few pages each morning, putting to paper our thoughts.

    They could be just stating what we had to do that day, how we were feeling, just ramblings but getting them out of our heads and on to the pages, cleaning up the space to be creative.

    I was a beginning student to this Way, when all hell broke lose in my life, and what surprised me greatly, is that I clung to these morning pages, which often grew to day long pages, for sometimes I wrote morning, noon and night.

    I filled that first book in a short time and then bought my first journal and after four years of writing longhand, I began a blog.

    I still write most days, sometimes more depending upon the unsettledness of my soul; writing is now part of who I am.

    What is so synchronistic is this book came to me just a week or so shy of a major event in my life, and it helped me find my way.

    What also has happened simultaneously my Artist arrived, she is having a ball playing with ladies, fabric, colors, designs, and is going places Artists go and her work is in an Art Gallery.

    I don’t know the way, but it seems to happen anyway.

    Perhaps that is the Artist Way.

    (I will have to go back and read in her book to see the marks I hit unbeknownst to me.)

  • 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.

  • In the Ditches of Life.

    Promises and commitments seem to only have real power when they are used for self, when they are used for others we become their slave.

    I want my daughter’s decision and commitment to be for her self and not for me, for it to be something she feels obligated to do for her own morals and values, leaving me out of the picture.

    If she were to make choices based on what makes me happy, she has just transferred herself over to me for me to rule.

    Promises and commitments when made for another seem on the surface to be a nice and friendly thing, yet if you look closer, they become silk chains that now keep you dancing for their happiness.

    I do not want my children to live a life that has them chained to my happiness, I want their lives to be driven from the inside out, to do what pleases them and makes them happy.

    Defining their own morals and values, owning their responsibility as individuals, being their own character sets them free to make promises to themselves, commitments they want to live by, that leaves us both free.

    My actions can’t define her and hers can’t define me.

    It is the freedom that is both liberating and scary as hell.

    Letting them go to crash and burn or to grow and become strong and independent.

    Kicking them out of the nest in my head, letting them grow and stretch into their own lives.

    I can no longer catch them when they fall; their falls are much bigger. They have to get back up and travel on.

    I think the threads and ties are for the mother’s benefit, I am thinking that our children are much stronger and more resilient than we believe.

    While there is freedom when the silk apron strings are cut, there is fear that did we teach them all they need to know?

    Are they strong enough to fly?

    Life isn’t lived in a straight line without failures; it looks more like a drunkard path.

    We all will fall, and stumble, make a bad judgment call, fall off the path and go in the ditch to gather a morsel of wisdom, it isn’t the mistakes we make but how we pick ourselves back up.

    We are not born with wisdom we find it in the ditches of life.

  • 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.