I M Perfect lady

Tag: lost

  • Who Believed the Worst About Herself.

    In the aftermath of reading David Hawkins, I am left with an even greater understanding or perhaps an explanation of my journey, how I arrived, what happened that covered my eyes and spirit; my innocence.

    I almost felt that I was responsible for being so irresponsible, that I had somehow fallen asleep carelessly or that perhaps I didn't care enough to save myself or was kind enough to save my sisters or any other girl who was abused after me.

    There was a part of me, a pretty large part that felt I was responsible for being so irresponsible…and that irresponsibility is my nature, my soul's fingerprint, the DNA of who I am.  

    Another huge chunk also enjoyed the haughty elitism of the FALC; the one right pathway to Heaven.  That I didn't mind all the other poor souls going to hell…I was heartless to the core…Self Rightiously superior and self absorbed.

    When my 'truths' of my first forty-six years revealed themselves to be false, I began the digging process to uncover how I had gotten so blind, backwards and confused, and who was the real me underneath it all?

    It feels like I am paleontologist of my own life, where I am trying to get to the fossil of who I am…to see me in my natural state.

    While it takes courage to be willing to want to know the truth, to search for answers to your irresponsibility, to go into your coldness, your blindness to evil within as well as out; like researching a monster called Self.

    Being a detective in your own life…your dysfunctional life.  

    Taking apart your mental mind, re-creating the pathways of beliefs that led you to act like a robot…with a mind completely closed down and emotions and feelings buried deep.  A great student of hatred in order to feel good.  

    What I recall of the First Apostolic Lutheran Church, is that they spoke of nonbelievers as being the devil, along with items they called sins; how they will slowly take away your 'faith' little by little.  When in actuality, they (preachers) were taking away our innocence bit by bit.

    Each time we believed in the sermon about nonbelievers being bad, we were taught to hate them.  Each time we relinquished our rights to our body, the preachers/church won another part of our lives.

    Its subtle and not so subtle messages slowly turned us into hating not only others but our own flesh and blood…and the weakness of self against them.

    How it would be impossible to resist the devil, so best not to dance the first step.

    Innocence and strength of spirit was not preached…but wretchedness and our inherent weakness poured into us. 

    I recall spending my first night at a non-relative nonbeliever's home…I was in grade school.  They had a TV, the parents drank beer, and I was afraid to go to sleep.  I was terrified, like sleeping in the devils home.  Fear of them…and fear of the pull and not being able to resist.  I remember we slept on the floor in the livingroom, and she fell asleep with the TV on…and I was mesmerized watching it, while knowing it was wrong, but couldn't stop.  I felt how 'evil' was stronger than I.

    The little innocent child self, curious and in wonderment, wanted to see TV, knowing it was wrong…did so and then was terrified I would die with this sin in me and go directly to hell.  Stuck in a home of nonbelievers.  A weak child against the demons.

    Looking upon this from the perspective of the program they were putting in place sickens me.  Not so much the program which is so filled with elitism, but the fact that the innocent child gulps this up without question. 

    Eroding its sense of pureness. Imagine by grade school, I was already gone.  

    Now add onto this being abused by my father.  I am weak and wretched once again.  

    And now my mother's opinion of me comes in.  Once again, no one sees my innocence.  It must be true.

    Three very influential factions in my little world all see me as no longer innocent.

    There is no way I can't turn on myself and see me as they see me.  

    See my body as they see my body.

    And if I was of stronger 'faith' or a stronger little girl, I could have saved my innocence….I believed.  I was the one who was weak and couldn't save myself.  Because I couldn't I was responsible for being irresponsible.

    I didn't pull apart the string so deeply to see the intricate pieces of how all my innocence was lost.  

    If the church still held me innocent, while I had lost it with my father, I would have then been half innocent; half good.  But, there was no one in my little life that seen me as a very innocent child whose consciousness is not devious.

    What a big burden for a child to carry, the lack of innocence and good.

    No matter how much I tried to do good, It was never enough to erase the DNA of being guilty for losing my innocence…hating my weakness against evil.  I lost and it won, always.

    To see myself and to know myself and to feel myself as being innocent/good/a joyful Spirit was taken from me…replaced with feelings of guilt, shame and weakness. 

    It is like the church/dysfunctional parent rips apart all that is natural, and of spirit; peace, love and joy…transforming the child of innocence, to reflect instead, that of the devil and hatred and fear.

    What chance does the child have?  

    No wonder I felt weak and powerless, I was.  I was weak in discernment, weak in not standing up against adults.  I was weak in not questioning…I was weak and unable to fight those who were determined to have my innocence.

    Yet I berated myself and my weakness…and grew into a girl wise beyond her years.  An old person in a young life.  I tried to control what was out of my control….and felt guilty when I couldn't.

    I knew I lost my innocence. I knew I was weak.  What I didn't know was that the strong people in my life preyed upon this.  That there was no way in hell I could have stopped this.  

    Not the rape of my body nor the rape of my innocent mind by the church…nor could I have convinced my mother.  For her love of both of them left me with no one to turn to.

    As Dr. Maya Angelou says, "Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives."

    What I failed to appreciate are a few things;

    The strength of the adults and the natural inherent trust of the child and its inability to discern makes it the weaker of the two.  It isn't that I was irresponsible, I was naturally over taken.  

    I didn't fight this larger system.  Which leads to another quote by Dr. Maya Angelou "…surrender in its place was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice."

    I now can honor my lack of resistance, for I had no choice.

    It wasn't weakness…I surrendered in order to survive.

    I can vividly see, feel and know the weakness wasn't weakness, but the truth of being a child…it is inherently weak against an adult.

    It isn't a personal character flaw, a carelessness or calculated callousness; I was naturally being a child.

    I could weep for the natural little girl…who believed the worst about herself.

      IMG_2874

    Photograph, by Hannah Jukuri

     

     

     

  • Outside of the Mind.

    I went on a tour of The House on The Rocks in Wisconsin.

     

    At a distance it looks like a needle jutting outwards towards a rock formation, and the view from the garden seem architecturally intriguing, the surrounding landscape held trees of various sizes and types all growing on a hilly terrain… right in the middle of nature.

    We spent time in the gardens, taking pictures of the flowers and the fishes that swam in the lily ponds.  If this was the outside, we couldn’t imagine what the inside would be!

    IMG_6464 

    Our first entry was narrow and tight with low ceilings, dark and airless, carpeting lined the walls and floors and small windows let in a bit of light.

    As we exited into a transitional hallway, where we were able to walk out on the needle we had seen in the distance, we did then see we were above the trees or in the trees and nature surrounded us.  Once again we could see the sunshine and trees.

    And then the tour led us back inside, into dark mazelike rooms and hallways, were we couldn’t turn back and couldn’t get out.  We had no choice but go forward following the signs, “Tour continues”.

    The walls and interiors were lined with a collection of odd things, mismatched and yet similar in feeling.  From masks, to old dolls…their eye staring wildly…stuck behind the glass with lights shining upon them, the rest of the room dark. 

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     And placed in even darker corners imitation tiffany lamps.  It was said he kept the house dark to show off their colorful light. Interesting he honored them more than the brilliant nature right outside.

    The windows coverings were a dark blue, so we never glimpsed the light of outside. 

    And then came the windowless rooms, and in this darkened maze we walked, trying to neutralize the overwhelming heaviness of insanity…a carousel played its circus music, which added to the crazy energy, spinning around and around. 

    We went downward into a huge room that held a wale its innards exposed an octopus draped over it; one huge eye bore down on us.  Even in this huge cavernous room you felt stuck.  A narrow sidewalk kept us walking single file forward.

    Lining the walls was a collection of old toys, like forgotten memories neglected and hidden from children or remnants and artifacts of children.

    In the darkness and cave like atmosphere all things took on a sinister glow…perhaps each cried out from their prison. 

    I have seen old things reverently kept in museums, and these treasures were locked away in the darken bowels of this man’s creation, taking on his energy by how he displayed them.

    Our next stop the ‘house’ café, where fumes of cooking overwhelmed our already churning insides.  Amazingly there were folks dining, we walked by their tables, anxious to be set free.

    As we exited the dining room we met two young workers and asked how much longer the tour was. To which they replied 25 more minutes.  I asked if they could lead us back to the Zen gardens, and one replied he could, and we followed.

    My brother said that the inside of this structure was like taking a physical tour into his abused mind…

    In the years he and I have talked together, we have been trying to get him free from that confused maze like mind.

    He has a picture of himself prior to the abuse, and in it stands a little boy with a red sweater. So we always speak of his inner voice, his creative voice, his Spirit as the little boy in the red sweater.

    It was so incredible that it was a young lad in a red tee shirt that led us out and back to the Zen Garden…just like in my brother’s life.

    I was able to see and feel the energies of a mind gone insane, and see how there appears to be no way out and nowhere to sit down and be at peace, no way to find Light and freedom inside the mind.

    The tour was worth so much more than they charged, for it showed us a walking tour on how it feels to be lost in the abused mind and to see it sitting in reality surrounded by nature.

    It is encapsulated in the midst of splendid reality, shut out to itself, like a huge pocket in the land of sunlight, air and splendor, it is secluded and dark, narrow and airless…it again is like the mind…without the access to the right side.

    And the juxtaposition, Zen Garden – Dark airless rooms, maze like hallways, dead-end corridors…even the fake tiffany lamps could be seen as a false sense of hope or false prophets…just steps away are flowers, waterfalls, lily ponds and peace.

    A young woman we shared our experience with said it sounded like the religion she just exited.  On the outside it has a Zen Garden like look, but once you get in you are lost and in the darkness.

    What was so amazing and telling to me, were the reactions of others, some were doing jigs to the carousel music not feeling the energies there, for it they matched their own levels.  Others were like us anxious and feeling suffocating and needing to get out.

    It was a great gift to see the overall picture of the abused mind, a mind caught up in the crazy making of a dark religion lying in the middle of a Zen Garden.

    For it is literally true, that nature is our own natural state unless your sense of self gets caught up in the left side of your mind…

    We were able to see the insides of the man who created The House on The Rocks.  How scary to build this monstrosity in the midst of nature’s grandness, totally blocking it out.

    Just seeing the close proximity of the wide-open expanse of nature, the brightness, the airy breezes, the smells and sounds of nature, just outside of the darkened maze was profound.

    How like the human experience of either being in reality or lost in the confused mind.  Reality is always here; we just have to find our pathway. 

    The road that leads us back to being our self, to self expression, self awareness, to being the self we were meant to be, our unique expression of who we are…is found outside of the mind.

    “In order to experience the Ultimate Reality you have to be out of your mind.”  Neale Donald Walsh

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    Nature's brilliance!!!

     

  • The territory of God, Reality.

    From David Hawkins’s book “Truth vs Falsehood”

    “The limitations of religion have been analyzed by historians from secular viewpoint and by theologians in their criticisms
    as well as by great philosophers over the centuries. The intrinsic problems arise from the canonization of interpretations of spiritual truth that are the consequence of misunderstanding by the spiritual ego of ecclesiastics. Much is lost in translation of teachings that were not written down until centuries after they were spoken.

    “While the above are well-known limitations (as reflected by consciousness calibration), less attention has been paid to the relationship of the follower to the religion itself. The most obvious error is the worship of the religion instead of God (an error not made by the truly enlightened mystic). While religion provides inspiration, spiritual facts, and important information, it is only linear, time-located body of concepts and not the Reality itself. This results in the commonly observed violation of the essential truth of the religion in the name of religion itself. (e.g. Christian and Islamic Crusades, the Inquisition, putting nonbelievers to death, slaughtering innocent in the name of religion, political piracy of religion by theocratic totalitarianism, and rationalization of nonintegrity in “the name of faith,” etc)”

    “In the manner of speaking, religiosity is a subtle form of idolatry that puts the Church as an institution above God. The current slaughter of the innocent in the name of Allah the All Merciful is the glaring example. A more subtle example is the exaggeration of the external trappings and the ethnic peculiarities of the primitive tribal customs that become the focus instead of the core of spiritual truth. Thus, distortions result in oppression and violation of basic religious premises.”

    “The underlying defect in all the above is the downside of the ego itself, which then utilizes religion to its own ends; pride, control, gain, prestige, wealth, adoration, social image, and narcissistic gain. Religion is the means, not the end; it is the map, not the territory; it is the cover, not the book. Thus hyper religiosity itself, which appears as piety, can and does become an error as exhibited by scrupulosity. The great teachers taught the Truth about Divinity, not religion, which came centuries later. While the veneration of religion and scriptures is understandable it is their truth and God that are meant to be worshipped and sought.”
    David Hawkins

    I found reading this very affirmative, in that my experience of religion wasn’t about the relationship with God, but rather the ‘faith’ in the religion.

    I didn’t know God, until I left the religion, for religion had covered Him up, had danced a variable amount of rules and regulations, of fears and judgments that stood between me and Him.

    I love that religion is the cover, not the book…the map and not the territory.

    I have asked others who have left my old religion what they now have, and many will say, they took the faith. I am not sure what that means, Faith in what?

    When I left my old religion, I didn’t take anything from it, for there wasn’t anything tangible to take I had a belief in the map, but not the territory.

    Now I feel that I am walking around in the territory… Of God, Reality.

  • I see me

    “Tolerance is another word for indifference.” William Somerset Maugham

    I am not sure you can have tolerance unless you are indifferent.

    Indifferent – without care or interest: showing no care or concern for or interest in somebody or something.

    I am looking at abuse and addictions from the point of the person who is on the receiving end.

    Usually abuse is looked at from the point of the abuser or addictions from the point of the substance.

    We forget to look closely at the person who is getting abused and why they have the tolerance or seem indifferent to the blows and words that are hitting them; it is because they are without care or interest for their self.

    They are indifferent to their own life.

    They show no care or concern for or interest in their own life.

    My question is when did they become so careless?
    When did they let them selves go?
    What happened that they no longer care?

    What I can know in my life is that I don’t even recall a self; I was too little to know I had a self to hang on to, to care about and to care for, and it was gone.

    My self was gone before I even had a chance to know it and know that there was something to protect.

    When a child is raised in an environment where the adults are indifferent to the child’s needs, we then become indifferent to them ourselves.

    Imagine, parents who are indifferent, without care or interest: showing no care or concern for or interest in somebody or something…and that somebody is you.

    We learn indifference.

    How they treat us is how we treat ourselves.

    We learn how to not care or show interest in our selves.

    In fact in order to survive, it is best to not have a self.

    For a self would feel their indifference and we don’t want to feel their indifference.

    It is easier to be without a self, to live in a pretend space, making believe that they care and the only way you can believe that story is to be separated from your self.

    To deny your body, deny your feelings, to not be connected to the self.

    A self who is not there will not feel their indifference…but lke the old saying goes, “If a tree falls and no one is in the forest to hear it, does it still make a noise?”

    In the same manner, if a child isn’t there to feel the indifference, does the indifference still happen?

    If a self is unaware does the indifference still affect them?

    When you are indifferent how can you know indifference?

    I don’t know what was more shocking their indifferences or me not caring for me, for me to see the lack of interest in my own life and wellbeing.

    I was indifferent to my whole life…and had to bring me back to my world, to undo the indifferences and learn how to care.

    In caring I found me.

    I am no longer indifferent… I see me.

  • Be you alone.

    Yesterday I was asked if I felt lonely and I felt inside of myself and I didn’t, but I understood lonely and have been there often.

    Yet what I failed to understand until I started writing today was that lonely is seeking that part of ourselves that were wounded in childhood. It isn’t so much someone, but a part of us that is missing. We are lonely for ourselves.

    I was writing along and discovered that my meaning or my view of a childhood wound was neglect, sexual abuse, damage, something awful, but do you know what it really is?

    If you look at this from the point of view of what the child lost instead of what happened to them you would discover that the wound is something missing, not something added to who we were.

    It isn’t that we now carry rape and its disgusting features, especially if you were a child and the man your father, but what happens is that in that instant, we felt that our innocence went missing.

    Most focus on the rape and its ugly addition to us, like it now becomes part of who we are, instead of seeing this as something our innocent self endured.

    What I believe is if we are not treated as innocent, we then believe we are not, and then leave childhood minus our feelings of being precious and innocent.

    Living life without knowing you are innocent and precious will open you up to all kinds of situations where you sell your self short, become a people pleaser, have no sense of your own value and self worth.

    The one two punch that my parents delivered left me feeling that I was no longer innocent, my value had changed, I was no longer precious to him and she was unable to see her precious husband change, so instead I had to be the one.

    How confusing this can all be. You think you have to go back and wrestle with the feelings of being abused, but actually it is feeling the loss of innocence.

    A childhood wound is a hole in our innocence.

    And we are the ones to bring it back.

    We are the ones to strengthen our weakened state.

    In the beginning of healing we find ourselves as leaky as a sieve and we slowly over time, we become a solid bowl.

    My container of self, my wholeness is more solid today than ever before, I had plug the holes by speaking up about my innocence.

    In the past few months, I have been able to witness the loss of innocence, the lure and the grooming and the way others treat my daughter after, myself included, to find the intricacies of abuse and what it actually means to be wounded in childhood without the experience of guarding your self worth and value.

    Sadly, the reason there is so much childhood abuse, is these newly arrived souls on the planet haven’t learned to protect themselves they are easy targets.

    They are loving trusting and kind individuals that get lured and groomed into letting go of their innocence for the pleasure of an abusive person, confused with the attention and courtship, they fail to see the hook, before they swallow the line.

    What makes this so hard to stop, is that the abusers knows how to lure and groom and make comfortable and when they have complete trust and faith, they then ask or move in a direction we did not see coming, and in that instant we are asked to stand by our innocence or please them.

    Comfort them, love them, allow them, do this favor, lend an ear, bring compassion and empathy…letting go of our own innocence we focus on what they are asking, and our innocence fades away.

    We become part of the dance.

    Even though we didn’t start it, we participated and that alone makes us guilty, yet all we did was let our innocence go to please someone one.

    Letting go of our innocence is our crime.

    What I also found is the steep incline it took to get my innocence back, I had to put the ‘blame’ if you will on the one who treated me poorly, they had to own their own actions and I got to own mine.

    While I balanced my self worth sheets inside, I created two columns, what was my responsibility and what was yours.

    Separating who did what to whom, what age, what experience, what was reality in that time frame in my life, and in doing so, was able to see the trend continuing forward, all the places I lost myself.

    What I have found is the characters from way back then to present didn’t change, but rather I was able to see what was actually going on, and how I felt and how they felt about me by our actions.

    I had no one to blame in my adult years but me.

    It is in owning me as an individual and not a public held entity, that I see it all begins and ends with me.

    My business is being me, being whole, and finding myself in the midst of deep lonely feelings, for you can be certain there is another hole to plug.

    Healing is removing the parts of my self that I have given away to others, pieces of my innocence, chunks of my self worth, bits of value. To see all the times I looked at other to carry me, to make me happy, feel loved, feel worthy, all are signs of my weakness…the places I let my self go.

    Each time I am lonely…it is clue, I lost my self there.

    Each time I feel powerless, well you can bet I gave myself up there.
    Each time I am angry at another’s action, I am expecting them to do something for me, carry me, love me, make me feel secure, and so I know I dropped a part of me there.

    It is amazing how fragmented we are, how may folks carry our sense of self.

    It is lonely, if you need others to be you.

    In a co-dependent society, being alone means being lonely for no one is supporting you.

    How awful to stand alone, separated, unattached…

    Being whole means needing no one to be you.

    You just be you alone.

  • We Play!

    “When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college – that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, “You mean they forget?” ~Howard Ikemoto

    Imagine a world where we didn’t forget to be a child, to have the childlike wonder of the world, a sense of knowing we know how to do anything without fear and lack of self-confidence?

    Where we didn’t have to take classes to learn how ‘draw correctly’ or write perfectly, but instead do what feels right for you.

    It seems at times we are taught so much, we are taught how not to be ourselves.

    We learn until we lose our way back to our self.

    Perhaps the class we need the most is an open class without rules or expectations, a class where we go to unlearn all the fears and lacks that have been preached to us, a safe zone where we shed the years and layers of all the things that are not us.

    A shedding room, a fleecing space where we can get back to the childlike place, where we are the center of the Universe, where we can do anything and we admire ourselves and all that we accomplish, where we affix stars to all that we do each day, where there is an unlimited amount of energy and things we want to see and do, where the world is wide open and we are free.

    How do we take off the heavy cloaks of doubt, fear, and lack that we drag around each day? How do we quiet the voices that have trained us to be motionless in fear?

    We wiggle free by doing things no adult in their ‘right’ mind would do… we play!

  • I feel Solo

    As I look at my self in my life today, I am so much freer than I would have ever dreamed possible.

    While I live in the same house, married to the same man, and still have four children with me, I am no longer chained by their behavior…well okay, I still get stuck for a half hour or so, but I can usually set myself free.

    Dr. Berman spoke of the triangle affect, where relationships get stuck when couples move from one corner to the next exchanging roles and manipulating feelings.

    I lived on that triangle for years and years, and I was the master at being a hero and dabbled in the victim villain roles pretty often as well.

    On the triangle you are never in control of your feelings, somebody owns yours and you own anothers, we forever go around making other people feel and feeling how other people make us…never free to feel by yourself.

    If your not moving feelings around, there is the spot of hero, where you literally take over the responsibility of another’s life, where you come in and save the day, allowing them to miss a lesson to grow and learn by experience.

    This triangle is dysfunction and it leaves you separated from your feelings, where you are forever at the mercy of another.

    My past six years have been unlearning the triangle reflexes of blaming the other, and instead look inside to see where I gave up power.

    Looking for the power leak, where I lost control of my own power.

    Any time I say, “you disappoint me” or “ you make me feel sad” I am back on the triangle as a victim.

    Instead if I say, “I am sad or I am hurt” I am in control of my feelings and I get to explore why.

    What actions did I do to wind up feeling this way?

    What can I do now to make me feel better?

    It leaves the other person out of my feelings; it frees them up to be in charge of their own.

    The co-dependency triangle leaves you so tangled up and out of control, where you never can be assured that your peace, love and joy will stick around, that soon something or somebody will come along and steal it away.

    What I love love love, is that you are the only one who can give that away. It isn’t stolen, you literally hand it over in a victim like drama way with great words and feelings.

    When I learned that my love, my joy and my peace were mine and I had right and obligation to protect them, life was much easier, I walked away from the triangle.

    Standing authentic with your feelings isn’t always easy, but always empowering.

    I no longer disappoint my feelings or cover them up or speak down to them or pretend them to be different than what they are.

    I stand up with them no matter what.

    My feelings empower me.

    The Spirit of me is alive in feelings.

    I am as I feel or I feel as I am.

    I blame no one for how I feel.

    I feel solo.

  • Darkness is the Only Love She Knows

    (reposting this for my brother)

    “The more of our self we own, the less need for enemies to embody our disowned darkness. Everything is welcomed by the soul.” Pat B. Allen.

    People are carrying the dark parts of us? Who we call our enemies are really folks carrying our darkness, our disowned darkness. So if we OWN our own darkness, then we will no longer have enemies?

    Darkness what is darkness? They are carrying our darkness, what is that? How do you explain darkness to others, how can a child know what this darkness is?

    If you showed a child an enemy of yours what would they look like, speak like, act like? Here is my enemy?

    How odd this all seems that our enemies are here to bring us a piece of ourselves we lost or disowned. That seems like a good thing, yet why are we so opposed?

    Enemies are our friends. Then who are our friends? Enemies?

    “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.” Martin Luther King Jr.

    I think this is all interesting.

    Can it be that silent friends can become our worst enemies?

    “Enemies will embody our disowned darkness.”
    I wonder than what friends embody? What is their role?

    Disowned darkness is not that there isn’t darkness within us, there is, but we don’t want to own it and only our enemies are brave enough to show us where we are not!

    Doesn’t this make sense, for I know that there are many times that I didn’t want to point out to a friend a dark spot along the way. And I have also experienced losing them when I did.

    In the end I became the enemy that carried their darkness for them, I became dark and unfriendly, this is amazingly accurate when I look at it.

    You become the message not just the messenger.

    Within my family I became the dark sheep, hey is that where the term came from, anyway I became the darkness for speaking the truth of what is.

    If I was the enemy for speaking the truth, what were their friends telling them?

    I am way confused on what being friend is now, for it sure seems backwards to me.

    In my experience, being friendly AND being truthful isn’t seen as one and the same!

    I literally remember being thrown back when they didn’t want to hear what I had to say! I was startled when I found myself standing against them as their enemies for speaking of reality.

    It wasn’t that I was making up stories or telling them lies against what is, I was just standing in a spot and being a commentator of it. And I became worse then the actual crime.

    Can a crime be owned or disowned? It surely seems that way. But whether you own it or not will it still have happened?

    When I arrive in front of my family they see me as their enemy, I am the one who is the problem, me.

    I used to say, “how in the hell am I the problem, me the ‘little girl’ in the molestation, I am the one who has issues, surely this is not right!”

    I became the darkness, which is what so many little girls become. They become and are the ‘disowned darkness’.

    We become the enemies of an otherwise beautiful kind world filled with sunshine and happy deeds, if only we would keep our mouths shut and our darkness to ourselves!

    We carry their disowned darkness, we the little ones carry their loads for them.

    In a letter my mother wrote to me on my birthday in 2004;

    “I have Beth’s core love as a daughter for her mother. I saw her as this beautiful small child. Blond hair chubby cheeks – sitting on the grass by the side of the house, a schoolgirl working very hard at home and at school a very good sincere child. Serious beyond her years. A young adult trying to keep the whole family marching along in line, reaching back to gather up the stragglers. Stepping up to carry part of the burden of my son’s handicap, to lightening the load for her mother…..

    In some way I cannot understand with my limited knowledge some where along in her childhood she picked up all the stray, sick, mixed up emotions whirling around our family. All the emotions and ugly undercurrents I did not see or feel, she did. As a child she tried to make everything right. A hopeless task. The same way I tried to make our family close, loving etc by pasting on false fronts, making excuses for my husband, working harder taking all lacks myself to make the perfect mother perfect family. (Daughter) you can rest now. You no longer need to carry this unmanageable load. I grieve your 46 years but I cannot undo it. I no longer need your affirmation of your love. I have it deep inside of me. Nothing can remove it….. Forgive me so you can release your soul to soar among the angels. Always forever, Mom

    I carried this letter around for a while, it seemed that my mother could see me, yet in the end it was her only seeing my love for her.

    It was painfully clear that in order to have her love, I had to carry the load, put the load down, so goes the love.

    Darkness is the only love she knows.

  • Shine Once Again.

    “Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.” ~Maya Angelou

    I don’t know what to blog about the show with Oprah and 200 Adult Children of Sexual abuse, men whose boyhood was stolen and now their manhood too seems to be lost, they are left in a middle ground, no longer innocent and no longer able to be a man.

    What I heard was that sexual abuse leaves you feeling vulnerable.

    The definition of vulnerability is,

    “Susceptibility to attack or injury; the state or condition of being weak or poorly defended; a specific weakness in the protections or defenses surrounding someone or something.”

    Being susceptible to attack and injury is to be a child, especially one that isn’t being properly watched and cared for, being poorly defended…having a specific weak parent that can’t protect you.

    A weakness in a parent can be a simple as loving the predator, defending his goodness while the child’s experience is widely different.

    I have stood on both sides, the parent and the child, the blind and the unseen, the knowing and the unknowing, on both sides feelings are denied.

    Fears are pushed aside…children are left undefended, monsters go on labeled as father, feelings not felt.

    Blindness spreads.

    When I did see, damage lay all around.

    When I did feel, terror was the truth.

    When I did know I was cast out.

    Cast out for speaking, seeing and knowing abuse.

    As I watched these men, I know what they fear, they fear being cast out.

    Shunned for being abused.

    How is that right?

    How do we have this so upside down and backwards?

    What I know to be true is I was cast aside, my voice not wanting to be heard, what they want the most is for me to be unchanged, to appear like the picture of innocence all the men held.

    To just be me without the abuse.

    What an impossible task to attain… to not be abused while being abused.

    So each man stands in the impossible stance, abused while trying to not show the affects of it, yet the abuse has infected each part of their lives, there is no place that abuse doesn’t touch.

    Once you stand fully in being abused, you can then begin to see where abuse created a life instead of you.

    Exposing the abuse allows the innocence to shine once again.

    “In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

  • Living without Me.

    Sitting on the ‘passenger’ side of the car but driving gives you a whole new driving experience and a great metaphor for seeing life from another angle.

     

    What was natural and instinctual is now taking thought; old driving habits are now null and void.

     

    My left hand is now the controller and my right rests on the armrest, it all seems awkward and clumsy, my brain is much more aware of the steps it takes to find a radio station, to shift, adjust the heat, etc where before it was done thoughtlessly.

     

    The driving view from the passenger seat is much different as well; it feels like you are off center.

     

    The left turns seem like you are taking them too wide and the right turns feel like I am turning on a dime, and backing up I look ‘naturally’ over my right shoulder to just encounter the door.

     

    After all the years that I have driven from the middle of the seat, using my left foot on break and gas and my left hand to steer, this still seems way odd, odder than being half way there!

     

    This shows me how instinctual we live and operate, and how we train ourselves to be that way!

     

    It takes time to feel comfortable with change, until we move naturally instinctually and even without thought, until it becomes a new normal.

     

    In my life, I am still acclimating myself to all the different things I now do and many that I no longer take part in, how each new change requires thought and I see the cause and affects inside of me.

     

    Learning to drive myself inside out, thoughtfully and in awareness.

     

    Before I drove my body recklessly to avoid feeling what I felt inside.

    I swerved away from confrontation, avoided questions and thoughtful inquiries, dodged oncoming unhappiness, passed up opportunities, followed passively in religion, parked my own desires and passions, bumped along unknowing myself, a body clearly out of control with a reckless driver.

     

    Isn’t there a traffic violation for reckless endangerment?

     

    I was in danger living without me.