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  • Rear-View Mirror

    It is interesting to me the dynamics of Functioning or Dysfunctional, and how the very nature of dysfunction leads you to make choices that will reap more dysfunction.

    The very nature of dysfunction is to not look at what is, or not feel that which you feel, which leads to a life that you won't look at or feel, which has you facing forward to the next moment in time, but not this moment.

    It is natural in the dysfunction to look ahead and disregard past behaviors, to not voice how you feel and to remain focused on the future, without looking out the side windows or definitely the back-window.  To not follow through with what you feel, but toss your feelings behind you and look ahead.

    My mother drove her life, heedless to how her actions affected us. Her attention on the future, kept her from dealing in the now. And she certainly was not going to look behind her at what lay there…and in doing so, years upon years of abuse lay scattered in her rear-view mirror, while she doggedly drove on into the sunset, never taking her foot off the gas peddle to stop.

    Her not stopping her life for an act of abuse…made it so my father didn't have to stop either…If she stopped, he would have been made to stop.

    She was his ticket to keep going.

    While she focused on the wide window in front of her, he was off to the side abusing, and in her rear-view mirror we all lay abused…while her attention was looking anywhere but there.

    Dysfunction is not looking and certainly not stopping your life style or interrupting your 'family' for abuse.

    Dysfunction doesn't stop when it sees abuse.  Dysfunction doesn't stop when it feels pain. Dysfunction doesn't stop when it is betrayed…dysfunction just plows ahead.

    Heading to a destination that is far away from abuse, into happiness or laughter, but dysfunction certainly doesn't stop for abuse.

    That is dysfunction. That is why families are okay with abuse, for it doesn't pay attention to it.  It allows it to ride along in the rearview mirror by promising NOT to LOOK.

    Looking at abuse is not permitted in dysfunction.

    Speaking about hurtful behavior by another is not allowed in dysfunction.  You are to forgive and move on, you are not allowed to hold 'grudges' or carry the truth forward, you must leave it lie in the rear-view mirror.

    Dysfunction is to create a person without a past.

    None of their 'sins' are taken into the future….only who they are today…sinless, abuseless, just a body without past actions….that is all that comes into the future.

    You are not allowed to look at the junk in their trunk…that is dysfunction…you must keep separating actions from the person.

    Surely I could keep a dad if I didn't bring forth the rape…that is dysfunction.  Yet,I kept looking behind in the rear-view mirror and seeing the rape….oh why couldn't I just focus on today…and a rosie future.

    In my experience, the only thing that happens if you never look back or out the side windows is Abuse gets to dance free….

    While my mother stared ahead toward future happiness…my father was able to rape and fondle and forcefully hold many little hands upon his penis…dysfunction won't look at abuse.

    Function stops and stares at abuse…function sees the child, function doesn't drive on…function stops her life…and stares behind her at all the flags she missed, all the places she didn't see…Function sees the monster…dysfunction sees the husband/wife.

    In order to continue on without abuse, you have to see where you have been…how you drove and not take that road again.

    Is impossible to stop abuse by not seeing it.  You can stare for the rest of your life ahead and it will not stop.

    Abuse needs you to not see.  My father needed all folks to Not see his abuse. And sadly, only the children saw it.  The helpless child felt the pressure of his powerful hands pressed upon his penis….they couldn't stop him.  

    Dysfunction will not stop and stare…

    I believe children are told to not talk about it, not dwell on it, to forgive that action and move on….it isn't that it isn't seen, but we are told to look ahead, and not to look behind.

    Not hold another person accountable…not let that one action or multitude of sins color their character, focus on the good times, the good things and ahead.

    That is the ingredients of dysfunctional families.  They don't stop for abuse…and they never look in the rear-view mirror.

    "Objects Are Closer than they Appear" 

     

     

  • Holistically I see me.

    I had images of myself yesterday, the woman I had become from being left untreated in abuse. How backwards I viewed life, myself and how I treated others was indicative coming from whence I came.

    Today while trying to write out the differences between living from love and living from fear, I stumbled upon a sentence that said, “Untreated abuse is abuse that isn’t seen”.

    Imagine all it takes to treat abuse is to see it.

    Just see it.

    I was able to crawl to the surface by one child echoing what I had felt about my father, she saw what I saw; we both saw or felt abuse.

    I am not sure how her treatment went from that point on, for when they treated her monster as a father, she was left confused. I lived in that confusion for 46 years.

    I find great peace in knowing that treatment for a child is seeing the abuse and acting in kind.

    All your actions from that day forth have to be indicative of dealing with a monster not a dad.

    I know, from my own Monster experience, that the key in killing what ruled me was to see it.

    To see the total make up of this monster, to see the triggers, the cause and the affect, to gain control over the monster that lived within me.

    This monster was created from Untreated abuse.

    Imagine.

    The word Holistic came to mind…and I looked up the meaning.

    1. analyzing whole system of beliefs: characterized by the view that a whole system of beliefs must be analyzed rather than simply its individual components
    2. considering all factors when treating illness: taking into account all of somebody’s physical, mental, and social conditions in the treatment of illness.

    When folks talk about holistic treatments for illness, they usually speak of natural substances to treat the affects, but rarely look at what the cause was.

    Holistic to me is to look at the whole person, to see the whole view of where they traveled and whom they traveled with, what they were taught and how that fits into reality.

    I am thinking that just like religion is learning about God and Spirituality is experiencing God, there is an equal space between trying to apply natural remedies upon an unnatural life.

    An unnatural life for me would be to live like I was never abused. A more natural life would be to live as an abused girl. And the holistic approach is to see all the aspects of abuse and to feel that there was no part of my life that it didn’t touch, it isn’t just a mole in my life, but my life.

    I love that I know two things now, that seeing abuse is treatment and to see all points of my life, is living holistically.

    I grew naturally into an unnatural person in the land of abuse.
    I was born right side up and was flipped and then tried to act normal from an unnormal place.

    Holistically I see me.

    IMG_5627

    This tree and me are one…I have such great love and compassion for how it grew and stands tall with its roots showing!

  • My Soul Cheers

    Shutting the valves or entry points where I have allowed toxic behavior and or negative energy to seep in, feels soooo liberating, so empowering, so self loving, I feel so lightened by this, if only I knew that I wouldn’t feel alone, but empowered, I wouldn’t have waited so long.

    The first time I left my family, I did so in fear, anger and anxiety, in moments of pure panic due to the way they were all acting, I segregated myself in solitary confinement in fear. Fear of who they were and how weak I literally was, I scurried to be far far away from them.

    I was out of control in a lonely spot with raging fear, alone and empty inside, twisted up with confused and conflicting images, tangling love and fear, I had to run to survive, not knowing that I would survive…I left.

    It wasn’t an act of courage or empowerment but an act of sheer terror.

    The difference between fleeing in terror or fleeing with knowingly and great awareness are oceans apart.

    One leaves you vulnerable and alone.
    The other empowered and alive with great gusts of newfound peace, like breathing or not breathing.

    Breathing with the right to orchestrate your world, using your free will to close the source of pain that flows into your world.

    What a great thing to know, how empowerment is grown, it is birthed by making a choice, using your awareness and seeing the cause, doing what you can to eliminate it in your world.

    This isn’t at all about them, but about you.

    You have the right to open and close relationships.

    I love that I found the energy to use the switch, to flip the button to off.

    It doesn’t change who they are, but it greatly changes their impact in my world. Little did I know, even though I left the window open, that I was the one I was waiting for…

    Inside, as my tank overflows with empowerment, my soul cheers!

    (I think I scored one for me!)

  • Both and And…

    ‎"To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path."

    Pema Chodron

     

    The path to enlightenment isn’t a slide of joy, love and bliss, perhaps once you have untangled all the crossed wires and unhooked all the addictive tendencies, connected love of self, but until then…when you feel that it is hopeless, when it seems so upside down and backwards, head in.

     

    Head directly in what is giving you stress and angst, and look about inside and outside, see it all as an experiment in humankind.

     

    I used to look at others and see all the places they were backwards, where they made actions blindly and sat befuddled in the outcome, now I look at how I affect the world around me.

     

    I am not excited or feeling blissful as I delve deeply into how my all or none actions are affecting me, my mothering skills, and how this all affects my children’s sense self, but in the moments when I feel so out of control, I usually am.

     

    I usually have taken a learned behavior and never questioned its application.  Not only on me, but those around me.

     

    It leaves you breathless to see how your words and actions can literally change the way another feels about themselves.

     

    One of the biggest challenges in all of this is to be the changeling mom, to be the one to undo and correct generations of useless tools.

     

    I am never certain what will work, but I am always certain that if I don’t change, the legacy will continue on, a legacy of all or none living.

     

    The perspective alone from all or none, to both-and leaves everyone with multiple options and the gates open wide in allowing different opinions to enter, for new ideas to be born, a change of the landscape as well as the people who live upon it.

     

    It leaves me hopeful, always.

    Hopeful that the damage I have inflicted can be turned around, that when I finally learn a new way, they will instantly feel the affects.

     

    The affects of being accepted, of allowing their true selves to shine forth, their voices to be heard, a life to be noticed, hopeful they will be in a reality of Both and And.