I M Perfect lady

Tag: life

  • 100 Proof.

    When I hear people so vehemently defending their religion, it almost seems like they are taking it personally, perhaps too personal, like there isn’t a self left standing, that the self and the religion are one.

     

    In my experience within the FALC, that the stamp of the church infected each one of my roles.

     

    In fact as a child, you were first taught what a sin was.  That you could or could not do this, not by what was kind or good for humanity, but rather what is good for being a First Apostolic. 

     

    So, instilled within us was the foundation of the FALC, before we even knew who we were, we identified ourselves as First Apostolic, and it ruled our lives from the time we were very little.

     

    Not only that, but the adults in our lives, the ones we depended upon for food and shelter, also lived by this formation. The FALC controlled them, not reasonable thought or what was good for their own family, but what was seen as good within the church.

     

    If you look at how we were indoctrinated from the time we were just babies, it is easy to see how any comment that is shining a light or seemingly smearing the church, it is actually feeling personal, for there is very little about the self that isn’t created by the FALC.

     

    And while deeply invested and entwined within the confines of the religion, there is very little self exposed, so any comment will feel like a direct hit.

     

    Otherwise, if this weren’t so, the reactions would not be so rabid…there could be two people having a discussion.

     

    Yet as far as my experience goes, having a dialogue with someone who is 100 proof of religion or abuse, all you talk to is the religion or the abuse.

     

    You can’t get to the individual or self, for each role and thing they do is seen first through the lens of abuse or religion.

     

    There is no separation…or awareness, it is one solid piece and no matter what words you use or what tone of voice or what research you have found, what the truth literally is, IF it something being said about the 100% make up of who they are, they will react and not respond.

     

    Their reactions will be from fear and understandably so.

     

    I have very little recollection of my years in the FALC, for I was missing.  There was no self there.  I moved through life following the group more or less or feeling shame and guilt if I didn’t.

     

    Mostly I would say shame and guilt for not being a good member.

     

    I didn’t marry within the religion, and I feel that was the first weakening of the hold the religion had on me.  And they do preach that the devil is out there waiting to pull you out.  And it does, but I don’t see it as a devil.

     

    I seen myself from the view of the church or the view of how my family saw me…or the view of how my husband saw me, or the view of how my friends saw me. But never a view of how I saw my self.

     

    If you took all the views away…or without them giving me value, I disappeared.

     

    And in fact, when my family’s abuse came into view, I lost a huge part of my self, for I lived for them.  Then when I discovered that the church knew of my abusive father and that he was blessed repeatedly, even for the latest little girl BY her father, I lost another huge chunk of who I was.

     

    In a few short days, I stood alone.

     

    It was then that I knew I had no me.

    All I had was a person who had been built up by what was needed by the religion and family too. But I had built very little of me and I was 46 years old.

     

    Oh, I suppose I had 25% me.  My art…well maybe not that high, I guess it was more like 5%. 

     

    That 5% was pure me.  And it was from that small beginning I began adding more and more of me into me…and each time I discover another vein of religious or abusive beliefs or thoughts…I know it is another percentage of me coming forth to be brought upright.

     

    So, as I read the comments of those who feel so viscerally attacked, I understand.  For there is very little of you that isn’t made up of FALC ingredients, you may be 100 proof.   

  • With me.

    In Chapter 8, Recovering a Sense of Strength (in The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron), she writes.

     

    “One of the most difficult tasks an artist must face is the primal one; Artistic Survival. All artist must learn the art of surviving loss; loss of hope, loss of face, loss of money, loss of self- belief.  In addition to our many gains, we inevitably suffer these losses in an artistic career.  They are the hazards of the road and, in many ways, its signposts.  Artistic losses can be turned into artistic gains and strengths – but not in the isolation of the beleaguered artist’s brain.”

     

    “ As mental-health experts are quick to point out, in order to move through loss and beyond it, we must acknowledge it and share it.  Because artistic losses are seldom openly acknowledged or mourned, they become artistic scar tissue that blocks artistic growth.  Deemed too painful, too silly, too humiliating, to share and so to heal, they become , instead, secret losses.”

     

    “If artistic creations are our brainchild, artistic losses are our miscarriages. Women often suffer terribly, and privately from losing a child who doesn’t come to full term. And as artist we suffer terrible losses when the book doesn’t sell, the film doesn’t get picked up, the juried show doesn’t take our paintings, the best pot shatters, the poems are not accepted, the ankle injury sidelines us for an entire dance season.”

     

    “We must remember that our artist is a child and that what we can handle intellectually far outstrips what we can handle emotionally.  We must be alert to flag and mourn our losses.”    Julia Cameron

     

    What I love about this first page of the chapter is how we have to learn how to survive loss.

     

    In life it seems we are so focused on other things, no one teaches us how to mourn the little things, so when the huge ones arrive, we too can use the same techniques.

     

    And I love how what we don’t mourn becomes our scar tissue, the bumps and bruises we did not sit with and honor their presence in our lives….don’t really disappear, but ride along gathering a thick skin…scar tissue.

     

    It will literally feel like we are tearing off the scab to now deal with loss from long past. To even sit with a self that was robbed of being so…all the little ways I failed to hold on to me.

     

    I now am gathering to me all the parts that I gave away, and bringing them back to my center, my attention and my awareness.

     

    I love that loss must be acknowledged and shared…for that is how we can not only see our wound but let other see it, so we all can acknowledge it, honor it…and it will then fade away.

     

    Who knew that it was the ‘hiding’ and keeping our hurts secret that we suffer the most?  It seems airing our loss is where our strengths will be found.

     

    I know that this blog has been a great show and tell for me and I am grateful and humbled by those who read and witness it with me.  This sacred place is more healing where two or more are gathered in truth. Thanks for being here with me.

     

  • Save your soul.

    The biggest hurdle in stopping abuse is stopping being a part of the family it is within. How easy to report abuse in another family but where it actually counts is when you see it and respond in kind within your own.

     

    To stop treating a father as a dad and see his actions of being a pedophile and putting him away and out of reach of other little girls.  My family failed at this big time.

     

    The authorities brought him to court, but the family set him free.

     

    I wish this was an anomaly but sadly, most will defend the father and not even let it get as far as ours did.

     

    There is this thing called, “Unconditional Love” that keeps this from happening, and another thing called, “Forgiveness of Sins” that does as well.

     

    We all think that the biggest thing we can do is report pedophiles to the authorities, but that is only a small portion of the job.

     

    The biggest deal is to take a family and rip it apart seeing who really does what, what are they doing, bringing and being, to bring in consciousness where before blindness lived.

     

    The key components a pedophile needs the most is your undying faith in them, your unconditional love and your willingness to continue to bless away his bad behaviors…for you to be relentless in this and NEVER changing.

     

    What most fail to realize it aren’t the authorities that are to blame but the families of these perpetrators.  Well, I believe the law of the land needs a big wake up call and to see that they are allowing dysfunctional families to call the shots…

     

    For as it stands now they are asking blind people to see and act clearly.

     

    Most often, and in my case it is true, that I wasn’t the first one abused, but rather just one of a long line of generations worth.

     

    This was normal behavior.  A mother who was unable to discern abuse for she herself never healed from her own abuse.  Her abused self worth and image attracted a man who operated at the same level.

     

    I am finding out that my brother and I are very much changelings within our family’s heritage, that every now and then one comes along and switches the family traditions, but in order to do so, you leave the family.

     

    What most want is to stop abuse, but what few will do is stop being part of a family.

     

    You will have to go against generations of folks, relatives in order to stop abuse.

     

    It isn’t a simple task, for 99% of the abuse is from someone you know and trust and of the 99%, 50% is from someone who is your blood relative.

     

    It is like turning against your own self…and is.

    You will have to take all you have ever known and begin yet again.

     

    I get so incensed with folks who tell me…I would never or I don’t stand with abuse, while they are still having relationships with people who abuse.

     

    It is insanity.  You are being just as abusive to the child by having a relationship with the person who hurts little children.  The child sees who you are aligned with and KNOWS you are not a safe person or one to help them.

     

    This matter is far more complex than it appears.

     

    Abuse is an infection that has spread through generations of families and will continue on unless you walk away. 

     

    You have to leave the infection called abuse… IT will not leave you.

     

    It will not one day change from hurtful abuse to wonderful love, stop pretending time will heal and change things.

     

    You have to leave it in order to be free of it…and then you have separated your self or isolated the infection to just you and then the real work starts.

     

    You have to see it in all your thoughts and beliefs and have to start working on each one to right it.

     

    To change your old definition of unconditional love to love that is free of abusive effects.

     

    You have to change your mind about a million things.

    You have to be willing to not know your self or those you ‘loved’.

     

    You have to be willing to walk a walk against family and ‘loved’ ones.

     

    I walked this walk…and while it was extremely tough, it is well worth the effort. 

     

    You will not walk alone; you will have the guidance of the Universe if you are a seeker of the truth.

     

    You will be changing your very DNA and the legacy you were born into.

     

    I will help anyone who has been chosen to walk this walk.

     

    So, go ahead and report, but mostly start the dialogue in how far would you go to stop abuse, would you go the whole way, would you forsake the world to save your soul?

     

  • Being a Beginner!

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

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

    I love being a beginner!

  • Original Truths.

    We live life on a spectrum, each aspect of our selves grows and expands, each moment of time is stretchy and flexible, and it is alive with the presence of those we are with.

     

    At times my life is highly charged and ignited with huge pockets of learning, and at others it is the calmness of the riverbed.

     

    This past weekend it felt like it was a place where all rivers merge, where we joined each other in our own truths…

     

    We each stood in all our glory, our feelings, our life’s journey, our experience, and truth alone made us one.

     

    It mattered not our age or our roles in life; instead we see each other as spiritual beings on a human journey…and even more importantly the emergence of our souls out of darkness.

     

    Seeing newly freed beings finding their own power was incredible to witness, to see them becoming aware of being conscious, the energy of their essences shining forth.

     

    Yet without the darkness we would have nothing to compare the Light to.

     

    They have known how it feels to be in the constricted tight spot, and are now learning the vastness of being free, being themselves instead of following along behind a religion that is geared to keep your spirit dead.

     

    It felt wonderful to be with others who are embracing the energy of “You be You” of gathering close their own self, their intuition and voice, to live from a place of what brings them peace, love and joy, to see them discover their own originality.

     

    We all arrived with our own original truths.

     

     

  • Living Life.

    Today I was able to see the overall appearance of being broken and being the only repairman to fix me. 

    To see my life like a broken clock, and have the clock actually doing the repairs while still telling time, to be changing the insides while the insides were still being used; their intricate pieces falling together to make me who I am, without rendering them useless or forever ruined beyond repair.

    It seems literally insane that those of us from dysfunctional homes are the ones to get us functional, and we are to do this while living life, raising children, going to work, and navigating friendships and relationships. 

    To know you are broken and all mixed up and yet it is from that state you have to be the one to right yourself, to swim out of the swirling waters and find the calm sea and learn to stay there.

    What I first became shockingly clear about was how broken and upside down and backwards I was. It was a miracle I was functioning as a human being.  And it is from this inside out and backwards state that you begin to make corrections. 

    It honestly is like being a broken clock and making repairs on your self from the inside out, while remaining in working order.  Even though it was tempting, I just couldn’t fall apart! 

    There were literally times where I felt that what they were asking was far too much. 

    As the changes are happening inside, I can go from a little lost girl who needs a mother to mothering my own children, from being in need of nurturing to nurturing, without a breath of space between. 

    Life situations will bring to surface old working aspects of me to be worked on, and I can be overwhelmed by sorrow or indignant with anger and fear…I can be an indignant mother or a wounded child…and I also have to get the message while being upset.  

    Be the broken part and the solution.

    Situations arise that will bring forth that which needs to be healed, and at times, I get tired of being broken and being the fixer too. 

    Today the swings from old to new are swifter, but in the past, I could linger for days in a quandary trying to figure out what was wrong, what was being asked of me in order to return to inner peace.

     My old clock ran like a top for dysfunction and I am reworking it now to run beautifully on peace, love and joy.

     Using the same moving parts, I am getting them to respond differently.

    This has been a full time job and one that is best done in the middle of a full working life, for it is there we can fine tune our instruments to get them responding properly.  We have live living breathing humans to help show us where we are not, where our thinking and beliefs are broken. 

    Each time I respond in fear…I have found another broken piece.  At times it seems that this work is never ending, for the more I fix, the more there seems to be broken. 

    I fix the inside and then have to go and try it out in relationships on the outside.  

    It is one thing to change your beliefs, it is another to then use them in real living color, to set forth and be that which you just discovered.

    My old clock was energized by falsehood and this new one runs on truth.

    As much as this boggles the mind, I have also experienced the same confusion with my emotions and feelings. 

    It is incredible to have great gulps of sorrow for losing an old piece, to enormous clouds of peace settle in its place as the new arrives.

    It seems I have been forever within a moving and changing landscape, and it then occurred to me this is living life. 

     

     

  • Paying Attention to each part of me.

    In the Sun Magazine they have a section where they give a word or two and you write about it. This month it was called Paying Attention.

     “Whenever my husband talks to his mother, brother or sister – on the phone or in person he sits down. This irritates me because I wish he would multi-task.  It also makes me jealous because I wish I came from a family of people who gave each other their full attention.”

     “My father traveled a lot on business and left the raising of my sisters and me to our mother.  A consummate multi-tasker, she’d pack meat for the freezer while helping one of us compose a school report.  In the middle of talking to us, she’d trail off: “Get me the…” The radio or TV was usually on, tuned into a talk show…”        Gigi Maniscalchi Edwards

     

    Paying attention to me meant if you could keep all the things going, you were paying attention.  Little did I know that I wasn’t paying attention to any of them, but just snagging bits and pieces of each.

     This fragmented view of life is what I was raised with, your focus was never fully intent on one item, behind each thing you were doing, was a background noise of a half a dozen more.

     In a large family there is always something going on or something to be done, there never seemed the time to stop and pay attention.

     Even as I raised my own children, I didn’t stop to pay attention fully and intently on each child and their conversation…I was juggling too many items in each moment of time.

    I am getting better at paying attention and focusing on one task at a time, and I can feel my body get anxious when there is too many things going on at once.  And I feel the distracted attention when speaking to someone who is doing things while we talk. 

    I prefer the game of one on one, where there is only one ball in the air at a time. 

    How sad for my children to be tossed in the air with dishes, clothes, cooking, and things; where my fragment attention was all they ever got. 

    My self was one of the things that got lost in the shuffle as well, and I have been learning to slow life down to now start paying attention to each part of me.

     Here is another writing on attention  that caught mine…

    “The other graduate students and I at the University of North Dakota drank a lot of coffee.  Whoever drained the last few drops from the thirty-five cup coffee maker would discard the used grounds and, using a long handle brush that we found on the wall in men’s restroom, scrub the inside of the percolator.

     

    We were satisfied with how this system was working until the day someone saw the janitor cleaning urinals with the brush.”     Lowell Wandke

     

     

     

  • She was Me

    I had the opportunity to be on web radio, but more importantly the pleasure of speaking with a kindred spirit about my journey, to feel the ease and flow of conversation minus the struggle of explaining.

     

    She got me…and I her.  We looked at life through the same lens…from the inside out. 

     

    Usually it seems I am the odd man out, I am seeing things from a unique angle compared to others in a room, but this time I felt her looking with me in total understanding.

     

    I was also able to see me in a broader way, to realize how far I have come, how my art has led the way, how intuitively I have walked forward and the distance I have traveled.

     

    I have been so intent on this step here that I didn’t see how far I walked, how much I have changed and how deep within I had gone, or even how I now appear.

     

    It is like working on a piece of art, but not stepping back from it…to remain close and perfecting each tiny stroke, not realizing what you have created.

     

    I knew that I had changed drastically, but I don’t believe I saw the beauty in the changes or even the wisdom. 

     

    And I was truly able to see the art in me.

     

    To see my transformation from patterns and dark colors and rigid lines to being the Lady of my quilts.

     

    I am the lady…I can see how we are merging, I am catching up to my lady.  The distance is not such a future dream and far away hope and desire, but that I am living her life today.

     

    I am free, I have self-expression, I am empowered, and passionate, I am truth, I am me.

     

    In the interview I saw my Lady speaking, and she was me.

     

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    Love her confidence and attitude…and I love that it is within me, has been…waiting for me to embrace it.

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    This is how my quilts hang in a quilt show…they never seemed to match.  The first time I seen this, I cried, for they fit in like me…not the same as the rest. 

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    I eventually was able to recognize that not fitting in was okay…but I still chuckle at

    how different my quilts appear next to others…just like me we are in a league of our own. 

  • Cultivate the Art of Play

    In reading chapter 5 in The Artist’s Way, Recovering A Sense of Possibility, she speaks of being self-destructive, and yet she isn’t talking about what we usually think of self-destructive behavior.

     

    We usually think of drugs, alcohol, abusive type behaviors, but never just being nice or being good.

     

    That is the self-destructive behavior that I struggle against. 

     

    Julia Cameron writes.

     

    “A young father with a serious interest in photography, years for a place in the home to pursue his interest. The installation of a modest darkroom would require dipping into savings and deferring the purchase of a new couch. The darkroom doesn’t get set up but the new couch does.”

     

    “Many recovering creatives sabotage themselves most frequently by being nice. There is a tremendous cost to such ersatz virtue.”

     

    “Many of us have made a virtue out of deprivation. We have embraced a long-suffering artistic anorexia as a martyr’s cross.  We have used it to feed a false sense of spirituality grounded in being good, meaning superior.”

     

    “ I call this seductive, faux spirituality the Virtue Trap. Spirituality has often been misused as a route to an unloving solitude, a stance where we proclaim ourselves above our human nature.  This spiritual superiority is really only one more form of denial. For an artist, virtue can be deadly. The urge toward respectability and maturity can be stultifying, even fatal.”

     

    “ We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish. We want to be generous, of service, of the world. But what we really want is to be left alone.  When we can’t get others to leave us alone, we eventually abandon ourselves. To others, we may look like we’re here. We may act like we’re there. But our true self has gone to ground.”

     

    “What’s left is the shell of our whole self. It stays because it is caught.  Like a listless circus animal prodded into performing, it does tricks. It goes through the routine.  It earns its applause.  But all of the hoopla falls on deaf ears. We are dead to it. Our artist is not merely out of sorts.  Our artist has checked out. Our life is now an out of body experience. We’ve gone. A clinician might call it disassociating. I call it leaving the scene of the crime.”

     

    “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” we wheedle, but our creative self no longer trusts us. Why should it?  We sold it out.”

     

    “Afraid to appear selfish, we lose our self. We become self-destructive.  Because this self-murder is something we seek passively rather than consciously act out, we are often blind to its poisonous grip on us.”

     

    “The question “are you self-destructive?” is asked so frequently that we seldom hear it accurately.  What it means is Are you destructive of your self? And what that really ask us is Are you destructive of your true nature?”     Julia

     

    What I had known was that I left myself behind to take care of and be responsible for others, leaving my needs alone on an island far far from my awareness and I called this being a good girl.

     

    I would not have called this behavior as being self destructive, but I had the experience of waking up at 46 shocked that I was no where to be found.

     

    Now, 6 years later I am much more conscious of a self, my self, and in the past few years begun taking care of her in ways that I had never done before.

     

    I am learning to let go of the responsibility and care for others or at least balance it out between self care and other care.

     

    I am not completely there, but now have an eye on me.

     

    The Artist’s Way is to bring more attention to this self, to bring her right up in front and out in the open, to display her and showcase her in your life and be the main Feature and not the sideshow.

     

    It is wildly exciting and intimidating and it feels strange to dive into thoughts, ideas, dreams and experiences that have been long forgotten…and a part of me wonders and doubts, while another part feels the forbidden fruits I am reaching for.

     

    Dare I reach and grab onto things that only I want?

    Dare I consider only my self?

     

    I can feel the long forgotten parts of me ready to awaken, but unsure if they should trust? 

     

    Like a see saw between coming alive and staying comfortably dead…my spirit hangs in the balance.

     

    What seems to be shocking even to me is that I was able to stand by my self through out the revelation of my father’s abuse and the aftermath, that I was able to find a strong voice and a steady stance… but doing frivolously artful living seems like a luxury.

     

    Finding a self in the sea of abuse and taking care of my self as I unraveled seems like an honorable thing, but to just do fun things, artful things, things that make me come alive and tickle me, seems so careless or playful.

     

    And sadly being care less or play full is not what I know how to do.

     

    I don’t know how to play.

     

    I don’t know how to do frivolous things.

     

    Imagine I need to learn how to play.

     

    My self doesn’t know play.

     

    My self isn’t a natural player.

     

    I will have to cultivate the Art of Play.

     

  • The Responsibility lies within you.

    In the past week, I have heard two different ladies tell me that God wants them to be kind to people who are not kind to them…that being kind to unkind people is pleasing to God.

     

    Both say, it isn’t what they would do, but they truly feel this is what God wants them to do.  So to please God they act differently than how they feel.

     

    They put on a God Smilely Face, when inside they are feeling quite the opposite and believe this is what God wants them to do.  God likes them to be fake.

     

    I find this very interesting and quite unsettling that they, when they find themselves in a spot of where their real feelings would have them move away, that they instead put on a smile and blame it on God.  He wants me to do this…

     

    What kind of God is that, I asked?  I am sorry, but the God I know, would not want me to be fake nor have me be with folks who are unkind… For Him.

     

    To which I am met with silence.

     

    Oddly enough by blaming God and ‘acting’ in a manner you assume he appreciates, leaves you without having to make a tough choice.

     

    It leaves you not having to move, nor speaking up or presenting your inner truths.

     

    In fact Martha Beck in this months O Magazine, wrote about the problem with asking “What would Love do”…for many of us have the wrong definition of love.

     

    I would say the same of God.  What would God do, usually is what you feel is your highest option.

     

    And if your highest option is to be fake, I am uncertain who you are.

     

    Again, it leaves me wordless and shaking my head…to hear these adult women having to be false, to be unable to walk their own truths, to present their own feelings and move away.

     

    They stay to please God. 

     

    In fact one lady told me this was the meaning of ‘unconditional love’ to remain kind no matter what.

     

    I told her I have found that this is the meaning of abuse.

     

    That if you are unable to make a choice, to turn around, to leave, to speak your truths …you remain a victim.

     

    And the God I know would not want me to be without free will.

     

    It is easier to blame God and plaster on fake kindness than it is for them to face them and say what they truly feel.

     

    Instead of holding God responsible for your acting inauthentic, the responsibility lies within you.