I M Perfect lady

Tag: Oprah

  • My eyes are on Healing

    Yesterday as I listened to Oprah speak of how her Audience over the years allowed and cheered her to be her authentic self, it also enabled her to inspire us to be more ourselves. As she opened up and shared her life with us, we also opened up and shared ours.

    There is this open swinging space that if you stand in your truth, those around you will do the same…and it works the opposite too, if you hide, they hide.

    She spoke of how she learned from sexual abusers about the grooming process and how they lure you into trusting them…and she realized, “It wasn’t my fault.” 

    This wisdom she passed on.  Her one regret was that she wasn’t able to shine a big enough light upon sexual abuse, but that she did what she could over the years. 

    I am thinking we can each take on this task.

    On a much smaller scale the blogs are doing the same…we are trying to shine a light of truth upon an issue that has affected our lives deeply and we know is still going on. 

    Just like her, we are using our voices the best way we can.

    We are sharing our truths, our pain, our abuse, and we are sharing what we discovered, what we learned and how we see things.  

    As more blogs come forth and more people begin the dialogue, change will happen.  Minds will open; questions will be asked…the tides will turn. 

    We will go from hiding skeletons to displaying our family wounds in order to heal.  Hiding isn’t healing.

    The difference it has made to have one other family come out and share their truths is huge.  Its impact will be felt far and wide…the ripple affects will reach places we can’t even begin to imagine. 

    To not be the only family speaking out…means we are not alone. 

    I know the cost of speaking your truth and I know its rewards…and more importantly, I know the cost of silence.

    Martha Beck writes about Heroes and Fear in Oprah’s Magazine this month.

    “Heroes aren’t free from fear; they’re just so focused on a worthy goal that they feel they can’t turn back.  Most of humankind’s great achievements – the sorts of things that make us say, “Oh, Wow!” – were accomplished by people who were muttering, “OH Shit!”  Heroes don’t feel special, just dogged.  They walk their scary paths with shaky knees and trembling hands. One shaky step at a time.”

    Jim is a Hero!

    Carl is a Hero!

    Judy and Erin…Heroines!

    Here is another part of her fear article that I like.

    “When you shoot,” my friend Jim, a hockey player, once told me, “you never want to look at the goalie. Look at the space around him. Where your eyes go, the puck goes.”  A white water kayaker warned me, “Look at the water, not the rocks. Where your eyes go, the boat goes.”  My riding instructor shouted, “Look where you want to go, not where you don’t.  Where the eyes go, the horse goes.”

    “Got it?  Where your attention goes, our lives go. As you take each step, be peripherally aware of the dangers, but glue your attention to the path between them.”

    I love Martha’s wisdom.

    My eyes are on healing…

  • Outside of Time.

    While listening to Mark Nepo (Author of The Book of Awakening) talking to Oprah on Sirius Radio, he shared a moment in his life where he had lost his job, had an unknown illness and was going to confront his father he had been estranged from.  He was afraid, in fear or in the unknown in the past, present and future, so he went deeper and sat with his soul. 

    I understood completely, for when my life turned upside down and my past seemed to horrifying to look at,  the future a vast landscape of empty and unknown and the present was littered with my father’s rubbish…I too went deeper and found my soul. 

    I didn’t call it my soul, but now I know that is where I went.

    A place that was untouched by time and events, but it was calm and knowing, a Self I had never met.

    I remember feeling this very deep calm knowing and strength, although I had no idea where it came from in the midst of such a churning moment in my life.

    Everything was falling down around me and I was deep beneath it all learning incredible lessons and seeing things that no one else could see. 

    I get this; I had connected with my soul when my life fell apart.  What I now know is that when your past, present and future fall down, you get left standing in the unchanging part of you, the place that survives all life experiences. 

    I went from living in time, to being timeless.  Time was too fearful to be in.

    What I also know is that once you take your self out of time, or are shocked and flung out of your life, you can see things from a deeper and wider view, prior to that I was tangled up in time and had no deeper perspective.

    I dwelled in the land of time without a connection to the deep well of wisdom, my soul.

    I love that I have this explanation.  

    One other thing he mentioned that really connected with me was that “Surrender doesn’t mean giving up, it means going with the Flow.”

    He explained that you have to flow all the way through whatever experience you are in in order to get the full lesson.  That giving up isn’t the answer, but being in it fully… going in all the way.  Accepting what is.

    Mostly I have heard that surrender is giving up or just letting it be, but I hadn’t heard that it means heading in fully.

    That is exactly how I faced my life situations after my father’s arrest.  I didn’t duck, I didn’t hide and I didn’t deny.

    Instead I walked fully into each moment of time, but I had this wonderful deep intimate connection with my soul, I never walked alone; I was connected to a place outside of time. 

    (What a great hour listening to him talk.  I bought his book, but gave it to a friend; I am thinking I need one for me.)

     

  • Warn the Authorities.

    I had a multifaceted dream just before waking this morning, confusing about places, time lines and doings, but yet totally clear with overall theme.

    I was at a high school reunion that was taking place at my childhood home and I left early, just walked out. In my car as I was leaving I seen my old neighbor running through his house with little boys chasing him. The next time he passed in front of the big bay window, he is wearing underwear, boys still laughing and chasing him. He then heads for the upstairs, stops midway and I see his underwear have fallen and his butt is showing. He stops on the step and turns…it is like he wants me to see him…doesn’t move for a second or two and then ascends the stairs…little boys following.

    I even notice that the stairway has been moved, for in the old floor plan, I would not have seen him taking the game to the upstairs bedrooms, out of sight.

    In the dream I call my brother to tell him…and then the next thing I am in a grocery story and see another old neighbor boy who is now an older man with a gray haired ponytail, and he is carrying a little boy who wants to get down…he lets him go. He and the boy are fully dressed and appear normal.

    I am buying a drink for my son who is in the hospital for a surgery and have witnessed in the dream my husbands loving teasing ways with him.

    This underwear game man juxtaposes the normal or regular men to boy scenes. The cat in the matrix, that something isn’t right, showing me the differences…and how I didn’t run over and wrestle with the man who was in the midst of a pedophile game.

    Yesterday Oprah asks her audience after listening to the Freedom Riders, what do you know that is wrong and what are you doing about it?

    What do you know or sense or feel isn’t right and what are you doing about it…?

    Leads me to sit with my life and ask what do I know that is wrong and is there something I should be doing about it?

    It just occurred to me in the past few days, that I don’t recall others talking about pedophiles to me. Of me being aware of knowing about other families. I just have no memory of them warning me of creepy men…and then I had a flash of knowing, it was me they were talking about. I lived in the creepy home. I was in the subject of what others were talking about, they didn’t tell me, for I was already there.

    This was shocking to know. No one brought the discussion about pedophiles and creepy men up to me, for my father was a known one.

    I find it fascinating and sickening to know that many knew and only warned others to stay away.

    In order for this disease to stop spreading, the ‘early warning’ system has to be ended, we have to learn how to step in, speak up, tell the authorities…do something.

    Even if you have known for years, now is a good time to do something different.

    I was taught to not speak ill of others, to not point out their negative behaviors, ‘for we all have faults’…silence was my first response.

    And I know I am not alone, there are pews full of well-intentioned good people, silently sitting by warning others to stay away, but not wanting to use their voice in a ‘negative’ way, to use it to tell someone suspicions of a child being abused.

    All it takes is for someone to alert the authorities and they will ask the child.

    It takes someone from the outside in the land of normal to come in and rescue those who were born in captivity.

    We know no different, we need you to speak up on our behalf.

    I have heard a few stories in the past six years, but I too didn’t move on it, didn’t speak up, for I who they spoke of I didn’t know, didn’t know their children or who they had access too. But what I also didn’t do is tell the person who told me, to not warn me, but warn the authorities.

    “What do you know that is wrong in the world and what are you doing about it…” Oprah Winfrey

  • Innocent day in the Future.

    I watched a bad day unfold and witnessed the innocent bystander caught up in its throes, and was shocked to see it in slow motion, seeing the day as innocent and the person actually doing the bad day to her self.

    The furnace that she felt was out to get her had actually been complaining that it was having issues.

    For three weeks it failed to keep running at night, so when we arrived at work, the temps were near 40 degrees. She would hit the re-start button and go on with her day.

    Until one day the re-start button failed to re-start.

    It was a bad day.

    Funny how the furnace gets blamed, when it had given early warning and the warnings had gone unheeded.

    A pattern began to emerge as I watched her day, how items came home to roost, items that she had put off for another day, arrived to be dealt with.

    What I seen was how the cycle keeps running and keeps coming back, that troubles don’t go away un attended, they just circle around gathering power until they are big enough for you to see.

    What you call is a bad day, is really the day of reckoning.

    Some people have piles of things that they do not want to pay attention to, a swirling tornado of stuff, and on some days a bunch hit the ground and fly in many directions and they sit there stunned, not making the connection that their non action started this ball rolling.

    Life is asking us to pay attention to be present in each moment to respond now and when we put it off it doesn’t fall off the planet, it just circles around until a later date.

    I could clearly see no one gets away with anything.

    There is a very accurate bookkeeper in charge, nothing slips by or falls off the earth unaccounted for.

    We either resolve what appears or it circles around and comes back later to be resolved, one way or another it will get your attention.

    Oprah puts it this way; first you get a whisper, than a brick falls on your head and then the whole wall. Paying attention to what is going on and dealing with it at that moment will complete the action reaction cycle.

    There will then be no karmic flow of unresolved choices to rain on an innocent day in the future.

  • A whole You.

    I listened yesterday as Dr. William Petit talked to Oprah about the evil that came into his life that destroyed his wife, his two daughters, and his home, that when it left, there was very little of himself standing, he was a man he didn’t even know.

    A few points struck me as he talked, one is how evil feels looking at it from the inside, and how he used to see evil somewhere out there, a distant thing. He was introduced to evil in a very large way, and it totally changed who he is and how he sees the world.

    There is a huge difference between understanding intellectually what evil is, in comparison to living in the throes of what it destroys, what it takes away and what lay in the aftermath and how you will deal when it comes knocking.

    Feeling evil and its energy and knowing how it tromps into life with no regard to life and feelings, is to feel evil’s blindness to another human being.

    Oprah asked him about forgiveness and evil, and I can’t remember his words, but I understand his feelings on this. That forgiveness is no match against evil.

    Forgiveness always seems to take on the image of being able to negate what happened, to find a place of peace in spite of the hole that evil left behind, or perhaps not even acknowledging the hole it left behind.

    Society has this unchallenged ideal that forgiveness trumps evil, that forgiveness can change evil.

    I believe what he is saying is that evil is an actual phenomena that we can’t change by forgiveness and that we are to acknowledge its power.

    The energy of evil is to destroy; to hurt, to deliver pain, it isn’t warm and fuzzy.

    I thought he sat in the middle of what is, in the center of what happened and described what evil feels like and how it changes who you are.

    The challenge left behind is who will you now become?

    I watched a few clips, and you can see he is still freshly wounded, that it pains him to talk and how he is trying to wrap his mind around such sudden drastic changes in his life.

    Holding on trying to focus on the good, bringing more good, trying to not succumb to the negative pull of drowning or giving up.
    He describes closure, as the hole will eventually lose its ragged edges that waves of goodness will wash over those rough spots leaving them smooth, but the hole will always remain open, a hole in his heart and soul.

    I agree.

    It is also an opening to find your authentic self, a you that stands behind the roles and titles, a you that lives beyond the surface of life; the hole drops you into the center of your being.

    Being a whole you.

  • Ten Affirmations for Male Survivors of Abuse

    My brother found these on Oprah’s website, and I believe they can be for
    anyone who is has been sexually abused.

    Howard Fradkin, Ph.D., LICDC, Co-Chairperson, MaleSurvivor Weekends of Recovery

    1. Recovery is absolutely possible and achievable for me.

    2. I will practice being disloyal to dysfunction and loyal to functionality.

    3. I give myself permission to connect to loving, affirmative, strong, sensitive, accepting men and women in my community.

    4. I release and forgive myself for any responsibility I have accepted in the past for my abuse.

    5. The abuser (s) from the past chose to hurt me; I will stop repeating the lie that it just happened to me.

    6. Offering myself daily compassion is necessary for my healing and growth.

    7. I commit to connecting to the boy inside me today so we can play, laugh and experience joy together, even if just for a minute or two.

    8. I believe deep inside me I possess the ability to face the truth of my abuse and to learn to use new tools for healing.

    9. I have the right and the ability to speak the truth of my abuse and deserve to be heard, understood, believed and supported.

    10. Feeling is healing; as I heal, I develop the ability to experience a wider range of emotions to enhance my health and connections to other.

    Thanks Oprah and Dr. Howard Fradkin, for doing the show, for sharing this information and for allowing each of us to stand a little taller, feel stronger and less alone.

  • Stand Up!

    Yesterday Oprah had the second part with the 200 men who stood up against abuse, I have only seen small segments on her website, but the few I seen offered this, “Standing UP against abuse”.

    Standing up and speaking up with courage, releases the shame, the blame and the rage that live in silence.

    Standing up is not a victim stance.

    Standing up takes courage.

    Standing in the truth of your life and your life experiences, standing and speaking of the deeds of evil you survived as a child, the mixed messages, the bad definitions, the path it set you upon, all stop when you stand up.

    You then pick your own path.

    A path free of abuse.

    I believe to the depth of my soul, you either are sitting down with abusers and letting the legacy continue, OR you are standing up and speaking out and walking away from the abuse.

    It takes courage to stand up, but standing up is the only thing that will stop abuse.

    Sitting and remaining in relationships where the abuse lives is sitting down in abuse.

    I Stand UP!

    I applaud these strong men and the courage it takes to stand up and I am standing with you!

    It will change your whole life, from being a victim to becoming a survivor.

    Standing up and speaking is the only way to end this.

    It is never too late to stand up!

  • 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

  • Love of Self

    A good friend responded to my post on Sprouting Self Hatred, with a great visual, a thought that I could picture.

    “That picture is: yoga being poured as if out of a fancy vessel and killing the sprouting self hatred–over and over again. This yoga is like emotional Round-up!!!! What a concept. There is “out of body Beth” pouring Yoga on self- hatred.”

    She is absolutely right, doing yoga has been killing me softly, the me that was birthed in Self Hatred.

    Taking all the false beliefs and destroying them, eliminating the source of low self-esteem, little by little, pose by pose, I have been wrestling with hatred of self.

    What a battle.

    Sometimes it took Herculean energy to get me off the couch, out of bed, and on to the mat.

    Bringing my old self to do yoga, an old self that didn’t have any energy to love me, to care for me, it was that person that arrived on the mat.

    And each time I successfully accomplished another day of yoga, the hating me weakened and the Loving Me was strengthened.

    The stronger love I have of self, the stronger I can love.

    Jane Fonda yesterday was speaking to Oprah and she was talking about falling in love, how it is best to stand strong in love.

    I am learning to stand strong in love of self.

  • Turn My Light Back On.

    While listening to Tyler Perry talk to Oprah about his abuse as a child, he speaks of how when his father beat him, he would escape to a park in his mind, but on one occasion, he recalls the beating was so severe that he was unable to reach the park, and on that day his little boy died.

    The little boy was beat to death, yet he survived.

    I also believe now, that my little girl died when my father raped me, that IT changed who I am.

    And I somehow felt I could retrieve that little girl, the spirit of innocence and trust that I could bring her back into my world, resurrect her to live again.

    How can I do that? How do you take out the abuse that resides in all my cells? How can I change who I am? How can I rewrite history?

    Oprah asked Tyler what he wanted to say to his little boy, which made me wonder what I would say to my little girl.

    My little girl died before she had a chance to live, to be free, to make decisions and choices that were hers alone to make.

    I feel that I can honor her life by living my life with the courage to speak and walk my truth.

    Her courage to endure is now my courage to stand strong, her enduring spirit lies within me.

    The spirit of my little girl walks with me always….

    Its hard to picture such a little girl being raped, her innocence lost, her trust and faith shattered, and how she had to continue on, without the wonderful free spirit, instead a shadow of her self emerged, a frightened, scared, on guard version came forth, the light was diminished from within.

    The death is when the light goes out.

    Molestation steals the light.

    It has taken me a long while groping along in the darkness to find the switch, to turn my light back on.