I M Perfect lady

Tag: parents

  • Reconnected with my Soul.

    I wondered about knowing your own self worth…is it possible to be full of great wisdom, love, compassion, caring, etc and not know it?  Can a person really not see themselves and their gifts?  Where does self worth come from and how is it so easily overlooked?

    What is self worth?  Is it to see your self with your own eyes and can you do this objectively, or is there a flimy residue of past neglect covering you up?

    I have read that children see themselves through their parent's eyes….(in Alice Miller's books). That how our mother's look at us, is how we learn to see ourselves.

    Is that true?

    But, I also have witnessed people who were abused, and how they see themselves as only valuable when they are 'in use' by others. That they themselves have very little use for themselves in their own life. Their value lies strictly in how much other people need them.

    So, if you come from a very self absorbed mother who didn't see you, you will not see your self either.  And, if your father abused you, HE seen you as his desire…not yours.

    I just wonder when or how we get to our own view of self?

    What has to happen before we can see our own self worth?

    I guess for me, it was when I could clearly see I wasn't seen.

    I felt completely worthless in their eyes.

    I was reduced to nothing.

    I then had to re-build myself.

    My sense of self worth was an inside job and often times I was rediculed by others, and hollered at for choices I made while creating a self that was worth something.

    Even today, this self I now have, isn't always accepted or appreciated or even liked, by others, let alone understood, but inside, the way I see me…I like me.  I love my strength and convictions, my knowings and my feelings.  I am a peace with who I am.  I feel worthy, being me.

    My old view was with my mother's eyes and my worth, was how I was used…and I discovered I was solely used by her to keep her story going, to keep her 'family' together, to keep abuse far and wide from our lives, while abuse worked behind the scenes stealing the worth of each and every child.

    My mother had wrote about me, "Picking up the stragglers" in our family….like my task was to make things 'right' after the damage was done, to fix things, to make them okay again.  And, if I failed, I wasn't giving enough, trying hard enough, doing enough.

    I recall one night laying in my bed and feeling the enormity of their (my parent's) damage, how it not only affect our lives, but our childrens lives.  How it was so far beyond my reach of fixing…sobbing, shaking to the point of losing it, I let it all go.

    Let go of my responsibility for fixing the mess I did not create.

    I disappeared…for I was shown how helpless I really was…without a use. 

    Not only was I abused, but I wasn't going to be able to fix anyone…

    Abuse's insidious energy had completely overwhelmed our family….leaving behind worthless feelings, rising against guilt and shame.  And yet, they (siblings) rallied on, working to make their family right by not seeing yet again…or seeing it through my mother's eyes.

    The cycle completes itself.  Children who are not seen, will not see their children.

    Children who are not seen have no value…unless they are fixing their parents lives.

    This spinning hurricane of worthlessness not stopping…just seemingly to gain more energy as they worked to keep our family 'right'.

    While they were busy shoring up my father's/mother's life, they neglected to see, yet again, their own.

    Their sense of self worth is extracted by what they do for others…never minding at what cost to themselves.

    My journey could be classified with this quote,  "The path into light seems dark, the path forward seems indirect, the direct path seems long…the greatest love seems indifferent, the greatest wisdom seems childish."

    Is the journey recovering your own self worth?

    Who is responsible for it?

    Where will you find it?

    How will you know it?

    When I seen my worth in my mother's eyes, I knew how empty I was…I had done very little for me.

    I have spent the last 8 years filling up my self.


    IMG_9450

    For, if your only value is outside of yourself, you can only see you in their eyes.  It will be impossible to see your self, for you eyes are always turned outward to find your worth.

    My own eyes could not see me.  I only judged me by how others reacted or needed me.  They owned me and gave me value.

    And, coming from dysfunction or abuse or co-dependent living, you will have to disappoint and become value less in their eyes in order to regain your worth.

    "If I gained the world…but, lost the Savior…" comes to mind.  I reconnected with my Soul.



  • How It Feels

    I am reading "The Body Never Lies," again by Alice Miller.  

    What is really standing out to me this time around is the fact about feelings. Or the fact that it is more typical than not to not be aware of your true feelings.

    Alice writes, "Genuine Feelings are never a product of conscious effort. They are quite simply there, and they are there for a very good reason, even if that reason is not always apparent.  I cannot force myself to love or honor my parents if my body rebels against such an endeavor for reasons that are well-known to it.  But if I still attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, then the upshot will be the kind of stress that is invariably involved when I demand the impossible of myself.  This kind of stress has accompanied me almost all my life.  Anxious to stay in line with the system of moral values I had accepted, I did my best to imagine good feeings I did not possess while ignoring the bad feelings I did have.  My aim was to be loved as a daughter.  But the effort was all in vain.  In the end I had to realize that I cannot force love to come if it is not there in the first place.  On the other hand, I learned that a feeling of love will establish itself automatically (for example, love for my children or love for my friends) once I stop demanding that I feel such love and stop obeying the moral injunctions impossed on me.  But such a sensation can happen only when I feel free and remain open and receptive to all my feelings, including the negative ones."

    "The realization that I cannot manipulate my feelings, that I can delude neither myself nor others, brought me immense relief and liberation.  Only then was I fully struck by the large number of people who (like myself) literally almost kill themselves in the attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, without any consideration of the price this extracts both from their own bodies and from their children.  As long as the children allow themselves to be used this way, it is entirely possible to live to be one hundred without any awareness of one's own personal truth and without any illness ensuing from this protracted form of self-deception."

    "A mother who is forced to realize that the deprivations imposed on her in her youth make it impossible for her to love a child of her own, however hard she may try, can certainly expect to be accused of immorality if she has the courage to put that truth into words. But I believe that it is precisely this explicit acceptance of her true feelings, independent of the claims of morality, that will enable her to give both herself and her children the honest and sincere kind of support they need most, and at the same time allow her to free herself from the shackles of self-deception."

    "When most children are born, what they need most from their parents is love, by which I mean affection, attention, care, protection, kindness, and the willingness to communicate.  If these needs are gratified, the bodies of those children will retain the good memory of such caring, affection all their lives, and later, as adults, they will be able to pass on the same kind of love to their children. But if this is not the case, the children will be left with a lifelong yearning for the fulfillment of their initial (and vital) needs. In later life, this yearning will be directed at other people.  In comparison, the more implacably children have been deprived of love and negated or maltreated in the name of "Upbringing," the more those children, on reaching adulthood, will look to their parents (or other people substituting for them) to supply all the things those same parents failed to provide when they were needed most.  This is a normal response on the part of the body.  It knows precisely what it needs, it cannot forget the deprivations.  The deprivation or hole is there waiting to be filled."

    "The older we get, the more difficult it is to find other people who can give us the love our parents denied us. But the body's expectations do not slacken with age – quite the contrary!  They are merely directed at others, usually our own children and grandchildren.  The only way out of this dilemma is to become aware of these mechanisms and to identify the reality of our own childhood by counteracting the process of repression and denial.  In this way we can create in our own selves a person who can satisfy at least some of the needs that have been waiting for fulfillment since birth, if not earlier.  Then we can give ourselves the attention, the respect, the understanding for our emotions, the sorely needed protection, and the unconditional love that our parents withheld from us."

    "To make this happen we need one special experience; the experience of love for the child we once were.  Without it, we have no way of knowing what love consists of."  Alice Miller

    While I knew that having lived 46 years trying so hard to possess feelings of love and warmth toward my parents, and working at being a warmer person, it had never not once occurred to me that I wasn't the problem. That due to the lack of feelings of love didn't mean there was something the matter with me…but rather what I was trying to love.

    I remember having odd and horrifying realizations about my self, when the lack of deep caring and love didn't arise from me, towards my parents.  I would not even want to glance to long at this self that seemed to be so detached and cool.  For what child doesn't want to be with her parents?

    The double feelings that I had with the discovery that my father was a pedophile, was that I wasn't a broken love person.  I wasn't cold or detached…I wasn't living in a broken body and cold toward family…I wasn't damaged…but my family was.

    I am not sure I can tell you how it feels to believe you don't have access to warmth and caring or love towards parents…and feel you are damaged. That you arrived empty of that kind of love.  Yet I knew I could feel, but couldn't carry those feelings to my parents.

    It now gives me great peace to know I can't manipulate feelings…that emotions are natural responses, ones that come up without any assistance from me.  It leaves me in a neutral position taking the lead from my body.

    My body never lies…however, I have lied about my body.

    I have lived faking my feelings.

    Living a fake life.

    But no more.  Now, I simply agree with how It feels.

     

  • Never Lied.

    In "Power vs Force" by David Hawkins, he writes,

    "In the experiments to be described in this book, the reactions of the human body provide such a signal of change in conditions.  As will be seen, the body can discern, to the finest degree, the difference between that which is supportive of life and that which is not." 

    "This isn't surprising: After all, living things react positively to what is life-supportive and negatively to what is not; this is a fundamental mechanism of survival.  Inherent in all life forms is the capacity to detect change and react collectively – thus, trees become smaller at higher elevations as the oxygen in the atmosphere becomes scarer. Human protoplasm is far more sensitive than that of a tree." DH

    There is so much going on in the Universe that we are not aware of; all the little choices that are made due to a detection of change in conditions.

    I see the home environment as a small universe within the universe. And its occupants with highly sensitive bodies, that detect change of conditions.  

    Children come in with bodies of high intelligence, that far exceeds what their minds know.  And they too learn to grow or not grow depending upon the climate within the home.

    No matter what they are told, they can feel the lay of the land, and adapt in order to survive.  When love turns abusive…their bodies detect the change of conditions…they become alert, wary, anxious, etc…and grow accordingly.

    They will require less if less is given. 

    Or flourish and expand according to the safety and love given.

    You don't have to know the intimate details of a family home, just look at its children.  How are they doing in society?  Are they flourishing or floundering?

    We step forth with the markers of how we were raised.

    You can see those of us who lived in home environments where the child wasn't seen; we have a hard time finding ourselves, our voices, our worth.  We grew low…we adjusted our selves and didn't rise higher than the treatment.

    Our stunted growth shows.  

    The lack of emotional growth or balanced lives.

    What is so remarkable, is that we forget we are not permanently planted, like a tree. We can transplant ourselves…and Move to a more Life Supporting environment.

    What is hard for folks to imagine is that parents will naturally keep their children at the same level they are.  They can only raise a child as high as they are, no higher.  

    My life clearly showed how I only grew as high as my mother. 

    And it would have been stunted there, had I not gotten out.

    My body had always felt the negative vibes, but I had overrode them.  I believed that my body was working incorrectly, for it was sending signals Against family.  

    I believed that I had to work harder to be/feel more loving toward my parents.  I had feeling issues.

    It was a horrifying relief to know my body was right on.

    Except now I had to reverse all that I knew and follow this highly sensitive brilliant body…and celebrate each feeling.

    For each feeling was a signal to me of the condition and changes around me.  It didn't care what I believed, what dogma I followed, what history I had with people, it was literally moving around beeping and binging messages to me, constantly.

    It is like having the best instrument in all the Universe…and you live in it.  

    Once you are aware that the body talks to you constantly, you can't be unaware.  

    To stand by your feelings is to stand hand in hand with the Ultimate power; God/Universe.

    What I see in abusive homes, is we are taught to worship a lesser god, one that disregards our feelings.  Our parents. 

    When you honor and love your parents in an abusive home, going against the feelings of your body, you are being turned away from your Higher Power.  

    What is so amazing to me is that God created our bodies and yet we don't see the connection or feel the vast Divinity of them…nor trust that God made them to work perfectly. 

    Doubting the body, to me is, doubting God. 

    When someone abuses our bodies, they are actually wrecking the gift that God created.  

    When others treat our bodies violently, we are taught to not feel like the gift we are.

    It takes lots of effort to restore our selves to our natural state.

    My life changed completely when I stopped honoring my parents and began to honor my body…it truly has never lied.

     

     

     

     

     

  • When She Writes It.

    I am at work, with a racking cough, aching bones and going through piles of mail, and come across my name and my mother's handwriting.  

    I put it in my slot. 

    What now, I wonder, what now…?  The added weight of the letter works on me as I continue to toss the mail.

    As I am bundling the mail to take on the route, I put mine in my purse, in case I decide I need to know what she has to say somewhere along my route.  I don't.  I feel the weight without even reading the words.

    I listen to a novel, moving along box to box, road to road, package to package….time passes, and she comes and goes along the route and I don't read it until I turn on my road.

    These words are spread out on stationary sheet, blue snowflakes around the border…plain white middle.

    Birthday/Christmas 2011

    Dearest Beth,

    You have been a great help and joy for many years.  You are my daughter and I have always loved you from Day 1.

    May God bless us all and give peace in 2012.

    A Mother's Love,

    Always and Forever,

    Mom

    I wonder what she is trying to accomplish by this letter.  What prompts her to send out these words?

    Stating a mother's love? Trying again to make me believe…

     A mother's love???  A mother who blessed her husband when he raped me.  Really, you loved me since day one.  I would beg to differ.  No matter how many times you write it, it still sounds hollow to me.  I don't feel the love.  Too many little girls lives were changed by how you loved me.

    She says I have been a great help and joy….And I certainly had been to abuse. She mentions nothing about my actions today, the present Beth, just the Beth of old.  She sees only her….refusing to acknowledge my changes, the new me.

    "May God Bless us all and give peace in 2012."  

    What is peace to her?  Would peace return to her life, If I would turn back into being a help and a joy for abuse?  Would peace then return, is that the Blessing she wants from her God?  

    Peace in dysfunction…an oxymoron for sure.

    Taken at a glance and just reading the words, it sounds like a lovely letter from a mother to her daughter; but the background experiences taint the words.

    Even the little girl in me feels the absence of her understanding as to where I am at.  I don't know if she can even fathom my path…our differences are so vast.

    While these notes may be comforting or helpful to her, they are not to me.  They come in blindly seeing only how she feels and what I brought….they fail to see how I felt or what I got back then.

    I asked myself, "what did I get from her…?"

    What is my response to her.  

    As a daughter of hers what can I possibly say?

    "Mommy Dearest…"  

    It seems when the hurt gets toughened up and put aside, she comes back in to peck at the cut.  I told her the kindest thing I have to offer her is silence.  No words.  Nothing.  Empty of retorts.

    As soon as I ponder what I would respond, it gets my blood pressure pumping.  I feel all the rage and wounds and resentment, hurt and pain.  Not only for me, but so many little girls, I get swallowed in the dark…I have no kind words to send back to her.

    I stop mentally writing a response…

    I just want her to remain silent.  To let it be.  To stop writing how much she loves me and how she will be my mother forever and always.

    Don't I know it.  Haven't I felt her brand of Love?  Was I not given another dose even today?  How can a mother who allowed such atrocities go on, write this letter to a Me?

    All she sees is how she loved me, not HOW she loved me.

    She misses all the places she wasn't aware…and I was abused.

    She misses all the things she overlooked that caused me pain.

    She misses all the mothering things she failed to accomplish when abuse walked through her door into her life, into her marriage and into her daughter.  She misses that.

    She only wants to see the joy and help.  She doesn't want to see the gaping wound of dysfunction.

    The wound that steered my life into flowing backwards and crooked.

    Seeing my Helping her and Joy for many years IS NOT what I need her to see. She doesn't need to see me that way.

    She needs to see me, a little child being hurt by her father. She needs to see that and then write letter about how she loved me so.

    Without mentioning my pain, her love stays golden.

    And without mentioning my pain… I would dissolve back into a land of dysfunction again.

    She keeps sending me letters expounding on her love…when a letter explaining how she couldn't have loved me would be more true to the nature of my experience.

    I don't want a love letter… I want a letter telling me how she abused me.  Isn't that odd.  We don't want our abusive parents to tell us how much they loved us for we carry scars of abuse…we want them to acknowledge what they did to us was not love.

    I could puke on the words of love she writes.

    Trying to give me her love…in words, when she failed in deeds.

    Once again, she didn't write the letter that will break my silence…

    She continues to hide behind a loving mother…when reality has shown me the opposite.  

     It is good for me to know what letter I am waiting for.  I always felt no need to respond, and now I know what words I am seeking…my truth, I will recognize it when she writes it.

     ‎"Truth can be Unrecognized, but it can't be changed." 

    David Hawkins  

     

     

  • How Low are your boundaries…

    “All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection” ~ Alice Miller

    Who knew that in order to grow up, you have to learn how to articulate your feelings and needs?  

    Isn't it funny in a peculiar way, how the parents who abused us believe they know what our needs are.  Really?  You do?

    What is even more tragic is that we continue to believe they have our best interest at heart…really?  Are they not the same ones who lowered who I was, who didn't allow me to self-protect?  

    There is no other crime in the world where the victim and the offender have relationships long long after the crime, where there is no separation…unless, and it is a very small proportion, the child presses charges against the parent.

    In order for the crime to be addressed, the child has to put his parent in jail…and be then accussed of 'breaking up the family'. Really, isn't it really just a crime ring?

    These crimes are snuggled nicely into the family unit, where the other spouse is a knowing accomplice, and the child or children are held victims forever…

    Even the whisper of 'speaking' of this sets off and in motion a torrent of fear that pulls tighter the controls of the patriarchal power…striking the child mute once again.

    The child fears to stand against the offender/accomplice…and is persuaded to return to the 'family' or crime ring.

    What I will never underestimate is the power of the parents to sway the sanity and well being of the family unit…and they have the exact same power to create insanity and hold it tightly within.

    Parents power will either be used to abuse or be used to love…and the children will follow in kind.

    Our family used family as a place for abuse to flourish…it wasn't used to raise and teach us self-protection, in fact it did the complete opposite.

    It is said that my father clothed and fed 14 children, but they fail to report how he didn't raise us, but instead stunted our emotional growth, rendered useless our power to self protect.

    He instead, along with my mother, set us out in the world without a way to protect ourselves, we had to learn this on our own.

    It took me 40 years to figure it out, that first step in the course of self protection was to learn to protect myself from my parents….

    No abusive parent will grant a child its rights to their needs or feelings, it is impossible for them to even consider it.

    Abusive parents are very self absorbed, they don't even know what you need, but the certainly and unequivocally LET You know what they need….and like always, we acquiesce our feelings and our needs to please them.

    What other crime does the victim work so hard and give up their lives to please the offender???

    If we are not standing up for our feelings and what our needs are we are laying down in order to please the one who lowered us.  How low will you go???  It is like insane limbo….and actually it does leave you life in limbo.

    It is my belief that offenders have no low limits, they could care less what is required of you in order to please them….it is up to us how low the bar goes, how low are your boundaries…

     

     

  • Whatever Reality Serves.

    My brother's blog (www.messyguru.typepad.com ) shows the switching characters that a mother often displays when faced with truths that directly oppose her life.  Her life and dream and ideals.
    I have somehow had this wrong.  I had presumed that my mother lived in truth and slide into unreality when uncomfortable subjects arose, but instead it seems she resides in non-reality and will slip out into reality every now and then.
    Although this is just hearsay on my part, for she never came out of her camp of denial, pretend, or righteous unknowing for me.
    She stayed true to the character of my childhood.
    I can't know what would be more perplexing on a child, to have her step forth in knowing, and the go back to unknowing or to remain steadfast in unknowing?
    While her actions aluded to the fact that her husband was in jail, for she seen him in an orange jumpsuit behind bars, she never not once spoke to me about why he was there.  
    This omitance echoes my childhood.  This is what I meant by she never once told me to fear my father, to stand clear, to not trust etc.  Instead it was always me that had issues, not him and certainly not her.
    However during the early months of this, since she wasn't speaking of this, not available by phone, I made my own conclusions about the lay of the land.  My body and I were in total agreement to who he was as well as to who he was married to and how this was able to continue on for so long.
    My mother's character never wavered from the mother I knew as a child.
    My father's character never wavered from the father I knew as a child.
    My character greatly changed, when I saw them in their true colors.
    All it took was one look, and my whole world shattered.
    The character that I had been playing, loving daughter, died.
    And in its place a new role was born.
    I gave up all outside roles and stood firmly in the role called me.
    I moved forward by what I felt inside.
    I responded in kind to what life served up
    When it served me a pedophile father, I walked in harmony with that.
    When it served me up a mother who was unable to step into my world, I accepted that.
    My new role is to walk in step with whatever reality serves.

  • Back to the Lake of Innocence.

    The previous post’s pictures articulate the changes, and how in fact the little girl continues to look the same, but now feels like that dirty lake resides inside of her, by the actions done to her and the lack of response.

    Prior to abuse entering into her world, her world is like Lake Superior on a beautiful summer day, calm, peaceful, relaxing, clean, fresh, beautiful, loving, kind, innocent…

    And then….

    (Recounting from the file)

    “He was always very nice, showing interest in me… he casually pulled me on his lap, real friendly like, a real laid back guy…but very strong…he would pull me onto his lap, he forcefully pulled me on his lap and then take my hand, held my hand, and place it over his erect penis that would be out of his long johns…if she tried to pull it away, he would very firmly put it back, rubbing his penis, while Ray would be doing this, other people would be in the room, including his wife. The same scenario happened, over and over again…”  Little girl voices…

    After abuse the world changes color, it is now darker, scarier and monsters lurk in kitchens and living rooms…friendly laid back guys can transform into monsters and then back again. No one seems to see the monster you are experiencing… It becomes this fluid ever changing landscape.

    And from the file, each girl spoke of my father’s transformation, of going from nice laid back neighbor man to a forcible pedophile.  The juxtaposition.

    What is missing is the transformation of the other adults.

    The wife, neighbors and minister continued on as normal.

    What is horrific is that they don’t become unglued…and transform into raging indignant people reeling about the injustice of such treatment of the innocent.

    We are left with double transformations.

    We wait to see our loving caring parent transform into rage at our abuse…and it doesn’t happen.

    So we then, watch or feel inside the disappearing love, trust and faith.

    It transforms from loving and caring, to caring less.

    Our world now holds people who are not who they say they are, there are flipping images and we can’t trust what we see anymore.

    The truth is, there is no truth.

    This is the awful state to be in, where you can’t trust the kind face of my father for lurking in the background is forcible contact with his penis.

    Double images.

    You can’t trust your mother’s high morals and values for when it comes to the real tough things in life, she is unable to stand tall, to come out swinging for you.

    She proclaims strong and comes out weak.

    She turns a blind eye towards your abuser, which translates to us, a blind eye on our abuse our wounds…

    If you don’t value your children, you don’t value anything.

    And when you don’t value the children, the children can’t value themselves. They literally see themselves in your eyes.

    What I saw in my parent’s eyes is the Lake of Sins…their sins.  I seen me through their eyes of sins…believing those eyes were talking about me, instead they were showing me who they were, and it had nothing to do with me.

    Their value became my value…they can’t make me precious and valuable…without it being within them first.

    “you can’t give what you don’t have…” seems like a lofty bit of wisdom the therapy world imparts, but I know form experience this is true.

    When I discovered my own innocence, I could then see my children with eyes of innocence…but first I had to see the abuse my parents gave to me.  I couldn’t hold them innocent, for when I did I was the problem.

    And what I know for sure is the girls; the little children who are forced to perform sexual acts are never the problem.  Not now, not ever.

    Until I held my father accountable, my innocence was not mine.

    This is very very tough for a child to do, for we want at all cost to keep a loving parent, a strong caring forceful in love parent, but instead we get parents who become strong in abuse and weak in love.

    Even at my old age, I still wanted to have a strong generation before me, I didn’t want to be stronger than the top, I wanted a soft place to fall, someone to rely upon, a warm embrace, a shelter from life storms…

    My healing and dealing and bearing the brunt of all ridicule and disdain is giving my children the parent I sought.

    I have to withstand all the storms that have been leveled at me to show my children and I how strong I am, that no matter who abuses…I can stand tough.

    I have stood against my father, my mother and all siblings who have openly and willingly supported and cared for them.  I have let family go for the sake of my own little girl inside and in doing so have secured an environment for my own children.

    I have transformed multiple times…innocent to abuse, to innocent again, from strong to weak and weak to strong, from loving to fear and fear to loving, from me to not me to back to me again.

    Back to the Lake of Innocence…

    IMG_6803 

  • In Peace I walked Free!

    After my last post about the Civil War in abusive homes, I had to look up the meaning of Civil to see what it means to be in a Civil war.

    Civil -polite: polite, but in a way that is cold and formal.
    And then I looked up the combination of the two words, Civil War,

    Civil War – is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation.

    The formerly united family is now at war with themselves, brothers against brothers, sisters against sister, children against parents for some of the blind can now see, some of the brainwashed are beginning to think on their own, an awakening is happening, and this causes a war within a war.

    I don’t want to leave the feelings that in this Civil War no peace is found, for it is. Peace is found in no longer remaining silent. Power is replacing the forced politeness…children are rising up and finding their true self, they feel the stirrings of their Spirit.

    They are finding their unused voices, speaking forbidden words and names, identifying the enemy and no longer remaining civil – polite cold and formal.

    They will become warm and informal, perhaps become unconventional and different, they will be marching to their own drums, hearing their own music for the very first time.
    Hearing the stirrings of inner freedom and expression, of passion and of self-awareness, they will fight now to be free from being held prisoner to another.

    This civil war will end for the lucky ones, for the ones who can find the thread of their soul, the inner knowing that their very aliveness depends on them leaving the family, that if they stay they may as well die.

    There wasn’t a moment of hesitation when I left my family, there wasn’t a drop of doubt, for to the depth of my being, I knew I had been one of the living dead and staying there aware would be to be buried alive, for now I knew I was alive but dead.

    What I had found that day back in December of 2004, was a dead me. A me that had no me in it. A me that was full of the definitions from my parents, the beliefs and thoughts of my religion, but there wasn’t but a speck of me there.
    Not a part of me that defined by me, just me.

    I was a body being used by my family and a religion, but I wasn’t alive and now I was aware of it. And once I knew, I could no longer not know. And when you know you are then awake of how asleep you have been.

    And when you are awake, you see the civil war you lived in.

    Imagine being in a war but unaware you are at war. Or even aware that you are scarred and lame due to the battles you unsuccessfully fought.

    A civil war refugee that finds its imperfect self is on the path to perfection.
    “Coming from whence you came…” you should act, be and walk and talk like the walking wounded.

    You are the perfect representation of an abused child. You are the signpost or the poster child for abuse. You have displayed yourself perfectly, the perfectly abused.
    Perfectly abused people act perfectly abused. When you are aware of how abused you are, you can then begin to heal.

    Denying your brokenness is denying your self.

    I found myself in a completely broken state and complete freedom arose, for I no longer had to strive for perfection instead I embraced my imperfections and found them to be perfectly me.

    In agreement with my history I found peace…and the freedom to be myself.

    To walk my walk.

    To talk my talk.

    To be a me I had yet to be.

    An individual, a free spirit, with a clear mind no longer washed by others, in peace I walked free.

    Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose!

  • A Pedophiles Nest

    There is only one human race, but there are many small sprints or similar roads we travel and our travel companions often times are running silently with us, unbeknownst to either of us.

    We feel alone and separated, when in fact our road is quite packed and overrun with folks of all ages.

    As refugees of our own secret war we hide our battle scars, for it is not a war we are proud to be in, it is more like we are prisoners of this war.

    Wartime prisoners walking free in chains of guilt and confused of who our real enemy is and fearful of those we love.

    To frighten to speak of the war crimes, we soldier on in silence, while our behavior displays great cover-ups and covert actions.

    Are we soldiers or are we prisoners?

    Who are we fighting for, whose side are we on?

    In the war of abuse the lines get fuzzy, our enemy lines are blurred by images of father, uncle, brother, sister, mother.

    The enemy looks and sounds too familiar. We can’t tell ‘friendly’ fire from those of our enemies.

    The war against abuse becomes the war against the family, a family’s civil war.

    This family civil war begins when a parent abuses a child or allows a child’s abuse to go untreated. The family home then becomes a war zone, where you’re living with the enemy, a prisoner of war.

    The war has been waging for generations and many lifetimes…and yet we feel that we are the ones who start the war by speaking of it, when if fact we are trying to end it.

    Ending this war means ending the ‘family’ as it stands.

    The insanity of it all, is what they call family is really a civil war, where children are born prisoners and in order to be free, have to leave the family.

    I am not sure I can articulate this correctly, but we are born into the land of the enemies and we are supporting a war machine while being the land it occupies.

    It is like we are on the team of our enemies fighting against ourselves.

    And to me, the reality of this was the beginning of an out and out war, for as long as I was a silent and well-behaved prisoner of war, a family’s image remained intact and the monster remained behind the façade of father.

    The near impossible task is to see the enemy of the family’s civil war, to feel the love evaporate, the trust turn to fear, and face that you lived in the middle of enemy territory.

    The refugees of this war come stumbling out of their families…lost, confused and alone or in the company of siblings in the same condition. In order to win the war, we’ll have to fight against the family, become its enemy.

    What is seen, as a family civil war is actually the war against abusive behavior, is a fight for the innocent children, a battle to begin healing from criminal acts in childhood.

    For all the new refugees and soldiers who have switched sides, I applaud you and your bravery and courage to stand up against enemies.

    The good news is that you have been fighting to keep a monster in power, and now you are fighting to take him down and all the energy, strength and endurance you have used to live within enemy camp can now be used against him/her.

    The family civil war can only be won in tearing the family apart and display it as it is, a pedophile’s nest.

  • Protected me.

    For six years I have been saying that I have no memory, and I have lied. I have no mind memory, but my body has always had its memory.

    I don’t have actual vivid stories to recount, but I do have the physical reaction within my body’s mass, its nerves and muscles…it knows what I forgot to remember.

    For years I wasn’t pleased with my ‘cold’ body, how it chose not to get close to my parents, how it literally would feel unease in their presence, never the desire to snuggle close or lean in and get into their aurora.

    It was like I wasn’t driving this body, that this body had a life of its own…it craved things and repelled things on its own volition.

    Now with hidden truths and untold stories known, I now am supportive of this living organism that has a beautiful memory, a trusting articulate knowing and isn’t fooled by flimsy masks.

    It never pretended to pretend it always reacted accurately aligning itself to the experiences of its past.

    Me inside was always disappointed in its lack of warmth for my parents, its lack of trust and faith and its inability to recognize and feel their love.

    My body stood strong and resilient to all my longings and childish wishes…it would not give up what it knew.

    It knew my father’s imprint, my mother’s indifference…it never once changed its way, lost its courage or grace.

    It just was…

    An abused body and it knew its source.

    Its memory carried me when I was to blind to see, to wounded to know, It always has protected me…