I M Perfect lady

Tag: mother

  • On the Fault Line.

    My mother turned 80 today, or so I was told.  I have lost track of her age, as well of her life.  She seems a mirage out on the far horizon, behind me…detached from daily emotions. But, I do know, if I were to be in her presence, a multitude of feelings would rush through my body.  Not the waterfall of love, light and comfort, but the opposite.  

    I wonder if I will ever be able to feel neutral, nothing, no ripple, to be 'social'.

    In the Fall, my middle daughter will marry….and she (my mother) is invited.  It is only for one day, a few hours, a fleeting moment in time, yet a special loving one for my daughter and our family.  Interesting to be part of a Mother/Daughter moment…one being the daughter and the other the mother….

    My daughter is free to invite whom she wants at her wedding…some of which will be hard for me to be around. Perhaps hard is not the accurate word…but difficult or challenging…

    I have a hard time seeing her role there.  I understand 'grandmother' is her title and right…and yet I don't see her as that.

    My daughter sees a grandmother, I see an accomplice…an active participant to abuse of many little girls.  I can't feel warm, fuzzy or ap-pathetic towards her or even neutral and social.  My vision of her, my memories are tainted, sordid…unkind. I don't feel her like a grandmother, a safe place, kind heart and comfort.  I feel her as painful, hurt, uncaring, not kind, psychotic.

    The contrast of emotions set forth for that day boggle my mind…how to anticipate, look forward to such contrasts of emotions…to be in the middle between my daughter and I and my mother and I?

    Harsh cold on one side and warm love on the other…

    I know my role is mother of the bride, not daughter.

    I am to place my estrangement with my mother off to the side.

    My estrangement with my siblings as some will find the need to attend.

    I am to keep facing the future and love.

    It is like a real life event of what goes on in our psyches…the negative energies begging to be on stage front and center…and loving kindness, peace, love and joy.

    Just as today, her birthday, I turn away from the past and lean into my life of estrangement but not to be overwhelmed with negative emotions.  Not to get caught up on the thoughts of her…and to see instead the wonder and beauty of this spring. To feel the peace in my home, to well up with emotions of love towards my husband and children…looking ahead, and not behind.

    Estrangement means you will sometimes be on the fault line…


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  • Hear Their Cries.

    It is that time a year when on my route, I get to see babies in nature.  The ones I particularly love, are the fawns.  They are so wobbly and tiny, and yet expected to cross the roads quickly behind their moms.  I have seen three sets this spring.

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    This little one got confused.  It did not follow the mom, and was making crying noises.  When I got between the baby and his mom, she came back across the road and stood between me and baby.  And she began making distress noises.  I drove off, letting them be in peace.  And, forgetting to get her picture.  You can tell by the size of the "For Sale" sign, how tiny it is.

    Further on the route, on a paved road, I again watched a mom cross the road, and a baby start, hesitate and then go back to the side of the road and lay down.

    So, I slowly drove up and snapped this picture.

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    This is right on the side of the pavement….I am just leaning out of my passenger window.  It can almost hide in the short grass.

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    As I am taking this picture, the mom comes back across the road, but quickly disappears in the trees. I again, leave…knowing I am causing them both stress.

    What amazes me is how attentive the mothers are in nature, and how defensive of their little ones, how they will put themselves in the way of danger to save their child. The natural mother instinct to protect, is alive and well out in the wild.

    What a marvel that without parenting classes they do this so well.  I said to the momma deer that stood and pranced in distress…."Good Mom, you are doing a good job!"

    And then there is the human species, who seem to fail at this in rising numbers.

    I am not sure if our natural mother instincts are disengaged, or do we not recognize danger?  

    In my experience, my body had a warning system fully engaged, but my mind overrode this "fear" signal.  It first of all deleted the molestation pictures or failed to even record them. So, all I had was a beeping body, but nothing else to go on.  My fears of my father seemed groundless and false.

    I was unable to discern danger…for I wanted my mind to agree. 

    As a child, in order to survive, our minds protect us. By not remembering the abuse. And this alone disengages the danger knowing.  We can't survive in childhood, with all of our faculties, IF we know, we are in danger.  Yet, oddly, what we don't feel is safe. We are not if full blown danger, but nor are we relaxed and feeling cared for.

    I have been thinking about what I could contribute to Dial Help as a hand out.  For they handed to me what was abuse.  I am thinking, instead there needs to be a worksheet, that is similar to "You know you're a Redneck, IF…."

    So, it would be, "You know you're a victim, IF…"

    The way the human body and mind work together to help us survive, is the hurdle we need to overcome in order to get back to who we were prior to abuse.

    This mechanism that is automatic, pre-sets us into believing what is not real…and not believing that which IS.

    Our inner sight and knowing is completely backwards.

    It is my belief, that there are many folks just like me in the FALC, who have this psychic blindness. And we are asking the blind to see. How?

     I am not sure I can articulate this accurately, to portray the dilemma any agency will have to flip this around, for they are living in a sea of danger and are unaware.

    The momma deer, knows I am a danger to her child.

    The woman who is married to a pedophile doesn't see the danger.

    What I do believe, though, at least in my experience…is that the child is trying to teach the parent. The child is giving out signals that the parent is missing.

    But what I also know to be true in most cases, is that the parent themselves are abused and their own pain has them so self absorbed, they can't see their children.

    They haven't healed from their own childhoods…so they don't know how to mother naturally, and to know danger.  Unlike animals in nature, we don't know who the predators are.

    And when this is so, the children are left unprotected.  It is open season all year round, and a child has no one to hear their cries.




  • God’s Peace

     I was asked, "Do you love your mother?"  And this is how I feel.  I wrote this almost 3 years ago…

    “You are the mother you have been waiting for.  When you focus on the mother, you become motherless.”

                Byron Katie

     

    Happy Birthday Mom, I want to thank you for all you taught me.  All the pain you suffered so I could get it right.  I want to thank you for staying true to form, for staying the course, so I could see by your example where it would lead me.  I had you to show me the awful way it would turn out, if I was not strong, if I had no courage, if I had only fear.  

    It is your birthday, and I wish you well, I hold no resentments or anger.  I have lived as you and wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.  Your walk is hard it is not an easy one.  I know the trials on the way, the blindness, the unknowing, no memory, no path, the lost hopes, the dreams that never arrive, the pit of desperation, of false hopes, of others changing, endless roads to no where.  

    I know how it is to hurt unintentionally, to see but not see, to hear but not hear, to have children you can’t protect, to lose more than your heart can hold.

    Some how, by some miracle, I have been spared of lifetime of that.  I have been allowed to spring free, allowed to know a new me.  I was able to walk free of the prison that holds you so tight. 

    We don’t know why I was set free, why I walked away, why I could see what you never could, why I could hear reality.  All we know is that the two of us are the same, but different, for some reason you had to be left behind in a hole of a million sorrows. 

    I stand here outside in the brightness of day, with truth and honesty, reality and kindness. I know why you did what you did, for you didn’t have another way.

    If I had to wish a wish for you, it would be this, “I wish you love, peace and joy, a Heaven of bliss”.

    It is because of you, I am who I am. 

    Ironically we were both motherless yours died when you were two.

    You had no one to show you the way. 

     As a mother I know it would bring me great peace to know that my life was for naught.

    Yours was not, for you gave birth to me.

    If only I could return the favor and lead you out free, but it doesn’t seem to be the way of it for now.

    I leave you knowing where you are, and I wish you peace.

    God’s Peace.

     

     

     

  • Survivor Self.

    The Drama of the Gifted Child – The search of the true self, by Alice Miller.

    Here is what she writes on the back cover of the book.

    “Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs and memories skillfully in order to meet our parent’s expectations and win their “Love.” Alice Miller writes, “When I use the word “gifted” in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb…Without this ‘gift’ offered us by nature, we would not have survived.”

    These few paragraphs explain my great power to know what others need, but really have no idea my own needs.

    “In my work with people in the helping professions, I have often been confronted with a childhood history that seems significant to me.

    · There was a mother who at the core was emotionally insecure and who depended for her equilibrium on her child’s behaving in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurities from her child and from everyone else behind a hard authoritarian, even totalitarian façade.
    · This child had an amazing ability to perceive and respond intuitively, that is, unconsciously, to this need of the mother or both parents, for him to take on the role that had unconsciously been assigned to him.
    · This role secured “love” for the child – that is, his parents’ exploitation. He could sense that he was needed, and this need guaranteed him a measure of existential security.

    This ability is then extended and perfected. Later, these children not only become mothers (confidantes, comforters, advisors, supporters) of their own mothers but also take over at least part of the responsibility for their siblings and eventually develop a special sensitivity to unconscious signals manifesting the needs of others. No wonder they often choose to become psychotherapists later on. Who else, without this previous history, would muster sufficient interest to spend the whole day trying to discover what is happening in other people’s unconscious? But the development and perfecting of this sensitivity – which once assisted the child in surviving and now enables the adult to pursue his strange profession – also contains the roots of his emotional disturbance: As long as the therapist is not aware of his repression, it can compel him to use his patients, who depend on him, to meet his unmet needs with substitutes.” Alice Miller

    I lived as a great servant for my mother’s needs for at least 40 years and never fully developed my own. This is an odd substitute for being ‘needed’ for our own self, but rather what we can offer to them.

    In a section called, The Lost World of Feelings, she writes…

    “ On the basis of my experience, I think that the cause of an emotional disturbance is to be found in the infant’s early adaptation. The child’s needs for respect, echoing, understanding, sympathy, and mirroring have had to be repressed, with several serious consequences.

    “One such consequence is that person’s inability to experience consciously certain feelings of his own (such as jealousy, envy, anger, loneliness, helplessness, or anxiety), either in childhood or later in adulthood. This is all the more tragic that we are concerned here with lively people who are often capable of deep feelings. It is the most noticeable when they describe childhood experiences that were free of pain and fear. They could enjoy their encounters with nature, for example, without hurting the mother or making her feel insecure, reducing her power, or endangering her equilibrium. It is remarkable how these attentive, lively sensitive children, who can for example, remember exactly how they discovered sunlight in bright grass at age four, at eight were unable to ‘notice anything’ or show any curiosity about their pregnant mother or were ‘not at all’ jealous at the birth of a sibling. It is also remarkable how, at the age of two, such a child could be left alone and ‘be good’ while soldiers forced their way into the house and searched it, suffering the terrifying intrusion quietly without crying. These people have all developed the art of not experiencing feelings, for a child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother’s love or the love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress her emotions. She cannot even experience them secretly, “just for herself”; she will fail to experience them at all. But they will nevertheless stay in her body, in her cells, stored up as information that can be triggered by a later event.”

    “Throughout their later life, these people will have to deal with situations in which these rudimentary feelings may awaken, but without the original connection ever becoming clear. The connection can be deciphered only when intense emotions have been experienced in therapy and successfully linked with their original situation.”

    “Take, for example, the feelings of abandonment – not that of the adult, who feels lonely and therefore turns to alcohol or drugs, goes to the movies, visits friends or makes ‘unnecessary” telephone calls in order to bridge the gap somehow. No, I mean the original feelings in the small infant, who had not of these means to distract and whose communication, verbal or preverbal, did not reach the mother because his mother herself was deprived. For her part, she was dependent on a specific echo from the child that was essential to her, for she herself was a child in search of a person who could be available to her.”

    “However paradoxical this may seem, a child is a the mother’s disposal. The mother can feel herself the center of attention, for her child’s eyes follow her everywhere. A child cannot run away from her as her own mother once did. A child can be brought up so that it becomes what she wants it to be. A child can be made to show respect; she can impose her own feelings on him, see herself mirrored in his love and admiration, and feel strong in his presence. But when he becomes too much, she can abandon that child to a stranger or to solitary confinement in another room.”

    “When a woman has had to repress all these needs in relation to her own mother, they will arise from the depth of her unconscious and seek gratification through her own child, however well-educated she may be. The child feels this clearly and very soon forgoes the expression of his own distress. Later, when these feelings of being deserted begin to emerge in the therapy of the adult, they are accompanied by intense pain and despair. It is clear that these people could not have survived so much pain as children. That would have been possible only in an empathic, attentive environment, which was lacking. Thus all feelings had to be warded off. But to say that they were absent would be a denial of the empirical evidence.”

    “Several mechanisms can be recognized in the defense against early feelings of abandonment. In addition to simple denial, we usually find the exhausting struggle to fulfill the old, repressed, and by now often perverted needs with the help of symbols (cults, sexual perversions, groups of all kinds, alcohol, or drugs). Intellectualization is very commonly encountered as well, since it is a defense mechanism of great power. It can have disastrous results, however, when the mind ignores the vital messages of the body. All these defense mechanisms are accompanied by repression of the original situation and emotions belonging to it.”

    “Accommodation to parental needs often (but not always) leads to the “as-if personality” this person develops in such a way that he reveals only what is expected of him and fuses so completely with what he reveals that one could scarcely guess how much more there is to him behind this false self. He cannot develop and differentiate his true self, because he is unable to live it….” Alice Miller.

    The last few words, ‘because he is unable to live it…is the root reason it never develops, instead the only self we know is the survivor self.

  • Kept this Pattern Going.

    Being a mother in the middle and having a generation before me and a generation below me puts me in a great place to witness the intricacies of how relationships are formed and how the legacy is passed on.

    Being aware of the legacy you are in while you are in it is near impossible…it takes stepping out to get a clear view.

    I leaped out of my childhood legacy when my mother’s moral tower displayed her husband of 49 years as a pedophile, it was then I knew the generation before me, and sadly I could also see the generation beneath me and how one man had touched two generations while my mother loved him.

    I saw him in his truth, her in her truth, and then me in mine.

    I saw the river that flowed beneath all of us and the only way to escape that river is to see what you are swimming in.

    Within me lay all the layers of teaching and years of treatment and formation, in horror I saw her in me…

    Within a few days I was able to see the structure of our family and how it all was flimsily held together and how each insane idea supported another insane concept, the maze was intricately held together by unquestioning authority.

    To see the shocking truth of a pedophile father and the undying “love” of his wife towards him, shatters the scaffolding that I had built called me.

    I saw my own insanity.

    I then saw how insanely I had treated my children based upon the morals and values of a woman who ‘loved and supported’ a pedophile.

    Stuck in the middle with an insane woman above me, mistreated children below me and me aware, I then had to unhitch myself from her teachings and long held beliefs while continuing to raise children but change everything.

    In the middle, I knew I couldn’t change my mother, but I had a chance at redoing me and then I had the hope that if I could, my children would then repattern themselves after the new me.

    What a tight spot to be in, yet with great freedom.

    I knew intuitively that they felt my every move.

    Where in the past I had blindly trampled upon their lives, I now knew that I could inflict pain or raise their soul.

    It has been my intentions, while not always successful, to see the children.

    To be very conscious of how my choices in life impacted theirs.

    For we are all strung on the same string, the string called family legacy.

    You simply can’t escape the line of your parents, but you can change the dance steps, the outcome, and the way you live your life.

    It takes great strength and courage to see the insanity of an abusive family and to see the traces poking out in you, to own your insane madness and to feel the rage of injustice, and the unknowingness of being a child and following along, with love, trust and faith.

    I found myself pretty much empty of good value, and had to start from scratch building my own tower of morals and values, and I started with the foundation of truth.

    I began building a whole new structure using the pieces of insanity, for its denial is what has kept this pattern going.

  • Fully Engrossed in Her Life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I love that I know this now.

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

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

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

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  • 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.

  • “With Love always mom”

    As I began my workday yesterday morning, I am in high spirits using all my efforts to stay positive with the large volume of mail, willing myself not to get weighed down by the load.

    I am happy to start sorting letters, the tray is filled with colorful envelopes, and a gold one sits in front.

    As I pick it up, my eyes focus in on the familiar name, mine, and the handwriting is hers.

    My high spirits escape in one breath.

    The restraining letter meant nothing to her.

    The weight of the mail meant nothing compared to the heavy heart of disappointment.

    She did not honor me.

    I tossed it into my home slot, and continued on for a minute or two, and then the not knowing was too much of a distraction, so I stopped, opened it up and read.

    “Noel” is printed in fancy letters on the front, and inside the card’s message, “Wishing you peace, love and joy this Holiday Season,” and her added line, “With love always, Mom and Gramma.”

    It is ironic that what I need for peace, love and joy is for her to honor me, and yet she stomps down upon the restraining letter I sent and sends her usual card.

    Her love always is one that disregards my needs, my wishes, and me.

    I am not seen at all, as she continues on, her stride unbroken by my restraining letter to her.

    My last written words to her, my first in 6 years, was a plea for space, for her to honor and respect our silence…

    My last line was, “If you fail to honor our separation as it is, you are deliberately seeking to disrespect and hurt me; I will take it as such.”

    Her love comes in with disrespect and hurt.

    I felt it as I stood there in a mountain of mail holding a card that yet again doesn’t see me.

    Feeling abused on the inside, my feelings tore up, I tossed it back in my slot, and tried to gather myself back together to continue on.

    Her failure of honoring my words should not be a surprise, yet I guess I am the ultimate believer.

    Believing that one day she will see me, even as sit behind a wall of restraining words, that she will hear them and see me.

    See me telling her, you hurt and disrespect me.

    My words to her fall upon deaf ears.

    It’s like my needs were never written.

    Like a bad energizer bunny she keeps going and going and going.

    Her blind bullheadedness is abuse.

    She is bullying me.

    With words of love.

    Love that knows no boundaries.

    Love that doesn’t hear.

    Love of a bully.

    A one-sided affair.

    Being bullied by words of peace, love and joy.

    The juxtaposition, a card of noel, a Christmas song…carrying the tune she has always sung.

    Actions of hurt and disrespect signed, “with love always mom.

  • In My Mother’s Eyes

    Being in this moment of time and healing my childhood wounds requires me to make changes now what I was incapable of doing back then.

    It is like living in two places at once, or being a grown woman and a little girl at the same time, my past is brought to the present to be healed or the presence goes back to the past to feel, heal and deal.

    What I failed to understand about the term, “healing your childhood wounds”, was that you literally are bringing forward the stuck emotions.

    Meaning you are made to revisit emotions that are stuck on, or places you are stuck and not free.

    Where you carry fear that is unreasonable as a mature woman.

    It is incredible to be a big lady in her own home, feeling feelings of being a ‘bad’ little girl, disappointing or displeasing, hurting her mother.

    How I don’t have this right. This option is not available.

    How the fear of her reaction seems to overshadow my independence and freedom.

    Yet, if I capitulated to the fears, I get stuck in the place emotionally being afraid of my mother’s reaction.

    It is her reaction that I fear.

    This is a very strong iron clad idea that I am not to upset my mother’s world, but what I also didn’t want to see is her reaction.

    It is twofold.

    That there is an unspoken rule, “thou shall not displease thy mother, for there will be a consequence IF you do.”

    It is perhaps the consequence… of what will happen or what do I not want to know?

    There seems to be more than just fear of her reacting badly, but rather seeing what’s beneath.

    In a dysfunctional home, I bet we know that the depth of love for us is very shallow, that we can’t push them very far and we will fall off the ledge of love.

    For in a dysfunctional home, the love of child seems to be last, the very last, in the furthest reaches, out beyond selfish needs, addictions and desires, and what we don’t want to know for sure is that this is true.

    That it is true we are barely seen.

    That we come behind a long list of things that matter more, that even with all the physical evidence to the contrary, we just don’t want to know, our well being comes second, third, or tenth on the list.

    Speaking up, making my wishes known, is to go against our usual dance.

    I am putting down my co-dependent wand.

    My greatest fear is that when I stand and offer to her that my well-being come before hers, that I will be seen as useless to her.

    That my value drops to zero.

    In My Mother’s eyes.