I M Perfect lady

Tag: lost

  • Backwards to Find Myself.

    In Peter Levine’s book, “Waking the Tiger” he speaks of understanding abuse, as you had to be there, that in order to truly understand the full impact, you had to be there.

     

    We use that in humorous situations, that sometimes the humor is lost in translation, same goes for abuse.

     

    What is so insidious about the abuse is that the abuse mountain of emotions that are too big for a young child to handle is now you.

     

    And the little child of you is lost behind all the swirling rolling twisting contorting emotions, a river of terror, it is like standing behind a waterfall, unable to get out in front of those falling currents of emotions.

     

    It is like swimming in a stream up a waterfall for we are brought back to being a young child feeling what we failed to feel, we are being brought back to the scene of the crime to simply feel.

     

    Simply feel what was so horrendous that we left our self behind.

     

    You had to be there, means we have to walk through our abuse to be there, to own it and live it and know its impact, and then and only then can we be reunited with the child self we left behind.

     

    It is amazing how you can live a life and not be there, not be conscious of not being there, to be missing and not even know it. 

     

    The crime of abuse is that we grow up without a self, we leave behind in a secure place our wonderful beautiful self, and go forth without that.

     

    We don’t want to soil and put garbage on our self, we want to retain our perfection and we believe we can by simply not acknowledging abuse.  Yet we don’t live beautiful and wonderful, we live as abuse.

     

    And somehow we feel that we made ourselves dirty, soiled and feeling like garbage.  Yet it is not our self we feel, we feel the contents of abuse.

     

    To make the separation between what is abuse and what is the child is to see abuse as the painful waterfall that came down on the child. 

     

    The waterfall of abuse is not the child.  It is what happened to the child. 

     

    It is my experience that once you understand that the abuse is not you, but something that happened to you, that you are not responsible for the waterfall of abuse, you can then retrieve the child back.

     

    Seeing the innocent child waiting behind the waterfall allows you to let go of the shame and the blame and the guilt.  It allows you to see clearly the separation between the abuse and the child.

     

    The child didn’t create the waterfall of abuse, but instead intuitively retreated to get out of the pain.

     

    In my case, no adult ever came along to rescue the child.

     

    I walked backwards to find myself.

     

  • How can you lead your life if you follow?

    When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. 

     ~Victor Frankl

     

    The more dramatic of a change you make, it shows just how far off base you were to begin with, and how far apart you were living from your own truth.

     

    I remember writing, “I was so lost, and that I was going to go find myself, I didn’t know who I was or even that I was missing.”

     

    That is how far off base I was, I literally had no idea who I was or even where to start looking for me, nor how to recognize me in my life.

     

    I had so many ideals and beliefs that I followed that had nothing to do with my own experiences. 

     

    I marvel now at how I lived so lost onto myself, but so found in other’s lives, how I disappeared without another.

     

    When you find yourself unable to move unless it is in tandem with another, there is a great possibility you have lost yourself and you don’t even know you are missing!

     

    What is even scarier is to find the persons you have ridden tandem with are frauds, then what?

     

    I was terrified standing there naked without a life of my own.

     

    Dumped off due to the truth that came crashing in, I was left to reconstruct myself at 46.

     

    It was freeing and terrifying at the same time.

     

    I was finally able to make my own choice, and each and every new one I formed, was a layer of the new me.

     

    Little by little, situation by situation, day by day a new me began to emerge. 

     

    I marvel now at the width and breath of life I lived without being aware that I wasn’t there.

     

    No voice, no feelings, no emotions, no awareness of me.

     

    Incredible to live a life without a self!

     

    You literally can live blind and deaf, for you just simply follow.

     

    How can you lead your life if you follow?

  • Sickened

    Here is another few lines from “Sickened” by Julie Gregory.

     

    “I lived my life in a bubble. First it was her bubble. Then it was of my own making.  And now, freshly stripped of the delusion that had protectively swathed me for years, I was embryonic – too raw to interface directly with the world.  People aren’t just influential to me; a thin layer of them fuses onto me like hot cling wrap.  Their words become my words, their voice inflections merge seamlessly into my own, their opinions form a transparency over the faint etchings of my own developing ones.

     

    I look back through stacks of photographs of me after the fire.  In each picture, I hold the facial tics and expressions of whoever I am involved with at the time. My face adopts the characteristics of the other, their fine lines, the exact way the jaw muscles freeze or the flex within their smile. My face morphs to take on their identity.

     

    Then I look at a baby picture of myself at six months old, lying on my belly, a natural smile lightening up my face.  My own natural smile, unbroken, intact.  This is the only picture I have of my own face, not someone else’s.  I wonder am I destined to drag around the past like a discarded placenta?  I wonder how far do I boil back in order to reclaim my self?  I was how many pieces did I lose along the way?  Where do I find them? Can I put them back? How many times do you glue a broken vase before you toss it?

     

    I had been taken to the bone.  My mother had fingered into me like the hollow of a melon and scooped me out.  And now, years later, you could press belly to backbone.

     

    Books are my friends, where it’s okay to be silent….

     

    All my time is spent slipped silently between their pages, finding some truth to go with the mirrors. They are self-help gurus who parent me positively and show me how to believe in myself.  They suggest underlying spiritual philosophies:  That each soul chooses its parents and all its experiences in order to learn the lessons it needs to develop fully.  That if the soul’s human form knew what it was supposed to learn beforehand, the ego would short-circuit the process of discovery.  They tell me that, because of this double blind experiment, where you find yourself in this painful process is exactly where you need to be.

     

    That if you lived in a dark cave you’d need time to adjust to the light when the rock was rolled away.

     

    That Hawaii had to be a volcanic eruption of toxic goo and ash before it became so lush and beautiful.

     

    That if you watched the clothes in a washer, it would look like they’re getting dirtier as they slosh through filthy water.  But it’s only after this agitation cycle that you can pull out fresh, clean clothes.

     

    I bolster myself with platitudes: “We are who we are not despite adversity, but because of it” and “They say the truth hurts, but the only thing truth hurts, are illusions.” I sink the studs into soft dirt, and bank my new foundation.

     

    My books talk to me like the child I am and coax me into developing autonomously.  They metaphorically hang all the colored pictures I make on the fridge when I race home with them.  They never tell me: Lighten up, you think too much.  If anything, they say, Hey, you, with the frontal lobe, turn off the TV, stop the noise, and consider this deeply.  They never dismiss me with Get over it.  Or if I turn to my father: What are you talking about? My brother: I don’t remember anything. Or my mother when I squeak out that I was too young to be taking the gun out of her mouth: “Jesus Julie, where is a mother supposed to turn to for support if not to her own daughter?  You think the sun rises and sets on you, like you don’t have any problems?  I can think of a hundred times you…”

     

    I pile my books around me before I sleep and they are the psychic guardrails that keep me from falling out of bed at night.”   Julie Gregory

     

     

  • Feminine Self

    My 40th yoga session followed right behind a two-hour Oprah interview with 4 sexual predators and a book I was reading called “The Flying Boy” by John Lee.

     

    As I began yoga and on the Standing Head to Knee pose, as I went to pick up my left leg, which is weak and unbendable the thought came to me, “my feminine side was crippled or broken” and tears began to flow.

     

    It was like my body felt relieved that I could acknowledge this.  I felt such compassion for the wounded feminine parts of me as I lovingly stood there on one leg holding my left/feminine side.

     

    This alone would be a huge gift on day 40, but on we go. 

     

    I get to the Balancing Stick pose and as I raise my hands above my head and I begin to breathe, another profound thought comes in, “I am only responsible for love and trust,” and again tears come and a huge lightness to my shoulders.  As I was breathing in I was feeling only being responsible for bringing trust and love to my relationship with my abuser, my father.

     

    I am innocent of being responsible or guilty for the abuse.

     

    I then proceed to hold the pose of Balancing Stick for all but the last one, for on that one, again I was eager to tell you about this, and lost the connection.

     

    Those are two gifts this yoga gave me today, the realization that my feminine side is damaged, but with good reason, and that I am free of carrying the weight of guilt and shame or blame.  My shoulders literally felt lighter yet again.

     

    As I went into the floor Separate Head to Knee, where my left hip usually screams, I told it, “it is okay I understand your hurt,” and I was able to do this without pain, not perfect, not farther, but with ease and more tears. 

     

    It is like I am recognizing the physical manifestations this body has held.

     

    An overwhelming sadness came in knowing that I have lived so long without this side, this softness, this trusting openness, how hard and stiff it has left me, struggling to be stronger, tougher, when what I needed was to be more relaxed and soft. 

     

    Bikram is right, “you have no idea what yoga can do for you, Yoga makes you you.”

     

    As one predator stated, “I killed the person she could have been.”  And he is right.  But they only win if we don’t bring her back!  I intend to return to my full healthy loving trusting feminine self!