I M Perfect lady

Tag: lies

  • Elders of the Church

    There are no coincidences in life and the fact that I am learning about more and more sexual abuse in my old church while I am reading Alice Miller is profound.

    She is literally writing about the hows and the whys that seemingly intelligent functioning adults are unable to stop this behavior…or it seems “Knows” and does nothing.

    What I am getting a view of is my family but displayed in a much bigger group, widespread from state to state.

    That there is an underlying very pervasive evil preying upon the children, while half the adults sleep and the other are the perpetrators, and all presenting a mask to society of high morals and values, where TV, Music, drinking and drugs, etc are forbidden, where truth and honesty is the way of life….

    The grand scale and its history from generation to generation of criminal sexual behavior under the auspices of a religion of high morals and value is mind blowing.

    My mother was not an anomaly she was a typical church mother.

    And what is so extremely shocking to me is that I didn’t know of it when I was in it. Yet, here is the deal on that…I didn’t leave the church until I had seen the truth of who my father was. So, I guess, their families were like my family we all matched…so we were not outstanding in the fact that the children in the family were abused.

    Knowing that my father abused the neighbors and the neighbor’s parents were in the church and did nothing shows to me, that they too didn’t find this shocking or something that should be presented to the law of the land.

    Again, I felt I lived in this little nest of incest with neighbors that I later found out had their own nests, but that we were the ‘odd’ ones in the church. But 6 years later, I am finding out that we are far from odd, but perhaps just normal parishioners.

    In Alice’s book she speaks of forgiveness in how I seen it work in the church and how it actually is the juice that keeps the evil in the pulpits and on the church boards, literally running the church while raping the children.

    “Can forgiveness for the crimes done to the child be not just ineffective but actively harmful? It certainly can because the body does not understand more precepts. It fights to make our conscious minds admit the truth and transcend our denial of genuine feelings. This is something children cannot afford to do. They have to deceive themselves and turn a blind eye to their parent’s crimes in order to survive. Adults no longer need to repress their feelings. But if they do, the price they pay is high. Either they ruin their own health or make others foot the bill.”

    “A therapist who has forgiven his parents for the cruelty they showed him may feel the urge to suggest this same remedy to his clients. In so doing, he is exploiting their dependence and their trust. If he is not in touch with his own feelings at all, he may indeed be unaware that he is doing to others what was once done to him. In suggesting forgiveness as a solution, the therapist is abusing and confusing others, while rejecting any kind of responsibility for his actions. He is convinced that he is acting for their own good. Are not all religions unanimously in their conviction that forgiveness is the path to Heaven? Was not Job ultimately reward for the fact that he forgave God?”

    “Unlike children, adult patients have a choice. They can leave a therapist once they have seen through his deception and self-deception….”

    “To break through this vicious cycle we need to understand that so-called love cannot survive abuse, deception, and exploitation without seeking new victims. And if it requires new victims it is no longer love but at best the longing for love. Only unflinching realization of one’s own past reality, of what really happened can break through the chain of abuse. If I know and can feel what my parents did to me when I was totally defenseless, I no longer need victims to befog my awareness. I no longer need to reenact what happened to me and take it out on innocent people because now I know what happened. And if I want to live my life consciously, without exploiting others, then I must actively accept that knowledge.” Alice Miller

    What is so vastly incredible is that the one thing a child needs to heal is not offered to him in that church, instead the only thing that is offered is the forgiveness of sins and the fourth commandment…”to love and Honor thy parents”.

    It is no wonder to me, as a person who has lived in the system, who was abused and left untreated there, and has witnessed the responses of my siblings, that this vein of power is still in play, whether you leave the church or not, it will take Herculean power to stop the mind set of forgiving sexual crimes and not passively accept love hurts.

    As long as forgiveness is preached, children will suffer abuse from the elders of the church.

  • Children will suffer.

    From Alice Miller’s book “The Body Never Lies,” she writes…

    “My attempts to persuade the Vatican of the importance of early childhood experiences have revealed how impossible it is to arouse feelings of compassion in men and women who right at the beginning of their lives learned to suppress their genuine, natural feelings so mercilessly that there is no trace of them left in their conscious minds. All curiosity about the feelings of others has been stifled. It seems that people who were physically mutilated in early life immure themselves in a fortress deep inside themselves, where they can only pray to God. It is to Him that they delegate all their responsibility, and they carefully obey the precepts of the church so as not to be punished by this “loving” God for any sins of omission they might commit.”

    “Shortly after the capture of Saddam Hussein in late 2003, the Vatican was largely instrumental in orchestrating the sudden increase, all over the world, of voices expressing compassion for the unscrupulous tyrant who had been such an object of fear and loathing while he was still at large. But in my view we cannot simply allow ourselves to base our judgment of tyrants on ordinary compassion for the individual, if that means disregarding things they have done.”

    “As biographers Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie tell us in their 1990 book “Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf”, Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937. He grew up in a peasant family living in penury near Tikrit. They had no land of their own. His biological father died before his birth. His stepfather, a shepherd, constantly humiliated the boy, calling him “son of a whore” and “son of a bitch,” beating him mercilessly and tormenting him in the most brutal way imaginable. To exploit young Saddam’s working capacity to the full, he forbade him to go to school until the boy was ten. Instead, he would wake him in the middle of the night and tell him to guard the flocks. In these formative years, children develop and image of the world. Ideas take shape in their minds about the values that are worth upholding in life. At the same time, they begin to cherish desires and dream of their fulfillment. For Saddam, the slave of his stepfather, these desires all centered around one thing; limitless power over others. In his brain the idea presumably took shape that he could regain the human dignity he had been so radically deprived of only by possessing the same power over others that his stepfather had over him. Throughout his childhood, there were no other ideals, no other examples to live up to, only the omnipotent stepfather and himself, the defenseless victim of the terror inflicted on him. It was in line with this pattern that the adult Hussein later organized the structure of the country he ruled over. His body knew nothing but violence.”

    “Every dictator denies the suffering of his childhood and attempts to forget them by indulging his megalomania. But the unconscious mind of an individual has completely registered his biography in the cells of the body, it will at some point urge that individual to confront the truth. After the coalition invasion, despite the immense financial resources at his disposal, Saddam sought refuge precisely in the vicinity of the place where he was born, the place where all help was denied him as a child, a highly precarious spot that could not provide real protection. The fact that he should have chosen this place to “go to ground” reflects the desperate plight of his early years and clearly illustrates the power of compulsive repetition. His return to his childhood was the return to the place where he had no chance to escape.”

    “there is conclusive evidence that the character of a tyrant will not change as long as he lives, that he will abuse his power in a destructive way as long as he encounters no resistance. The point is that his genuine aim, the unconscious aim concealed behind all his conscious activities, remains the same: to use his power to blot out the humiliations inflicted on him in childhood and denied by him ever since. But this aim can never be achieved. The past cannot be expunged, nor can one come to terms with it, as long as one denies the suffering it involved. Accordingly, a dictator’s efforts to achieve that aim are doomed to failure. Compulsive repetition will always reassert itself. And an endless succession of victims is forced to pay the price.”

    “With his own behavior, Hitler demonstrated to the world the kind of person his father was and the kind of treatment he suffered at his hands when he was a child: destructive, pitiless, ostentatious, merciless, boastful, perverted, self-enamored, shortsighted, and stupid. In his unconscious imitation he was faithful to his father’s example. For the same reason, other dictators like Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Ceausescu, Idi Amin, Saddim Hussein behaved in a very similar way. Saddam’s biography is a striking example of how extreme humiliation in childhood is avenged on thousands and thousands of victims at a later date. The refusal to learn from these facts may be grotesque, but the reason for refusal are not difficult to identify.”

    “ The fact is that an unscrupulous tyrant mobilizes the suppressed fears and anxieties of those who were beaten as children but have never been able to accuse their own fathers of doing so. Their loyalty to these fathers is unswerving, despite the torments suffered at their hands. Every tyrant symbolizes such a father, the figure whom the abused children remain attached to with every fiber of their being, hoping that one day they will be able to transform him into a loving parent by being blind.”

    “This hope may have been what prompted the representation of the Roman Catholic Church to demonstrate their compassion for Hussein. In 2002, I turned to a number of cardinals for support when I presented the Vatican with material on the delayed effects of spanking and asked authorities there to do what they could to enlighten young parents on this subject. As I have said, not one of the cardinals I approached with this request showed the slightest interest in the universally ignored but crucially important issue of physically abused children. Nor did I come across the slightest indication of Christian charity or compassion in connection with this issue. Today, however, those same representatives are eager to show that they are indeed capable of compassion. Significantly, however, this compassion is lavished not on maltreated children or on Saddam’s victims but on Saddam himself, on the unscrupulous father figure that the feared despot symbolizes.”

    “As a rule, beaten, tormented, and humiliated children who have never received support from a helping witness later develop a high degree of tolerance for the cruelties perpetrated by parent figures and a remarkable indifference to the sufferings borne by children exposed to inhumane treatment. The last thing they wish to be told is that they themselves once belong to the same group. Indifference is a way of preserving them from opening their eyes to reality. In this way they become advocates of evil, however convinced they may be of their own humane intentions. From an early age they were forced to suppress and ignore their true feelings. They were forced to put their trust not in those feelings but solely in the regulations imposed on them by their parents, teachers, and the church authorities. Now the task facing them in their adult lives leaves them no time to perceive their own feelings, unless those feelings happen to fit in precisely with the patriarchal value system in which they live and which prescribes compassion for the father, however destructive and dangerous he may be. The more comprehensive a tyrant’s catalogue of crimes is, the more he can count on the tolerance, provided his admires are hermetically closed off from access to the sufferings of their own childhood.” Alice Miller.

    What a brilliant cycle this abuse is, for the circuitous madness not looking creates. How nature creates ways in which our mind can overrun our realities for survival and yet this very technique is what allows it to continue.

    The hurt child ends up hurting children and the hurt children who don’t want to feel their pain ends up seeing the ‘heroic’ adult and not the monster.

    It takes Herculean efforts to go with the body of truths and swing wide of society, church and family to see reality.

    Imagine a world full of delusional adults who carry a false picture of their formative years, they will not be able to spot a monster in their presence?

    No matter not how detailed his catalogue of crimes are, what matters most is that his followers, family and friends, haven’t discovered their own box of crimes of childhood…the sightless followers, the ones who love to live in the land of denial will not see his crimes.

    It is incredible to me, it isn’t that they are not seeing what is going on today, but the long ago blindness that makes them unconscious supporters of evil.

    You simply are incapable of seeing in the present if you didn’t see in the past.

    And the sheer volume of people refusing to deal in the past wrecks havoc on today’s reality.

    While I screamed loudly about the present, they clung to the vestiges of their ‘happy childhood’.

    Who knew that holding tight to a ‘happy childhood’ could cause so much pain!

    By not seeing who you really are you are incapable of seeing the truth in others…and this works so well for the monsters among us.

    Who will stop them?

    What will make the blind see, how much destruction has to be spread around the planet, before we can begin to see that children are not born this way, the parents are the cause.

    As long as we don’t see the suffering children, children will suffer.

  • Valley of Evil

    Reporting – is to tell about what happened: to give information about something that has happened, an account or statement describing in detail an event, situation, or the like, usually as the result of observation, inquiry, etc

    How well do you report your life? What is your observation deck, is it the mind or can you step back and witness the whole scene and see your part in the mix of the whole?
    Can you report from your inner view and share all the details, or do you gloss over the rough spots and expand on the lighter moments.

    Are you an in depth reporter and can you speak your own truths, do you even know your own details? Do you dare become an investigating reporter in your own life?

    It seems we are more comfortable in the valley between both truths, yours and mine.
    A place where life is lived on the thin surface, where feelings are not shown and reported, where no hard questions are asked or expected, where details are of weather, dress and food…the space where life isn’t happening.

    What I find so interesting is that the truths from both sides fly over this valley are heard but not believed, are seen but overlooked, are felt but quickly numbed, it is the place where truths are not held and they quickly are ignored.

    No one expects you to hold on to reality in the valley, it will ruin many a pretend relationship if you do so.

    The perceptions from here are very distorted and absent of truthful facts, a report that leaves out the most pertinent information for the goal of the valley is to be kind and loving…at all costs, even if means leaving reality behind.

    At times it seems that I am living in a dual world, where people speak a totally different language than I and that I can see and hear what others blatantly overlook, it is like I am a reporter of reality and they are reporters from the valley’s floor where they don’t hold on to facts as being real.

    My mother had said we have two perceptions and she was totally right, in her world truths were known but not held, they were looked at quickly but not dwelled upon, so life could return as quickly as possible back to ‘normal’.

    My perception is much different, I report differently, I see things and hear things that I do not disregard.

    The meaning of the word Perception.

    Perceptions -perceiving: the process of using the senses to acquire information about the surrounding environment or situation result of perceiving: the result of the process of perception impression: an attitude or understanding based on what is observed or thought.

    Interesting to know that perception comes from the process of using the senses.

    Using your senses…but what happens if you are detached and disconnected from your feelings, then what? What will you then use to guide your peceptions or how right on can they be?

    It is interesting to know that we all percieve the world based upon our connection to our own inner sense of self.

    The further from your self you are, the further off base is your perception. And to me, the more you disregard your truths, the further from self you go and the more off base are your perceptions and more you out of line with reality you go and deeper into the valley of pretend.

    I was a residence of this valley for 46 years while living in reality, I had no clue that my perceptions at that time were distorted, that they did not match reality, but instead fit perfectly with the image in my head.

    When the image in my head exploded it left me standing in the valley of pretend but aware…aware of how off my perceptions had been.

    I was aware of all the distortions, all the false images, it was like waking up in a nightmare, where all the good became evil and the evil good…where truths became my friends instead of my enemies.

    All the things that were kept hidden were revealed, to see the old sins resurface unharmed, truth flooded into the valley in my mind, there was no place to hide.
    I was flooded with awareness of how unaware I was.

    The view of the valley of looks very different standing on mountains of truth, it looked like the valley of evil.

  • Meet your Truth.

    Remember playing with magnets as a child, and how they would either click together or be repelled apart?

    I was reminded of magnets as my friend talked about situations we get into in relationships, where we are going along with mutual attraction and then somehow we get flipped around and now are being repelled apart.

    I recalled the magnet’s inner wisdom was much smarter than our strength, no matter what we did; they knew when they matched or when one of them was turned the wrong way, in order to click together they had to be facing the right way.

    And it was fun to feel the push away from these seemingly innate objects, like they had a mind of their own.

    The image of my friend’s hands and how they moved to resemble magnets stayed with me as I looked at my husband and myself and how we seemed at odds, and how we trying to realign ourselves.

    It seemed his truth and my truth didn’t match, and our bodies knew, repelling replaced our old attraction.

    My body has a magnet of its own and the flesh is just a covering on top and beneath my skin is this energy field that knows things my wandering mind misses.

    And my mind has learned that by faking it or pretending to be okay when the body is not, is fruitless for what I seek most is for the body to teach my mind.

    I listen and receive signals of distress or of peace.

    In the past I was the opposite; I turned away from the signals and bull headedly marched on, heedless to the discomfort my body screamed.

    My mind that had been taught what to believe, what was right and what was wrong and it neglected to seek counsel of my body. In fact the body, I was taught, was full of sin and it had the devils magnetic field that would pull us asunder.

    You would go to Hell if you followed your body; Heaven was to be gained by following your mind.

    Your body was your greatest enemy.

    As I write this, I know that my childhood religion was threatened by the wise wisdom of this knowing body.

    Imagine the wonderful creation of God, this highly functioning self-healing living breathing body being the devils property?

    What the religion was teaching was to go against the magnetic pull of my own body.

    With this being my background I as accustomed of turning away from my body, of shunning its desires and passions and neglecting the wise inner gut feelings and focusing instead of following the masses, the church leader and listening to what he and they felt was best for me.

    Stepping away from my body I lived disconnected and out of touch…I worked religiously against my own magnetic pull.

    Imaging going against your own truth!

    It is incredible to me that we all have these wonderful magnets that are infused into all our cells, and they know what is true.

    If you use your body like this big lie detector or treat it like a magnet for truth that it is, your life will be less complicated.

    I watched my daughter and how she appeared physically in our world while she lived a lie. Like a diseased plant she began to fail.

    What I notice about my body is it likes it when I speak the truth, even if the truth sounds bad, it cheers.

    When I was on our local school board and the president of the board lived in another city, but was on our board, it made sense to my body to say, “You have a pretend house in Chassell, so you can be legitimately on our board.” I told him, a man who pretended to live here and who had a fake home in our town were directing me on the board.

    My body felt better being there with the truth hanging out. And I knew better than putting trust or faith in a pretending man.

    So, even if you can’t make moves to get out from beneath the lies don’t lie about your situation; give your body the full report.

    It is not the actual reality that distresses the body, but us telling the body it isn’t really there. It likes to have a well-balanced reality accounting sheet.

    I love that I am aware of my body’s magnet and how its preset to the truth, how I can rely on it subtle and not so subtle readings, how it vibrates at a certain note to gain my attention, letting me know when I am not seeing or being in truth.

    My Universe and this magnet are connected and both dance perfectly in harmony with reality.

    My body thrives best in the reality of truth and I speak reality’s harshest truths with great courage for I now what happens when I don’t. I get repelled away from peace, love and joy.

    My magnet is set uniquely for me and I get anxious and scared when lies pile up and truth seems far away…

    Namaste, means the Spirit in me recognizes the Spirit within you…what I believe maybe more beneficial is my truth wants to meet your truth.

  • Taking the same steps.

    I backed away from people who hurt me, I retreated from untruths, receded from supporting religions, I moved from co-dependency, I pulled myself back from all the places that seemed to support dysfunction and it seems I landed in a corner with my back pressed against the walls of truth, and I now am standing alone.

    Perhaps this is how we enter into Heaven, we come alone with our suitcases fully packed with our lessons, our truths spilling out, our journey’s pivotal moments all stacked up like final exams waiting to be scored.

    Did I pass? Can I fail? How will I know?

    Sometimes it seems that in separating my truth from fiction, I have backed myself right out of my life.

    It is like I am at the end of my fictional life and a toddler in my new life.

    Simultaneously dying and being born, grieving while celebrating, saying good-bye and saying hello, a stranger and a new friend all living as me.

    It is like doing your own autopsy searching for the cause of death and witnessing your birth while being born, all at once.

    My greatest challenge is to find a new place to stand without the exhaust fumes of lingering fears clouding up my new self.

    To live fearlessly after knowing great fear, and not pack too much of the past into the present, be aware but not wary.

    Just as horses where blinders to shield them from scary things, I wear blinders that seem to shield me from good things. I wear them backwards.

    These blinders of immense fear stop me from seeing other alternatives.

    A wise woman kindly suggested removing the blinders, and letting in a view from the side.

    To see if perhaps there is a way to release the high emotions and find common ground where we are looking in the same direction but with two different sets of eyes.

    Self absorbed and selfish, is wearing blinders. Even if the blinders are made out of fear, they are blinders nonetheless.

    As a horse who has traveled so long relying on just one set of eyes, I am fearful in allowing others to see…with me or maybe for me.

    And to take my eyes off my road seems careless.

    Yet this one eyed view in a relationship, renders the other blind.

    Fearlessly I will have to take my eyes off my journey and look into his.

    And then perhaps when our eyes join together we will see a perfect view.

    Like getting the perfect pair of glasses that correct the distortion in our eyesight.

    I recall reading somewhere, that if two people are exactly alike as a couple, then one of them isn’t necessary. What I need isn’t someone who sees like me, but rather someone who sees what I don’t see.

    It doesn’t mean I give up my view, but I include his, and perhaps then we can find a place where we can walk together seeing differently but taking the same steps.

  • My mind now knows it.

    My feelings are like energy magnets and they seem to either be drawn to someone or pushed back, I am unable to steer my feelings, they have a life of their own.

    I can be friends with someone, and then they do something that changes who they are, and I don’t even have to wonder what to do, inside of me the desire to be with them changes and I move away.

    Some will say the friendship or love began to cool, and what I believe happens is new information comes in and it changes the ingredients of their energy system. And then we act differently, it isn’t a conscious thought, but unconsciously our body is leading us.

    I am now very astute as far as my body’s signals are, even a slight change sends a ripple across the water inside of me.

    In the past I believe my insides were very choppy waters so I couldn’t tell if an outside stress was stressing me, for the insides were already such a mess, it is like looking for ripples on 8ft waves.

    Each time a new ripple comes in I stay with it, I discern where it is coming from, what is going on in my world, and who is carrying it?

    My body doesn’t lie; it knows when something in my world is off kilter, when peace has been disturbed, when an untruth has walked into my space.

    Hints to my dis-ease float to me, unannounced and land like odd objects in an otherwise normal world, beckoning me to notice. If I miss one, a second one appears like messengers relentlessly waking me up.

    Once you notice these mess enders, the mess in my understanding clears up, and I see clearly.

    What I see isn’t always what I want, but what I need to see.

    I used to dismiss these signals and over sedate my body so I didn’t feel their uncomfortable truths, now I know if I don’t get the first message the problem doesn’t go away, I am just wanting to play in denial.

    The land of denial is only a temporary home, a respite on a journey towards the truth, and it seems the longer you put it off, the more you have to face in the end.

    I now prefer to face things one at time and as they happen, and to see the nuances and changes in people’s personalities and stay recent with the affects of their behaviors, so that we are not familiar strangers.

    My daughter’s face is familiar but everything else is getting stranger and stranger, my body no longer is comfortable with the ‘truth’ that she presents, it seems to be a token or crumb tossed my way to chew on, and bit by bit I am being fed a book full of lies to deflect me away from who she really is.

    To be honest, I wish my body believed what my ears are hearing, it would be so much easier, but they disagree and there is dis ease inside of me.

    My body is a lie detector and my mind now knows it…

  • Hide what isn’t there.

    “Speech as opposed to telepathy used by the animals…and the silence of muktas arose due to a need to be untruthful, and have a deeper involvement in material.” Tony O’Clery

    Speech arose due to the need to be untruthful is what I get from this quote, that we use language to deflect the true meaning of our actions or to excuse behavior.

    Immediately I thought of dogs and how we learn who they are by how they behave. A friendly dog acts friendly and an unfriendly dog acts unfriendly.

    What we miss is the excuse or reason an unfriendly dog is unfriendly, we take it as it is for they don’t have the luxury of words to sway us to believe otherwise.

    And we don’t have unfriendly dogs trying to be friendly, by speaking nicely over feelings of unfriendliness.

    Dr. Maya Angelou quote, “People show you who they are, Believe them.”

    Yet time and time again, we will take the words above the action.

    “I love you” will override the abusive action.

    “I am sorry or please forgive me,” is a way to deflect away from the behavior.

    What if we all stood with how we acted each time?

    What if we address immediately the action?

    What if words were used to just speak of actions?

    How often are your words used to get the other person to not believe your actions?

    Owning our actions seems like a really simple thing, but often times our actions alone are untruthful, we go places we don’t want to go, we do things we don’t feel right doing, we go along to get along.

    We get lost to what our own standards are for we get used to doing things for peace and to not be a stick in the mud, to be seen as okay, or a million other reasons.

    Due to this speech thing, we can tell ourselves we are doing something for a good reason, even when the behavior is bad for us and for others, we will find an ulterior motive that makes it okay.

    It is like the Picketers at funerals of soldiers, they feel that their message overrides all events taking place.

    What they fail to see is that their behavior is actually screaming above the signs, their true nature is showing, their hatred and fear arises long before a sign of love.

    They say they are warning us of God’s wrath, what they are displaying is their own wrath.

    The visual of picketers is what I often times feel of people who tell you one thing but do another. That we are supposed to keep our eyes focused on the sign and not see where they are walking and over who they tromp, just focus on the words, like a mad hypnotist of lies they bend us to believe opposite of what is truly going on.

    If you look at the world through the eyes of babies or animals, you would see things differently.

    “Out of the mouths of babes” comes truth, for they have not learned the power of words to hide what isn’t there.

  • Go with the Flow.

    United we stand united we fall, divided we stand divided we fall…are two phrases that ran around in my head as I laid my weary brain down to sleep.

    There has been a humming of difference going on in our home, a vague and nagging two party rule.

    This split difference seemed to be two strong individuals doing what they felt was right for them and it didn’t affect the atmosphere within our home, for our individual expressions were directed to those who did not live with us.

    Sure we had awkward uncomfortable moments, but they would only arrive when say a party was to be attended and we both didn’t go…yet we both could please ourselves.

    Me by staying home, and them by going, two drastically different responses to one event.

    It seemed to be this great wide-open free space of self-expression and allowing, and it was.

    What happens if our differences fall into our own home, where a person in our relationship changes and our responses are different?

    It became crystal clear to me that we were at a cross roads, both individually and as a team.

    The individual harmony of our home is tipping and sliding and churning over the way we both deal with actions that go against our moral code.

    My daughter’s changing actions have set in motion and are displaying our stark contrasts, where we are both sitting in a very tight spot.

    A spot that we both drew comfort in and it allowed us to be ourselves, we may be asked to leave.

    What we are being asked is to stand with that sentiment or to reverse and head in another direction; it truly is a turning point in our relationship.

    If my daughter continues in the direction she seems to be heading in, she will also change the direction our marriage, it will be the trigger that goes off and we will then be asked to change as well.

    She is the key that will turn this all.

    Our response is the echo and the reply and what I know from past behaviors, we answered differently.

    Can we form as a team and come up with an answering response that will honor both of us?

    I see the looming bends in our river, the rapids that will require each of us to hold to our course and see not one boat called family, but three different canoes.

    I see how the current in each of our lives may lead us down separated journeys, how the potential for parting is strong, how our differences become stronger not weaker, how their forces propel and repel.

    Within each of us lies our sense of self, our value and self worth and that alone is the motor that steers our choices, speaks our voices, and their clamoring for individual power drowns out the unity we once had.

    It isn’t the direction that they are heading in, or the rapids beneath them, but rather the integrity within each boat, the honesty and character that directs these boats in their direction.

    It seems that the Universe pulls them toward like-minded boats; our separation isn’t what the heart wants, but rather what our actions lead.

    The freedom that I lovingly gave that had us all happy in our separate boats, is now coming to bear.

    There is a fork in the river now, a change in the stream, a curve that bends their lives from mine… what I can’t know for sure is will they take the curve or change something inside of them.

    It isn’t me, but the river of life and how you change or it changes you.

    At the end of the day, I am a lady of my own character who has no choice but to follow where it leads…reality wins only but 100% of the time, it is futile for me set my canoe against it.

    This is what happened last time, six years ago, where my canoe didn’t go where the rest all went, where the river bent, and my character simply couldn’t go with the flow against the river of reality.

    I see my daughter’s canoe swirling lost in the struggle against the rivers flow, not wanting what is and lying to make it right, twirling in the swirling waters going against life’s truth, trying to make something right out of what is wrong.

    I have seen this branch of the river before, I have watched as many family members’ canoes got stuck in the madness of seeing an illusion and following.

    My shouts fall short and are lost in the waters of time that race by, telling them it is useless to fight what is.

    Now this time, the illusion has my daughter in its grips, the fantasy that is but a mirage above the river, and I can’t seem to break the spell that will plunge her back into seeing what is.

    And I can’t know the strength and conviction she has with this mirage and how far will she follow it and for how long, and if she does, what will my husband do?

    Will his canoe ride with her?

    Will his words to fall short?

    Will she hear us as we shout; will she trust the mirage or her old reality?

    Where will these three canoes go? Which ones will fight reality and who will go with the flow?

  • 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.

  • Until she can find her own.

    The hardest part of being a mom is when your child takes an exit that you didn’t see coming and they seem to disappear from the usual landscape and it leaves you separated.

    And I am not even sure what exit she took, where she is or what her intentions are, just that she has left the lane of what was and is now heading down a road that neither of us are familiar with.

    As I continue to travel down my regular road, off to the side is this other lane of unfamiliar nagging at me, this road from my view is full of potholes and hairpin curves with disappearing drop-offs and my daughter seems blind to all its hazards.

    I am not certain if she is at a wayside unsure or if she is going forward with a full head of steam.

    I am not even sure what is making me uneasier, her being on that road or not knowing if she is sitting down in wonder or going further into its complicated bends.

    Our voices have been silenced. But all that seems to be happening now is a silent movie, where the drama continues, but I can’t hear the words.

    The not knowing is far worse, I believe than knowing.

    In the knowing, I know and can deal.

    It is like her life has slipped from my view.

    This almost seems like the far end of a spectrum, one being you are doing too much in a child’s life, overtaking it and this is the complete opposite, where you are completely taken out.

    In the middle of the spectrum are two people who allow the other their lives, we share and explore and understand their individual journeys.

    I am wondering how to hook our roads back up, how to join them together in a way that honors and gives space, in a way that respects our differences, but allows us to trust each other.

    Is there a way two people can be together on two different roads?

    As women we have lots in common and I am sure it is harder when I have more experience and I have been her superior as her mother for all these years, but is there a bridge that we can stand upon and share our views?

    I will have to let go of my fears and my ‘know it all’ attitude and let her show me the landscape of her new world, I will have to be a visitor to a foreign land.

    It truly feels like two distinct worlds.

    Yet I believe and feel that I have traveled the world she is going into, so it isn’t that foreign to me, perhaps it is only new and exciting to her, she is the foreigner not I.

    What is so perplexing is that you never leave reality, this is an inward journey, you are traveling away from your essential self.

    Away from your morals, your values, your worth, your self esteem, your dreams, your passions, your soul. Into a world of secrets, lies and deceit…heading towards a self that is unfamiliar, foreign.

    It is the road to no you.

    You are being lured down this road by a friendly face that is the façade of negative energies, manipulating you with false promises and pretty lies.

    If she were to travel this road alone, He would be her only guide.

    What I want is to walk with the two of them and give the real story, like Paul Harvey’s ‘the rest of the story’.

    Yet he knows and perhaps she knows too, that I will be the story wrecker, I will unveil the pretty lies and unravel the promises and make them as they are empty.

    So what scares me the most is that my familiar voice will be drowned out by his, that she will tune me out and turn a deaf ear to my words and cling to his.

    Her life in its innocence doesn’t have a voice of her own.

    I am sure she feels the pull between him and I, both of us wanting her. And what I want the most is for her to have a separate voice from both of us, but I don’t feel she has one for her self as yet. I see her as a girl who confused and twisted and wants to have love and attention but it comes with such a price tag, her self worth.

    I can almost understand the twist between what he says and how she feels.

    His promise land is a secret place and it can’t reach the light of day.

    In order for her to travel down his road, she lies to me.

    What I want most is for the lies to stop.

    Lies to herself and lies to me, both are taking a toll on her.

    It is so telling to see what lies can do to your spirit, you can literally see her growing darker.

    The truth will set your Spirit free!

    The two roads I see in my minds eye is the road of lies and the road of truth. One road darkens and leads you away from self and the other will support and Lighten who you are.

    You wonder what makes some travel into the darkness and what makes others travel towards the Light. What decides this and can they make a U-Turn?

    I will do as any good mother or women who see another descending into the darkness will do. I will give her my voice until she can find her own.